Harem Startup : The Demon Billionaire is on Vacation

Chapter 486 – Forgotten Lord [Part 1]

No broadcast. No explosion. Just a silent, aching pulse of old Greed magic—like a thread tugged through time.

Far beneath the Infernal Layers. Beneath even the trade rings and soul-bonded vaults. Past the Nexus Prime where modern Hell shimmered like molten neon glass and contract-encoded skyscrapers towered into anti-light. Past the economy that Lux Vaelthorn rebuilt with black ink, smirks, and sin.

All the way down—

To stone.

To rot.

To dust older than language.

To the first vault.

Not a financial tower.

A tomb.

Stone bricks carved from the corpse of the first Mammon. Vault doors made from petrified Greed Essence, flaked and sealed with sigils abandoned by modern spellweavers because they burned too bright, too hungry. A place forgotten—because the ones who remembered were too scared to ever say its name again.

And inside—

”Lux Vaelthorn...”

A whisper, like rust over bone.

”It’s all because of you...”

Another breath, this one cracked with heat.

”I need to wait longer... You make me impatient...”

The voice didn’t echo. It bloomed—like a toxin, slow and suffocating.

The creature shifted. If you could call it that.

He was a man. Or had been. Or wanted to be.

But now?

Now he was something that Greed molded and left behind.

Long limbs, too lean for mercy. Fingertips blackened, cracked—twitching with calculations. Scars traced his neck like a signature of someone else’s power. And on his face, a long, diagonal burn, raw and never fully healed. It pulsed faintly every time he thought of fire.

Of him.

Of Kaelmor.

And worse—

Of Lucaris.

Of Zarvos.

And beneath it all—

That name.

That new name.

The name of the boy who refused to break.

”Lux,” he hissed again, dragging his clawed fingers across the stone floor, tracing the same ruined sigil he’d been etching for five centuries.

”You’re supposed to be the weak one...”

The seal that held him cracked—just slightly.

A thin wisp of sulfur hissed from the edge. A little victory. But he didn’t smile.

Smiling was for the proud.

And Pride...

Pride was a parasite.

He growled and stood.

Even shackled, even weakened—he stood like a royal. Like a king without a crown. Like a monster who knew the only thing keeping him underground...

Was time.

And maybe luck.

And maybe him.

”Zarvos’ son... Why do you thrive?”

The torches lit themselves again. His anger always had that effect. They hated him. The runes burned his skin. The floor still rejected his blood. But the room remembered him. It feared him too much to forget.

His name?

Zoltarin Vaelthorn.

Twin of Zarvos.

First son of Greed’s third bloodline.

The one who tried to take it all.

”Five hundred years,” he muttered, pacing, dragging chains that didn’t clink—they growled. ”I gave them the plan. The blueprint. Greed should never share. Greed should never marry into Lust. Or Sloth. Or those idiotic Wrath tribes—”

He stopped. Hands twitching.

”And yet... you...” He stared up at the cracked ceiling. ”Lux... you merged the sins. You evolved the system. You little bastard.”

A snarl escaped his throat.

”You were supposed to fail.”

His voice rattled the remaining runes on the walls. Several flickered out. Good. He’d spent two hundred years whispering heresies to the stone. Anything to corrode the wards. Anything to bleed the bindings thin.

It was working.

Bit by bit.

Because even Infernal Lords got lazy.

Even sin-born kings got bored.

And what was five centuries, if not a nap?

”I planted the collapse,” Zoltarin murmured, pacing now, dragging his long claws through the air as if sculpting fate itself. ”I whispered to Warlord Gluvor. I poisoned the bonds with inflation. I used Overlord Marrik’s vanity to stage an asset war. And that idiot from the Bone Sea? He tanked three currencies overnight because I convinced him a sea-glass coin would outsell soul credits.”

He laughed. Unhinged. Quiet.

”And still... you rise.”

He spat. But the spit sizzled on the floor. This place hated his body more than his soul.

A shadow stepped forward from the wall.

One of the few that could approach.

It didn’t speak. It bowed.

Zoltarin raised a hand. ”Report.”

The shadow trembled. Then answered with a voice that sounded like dying ink.

”The auction. It’s done. Lux made a scene. Delmar is dead. The Avariels bowed.”

”Of course they did,” Zoltarin muttered.

Another whisper. ”The Lamia Queen. She’s... unsettled.”

”She still wears the circlet?”

A pause. ”Yes. But he didn’t say a word. His partner—Sira—was present.”

That name.

That fucking name.

”Sira...” Zoltarin growled. ”Daughter of Lucaris. Of Pride. Of all the snakes to wrap around him—damn her.”

The fire flared again. One of the chains around his ankle cracked—just a hairline fracture. But it made his spine shiver.

Zoltarin moved toward the wall. Pressed his burning hand against the stone until smoke curled between his fingers.

”That lamia is watching him,” he whispered. ”So I’ll watch her.”

Zoltarin’s clawed finger hovered midair, flickering with ember runes, as the shadow in front of him crouched in silence—formless, rippling against the obsidian walls like oily smoke resisting gravity.

”Manipulate her more,” he ordered without turning his head. ”I need her to do what we want. Tell her...” His eyes narrowed, glowing with a faint maroon gleam. ”Tell her we’ll give her Lux Vaelthorn.”

The shadow dipped low. ”Yes, Lord Zoltarin.”

And then—like fog pulled through a drain—it vanished. Not a whisper, not a trace. Just gone.

Zoltarin stood in the dimness of his sanctum. The chamber was alive with quiet pulses—sigils lining the stone floor thrummed with reddish-gold light, old runes of Greed flickering beside newer, warped marks of Dominion. His breath fogged the cold air, and as he exhaled again, something darker stirred behind his gaze.

Of course he wouldn’t let that lamia keep Lux.

Lylith Seravelle... what a surprise.

He paced slowly, boots clinking against the tiled obsidian underfoot. His horns cast jagged shadows on the walls. Every few steps, a pulse of infernal light from the runes illuminated his expression—contemplative, bitterly amused.