Harem Startup : The Demon Billionaire is on Vacation-Chapter 401: A Unit of Life
Chapter 401 – A Unit of Life
For at least an hour, he worked.
Not worked in the usual sense—no pressed suit, no neatly combed hair, no controlled posture behind an obsidian desk that reeked of authority. No. He sat in the mansion’s living room, sunk into a velvet chair with his legs sprawled, topless, only his pants on, hair still a wreck from Mira’s claws. His wings twitched occasionally, the faint marks still glowing where her nails had shredded him. He didn’t look like a CFO. He didn’t even look like royalty.
He looked like sin after an all-nighter.
And yet, in front of him hovered a dozen massive hologram screens, charts spilling with jagged lines and infernal sigils, reports stacked in neat glowing columns. His claws tapped over them with precision, signing off, rewriting numbers, highlighting deficits. His red eyes burned, focused, sharper than any blade.
He was still doing what a CFO did. Managing Hell’s financial department—from a mansion, with bed hair and a coffee stain on his thigh.
[Your current appearance does not align with the presentation of a high-ranking executive. Note: still intimidating. Possibly more so.]
Lux smirked faintly. "Good. I like being intimidating when I look like trash. It’s a marketable skill."
[System Response: Of course, sir.]
The Seventh Circle’s trade deficits glared at him like a sore wound. He scrolled through the reports with a flick of his wrist, watching as numbers dipped into red, balance sheets bloated with unnecessary imports.
"Idiots," he muttered. "Trying to play market wars while I’m on vacation. Cute."
Then came the Third Circle’s war budget. Overspending. Again. Lux zoomed in, his jaw tightening as he read the breakdown: weapons contracts doubled, mercenary costs unregulated, three warlords siphoning funds like hungry ticks.
And there it was—the requests for soul credits.
Lux leaned back, exhaling slowly. Soul credits weren’t play money. They were minted from mortal souls, condensed into tangible currency by the Greed Vaults. Every credit carried a weight of existence, a unit of life. You didn’t just ask for more like you were ordering drinks. You proved the need. You earned it.
Otherwise, you were burning mortals alive for vanity.
He dragged his hand through his messy hair, sighing. "Of course, they’d try this now. Testing me. Testing whether the golden boy CFO still checks the ledgers while he’s in the mortal realm."
[Observation: Probability of deliberate sabotage: 73%. Probability of incompetence: 26%. Probability of coincidence: 1%.]
"Exactly," Lux muttered, reaching for his second cup of coffee. The mug was still warm, bitter steam rising as he sipped. "They think if they make a mess while I’m gone, Father will let it slide."
He pictured Zavros—Lord of Greed, his father. Still probably asleep in his palace, sprawled across golden sheets, tangled with Lux’s mother, the Lady of Lust. Zavros wouldn’t be awake yet. Or if he was, he sure as hell wasn’t reading financial reports.
Lux smirked bitterly. His father was nothing like him. Zavros stayed in the palace, visiting the office only when necessary. He had to split time between ruling, war councils, and his insatiable appetite for sex. Lux, on the other hand? He’d practically lived in the office for almost two centuries, chained to numbers, buried in reports, fielding midnight crises.
Private time, for Lux, meant slipping into the Vault. Sitting alone with a meal or a cup of coffee, staring at the artifacts and coins like they might talk back to him. That was his brand of greed. Quiet. Controlled. Focused.
Not Zavros.
Not Lust’s favorite plaything.
Lux clicked through the screens, his finger dragging over deficit reports, marking each one. He opened a fresh slate and began making notes. Specific. Targeted. The kind of notes that cut like daggers in boardrooms.
Auditors. He’d need to send auditors. Not just bean-counters, but hunters, wraiths, something that could do damage. People who could sniff out which warlord thought it was smart to poke holes in the treasury. Because that’s what this was—a test. A push to see how far they could bend him before he broke.
Lux smirked as he typed, the glow of the holograms painting his bare chest. "Bad idea. Really bad idea."
He made another note.
"Prove that even from afar, I own their ledgers and their throats."
He sipped his coffee again, lips curling into a grin. Even on vacation, he could destroy them remotely. He didn’t need to sit in Hell’s marble offices to show teeth. He was still Lux Vaelthorn.
Still CFO.
Still the son of Greed.
And anyone who forgot that was about to learn fast.
He finished another line of notes, signed a report, and leaned back, wings stretching against the couch. The living room was silent but for the flick of his claws over the glowing screens, the steady hum of numbers shifting under his control.
Lux exhaled, slow, sharp. Then his grin widened, eyes glinting as he raised his cup like a toast.
"Ah... please," he said softly, almost to himself, almost to the Warlords who would eventually read his wrath written in ledgers. "Don’t fuck around with me."
The system chimed once more, like a deadpan bow after a performance.
[Warning delivered. Probability of obedience: low. Probability of regret: absolute.]
Lux laughed under his breath, sipping his coffee again, savoring the bitter bite.
Yeah. Let them test him. Let them push. He’d remind them why numbers, like debts, always came back to collect.
And Lux Vaelthorn always collected.
He hummed, low in his chest, and pushed himself up from the velvet couch. The hologram screens still hovered around him, shifting slightly as if they followed his movements like obedient familiars. Lux rolled his shoulders, wings flexing once before folding neatly, and grabbed an apple from the bowl Lyra had left on the side table.
He tossed it into the air, caught it with a lazy snap of his fingers, and sank his teeth into it. Sweet. Crisp. The crunch echoed in the quiet living room, mixing with the faint hum of holographic charts.
And damn, he felt good.
