My Succubus Harem System In The Reverse World

Chapter 87: Chapter 87: Why Does Your Sweat Smell This Expensive?

I woke up with my body aching in places that had nothing to do with ordinary training.

The sofa had left a stiff line of protest down my spine and shoulders.

For a disoriented second I wondered if the system had decided to punish the decision I refused to make the night before.

The thought faded as soon as I sat up and the ordinary complaints of a bad sleeping position replaced it.

Jenna was already in the kitchen, moving with quiet efficiency around the coffee unit.

She didn’t look surprised to find me awake.

I pushed myself upright, rubbed a hand across my face, and spoke before the silence could settle into something heavier.

"I didn’t mean any of that last night."

"I know."

She turned, set a cup on the counter within my reach, and met my eyes without flinching.

"I know you more than you think."

I took the coffee. The heat against my palms felt grounding.

"You heard about the training?"

"With Rei, right?"

"Yes. For some reason, her mother’s guild never contacted us about you."

I frowned slightly.

"So?"

"It means she didn’t disclose the full details of what happened in the simulation, or what you are, to her family. That is both good and bad. Good, because we can keep your current training cycle relatively low-key. Bad, because we still don’t know what she intends to do with the information she is holding."

"It’s not like she’s dangerous, right?"

"Rei herself isn’t dangerous. Her curiosity is."

I nodded.

The assessment was clean, practical, and exactly the kind of framing I had come to expect from her.

Rei Lawless had always been the most straightforward of the complications in my orbit.

She didn’t pretend the exchange was about anything softer than power. In a week full of careful distance and muted anchors, that kind of honesty almost felt restful.

We finished the coffee in relative quiet.

I showered, changed into training clothes, and left for the guild without further discussion of the previous night’s offer or the system window I had refused.

She didn’t know I could do it.

I kept it that way.

The private training room felt larger without Gianna in it.

I stood in the center of the mat for a moment, listening to the low hum of the reinforced walls, then rolled my shoulders and called the chains.

Blue ethereal links spiraled into existence around my right hand, solid and responsive.

The new bracelet remained quiet against my wrist, monitoring, not yet restricting.

I dismissed the construct, formed it again, split it into three separate lengths, and began running the basic control drills Mira had outlined: rapid formation, directional snaps, controlled retraction, low-output binding against the training dummies.

[Host.]

I kept moving.

"I know," I said under my breath.

"I’m not blaming you. You want progress? I’ll give you progress. Trust me. But I need more skills."

[Use the Succubus Points.]

Oh.

I almost forgot something like that exists.

The system didn’t reply. It didn’t need to. The recommendation of Rei Lawless as next target still sat somewhere in its memory, patient and available.

I simply refused to look at it directly while I worked.

Sweat gathered along my spine and at the back of my neck.

The Pheromone Trace passive activated without conscious effort, dispersing that subtle cooling signature into the recycled air of the room.

I ignored it and moved on to Partner Mapping drills against space, then to short bursts of Adrenaline Partition to test how cleanly the new trait cut fatigue signals.

Ten minutes of suppressed burn.

Five minutes of ordinary recovery.

Repeat.

By the time the door opened, I was breathing hard, shirt damp, chains dissolving back into light between my fingers.

Rei Lawless stepped inside.

She wore a sleeveless training top that left her arms fully visible and a pair of dark combat pants. Her black hair was pulled into a single, long braid. The moment she crossed the threshold, she smirked, as if the sight of me already working amused her on some private level.

"Hello, Partner."

I nodded once, still catching my breath.

She set her bag down in the corner, then paused. Her head tilted slightly. She inhaled, slow and deliberate, and the smirk widened into something sharper and less polite.

"Why does even your sweat smell this good?" she asked.

"Is everything about you like this?"

I didn’t answer.

Rei finished stowing her gear and turned to face me fully, arms loose at her sides, posture already balanced the way a fighter’s posture always was.

"Mira told me to be careful," she said.

"Said you’re unstable right now. Full of leftover emotions and half-processed restrictions."

"I’m not unstable."

"I know."

She took a few unhurried steps closer, boots quiet on the mat.

"That isn’t the question I actually care about. Let me ask you something else, Revien. Why are you letting everyone in this guild walk over you?"

The directness of it landed harder than an accusation would have.

I met her dark eyes and found no mockery there, only the same blunt evaluation she had shown in the simulation when she decided my chains might be useful after all.

"I’m not sure what you mean."

"Yes, you do."

Rei stopped a few paces away, close enough that the residual trace in the air was impossible for her to ignore.

"You have a class that rewrites cores. You expanded my power in one day. You forced a mutation in me that I still haven’t fully mapped. And yet you’re here running solo drills under a heavier bracelet, swallowing whatever they hand you, accepting a schedule designed to treat you as nothing more than an animal. Why?"

"Because the alternative is hurting people I don’t want to hurt."

"That’s a reason to develop control. It’s not a reason to let them set every boundary for you."

She tilted her head, braid shifting across one shoulder.

"I watched the logs from your little episode. Your core tried to take. Something external stopped it. And instead of treating that as information to use, you’re treating it as proof that you should stay small until someone else decides you’re safe again. Do you have any idea how much power you are throwing away because you might hurt people?"

"What are you trying to say?"

I formed a single chain and let it coil loosely around my forearm, more for the focus of the motion than for any immediate use.

"I have a clearer plan."

Rei’s smile thinned into something closer to genuine interest.

"You need pressure that doesn’t come wrapped in careful emotional management. You need someone who won’t flinch if your eyes go empty for a second, and who will put you on the floor if you actually cross a line. Lucky for both of us, I already decided I’m not interested in becoming a permanent fixture inside your core. I want the growth. I want the edge. I do not want the soft aftermath."

She stepped into the center of the mat and rolled her shoulders once.

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