Chapter 144
Soren shrugged. "I told you hours ago I can put you right in a moment, and you wouldn’t hear it."
"Dragging that body around a reception hall is going to be brutal."
Celeste giggled.
"As long as it’s something Husband gave me."
"Even if my arms break and my legs shatter."
"I love it"
"This won’t slow my work down. It’s motivation."
"So you absolutely must not fix me."
"The more wrecked my body looks, the better it proves how much Husband dotes on me."
"Hehehe."
"Today."
"Celeste is crawling out of this palace if she has to."
Victoria’s smirk faded out.
Privately, something like admiration arrived.
As expected of the only other woman fit to share my man.
That level of ideological commitment.
Genuinely unmatched.
Swaying as she went, Celeste made her way toward the doors, tipped her head back, and pulled in a deep breath.
Then she used the doorframe to get herself out of the hall.
Victoria stood up too.
She wrapped her voice in demonic energy and sent it to Soren.
"If the crowd out there is as big as she says."
"Celeste can’t handle it alone."
"And I’m worried those proud Emperor Realm powerhouses, after waiting two days, will look at a Human Venerable and start entertaining thoughts."
"I need to go as well."
"To anchor our prestige and hold the room."
Soren nodded, he only asked one thing.
"Are you holding up?"
"Not holding..."
"Uh."
"I’m holding up fine."
Victoria paused half a second.
She sent another line.
"If you aren’t in a hurry to leave the domain."
"Come to my pocket dimension tonight and help me cultivate."
"The Ancestor Realm breakthrough can’t wait any longer, it should have been at the top of the list a long time ago."
"That’s no trouble at all," Soren replied. Once Victoria reached the Ancestor Realm, what she could do for him went up considerably.
"Mmm."
She left him a smile with a hook in it and walked toward the doors.
The next second, her legs went out from under her, she nearly hit the floor in a heap.
Upper-Tier Demon Emperor or not.
She had been drained to the point where her muscles wouldn’t answer.
Heaven was fair about these things, the more you took, the higher the bill.
Her cultivation let her beat Celeste without effort, her cultivation disadvantage meant she stood no chance against Soren at all.
"You don’t want me to fix you either?" Soren asked, amused.
Victoria huffed, and the reply came back with her pride intact.
"If a mere Human Venerable like Celeste doesn’t require assistance, then the Grand Mistress, an Upper-Tier Demon Emperor, requires it even less."
"I’ll be waiting tonight."
With that.
Victoria made her way out, unsteady, stopping every few steps to get her breath.
A satisfied smile on his mouth, Soren turned his attention back to the panel, what was displayed didn’t belong to Victoria.
Or to Celeste.
It belonged to Cecilia.
Soren looked at her relationship title.
Obedient and Submissive had lit.
Not superficially, not under duress, a real transition.
More than that, the tier after it, Deep Affection and Righteousness, had flickered faintly for four or five seconds earlier.
Out of the corner of his eye Soren watched her, still sitting rigid in that chair like something carved.
He had no idea what was going on in there, one thing wasn’t in doubt.
Something entirely new had taken root in Cecilia’s chest.
Because the strategy for conquering her was strange.
When Soren first read the system’s instructions two days ago, even he’d had trouble with it.
He’d half suspected something was wrong with her.
He reviewed the intelligence again.
[Cecilia has undergone long-term conditioning and executed countless assassinations, toward the opposite sex she maintains total emotional detachment.]
[By conventional psychological logic...]
[She cannot genuinely fall in love with any man.]
[However, because Cecilia is presently executing an assassination mission against Master]
[She is obliged to display affection, stage obedience, and actively curry favor.]
[Further, she has assumed the role of Master’s woman in name and in fact.]
[Under that identity shift, there is a distinct probability her defenses blur and she begins substituting herself into the role she is performing.]
[Master need only seize those transient moments of vulnerability and keep stimulating the emotional fluctuation.]
Soren smiled to himself.
He thought back over what happened two and a half days ago.
When Celeste came through those doors, and got into that argument with Victoria about who arrived first.
Something in Cecilia had substituted itself without permission.
For an instant, the thought that went through her was this.
If I really were Soren’s woman, would I be the one squabbling with Victoria and Celeste for my place?
And with that hypothetical turning over in her head, something sour and entirely unfamiliar had come up.
Soren caught the fluctuation to the decimal.
Which was exactly why he hadn’t turned Victoria and Celeste down.
Two days on.
Cecilia was still submerged in the aftermath, she couldn’t climb out of it.
If the Strategy Encyclopedia’s instructions were boiled down to one line.
He needed to be openly, unreservedly affectionate with other women where Cecilia could watch.
Only that kept knocking her detachment loose, pushing the substitution deeper, until performance and reality stopped being separable.
In the old days, faced with a female assassin sent by the Heavenly Demon Alliance.
Soren would have crushed her without thinking twice.
The way he’d executed Aelyra without hesitation.
But he was a Middle-Tier Demon Ancestor now, and the Heavenly Demon Alliance didn’t frighten him.
Since the Earth Demon Ancestor had been generous enough to deliver his own niece to the doorstep.
Refusing a top-grade beauty and declining to make her his loyal subordinate.
That would be wasting what heaven had handed over.
Compared to his earlier days, Soren no longer had a mother to rescue or a Great Demon Emperor to survive.
So the appetite for play had grown.
Which is to say.
He didn’t rank the Heavenly Demon Alliance highly enough to worry about it.
Enemies that needed removing would still get removed, and stockpiling resources to raise his subordinates’ strength remained a fixed part of the plan.
He had no desire to handle every trivial matter and fight every small battle himself.
If that was the job.