Absolute Depravity: Reincarnated with a lustful System-Chapter 298 - Stitching The Remains
"Finally, it's time for you to wake up," surrounded by Serena's followers, Haruki gently ran his gloved hands over her smooth skin. Resting a thumb over her lips, he could feel her body breathe, but there being no soul to fuel conscious action, she'd been like a sleeping doll cased in a shrine.
"Master, all preparations have been made, can we begin?" Standing beside Haruki, an acolyte of Serena asked.
"Yeah…" Without looking away Haruki reached into a dungeon pocket and took out the mason jar holding Serena's soul. Shifting his gaze to the follower by him, he quickly handed her the soul and took a step away from the spotlight. "Fay has worked on the soul already, you just need to take it out and let it dissolve into her forehead."
Visibly a bit shaken, the girl didn't seem all that confident in attempting the procedure despite the simple instructions. Turning her head to the others, she noticed them flinch backward so they wouldn't have to take her place.
"Uh…Can you not do it?" Looking back at Haruki, she pressed her lips into an awkward smile. "What if I mess it up? Everyone will blame me."
"I…" Closing his eyes for a moment, Haruki was reminded of the poison coursing through his body. Touching the soul directly even if it was through a pair of globes was not in the list of options. "Just do it, I command you."
Forced into it by a command, the girl turned to Serena with jittery eyes. Feeling her heart pumping with adrenaline, she drew long deep breaths to calm herself while reaching into the mason jar.
"O-okay, but if anything goes wrong, it's not my fault!" Pinching the marbled soul between her fingers, she closed her eyes shut. Gritting her teeth to power through the spiking tension, she brought the soul out of the container and moved it over Serena's body. "Here I…go!"
Opening her eyes back up, she didn't let her mind think too much and just pressed the soul onto the priestess's forehead. Instantly shattering in two, the soul marble emitted a surge of blinding light, almost blinding the heightened senses of the demons present in the room. However, what baffled them even more wasn't the shattered soul itself, but a bright crossed mark on Serena's forehead through which a child-like dark hand clasped the shattered pieces and pulled them into the body.
"Ehehehe!" As the light began to dissipate, the giggles of a young deviant could be heard echoing throughout the shrine's room.
"Wh-what was that?! And did it work?!" The girl turned to Haruki, even more flustered than before.
'Just like when I signed the contract, a dark presence controls covenants and such in this world.' Reminded of the time he'd seen something similar after signing the new contract with Asmodia, Haruki grew quite curious about the nature of the being.
'For now, it's not an enemy is all we need to know.' Asmodia told him through their conjoined thoughts. And although she herself had no clue what the creature was, admitting to it when she once wrote the fate of the world, wasn't something she could do. 'If we have luck, that creature is nothing like the Valkyries.'
'That we can agree on.' Haruki replied, seeming lost in his own thoughts to the others.
"Please say something!" The female follower screamed, bringing Haruki back to the conscious world.
"W-where? Where is this?" Before he could say anything to her, however, the longed voice of Serena broke into the shrine room.
Hearing their master talk again, a ripple of joyous gasps left the acolyte's mouths. Moving closer to the elevated platform over which Serena was laying, they stared at her with a smile and even an ecstatic laugh here and there.
"This took too long," getting closer to Serena once again, Haruki looked her in the eyes with a subtle hint of shame. "I'm sorry."
For a spell of time, Serena glared at Haruki with her eyes squinted nearly shut. With the hood from his cloak looming over him, and the mature expression on his face, she couldn't recognize him at first glance.
"Haruki?" As the realization set in, however, her eyes bright up like a pair of stars. Reaching up with her arms, she tried to hug him the very next instant, but administering caution, Haruki took a step away from her. "What…Why did you?"
"You shouldn't move recklessly, lay down and rest for a bit before getting up," offering a false reason, Haruki began stepping further away from her. Turning to the acolytes, he gestured with them to take care of her before turning around to leave. "I'll see you once you feel better, and have had some food in your system after so long."
Watching Haruki trying to leave, Serena tried to get off the bed, but with her body no longer used to such a sudden moment, her heartbeat jumped aggressively; making her clutch tight against her chest. Breathing heavily as the acolytes rushed closer in fear of something happening to her, Serena kept her eyes fixed on Haruki until he left through the shrine door.
'What has happened since I was last conscious?!' She thought, and before her mind could conjure another thought, she began throwing up.
"Your Highness lay down!"
"Eekk! Don't move so much!"
"Let me get a towel!"
Thankfully for her, the acolytes were more than competent to take care of her. In the meantime, Haruki still had a lot to do, one of which happened to be confronting the devil general Nabe, and figuring out her true intentions for coming to find Haruki's companions. 𝙗𝒆𝒅𝙣𝙤𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝒐𝙢
"Greta, was it?" Coming out of the shrine, he was greeted by Moriyana's general.
"Yes, sir!" Great replied, bowing lightly to Haruki.
"Any progress with her?" He asked, trying to get all the information he could before meeting up with her again.
Lifting her head back up, Greta looked up at Haruki and nodded.
"The poison you've provided has worked wonders, she'd been utterly crippled and brainwashed to answer questions," a bit surprised by her efficiency, Haruki couldn't help but smile.
"Ahaha, no wonder Moriyana trusted you," placing his gloved hand on her shoulder, he let out yet another chuckle. "Now go and bring the monster queens to my chambers, I need them to start experimenting on Dominion, and also it's about time I turned them into demons before they age too much."
Walking past her after giving her the orders, Haruki made his way to his log cabin chamber in the replica of the minotaur dungeon. On his way there, even amongst his remaining fellow demons, he received suspect glances as they knew something about him was off from how he used to be, but couldn't figure out what it was actually.
"Do your jobs!" Not being able to hold his rage any longer, Haruki scared them straight with a scream that echoed throughout the dungeon.
'You can't hide the truth for long, you know? That poison in you is making you bitter, and I'm just talking about the way your blood might taste.' Unlike the rest, Haruki couldn't really do anything about Asmodia's whispers in his head, even though he really wanted her to shut up.
"Clone: Asmodia Archangelieus Remure," creating a clone of her, Haruki forced her consciousness into it so he could get away from her for a while. "Go throw your advice on down on some demons you can manipulate!"
In absolute shock from being forced into another body, Asmodia watched as Haruki didn't even look back at her and kept walking. Engaged, she frowned deeply and turned to a floating gust of mist before appearing in front of Haruki.
"You dare!" To her shock, he didn't pay her mind and passed right through the clone.
ραΠdαsΝοvel.cοm "Don't waste my time, and be useful for once," Haruki mumbled as he continued on walking.
Grinding her teeth in rage, Asmodia looked around to find the unworthy gaze of countless demons and monsters looking right at her. Humiliated in the middle of a street with ongoing construction, she could feel herself fuming from the ears.
"Don't you maggots dare look at me with your filthy eyes!" With just a stomp of her feet, she made the entire street quake. And as if that wasn't enough to strike fear in the eyes of the onlookers, she transmuted her body to grow sharp parallel teeth that replaced her spine.
Crouching downwards a little, she opened her body from the back and revealed inside the mouth a portal mirror their deepest terrors.
"How dare you maggots lay your eyes on me?!" Taking out her rage for Haruki on the bystanders, she tortured them with their most horrid nightmares until their minds and body submitted to the stress.
Filling the streets with screams, Asmodia let her frustration out despite knowing that she'd have to be the one to repair their bodies and broken minds once it was all over.
'Dammit, I miss her, she used to deal with people for me!' Though she was torturing others, the one being tortured the most, was Asmodia herself.
