Villain's Breeding System: Evolving 999+ Harem into an SSS-Rank Legion-Chapter 176- Asking the Body Counts

Her jaw set.

Her jaw was going to be permanently set at this rate.

She took her skirt off.

She was in her underwear and her blouse, which stopped at her hips. The blouse was sufficient coverage. This was a thing she told herself as she handed the skirt to him with the specific, direct energy of someone making a transaction.

He took it without looking at her.

Which was, she decided, the most aggravating possible response.

"’You’re welcome,’" she said.

"’Thank you,’" he said.

The fish arrived at four.

The fishing line he’d constructed from Nara’s hem and a hook fashioned from what appeared to be, impossibly, a natural piece of wire-hard thorn from a tree he’d identified without being asked — the hook was specific, intentional, the right gauge for the reef fish that were visible in the shallows twenty meters from shore.

He’d waded out with it.

In his underwear. His jeans now also structural material — Celia had pointedly not looked at the moment when he’d taken them off, had been looking at the ocean and the far horizon with the specific, committed attention of a woman with other things on her mind.

The fish came in groups of two.

Six fish over the course of two hours. He cleaned them on the flat rock with a knife-edge of split cane. The procedure was clean and fast. The women watched from various positions of proximity.

Nara was helping.

This had been happening all day — Nara gravitating toward tasks he was doing, appearing beside him with the next tool or next material or next piece of information, her hands finding the space adjacent to whatever he was working on. She wasn’t performing it. It was more organic than that — the specific, proprietary helpfulness of someone who had organized themselves around a person and was finding their place in the structure by utility.

The other women had noticed.

Aisha and Meijin in particular — the specific, comparative quality of attention that women gave to women who were in a position they were assessing.

Gia noticed Celia noticing this.

"’She’s very helpful,’" Gia said, quietly.

"’She’s always been helpful,’" Celia said.

"’Mm,’" said Gia.

The fire.

The woods were wet.

He’d been gathering dry material from inside the hollow trunk of a dead palm all afternoon — the specific, interior dryness of a dead tree’s core, which maintained ambient humidity even after rain. The fire platform was a ring of stones. The tinder: inner bark stripped from dead wood, torn fine.

The fire started on the third attempt.

Not dramatically. It started the way fires started when the person starting them knew what they were doing.

By the time the light had gone from gold to the specific, immediate dark of a tropical island’s evening — fast, the sun dropping below the horizon with equatorial efficiency rather than the long northern goodnight — the fire was established and the fish were cooking on split-cane spits above it.

The warmth of it. Immediate, specific, the exact quality of warmth that addressed the sudden drop in temperature the island produced at night, the sea air moving in cold from the south, the humidity that had been comfortable all day becoming something else in the dark.

The group had arranged itself around the fire with the specific, organic geometry of people choosing proximity to warmth.

Raven sat back from the fire.

Not by much. But back. The fire between him and the group, the group facing the fire, him behind it with the light of it finding the angles of him in the dark.

Preet was looking at him.

Then not looking at him.

Then looking at him again. 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝘦𝓌𝑒𝑏𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝘭.𝒸𝘰𝑚

Meijin had the specific, careful quality of someone keeping their face neutral while running a calculation.

Aisha was looking at her hands.

Gia was looking at the fish.

Nara was beside him.

Not beside him in the group-around-the-fire arrangement. Beside him in the specific, two-centimeters-of-distance arrangement that communicated something that the group had been reading all day and that Nara had stopped pretending wasn’t the case.

His hands rested on his knees.

The fire’s light on his chest. The shoulders. The V-muscle visible above the waistband of his underwear.

Celia, across the fire, was looking at the fish.

Five women in varying states of undress in the firelight — the bras that remained, the underwear, the single remaining tops that had survived the day because he hadn’t found a structural reason to use them yet. Five women and their specific, individual geometries in the warm orange of an island fire, the dance of it catching at their skin.

He looked at each of them.

Then at the fish.

"’By the way,’" he said.

The group looked at him.

"’Ladies.’"

The word carrying the specific, easy register of someone who is completely comfortable with the current arrangement.

He reached forward. Rotated the fish spit. The sizzle of fat on the hot stone. The smell of it — that specific, immediate comfort of cooked food, which the group hadn’t realized they’d been needing until the smell arrived and said ’oh yes, this was what was missing.’

He looked at the fire.

"’I forgot to ask,’" he said.

Six women. The darkness beyond the fire. The island’s specific, dense night sounds building in the trees around them. The warmth of the fire on their bare skin. His voice in the dark.

He looked up.

The unhurried attention of his purple eyes moving across the group with the specific quality of a man who has had all day to form his opinions and is now proceeding to the next item on an agenda that he’s had since the beginning.

"What are your body counts?"

The fire crackled.

Nobody said anything.

The specific silence of a group of people who have all processed the same question at the same time and are each waiting to see who processes it out loud first.

"’Body count,’" Gia said. The precise enunciation of someone confirming they’d heard correctly.

"’Mm,’" he said.

"’You’re asking—’"

"’How many,’" he said. "’People. You’ve slept with.’"