Harem Startup : The Demon Billionaire is on Vacation-Chapter 594: The Forge That Failed

Lux stood in the dark ruins of a broken realm.

But his smile?

Still sharp.

Still glowing.

Still Lux.

The silence around him wasn't silence. It was the sound of systems breathing. Walls groaning. Forgotten data hissing through burnt-out infernal circuits. The air smelled like ash and ozone, like a machine had coughed up its own soul and left the charred skeleton behind. This was not just a ruin. This was a failed idea. A vault that lost.

The Forge That Failed.

An abandoned subspace cluster originally designed by Greed's high architects to manufacture soul-based currency algorithms. But it broke. Malfunctioned. Got corrupted from the inside out.

Or maybe it got rewritten.

Lux's boots crunched over black glass and hex-slag. Dust shimmered with residual mana. The walls twitched like the network still remembered being touched by something that shouldn't exist.

He let the shadows wrap around him like a familiar suit.

And then…

Dark light flared.

[Battle Form Activated.]

His armor didn't clank. It whispered into being. Midnight obsidian plates laced with molten gold threads that flickered with infernal runes.

He rolled his neck.

"Alright, you old parasite," Lux whispered, voice velvet and death. "Let's see where your consciousness is hiding now…"

He reached forward. Not with hands.

With code.

[SYSTEM: TechnoTrace – Initiate Zoltarin Pattern Search.]

[Input Artifact Residue: Azithra's Hairpin – Imprint Matched: 96.78%]

[Network Threads: Processing… Decompiling Shadow Code…]

The space rippled. A thin red line blinked across the ruined floor, then another. Dozens of tiny threads sparked in midair like blood-silk threads, bouncing erratically across the ruins, forming a web, frantic, incomplete, fading.

Lux narrowed his eyes.

"Too weak," he murmured. "He's not active here. He's remote accessing."

[SYSTEM: Searching Cross-Nodes.]

[...Loading…]

He tapped his dagger against his armor.

Think. Zoltarin's style was sloppy. Overconfident. He liked to flex. Always used indirect methods to pretend he wasn't paying attention while watching every move.

So… where would his mind hide?

[SYSTEM: One Active Subnode Detected – Frequency Match: 88.2%]

[Node Tag: Vault_Zero.BetaX-3]

[Warning: Access Cloaked. Intrusion Detected.]

Lux's lips curled.

"Bingo," he whispered, eyes glinting.

And then he vanished.

[Teleportation]

[Coordinate Lock: Vault_Zero.BetaX-3]

[Network Bypass Successful.]

The world around him fractured like glass.

And when it reformed…

He was above.

Above a broken control room embedded in the heart of a collapsed sub-server. Gravity bent. Airless. Frictionless. Cold. The energy here was different. It didn't hum. It ached. Like a scream that had been trapped behind a firewall for centuries and now… leaked.

And there.

In the middle of the room.

A humanoid figure, partially made of code. Wearing the skin of his uncle, but twisted. Pixelated beard. Teeth glitched in and out of focus. His eyes burned with corrupted crimson, flickering like candles in a windless void. And for a second, Lux didn't see a monster. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝒆𝔀𝒆𝙗𝓷𝒐𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝓶

He saw legacy.

He saw the shadow of someone once praised in the halls of Greed. The first heir. The golden son. The man who almost ruled before he lost everything.

But that second passed.

Because Lux wasn't here to talk.

And he wasn't here to forgive.

He launched straight at Zoltarin, no introduction, no dramatic speech. Just speed, daggers already drawn, system already flaring.

[Skill Activated: Agility Boost]

[Skill Activated: Demonic Orbs ]

[Skill Activated: Abyssal Grasp ]

His body blurred, flesh and shadow, slick with infernal light, and closed the gap in half a breath.

But Zoltarin was faster.

Perfect condition.

He was already moving before Lux struck, sidestepping like a whisper, and…

-CLANG!

Lux's blades met resistance.

Not armor.

Greed.

Zoltarin summoned a shield out of contracts. Pages of ancient, forbidden Greed pacts burst in front of him, hardened into hexagonal gold barriers mid-swing.

"Ah," Zoltarin said, his voice clean now. No longer glitched. "The prodigal nephew. No hello? No bow? Tsk. Children these days."

Lux didn't reply.

He twisted his dagger under the edge of the barrier and flared it.

[Orb Implosion Triggered – Curse Debt]

The orb detonated on contact, not with fire, but with an economic explosion. Numbers. IOUs. Cursed ledgers. The detonation stole value from Zoltarin's defenses and cracked the barrier.

Lux kicked off the wall, flipped sideways, and went for the neck.

But Zoltarin smiled.

And moved.

Faster.

[Zoltarin Skill: Greed Rewrite – Velocity Conversion]

[Effect: Converts nearby contract fragments into movement speed for 3 seconds.]

Lux barely blinked before the man was behind him.

And he felt it…

A flare of cold.

Something grazing his side.

Not a weapon.

A pen.

The sigil-bit tip of Zoltarin's Greed Lance, shaped like a writing instrument, forged by the first Vault Lords, scraped past his ribs.

[Warning: You has been Tagged – Value Drain Initiated.]

Pain lanced down Lux's spine. Not just physical pain. Economic pain. His resource pool started draining. Stats jittered. His barrier flickered.

"Still immature," Zoltarin murmured.

Lux stumbled forward but threw a dagger backward in response.

Zoltarin caught it.

And snapped it.

With two fingers.

That bastard.

Lux growled, dashed sideways, then summoned five orbs to float in defensive formation.

A massive black-and-gold circle pulsed beneath Lux's feet. Infernal coins spun in orbit. The space twisted into a high-frequency financial battleground.

Lux's eyes flared brighter. "You're not the only one trained by our grandfather."

Zoltarin exhaled. "No. But I was his favorite."

They collided again.

Steel clashed. Sparks flew. Every move was a balance of math and muscle. Every parry was an algorithm. Every feint a financial forecast.

Lux ducked low and stabbed upward.

Zoltarin weaved. His cloak split into floating golden receipts that deflected the blow.

[Zoltarin Passive: Legacy Credit – Every 10 seconds, a failed attack refunds mana.]

"Ugh, you're so outdated," Lux spat.

"Yet I'm not the one bleeding," Zoltarin said.

Lux was bleeding.

That damn scratch earlier was still draining him. The tag acted like a leech, siphoning points from his stamina regen, locking him out of high-tier resource skills.

Lux teleported backward to gain space.

He landed hard against a crumbling data pylon. The world around them wasn't solid. It was code-infused architecture, floating plates, black voids, data seams flickering like lightning between dead consoles.

Corvus's voice hissed in his head.

"Lux?! Status report! Your signal's blinking like a cursed stock graph!"

Lux spat blood. "Still alive."

"You sound like you're getting divested, boss!"

"I'm fine," Lux growled, wiping his mouth. "Just stalling the quarterly villain."