My Taboo Harem!

Eira had always possessed the irritating convenience of being able to exist in more than one place at once, although the ability was considerably less perfect than it sounded whenever real danger entered the equation.

She could leave copies of herself behind, each carrying enough of her presence and awareness to observe different locations simultaneously.

Those copies were built primarily for just watching, though they could still defend themselves, interfere when something went wrong and even confront weaker enemies if circumstances demanded it.

The problem appeared when too many copies existed at once.

Every additional Eira meant another portion of her strength spread thin elsewhere, and while that meant very little against ordinary enemies, a genuine powerhouse could turn the inconvenience into something dangerous very quickly. Her main body would still remain the strongest, but there was a considerable difference between possessing enough cultivation to casually deal with a problem and being forced to release power Earth had absolutely no interest in allowing.

That brought her back to the same headache that seemed to follow every powerful being around Phei lately.

The Gods governing and watching over Earth.

Eira could fight seriously if she absolutely had to although she couldn’t do it on her own accord, anyways, but pushing too deeply into her true cultivation would draw the attention of the divine authorities overseeing the world and the Laws imposed upon it.

Adding to that; she was also still bound by the Eternal Prisons too and she could not act unless per his orders, and somewhere between irritating Earth’s Gods and provoking the ancient bastards who watched the prisons and would drag her back on a single mishap, Eira had already made her personal preference extremely clear.

She would rather deal with the Gods than the Eternal Guardian bastards.

The guardians of the Eternal Prisons ranked higher on the list of things even his fairy preferred to leave undisturbed.

Tonight carried the delightful possibility of provoking both if she became careless, which was why Eira had chosen to search for help instead of scattering copies of herself across Hell’s Paradise and pretending she could personally babysit every disaster scheduled before sunrise.

Phei had naturally asked who she intended to find for help.

"An old friend."

That had been the entire explanation.

She had given him no name, no useful description and not even the basic courtesy of telling him whether this mysterious friend happened to be human, Dragon, God, Immortal, fairy, imprisoned criminal or another ancient woman destined to walk into his life already knowing embarrassing things about his childhood.

Since Eira had already admitted that saying more might bring punishment down on her head, Phei had let the matter go.

At this point, mysteries had become background furniture.

Everyone had secrets.

And everyone else seemed to know something about him that he did not.

Half the people around Phei appeared to be participating in some enormous cosmic group chat from which the actual Cosmic Dragon had been deliberately excluded, and whenever he got close enough to demand an invitation, somebody smiled mysteriously, muttered something about timing and vanished through a wall, portal or dimensional crack.

Eira, at least, had a respectable excuse.

The others remained under investigation.

So Phei waited.

He sat alone inside one of this villa’s secluded private lounges and sunk comfortably into a wide couch while warm amber lamps painted the room in muted gold.

Beyond the glass walls, Paradise remained wrapped in night, distant towers and roads glittering beneath the darkness, but Phei barely looked outside. Once Eira returned from whoever this mysterious old friend turned out to be, the two of them were going hunting and get the Coffer.

Until then, he finally had enough quiet to deal with something he had been postponing since Sienna.

His rewards.

And then his Status.

Phei leaned his head against the couch and released a long breath that became theatrical somewhere around the halfway point.

"System."

Blue light unfolded before his eyes.

[Mission: Mark a Goddess!]

[Description: Make love to a Goddess and have her willingly accept Host’s Mark, choosing to become your eternal partner without tricks, coercion or force.]

[Status: Mission completed in less than 24 hours!]

[Rewards: Living Soul (First Step), 200,000 EXP, 200,000 Points!]

Phei’s eyebrows rose slightly.

Two hundred thousand EXP and another two hundred thousand Points were lovely. Extremely lovely, actually. His attention still drifted past both amounts almost immediately and settled upon the reward sitting above them.

[Living Soul: Host’s Harem/Tame Mark has taken its first step toward becoming a Living Presence.]

[Description: Unknown????]

Phei stared at the question marks for several seconds, then continued staring just in case embarrassment eventually persuaded them to transform into useful information.

They remained question marks.

"Magnificent."

Apparently the System had mastered the ancient cultivation art of handing someone a treasure and misplacing the instruction manual.

Marking Sienna had triggered the second major transformation his Mark had undergone, though Phei had never expected the little thing to become this important when he first received it. Back then, he had considered the Mark relatively straightforward, a supernatural seal representing the bond between him and a woman who willingly accepted it.

Then Roxanne’s Marking had changed it and the ability apparently decided straightforward was beneath its ambitions.

After Roxanne, the Mark began behaving disturbingly like a tiny creature resting beneath the skin. The little dragon gained depth, its movements became smoother, its wings could flex and its body could shift naturally rather than appearing like enchanted lines crawling over flesh.

Watching it breathe for the first time had been unsettling enough.

And here they were; Sienna had pushed it beyond even that.

The Mark now connected the souls of his women directly to his own, forming an anchor between them and Phei.

Through that connection, he could sense danger threatening a Marked woman before it actually reached her, while those carrying his Mark could potentially draw upon his Soul Energy and the protection of his Soul Realm to nourish and defend their own souls, assuming they were awakened enough to understand what they were touching.

That alone had made the Mark frighteningly valuable.

In several ways, it had already surpassed the Spiritual Bond Ring still sitting unused inside his inventory.

The Ring remained absurdly useful in its own right:

Once bonded, it could tell Phei exactly where the other person was regardless of distance, allow him to sense the general state of their well-being and warn him when serious danger appeared. The precise location alone made it almost unfair in Phei’s hands. If someone bonded to the Ring were kidnapped and carried halfway across Earth, he could skip the investigation, ignore the vehicle tracking, save himself several interrogations and completely avoid spending six Chapters following suspicious footprints through a forest.

He would simply know where she was.

And Phei had portals.

Kidnapping solved.

The Harem Mark offered something slightly different and arguably even more valuable. It could warn him before danger reached one of his women, almost as though the soul connection could feel disaster approaching.

Then there was access to his Soul Energy and Soul Realm, two things the Ring had never promised to share.

Phei scratched his cheek thoughtfully.

"Soul protection really is more important than soul protection."

The sentence sounded considerably wiser inside his head.

He frowned at himself for a second before returning to the Status Window.

The Mark had evolved again, yet the only obvious addition was a pair of words sitting beside its name.

Living Soul.

First Step.

"What the hell is a Living Soul?"

The answer appeared immediately.

[Insufficient information.]

Phei slowly narrowed his eyes.

"You gave me the ability."

[Correction: System only assists Host in awakening the Host’s abilities and some abilities are beyond what the system knows about Host’s powers, bloodline and potential!]

His expression changed.

There it was again: increasingly suspicious distinction the System kept making whenever his Cosmic Dragon abilities became involved.

Phei leaned forward and rested his elbows upon his knees. "Then explain what it does."

[Unable.]

"Why?"

[System possesses no complete knowledge regarding unawakened Cosmic Dragon abilities.]

Phei became very still.

The blue text continued before he could interrupt.

[Cosmic Dragon abilities may only be generally interpreted after sufficient awakening of Host has occurred.]

[Living Soul remains incomplete.]

[Current progression: First Step.]

Phei stared at the words for a while before asking the question any sensible person would ask after being told he had reached the first step of something.

"How many steps does it have?"

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