Systembound: Rise of the Dronemancer [Book 1. Complete] / Systembound: Rise of Androxis [Book 2. Ongoing]

Searanox placed the woman on the ground and stepped forward. His magitech armor gleamed faintly under the moonlight, the crushed grass beneath his boots whispering with moisture.

”You’re going to open your storage ring and hand it over,” he commanded, his voice cutting through the night air like tempered steel. ”The same goes for the rest of you.” His gaze swept across the recovering squad. Their faces remained pale with terror despite their restored bodies. ”If not, we’ll see—”

There was no warmth in his tone, only the cold certainty of absolute authority forged in countless battles and reinforced by his position as Androxis’s undisputed ruler.

His words hung in the charged atmosphere, thick with unspoken threats. Before he could finish, a translucent blue window materialized in his field of vision. The notification shifted his focus from the trembling intruders to whatever urgent message the System deemed important enough to interrupt him.

[System Contract]

─ Terms:

• Kylith Rahzura will answer all questions truthfully.

• Feed the contract holder until she is full.

─ Penalty:

• Non-lethal System punishment, until compliance.

─ Duration:

• Ends on fulfilment.

Searanox sighed before accepting the contract. The ethereal blue window dissolved from his vision as his will brushed against it. ”Was that necessary? I said I would feed you if you answered all my questions.”

”Yes, it was,” she answered with a soft smirk. Her amber eyes glinted with calculated mischief as she draped her body over the ATV-like travel drone. ”I don’t want you to wiggle out of your word.” Her fingers traced patterns on the drone’s metallic surface, a possessive gesture belying her earlier subservience.

”Now, where were we?” Searanox asked, looking back toward the nine people on the ground. Their faces showed a mixture of confusion and defiance as they struggled to stand. ”We can also enter a contract. That way, I can’t cross you, and neither can you.” His tone was casual, as if discussing business terms rather than threatening a group of armed intruders with their lives.

Kylith looked at the man with calculating eyes, then at the other nine, noting their rigid postures and clenched jaws. ”They won’t accept it. They are proud purebloods. They’d rather die than bind themselves to a half-breed or a native.” Her voice dripped with contempt, though she herself stood caught between two worlds.

”That’s the good thing about Pride, it can be broken with enough time and the right motivation,” Searanox said, his gaze sweeping over the squad with clinical detachment. ”Unfortunately for them I don’t have much time, but plenty of motivation to make up for it.” The implication hung heavy in the air—a promise of prolonged agony that made even some of the defiant purebloods flinch.

Searanox turned back towards Kylith, ”Kylith, why don’t you get your daggers? This could take a while. And you may not want to see it up close.”

”Of course,” Kylith said with an almost imperceptible nod. She began walking back toward Androxis, where her daggers still lay in the mud from the ambush. Her hips swayed with provocation—a last small act of defiance before turning her back on the coming violence.

When she was a few meters away, her silhouette framed against the distant city lights, the night erupted in crimson and violet flashes. Screams of raw pain filled the air, a symphony of agony tearing the very fabric of silence. This time, however, Searanox had no time to draw it out for hours as he had with others before. He dismissed his travel drone, which dissolved into particles of blue light, and brought out another healing drone alongside the one already tending to the squad.

They worked in tandem, their emerald beams weaving patterns of restoration as other drones fired into the heap of writhing limbs. There was no breather between the pain, no moment to process one agony before another began. It was a single continuous barrage of energy beams that cut into them. Their flesh burned and was healed the moment the wound appeared, creating an endless cycle of destruction and regeneration that broke the mind faster than the body.

Kylith looked back, her eyes widening as she took in the horrifying tableau unfolding behind her. The sight of her former comrades caught in that relentless cycle of destruction and regeneration made her stomach twist. She felt a wave of relief that she was not standing with them when they were spotted. She was fortunate.

Her fingers trembled as she bit her nail, a nervous habit betraying the cool facade she maintained. She took in the man standing in front of the grotesque scene, watching it all with unnerving detachment.

”At first glance, he appeared to be a high noble,” Kylith muttered, watching from afar. ”His character and actions are similar, nearly identical in their casual cruelty and absolute authority. And yet, he has not looked down on me. At least, not in that way.”

She had to search for her daggers for quite some time, the screams of her former comrades filling the night. Eventually, she found them. They had sunken slightly into the soft earth when she was forced to drop them, their familiar hilts offering a small comfort in the terrifying situation.

She walked back toward the screams, the beams of light, and the man who was no longer standing. At some point while she was looking for her weapons, he had summoned a chair and sat down, as if watching a performance rather than orchestrating torture. From this distance, she could hear him talking to them. It was difficult to make out the words over the pained screams, but his voice remained calm and measured.

”It’s only you left, son of the House of Talidan,” Searanox said, looking down at the man. His red skin was covered in blood, the mud beneath him soaked into a gruesome slurry. He lay in a pool of his own blood, his breathing ragged and shallow.

”It’s Talian...” he coughed, spitting out blood that had gathered in his mouth. His pride refused to let him die without correcting this insult to his house name.

Searanox smirked, a cruel twist of his lips. ”Isn’t that what I said? House of Talidan.”

The men beside him lay stripped of their belongings, their armor and weapons piled neatly next to them. Their bodies breathed heavily, still trapped in that horrifying loop.

”Just give it up, all of it,” Searanox continued. ”And you don’t have to suffer anymore. I don’t want to do this for the next ten years... and you don’t want that either.”

As Searanox mispronounced his name again, a vein throbbed in the son of House Talian’s forehead, his pale red skin flushing with indignation. But the casual reference to enduring this torment for years drained the color from his face faster than any wound could, his bravado cracking like thin ice under a heavy boot.

”Alright,” he rasped. His voice was brittle and weak despite the constant stream of healing energy knitting his flesh back together. ”All that I have on me. And I won’t have to suffer anymore?” The question hung in the air, a desperate plea wrapped in a nobleman’s last shreds of dignity.

”It’s just as the System contract states,” Searanox said, a thin smile gracing his lips as if savoring the man’s surrender.

The moment the son of Talian signed the contract, ethereal blue light enveloped his body like a ghostly shroud. His armor dissolved into shimmering motes and his weapons vanished into nothingness, all absorbed into the storage ring. Then, with a trembling hand that betrayed exhaustion and utter defeat, he pulled the ring from his finger and dropped it into the mud with a soft plop.

”Very cute,” Searanox murmured. His tone was devoid of amusement as he stepped over, his boots sinking into the blood-soaked earth. He bent down, his fingers closing around the mud-slicked ring. In the same fluid motion, he pulled his rifle from his own storage, the weapon materializing in his hand as if from thin air.

Without hesitation, he pressed the muzzle against the nobleman’s temple and fired a beam of pure energy point-blank through his head. The sound was barely a crackle, but the result was instantaneous—a clean, precise hole that ended all suffering.

”You said... The contract... no more suffering,” one of the remaining men cried out. His voice cracked with disbelief and horror as he watched his commander slump forward, life extinguished.

Searanox snapped his gaze to them, his eyes cold and unforgiving as a winter storm. He captured the next man’s stare, holding it with an intensity that made him flinch.

”There is no more suffering if you are dead.”