Demonic Dragon: Harem System-Chapter 423: Come on, tell me how to use this.

"There's nothing here," growled Strax, kneeling over one of the broken murals, away from the central ruins. His gaze roamed over the carvings covered in moss and time, but his real attention was on the trees behind him - where Artemis' presence burned like embers in the branches.

It had been almost an hour since he had left the fallen goddess bleeding on the ground, refusing to give her more than seconds of his attention. Now, there, among the ashes and echoes of what had once been a spiritual sanctuary, he wondered:

How had a goddess of the hunt come to this?

Artemis, once an indomitable force of nature and war, now lurked like a nameless specter, watching him with the eyes of a wounded wolf.

"If you're going to keep staring at me with this hunger for revenge, attack me," he snarled, without turning his face away. "I'll kill you in a second, bring you back as a demon, and then you'll tell me everything you know about this fucking sword."

The anger in his voice wasn't just about her - it was about his growing frustration at the mystery surrounding that damned weapon. Ouroboros and Tiamat were in another section of the ruins, reading ancient inscriptions with attentive eyes. He, however, was only there to tease the fallen goddess.

Behind him, the leaves shook. In silence, Artemis leapt from the tree and landed lightly on the blackened ground. There was no murderous intent. Just... something closer to the truth.

"How did you get that sword?" she asked, her voice firm but not arrogant.

Strax didn't bother to turn around. "It doesn't matter."

His eyes ran over a broken mural. In it, spirits danced among golden trees, free, peaceful.

"That place was... alive." He murmured. "Happy."

"Yes, it was," Artemis replied, his voice steeped in ancient memories. "Until Zeus showed up."

Strax stopped breathing for a second. Finally, she began to speak.

"His lust for power knew no bounds. One day, he tried to invade the Spirit King's Domain. A war broke out. And we, the gods of Olympus, were crushed. By a single man." She clenched her fists. "One damn man."

Strax turned around slowly, his expression fraught with tension. "Who was he?"

"We don't know his name. Only that he was... a Demon Dragon."

Strax paled.

His body instinctively began to transform. His muscles expanded, black scales appeared under his skin, wings blossomed on his back and his eyes became red slits. Its aura changed, becoming dense, infernal.

"Like this?" he asked, his voice reverberating in two tones - one human, the other ancestral.

Artemis staggered backwards. His eyes widened, his breathing became irregular.

"You..." she whispered.

"My mother... was a Demon Dragon," Strax replied, his aura beginning to recede. "At least, that's what Scarlet believes."

The name meant nothing to Artemis, but she didn't need to know who Scarlet was. Her gaze was on something deeper - on his soul.

"No... you're not like him," she replied at last, studying him with the remnants of her Divine Sense. "He... he was the end. Hair like hellfire. A body that seemed forged for war. He didn't belong in this world. He was a god from another plane, something that... none of us could touch."

Strax gritted his teeth. "Then I'm not related to him," he said. 'Looking for answers like that because of this physique sometimes annoys me. free𝑤ebnovel.com

"No," confirmed Artemis, her deep voice laden with a strange reverence. "But..."

She took a step forward, breaking the safe distance she had maintained until then. Her eyes - once torn by anger - now shone with something different. A contained fear. An inevitable recognition.

"It makes sense now..." she murmured. "Why Artorias gave you the sword."

Strax narrowed his eyes, his body still half-transformed, his aura oscillating between control and fury. "What do you mean?"

Artemis didn't hesitate: "That sword carries a power capable of destroying entire kingdoms. Tearing apart the earth, shattering the sky... it's an anomaly forged with the blood of spirits and the sacrifice of deities. Do you really think anyone could wield it without being consumed?"

Strax replied coolly: "Artorias held it."

"Yes. But Artorias wasn't just a man." She stared at him. "He had a pact with the Spirit King himself. He appointed him Protector of the Abode... guardian of the border between worlds."

The silence that followed was dense, as if the wind between the ruins had frozen.

Strax felt a strange weight descend on his shoulders.

Protector of the Abode of Spirits...

He thought for a moment of Evelyn - the daughter of the Queen of the Elves - and the reality hit him with the force of silent thunder.

She.

She was the current Protector.

Everything began to fall into place - with uncomfortable precision. The sword, Evelyn, Artorias' death, the collapse of the Abode of Spirits... and now him.

Like ancient pieces in a game much older than he had imagined, each element was being pulled back onto the board by invisible hands. It was as if destiny itself, dormant for millennia, was awakening only to reunite the fragments of a story that never ended.

Her ancestor... had been a Protector of the Abode of the Spirits.

And now, Evelyn - the elf who had crossed his path almost by chance - was the current Protector.

