The contact was intimate and electric.
The heavy, soft curve of her breast pressed firmly against the hard plating of his chest armor. Through the thin wool of her tunic, she could feel the cold, unyielding iron of his existence, and it grounded her.
She pulled back slightly, just enough to look into the glowing red eyes of his mask. Her face was inches from his.
"You saved me," Seraphina choked out, tears spilling onto his hoodie. "When Cedric... when he was going to rape me in the forest... you were the only one who came. You saved me"
She ran her fingers over the cold metal of his mask.
"Everyone else... my family, the students... they told me I was nothing. They said I was Rank-F Trash. They said I would never amount to anything but a concubine"
She looked deep into his optical sensors, her violet eyes burning with a mixture of pain and hope.
"But you... you protected me in the forest. You are protecting me now against my nightmares. And you promised..."
Her voice dropped to a desperate whisper.
"You promised you would make me strong
You promised you would make the Valerius Dukedom regret the day they threw me away"
She tightened her legs around his waist, pressing her forehead against his mask.
"Is it true, Zero? Can you really fix someone as broken as me?"
Lysander held her gaze. He felt her trembling against him. He felt the softness of her body and the fragility of her spirit.
[SYSTEM ALERT]
[LOYALTY RISING RAPIDLY]
[SUBJECT STATE: VULNERABLE]
He tightened his grip on her.
"I don't lie, Seraphina," Lysander said, his voice low and dangerous.
"They called you Trash. They called you F-Rank. They judged you by their rules."
He leaned in, his mask touching her forehead.
"But I don't play by their rules. I will break your limits. I will rewrite your bloodline. When I am done with you... the Valerius family won't just regret it"
The red eye of his mask flared.
"They will kneel before you and beg for mercy"
Seraphina let out a shuddering breath. The conviction in his voice washed away the last of the fear.
"Okay," she whispered, resting her head back on his shoulder, her chest rising and falling against his. "I believe you"
She didn't let go. And for the first time in his second life, Lysander didn't let go either. He stood there in the dark cabin, holding the broken noble girl, guarding her from the demons of her past.
To the outside world—and to Lysander's sensors—the scene was peaceful. The sobbing had stopped. Seraphina was resting her head against his chest, her breathing steady, her arms wrapped tightly around his waist.
Lysander looked at his HUD.
[STATUS: CALM]
[HEART RATE: STABILIZED]
"Good," Lysander thought. "She is recovering. The fear is gone"
But the System was wrong. The fear was gone, but it had been replaced by something much darker.
Inside Seraphina's mind, the silence was filled with a single, looping chant. It was a broken record, spinning faster and faster.
'Zero... Zero... Zero... Zero... Zero...'
She pressed her ear against the hard metal of his chest plate, listening to the hum of his mana core. It was the most beautiful sound she had ever heard.
'You saved me. You picked me up when I was in the mud. You fed me the fruit. You killed the monster.'
Her fingers dug into the back of his hoodie, clutching the fabric so hard her knuckles turned white.
'You are the only one. You are mine. You are mine. You are mine.'
Her eyes, hidden against his shoulder, opened wide. The violet irises were no longer trembling with sorrow. They were dilated, dark, and terrifyingly focused.
She remembered the way Elara, the Cat-Kin woman, had looked at him earlier.
She remembered the way Elara's tail had twitched. She remembered the hunger in those golden beast eyes. She remembered how Elara had tried to keep Seraphina out of the cabin.
'That cat...' Seraphina thought, a cold sneer forming in her mind. 'She thinks she loves him? She thinks she can have him?'
Seraphina's grip tightened around Lysander's waist.
'No. She is just a pet. She doesn't understand him like I do. I am the one he saved. I am the one sleeping in his house. I am the one in his arms.
A dark resolve solidified in her heart.
'I will become strong. Zero said he would make me strong. And when I am strong... I won't just kill monsters.
She visualized Elara.
'I will kill anyone who tries to take him from me. If that Cat-Kin tries to touch him... I will cut her paws off.
