"What the hell was that!" I said rushing out of bed grabbing for my clothes. "You don’t think a monster is trying to break into the manor do you?" My system popped up with several very large and red dick shaped screens, all blinking the same thing.

[ WARNING ]

[ UNKNOWN ENTITY NEAR ]

[ UNKNOWN MANA SIGNATURE ]

Before Celeste had time to answer me, I had the door open, ready to face whatever it was in just my boxers. I stood at the doorway, testing the mana connection that was still active. In my hand glowed a vibrant red and blue, rotating around each other and at the center was a ball of green mana.

[ Mana Sync Active ]

[ Remaining time: 28 minutes ]

[ Active Links: Reika( | ICE | Affinity) Celeste( | Fire | Affinity) ]

[ Shared Mana: ACTIVE ]

"You two stay here! I’m going to go see what that was... If I yell, come quick!" I said as I ran out the room. Slowing almost immediately, an odd pink miasma swirling outside had caught my attention. "What the fuck is that?"

I stopped halfway down the stairs, my heart hammering against my ribs. I was still basically naked, shivering in my boxers while holding a swirling ball of elemental napalm in my hand.

"Help..." the voice came again. It sounded muffled, like someone was talking through a mattress. "Please heeellllppppp... I’m stuck..."

The pink miasma was thicker down here, swirling around the base of the stairs like cotton candy from hell. I tried to look tough, or at least like a guy who wasn’t about to piss himself. Instead my brain was a mess of ’What the fuck’ and ’Oh god, please don’t be a tentacle monster.’

Suddenly, my vision was blocked by a massive, pulsing, red-pink system window. It was shaped exactly like a giant, throbbing dick, and it was vibrating with urgency.

[ WARNING ]

[ UNKNOWN ENTITY NEAR ]

Then, not even a second later, another one slapped down right next to it, equally phallic and twice as bright.

[ NEXT HAREM CANDIDATE NEAR ]

"You’ve gotta be shitting me," I huffed, waving my free hand to swat the windows away. They didn’t move. They just hovered there, mockingly. My life was apparently a crossover between a high-stakes boss fight and a shitty dating sim, and the system couldn’t decide which one to prioritize.

I crept toward the lower hallway, the floorboards groaning under my feet. The miasma was drifting from a side room near the foyer. I rounded the corner, mana held high, ready to blast anything that looked like a threat.

The invader wasn’t just standing there; they were inserted into the wall. Their horns were jammed into the upper frame, shoulders wedged tight against the cracked plaster, hunched over at what looked like a very uncomfortable angle, looking like she’d tried to perform a tactical breach on a doorway that was half her size.

She looked at me. I looked at her.

The pink miasma was rolling off her skin in lazy waves, and there were literal wood splinters caught in her hair. A long, agonizing silence filled the hallway.

She spoke with a voice that was terrifyingly serious. "Don’t you dare laugh."

I stared at the front door, which was currently lying in the middle of the lawn, then back at her. "I wasn’t going to."

Her eyes narrowed. They were a piercing, golden color. "You were thinking about it. I can see it in your face, little man."

"I was mostly thinking about why you decided to turn my front door into a yard decoration," I shot back. "You’re that woman from town, aren’t you? The one from the market?"

She huffed, her breath catching as she tried to maintain some shred of dignity while being used as a structural support beam. "Valka. My name is Valka. Can you help me get out of your door please..."

"Hard to forget a woman who uses my house as a chew toy, Valka," I muttered. "Why are you here? And how did a door ’happen’ to you?"

I raised my hand slightly, and the system went into overdrive, another dick-shaped window popping up in the corner of my eye.

[ ENTITY SCAN INCOMPLETE ]

[ Name: Valka ]

[ Race: Demi-human ]

[ Mana Signature: Unknown ]

[ Dormant Classification: █████ ████ ]

[ Current Threat Level: Unstable ]

"I smelled something... irresistible, I flew here as fast as I could..."

I stared at that last line on the [ ENTITY SCAN ] window. The system was basically calling her a "stuck step-bro" in its own clinical, phallic way.

I didn’t want to mock her, mostly because she looked like she could snap my neck with those thunder thighs, but I couldn’t help it. "You’re really in there, aren’t you?" I said, my voice echoing in the wreckage.

Her ears twitched with pure, unadulterated irritation. "It is a temporary setback! My strength simply exceeded the structural integrity of your habitat!"

Suddenly, the pink miasma pulsed. A heavy, suffocating pressure slammed into my chest, making the air in the hallway feel like lead. The floorboards groaned and the broken frame around her shifted, wood screaming as it warped further under her sheer mass. I immediately brought my mana sync up, the red, blue, and green lights blaring in the dim hall. For half a second, the embarrassed woman was gone, replaced by something old and terrifying.

Then, she blinked. The pressure evaporated and she looked like a humiliated ram again. "That happens sometimes," she whispered.

"That is not comforting!" I yelled. Just as I was about to ask if she had a "reverse" gear, another system window slapped into my face, pulsating with a rhythmic pink glow.

[ QUEST UPDATED: THE TITANIC TANGLE ]

[ OBJECTIVE: EXTRACT THE CANDIDATE WITHOUT TOTAL HOUSE COLLAPSE ]

[ HIDDEN BONUS: ADMIRE THE VIEW (COMPLETED) ]

I bit my tongue to keep from cursing at the air. Valka gave me a suspicious look, her golden eyes narrowing as she watched me stare at the empty space in front of my nose. "What is it? Why do you look at nothing with such hatred?"

"Nothing. Just... a headache. Don’t move." I stepped closer, the mana in my hand swirling. On the outside, I looked like a confident mage handling a crisis. On the inside, I was absolutely losing my shit, wondering if my homeowner’s insurance covered "Demonic Force Majeure."

I reached out, my fingers brushing her shoulder to guide her, and the system chimed one last time.

[ RIZZ BONUS ACTIVE: DAMSEL IN A DOORFRAME ]

This was going to be a long night.