My Taboo Harem!

Chapter 782: The Path of Power

The path of power was a treacherous, glittering road paved with exquisite loneliness.

That was what Eira had come to understand across the slow, aching eternity of her existence; it was a desolate highway where one gradually forgot that other people even existed as anything more than fleeting shadows or useful tools. A merciless trail where one cultivated, bled, sacrificed decades, and clawed desperately toward immortality — only to reach what one believed to be the summit and discover, with bitter amusement, how laughably insignificant one still remained.

There were always bigger monsters waiting in the dark; ancient, indifferent beings who could crush a painstakingly forged immortal soul like a mortal insect, with the same bored indifference one used to swat a fly on a summer evening.

And so... the cycle repeated itself, cruel and elegant in its inevitability.

Cultivate harder. Climb higher. Discover more forbidden truths and reach higher realms. Realize, yet again, how vast and mocking the distance still stretched ahead.

Endlessly. In the patient, echoing solitude of a being who had long forgotten how to truly live — how to taste the sweet madness of desire, the warmth of skin against skin, the reckless joy of being gloriously, stupidly alive.

And then, when their talent inevitably depreciated before the dreams of reaching the very pinnacle were ever fulfilled, came the small, late horror of the arrived-too-late: the devastating realization of everything it had cost:

An entire life bartered away for a mere sliver of power. Wives/husbands never got, children they never gave birth to. Afternoons never spent tangled in sweat and laughter and raw, dripping pleasure of being with their families, those they should’ve cherished but abandoned in a mad race for more and more power.

All of the pleasures of being alive traded for one more rung on a ladder that had no top — and even if one reached it, only revealed the bottom of a taller, more mocking one.

’Maybe pointless is the right word for it all.’

’Maybe’ — and here Eira’s philosophy always faltered, fraying at the edges like an old tapestry — ’they could have achieved just as much if they had only bothered to live a little along the way. To love and embrace loved one and build a meaningful family just like my depraved Master. To savor the sins and warm presence of their loved one. To fuck and laugh and conquer not just for power’s sake, but for the sheer wicked joys life had to offer.’

She wasn’t, she had to admit with a touch of self-mockery, the best teacher for that particular lesson.

So, she kept it tucked away in her heart like a forbidden secret.

She kept it there as she watched Phei walk gloriously naked across the floor of the Infinity Chaos penthouse toward the bathroom — bare, unhurried, every powerful line of his body on full display.

The late-afternoon light slanted in from the southern shoreline and kissed the long, taut planes of his physique. A young Cosmic Dragon in raw, magnificent working order, fresh from a training.

Eira’s eyes tracked him with slow, shameless hunger.

The small pink dart of her tongue slipped out to wet her upper lip before retreating.

She had refined taste across several civilizations. And yet the unfiltered, powerful slope of Phei’s bare back as he walked away did obscene, delicious things to that taste — things it had no business doing to a fairy of her standing whom was supposed to be serving her master, nor lusting for him.

He didn’t see it.

A small mercy. Because if he had caught the raw, appreciative look she had just given his retreating form, his afternoon would have lost three problems and gained several thick, urgent, throbbing ones it wasn’t prepared for.

She composed herself.

Sort of...

Her eyes remained glued to the bathroom door long after it closed behind him.

She was, she admitted only in the sanctuary reserved for fairies bonded to dangerously charismatic seventeen-year-old Cosmic Dragons, glad.

’I am glad he isn’t walking that cold, sterile path of lonely ascension.’

Eira was happy to see him every day as he builds more and more into his chaotic soul the one countermeasure most cultivators never discovered — the inconvenient, glorious habit of actually living.

He pursued power, yes. Harder than most beings his age, harder than most beings of any age. This afternoon alone he had willingly walked into a training that introduced him to a cathedral wall at high velocity that took him to the very blink of death.

He was committed.

And he would ask her for worse next day.

But he didn’t vanish into the cultivation; he emerged from the hollow and the very first thing his fully restored body chose to do was long-distance fuck his slave through her mother’s tea while hungrily ogling her mother like a predator eyeing the ultimate prize. He balanced the scales beautifully.

He chased women with even more unhurried, sovereign hunger he chased power.

Phei lived his life to the fullest each day could bring.

By every conventional measure of the cultivators she had seen, putting the pleasure ahead of the power was catastrophic. But by that same measure, of course, every powerful being she had ever been with had ended up alone in a cave, eating self-pity for breakfast.

Phei was never going to end up in a cave.

Phei was never going to eat self-pity for anything.

’And it is,’ she had to admit with a treacherous thrill, ’exactly what she wanted for him. Putting pleasure and his women first. Prioritizing the warm, wet chaos of his harem over cold, lonely ascension.’

’Maybe’ — and here her own ethics frayed delightfully — ’I have become a little too supportive of his gloriously debauched path. A little too enthusiastic in cheerleading for my master.’

Hmm.

She’d think about it tomorrow.

The shower had started.

The scent of him drifted out from beneath the bathroom, perfumed with Infinity Chaos’s luxurious bathing toiletries and behaving with the obedient elegance of seven-star hospitality.

Eira’s translucent feet touched the floor.

She walked this time instead of hovering. Hovering was for when she had no plan.

Tonight — this long, golden vespertine slide between afternoon and evening — she had a very specific, very sinful plan.

She crossed the penthouse to the bathroom door...

... And pushed it open.

The steam parted like a willing curtain. Phei stood under the spray with his face tilted upward, both hands pushing his dark, wet hair back from his forehead. Water ran in unhurried, glistening rivulets down the powerful lines of his torso, tracing every hard muscle, every delicious contour, before sliding lower over his thick, heavy cock.

He didn’t startle; he cracked one eye open, looked at her, and smiled with dark amusement.

"Eira..."

"Master~"

She used the vocative deliberately. For weight.

"Yes?"

She stood in the doorway, folded her small translucent arms, and tilted her head.

"I’d like, if it’s at all convenient —"

"Mmm?"

"— and if you can find it within your sovereign kindness, after everything — after the patient service I have rendered to you and your seduction as chase women and your obscenely well-organized libidinal taxonomy, and after the several occasions on which I have personally witnessed sights I will carry to my translucent grave—"

He was grinning wider.

"— I’d like, Master, to take a taste... Of it."

A pause.

His grin turned positively wicked.

"It."

"Yes... it, Master. That thick, magnificent cock of yours."

"Just a taste?"

"Just a taste. After everything. By any honest accounting, I’ve earned this much."

Phei laughed — entirely amused.

He turned his face back into the spray, let the water cascade down the long, strong line of his throat, and answered without opening his eyes.

"I’ll think about it."

"Master."

"After I check my Super Abilities Mystery Box."

Eira’s wings stilled mid-hover.

"... oh, right." A pause. "What is that again?"

He cracked one eye open at her. The corner of his mouth curved with the satisfaction like he had just successfully derailed an incoming negotiation.

"My Super Abilities Mystery Box, Eira."

"Master. What is that."

He smiled.