Her mind drifted to Cedric Vance. The man who had treated her like an object. The man who thought he could use her body and throw her away.
A twisted smile touched her lips, hidden by Lysander's shoulder.
'Cedric... you fool. You think you can touch me? You think you can touch what belongs to Zero?'
She didn't want to run from Cedric anymore. She wanted to hunt him.
A vivid, bloody image flashed in her mind.
She imagined herself holding a small, sharp dagger. She imagined pressing the tip of the blade into the soft skin of her own chest, right between her breasts.
'I want to carve it,' she thought obsessively.
'I want to carve his name right here.
Z-E-R-O.'
She wanted to scar his name into her flesh so that if anyone—Cedric, her brother, or any other man—the first thing they would see was the name of her Men written in blood.
'I am his property. I am his weapon. And he is my world.'
Lysander, completely unaware that he was holding a ticking time bomb, patted her head awkwardly with his armored glove.
"You should sleep now," Lysander said gently. "Tomorrow is going to be hard"
Seraphina looked up. The crazy look in her eyes vanished instantly, replaced by a mask of sweet, innocent adoration.
"Yes, Zero," she whispered softy. "I will sleep. Because you told me to"
She pulled away reluctantly and went back to her mat. She lay down, pulling the blanket up to her chin. But she didn't close her eyes. She stared at him.
'Zero... Zero... Zero...'
Lysander settled back into his corner, closing his eyes to enter Sleep Mode.
"I fixed her," Lysander thought with satisfaction. "She isn't scared anymore. Now I can mold her into a warrior"
He had no idea.
He thought he was forging a Queen.
In reality, he had just awakened a Yandere. And she would burn the world down before she let anyone else have him.
The cabin was silent, save for the soft, rhythmic breathing of Seraphina, who was finally asleep, clutching her pillow and dreaming of her "Zero"
In his corner, Lysander was not just sleeping; he was comatose. The physical toll of fighting a Rank-B Titan-Scale Behemoth, the mana drain of the Abyssal Guillotine, and the sheer mental exhaustion of saving the village had pushed him past his limit.
He had fallen into the deep abyssal state—a level of sleep where the mind completely shuts down to repair neural pathways. He was drifting in a black, silent void, unaware of his body or the room around him.
But the System was awake.
Ding.
A blue holographic screen materialized in the darkness of his mind, but Lysander was too deep in the abyss to see it.
[SYSTEM ALERT]
[LIMIT BREAK CONFIRMED]
[Previous Limit: Level 30]
[Current Status: Level 40]
[Achievement: Solo Kill of Rank-B Boss]
Ding
[CRITICAL NOTIFICATION]
[INITIATING SYSTEM UPDATE]
The blue screen flashed urgently.
"User? Wake up. Authorization required for immediate patch installation"
The System's artificial voice echoed in his subconscious, but it sounded like a whisper underwater. Lysander didn't move. He didn't twitch. He was dead to the world.
Ding!
[WARNING: USER UNRESPONSIVE]
[REASON: EXTREME MENTAL FATIGUE]
The System paused, processing the lack of response.
[OVERRIDE PROTOCOL ENGAGED]
[AUTOMATIC UPDATE INITIATED]
[Shutting down Shop Interface...]
[OFFLINE]
[Shutting down Minimap...]
[OFFLINE]
[Shutting down Status Window...]
[OFFLINE]
[Rewriting Core Algorithms...]
[IN PROGRESS]
In the real world, the red eyes of Lysander's Iron-Wraith Mask—which usually stayed dimly lit as a sentry—flickered erratically.
They pulsed bright red, then dimmed to a faint purple, and then, for the first time since he got the mask...
Zzzzp.
The lights in the mask went completely black.
[SYSTEM GOING DARK FOR 8 HOURS]
[PROTECTION PROTOCOL: DISABLED]
Lysander slept on, unaware that his greatest weapon—the System—had just turned itself off to evolve. He was defenseless, lying in the dark, while the code inside his soul rewrote itself to prepare for the carnage to come.
[UPDATE PROGRESS: 1%...]