100x Rebate Sharing System: Retired Incubus Wants to Marry & Have Kids-Chapter 372 - 371- Ktorian’s Arrival

Her voice came from behind his shoulder, slight confusion in it — the voice of someone who had considered the entrance approach and found it unexpectedly short-circuited. She came around, stepping into his peripheral vision, pink hair falling slightly forward, heart-shaped pupils carrying that faint warm light they got when she was curious or amused or both simultaneously.

Viktor looked at her.

"Your—" He made a small gesture. At her. The relevant geography of her, specifically. "Bella’s are smaller. Mira’s are considerably larger. Helena’s are — Helena. Kaida is flat by comparison. You’re somewhere in the middle but higher. Perky." He returned to his trousers. "Easy to recognize."

Elara blinked.

Then she laughed. The real one, not the performed one — the short, surprised sound she made when she hadn’t prepared a response and her body answered before her mind did. She pressed one hand over her mouth, pink eyes crinkled, and then she dropped the hand and looked at him with an expression that was half exasperated and entirely fond.

"You sorted us by ’cup size.’"

"By feel, actually," Viktor said. "But the result is similar."

"That’s—" She seemed to be deciding whether to find this offensive or charming, the calculation visible briefly in her face. The heart-shapes in her pupils pulsed once, warm and soft. She looked past him at the closed bathroom door. At the bed. At the general archaeology of the room, which told its story clearly enough to anyone who knew what to look for.

Her mouth curved.

"Did you enjoy her?" Elara said.

Viktor considered the question with the same seriousness he considered most questions.

"Yes," he said.

"And?" She tilted her head, pink hair swinging. The particular angle of it was the one she used when she wanted more information and was deciding how directly to ask for it. "What did you get? From her. The ability."

Viktor’s hand paused on his waistband.

He turned that over in his mind. The question had arrived at the right time — Elara always had a sense for when he was ready to think rather than feel, the instinct of someone who had spent enough time adjacent to power to recognize when it had finished its work and the inventory could be taken.

"Now," he said, "that is a good question."

He stretched his hand out.

The system window materialized with the quality it always had — not flashy, not dramatic, just ’present,’ the blue-white light of it familiar now, clean text hanging in the air between them like a sheet of illuminated paper.

Elara moved to his side. Her shoulder pressed against his arm. She read over it with the attentiveness she brought to anything that might matter tactically, the merchant’s daughter instinct for useful information still alive in her despite everything else she’d become.

Viktor read it himself.

[ABILITY ACQUIRED — x100 MULTIPLIED]

SOURCE: VIVIAN (ELVEN, NATURE AFFINITY — PURE BLOODLINE)

ABILITY I: NATURE INTEGRATION FIELD

’A pure nature aura emanates from the host at all times. Demonic markers, corruption signatures, and tracking elements cannot adhere to the host’s presence. Within natural environments — forests, open land, running water — host becomes functionally undetectable. Movement leaves no trace. Scent disperses. The host does not hide from nature; the host becomes part of it.’

’[At 100x: Field extends to a 3-meter radius. Allies within range share the effect.]’

ABILITY II: WORLD TREE SEED

’Host may plant one World Tree per established territory. The tree, once rooted, grows to maturity in 30 days. Properties of the mature World Tree: absolute vitality emanation within 500 meters, fruit with full healing and purification properties, soil purification for a 1km radius, structural interior for habitation, natural resistance to all forms of magical corruption.’

’[At 100x: Growth time reduced to 72 hours. Fruit restores any injury short of death. The tree is effectively indestructible by conventional means.]’

ABILITY III: VERDANT AUTHORITY

’Host may commune with living plant-based systems within established territory. Roots, fungal networks, old-growth trees — all become extensions of awareness. Information traveling through root systems becomes accessible. Can redirect growth of established vegetation. Can accelerate or halt natural processes.’

’[At 100x: Commune range covers entire territory. Detection of living presence through root network. No blind spots within forested terrain.]’

The system window closed.

The blue-white light folded in on itself and was gone, leaving only the bedroom and Elara on her knees and the abilities filed away in a part of his mind that operated separately from everything else — the part that never stopped cataloguing, never stopped building the next five steps while the current one was still in progress.

Viktor rolled his shoulder.

"I suppose," he said, "that’s enough to meet my mother’s family."

The words came out even. Conversational. Not dismissive — just the tone of a man who has made a calculation and found it satisfactory.

Below him, Elara’s eyes came up.

She was still working. The long pulling drag of her mouth, unhurried, her tongue laid flat against the underside of him in the easy way she had when she wasn’t rushing — the way that was less about efficiency and more about the thing she’d never said outright, the third quality in her expression that lived alongside hunger and calculation. Her pink hair had fallen forward over her shoulder. The heart-shapes in her pupils caught the room’s light and pulsed, once, slow.

