Limitless Evolution As a Snake

The casino goes off like a bomb went off in the room. I can hear it even from up here, distant but unmistakable, a wave of noise crashing through two hundred people at once. Screaming. Chairs scraping back. Somewhere in that chaos I catch one word rising above the rest, spreading through the crowd like fire through dry grass.

Murderer.

The stream chat’s probably worse. Forty million people watching Channel confess to attempted murder through a magic clone getting railed on a hotel bed, and not one of them is going to forget this by morning.

I don’t know where Hansen and Harden are sitting, but I’d bet good money they’re trying to make themselves as small as possible right about now, sliding down in their seats, pulling collars up, doing anything to disappear. And somewhere out there, my dear old dad is probably having the worst night of his very long, very shady life, because his brother’s just got outed as attempted murderers.

No time to savor the victory. There’s still more to get out of this one, and the timer on her composure is about to hit zero. Just a little more pressure. So I fuck her again, brutal and unrelenting. I drive into her until her voice goes hoarse, until her whole body is just one long shiver begging for release. *There it is.* I stop dead, hilt-deep, letting the silence hang.

”Tell me about the casino, and tell me about the plan with Raymond.”

She’s crying too hard to talk at first, chest heaving, wings twitching uselessly against the mattress, but I wait her out with the cold stillness of a viper coiled to strike. I’ve got all the time in the world. She doesn’t.

”We were going to take the casino,” she finally says, voice wrecked, barely holding together. ”Hansen and Harden wanted it under family control—they were going to kill the rest of your harem once Lyra was gone, one by one, make it look like accidents, and then—then they were going to have Raymond killed too, so there’d be no one left to challenge them for the territory...Ah-!”

The reaction from the casino floor isn’t screaming this time. It’s worse. It’s silence, then an explosion of noise all at once, shouting, glass breaking, someone yelling for security, someone else yelling for the police, and underneath all of it I swear I can hear my father’s voice, high and panicked.

I’ve heard enough.

I pull out of her slow, deliberate, and she lets out this desperate, broken sound, hips chasing after me like her body hasn’t caught up with the fact that the interrogation’s over.

”No—no, please, don’t stop, please!”

She’s still begging. Still soaked, still open, still twitching from every unfinished wave I left hanging in her body. And for the first time since I coiled around her, pinning her to the bed, I actually look at her, really look, and there’s nothing left in her eyes but need and terror all knotted together.

Good.

That’s exactly how I want her to remember tonight.

She was a good time. A real good time. But she’s not sticking around, and I’ve got no interest in pretending otherwise, so I don’t say anything sweet to her, don’t stroke her hair, don’t do any of that stuff. I just watch her fall apart on the sheets, spent and shaking and useless to me now, and then she goes.

Not like she dies. She just stops being there. One second there’s a wrecked, sobbing woman on the bed still chasing a feeling I ripped away from her, and the next second there’s nothing but rumpled sheets and a wet patch where she used to be.

The clone’s done its job and packed itself back up into whatever weird magic hole it came from. Guess the real Channel’s about to have one hell of a headache.

Old Mate doesn’t waste a second before piping up in my head,

[System: Well, cunt, I’ll say this much, that was quite the performance.]

Yeah, no kidding.

I float there for a second, smoke curling off my scales, feeling that heavy, satisfied kind of tired that comes after a job well done, and then the actual important question hits me.

Oh, shit. Post nut clarity oh my god, am I bonded to her now?

Because if I am, that’s a whole new problem, a whole new mouth to feed, a whole new woman who’s gonna need my ”essence” on some kind of schedule, and honestly, after tonight, I don’t think I’ve got it in me to add Channel the professional assassin to the harem roster.

She actually tried to kill me. Twice. The sheer audacity is almost cute. Pathetic, but cute. Reminds me I need to do some pest control later...

Feels like a fair question. I’ve got a system for a reason, might as well use it for the hard stuff.

[System: Technically speaking, no, ya lucky bastard, you didn’t bond with her. You bonded with the clone. Completely separate entity, mate, no strings attached, no dependency loop, none of that. The real Channel’s out there somewhere with a raging headache and absolutely no memory of getting railed by a smoke snake, so, y’know, silver linings.]

Thank god for that. One less thing to worry about.

[System: But, for the sheer chaos of what you just pulled off—fucking a magic clone of the woman sent to kill you. Im disgusted yet extremely entertained. So here’s two thousand exp, you absolute legend, and forty IP on top of that, because mate, you need a top-up worse than anyone I’ve ever met.]

Have you met alot of people since becoming a System?

[System: No, but i like to pretend i have.]

Damn, do i get you a ipad or something?

[System: I’d love a beer, cheers.]

Maybe later, okay? Anyways what do we do now?

Perfect. Raymond’s having a meltdown downstairs, Hansen and Harden are trying to phase through their chairs, and the whole Vane family empire is a smoking crater on a livestream. Total victory. And in the middle of that beautiful mess, I’ve got a casino to run and a hoard to get back to. My girls are gonna need me.

Old Mate doesn’t even hesitate.