Lewd System: Every Scream and Moan is EXP

Chapter 417: Chapter 417: The Price of Borrowed Power

Ravana stood at a distance, and the man was built like something a mountain had spat out.

His upper body was bare, and crimson markings ran from the center of his chest out across one shoulder and down the length of his arm, glowing along the skin like cracks in something about to break open.

Two long black horns curved back off his head, thin as blades.

A heavy crimson cape hung from the one shoulder, and a black war kilt worked in gold covered him below the waist.

Around his neck sat a thick chain of large black prayer beads strung together with carved demon bone, so that he looked like a king and a devout worshipper standing in the same body.

He was still clapping, and the smile on him did not mean what a smile usually means. “Interesting. So this is why my name never once found a place in your heart.”

“It was already occupied. By someone out of your own world, someone you never saw fit to mention to me.”

“I searched myself for the flaws. I wondered whether I had been too impatient with you. Too commanding. Whether my devotion had simply not been enough.”

“And the answer was far simpler than any of that.”

“Your heart was taken long before you ever set foot in this world. Everything makes sense to me now.”

“Why you never once looked at me the way you look at him. And that smile of yours.” His voice stayed pleasant. “I had convinced myself you’d simply forgotten how to make one.”

“The way you held him. The way you kissed him. I understand all of it now. I was chasing something impossible, because his name was already sitting where I wanted mine.”

“But impossible things are the only ones worth chasing. And at long last, Lady Beatrix, I know exactly what has been standing between us.”

“I don’t blame you for loving him. I don’t blame you for keeping him from me either.”

“I blame myself, for reaching after a place that had already been claimed.”

His hands came apart and stayed apart. “That mistake will not happen twice.”

“From today I have only one task left in this life. To make certain that one day, when you look into your own heart…”

“…there is nothing of his name left in it.”

“Only then will there be room in there for me. So I will erase him from existence, and I will take the place he holds in you right now for myself.”

“What you showed me today, Lady Beatrix. That side of you which only he has ever been permitted to see.” He breathed in slowly. “It has woken a jealousy in me. One that makes me want his death exactly as much as it makes me want you.”

“Perhaps that is the true nature of jealousy. The more I envy what a man has, the more I ache to make it mine. And for that future, I will pay any price you can name. My own soul included.”

“It may take time for you to forget him, and longer still to accept me. But we will have thousands of years to work it out between us.”

Jax grinned at him. “Thousands? You’re delusional, you horned dickhead. You won’t survive the month, and I’ll put money on it.”

“And as for Beatrix, she’s finished wasting her time playing the sad queen for a desperate meatstick. She’s done humoring whatever this is.” He shrugged. “So she’ll be saying goodbye to you. Permanently.”

He pressed the gauntlet to her chest, right over her heart, still smirking.

The artifact didn’t fire.

Jax’s smirk slipped. He poured more mana into it, and then more, and the crystal sat there doing absolutely nothing.

Behind him, Ravana had started laughing, and one look at the man told Jax everything. He was the one holding the magic shut.

“The confidence of youth truly is a fascinating thing, in any world you care to name,” Ravana said through it. “It lets a man speak as though tomorrow already belongs to him.”

Then the laughter cut out completely, and what came up behind it had no warmth left anywhere in it. “You’ve enjoyed that mouth of yours long enough. Come here. Let me show you the monster who carved an empire out of blood, and let me pull that arrogance out of you so slowly that you’ll be begging me to finish.”

He started walking, and the killing intent came with him.

Beatrix put herself in front of Jax with both arms out. “Please, Lord Ravana, spare him. I’ll do anything you ask of me. I’ll accept every condition you have. I’ll become your wife, I’ll stay here forever, all of it, just please don’t hurt him.”

Jax pulled her back by the shoulder. “Didn’t I tell you your misery belongs to me now? Have a little faith in your boyfriend.” He clicked his tongue. “You’re making me look seriously uncool here.”

“But…”

He didn’t let her finish. Both swords came out of his hands at once. “Be a good girl and stay back. Leave the rest to me.”

“Domain of Authority.”

The world folded, and Ravana found himself standing inside Jax’s domain, with half of everything he had bled out of him, while Jax climbed thirty percent in the other direction.

Jax charged without wasting a second. He moved fast enough that Ravana had to keep turning his head to hold him, and the moment those eyes lost the thread, Jax was already inside his guard and driving the blade home.

Or that was what Jax thought was happening, right up until he saw the grin. Ravana caught the sword by the tip and stopped it dead.

The other hand came for him, rough and unhurried, and Jax swung his second sword into the man’s throat before it could arrive.

CLANG.

The blade met his neck.

And it did nothing at all. The muscle under that skin simply refused to open, and Ravana stood there tilting his head to one side so he could take hold of the second sword too.

Then he kicked. His foot caught Jax in the torso and sent him flying backward with both swords still in the man’s hands, and Ravana threw them down in the dirt.

Jax pushed through the pain and got his head up, and Ravana was already teleporting the distance between them. A hand closed around his throat.

“You disappoint me, champion.” Ravana lifted him off the ground. “I had hoped you might entertain me for a while with that witch’s power you stole from somewhere.”

Then he threw him down, and the impact shattered the entire domain.

Both of them came back into the garden with the world reassembling around them, and Jax lay there grinding his teeth with his cheek in the dirt. Beatrix tried to run to him, and the Asuran war maidens were already around her, closing her in.

‘Echidna,’ Jax hissed. ‘There’s nothing left to try. Lend me your power, even if it kills me.’

‘I warned you it was stupidity to walk into this man’s den,’ Echidna said. ‘Look where that Loki has put you. If I refuse you, you get a slow and painful death. If I agree, you still get a death, and a considerably worse one, because putting him down means pouring out more than half of everything I have.’

‘And you can work out for yourself what that does to you. You remember what one percent of me did.’

‘I don’t care anymore. Do it.’

‘I have told you before, doing this will kill you, along with…’

She stopped there. Jax had no idea why, and then she spoke again, and every trace of her usual bite had gone out of her voice.

‘Fine. But remember this on your way to hell. Some debts aren’t paid only by the one who makes the decision, Jax.’

His body began to leak a thick dark energy, and where it touched Ravana it started eating at the man’s skin.

The dozens of war maidens were already struggling to hold a shield together over themselves and Beatrix.

Jax had it worst of all. His vision blurred and went, until he couldn’t see the world outside himself at all, and the only thing left in front of him was a system screen.