Harem Online: My Party Is Full of Beautiful Celebrities

The transparent woman stepped onto the riverbank.

Her bare feet passed through the grass without bending a single blade. Golden light moved beneath her skin in slow currents, and the long green strands floating around her shoulders remained untouched by the heat rising from the grill.

Rangar lowered his skewer.

Robert moved his hand away from the last piece of meat with the guilty care of a man caught stealing from an altar. Scunko licked a greasy paw and hid behind Robert’s boot, apparently remembering his own theft.

The woman stopped beside the grill and smiled at the meat sizzling above the coals.

Martin looked from the living gold inside her to the Light Tree towering beyond the canopy. "You’re the Light Tree."

"Martin," Rangar whispered urgently. "Ya can’t greet her like another stranger who followed the smell."

"The smell brought you here."

"That’s different."

The woman’s smile deepened. "It is not entirely different."

Robert wiped both hands on his apron. The motion only spread soot over the leather. "Should we kneel?"

"I did not ask you to."

That answered one question while leaving Martin with a harder one: what was he supposed to do when an ancient tree appeared as a woman beside his improvised lunch?

He lifted the nearest finished skewer. "Would you like one?"

Rangar stared at him.

Martin shrugged. "She was smiling at the grill."

The Light Tree accepted the skewer. Her fingers looked translucent around the wood, yet they held it without passing through. She studied the glazed meat, took a small bite, and closed her eyes as she tasted it.

"The pepper is stronger than necessary," she said.

Robert nodded solemnly. "I told him that."

"You stole two."

"Waste would’ve been disrespectful."

Scunko squeaked from behind his boot, apparently supporting the defense.

The Light Tree looked toward him. "You stole one as well."

Scunko turned his back on divine judgment and began washing his other paw.

Angel brought her enormous head closer to shore. The Light Tree broke off an unseasoned piece, but Martin caught her wrist before she could offer it.

Robert stared at Martin. Angel froze with her head above the water.

"Onion," Martin explained. "I don’t know whether Dragon Turtles can eat it."

The Light Tree glanced at the piece, then handed it to Rangar instead.

"Why me?" he asked.

"You are not a Dragon Turtle."

Martin laughed before he could stop himself. The woman’s expression remained serene, though a hint of amusement warmed the gold in her eyes.

He turned another skewer over the coals. "I didn’t expect a sacred tree to approve of cooked monster meat."

"Why would I object?"

"Because eating something feels less peaceful than glowing in a forest."

"It is part of the ecosystem for one life to prey upon another," she said. "A predator follows hunger. It takes what it needs, rests when it is fed, and eventually returns its own body to the soil. Survival places a limit upon appetite."

Her gaze moved to Angel, who waited by the bank with her mouth open. "Beasts live within that balance. They hunt, protect their young, defend their homes, remember kindness, and mourn what they lose."

Martin stopped turning the skewer. "But monsters don’t belong to that balance."

"They do not." Her answer was gentle and absolute. "Monsters are not beasts. They are lives born from the Dark Force. Their hunger has no natural end. They consume without becoming satisfied, destroy without protecting a place of their own, and spread the force that shaped them."

Rangar nodded. "Beasts have peoples and cultures. Monsters leave chaos."

"You taught me that when Angel hatched," Martin said.

Angel rumbled proudly and opened her mouth wider.

Martin surrendered another unseasoned strip of meat.

The Light Tree watched her eat. "Instinct kept hunger bound to survival. Intelligence brought foresight, memory, and choice. It also made greed possible."

The air around the grill grew warmer.

"Humans learned to take after they were full. They claimed more land than they could live upon, killed for possession, and stored power they could never use. That greed spread into their dealings with beasts. Some beasts changed to survive it. Some answered it. Some intelligent beast peoples learned to desire far beyond their needs as well."

Martin stared at her. He had treated the Dark Force as an ancient opposite to the Light, something the world produced so players would have enemies.

"That created the Dark Force?"

"It helped give birth to the Dark Force as you know it. Desire without need. Violence without purpose. Hunger without an end."

Fat dripped from the forgotten skewers and flared across the coals.

"So humans made monsters."

"Not alone, and not with one decision. Intelligence gave many peoples the freedom to choose more than survival required. Humanity spread its greed farther and faster than most. The Dark Force answered that pattern."

Martin looked at Angel. "Could an intelligent beast become a monster?"

"A beast can be corrupted, controlled, or changed beyond recognition. That tragedy does not make beasts and monsters the same. Never let someone erase the difference because killing both is convenient."

Beastslayers did exactly that. They reduced a bond to blood, a life to progress, and a partner to a resource.

"Can killing monsters weaken the Dark Force?" Martin asked.

"It can protect what monsters would consume. It cannot remove the greed that feeds their source."

"Then stopping Beastslayers matters for more than saving individual beasts."

The Light Tree inclined her head and looked beyond the river. "Many beast cultures withdrew beneath mountains, into drowned ruins, and behind sealed forests while monsters claimed the paths to the surface. Some still wait for safe paths to open."

Rangar turned toward Martin. "And the guild?"

Martin looked at the empty space beneath his name. Only days ago, another crest had occupied it. Building a replacement would be easy. Deciding that everyone should stand beneath his name would repeat the same mistake in a friendlier shape.

"There won’t be one," he said. "No new guild. We’ll be independent adventurers who choose each job for ourselves."

Rangar listened without protesting.

"We protect beast cultures instead of treating them like quest hubs. We open paths to the surface for those who want them. We stop Beastslayers. Nobody gets a crest, an office, or ownership of the rest."

"That path may also help Cassandra regain a place in this world," the Light Tree said.

Martin’s jaw tightened. "It can give her something useful to do. It can’t make anyone forgive her."

"Nor should it. Cassandra may repair some of the harm she caused, but that does not buy anyone’s forgiveness."

"Good."

He had not realized how much he needed to hear an ancient authority say it.

After finishing her skewer, the Light Tree returned the bare stick to him and lowered her gaze to the dark plates covering his chest.

Worldshell Carapace tightened around Martin’s ribs.

Deep sapphire lines pulsed beneath its nearly black surface. Golden light answered beneath the woman’s translucent skin, and a vibration rolled through the armor like a distant creature waking beneath an ocean.

Her serene smile changed into open surprise.

"How curious," the Light Tree murmured. "A Worldshell bearing the echo of a Leviathan."