Demonic Po*nstar System

Chapter 896: Not To Be Outdone

Calypso pulled her hand back laughing, a bright, delighted sound that had nothing to do with the heat and everything to do with what it meant. She turned to Kaiden with a grin that could have powered the containment artifacts. ”I adore this thing, Darling~”

One of the government representatives was speaking into his phone in rapid, clipped sentences. ”Even the monsters! Same reading! Yes! I don’t know!”

The other had given up on his phone and was just watching, mouth slightly open. The chat had long since passed any readable speed, millions of viewers watching Eclipse shatter every record in the history of awakened classification, one woman at a time, with identical results that defied everything the discipline thought it knew.

Kaiden leaned against the wall and watched his girls own the room, and the pride swelling through him had nothing to do with Calypso’s residual heat.

The examiner had stopped announcing results. She was recording, head down, because professional obligation was the last thing she had left and she was holding onto it with both hands.

Alice crossed to the orb.

She’d been standing at Kaiden’s side with her arms crossed, looking thoroughly bored by everything that didn’t directly involve her brother. Five beyond-S-tier results had warped space, summoned storms, cracked floors, flooded the room with moonlight, and set the equipment steaming. Alice had watched each one with polite tolerance.

She placed her hand on the surface.

THE LIGHT THAT DESTROYS.

Golden radiance filled the space, bright and brilliant, and it climbed to the same peak with the same precision. Six for six.

But Alice wasn’t looking at the readout.

She was looking at her own hand on the orb, feeling the connection pulse beneath her palm, and for the first time since the testing began she was smiling. A real smile, small and private and aimed at no one, because the artifact had just told her something she’d needed to hear.

She wasn’t the outlier, the ’normal S-tier awakened,’ the Ashborn sister attached to a system she’d feared she didn’t fully belong to. The artifact said otherwise. She was one of them. She was his.

”I’m the same as them,” she said to him, and the warmth in those five words tightened his throat.

”You always were...”

”...” Alice’s expression turned truly tender upon hearing his words. Then the yandere little sis looked across the room at the yandere lover, who was still tucked against Kaiden’s side.

Aria caught her gaze, blinked once, and beamed at her.

Alice scoffed. ”Two can play that game.”

Her hand was still on the orb, golden radiance still flooding around them, and she shaped it. The light moved. Golden script materialized between Alice and her brother, brighter than Aria’s silver, and longer.

[Thank you for everything, big brother. I love you more than anything in this world.]

More words than Aria. She looked at Kaiden with an expression that was pure, undiluted smugness, as though she’d just won a competition Aria hadn’t realized they were having.

Alice then pulled her hand from the orb and crossed to Kaiden, wrapped her arms around him from the other side, and pressed her face against his shoulder. Aria, still tucked against his chest, looked down at the teenager clinging to his arm and didn’t move away.

For a moment, he held both of them, and the chat stopped being able to form coherent sentences.

Then Kaiden looked at Alexandra.

She was standing between Nyx and Calypso with a small notepad open in her trembling hands, pen moving in quick, tight strokes while she peppered them with questions.

”Does it hurt when it reads you? What does it feel like? Should I hold my breath? What if I touch it wrong and it breaks?”

”It doesn’t break,” Nyx said patiently. ”You just put your hand on it.”

”But what if my hand is too sweaty? Will that affect the reading?”

Calypso looked down at the maid with the expression of someone watching a kitten try to intimidate a dragon. ”Darling, just slap it. That’s what Luna did.”

”I am NOT doing what Luna did! She almost destroyed the whole building!”

Alexandra’s pen was still moving the entire time, scribbling Nyx’s answers into the notepad with the frantic diligence of a student cramming before an exam she was certain she’d fail.

It was far too adorable.

Kaiden had to pause for a moment just to take it all in.

Then he smiled.

”Your turn, Alex.”

Her pen stopped. She looked up at him with wide eyes, the notepad clutched to her chest like a shield.

”What if it goes wrong?”

”You’ll be safe. Look at all these defenses they put in place.”

”Not that!” Alexandra’s chin lifted, and defiance flickered through the nervousness. She puffed her chest out. ”What if my reading is too low? What if I can’t... what if I’m not strong enough to help you?”

Kaiden paused.

’Oh... so that’s what the hold up was.’

He looked at her, the maid with the notepad and the fierce little chin, and his voice came out warm and sure. ”That’s impossible, Alex. Even if you read lower, you’ll always be our Hearth Valkyrie. The one who protects us.”

Her big, worried eyes blinked at him. ”Are you sure?”

”Yes.”

A second devastating blink. ”O-okay...”

She tucked the notepad into her apron pocket, squared her shoulders, and crossed to the pedestal with the same brisk composure she brought to breakfast service and corset lacing, because Alexandra met each challenge the same way: by being professional about it.

Her palm touched the surface.

HEARTH VALKYRIE.

The effect was different from every other class manifestation.

No spatial warping. No storm. No crushing gravity or searing heat or golden destruction.

Instead, warmth.

It didn’t arrive like the other manifestations had. Nyx’s power had bent the room. Luna’s had shaken the building. Aria’s had filled the air with weapons. Alexandra’s just... filled everything with the feeling of being loved.

It started at the orb and spread outward in a slow, amber wave that softened every hard surface it touched. The fluorescent lights dimmed to the warm glow of a fireplace. The cracked tile beneath the pedestal stopped looking like damage and started looking like character. The fogged consoles caught the light and turned golden at their edges.

The examiner’s hands unclenched for the first time in an hour. She didn’t notice. She was thinking about her daughter, who was seven and who she hadn’t seen in two whole days because work had been insane, and the warmth around her made that feel like the only thing that mattered.

One of the guards lowered his weapon. Not because the threat had passed, but because he’d suddenly remembered his mother’s kitchen on a Sunday morning, the smell of coffee and bread, and the specific warmth of a house where someone was always happy to see you come home.

The younger technician pressed both hands to her face. She wasn’t crying. She just needed a moment.

The reading climbed through the tiers with the same violent speed as every other. Past S, into the beyond, settling at the exact same value that six women before her had produced.

Seven for seven.

The same reading. No violence. No destruction. No spatial warping or lightning or crushing weight.

Just warmth so deep and so total that every person in the room felt like they were sitting in front of a fire on a cold evening with hot chocolate in their hands and someone they loved beside them, and that had produced the same beyond-S-tier result as powers that could level buildings.

’Not even her power manifestation wants to hurt anyone,’ Kaiden thought softly. ’This girl... She really is an angel.’

The examiner put both hands flat on her console, closed her eyes, and took a very long breath through her nose. When she opened them, they were wet.

Alexandra stared at the orb beneath her trembling fingers as the amber light painted her face. The reading was the same. The same as Aria. The same as Luna. The same as everyone.

She let go of the orb, and the amber light receded gently, leaving the cold fluorescence to creep back in.

The room felt emptier for it. Colder. Several people inside quietly wished it hadn’t stopped.

The girls were looking at her, smiling. Happy for her reading.

Alexandra returned with her composure held together by will alone, and when Aria reached out and squeezed her arm she pressed her lips together tightly and nodded once at Aria, because speaking right now would have been too much.

”Mister Grey.” The examiner straightened behind her cracked console. ”Your turn.”