Lewd System: Every Scream and Moan is EXP

Chapter 398: Chapter 398: The Hundredth Course

Lysia froze for a beat, then decided this was simply his idea of revenge for her earlier joke about him being a demon.

She burst out laughing. “…Haha. Good one. Really got me. Now open the portal.”

“Did my words fail to reach you?” Athanor said, cold as ever. “I told you I cannot do it.”

“The reason being that doing so would breach our contract. It states plainly that you are to train under my guidance for five years. And under my guidance means this land, since I am forbidden from setting foot in your world.”

He went on, utterly unhurried. “Any attempt to breach that contract results in your death. And as I have sworn to safeguard your life, your death would drag mine along with it.”

“And lastly, opening a portal is nowhere near as simple as you imagine. It is a one-time thing, spent as a choice. Whether you wish your slave to aid you here in Luminera, or to remain in the mortal realm to spy on it, or to carry out some task there.”

Lysia’s entire world turned upside down. She had no idea what to do with any of it, so she simply unleashed. “Are you out of your goddamn mind? Are you seriously standing there telling me I’m trapped in this place for the next five years?”

Her voice cracked, right on the edge of sobbing. “I had my whole life ahead of me! I still had academy life to enjoy, I was going to land myself a prince and spend the rest of my days sleeping on a pile of gold and treasure, and you ruined all of it!”

She turned that devastating face on him, fully expecting it to melt the man where he stood. Athanor wasn’t even looking. He was already walking out of the chamber.

Lysia lunged and caught his hand, switching instantly to her cutest, most pitiable expression, the one that had broken stronger men than dukes. “But you can fix anything, can’t you? You’re a celestial. You can heal it all, wave your hand, make this go away.”

Athanor ignored that too.

The mask dropped off her face in an instant, and her anger came roaring back up through it. “Why me? Out of a billion people crawling around down there, why me? Why did you ruin my youth specifically, when you had thousands of better options sitting right there?”

Athanor opened his mouth, and nothing came out. Because he didn’t have an answer. Not one he could give her, and not one he had ever managed to give himself. So he simply stood there in silence.

Lysia did not find that satisfying in the slightest.

A small void rift tore itself open beside her.

Shrrk

She reached in, pulled her sword out of it, and ran the man clean through the back.

Blood began dripping down and pooling across the polished floor. Lysia leaned in close, wearing a victorious grin, and whispered right beside his ear. “Tell me something. What if the patron simply stops being alive? Wouldn’t that mean I’m finally free?”

She was enjoying herself immensely, right up until Athanor’s whole body dissolved into golden light, and then reassembled itself a few steps away. Alive and Unharmed.

And completely naked.

Lysia stood petrified, rubbing at both eyes to confirm she was seeing what she was seeing.

Athanor glanced at the blood on his floor, retrieved his clothes off the ground and said, “Clean up the mess you created. Or you will be spending the next five years sleeping in the horse stables.”

For one full second, everything else fell out of her head, because the man had just told her to clean. Then the rest caught up, specifically the part where he’d called her a slave few moments ago, and she rounded on him all over again. “Excuse me. Do you genuinely think of me as a slave?”

“Then who are you, if not my slave?” Athanor said, calmly fixing his collar. “Besides. Mortals such as yourself are generally referred to that way.”

Lysia flooded with rage and charged him.

WHUMP.

[Months passed]

Athanasia watched the twisted relationship between her father and her mother unspool in fast-forward.

She saw the training the two of them went through side by side, Athanor personally walking Lysia through the Celestial Draw Art, and the endless spars that followed, the two of them wrecking one courtyard after another.

She saw the way the thing between them slowly shifted. And she saw, alongside it, the steadily climbing tally of murder attempts, because Lysia had forgiven that man for exactly nothing.

Ninety-nine of them, to be precise.

Today, Lysia was going for her century. She’d spent weeks securing a poison rumored to be capable of killing even a celestial, and she was practically vibrating at the dinner table, watching Athanor eat the meal she’d so lovingly seasoned.

