Extra's Life: MILFs Won't Leave the Incubus Alone Chapter 610 605: The Pulse Spreads

They rode out at first light, the hills falling away behind them as fast as the horses could manage without breaking.

The deep pulse stayed with them the whole way—quieter on the surface now, but steady, like a second heartbeat thumping somewhere under the dirt. By midday the land itself started showing the damage.

Sinkholes had opened overnight in three spots along their path. One still blew cold air and that same metallic musk they had smelled in the vault. Another had half-swallowed an old stone marker, cracking it open so the angular pre-empire script underneath caught the light.

Selene swung down and crouched by the broken stone. She traced the newly exposed lines with one gloved finger. "It's not just that one vault. The whole network felt the crystal leave its pedestal. Other locks are going soft."

Aiden stayed in the saddle, eyes on the horizon. "Which means other things that were sealed are waking up. And anything hunting the name now has a louder trail to follow. Great. Just what we needed—more company."

"You're welcome," she said without looking up. "I live to complicate your day."

They found the next site by pure accident late in the afternoon. A wide depression in the limestone had caved in, exposing a broad stone stair that had no business sitting open under open sky. The steps led down into a much larger complex—wider corridors, higher ceilings, the clear marks of a place built for more than one secondary lock.

Cold air rose from the stair, thicker this time, carrying a heavier animal stink that made the horses stamp and snort.

Selene wrinkled her nose. "New hole in the ground. Still smelling like regret and old blood. We're going in, aren't we?"

"We need to know how far this spreads," Aiden said. He flexed his hands. The incubus power answered more readily than it had the day before—cleaner, denser, as if the vitality he had taken from the vault beasts had settled in for good.

"And if there's anything else down there that belongs with the name and the anchor, we take it before someone else does. Besides, I'm still insulted by the last set of stone men. Feels only fair to keep the streak going."

"Ah, so this is about your pride." She checked the straps on her blade. "I should have known."

"Partly. The rest is pure curiosity mixed with a healthy dose of 'I'd rather not get eaten in my sleep.'"

They picketed the horses well back from the depression, checked weapons one last time, and started down.

The first level opened into a broad processional hall lined with empty alcoves. Bones and broken scale littered the floor like someone had thrown a very messy party and never cleaned up.

Halfway along, the walls broke into side chambers that had once been sealed. Most were empty. One was not.

A pack of the smaller wrong-jointed beasts had already forced their way out of a collapsed side tunnel. Nine of them this time, leaner and hungrier than the ones in the vault. Their joints clicked as they turned toward the newcomers.

Aiden did not wait for them to close the distance. He met the rush head-on, incubus power rising in a controlled surge rather than a desperate flood.

When he seized the first beast and drank, the vitality came easier, denser. The feedback hit harder; he felt his own limits stretch like wet leather.

The second and third fell almost as quickly. He moved with less wasted motion now, the draining force answering faster and with more precision than it had underground before.

Selene fought at his side with the same cold efficiency, blade flashing in tight arcs, but she also watched him between cuts. When the last beast dropped, withered or broken, she wiped her blade on a scrap of scale and said, "You're changing. The more you take, the less it costs you."

"Feels like the power is learning the shape of these things," Aiden said. He turned his hands over. No tremor. No leftover ache. "Or I'm learning the shape of it. Either way, I can go further before it burns me out. Handy, right?"

"Terrifying," she corrected. "But also handy. Try not to start glowing or something. I'd never hear the end of it."

They pushed deeper.

The second level of the complex was built on a different scale. Corridors wide enough for wagons. Chambers with vaulted ceilings and the remains of heavy binding arrays cut straight into the floor. Most of the arrays were dead. A few still flickered weakly when Aiden's power passed near them, like dying fireflies.

In the largest chamber they found what the pulse had fully woken.

It was not a pack animal and not a single guardian. It was a breeding cluster—two of the large plated beasts and a dozen of the smaller ones, all restless, all feeding on the slow leak from a cracked central seal. The moment Aiden and Selene stepped inside, every head turned.

There was no quiet approach. The chamber erupted.

Aiden went straight for the larger threats. The first plated beast met him with the same crushing force as the vault guardian, but this time he did not give ground. The incubus power rose in a thicker, more focused wave. When he locked his hands on its jaws and drank, the vitality came in a torrent.

Something inside his own nature shifted and settled—an expansion, as if a threshold he had not known was there had been crossed. The beast collapsed faster than the one in the vault, its light snuffed out in seconds.

The second plated creature was on him before the first had finished falling. He pivoted, caught a descending limb, and poured the newly denser draining force into it. Scales cracked. The limb withered. He drove the weakened animal into the wall and finished it with a sustained surge that left him breathing hard but still steady on his feet.

Selene held the smaller beasts off him with blade and the last dregs of the binding rod, moving in tight arcs that kept them from surrounding him.

When the final small one lunged, Aiden turned and took it out of the air with a single drained, open-handed strike. The body hit the floor already desiccated.

Silence fell, broken only by the drip of water and the settling of dust.

Selene stared at him, blade still raised. "That was different. You didn't just win. You dominated."

Aiden looked at his hands. The power under his skin felt deeper, more ordered, as if the repeated feeding had carved a clearer channel.

"Whatever rank or measure these old builders used for things like me… I think I just moved up one. The drain is cleaner. Stronger. Costs less. I could get used to this."

"Don't," she said. "You'll start expecting standing ovations."

They searched the chamber carefully. At the center of the cracked seal they found a small stone tablet still intact. Selene read the angular script slowly, lips moving as she worked through the old forms.

"It's a hierarchy. The original sealers ranked the kinds of power that could interact with the locks. Ordinary strength—nothing. Bound magic—limited.

'Devouring blood'—that's you—was listed as both the greatest threat to the seals and the only thing that could safely hold both name and anchor at the moment of speaking. They expected someone like you to come eventually."