My Taboo Harem! - Chapter 224 - 224: Dragon's Molt Card
Phei took a deep breath as he closed Valentina’s door behind him.
Softly. Carefully. Like a man leaving a crime scene—which, depending on how you looked at it, wasn’t entirely inaccurate.
The kind of crime scene where the only victim was decorum, the only evidence was rumpled sheets and the faint, lingering scent of sweat, sex, and the sort of satisfaction that made bad decisions feel like divine intervention.
The hallway of the 80th floor stretched before him: clean lines, muted lighting, the kind of corporate elegance. Very Sovereign Tower. Very on-brand.
He’d just learned something interesting tonight.
Unless they had their own homes or families inside Paradise or Downtown Paradise, all Sovereign Tower employees—particularly those hired from outside the golden gates—were given their own rooms in the building.
Rooms.
In a building where the cheapest unit cost more than most people made in a lifetime.
Most of the staff stayed on the lower floors: housekeeping, maintenance, the small army of invisible people who kept a hundred-story monument to wealth running smoothly without ever being invited to enjoy it.
But the employees who worked the top floors—the ones who had access to the penthouse levels, who knew which billionaire ordered his coffee black and his mistresses brunette, who could theoretically sell secrets worth millions—they stayed on the 80th floor.
Kieran. Valentina. The other trusted few.
Close enough to be on call twenty-four seven. Far enough from the residents to maintain the polite fiction of separation.
When you thought about it, it was really generous of Sovereign Tower.
Or, if you’re the cynical type—and Phei had spent seventeen years perfecting cynicism the way other people perfect yoga— it was a velvet leash.
Live here for free. Eat here for free. Build your entire life inside these glittering walls. And if you ever think about leaving, about taking what you know to a competitor or a journalist or anyone else who might actually pay attention…
Well.
You’d be leaving everything.
But that was the cynical view. The view of someone who’d spent most of his life being suspicious of every kindness because kindness usually came with strings attached, hooks buried in the chocolate, poison in the gift horse’s teeth.
Phei wasn’t that person anymore.
Mostly.
He chose to see it as generous. Chose to appreciate that people like Valentina—who’d come from outside Paradise, who’d built herself from nothing into one of the elite trainers—had a home here. A good home. A safe home.
Even if that home was technically owned by people who could buy and sell entire countries like they were trading Pokémon cards.
Baby steps toward optimism, he told himself. Don’t go crazy.
Speaking of employees with rooms in the building…
Calistra.
The ice-cold receptionist from his first visit. The one who’d looked at him like he was background noise and found even that mildly disappointing.
He hadn’t seen her since.
She worked the front desk, which meant she was somewhere on the lower floors most of the time. Their paths didn’t cross naturally—he came in through the private garage now, took the private elevator, existed in a completely different orbit than the ground-floor staff.
But he wanted to talk to her again.
Why?
He wasn’t entirely sure.
Or maybe I just like the challenge.
Ice queens were interesting. He had a type, apparently.
File that away for later, he decided, pressing the elevator button. Find out if she lives here. Find an excuse to run into her. See if she’s beautiful, interesting, good, and willing.
The four criteria.
Can’t collect if they don’t meet the criteria.
Wait, no. Not collect. Wrong word. Creepy word.
Can’t… pursue? Court? Woo?
Fuck, what is the non-creepy way to say “add to the harem”?
The elevator arrived with a soft chime.
Moving on.
The doors slid closed, and he was alone with his reflection in the polished metal—and the card in his hand.
The card.
He’d almost forgotten about it in the aftermath of… everything.
It was dark. Obsidian-black with an iridescent sheen that shifted when he tilted it, like oil on water under moonlight. But the texture was what made it unusual—raised ridges covered the surface in overlapping patterns.
Scales.
Dragon scales.
The card looked like it had been carved from the hide of something ancient and powerful, something that breathed fire, hoarded gold, and laughed at the concept of mortality.
Which, given what it represented, was probably intentional.
[ITEM: DRAGON’S MOLT CARD]
[DESCRIPTION: Takes Host’s current physical foundation and applies a x5 multiplier. Training adaptations, muscle development, bone density, neural pathways—everything the Host has earned through effort will be quintupled and permanently integrated.]
[WARNING: The x5 upgrade involves SIGNIFICANT PAIN and potential loss of consciousness if Host cannot handle the stress. Host is STRONGLY ADVISED to use this item in a safe, private environment.]
