Baby System: I'm the Beast World's Only Hope!-Chapter 358: Episode 356: The Architect’s Game

A/N: Welcome to Season 3! We are about to go down that path we don’t wish to go down, it’s about to get messy, absolutely sweet, and absolutely life changing, ready your pants, you might need to hold it at some point.

***

"Let me introduce myself."

Before Roxy could even process all the things that were happening to her. A thick, freezing black mist slithered across the polished floorboards with the speed of a striking viper.

Roxy gasped, trying to scramble backward, but she was entirely too slow.

The black mist violently coiled around her throat. It wasn’t tight enough to crush her windpipe, but it possessed the immovable, iron-clad density of solid chains. It ripped away every single ounce of her strength.

With a sharp, terrifying yank, the mist pulled her forward. Roxy’s feet completely left the marble floor. She flew through the air, entirely unable to control her own limbs, and crashed heavily against the architect’s thighs.

She landed in a completely compromised, deeply humiliating position across his lap. The black mist immediately dissolved into the fabric of his opulent purple robes, leaving her entirely unanchored but paralyzed by the sheer proximity of the entity.

Roxy’s breath hitched in her chest. Her face was mere inches from his. She was forced to look directly into those luminous, terrifyingly cold red eyes. There was no warmth in them, no spark of humanity, only the endless, calculating abyss of a predator.

His flawless, unearthly lips curled back into a slow, devastatingly arrogant smirk.

"I am called Abaddon, the demon king of the demonic realm," the man whispered, his breath smelling faintly of vanilla which was odd for an entity of his caliber. "But sweetie, you can call me Donnie."

The terror that had been freezing her veins instantly disappeared and was replaced with rage. She had just watched her husband dissolve into nothingness. She had absolutely no patience left for a gamified demon playing with her life.

Roxy sneered, her brilliant green eyes flashing with a fierce, uncompromising defiance. She scoffed directly into his flawless face.

"I have been looking for you, do you know that?" Roxy asked softly, her voice a blade that completely betrayed the trembling of her exhausted body.

Abaddon’s eyes widened by a fraction of a millimeter. The arrogant smirk on his lips faltered slightly, replaced by a flicker of genuine, calculating amusement.

He raised a single, pale finger and flicked his wrist. The invisible, crushing pressure holding Roxy’s spine rigid immediately loosened just a fraction, releasing her enough so she could breathe freely.

"Oh?" Abaddon murmured, tilting his head. His stark white hair cascaded over his shoulder like liquid silk. "And what, exactly, were you looking for me for, little one?"

Roxy planted her hands firmly against his chest, completely ignoring the luxurious gold threads of his robes, and pushed herself up just enough to level a furious glare at him.

"To ask why you chose me?" Roxy demanded, her voice cracking with the sheer, agonizing weight of her recent trauma. "Why this book? And why does Ren have to die?! If you started something, you should finish it, and do it the right way! You are a demon, aren’t you?! Why did you give me a family just to rip the father of my child away?!"

Abaddon stared at her, utterly unfazed by her tears or her fury. He let out a dark, velvety chuckle that vibrated through his chest beneath her palms.

"What’s the fun in that?" Abaddon replied smoothly, entirely dismissing her emotions as if it were a minor plot hole in a cheap novel.

He leaned back against the purple crystal of his throne, his red eyes completely devoid of empathy. "Well, at some point, let’s say I was having a spectacular amount of fun watching you do all those missions. I watched you domesticate the terrifying males of the beastworld. I watched you build a Manor, cure diseases, and squabble with Alphas. It was wildly entertaining television for an entity like me."

His gaze darkened, dropping to her lips before snapping back to her eyes. "But then, it started becoming boring. You became too comfortable. Too domestic. When I saw the sheer, unyielding fire in your soul... when I saw how you defied the absolute limits of my programming... I realized that you were someone who should be by my side, not playing house with a pack of oversized animals."

Abaddon slowly raised his hand. His impossibly pale fingers reached out, trailing gently down the curve of her jawline, moving to caress her cheek with a sickening, possessive reverence.

Roxy violently recoiled in disgust. She jerked her face away from his touch, her stomach heaving with absolute revulsion.

Abaddon paused, his hand hovering in the air. He let out a harsh, condescending scoff, dropping his hand back to his armrest.

"As for your other questions," Abaddon continued, his tone turning clinical and cold. "I didn’t choose you. The old men in the heavenly realm did. They handle the transmigration bureaucracy and soul displacement. I was merely the one who chose the book you were dropped into. The Beastworld was my selected sandbox."

He leaned forward, his eyes narrowing into lethal, unforgiving slits. "And for that slimy fox of yours... I didn’t kill him."

