'Lust system': Rise of the Harem lord-Chapter 41: Elias

The masked figure didn’t waste time.

One blink—and he was already in front of Rina.

A streak of scarlet flashed as she threw up her arm shield, barely catching the strike. Sparks flew, her heels grinding into the cracked stone beneath them.

Lilith moved next, spinning into a high arc that sent her whip-blade slicing through the air. But the masked attacker twisted out of reach, fluid and sharp like a system-born shadow.

"This guy’s fast," Lilith muttered.

"Not just fast," Rina replied, sliding to her side. "He’s cloaked in Cassian’s thread code. This one isn’t just a follower. He’s tuned."

Behind them, Echo dropped to her knees.

Whispers spilled from her lips. One voice begged them to run. Another cursed them for being weak. A third kept laughing.

Lilith glanced back. "Echo! You need to stay with us!"

"I’m trying!" Echo gasped. "They’re fighting me inside!"

The masked man stepped forward, lifting his blade of red thread.

"She doesn’t belong to your Dominion. She’s too fractured. Too loud. She’ll crumble."

"No," Lilith said, eyes narrowing. "She’s exactly why we’re here."

The masked man moved again.

This time, Lilith let him come.

She ducked under his blade, flicked her whip in a circle, and caught his leg mid-swing. Rina followed with a blast of charged kinetic force that slammed into his chest.

He staggered.

But only for a second.

Then he vanished again—like mist cutting through moonlight—and reappeared behind Echo.

She gasped.

He raised his blade.

And froze.

Echo stood now—different. Her posture straight. Her eyes golden. Her aura... still.

"I don’t want to be broken," she said softly.

"I want to be whole."

All five voices inside her merged for a breath.

A shockwave erupted from her chest—soundless, but powerful. It blasted outward, throwing the masked disciple off his feet and sending Lilith and Rina stumbling back.

Echo hovered an inch off the ground, threads spinning around her body in five colors—one for each of her fragmented selves.

"I am not your mistake," she whispered. "I’m not his failure."

The masked man snarled. "You’re unstable."

"I’m human," she replied. "And I choose them."

With that, she released a burst of psychic force.

It slammed into the masked disciple, shredding the cloak from his body and revealing cold, metallic lines running down his spine—a half-synthetic system body.

"Cassian rebuilt him," Rina muttered.

But it didn’t matter.

Because Echo wasn’t afraid anymore.

The disciple recovered, readying another strike.

Lilith didn’t give him the chance.

She charged in with Rina, both moving as one. A feint. A side strike. A detonation of bond-thread light that exploded behind his back. The masked man collapsed under the combined force.

His body sparked and hissed.

For a moment, he tried to rise.

Then his threads began to collapse—Cassian severing the link.

He vanished in a blink of red static.

Gone.

Echo fell to her knees, breathing hard.

Lilith knelt beside her. "You okay?"

"I... I think I am," she said, tears slipping down her cheek. "They’re still in here. But now we’re... holding each other. Not fighting."

Rina helped her up. "That’s more than most people ever figure out."

Echo looked between them, voice trembling.

"Do you think Elias will really accept me like this?"

Lilith smirked. "You’ve clearly never met the man. He’s not in the business of throwing people away."

---

Back at Dominion, Elias stood watching as repairs continued from the synthetic attack.

A new message flickered across his screen.

> Echo secured. Attacked by Cassian’s disciple. Defeated. Host stabilized. Returning now.

—Lilith.

He smiled faintly.

"She made it."

Behind him, Mira stepped in.

"You think Cassian’s done?"

Elias turned, expression cold.

"No."

He looked out at the horizon, eyes hard.

"He’s just getting started."

---

The gates of the Dominion opened with a low hiss as the skimmer glided in, its hull still dusted with frost and battle scorches.

Elias stood waiting on the central platform, arms folded, surrounded by the soft glow of rising daylight. Beside him were Aurora, Mira, and Aya, all watching with unreadable expressions.