[ADDITIONAL WARNING: Seriously… This is going to hurt.]
[ADDITIONAL, ADDITIONAL WARNING: Like, a lot.]
Phei stared at the warnings.
Then stared some more.
“Significant pain.”
“Potential loss of consciousness.”
“This is going to hurt. Like, a lot.”
He tilted the card again, watching the iridescent scales catch the elevator light and throw tiny rainbows across his knuckles.
The thing practically smirked at him.
Oh, you thought the dragon thing was just aesthetic? Cute.
He exhaled through his nose, half laugh, half sigh.
The system wasn’t usually this emphatic about anything.
It had watched him nearly die on a rooftop and responded with quest notifications while cheerfully slapping him with a 100-points debt—like a collections agency run by sadists with a sense of humor.
It had observed him seduce his aunt and offered helpful tips in the same dry, clinical tone it used for reminding him to drink water. It approached most life-threatening situations with the emotional investment of a bored accountant reviewing expense reports.
But this?
This warranted three separate warnings.
Fuck.
Phei turned the card over in his hands, feeling the raised scales catch the elevator light like tiny obsidian teeth. Each ridge felt alive under his fingertips, warm, almost pulsing.
He remembered the pain from his initial transformation. The way his cock had—
No.
Don’t think about that.
You survived that. Barely. While screaming like a man being slowly vivisected by someone who really hated men. And that was just one body part.
This was his whole body.
Every muscle fiber. Every bone lattice. Every nerve ending screaming in stereo. Every cell rewriting its own goddamn constitution.
x5.
He was already stronger than he’d been two weeks ago. Already faster. Already more. The Dragon Rise training combined with the system’s stat boosts had taken him from charity case who gets winded carrying groceries” to impressive physical specimen.
But this would be different.
This would be more.
And it was going to hurt like absolute hell.
Why am I doing this again?
The answer came immediately, automatic, drilled into muscle memory:
Because he needed to be stronger. Because the Legacies weren’t playing parlor games anymore. Because the women he loved deserved a man who could protect them—not just fuck them senseless and hope the bad guys got bored. Because weakness was a luxury he couldn’t afford anymore.
Because dragons didn’t stay small.
They grew. They molted. They burned away what they were to become what they needed to be.
Poetic bullshit, the pragmatic part of his brain muttered. You’re about to voluntarily enter a pain cocoon because a video game system told you to. Next you’ll be eating Tide Pods for the XP.
Shut up, he told that part. Nobody asked you.
He’d already decided where.
Not the gym—too exposed, even at 3 a.m. Not the master bedroom—he didn’t want Sierra or Maddie waking up to him writhing naked on the floor screaming about his skeleton trying to escape his skin.
Not the main bathroom on the first floor—too close to common areas, too likely someone would hear and come running with questions he couldn’t answer while convulsing.
The second floor. The secondary bathroom. Private. Enclosed. Soundproofed enough (he hoped) that screams wouldn’t carry up to the third.
Please, he thought, please let my dick be spared from this round.
The first transformation had been localized. Agonizing but focused. He’d been able to grit his teeth, ride the wave, survive it one screaming inch at a time.
If this hit everywhere at once?
If his cock decided it needed another glow-up?
A man could hope.
A man could also buy lottery tickets and expect to win the jackpot while getting struck by lightning on his way to cash it.
Same energy.
The elevator slowed.
Phei looked at himself in the reflection one last time.
Seventeen years old. Hair falling across his forehead in that careless way that somehow looked deliberate.
Purple eyes that glowed faintly in the dim light—a reminder that he wasn’t fully human anymore, hadn’t been since the system bound to him on that rooftop and decided “congratulations, you’re a dragon now, try not to die immediately.”
He’d come so far.
He had further to go.
Alright, Dragon, he thought, gripping the scaled card tighter until the edges bit into his palm. Time to molt.
The elevator doors opened on 98.
****
Five minutes later, Phei stood in the secondary bathroom on the second floor.
He’d stripped down to nothing—partly because he didn’t want to destroy several thousand dollars’ worth of clothing when his body inevitably decided to expand, partly because if this transformation changed him as dramatically as he suspected, he wanted to watch every new ridge, every new line, every new inch of himself appear in real time.
Also, if he passed out naked on the heated marble floor, at least he’d be alone.
Small mercies.
[DRAGON’S MOLT CARD]
[Ready to activate?]
[Y/N]
