[ SYSTEM UPDATE ]
> Blood Transfer .... COMPLETE
> Target Scan .... SUCCESS
- Compatibility Rate: 98%
> Awakening Protocol ... INITIATED
> Awakening Status ..... COMPLETE
───────────────
CLASS UNLOCKED: [Rare] Fire Starter
TITLE UNLOCKED: [Unique] First Wife of the Progenitor
[Effect Notice]
- Class [Fire Starter] has been altered by Title [First Wife of the Progenitor].
CLASS UNLOCKED: [Legendary] Vampiric Dragon Queen Of Flame
───────────────
The air grew heavy, charged with something ancient and divine. Lara's body trembled in his arms, her breathing ragged… she grabbed Leon's arm squeezing it tightly as she braced herself.
Her wounds, both inside and out, knit together with agonizing slowness, glowing faintly red as her blood boiled from within. The scent was intoxicating, a heat that wrapped around him like chains.
"Leon…" she whispered, voice cracked but steady. "So you saved me again didn't you. "
He didn't answer. He couldn't. His chest was tight, his heartbeat pounding louder than any monster's roar.
Then the system voice cut through the silence again:
[Bond Established: Eternal Spouse]
[Bond Status: Unbreakable]
Lara gasped as another surge of light coursed through her veins, crimson fire leaking from her eyes for an instant before dimming again. The immense energy that had momentarily animated her proved too much. Her eyes, which had begun to shift into a feral, draconic gleam, fluttered shut. The tension left her body, and she fell limp in his arms, unconscious, her transformation complete but her consciousness overwhelmed.
The sudden silence on the quad was deafening. Leon knelt there, holding her, the adrenaline of his own awakening and the fight beginning to ebb, leaving a hollow, weary ache. The world seemed to hold its breath.
'Haa.... What the fuck is going on'. That thought was the only thing going through his mind in the silence of the of the desolate quad
It was a fragile peace, shattered by the sound of skittering claws on concrete.
From the shattered doors of the humanities building and from behind burning cars, they emerged. The smaller Skivers. They had fled the larger creature's presence and the explosive battle, but now, sensing the dominant aura was gone and detecting only the scent of blood and a single, weary prey, their instinctual hunger drew them back.
Three of them fanned out, their bulbous red eyes fixed on Leon. They saw a man on his knees, holding a defenseless form. Easy meat.
A cold, clean fury washed over Leon, erasing his fatigue. The rage that had subsided when Lara was safe came back to life,. They were a nuisance. An interruption. A threat to her.
He gently laid Lara down on the grass, his movements slow and deliberate. As the first Skiver lunged, he didn't even need the crimson sword.
He moved like a phantom. His hand, now tipped with claws that hadn't been there a moment before, shot out and caught the creature by its throat.
He could feel the strange energy in the air that flowed into him, empowering him both now and earlier before.
With a sickening crunch, he crushed its windpipe and flung the twitching body into the second one, sending both tumbling. The third leapt for his back, but he was already turning. His other hand, now shimmering with red-hot scales, punched straight through its chest. Ichor, black and sizzling, sprayed across the pavement.
It was over in seconds. The three Skivers lay dead, their bodies already beginning to dissolve into foul-smelling smoke. Leon stood over them, his breath misting in the air, the reptilian slit in his eyes slowly receding. The anger faded, replaced by a single, driving purpose. Sanctuary.
[+3 Skivers killed]
[14 kills Left]
He turned back to Lara. Her chest rose and fell steadily, a deep, unnatural warmth radiating from her. She was no longer the fragile girl from his childhood ; she was something more, sleeping power humming just beneath her skin.
Carefully, he lifted her into his arms. She was surprisingly light. He cast a final glance around the ruined quad, at the corpses and the flames. This was no place to rest.
