Liam woke up feeling like a completely different person.
The morning sunlight filtered through the massive windows of the safehouse penthouse, casting a warm glow over his skin. He sat up in the luxurious bed and immediately noticed the sheer weight of his own body. He was not sluggish. He was incredibly dense.
Every muscle fiber in his arms, chest, and core felt like tightly coiled steel cables.
The agonizing freezing process Vespera had subjected him to last night had forcefully broken his E-Rank physical limitations, rebuilding him into a vessel capable of handling true destruction.
He swung his legs out of bed and stood up.
He did not bother reaching for a shirt. His body was running entirely too hot as his shadow core constantly worked to maintain his new muscular density.
He walked out into the main living area, expecting the quiet calm of an early Sunday morning.
Instead, he found Liora standing at the kitchen island. She was wearing a pair of comfortable sleep shorts and a fitted tank top, humming softly as she waited for a kettle to boil.
She turned around with a bright smile to greet him, but the words completely died in her throat.
Her blue eyes widened as they locked onto his bare chest.
The transformation from yesterday was impossible to ignore. His previously lean frame was now packed with highly defined, dangerous muscle. The dark runic tattoos of his shadow magic faintly pulsed just beneath the surface of his skin, tracing down the sharp v-line of his lower abdomen.
Liora took a sudden, staggering step backward and completely missed the edge of the counter. She knocked a silver teaspoon onto the floor with a loud clatter.
"Good morning," Liam said, his voice carrying a deeper, resonant hum that seemed to vibrate right through the air.
"You are not wearing a shirt," Liora squeaked out, her face instantly turning the color of a ripe tomato. She quickly bent down to pick up the dropped spoon, desperately trying to hide her thoroughly flustered expression.
"My internal body temperature is currently elevated," Liam explained clinically as he walked over to the refrigerator.
He opened the door and pulled out a bottle of chilled water. "The new cellular structure requires a massive amount of caloric energy to stabilize. I will likely need to consume three times my normal food intake today."
Liora slowly stood back up, clutching the spoon to her chest like a protective shield. She forced herself to look at his face, carefully avoiding letting her gaze drop below his collarbones.
"Are you feeling any pain?" she asked, her healer instincts fighting a losing battle against her racing heart. "That tempering process looked completely agonizing. I wanted to stop her."
"It was necessary," Liam replied, unscrewing the cap and taking a long drink. "And the results speak for themselves. How are you feeling? You were exposed to a heavy amount of ambient elemental clash yesterday."
Liora shifted her weight from one leg to the other, wincing slightly as a sharp cramp shot up her thigh.
"I am mostly fine. My lower back has been incredibly stiff since I woke up, and my legs feel a little heavy. Probably just stress."
A glowing golden window instantly materialized right next to the refrigerator.
[System Medical Alert!]
[The Consort is incorrect. She absorbed ambient Frost-Shadow residue during your extreme tempering session. The conflicting energies have settled directly into her sacral meridian, causing severe mana stagnation in her lower body.]
[If left untreated, the cramping will escalate into temporary paralysis.]
[Task: Perform a localized mana extraction. The primary nodes are located on the upper gluteal fold and the lower lumbar curve.]
[Translation: You need to give her a deep tissue massage right on her ass. I do not make the biological rules, Sovereign. I just enforce them. Proceed with the groping.]
Liam stared at the text.
He slowly lowered his water bottle, closing his eyes for a brief second to summon the patience required to not set the kitchen on fire.
The System was deliberately weaponizing magical anatomy to force him into increasingly scandalous situations.
"It is not stress," Liam stated flatly, opening his eyes to look at her. "You absorbed elemental residue. It is causing a blockage in your lower chakras."
Liora looked worried, rubbing the side of her hip.
"A blockage? Can I flush it out with my starlight?"
"No. Starlight will only aggravate the frost residue," Liam explained, keeping his expression a perfect, unreadable mask. "I have to draw it out manually using my shadows. The procedure is entirely painless, but it requires direct acupressure on the affected meridian nodes."
