Lewd System: Every Scream and Moan is EXP Chapter 414: The Woman Who Kept Refusing

An hour in, the battle was still moving, but anyone with eyes could see where it was going to end.

Loki’s side was coming apart, because the moment every faction on that field stopped fighting separately and started fighting together, the numbers stopped being a question.

The Order of the Silver Vanguard took the entire demon force on by itself. Those three generals were genuinely something to be afraid of, and it made no difference in the end, because nothing on that field was built to survive Rora’s temper and Albert’s sword arts arriving at the same time.

Once they were finished, Rora went to help the girls put down a monstrous demon, while Albert handled the headmaster of the dark academy on his own.

As for the dragon woman, she did exactly what her race was famous for and put fear into every person who saw her. Then she got surrounded by the academy’s top monsters, otherwise known as its professors.

The fourth faction, assigned to the northern front, had arrived to reinforce them long before that.

Jax, meanwhile, walked away from the fight between his girls and Zia without lifting his sword once, because there was nothing there for him to do.

They moved around each other so cleanly, and refused to break so completely, that no matter how monstrous Zia proved she was, she never got one moment to take control of that field.

And once Rora arrived, he left entirely. An exhausted Zia was going down soon, unless she had a trump card left worth playing.

So he went looking for the one holding every string, and found her sitting there watching her own army lose.

Loki glanced at him for a second before turning back to the field with a sigh. "Well. This is disappointing. It seems my mission is ending in a loss, and I truly do hate losing. Tch. How annoying."

Jax smiled faintly. "You don’t look like a woman who tried very hard to win."

"Don’t mock me." She didn’t look up. "I was doing everything I could to beat you, and why wouldn’t I be, when my own life was riding on it? You do know there was a condition attached to hunting you. Succeed, and the hunter receives the Divinity Elixir."

"An item worth more than anything you could name. It turns a celestial into a pure blood, and hands them immortality along with it. And to balance a prize that size, they had to attach the worst punishment they could think of."

"Every power and privilege the gods ever granted me, stripped away. Which in plain words means that if I lose here, I’m a mortal with no power, and no road left that leads home."

"Then why did you choose to lose?" Jax asked.

Loki’s brow furrowed. "What on earth are you talking about?"

"Stop playing games with me. I’m not some fool who can’t see what you’ve been building since the day this started." He didn’t raise his voice. "Winning was never the point. You came here to pull this world into one piece, and to put me under a microscope while you did it."

"Every single puppet you moved out there had a purpose in this, or should I say every enemy we thought was ours. The orcs. Athanor. Zia. That dragon woman is the only one I still can’t place."

His eyes stayed on her. "And me, I was nothing but a pawn who walked himself onto every square you wanted him standing on. So state your real purpose. Tell me what you want from me that was worth sacrificing yourself for."

Loki smiled faintly and rose to her feet. "I should have known the performance wouldn’t hold up in front of you. Fine. Let’s stop lying to each other and get to business."

"Yes, I meant to lose. And you’ve already worked out a few of my objectives, which I would genuinely love to hear you lay out sometime. But everything you just listed is half of it at most."

"There’s the matter of buying you enough time before the next celestial gets assigned to you, and..." She let that trail off. "And the important part. I’m here as a messenger."

"You see, while I was out wandering, I came across a woman crying her heart out. So I did what I do, and I went into her head to see what was in there." Her eyes came up to his. "And I found a piece of you sitting in it."

She lifted a finger to her left and a screen unfolded out of the air. On it sat Beatrix Steele, alone in a room, and the sadness on her face was something Jax had never once seen there in all the time he’d known her.

"That’s the woman," Loki said. "It’s an old recording, taken off one of the maids. She’s currently a prisoner in the Asuran Empire, held by Ravana himself."

"Though prisoner isn’t quite the word. Ravana has taken a liking to her. The poor thing’s luck is so spectacularly bad that his eyes landed on her the moment she arrived in this world, and from that second on the man started doing insane things."

"The Asuran king. A name people say quietly, built out of cruelty and bloodlust, and he got taken apart completely by the beauty of one woman." She tilted her head. "Or should I say your woman?"

"He’s given up on everything else now. His entire dream has narrowed down to marrying her, and this is a man with two living wives already."

"And whatever else he is, whatever monster or lunatic you want to call him, he’s also a man who respects women. It’s said he has never once raised a hand against one. There are stories of him bowing to them instead. Worshipping them, in a case or two."

"Beatrix is no exception. He respects her completely. He simply doesn’t respect what she wants." Loki’s voice stayed level. "So he doesn’t force her, and he doesn’t touch her. He waits for her approval, and every single day he does something new to earn it."

"And every single day she refuses him, and every single day it costs her more."

"She’s already tried to end it herself. To die here and wake up back in her own world." Loki paused. "Except her luck runs true all the way down to the bottom. The card she picked makes her invulnerable to any physical attack made by a champion, and she happens to be a champion herself."

"She don’t have magical skills. She can’t ask a single servant in that palace for help, and she can’t get near a relic that might do it for her, because Ravana has eyes on all of it."

"And she can’t simply refuse him and wait for the game to end and send her home either, because that man has already decided nobody is taking her anywhere. And he has more ways to make that true than you’d like to know about."

"He could take the wish, if he wins the Primordial Ascension, and turn her into a celestial. A citizen of this world, permanently. And that’s one road out of many, all of them ending with her locked in that palace for the rest of her life."

"Which is what’s breaking her."