Demonic Dragon: Harem System-Chapter 788: We need to stop normalizing these things.

The silence that followed that word was dense, almost physical, as if it had its own weight. None of the men moved, but several swallowed hard, the sound too small to break the tension that dominated the inn. The owner had already cowered behind the counter, silently praying to whatever deity might still hear him, while the few customers who hadn't managed to leave stood motionless, trapped between the fear of running and the even greater fear of drawing attention.

Strax stood still for a moment longer than necessary, as if granting the world one last chance to correct its own stupidity. His golden eyes calmly scanned the room, registering details irrelevant to anyone else: the soft creak of an old beam in the ceiling, the smell of hot grease beginning to burn in the kitchen, the trembling hand of one of the men gripping the hilt of his sword too tightly.

Then he moved.

It wasn't fast in the traditional sense. There was no blur, no burst of speed, no abrupt displacement. It was simply… inevitable. A step forward, firm, silent, as if the ground had been made to receive him in that way. The simple change of position seemed to alter the atmosphere of the room; the air grew heavier, the feeling of space diminished, as if the walls had moved a few centimeters closer.

The armless man tried to shout something—an order, an insult, perhaps just pain transformed into sound—but Strax was already standing before him. The look he received was not one of anger, nor of contempt. It was worse. It was empty. As if that man had ceased to be a person and had become merely an inconvenient obstacle.

"I warned you," said Strax, almost in a didactic tone.

The first attack came from the side. One of the men, seized by panic or the false courage that only a crowd grants, advanced with a raised club, trying to hit Strax's head. Cassandra noticed the movement even before Daniela, but neither of them intervened. They knew. All the women walking beside Strax knew.

Strax raised his hand and held the club in mid-air.

The impact that should have broken bones simply died there, absorbed by something that felt neither muscle nor visible magic. The man's eyes widened, trying to pull the weapon back, but it was as if it were stuck in living stone. Strax twisted his wrist slightly.

The sound was awful.

Not loud. Not dramatic. A damp, deep crack that made several of those present immediately look away. The man fell to his knees screaming, his hand now dangling at an impossible angle, his fingers still trying to close by pure reflex.

Before the body fully touched the ground, Strax had already moved on to the next one.

Cassandra moved almost simultaneously, her blade emerging as a natural extension of her arm, quick and precise. She didn't fight with anger; she fought efficiently. A quick strike to the knee of an attacker, another to the shoulder of someone trying to flank her, disarming without killing—not out of mercy, but because death drew more attention afterward.

Daniela, on the other hand, smiled.

She advanced with a spinning kick that sent a man flying against a table, shattering it in two with a dry crash. Before he could get up, she grabbed him by the collar and hurled him against the wall, where he fell unconscious, perhaps with something broken, perhaps not. Daniela never bothered to check.

Strax moved across the room like a slow, unstoppable tide. Each movement was economical, almost lazy, and yet devastating. A man tried to attack him from behind; Strax simply stepped aside and grabbed the attacker by the throat, lifting him off the ground with one hand. The man kicked the air desperately, but Strax only observed him for a second, like someone assessing a defective object.

"Breathing is important," he commented, before squeezing.

The body fell limp to the floor, unconscious—or dead. No one there dared to confirm.

The armless man shouted incoherent orders, his voice broken by panic and pain. "K-kill him! Kill that bastard!"

Strax turned slowly toward him. 𝘧𝓇𝑒𝑒𝑤ℯ𝑏𝓃𝘰𝑣ℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

The entire room seemed to shrink.

"You're still talking," Strax observed. "That's surprising."

He walked toward the man, completely ignoring the few who were still trying to keep their distance, armed. One of them tried to advance, but Cassandra knocked him down with a blow to the sternum before he could take two steps. Another was thrown by Daniela through a chair, which shattered into pieces.

Strax stopped before the mutilated man.

He crouched down, bringing himself to the man's eye level.

"You thought," Strax said calmly, "that gathering more people would make this fair."

The man trembled so much he could barely focus his gaze. "You… you can't… this… this is a city… the guard—"

Strax sighed. "Always the guard."

He stood up and took a step back. For a moment, it seemed he would simply turn his back. The man breathed a sigh of relief for a fraction of a second too short to be called hope.

Then Strax turned back and delivered a simple kick.

