Chapter 224: Harem Online: I Love Them So Much I Couldn’t Choose One, So I Took Them All!
Her voice carried through the house, but no one answered. That was probably for the best. If Katherine heard about the outburst later, Alexandra would have to explain why she had been researching aphrodisiac cave sex while her sister was on a private call with Martin.
Still annoyed, she kept searching. The next novel used demonic flower pollen. Another relied on a lust curse. One involved a medicinal pill the hero swallowed by accident during cultivation. Naturally, the only way to stabilize his energy channels was to sleep with three women.
Alexandra dropped the tablet onto the mattress.
"Changing the name of the poison doesn’t make it romantic!"
After glaring at the device for several seconds, she picked it up again. She wasn’t done yet.
The stories without forced sex weren’t much better. They simply kept adding more women.
A new heroine would arrive with a tragic past and a goal of her own. The protagonist would save her, win her heart, and promise that he would never leave her behind.
Two hundred Chapters later, she would still be missing.
By the time she finally returned, the protagonist had married six princesses, two sword saints, a fox spirit, a dragon empress, and a woman who might have been the moon in human form.
Alexandra opened the character list and nearly dropped her tablet again.
There were eighty-seven confirmed wives.
"That can’t be right."
She counted them a second time, moving slowly enough to make sure she hadn’t included minor characters by accident. The number remained eighty-seven.
Several women had almost identical names. Others had not spoken in thousands of pages. One heroine had been introduced as the protagonist’s greatest love, only to receive two brief mentions after their wedding.
Alexandra stared at the list in horror.
"This isn’t a relationship. He’s catching them like Pokémon."
She imagined Martin walking into a room filled with women and secretly opening a menu because he had forgotten half their names.
Katherine would be a fire type, Cassandra would be an ice type, and Alexandra would obviously be legendary.
The comparison made her grin until she looked back at the character list. A woman shouldn’t become irrelevant because someone newer appeared. Love wasn’t a collection, and a harem shouldn’t exist just because one man wanted an endless supply of beautiful bodies around him.
After almost two hours, Alexandra closed every tab and fell onto her back. The tablet rested against her stomach while she stared at the ceiling and tried to make sense of everything she had read.
Harems had sounded far more exciting before she started researching them.
History had offered political prisoners in expensive dresses. Western fantasy gave her women who existed only to lose. Cultivation novels relied on drugs or kept adding heroines until even the author seemed to forget who they were.
None of that was what she wanted, which raised a question she hadn’t bothered asking when Rangar first planted the idea in her head.
What did she want?
Several women loving the same man sounded daring and forbidden, which made it fun to imagine. She hadn’t considered what happened after the exciting part.
Would the women hate one another? Would Martin compare them, even without meaning to? Would one become his obvious favorite while everyone else pretended not to notice?
Alexandra’s mouth tightened. If that was the result, then a harem would only make things worse.
She shifted the tablet aside and pictured Katherine. Her older sister was proud, affectionate, and far more sensitive than she liked anyone to realize. Katherine could act bold around Martin, but Alexandra knew how deeply rejection would hurt her.
Alexandra didn’t want to win Martin by watching Katherine lose. That didn’t mean she intended to sacrifice herself, either.
For the first time, she tried to imagine an arrangement in which neither sister had to.
Every woman involved would need to choose it for herself. There could be no pressure from Martin and no desperate agreement made because someone was afraid of losing him. The drugs, curses, and conveniently timed pollen could go straight into the trash.
Martin would have responsibilities too. He couldn’t keep a woman around because she was beautiful, powerful, or useful. If he claimed to love several women, he would have to prove it through the time and attention he gave each of them.
Then there were the women themselves.
Jealousy would happen. Alexandra knew herself well enough to admit that. She would compete, tease, and occasionally try to steal Martin for herself. Katherine would do the same, and Cassandra would probably create a color-coded schedule before insisting it wasn’t a schedule.
That could still be fun. What Alexandra didn’t want was for jealousy to turn into hatred.
The women needed to care about one another outside their feelings for Martin. They didn’t have to become identical best friends who agreed on everything, but they should be able to laugh together, rely on one another, and genuinely want the others to be happy.
Whatever they built would need to feel like a family.
For the first time that night, the idea stopped sounding ridiculous. A family could argue without falling apart. Its members could get jealous and still love one another. No one became disposable because a new person entered the room.
That was the kind of harem Alexandra could imagine striving for.
The number of women still mattered. A small group could remain close, and Martin could give everyone enough time and affection that no one felt forgotten. Once the number reached eighty-seven, however, someone needed to drag the protagonist away and have him sterilized for the public good.
Alexandra pressed her lips together, trying not to laugh at her own conclusion.
She was taking this far too seriously. Martin barely knew what to do when one woman flirted with him. Presenting him with relationship rules, schedules, and emotional responsibilities might cause his brain to shut down entirely.
"I haven’t even asked whether he wants a harem," she muttered.
She pictured Martin surrounded by beautiful women, desperately trying to behave like a gentleman while his eyes revealed every crude thought passing through his head.
"Of course he wants one. He’s Martin."
Wanting several beautiful women would be easy. Keeping them happy without becoming a complete asshole was the part that would test him.
Alexandra picked up the tablet and typed one final search.
[harem NovelFire where the protagonist genuinely loves every heroine]
Most of the results still looked terrible. Several covers showed a smug man surrounded by women whose breasts seemed larger than their heads.
Then one title caught her attention.
[NovelFire: Harem Online: I Love Them So Much I Couldn’t Choose One, So I Took Them All!]