The More I Invest in My Wives, the Stronger I Become

The first few floors went easily enough.

A **Bramblehide Boar** on floor one, put down with a single clean strike before it even finished its charge.

A **Skitterfang Spider** on floor two, fast but predictable once he learned its rhythm, darting low and striking twice for every one opening it gave him.

A **Mossback Turtle Golem** on floor three, slow enough that patience beat power outright — he simply waited out its lumbering attacks until an opening in its shell revealed itself.

A **Windrazor Hawk** on floor four, diving strikes he’d learned to read after the Stormwing pack weeks earlier, the pattern familiar enough now that it barely slowed him down.

Floor five was where things actually got interesting.

A **Cinderjaw Wolf** met him at the threshold, low and snarling, smoke curling from between its teeth with every breath. It didn’t hunt like the others — it circled him slowly, testing the edges of his stance, waiting for an opening instead of charging in blind.

Daemon matched its patience with his own, refusing to be baited into striking first, until it finally lost its nerve and lunged.

He was faster.

The dagger went up through its exposed throat the instant it committed, and it went down hard, smoke fading with it into nothing.

*Good. Getting faster at reading them. Each one teaches me something the last one didn’t.*

Three days in, by his count.

He built his camp against a stone outcrop, cooked what he’d taken down that day, and let himself actually rest for once — real food, real sleep, the kind of recovery his body genuinely needed if he wanted to keep pushing deeper.

He was halfway through his meal when the notification came.

Ding!

[Reward Granted.]

**Voidreaper (Weapon)** — an ancient blade, its power still sealed, growing stronger as the Host’s level rises.

**Inferno Blast (Skill)** — wreathes the Host’s fist in flame, capable of both striking and burning.

**Hollow Veil (Artifact)** — grants temporary invisibility.

**Healing Potions x20**

Daemon stared at the growing list, something like real excitement finally breaking through the exhaustion weighing down his shoulders.

*My first actual skills. Not just borrowed strength from an emergency surge. An actual fire fist. A sword that isn’t just decoration anymore.*

*Tomorrow, I use both. See what I can actually do with real tools instead of bare hands and stubbornness.*

He banked the fire low, wrapped himself against the growing chill, and let sleep take him.

---

The next stretch of floors blurred into a rhythm of steel and flame.

A **Stoneclad Beetle** on six, its shell finally cracking under a Voidreaper strike backed with real weight behind it, the blade biting deeper than anything he’d swung before.

A **Marsh Serpent** on seven, driven back by a burst of fire from his fist before it ever got close enough to strike, the flame catching along its wet scales and forcing it into a hissing retreat he closed the distance on immediately.

A **Duskthorn Assassin** on eight, fast and silent, nearly getting past his guard in the dark before Inferno Blast caught it mid-lunge, the impact throwing it clear across the chamber.

A **Frostmaw Bear** on nine, an actual contest of strength he barely won, ribs aching for an hour afterward from a hit he hadn’t fully dodged in time.

A **Sandstalker Scorpion** on ten, its stinger deflected off Voidreaper’s edge with a shower of sparks before he ended it clean, the blade humming faintly in his grip like it had enjoyed the exchange.

Floor after floor, the pattern held — dagger and blade for the openings, fire for the ones that got too close, invisibility whenever he needed a second to breathe and reset.

By floor fifteen, the fights barely slowed him down, each victory coming faster and cleaner than the last. By floor twenty, he wasn’t just surviving them anymore. He was winning them with room to spare, sometimes ending a fight before he’d even broken a real sweat.

Floor twenty-five brought something bigger — a hulking, armor-plated **Warbeast**, easily the largest thing he’d faced since the drake on floor eighteen, the ground itself shaking with every step it took toward him, dust rising in small clouds around its feet.

Daemon didn’t retreat.

He met it head-on, Voidreaper flashing in one hand, flame roaring from the other, weaving between crushing blows that would have ended him outright a few weeks earlier when he’d first stepped through the gate. The fight stretched longer than any before it, both of them trading ground back and forth across the scorched arena, until Daemon finally found the gap in its guard and drove everything he had into a single decisive strike.

When it finally went down, the arena around him scorched black in a wide circle, he stood over it breathing hard, hands still smoking faintly, the silence afterward feeling almost too loud.

*That’s enough.*

*That’s more than enough for now.*

---

”System. How long have I been here.”

[Seven days, Host time.]

*A week. Victoria’s going to notice if I stay gone any longer than this. I said I’d only be a few hours.*

He sat with that thought a moment, guilt settling uncomfortably in his chest, before the system chimed once more.

[Reward Granted.]

**Inferno Blast** — range increased.

**Voidreaper** — Level up.

**Blade Aura (Skill)**

**Curse Insight Appraisal (Skill)** — Allows the Host to perceive corrupted bloodline energy directly within a bonded wife’s body. Guided touch can gently ease active symptoms, slowing the spread and easing pain temporarily.

**Emberalm Jade (Artifact)** — A pendant that cools an overactive bloodline, reducing flare-ups and allowing the wearer periods of near-normal life. Charge depletes with use and must be restored using monster cores.

Daemon read the last two entries twice, chest tightening with something closer to hope than he’d let himself feel in weeks — real hope, not the careful, guarded kind he’d been rationing out to himself since the wedding.

*She could actually feel normal for once. Not constantly fighting her own blood just to get through an ordinary day.*

*This is real. This isn’t just slowing the damage down anymore, buying her a little more time before things get worse. This is actual relief. Something she can feel immediately.*

He turned the jade pendant over in his palm, warm and faintly pulsing, and made up his mind before he’d even finished thinking it through.

*I’m not waiting to figure out the perfect moment for this. She’s suffered long enough already.*

”System. Open the gate home.”

---

Night had fully settled outside when he stepped back through, the street empty, no one around to notice a man appearing out of thin air where a shimmer of blue-white light briefly split the dark and then sealed itself shut behind him.

He moved through the house quietly, careful with every step, easing the door shut behind him without a sound, already rehearsing some vague excuse about a job that ran long.

He made it exactly to the bottom of the staircase.

Victoria was already standing there, arms folded beneath her chest, watching him with an expression that wasn’t quite anger and wasn’t quite relief either — something caught tensely between both, like she’d spent the last several hours deciding which one she was going to lead with.

”Where were you,” she said, voice low and tight, each word measured like she’d practiced saying it calmly. ”Your phone wasn’t reaching. You said a walk. It’s midnight, Daemon. You just — disappeared. No message. Nothing.”

Daemon opened his mouth, no good answer anywhere close to ready, every excuse he’d half-formed on the way home suddenly sounding hollow.

*I can’t tell her the truth. Not yet. Not like this, standing in a dark hallway at midnight with her already upset.*

Then something occurred to him, and he seized it before he could second-guess it.

”I have something for you,” he said instead. ”I meant to give it to you this morning, actually. Got... held up. It’s yours either way.”

Victoria’s eyes narrowed, suspicion warring visibly with curiosity across her face. ”What could you possibly have for me at midnight that’s worth disappearing for hours over.”

He reached into his pocket and held out the jade pendant, faint warmth still pulsing softly from its center, catching the dim hallway light in a way that made it look almost alive.

Victoria’s gaze dropped to it, and something in her posture shifted — the folded arms loosening slightly, the tight line of her shoulders easing just a fraction, like some instinct in her recognized what she was looking at before her mind had caught up.

Her breath caught the moment she saw it.

”This is...”

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