Chapter 239: The Day Before
Time flowed strangely inside the Azure Dragon Realm.
What felt like months had passed since Damon entered, but the system’s countdown showed only one day remained before the realm would expel everyone back to the real world.
Damon sat on the edge of the wide stone bed they had carved out of the cave’s inner chamber, one knee raised and his forearm resting loosely across it, watching his women sleep in the pale, ambient glow of the realm’s eternal twilight that bled through the cave mouth.
The sight held something quiet in it.
Something that, a few months ago, he wouldn’t have known to value.
Ariel had her arm draped lazily across Mio’s waist, her long dark-blue hair fanned out beneath her like spilled ink across the stone.
Even in sleep, her expression was soft and unbothered, the natural trust of someone who had no doubt about where she belonged.
Beside them, Mia’s head rested against Seraphina’s shoulder, her deep purple hair falling loose and straight across her cheek, half-hiding the faint pink that seemed to live permanently on her face even in unconsciousness.
Seraphina, for her part, had her long lime-green hair unbound for once, and despite her usual rigid, upright composure, she had tilted slightly toward Mia with an ease that only sleep could coax out of her.
A little apart from the cluster, Alena had curled herself near the cave wall, her practical forest-green robes tucked around her legs.
Her alchemy notes lay scattered around her in a wide, haphazard ring, dense with her precise handwriting and annotated diagrams of herbs, their molecular structures mapped out in obsessive detail — notes she had been working on right up until her eyes finally gave out.
Then there was Flare.
She hadn’t joined the group.
She lay a deliberate distance away, on her back, arms folded across her chest in a posture that even in sleep managed to project a stubborn refusal to yield.
Her fiery-red hair spread out around her like cooling embers, and that faint, feverish warmth she always radiated kept a thin ring of air around her noticeably drier and hotter than the rest of the cave.
But she was closer than she had been a week ago.
Damon’s golden eyes traced the distance between her and the others with quiet, measured satisfaction.
Progress.
Damon opened his status window and scanned the numbers.
[Name: Damon Arcknight]
[Age: 18]
[Cultivation: Heavenly Spirit Realm - First Level]
[True Cultivation: King Spirit Realm - First Level]
[Affinities: Fire: 95, Water: 175, Ice: 215, Wind: 215, Earth: 115, Lightning: 445, Nature: 95, Light: 95, Dark: 235, Space: 50, Time: 50, Sword: 115]
[Spiritual Roots: Elemental Spiritual Roots] [Saint Grade - Peak]
[Bloodline: Blood of Incubus Dragon Lord] [Heaven Grade - Low]
[Physique: Body of Incubus Dragon Lord] [Heaven Grade - Low]
[Lust points: 19,847,200]
[Harem Members: Ariel Aquaria, Mio Nightrider, Mia Nightrider, Selene Frostborn, Seraphina, Flare]
[Beasts Bonds: Neko [Heavenly White Tiger]]
[Ability: Incubus Touch, Incubus Aura, Incubus Celestial Eyes, Incubus Fluid, Incubus Dream, Polymorph, Dragon Transformation, Incubus Transformation]
He had deliberately adjusted his Polymorph to show only Heavenly Spirit Realm First Level.
It was a calculated choice.
The sect leader already knew about his sword aura.
That alone guaranteed his spot on the tournament team.
Pushing his cultivation higher would only draw unwanted attention and force him to explain how he advanced so fast inside the realm.
Better to let them think the realm’s main benefit went to the women.
And it had.
Ariel had reached Earth Spirit Realm Ninth Level.
Mio and Mia stood at Heavenly Spirit Realm Fifth Level.
Seraphina had stabilized at Heavenly Spirit Realm Fourth Level.
Flare’s Phoenix Bloodline had pushed her to Heavenly Spirit Realm Third Level.
Even Alena, the newest addition, had reached Heavenly Spirit Realm Second Level.
The Azure Dragon Realm had served its purpose.
Damon had not come here to prove himself to Hector or the other elders.
He had come here to make his women stronger.
Everything else was secondary.
He leaned back against the cave wall and let his gaze drift to the cave entrance.
Lark.
He had not gone looking for her, had not sought her out in the corridors of the sect or waited near the training grounds in the hope of crossing her path.
Not because he had forgotten her.
The memory of that night — her golden hair spilling free of its bindings, the perfect, statuesque figure hidden beneath years of careful concealment, the flustered crimson that had flooded her aristocratic features when he saw through every layer of her disguise — was far too vivid to ever be forgotten.
Not because he didn’t want her.
That would have been an outright lie.
But because he understood her situation far better than she herself had likely realized.
She was not some sheltered core disciple nursing wounded pride. She was a princess.
A hidden one, carrying the full weight of a royal bloodline on her shoulders, running from political entanglements powerful enough to reshape entire kingdoms.
A woman who had spent years constructing an identity from nothing, brick by painstaking brick, and had worn it so long it had nearly become her skin.
He had to peeled it back in a single evening.
That was not something a woman like Lumina Solaris simply shrugged off and moved past.
Chasing her now would only drive her further behind those walls she had spent so long building.
Lumina Solaris was a princess hiding inside a sect to escape a from something.
She wore an Origin Grade artifact to maintain her disguise.
She had spent years building walls around herself, walls that kept everyone at a distance.
Damon had already breached those walls once.
He had walked into her room, exposed her secret, and touched her in ways that awakened desires she had buried for years.
Now it was her turn to come to him.
He had made certain of that much.
She had watched as his women moved through this realm like forces of nature unleashed.
When she had seen what they had become, and more importantly, she knew exactly where that power came from.
She was sharp enough to understand that none of it had happened by accident.
A faint smile curved the corner of Damon’s lips.
’She’ll come. She just needs to admit to herself that she needs me.’
He didn’t need to chase her.
He didn’t need to force her hand.
He already planted the seed.
Now he only needed to wait for it to grow.