Lewd System: Every Scream and Moan is EXP

Chapter 375: Chapter 375: The Villain’s Promise

The preparations were finally finished, and one by one the legions split off and marched out, each dispatched to hunt down every last insect that had crawled its way into the Aleris estate.

Claude himself walked out of the mansion and fell in with the Silver Vanguard, despite not having a single combat bone in his body. And his joining turned Albert into the happiest man drawing breath that night, because now there was someone with the authority to keep Rora on a leash.

As for everyone else, they peeled away toward their assigned fronts. Jax included. He was drifting south for the moment, exactly as instructed, even though every instinct in him was screaming east, the direction Echidna had caught Loki’s scent. He wanted no part of a scene, so for now he tagged along quietly behind the wall of professors and students up ahead.

Then the front line spotted the enemy, and Jax saw his opening. He’d been slowing his steps the whole way, sliding gradually toward the back, and now he turned to slip off into the dark. What he hadn’t counted on was that his students had been keeping their eyes locked on him the entire time.

As he turned, he found them all waiting. Seraphina, Elira, Astrid, Seris, Lilith, with Belle at her side, and last of all, the thoroughly drunk Roxana.

Elira spoke first. “Told you he was up to something.”

“It was obvious he was plotting,” Astrid said. “You should have seen the way his eyes were crawling over everyone else’s, like some criminal casing a room before a job.”

Roxana, hanging off Belle’s arm for dear life, slurred her contribution. “Professor. Hic. Don’t you dare tell me you were sneaking back to the mansion to raid the treasury while the whole world’s busy losing its mind. You need a lecture. A long one. So you’re coming with me, mister.”

And the very instant Roxana came lurching toward Jax, Astrid casually swept her leg out from under her, sending her crashing face-first into the floor, where she promptly checked out and drifted off into dreamland.

Seraphina stepped forward next. “Professor. Be honest with us, just this once. Where exactly do you think you’re wandering off to?”

Seris jumped in. “I’d bet good money it’s another one of his urges to steal the spotlight. Pick something completely insane just so he can paint himself the hero of it.”

Jax kept turning away from them. “Think whatever you like. I’ll be taking my leave now.”

“Professor, you can’t just leave like that,” Lilith said. “What if Headmistress Lysandra finds out you walked away from your duty? It’ll only cause you trouble down the line.”

“Do you honestly believe, Lilith, that he hasn’t already accounted for all of that?” Elira said. “Of course he has. And even knowing every consequence, he’s still stubborn enough to do exactly as he pleases. So the consequences aren’t the real question. The real question is what you’re up to, professor. What is it that’s worth a risk like this?”

“It’s none of your concern,” Jax said.

Elira walked right up and planted herself square in his path. “I’ve never once seen you this worried. This far from yourself. Which tells me whatever you’re stepping into is a great deal bigger than the last thing. And that Lavinia girl, or whoever she truly was, clinging to your side from the very first moment, there has to be a thread tying the two of you together.”

She held his gaze. “Revenge, some personal grudge, I genuinely couldn’t care which. As long as it isn’t you turning sides, in case that thing was a comrade of yours. But hear this. We owe you. I owe you a debt far heavier than you could ever guess. So there’s no chance we let you run down this road alone.”

Jax brushed past the words, and past her. “You’re overthinking the whole thing. There’s no need for any of you to follow me and stake your names on the risk too.”

Lilith’s face creased with worry. “You’re lying. I can hear it in your voice. That tone doesn’t belong to the professor I know. And that alone is every reason I need to take any risk at all to help the man who handed me a wonderful new life. So if you refuse…”

She began drawing the dark mana up around her hands. “Then I’ll have no choice but to put you down for a nice long nap, right up until this war is over.”

Jax hissed through his teeth and rounded on the lot of them. “Why in the hells are you all this stubborn? Why can’t a single one of you just leave me to my own business?”

