Demonic Pornstar System

Chapter 787: Last Arrivals

The cathedral let them out into open air for the first time in hours.

Flat staging plain between the dungeon’s mouth and the treeline, Association perimeter vehicles clustered at its far edge, the sky overcast with late-afternoon American light that had gone the color of old tin. Eclipse veterans held the middle ring. The Association worked the inner. Vespera’s forces sat somewhere past the trees.

Kaiden stood at the threshold of his domain with his women around him.

Aria along his right side, silver hair moving in the wind, her fingers laced loose through his. Luna one boot up on a broken boulder at his left, arms crossed, eyes tracking the treeline for motion. Bastet a half step behind him, veils lifting and settling against the gold of her ankles, tail sweeping slow against the breeze. Calypso off to the side with her axe’s handle propped on her shoulder and her grin on idle. Nyx and Scarlet on the Association-provided bench, legs crossed in opposite directions, the Flame Monarch already looking entirely at home alongside the Space Babe. Alice hovered above his head in her halo form, quiet for once.

Vespera had stayed inside, busy making her own preparations.

[Time Until Defense: 00:56:12]

Kaiden watched the treeline.

The convoy came over the rise a minute later.

Armored vans filling the mid-column, a dozen SUVs at the head, black-windowed and dust-streaked, the lead vehicle flying the Awakened Association’s field pennant. They pulled into the staging plain in sequence and braked in formation, tires biting gravel, engines cooling in unison.

The van doors opened first.

Taigi was out before the lead SUV had finished settling on its suspension. She hit the stone at a step-down jump, saber already moving to her hand, captain’s armor dusted with the gray grit of a dungeon she had been fighting in as recently as an hour ago. Her people poured out behind her in disciplined sequence, reassembling into formation as their boots hit the ground: shield wall in front, spearmen falling in behind, archers at the third rank, skirmishers peeling to the flanks, trappers bringing up the rear. Forty-six bronze-armored warriors moving from van to battle-line without breaking rhythm.

They had been recalled from a farming run. Weeks of grinding against whatever the other side had to throw at them, cut off mid-cycle by the rune on Bastet’s sash. The Association had rolled them onto transports the second they cleared the run and driven them here at speed.

Taigi closed the last thirty meters at a sprint and dropped to one knee on the stone the instant she reached her Lord.

”My Lord. Forgive us.”

Her voice was level. Her breath, slightly not.

”We were held up.”

Kaiden looked down at his Leader of the Dungeon-Born.

His smile came easy.

”You didn’t miss anything, Taigi.”

Her head lifted a fraction, dark eyes steady on his, and the relief that passed across her face took exactly one short breath to arrive and settle. She nodded once.

”We are ready.”

”Good. Prepare for defense.”

Taigi rose. Her saber left its sheath in a single oiled motion, and she turned to her formation and raised it above her shoulder.

”Forward! We defend our home!”

The column answered with a massed shout that cracked across the clearing, and forty-six bronze-armored warriors streamed past Kaiden and his women in disciplined file, pouring into his domain as a rolling wave of shield-rim, spear-tip, and quiet fierce intention.

Taigi followed last. She inclined her head to Kaiden’s women as she crossed the threshold, and the Yandere Princess returned the gesture with a small smile. The kind that said welcome home.

Then they were in, and the stone outside was quiet again.

...

The lead SUV’s doors opened next.

The heavy hitters stepped out first. Nobody here was a cosmetic escort. Kaiden clocked it at a glance. The auras bleeding off the agents filing out of the second and third vehicles were the kind you felt in your chest before your ears. Two S-tier signatures. Three high-A at minimum. Veterans of fights Kaiden would not have picked on a good day.

The middle vehicle’s passenger door opened last, and Grace stepped down onto the stone.

She looked like hell.

The composed executive secretary Kaiden had last seen was nowhere in this woman. Lip tint absent. Hair pulled into a rough knot that had come loose along the left side. Dark rings under her eyes that had settled past the point where concealer would have helped even if she had tried. Her blazer was the same blazer she had clearly been living in for days.

Kaiden tilted his head as she crossed the cleared ground to him.

”Rough day?”

She gave him a look.

It was the driest expression his face had ever been subjected to, and behind it was a continent’s worth of exhaustion in real time.

Her lips twitched when Kaiden returned the expression with utmost seriousness.

Grace exhaled.

”This is a colossal clusterfuck.”

”Yeah...”

She planted both hands on her hips and went straight for it.

”Help me out, Kaiden. I know you’re somehow tangled into the middle of this. So tell me. How come you squared up with that creature and it left you alone? How come Vespera pulled back to this coordinate instead of fighting on the front?”

Her eyes cut sideways, wry and pointed, and landed on the woman on the bench.

”And how come half the heavyweights my team’s been trying to rally all day dropped off our comms and showed up at *your* dungeon instead of at the impact zones?”

Scarlet, entirely unbothered by the accusation arriving in her direction, pushed upright on the bench, grinned wide, and threw Grace a V-sign.

A vein twitched to life at Grace’s temple. Anime-style.

She took a slow breath through her nose and carefully did not look at the Flame Monarch a second time.

Kaiden waited a beat.

”Oh. That.”

Grace’s eyes flattened a fraction.

”The monster challenged me to a duel. A Dungeon Master’s Duel. It’s coming to take my dungeon. My mother has been coordinating preparations ever since the declaration.”

He let it settle.

Then he raised an eyebrow.

”Wait. You didn’t know?”

A pause.

”I thought she would have told you.”

Grace stared at him.

Grace was in the loop. She had been briefed, she had briefed her Chairman, she had spent sleepless hours coordinating continental asset allocation on the basis of that briefing. And the man at the center of the entire storm was asking her if she was in the loop.

She held the stare for a full four seconds.

The nearest Association agent found somewhere else to stand.

Then she sighed. Defeat and affection in equal measure. She had been babysitting this man’s reputation since before he had one.

”She did.”

Another sigh.

”I just wanted to hear that nonsense spew forth from your mouth.”

Kaiden’s smile came back.

”Fair, I guess. Did it satisfy you?”

”Tremendously,” Grace exhaled as wryly as physically possible.

A deep voice cut across the clearing before either of them could say anything else.

”The man in the flesh, huh?”

Kaiden turned.

The fourth figure out of the lead vehicle had been standing by the open door, and was only now crossing toward them at an unhurried walk.