One hundred was a lucky number. One hundred was the one that would finally buy back her freedom.

Athanor, for his part, was thoroughly enjoying his dinner. He turned to one of the maids standing by. “Compliment the cook on my behalf. Today’s meal is particularly delicious.”

The maid’s knowing laugh nearly escaped before she wrestled it back down. “Today’s meal was prepared under Lady Lysia’s supervision, Your Grace. She personally assisted the head chef from beginning to end.”

Lysia’s fist tightened around the tablecloth. “…Aren’t you feeling a bit weird?”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Athanor took another bite. “Though, yes, I suppose I do feel somewhat strange. I’m sweating. A touch dizzy. Certainly the spices doing their work. It’s rather pleasant, actually.”

She was grinding her teeth down to nubs over yet another failure when Athanor suddenly began to cough.

Kaff. Kaff-kaff.

Lysia’s grin split her whole face open. She planted one boot squarely on the dining table. “Die, you bastard! Suffer the way you made me suffer! Ninety-nine tries and here it finally is, my revenge—”

Athanor stopped coughing. “Can you explain to me precisely when I made you suffer?”

He dabbed his mouth with a napkin. “Do you have any concept of how much of my wealth you are currently spending? A few weeks ago this dukedom was formally inspected, on suspicion that we had struck some hidden fortune. Purely because of the rumor that a single slave of mine was outspending the king’s own daughters and every other duchess in the realm combined.”

“…How are you even alive?” Lysia said.

“Did you truly believe there exists a poison capable of killing a celestial?”

“Wait.” Her boot slid off the table. “You knew about the poison?”

“Of course. There is nothing in this house that can be hidden from me.” He set the napkin down.

“In fact, I was the one who devised the poison-assassination plan in the first place, the moment I learned you had begun hunting for new ways to kill a celestial. You are a fool if you think a single soul under this roof would turn against me to help you bring me down.”

Lysia’s head snapped toward Eislyn, the head maid, and she stared at her with the raw, wounded face of the profoundly betrayed. Eislyn simply stood there, hiding her smile behind perfect posture.

Eislyn had served this house since Athanor was a mere child. She had been his caretaker. Which meant she had watched that boy be tortured and shoved down a path that stripped away every piece of who he might have been.

For years after, this whole palace had known nothing but silence. People walked its halls and did their work like well-oiled machines. And all of it changed the very moment Lysia stepped through that gate.

The palace had never once been this loud, or this alive. Every maid and servant in it had been won over completely by Lady Lysia’s cheerfulness.

At first Eislyn had assumed it was a calculated ploy, an attempt to turn the whole staff rebellious against the duke. In truth, it was simply who the girl was.

She treated every soul in that house with love. Every soul except the duke. But Eislyn knew the real shape of it, that Lysia resented that man and liked him in the very same breath.

And today had proven it beyond argument, because before she’d ever poisoned his dinner, Lady Lysia had quietly prepared the antidote for it.

She had changed everything in this house. Including its master. Eislyn had watched Athanor go from a man with no interest in anything that lived, to one who teased Lady Lysia in his own stiff, graceless way, who slipped out of his own study in the middle of his duties simply to keep an eye on whatever chaos she was inflicting on the dukedom that afternoon.

The emotions everyone had long since buried had come crawling back onto his face. Her absence put a sadness there. Her presence put a smile there, one he was certain nobody in the world ever noticed.

Lysia was his greatest entertainment. And she was his nightmare too, the one that came for him at night wearing a single question. What happens when the five years are done? What happens when she’s gone?

Athanor had no idea what to do about any of it, or what this feeling, this awful, clinging attachment, even was.

He knew that his own greed was the only thing binding her here. A woman who didn’t like him in the slightest, and wanted nothing more than to leave.

But then came the day he learned he’d been wrong about that.

It was the day the two of them traveled to the capital, for the birthday banquet of Zeus’s daughter.