Cradling his unconscious, newly-crowned queen, Leon moved into the deeper shadows of the campus. The abandoned maintenance tunnels beneath the engineering building were his goal—a place to hide, to regroup. As he walked, the weight in his arms wasn't just physical. It was the weight of a lifetime.
The sight of her peaceful, sleeping face, now holding the potential for untold power, unlocked a floodgate of memories.
------
The large, ornate door of the Vasser estate swung open. Mrs. Vasser a young woman with white silver hair and brown eyes stepped out, her face a mixture of surprise and immediate concern, as she found a simple basket on the stoop. Inside, wrapped in a thin blanket, was a quiet baby boy with curious eyes, a note pinned to his chest with a single word: "Leon."
He was brought into the warmth and chaos of a house already overflowing with life. The Vasser quintuplets—five identical girls with wisps of silver hair and piercing purple eyes—had been born just weeks before him. He wasn't a replacement; he was an addition. An unexpected brother placed at the center of a five-pointed star.
But as they grew, the word "brother" never quite fit. For the five girls—Lara, Livia, Lena, Leah, and Lily—he was never a sibling. He was theirs.
Livia, the most strategically minded, always "coincidentally" scaring away any girl who tried to talk to him in school.
Then there was Lena, the artist, filling sketchbooks with portraits of only him, her possessiveness a quiet, intense obsession.
After her, Leah, the most physically affectionate, who would cling to his arm with a grip that was just a little too tight, a silent warning to anyone who might try to separate them.
Then Lily, the youngest by minutes, whose seemingly innocent questions were always probes to ensure he was happy, with them, and no one else.
And finally Lara. Always Lara, the unofficial leader of the quintuplets. Her claim had been the most vocal.
They didn't see it as competing for him; they saw it as a shared custody of their most prized possession. He belonged to all of them, together.
A cold dread, deeper than any fear he'd felt facing the Skiver Ravager, trickled down his spine.
Suddenly he wasn't feeling as enthusiastic about meeting up with the rest of them.
The heavy steel door of the maintenance tunnel groaned shut behind him, cutting off the distant sounds of chaos and the sickly orange glow of the fires. The silence that followed was thick, broken only by the drip of water somewhere in the darkness and Lara's steady, warm breathing. The air was cool and smelled of damp concrete and oil.
He found a small, dry alcove that once served as a storage closet for cleaning supplies. Gently, he laid Lara down on a pile of old, musty sacks that were the best bedding he could find. In the near-total darkness, her skin emitted a faint, crimson luminescence, like embers banked for the night. The [Vampiric Dragon Queen of Flame] was not a title given lightly.
He sat against the cold wall, sliding down to the floor, his knees drawn up. The exhaustion was a physical weight, a weight that pulled his eyelids shut as he fell asleep beside her.
------
A few hours later he awoke, his mind much clearer than before, so many things had happened at once that he didn't have time to think about anything else except getting to safety.
But now as he sat up with his back against the cold wall, he wondered what he should do next.
He looked to his side and there she was,his newly crowned wife, muddled in with all the confusion was joy, he was happy after all the girls weren't the only ones holding feelings, it was just that he had forced his his feelings deep into his heart.
He felt like it was greedy, staking claim on all the girls felt wrong but when he saw Lara in that broken state he couldn't help but imagine what if she had died.
Regret welled up in his heart a searing, suffocating heat that had nothing to do with her new power. The thought of a world without Lara's voice, without her fierce, possessive love, was a void more terrifying than any monster. In that moment of raw, desperate clarity, the walls he'd built around his own heart crumbled to ash.
He had loved them. All of them. Not as a brother, but as a man loves a woman. The guilt of that truth had been a constant companion, a sin he thought he had to bury. How could he choose one without shattering the others? How could he want all five without being a monster of greed?
But no more, he wasn't going to hide how he felt any longer, he was going to take their love and reciprocate it even more intensly. The resolution solidified within him, a core of molten steel cooling into an unbreakable shape.
--------------------------------------
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