Roxy’s breath caught. She stared at him, her chest heaving.

"His fate was entirely sealed since the very first day you met him," Abaddon stated, delivering the absolute, devastating truth with surgical precision. "The Kitsune bloodline in this narrative was written to be a tragic, dying race. His core was always going to fail. You didn’t cause his death, Roxy. If anything, your presence, and your stubborn refusal to let him go... you just lengthened his life. You gave a dead man a few extra years and a legacy. You should be thanking me."

The words hit Roxy like a physical execution.

You just lengthened his life. The tragedy of Ren’s existence crashed down on her. He had known. He had always known he was living on borrowed time, and yet he had spent every single second of it fiercely, devotedly loving her.

A hot, agonizing tear slipped over her dark lashes, tracing a slow, devastating path down her dirt-streaked cheek. The fight completely drained out of her. She was about to fully break down, ready to sob uncontrollably right there on the throne of her tormentor.

But suddenly, Abaddon leaned forward. Before Roxy could even register his proximity, his face was pressed against hers. He opened his mouth, his tongue darting out to slowly, deliberately lick the salty tear directly off her cheek.

Roxy froze in horror.

Abaddon pulled back, his eyes completely blown wide with a dark, twisted, and entirely depraved hunger. 𝗳𝗿𝐞𝕖𝘄𝗲𝕓𝗻𝚘𝚟𝕖𝐥.𝚌𝕠𝕞

"Stop crying," Abaddon whispered, his voice dropping into a dark, guttural octave that made the marble floor beneath them vibrate. "Because watching you break like this turns me on. And trust me, sweetie... a human cannot handle a devil’s appetite."

A violent, involuntary shiver of pure fright violently racked Roxy’s spine. The warning was absolute. Survival instincts, honed by months of navigating the brutal Beastworld, instantly took over.

Roxy violently swallowed her tears. She forced her racing heart to steady. If she wanted to get back to her newborn child, to Zarek, to Kaelen, to Drax, and the rest of her family, she had to play his game. She decided to be docile, to submit just enough to figure out exactly what the devil wanted.

She forced her rigid muscles to relax. Even though her skin practically crawled with screaming warnings, she stopped fighting his proximity. She let her hands drop from his chest, allowing him to pull her closer.

Abaddon’s eyes gleamed in dark triumph. He immediately cradled her in his arms, pulling her back against his chest as if she were a prized, obedient pet.

Roxy stared blankly at the vaulted ceiling, enduring the suffocating chill of his embrace.

"So," Roxy asked, her voice deliberately soft, carefully masking the absolute hatred burning in her soul. "What do you want from me now, Abaddon?"

Abaddon hummed a low, vibrating note of consideration. He tapped his pale fingers thoughtfully against the armrest of the purple crystal throne, acting as if he were pondering a deeply complex puzzle.

"Well," Abaddon mused casually, looking down at her. "Since I am entirely bored of this current narrative arc... I think I would just send you back."

Roxy’s heart gave a violent, catastrophic start.

The blood completely drained from her face. Send you back. The words echoed in her mind as if a bomb had just dropped in her mind. Back to her original world. Back to a life without magic, without the Iron-Wood, without the chaotic, beautiful family she had built with her own blood, sweat, and tears.

Roxy scrambled wildly off his lap. She threw herself onto the cold marble floor, putting as much distance between them as possible, her green eyes wide with panic.

"No!" Roxy gasped, holding her hands up defensively. "You can’t do that! Please, you can’t!"

Abaddon cocked his head, looking entirely mildly amused by her sudden outburst.

"Please, Abaddon!" Roxy begged, her voice cracking with absolute desperation. She didn’t care about her pride anymore, she never even did. "I couldn’t leave without my mates! I can’t leave my children! Zarek, Kaelen, Torian... my baby just lost his father, I cannot leave him! You can’t separate me from my family!"

Abaddon let out a heavy, incredibly exasperated sigh. He rolled his eyes, waving his hand dismissively through the air as if swatting away a mildly annoying insect.

"Oh, calm down," Abaddon scoffed, his tone dripping with utter, condescending detachment. "Why are you getting so incredibly emotional over lines of code? They aren’t real, sweetie. They are just characters in a book."

Roxy’s fists clenched so tightly her fingernails bit violently into her palms, drawing blood. The sheer, cosmic invalidation of her entire existence, the dismissal of Ren’s ultimate sacrifice, and the erasure of her children’s souls ignited an explosive, uncontrollable inferno within her.

The audacity of him.

She leaped to her feet, her brilliant green eyes blazing with the unholy, terrifying wrath of a mother and a Queen.

"THEY ARE NOT JUST CHARACTERS!"