There was no spectacle. The blow struck the man's chest with enough force to send him flying against a wooden pillar, which cracked audibly. The body fell to the ground, motionless, the final sound muffled by the absolute silence that followed.

The few men still standing dropped their weapons.

Some fell to their knees. Others ran.

Strax watched them flee without any interest in pursuing them. He smoothed his coat, then looked around the destroyed hall: broken tables, blood on the floor, low groans from those still conscious.

"Sorry," he said, addressing the innkeeper, who was trembling behind the counter. "The food was great."

The man nodded frantically, unable to form any coherent words.

Cassandra wiped the blade on a cloth and put it away with a precise gesture. Daniela snapped her fingers and glanced around, satisfied.

"You know," she commented, "this will reach the mayor's ears in less than an hour."

Strax nodded. "Great."

Cassandra crossed her arms. "You just killed men in the middle of an inn."

"They chose the place," he replied. "I was just having lunch."

He walked to the table, picked up a piece of bread that miraculously was still whole, took a bite, and chewed thoughtfully.

"The food gets cold quickly when you interrupt," he commented.

The comment fell on the air with a disconcerting, almost domestic naturalness, as if Strax were complaining about an interrupted conversation and not a recent massacre. The bread was still between his fingers when a chair scraped the floor behind them.

The sound was small. Too irrelevant for anyone who wasn't paying attention.

But Strax was.

One of the customers who had remained motionless until then—a thin man, simply dressed, his face too pale for someone feigning calm—finally broke. He stood up abruptly, knocking the chair over, his eyes wide, his whole body trembling as he turned toward the door. He didn't scream. He didn't warn anyone. He just ran.

Panic gripped him all at once, raw, disorganized. His feet slipped slightly on the floor soiled with spilled drink and dried blood, but he recovered too quickly, driven by pure survival instinct. His hand reached for the doorknob.

The room seemed to hold its breath.

Daniela turned her face away first. Cassandra frowned. Neither of them moved.

Strax chewed.

He followed the man with his gaze for a second too long to be coincidence. His golden eyes expressed neither surprise nor irritation—just a quiet, almost weary realization of something inevitable.

"Hmm," he murmured, swallowing the last bite. "This is going to be trouble. That guy was watching everything and came in with them. He must be the lookout."

The man pulled the door open forcefully.

Strax twisted his wrist.

The movement was simple. Relaxed. Like someone throwing a piece of stale bread away from the table.

But it wasn't just bread anymore.

The instant it left her fingers, the hardened crust was enveloped in a black and crimson aura, dense energy condensing around the object in an unnatural way. The surrounding air distorted slightly, as if space had been forcibly compressed. There was no exaggerated glow, no mystical sound. Just weight. An absolute, demonic weight, impossible to ignore.

The bread crossed the hall in a straight, brutal arc.

The impact was dry.

The man was struck in the back of the head with a force no human body should endure. The sound that echoed wasn't that of something being crushed, but of something being finished—a deep, definitive thud that caused the door to shatter in two before the body even fell.

The man was thrown forward, crashing through the broken wood and falling outside like an empty sack. The body hit the street floor with a hollow sound and didn't move again.

The energy surrounding the bread dissipated in the next instant.

The piece, now just bread again, rolled across the ground and stopped near the destroyed entrance, stained with blood and dust.

Silence.

A silence too heavy even for that place.

The innkeeper let out a low sound, something between a groan and a prayer. One of the wounded men began to cry silently, his shoulders shaking as he tried to huddle against the wall.

Strax observed the broken door for a moment, assessing the damage with the same attention he would devote to a poorly positioned piece of furniture. Then he calmly rose from the table, walked to the entrance, and picked up the piece of bread from the floor.

He examined it, turning it between his fingers.

"What a waste," he commented, in a genuinely disappointed tone.

Daniela let out a short, incredulous laugh. "You killed a man with bread."

Strax shrugged. "It works with almost anything, if you put enough energy into it."

Cassandra sighed slowly, running a hand over her face. "This is definitely going on the list."

"List of what?" he asked, returning to the table.

"Of things we shouldn't normalize," she replied.

Strax sat down again, pulling his chair as if nothing had happened. He looked at the plate in front of him, now completely cold, and made a slight, almost imperceptible grimace.

"This place has lost its charm," he decided. "Let's pay and leave."