Demonic Po*nstar System

Chapter 817: New Plan

Kaiden turned his back on the gate and walked.

He walked deeper into his dungeon, past the Safe Zone, toward the heart of his domain with ichor drying on his bare skin and that grin still pulling at his mouth like he’d figured out a joke nobody else had heard yet.

The girls followed.

None of them spoke, because his tone left no room for debate.

Scarlet caught up in three strides, hands behind her head, walking the way fighters walk when the adrenaline hasn’t quite left. ”So, golden boy.”

Her eyes were bright with the hunger. ”Tell Auntie Scarlet. What’s the plan? Because that face you’re making says you’ve got one, and I’m dying to hear it.”

”You’ll see.”

”That’s not an answer.” She was practically bouncing. ”Come on, don’t mess with this poor old lady! What are you hiding?”

Kaiden’s grin widened, and he said nothing.

Scarlet looked at the girls for help and found shrugs, amused smiles, and a swishing demon tail that answered nothing.

Aria slipped her hand into his. Her silver hair was still dusted with ash from the chokehold’s thermals, and her eyes carried the softness that arrived every time she saw him injured and walking anyway. ”Kai...” she murmured. ”Are you okay? Your shoulder is still...”

”I’m fine.” He squeezed her fingers. The shoulder was, in fact, not fine, but he did not care.

Time was ticking.

He glanced at the stream ticker.

[Viewers: 54.2M ↑]

The number had climbed since the combat ended.

The Claimant’s withdrawal, the drone footage, the reunion at the gate, all of it had pulled in viewers who’d missed the fighting and were catching up through the replay clips Kira and Rika generated.

Despite their two producers chickening out, they were still dutifully conducting business.

Fifty-four million and rising. But the curve was flattening. In twenty minutes, with nothing happening, it’d start to drop.

Unless he gave them a reason to stay.

His grin shifted into the look his girls recognized from a hundred private moments and zero public ones.

”Men and children,” he said, addressing fifty-four million people while covered in monster blood.

”Oh no,” Luna gasped.

Kaiden continued, undisturbed, ”Please enjoy an edited review of all that happened thus far, commentated over by my team. Thanks for all the support.”

Every woman within earshot froze.

Luna blinked. Then squinted. Then her whole face opened up. ”You’re not serious.”

Kaiden paused, turned around, then looked at them.

At his five girls.

”Girls. It’s time to fuck.”

Scarlet’s foot came down mid-stride and stayed there.

”Huh?”

The reactions hit like shrapnel.

Aria’s face went crimson, her hand crushing his as if releasing it meant admitting what he’d said was real.

Luna hissed through her teeth, jabbing a finger at the ticker. ”This fucker really just said that in front of the entire goddamn planet.”

Bastet maintained her composure perfectly, save for her ears, which were flat against her skull and twitching without her permission. ”Not the entire planet, gremlin... Only the adult female population.”

”That’s not any better!” the Storm Valkyrie stomped.

Calypso’s tail curled upward in a lazy spiral, and the ”Darling~” she breathed carried more enthusiasm than the word had room for.

Nyx just smiled. Quiet, knowing. ”I’m in~”

Vespera, behind them all, did not react. Her face could have been carved from the same stone as the Claimant’s hide.

Kaiden reached up and patted the air near the halo.

While letting the little sister hand him a lecture on ethics and public decency, he turned his attention back toward the stream.

The content gate split the feed in two. Twenty-six million adult female viewers stayed on the live stream. Everyone else got redirected.

What they got redirected to was Kira.

...

The secondary feed loaded before the displaced viewers could finish complaining, and what they got was not a static replay.

The battle footage filled the screen in full resolution, starting from the first wave hitting the chokehold, every angle available, every POV switchable. And in the bottom-right corner, taking up maybe a fifth of the frame, a facecam window held Kira Vaughn with a mug of something steaming, a headset mic, and a grin that could have sold ice to a blizzard mage.

”Hey everyone! Welcome to the Phase 1 breakdown!”

She waved two fingers at the lens without looking away from her second monitor, where the footage was already queued to the first Ruinwalker engagement. ”I’m Kira, production team. While the fighters rest up for Phase 2, we’re going to go through everything that just happened, because trust me, you missed things. Everyone missed things. Even I missed things, and I was watching with my eyes peeled open the whole time! What a stream that was!!!”

The format was clean.

Battle footage rolling in the background at full scale, Kira’s face in the corner reacting, pausing, rewinding, circling things with a telestrator overlay that Rika fed her from off-screen. The viewers weren’t watching a talking head. They were rewatching the fight with a guide who knew what she was looking at.

Perfect engagement retention mode, activated.

— xVoidling: oh this is actually sick

— BroBroBro: wait she can rewind it?? go back to the part where he threw the blood crescent

— ChaosGremlinNoob: why is it a girl talking now I wanted to see the kaiju

”Okay so right here,” Kira circled the moment Kaiden’s blood crescent caught the dodging Mirescutter at the throat, ”this construct was shaped mid-stride. He didn’t stop. Didn’t plant his feet. Watch his hand.” She rewound two seconds. ”See that? The blood compresses along his forearm and releases in a sidearm arc that leads the target by two full seconds. He threw it where the runner was going to be.”

— BroBroBro: holy shit I didn’t even catch that

— xVoidling: that thing was doing lateral dodges and he still hit it

”Now,” Kira sipped her mug, ”while we’re on this sequence, quick Q&A. I’ve seen a lot of questions in chat.”

— BroBroBro: what’s kaiden doing right now?

— xVoidling: yeah why was the stream split? why are the w@men getting special treatment?!

”The team is regrouping and prepping strategy for Phase 2. Standard intermission stuff.”

Her smile didn’t flicker. ”Totally routine, don’t worry about it. Anyway, let’s talk about this Veilstalker that dodged Alice’s beam, because that creature read her firing pattern across two shots and broke stride on the third, and nobody’s talking about how insane that is for a monster.”

She pivoted so smoothly the chat forgot it had asked.

— ChaosGremlinNoob: ok wait the monster DODGED A BEAM OF LIGHT??

— BroBroBro: this chick’s dodging harder than the veilstalker lmao but I don’t even care this breakdown is fire

Rika managed the analytics dashboard from off-screen, feeding Kira timestamps, circling killframes, queuing the next clip before the current one finished.

The retention curve on the secondary stream didn’t dip one bit.

...

[Adult Stream — Female Viewers: 26.3M]

Twenty-six million women stayed.

”Ladies,” Kaiden said, his voice dropping into the register that had earned him five billion views and four million fangirls. ”Your support is requested.”

The chat detonated.