A girl marked by an incurable spiritual illness. An affliction that, according to everyone, could not be saved... except by him. By someone like him.

And then came the truth: his lineage, his power, his connection to the sword. Everything indicated that it was no coincidence.

Artorias - the man who had faced gods, betrayed Olympus and carried the burden of the sword before him - had paved a path. A path that led straight back to where he started.

A cycle. A cycle that had begun a thousand years ago... and was now reaching its final lap.

Strax clenched his fists tightly, his veins pulsing furiously under his skin. His eyes were burning.

"Fucking Patriarch," he snarled between his teeth.

There was venom in his voice.

He hated being a piece on someone else's board. He hated even more knowing that his ancestor - the one who had given him the sword and the power - had perhaps done so only to fulfill a greater plan. A prophesied cycle. A trap written in blood and fate.

Strax didn't accept being shaped by anyone. Not by time. Not even by his own blood.

"He asked me to free the Spirit Kingdom." Strax's voice cut through the silence like a blade. Low, but charged with barely contained anger. "Then tell me how."

Artemis hesitated, observing the dark gleam in his eyes. She didn't need divine powers to realize - he was on the verge of exploding. Angry. Frustrated. Hurt to know that his path had been paved long before his own footsteps.

She understood. In his place, he might have been even worse off.

"Promise you won't hurt me," she said firmly, keeping her tone calm but unyielding. "I'm not going to risk handing over a secret like that to someone who could kill me the next second. Not while you carry such hostility in your eyes."

Strax took a step forward. The aura around him shimmered like heat on red-hot metal. "If I wanted to kill you, I would have done it by now."

"Exactly," Artemis retorted. "But that doesn't mean you won't want to after you've heard what I have to say."

There was a moment of silence between the two of them. The tension was thick, almost palpable. A duel not of weapons, but of wills.

Strax took a deep breath, trying to contain the anger that boiled up inside him - not against her, but against the damned cycle he had been thrown into.

"Speak. I'm not going to kill you. Yet."

Artemis nodded slowly. "Then listen carefully... because there's no going back once you know."

...

"Looks like time hasn't been at all kind to us." Scarlet's voice cut through the air like a cold blade as she watched from the palace's highest balcony. Her crimson eyes passed over the rows of elves crowded in front of the royal gates - a living tide of anger, fear and blood.

The square was taken over. Thousands of elves, armed and exalted, waved black flags marked with the symbol of the old rebel clan. But it wasn't the screams that made Lyana's stomach turn - it was the hostages.

Hundreds of elves were tied up, kneeling in the sun, beaten, bleeding. Women, old people, even children... citizens who had dared to remain loyal to the Queen. They were being used as living shields.

"Arm yourselves," ordered Lyana, tense, throwing short swords on the table. She took one for herself, twirling it between her fingers like someone who knew what was coming. "They haven't come to negotiate. They're going to invade this place."

Scarlet let out a dry, almost mocking laugh as she looked at the blade thrown in her direction.

"That? I don't use crap."

She bit her finger, the blood flowing like a vivid scarlet thread. In an instant, it molded itself in the air into a curved blade, elegant and pulsing with power. A sword made of her own ancestral blood.

"I am the weapon," she murmured with a smile.

Outside, the shouting increased. An elf, with tarnished armor and eyes bulging with fanaticism, stepped forward in front of the crowd and shouted:

"HAND OVER THE FALLEN QUEEN!"

"GET OUT OF THE PALACE, OR WE'LL KILL EVERYONE!"

"NO ONE HERE WILL LEAVE ALIVE!"

The chaos was palpable. Every shout was followed by a groan, the sound of kicks and slaps on the hostages, a theater of cruelty to put pressure on the walls.

"I'm going outside." Evelyn's voice came low but clear - a determined breath in the midst of the storm.

Scarlet turned to her with an arched eyebrow. "Don't be stupid. Going out there now is a walk to the slaughter. And you're not disposable."

"They're suffering because of me," Evelyn replied, her eyes watery but firm. "They believed in me. In my mother. In everything we've built. If I hide while they die for it, then... I deserve to fall."

"Ah... how dumb this generation is!" Scarlet said, placing her hand on her stomach. "Please, just shut up and stay inside, okay?" Scarlet said before looking outside and an arrow hitting her head.

"Oh, you almost killed me" she said with the arrow stuck in her forehead, "Too bad I'm immortal" she said and pulled the arrow out recovering, "Nothing wrong" she said smiling.

"To be honest, you'd better stay here, I'm going to decimate you all-"

She didn't even have time to finish...

BOOOOOMMMMM!!!!

A bolt of white lightning rose into the night sky, making the rebels' torches disappear completely... Just one white bolt powerful enough to make Scarlet shiver...

"Holy shit..." She muttered.