"Okay," Liora agreed quickly, trusting him completely. "Where are the nodes?"
"Your lower back," Liam paused for a fraction of a second, calculating the most clinical way to phrase his next sentence. "And your upper glutes."
The silence in the kitchen became so heavy it was practically suffocating.
Liora’s blush, which had just started to fade, roared back with a vengeance.
She stared at him, her mouth opening and closing a few times as her brain completely short-circuited.
"My... you need to massage my butt?"
"The sacral meridian spans the entire pelvic region," Liam corrected, though it did absolutely nothing to make the situation sound less insane. "If we do not clear the stagnation, you will lose feeling in your legs within the next three hours. Please lie face down on the couch."
Liora looked at the leather couch in the living room, then back at Liam’s intensely serious face, and then down at her own very short sleep shorts.
She swallowed hard, her heart hammering wildly against her ribs.
She knew he was telling the truth because the cramping in her thighs was already getting worse, but the thought of his large, incredibly strong hands pressing into her lower body was sending an overwhelming wave of heat straight to her face.
She slowly walked over to the couch and lay down on her stomach, burying her burning face into a decorative pillow.
Liam approached quietly.
He knelt beside the couch, completely ignoring the obnoxious, celebratory confetti falling inside his system window.
"I am going to begin with your lower spine," Liam murmured.
His voice was soft, intentionally lowered to keep her calm.
He placed the warm palms of his hands firmly onto the curve of her lower back, his thumbs resting just above her waistline.
Liora let out a sharp, trembling breath. The contrast between his scorching body heat and the cool leather of the couch was deeply intoxicating.
Liam channeled a tiny sliver of freezing dark mana into his fingertips and began to knead the tight muscles along her spine.
The moment his shadows made contact with the stagnant residue, the painful cramping in Liora’s back instantly melted away. A profound, deeply pleasurable wave of relief washed through her entire body.
"Now the lower nodes," Liam instructed quietly.
He slid his hands downward.
His large palms cupped the soft, incredibly sensitive curve of her upper glutes just beneath the hem of her sleep shorts.
Liora let out a soft, highly involuntary moan into the pillow, her entire body arching slightly into his touch.
Liam’s own heart rate spiked.
He was a master of self-control, but he was still a virgin man currently holding a beautiful, wildly flustered girl who smelled like vanilla and pure starlight.
He pressed his thumbs firmly into the meridian points, drawing the foul, stagnant energy directly into his own shadows.
The resulting rush of purified Yin energy flooded his system, making the air in the room crackle with invisible electricity.
Liora felt like she was melting into the cushions.
The incredibly firm, commanding pressure of his hands was sending a thousand butterflies violently fluttering through her stomach. She turned her head slightly to the side, looking up at him through half-closed eyes.
"Is it... working?" she whispered, her voice breathy and entirely devoid of its usual clarity.
"The blockage is clearing," Liam replied.
His jaw was clenched tight, completely focused on regulating the energy transfer and actively suppressing the very human reaction his body was having to the entire ordeal.
Just as Liam’s thumbs dug into a particularly deep knot, causing Liora to gasp loudly, the elevator doors at the end of the hall dinged open.
Vespera Nocturne walked into the penthouse holding a stack of dungeon permits.
She froze instantly.
From her angle, all she could see was Liam, entirely shirtless and incredibly muscular, kneeling beside the couch with his hands firmly grabbing Liora’s lower half while the silver-haired girl made a noise that sounded highly inappropriate for a Sunday morning.
Vespera dropped the permits.
Liam did not move his hands.
He simply turned his head to look at the Ice Queen. "We are performing medical maintenance on a blocked sacral meridian."
Vespera’s face went completely blank, though the air around her immediately dropped twenty degrees.
"Of course you are. Put a shirt on, Cross. We have a dungeon to clear."
had anticipated.