As the ramp dropped, Lilith stepped down first, cracked knuckles and a tired grin.

"Miss us?"

Behind her came Rina, a little scuffed up but calm as ever.

And then Echo appeared.

Elias’s eyes narrowed slightly—not in suspicion, but in instinctive focus. The girl walking toward him wasn’t just powerful... she was different.

Even before she said a word, her aura pulsed with five frequencies—grief, rage, fear, curiosity, and hope. Each of them distinct. Each of them hers.

Echo stopped just a few feet from him, lifting her chin with fragile bravery.

"I don’t know if I’m what you need," she said quietly. "But I chose to be here."

Elias didn’t speak right away.

Then he extended his hand.

"You don’t have to be what I need. You just have to be you."

Echo blinked. And smiled.

Aya gave a quiet snort. "Alright, poetic moment’s over. Can we talk about the part where Lilith almost lost an arm?"

"I did not," Lilith said, stretching. "Rina just gets dramatic when I bleed a little."

Elias turned to Mira. "Any update on the synthetic Host’s remains?"

Mira nodded and pulled up a glowing thread-map on her lens.

"We recovered fragmented code from the wall it was embedded in. At first, I thought it was just corrupted exit data."

"But?" he prompted.

"But it wasn’t damage. It was a deliberate imprint."

She tapped her wrist, and a projection unfolded in the air—lines of system code reshaping into a sigil. Not one of the known Host glyphs.

This one was jagged, looped in the shape of an eye with thorns curling around it.

Rina frowned. "That’s not from any standard path."

"No," Mira said. "It’s a gate marker."

"Gate to what?" Lilith asked.

Mira turned to Elias.

"Cassian’s True Domain. Not the version he shows when he’s making deals. The place he hides everything—the original test site where the first Lust System prototypes were buried."

Everyone fell silent.

Elias stepped closer to the projection. "Location?"

"Somewhere under the old hollow arc fields. Coordinates hidden in staggered pulses. But we’ve cracked half of them."

"And the rest?"

She looked over her shoulder.

"We need one of the first-generation Hosts to unlock it."

Echo shifted.

"Cassian... told me I wasn’t the only one like me," she whispered. "That there was another. A girl sealed beneath layers of forgotten bond code. She never woke up. But she was his first real test."

Elias’s eyes darkened.

"Then that’s our next target."

---

Later that night, Echo sat with Aurora and Aya in the upper observatory garden.

Soft lights glowed between the trees, and the stars overhead blinked in peaceful silence. Aya offered Echo a cup of calming synth tea, and surprisingly, she took it.

"You really weren’t scared of me?" Echo asked.

Aurora shrugged. "Girl, we’ve faced psycho cultists, ghost Hosts, and a naked Velhira summoning blood whips in her sleep. You’re practically normal."

Aya snorted.

Echo laughed. A little too hard. Then a little too quiet.

"They don’t talk as loud now," she said. "The voices. It’s like... they trust you guys."

"They’ll settle," Aya said softly. "You don’t need to quiet them. Just listen when they need you."

Echo leaned back and looked at the sky.

"I think I want to fight for this."

Aurora grinned. "Good. You’ll fit right in."

---

Back underground, Elias stood alone in the lab room with Mira.

She had the synthetic Host’s cracked remains on the table, its thread still faintly glowing. A last message ticked faintly in its chest plate.

One more line of Cassian’s words, hidden under encryption only Elias could see:

> "The first one still dreams of you, Elias. When she wakes, will you still be the same?"

Elias clenched his jaw.

So that was Cassian’s next play.

Not a weapon.

Not a threat.

But a memory Elias had buried long ago.

A girl.

A bond.

One that had never been meant to activate... but had.

And it had destroyed half a city.

Mira looked over. "You knew who he meant?"

Elias didn’t answer.

He just whispered:

"She was my first failure."

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