Silence dropped over them. Jax caught the edge in his own voice a beat too late and knew the outburst had been wrong, while across from him the others heard something underneath it. Desperation.

“There’s something out there,” Jax said, quieter now, “that’s mine to deal with. Not anyone else’s problem. Mine. And every second I waste standing here arguing, the higher the body count climbs.”

He turned to Seris. “You said I want to play the hero, didn’t you? No. I’m the exact opposite of one. I don’t care how many of our own fall tonight. I don’t care how many corpses I have to step over to reach what I’m after. There’s only one thing I want. When the smoke finally clears and I ask myself the single question that matters, what did you lose, I want to hold my head high and answer it the same way every time. Jax never loses. Not his battles. And not the souls he wants left breathing.”

His eyes moved over them, steady, refusing to flinch. “I’ll wear the villain’s name and wear it gladly, if that’s the price of walking out of here with every last one of you still breathing when the dust settles. I am no hero. A hero throws his arms open wide enough to save the whole world, and then spends the rest of his days grieving the ones who slipped through his fingers anyway. That isn’t a life. That’s a slow death dressed up in pretty virtue.”

His voice didn’t bend. “I’m a villain. A scum, whose greed, or whose madness, simply won’t allow the harm to land on the few. On you.”

“And for that, I’ll trust my own judgment. It’s the one friend that has never once let me down. And right this moment, that same judgment is telling me to go as far as fighting my own student, if that’s what it takes to keep you from following me.”

He drew both his swords.

Elira opened her mouth to argue, but Astrid shut it down. “Enough.”

Astrid stepped forward and stood face to face with him. “There’s no need for any of us to start swinging at each other right now.” She turned it over in her head for a long moment, then let out a slow breath. “Fine. I’ll see to it that no one follows you. And I’ll keep this whole conversation buried.”

“But—” Elira started beside her.

Astrid cut her off a second time. “You heard him, didn’t you? Do you genuinely still believe there’s a single word in any language that changes this bastard’s mind?”

Elira went quiet, and Astrid pressed on. “And don’t go wasting your worry on him either. I promise you he’ll come crawling back here alive, because I know exactly what he is. He’s the breed of cockroach born wrapped in plot armor. The kind you can spray, stomp flat, and set on fire, and he’ll still come strolling out of the smoke asking what all the fuss was about. A slipper isn’t ending that man. Nothing short of the gods themselves is.”

Jax looked into her eyes, then slid the dimensional ring off his finger and held it out to her. “Here. Thank you, for this. And thank you for the help just now, too.”

Astrid pushed his hand right back at him. “Keep it. It’ll come in handy, there are plenty of potions stashed inside it. But you promise me one thing. You return it yourself, once all of this is over.”

“I promise,” Jax said.

A few steps away, Seris watched the whole exchange, baffled, as Astrid took the lead with him. Every word out of her mouth was as cold and rough toward him as ever, and yet something about it refused to line up.

‘Why,’ she thought, ‘did that last line sound so much less like a condition, and so much more like a plea for him to come home alive?’

“Then I’ll be on my way,” Jax said with a smile.

And at the sight of that smile, the rest of the girls felt the tension bleed quietly out of them. Because their bastard of a professor was back.

But then Roxana’s eyes snapped wide open, and the instant they locked onto Jax she was shouting, “Jax, you absolute moron, give me back my rum! You’ll pay for—”

Her mouth was promptly clamped shut by Astrid, who began dragging her off by the collar. “I know a place positively drowning in rum. Gallons of the stuff. So be a good little girl, and let me toss you straight down the well.”

-x-X-x-

Some time passed.

Jax was tearing east through the dark when he came upon a figure standing in his way, hooded, with a wide grin splitting his face.

Jax slowed, confused. “…Harry?”

-x-X-x-

[A/N: George_Pappas_5717, DaoistMktAy4, Rod_Snow, Ordici_T and Phillip_Beavers thank you for the golden tickets 🙏🔥

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