My Taboo Harem!

Phei allowed Minimal Void Sense to awaken gently, careful not to pour too much power into something he had only just acquired. Nothing in the room visibly changed, yet the world beneath what his eyes normally perceived became subtly different.

The faint wound left behind by his earlier portal was suddenly obvious, a disturbance in space that ordinary vision had completely missed. Tiny hollows existed where he had previously sensed only solid matter, while other places carried strange emptiness that did not feel natural at all. Some absences were merely empty space.

Others felt as though something had once existed there and been swallowed so thoroughly that reality had been left carrying the scar.

His attention drifted across the room.

Then brushed against Maya.

Phei’s eyes narrowed.

Something around her disturbed his new perception.

He could not tell what.

There was no obvious hostile presence, no visible wound in space and nothing his still-primitive Void Sense could properly identify, yet the hollowness around Maya did not feel the same as the hollowness around everything else.

Her fingers stopped immediately.

"What?"

Phei looked up into her silver eyes and studied her for a moment. Maya appeared exactly as she had before, beautiful, soft, quietly concerned and increasingly suspicious of the way he was staring at her.

"Nothing."

She continued looking at him.

Phei smiled.

Maya’s expression informed him with remarkable clarity that she believed absolutely none of that answer, but after several seconds she resumed running her fingers through his hair.

Eira’s advice remained useful.

"Let things unfold before tearing them apart."

The System continued.

[Ding! Major Soul Evolution!]

[Death-Kissed Cosmic Dragon Soul: The sacred essence of the Nether Goddess has tempered your Soul, granting you Near-Absolute Resistance to Nether Energy, Death pressure, grave curses, soul rot and weaker Death Authorities. Nether and Death attacks, curses and corrosive energies may also be refined into temporary Soul Protection.]

Black-violet sparks briefly crawled over Phei’s fingers before sinking beneath his skin.

He flexed his hand slowly, feeling a faint coldness settle somewhere far deeper than his flesh.

Near-Absolute Resistance was not something the System handed out casually.

The sacred essence he had received from Sienna had apparently changed the very nature of his Dragon Soul, tempering it against the powers belonging most naturally to the Nether Goddess herself.

Nether Energy, grave curses, soul rot and weaker Death abilities and domains perhaps, would now have far less power over him, while some hostile energies carrying Nether or Death could even be refined into protection rather than simply allowed to corrode his soul.

There was something deeply satisfying about the idea of an enemy attacking him with death only to discover they had strengthened his defenses.

The next reward expanded that idea even further.

[Ding! Special Ability Acquired.]

[Death Owes the Dragon: During a critical death attack, Host would seize the invading death-force and turn it into a temporary soul shield, counterattack or emergency revival pulse. Limited to one use during a major applicable encounter.]

Phei gave the description a slow approving look.

He liked that one.

No complicated mystery. No dormant ability waiting for some future revelation or strange spiritual relationship requiring interpretation.

Someone attacked him with Nether or Death badly enough to threaten his life, and once during that encounter, he could seize part of the attacking force and make it serve him instead.

Even Death, apparently, could be robbed if a Dragon was shameless enough.

The System finally reached the last reward.

[Ding! Special Recognition Acquired.]

[Unfinished Children Recognition: Nether Goddess’s Unfinished Children recognize Host as their Goddess’s eternal companion and Secondary Master. Host can command them through simple orders such as Stop, Follow, Guard, Retreat, Bring, Hide, Point, Open and Close, but Host’s authority can never override Nether Goddess’s.]

Phei stared at the notification for several breaths asking what the heck were Unfinished Children?

And he was the secondary Master of these children, or rather, horrors?

That was apparently his life now.

So Sienna had an entire realm filled with the "Unfinished Children" horrors that crawled out of realm and enough of them now recognized him that simple commands from him carried authority?

He’d have to ask Sienna about that sometime.

For now, at least Sienna remained above him; that was probably best for everyone.

The last thing Phei needed was to accidentally tell one of her mountain-sized "children" to bring something and discover several hours later that it interpreted the instruction generously enough to drag half a kingdom through the Nether.

The System windows gradually faded from his vision, leaving the room quiet again.

Phei remained stretched across Maya’s lap for a while, thinking through the actual shape of what had happened to him.

Phei had made love with Sienna, a girl a loved and now the universe, or to be more correct, the Nether Goddess on their first night had somehow awakened an entirely new forbidden cultivation path, deepened the existing Mark connecting him to his women, permanently bound his soul to Sienna’s, tempered his Dragon Dominance, evolved one particularly shameless collection of abilities into something considerably stronger, awakened a mysterious Soul Mate Authority, pushed Void-Ice into its first touch of True Void, tempered his Cosmic Dragon Soul against Nether and Death, given him a method of turning Death’s own force against it and convinced Sienna’s nightmare children that he ranked somewhere beneath their Goddess but comfortably above being ignored.

Phei exhaled slowly through his nose.

He had intended to make love to her and give her a memorable first time as she lost her virginity and he had come out looking suspiciously like the beginning of an entirely new cultivation problem.

’Okay that sounds weird, the first sentence I mean.’

Maya’s fingers brushed softly across his forehead and drew his attention back to her. She looked down at him with those gentle silver eyes and asked, "Feeling better?"

Phei held her gaze for a moment before nodding. "A little."

Her smile came quietly. "Good."

That was all.

She did not ask what he had spent the last several minutes staring at. She did not demand an explanation for every change in his expression, nor did she question the black-violet sparks that had briefly appeared along his fingers.

Phei reached up, caught her free hand and pressed a quiet kiss against her knuckles.

Seeing all these abilities, Phei realized that there was actually another path to True Omnipotence opening before him, one completely separate from the Omni-Primordial Path and the Original Progenitors he was meant to enslave.

That path depended on taking the foundations of those ancient Legacy monsters and making their power his own; enslave them, get an ability reward each time while making them his loyal dogs while getting so much Soul Energy from them.

This one was different. It was being built entirely from what the Cosmic Dragon itself was becoming.

The Dual Path could let him endlessly cultivate himself through the women bound to his life while making them stronger too beside him. Dragon Dominance was beginning to climb beyond mortals and to even suppress against gods themselves, although he knew that why he had that ability he was still too weak to suppress a god.

’But that’s where we’re headed isn’t it?’

His Death-Kissed Cosmic Dragon Soul was learning to treat Nether, curses and Death as things to resist and refine, while Death Owes the Dragon could one day make even a killing blow another resource to seize.

And now the Void had finally opened its first true door to him through Hollow Touch, Void Step and Void Sense.

Phei stared at it all for several long seconds.

One path toward omnipotence demanded that he conquer the Original Progenitors. The other seemed far more frightening in its simplicity: keep evolving the Cosmic Dragon until cultivation, Death, gods, space, the Void and eventually the laws governing existence itself became things beneath his authority.

He’d embark on both paths!

Then he closed his eyes again.

This time he did not need to search through the distant edges of his soul or wonder whether what he felt was imagination. Dual-Nether Souls remained there beneath everything else, quiet and permanent, carrying the faint cold presence of Sienna through distance and concealment.

She was alive, sleeping.

Phei’s mouth curved faintly:

Sleep well, Ice Robot.

For tonight, knowing that much was enough.