Harem Startup : The Demon Billionaire is on Vacation

Chapter 487 – Forgotten Lord [Part 2]

She was his daughter.

Or maybe granddaughter.

Or maybe great-great-granddaughter.

Hard to tell.

He’d stopped counting lineage once his bloodline diverged across three planes and five banks of bastards. But he did remember one thing.

Once, long ago, when he was young—by Infernal standards, anyway—he’d slipped into the mortal realm. Greed ran rampant there. Mortals were deliciously foolish. Easy to manipulate. Easy to plunder. Easy to bed.

And the lamias?

Beautiful.

Dangerous.

Profitable.

He chuckled darkly. His breath curled against the air, like smoke from a furnace cooling in shame.

He hadn’t planned to stay long—just enough to milk a noble house dry and reroute their treasury to one of his shell banks.

Yes, he didn’t just want Infernal wealth, but also mortals.

But there had been a lamia woman. Name forgotten, face fogged. But her voice? Still sharp. Still sweet. Like honey dissolved in venom.

She’d tried to charm him. He’d let her.

She said she could breed a devil’s child.

He’d laughed in her face.

Royal devils don’t breed easily. Their essence is too dense, too unruly. It takes rituals, bloodlines, alignment shifts, sometimes even a willing soul-contract from the mate. So yeah—one heated night and she claimed pregnancy?

Impossible.

But he had been... amused.

Enough to leave her a gift.

A red circlet. Laced with his mark. Not quite a seal, not quite a relic. Just... a leftover whim. Something to remember him by. An afterthought.

And then he left.

Centuries passed.

He never looked back.

Until recently.

Until the damned circlet activated.

Not through spell or summons.

Through blood.

Her blood.

The artifact screamed across realms, tugged him through layered space like a fishhook yanked through time, and when he surfaced—

There she was.

Lylith.

Dripping with charm and silk, eyes like molten ruby, breasts wrapped in a scandalous trade ambassador gown—and holding his circlet.

With blood on it.

He’d nearly laughed.

He didn’t know whether to be impressed or insulted.

But it didn’t matter.

She liked Lux.

She wanted Lux.

So he would give her just enough to think she could have him.

Let her believe the dream.

Let her chase it, flaunt it, flaunt him.

Because Zoltarin wasn’t done with that incubus. Not even close.

Lux Vaelthorn... the name alone felt like a grin carved into marble.

Too many contracts.

Too much power for someone so new.

Zoltarin didn’t know whether he admired the boy or wanted to break him.

Probably both.

He’d bind him, eventually.

Maybe kill him. Maybe not.

Depending on how the contracts were anchored. Depending on what factions would cry loudest. Depending on who else was watching.

Or...

Maybe he’d just steal the contracts.

Rewrite them.

Nullify old ties and inject new clauses.

Imprison the soul. Keep the system.

Wear him.

But not yet.

He wasn’t ready.

Lux was still being shaped. Still ascending. Still gathering allies and debts. Still gambling. Still thinking he had control.

Let him.

Let him think.

Let him win small things, claim women, parade around in that smug aura of divine-neutral smugness that pissed off both the Courts and the Choirs.

Let him get cocky.

Because Zoltarin would come later.

With the proper keys.

The right paperwork.

And the perfect dagger—carved in silence and consent.

But for now?

The lamia would do.

Lylith was useful.

She only thought she was the architect—blinded by lust, pride, and the soft, aching obsession that whispered he should’ve been mine.

She didn’t realize she’d been baited.

She thought it was her idea to chase him. To charm him. To prove herself more than a queen with ancient blood and borrowed jewelry.

Funny.

Zoltarin had built Lux’s first bounty.

Zoltarin had merely nudged the odds.

Adjusted a few scrolls. Whispered a few rumors. Let the right seraphim overhear certain numbers in the celestial war rooms.

Told his scribes to forge the bounty authorization on a mirrored seal—so it looked like it came from the Upper Realm.

Suggested to the right pride-lords that a certain infernal prince might become... inconvenient.

That if a Greed-class demon with celestial ties bloomed unchecked, he might bankrupt realms. Break contracts. Twist the balance.

That maybe—just maybe—it was smarter to snip the bud before it bloomed.

And sure enough?

They bit.

The pool snowballed.

One billion soul credits.

Then two.

Three.

Four.

And it kept adding.

Even a sealed prayer-favor from some goddesses, offered quietly and off the books. Signed in flame. Filed under ”non-attributable consequences.”

Idiots.

Zoltarin ran a claw along the armrest of his throne, where soul-vellum scrolls curled like dead petals—each one a failed assassin’s name, crossed out in black infernal ink.

Now?

The Seraphim blamed rogue angels.

The demons blamed celestial spies.

The mortals blamed bad luck.

And Lux?

He just kept walking.

Through blood. Through politics. Through women.

And Lylith?

She watched him with star-bright eyes.

She didn’t know about the bounty.

Didn’t know her flirtation was being used as part of a longer game.

Didn’t know her feelings were genuine in a world where nothing else was.

But Zoltarin knew.

He saw it in the way her thighs pressed together when Lux passed too close.

In how she tilted her neck, unconsciously baring it when he raised his voice.

In how the red circlet on her brow pulsed—not with power, but with want.

Zoltarin chuckled, low and cold. The kind of laugh that never reached the ears of those being played.

”Let her believe she’s seducing him,” he murmured, tracing one contract rune with a talon.

”Let him believe he’s controlling her.”

He tapped a flickering sigil that bore both their names.

”And when they’re both too deep to pull away?”

His smile widened.

”I’ll harvest both.”

The chamber dimmed. The soul-lights flickered.

Zoltarin leaned back in his bone-carved throne, fingers laced, scry-orbs spinning silently in the shadows—each one trained on different angles of Lux and Lylith.

Like a spider watching two flies fall in love inside his web.

The board was set.

The endgame had already begun.