SSS Ranked Awakening: All My Skills Are at Level 100 Chapter 530: The Price of a Reward—2

Xyra moved.

There was no transition. No blur of motion. No warning that Leon could detect. One moment she was seated on the sofa, composed and still. The next, she was in front of him, less than a foot away, bending slightly at the waist.

His spatial awareness, his mana sense, his every passive detection ability—they all failed to register her movement. It was as if she had simply ceased to exist in one position and materialized in another, skipping over every intermediate point.

She was bending down, her face inches away from his limp cock, her silver eyes studying it with an expression of genuine confusion.

"Why is it like that?" she asked, her voice carrying the same matter-of-matter tone she used for discussing world fragment physics. "It used to be so much bigger when I saw it before."

The word echoed in Leon’s mind.

The realization hit him like a physical blow, and the pieces clicked into place with the sickening certainty of a puzzle finally completed.

His guess had been correct. The thought he had dismissed as wild paranoia, as an overactive imagination, had been exact and precise. She had watched them. Through her spell. Through her impossible reach.

He didn’t keep the realization inside. He confronted her directly—that was his nature. He didn’t dance around things or let them fester in shadow.

"When have you seen it before?"

Xyra’s head tilted slightly, her gaze still fixed on his limp cock, as if she was trying to solve a puzzle that didn’t quite fit together.

She paused for only a fraction of a second at his question—a pause so brief that most beings wouldn’t have noticed it at all. But then she answered, and her voice carried no shame, no hesitation.

She knew spying was wrong, but only if you were caught. And this slip wasn’t really a slip—she had already decided that they would be together for a long while. Hiding this from him would have been impractical, exhausting. It wasn’t her style.

She told him plainly. She had seen this enter both that purple-haired girl and the red-skinned girl. But it had been much bigger then.

Leon stared at her, baffled.

He opened his mouth to explain why it wasn’t hard, to tell her that this was enough, that he couldn’t do this anymore, that he couldn’t become the boy toy of a degenerate he had never truly recognized—

But the puzzle had already finished assembling itself in Xyra’s mind.

As a spirit race, she hadn’t been accustomed to much of human culture. But she knew things—knowledge buried in her mind, waiting to be connected. And now, she understood.

She understood why it wasn’t hard.

And she hadn’t provided enough of it.

Her expression shifted. The confusion vanished, replaced by something colder, something that made the temperature of the room drop by several degrees.

"Leon."

Her voice was different now. Sharper. Edged with something that sounded like wounded pride.

"Why is it not hard?"

She straightened, her silver eyes locking onto his with an intensity that made him want to step back.

He tried.

Nothing happened.

His body refused to obey. Every muscle locked in place, frozen as if the air itself had turned to stone around him. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t twitch. He could only think, and see, and wait.

"Do you think I am not good-looking enough?"

Her eyes were cold now. Gleaming with an emotion he couldn’t quite identify—not anger, exactly. Something more personal. Something that touched the core of who she was.

The curse echoed through Leon’s mind as the full weight of the situation crashed down on him.

Was she not beautiful enough? Of course she was. From the moment Leon had laid eyes on her, he had known she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen in both of his lives. The silver hair, the sharp features, the way she carried herself with ancient grace—she was stunning.

But when she had teleported him here, his mind hadn’t been on her beauty. He had been focused on the situation, trying to anticipate what she might ask for as a reward. Hoping it wouldn’t cost him too much. He had just saved enough to buy that thing he wanted from the Cosmic Shop, the thing he had been working toward for so long.

, he realized.

And that wasn’t all. The way she acted, the way the atmosphere had shifted, what he had learned about her—all of that had made it hard for him to think about beauty or lust or anything else. He just wanted to get this over with, to escape this red room and return to the familiar comfort of his tower.

But his reaction—or lack of reaction—had hurt her. It had wounded the pride of a being whose beauty had never been questioned because no one had ever lived long enough to ask.

He cursed his luck again. The battle outside had gone so smoothly, without a single significant hiccup. He had felt lucky, had thought that maybe, just maybe, things were finally going his way.

But that luck had been borrowed. Because waiting for him, hidden behind the quiet professionalism and the ancient composure, was something far more dangerous and unpredictable than any external enemy.

, he thought grimly.

The contract protected him from harm. But Xyra was an ancient being, and spirit of his artifact. There were things she could do that skirted the edges of that protection, things he couldn’t even imagine because he lacked the framework to conceive them.

, he told himself.

He looked at her—at the cold gleam in her silver eyes, at the way her posture had shifted from composed to menacing, at the tension in her jaw that spoke of wounded pride.

The thought settled into him with grim resignation. He had already stripped. He had already given her what she asked for. But now it wasn’t about fulfilling a request. It was about managing a landmine.

He forced his voice to stay calm, to carry none of the panic he felt.

"Xyra. Listen to me."

She tilted her head, waiting. The frost in her gaze didn’t thaw, but she didn’t interrupt.

"You are beautiful. From the moment I met you, I knew you were the most beautiful being I have ever encountered. In this life or my previous one."

A flicker. Something in her eyes shifted, almost imperceptibly.

"The reason I’m not hard has nothing to do with your appearance. It’s the situation. It’s unexpected. I was caught off guard. My mind is still processing."

He paused, choosing his next words with care.

"I came into this room expecting a reward request. Something symbolic. Something I could provide through effort or resources. I didn’t expect this. My body hasn’t caught up to what my mind is still trying to understand."

Xyra’s gaze softened. A fraction. A barely perceptible change.

"You think I’m beautiful?"

Her voice had lost some of its edge. Still cold, but with a crack in the ice.

"Objectively," Leon said. "Without question. The most beautiful woman I have ever seen."

She held his gaze for a long moment. Then, slowly, the tension in the room began to ease. The cold pressure that had immobilized him receded, and he felt control return to his limbs.

She took a step back. Then another. She sat on the edge of the bed, her hands folded in her lap, and looked at him with an expression he couldn’t quite name.

"Then prove it."

Leon blinked. "Prove it?"

She nodded, her silver hair swaying with the motion.

"Make it hard. Show me that you mean what you say."