Chapter 327: The Perfect Loophole
[Detected spatial ring artifact.]
[Detected pocket space of approximately 0.5 standard football field capacity.]
[Confirming transfer target. Does host wish to send the full stored volume?]
’Yes.’
[Transfer of 21,344 liters of condensed liquid Qi successful.]
Stan checked his internal sense of the inventory. The pool was gone from his storage. He felt it move, a distinct sensation of the substance leaving his space and settling into hers. The transfer had completed.
Camilla’s eyes flickered as she felt her ring receive the payload. She placed the ring back on her finger. Her red eyes lifted to meet his with a new expression, the specific expression of a Royal Blood who had just come into possession of something worth killing for.
She did not, in that moment, kill him. She kept her word.
At the same moment, another system notification arrived in Stan’s awareness.
[Does host wish to use the Rebate feature on the transferred Spirit Pool?]
Stan almost laughed out loud. He had, in the tension of the moment, nearly forgotten the entire point of his engagement with the system’s economic infrastructure.
’Yes. Of course.’
[Rebate applied to transferred Spirit Pool. Target: Camilla Dragomir. Favorability tier: 40-49 (4x rebate).]
[Host has received 85,376 liters of condensed liquid Qi.]
The volume settled into Stan’s inventory space.
Four times the original amount of the Spirit Pool now sat in his personal spatial storage, invisible to Camilla, invisible to any tracking method he was aware of, entirely his.
He kept his face perfectly composed. He had, in effect, just given her the pool while keeping the equivalent of four pools for himself. She had received twenty-one thousand liters. He had received eighty-five thousand liters.
And she had, by every reading available to her, watched him surrender the entire treasure without keeping a single drop.
Camilla was smiling. Then, in a fraction of a second, her smile shifted.
It went from admiring to wickedly amused in the space of a heartbeat, and Stan felt a chill run down his spine before he had even parsed the expression change.
"I upheld my end of our agreement," she said softly. "I protected you from the werewolves. I brought you here. I let you keep your life."
She stepped closer. "But now I’m not so sure you upheld yours."
Her red eyes glowed slightly. Something in the air between them thickened, a sensation Stan’s system enhanced perception registered as a compulsion of some kind, a vampiric technique that carried the specific weight of an ancient supernatural instrument being drawn from a scabbard.
"Swear upon your blood." Her voice had a resonance to it now that had not been there before. "Swear that every single drop you obtained from the Spirit Pool has been sent to me. That you have kept nothing for yourself. If you have hidden even one drop, I will drain every ounce of blood from your body. Slowly."
’Thank God I sent her the entire original pool so that I can get maximum rebate,’ Stan thought that instant. ’The rebate volume is separate. The rebate was created by the system, not the pool. Technically, I gave her everything I had obtained from the Spirit Pool. The rebate was obtained from the system, not the pool.’
The linguistic loophole was thin. He decided to trust it.
"I swear," he said calmly. "I gave you everything I obtained from the Spirit Pool."
A small red mark flared into existence on his wrist, the outline of two vampire fangs, glowing faintly against his skin.
Camilla nodded with satisfaction upon seeing the mark...
"The blood pact is formed. If you have lied, the mark will glow and you will feel unbearable pain. I will also feel it. So you cannot hide even a small lie from me, even one you might otherwise endure through pain tolerance."
The mark on Stan’s wrist glowed.
Both of them looked at it. It pulsed once, softly.
Then it settled. Then it faded to a faint, non-luminous line on his skin.
Stan felt no pain. No burning. No sensation of the pact rejecting his statement.
Camilla, on her end, felt nothing.
’Impossible,’ she thought.
She stared at his wrist for a long moment. Then at his face. Then at his wrist again.
Her expression cycled through several emotions in rapid succession. Disbelief. Confusion. And, settling last, a slow, dawning shock.
’He truly gave me everything. Not a single drop was kept back. A human, a mortal, with a treasure capable of starting wars, surrendered the entire volume without hiding so much as a drop.’
Her red eyes fixed on him. She had, over the centuries, met countless humans. Every one of them had lied. Every one of them had held something back. Every one of them, when placed in a position where they had access to power beyond their station, had grasped for it with both hands and hoarded whatever they could get away with. Greed was, as far as she had ever been able to tell, simply the fundamental nature of the human species.
And yet the man in front of her had, in her presence, willingly given up a treasure that would have transformed his life, his lineage, and his standing on Earth for the rest of time, without keeping a single drop.
Because he had promised. Because his word had been given.
She was, for the first time in a very long time, completely off balance.
[Camilla Dragomir: Favorability +20.]
[Camilla Dragomir: Favorability 65.]
The counter jumped past the fifty point threshold in a single leap. Stan’s mind seized on the notification with a small, private thrill of triumph.
’Sixty-five! I did it!’
The Harem feature was now accessible. He could manually add her to it whenever he willed. She would, from that moment forward, be structurally incapable of betraying him. She could not kill him. She could not drain him. She could not act against his interests in any way, regardless of what she personally wanted.
He wasted no time.
’System, add Camilla Dragomir to my harem.’
A series of system notifications immediately appeared before him.
[Camilla Dragomir’s Favorability toward Host: 65.]
[Target meets the minimum requirement.]
[Successfully added Camilla Dragomir to the Harem.]