Chapter 168: Supreme Leader Poppy

Kalon focused on the highest authority marker the system would give him on Cupid and initiated the travel.

The system warned him that he would be exposed to two Cupidians if he travelled to the location, but he did not care.

He had already gauged the power level of this planet. Daisy was the second most powerful woman on the planet, and she wasn’t a match for him.

That meant it was likely that there wasn’t anyone else who could cause him a large amount of problems.

[Initiating Travel Sequence...]

[Adapting body to suit conditions...]

[...]

[You have arrived!]

[Welcome to Cupid!]

He appeared in a wide private bedroom near the top of a pale stone castle-like structure.

The room was built for comfort and control at the same time.

Soft pink-white light came from crystal panels set into the walls.

The floor was dark polished stone.

At the centre stood a massive bed dressed in black and rose-coloured sheets. The air smelled faintly of perfume and metal.

Supreme Leader Poppy was on that bed.

She did not look like Daisy. Where the War Commander was athletic hardness over heavy lower curves, Poppy was something more deliberately constructed for attention.

Her skin was the same ghastly pale shade as other Cupidians, but it had a soft silk like texture to it.

She was completely hairless, like the rest of her people, yet a crown of living pink crystal grew directly from her scalp in place of hair, the shards sweeping back in an elegant crest that glowed faintly when she moved.

Her eyes were pure black, large and sharp. Her lips were full and tinted a natural dark rose.

Her body was the part that held the eye.

Tall and long-limbed, with a narrow waist that flared into wide, plush hips and a heavy, heart-shaped ass currently half-raised off the sheets.

Her breasts were large, full, and pale, the kind that moved with obvious weight when she shifted.

She wore nothing but a cascade of thin pink-gold chains that draped between her breasts, around her waist, and along the tops of her thighs, more decoration than clothing.

Every line of her body screamed of pure authority, power, and most importantly, beauty.

Under her, face-down on the mattress, was a man.

Her husband, if the matching crystal band on his wrist meant anything. He was pale and well-built, but the dynamic in the bed was obvious.

A thin pink collar sat around his neck. A matching leash of braided crystal-thread ran from it to Poppy’s hand.

She had been using him.

His skin was marked with faint flush-prints where her hands and thighs had held him down.

His pure black eyes were half-lidded with a mixture of strain and obedience when Kalon’s arrival broke the moment.

Poppy’s head snapped up. The crystal crest on her scalp flared bright.

"Intruder."

She did not ask questions. She and the collared man moved together on pure trained reflex.

Poppy thrust her free hand forward and released a dense lance of hard-light pink energy.

At the same time her husband, still half on the bed, drove both palms into the mattress and sent a shockwave of kinetic force along the floor toward Kalon’s position.

The two attacks joined into a single joint strike, light and impact fused into one crushing line aimed at erasing whatever had dared appear in the Supreme Leader’s private bedchamber.

Kalon activated Astral Counter.

The skill caught the incoming combined force cleanly, drank the structure of it, and reversed the energy in a single hard return.

Kalon directed the reflected power straight into the husband. The kinetic-light blast slammed the collared man off the bed and into the far wall hard enough to crack the panel behind him.

He dropped to the floor in a heap, consciousness gone, the pink leash tearing free from Poppy’s hand and falling limp across the sheets.

Poppy stared at her downed husband for half a heartbeat. Then her black eyes cut back to Kalon, colder than before.

She reached to the side table, snatched a flat crystal device, and activated it with her thumb.

"Daisy. Priority override. Intruder in my chambers. Respond."

The device pulsed once, waiting for a channel. Nothing came.

Kalon shook his head with a smile spreading across his lips.

"No use. Your War Commander’s already been tamed."

Poppy’s grip on the device tightened. The pink crystal crest on her scalp burned brighter.

"Explain."

"I was in her quarters before I came here," Kalon said. "Her armour’s gone. Her invasion confidence is gone with it. She’s not coming to save you."

For a moment Poppy simply looked at him.

Calculation moved fast behind the anger in her black eyes.

The decorative chains across her naked breasts rose and fell with a controlled breath. On the floor, her husband remained unconscious. The leash lay useless on the bed.

Kalon kept his stance open and his hands visible.

"Sit down," he said. "I came here to talk. The invasion of Veylora ends. We can do that with words, or we can do it the hard way. Your choice."

Poppy’s rose-tinted mouth curved into something that was not a smile.

"You enter my bedchamber. You strike down my husband. You claim my War Commander is broken. And then you tell me to sit."

She opened her hand.

Pink light gathered above her palm and stretched upward in a violent column. When it solidified, she was holding a sword almost as tall as she was, a massive single-edged blade of condensed rose crystal, thick along the back, wicked along the cutting edge, humming with power.

The weight of it should have been absurd in one hand.

She held it with ease.

The chains on her body rung as she stepped off the bed and onto the stone floor, bare feet silent, naked body marked only by jewellery, and the enormous pink sword rising into a ready guard.

"Talk is finished," Supreme Leader Poppy said. "Now you prove you deserve to stand in this room."