She heard him.

Her hands, which had been resting on his thighs, pressed down slightly. A single acknowledgement.

Then she closed her eyes.

Her throat opened. 𝕗𝐫𝐞𝕖𝕨𝐞𝗯𝚗𝕠𝘃𝐞𝚕.𝐜𝗼𝚖

She took him deep — past the point she usually stopped for breath, past the catch of her gag reflex, all the way down, her nose pressing into the warmth of his pelvis and her throat working around him with the particular convulsive tightening of depth, and Viktor’s jaw went taut.

His hand moved to her hair. Not guiding. Just there.

She held it. A full breath’s worth of time, her throat flexing, her hands gripping his thighs with the focused pressure of someone applying everything they had to a single clean moment.

Then she pulled back.

Slow. All the way. His cock sliding free of her lips with a sound that was wet and soft and obscenely thorough, a final drag of her tongue from base to tip as she withdrew, collecting everything, her cheeks hollowed for the last pull of it.

She swallowed.

Opened her mouth.

Showed him.

Clean.

"Aren’t you good," Viktor said.

Not sarcasm. Just fact, delivered with the same weight he’d give any other fact.

Elara looked up at him with the expression that had the third thing in it.

He reached down and put his hand on her head.

Ruffled her hair.

It was an undignified gesture — the kind you’d give a very dedicated puppy — and he did it with absolute seriousness, his palm messing the pink strands thoroughly, the heart-shapes in her pupils disappearing briefly under the disruption.

She batted his hand away. Smoothed her hair back.

"You’re terrible," she said.

"You’re the best," he said.

The same tone. Same weight.

She stared at him for a moment, hair half-ruined, a streak of something still damp at the corner of her lip that she hadn’t caught, and something moved through her face — the third thing, unguarded for a half-second before she covered it with the merchant’s-daughter composure she kept handy.

She stood, smoothed her dress.

Looked at the window.

"How long?" she asked.

"Before midday." Viktor picked up his shirt. "They entered the eastern road an hour ago."

Elara turned to look at him. "You felt them through the roots?"

"The Verdant Authority activated the moment the ability locked in." He fastened his shirt, fingers moving through the buttons without looking down. "The root network under the east road has been there for decades. Old growth. When I touched it this morning it was like — " he paused, considering. " — like looking at a map that drew itself in real time."

"And?"

"Forty-three riders. Heavy plate, silver standard. Three supply wagons." He tucked his shirt, reached for his jacket. "Captain at the front. Knight formation, not scouting — they’re arriving, not searching."

"House Ktorian?"

"Has to be. Nobody else uses that crest configuration on the banner relays." He looked at his reflection in the window glass — pale, imperfect, the shape of his face made stranger by the early light. "I don’t know which of them specifically. The roots don’t carry identity. Just weight, heartbeat, direction."

Elara was quiet for a moment.

"Does it matter?" she asked.

Viktor shrugged the jacket on.

"Not particularly," he said. "Whoever it is, the script is the same. We receive them. We’re hospitable. We’re not threatening. We let them see exactly what they came to see and nothing they weren’t meant to."

He looked at the window again. East road, invisible from here, but in the part of his awareness that the roots fed — the column moving through it, the even spacing of cavalry, the heavier drag of armored horses over old stone.

"Get Olivia dressed," he said. "White robes, the good ones. Tell her to be at the front entrance in thirty minutes."

"And Vivian and Gwen?"

"Keep them back. Upper floor. Gwen doesn’t go near any windows that face the east approach."

Elara nodded once — the nod of someone taking notes — and moved toward the door.

---

The east road of Millbrook was cobblestone.

That was the first thing.

Commander Celestia Ktorian noticed it the way you notice a door where you expected a wall — not slowly, not with growing confusion, but all at once, the sudden recalibration of everything. The column was still moving, horses at a measured walk, the rhythm of steel-shod hooves against stone creating a sound that was clean and regular and *wrong* for a border town.

Border towns had dirt roads.

Border towns had mud roads in spring and cracked-earth roads in summer and roads that were really just the places where enough feet had gone often enough to kill the grass. Border towns did not have *cobblestone* because cobblestone required quarried stone and leveled ground and labor paid enough to do it properly, and border towns had none of those things.

She’d been this far north once, eight years ago. She remembered the road. She remembered specifically thinking that the ruts would snap an axle if the wagons pushed past walking pace.

The ruts were gone.

Her gaze moved ahead, past the outer edge of the settlement — and there it was.

’What.’