Harem Cultivation System

Rosalia’s opponent hit the ground running — literally, sledgehammer already mid-swing before either of them had exchanged a single word, aiming to end the fight in one blow before it could even properly start.

"Ooh, rude." Rosalia caught the hammer’s haft with one bare hand. The impact cratered the ground beneath her boots, sending cracks spiderwebbing outward across the grey plain in jagged lines, but her palm didn’t so much as bruise. "I like rude. Rude means you’re not planning to waste my time with a warm-up."

The bald man’s ever-present smile didn’t waver, even as his weapon shuddered uselessly in her one-handed grip, the steel groaning under a pressure it clearly hadn’t been designed to resist.

"Name’s Bruck." His voice stayed calm, almost pleasant, like a man discussing the weather rather than a fight he’d just failed to win in the opening second. "Enhanced density. Nothing hits me, and nothing I hit doesn’t break. Simple as that. Been that way my whole life."

"Bold claim from a guy whose hammer’s currently stuck in my hand." Rosalia twisted her wrist, slow and deliberate, savoring the moment, and the sledgehammer’s steel head crumpled inward like tinfoil under a boot, the metal folding in on itself with a shriek that echoed strangely across the featureless void.

Bruck’s smile finally slipped, just slightly, the first crack in an otherwise unshakeable facade.

He didn’t waste time trying to retrieve the ruined weapon. Instead, he abandoned it entirely, letting the mangled steel clatter to the ground, and came in bare-fisted, driving a punch straight for Rosalia’s ribs with enough compressed force behind it to have leveled a stone wall three feet thick — the kind of strike that, by rights, should have folded her in half.

It connected clean, no glancing blow, no lucky miss. Dead center.

Rosalia didn’t move an inch.

"...huh." Bruck stared down at his own fist, still pressed flat against her side, waiting for a delayed reaction that never came — no wince, no stagger, not even a huff of expelled breath. "That’s new."

"You’ve got density. I’ve got mass, momentum, and a personal grudge against people who bring sledgehammers to a conversation." Rosalia cracked her neck lazily, rolling her shoulders like she was only now warming up. "My turn to show you what that actually means."

Pink Dao surged up her arm in a bright, crackling coil, the cannon that had wrapped itself there earlier during the plane’s initial assault reforming around her forearm, humming with condensed pressure, before collapsing down into the seven-foot sledgehammer she favored — heavier, cruder than Bruck’s own weapon had ever been, built for exactly one purpose and nothing else.

Bruck’s eyes flicked toward it, and for the first time since the void had closed around them, real hesitation crossed his face.

"Enhanced density," he said, backing a step, testing the give of the ground beneath him for footing, recalculating something behind those calm eyes, "means I can take a hit most people can’t survive. I’ve stood in front of falling boulders. I’ve taken direct hits from A-rank cultivators and walked away laughing."

"Cool story." Rosalia hefted the hammer with a single hand, resting the flat of its massive head against her shoulder like it weighed nothing at all, like it was an extension of her own arm rather than several hundred pounds of condensed Dao and steel. "Let’s see if ’most people’ includes me."

Bruck didn’t answer with words this time. He tried to close the distance again instead, throwing a flurry of strikes meant to overwhelm before she could bring the weapon fully to bear — three, four, five blows in rapid, brutal succession, each one landing with a dull, meaty thud against her forearms, her shoulder, the flat plane of her collarbone.

None of them so much as staggered her. She simply stood there and absorbed each one like a wall absorbing rain, patient, almost bored, waiting for him to tire himself out.

"You done?" Rosalia asked, tilting her head, genuine curiosity in her voice now rather than mockery.

Bruck didn’t answer that either. Instead, he planted both feet wide and drove his fists downward into the ground itself, channeling whatever density-enhancing technique ran through his blood directly into the earth beneath him, anchoring his whole body like a mountain refusing to be moved by wind or tide. Cracks of dark energy spread outward from where his knuckles met the ground, rooting him in place with a weight that seemed to bend the very air around him.

"Smart." Rosalia allowed herself a small nod of genuine respect. "Guess you finally figured out running wasn’t going to work, and figured you’d try not moving instead."

She didn’t overthink the follow-up. She never did. She simply swung, letting every ounce of pink Dao coursing through her arm pour into a single, unbroken arc.

The strike caught Bruck square in the chest, and despite every ounce of anchoring technique he’d poured into the ground beneath him — despite centuries, maybe, of training that grounded stance to withstand exactly this kind of overwhelming force — the sheer, absurd weight behind the blow ripped him clean off his feet anyway. He went skipping across the grey plain like a stone thrown across still water: one bounce, two, three, four, five, the ground cratering with each successive impact, before he finally skidded to a stop in a smoking, crumpled heap at the very edge of the void.

Rosalia lowered the hammer, letting its head rest against the cracked ground with a soft thud, and strolled over to where Bruck lay groaning, barely clinging to consciousness, one arm twitching uselessly at his side.

"Enhanced density’s great and all," she said, planting a boot squarely on his chest, applying just enough pressure to make her point without actually crushing anything, "but it doesn’t mean much if the thing hitting you just plain outweighs the whole concept you built your entire life around. You built a house on rock, thinking that was the safest foundation there was. I brought the mountain that was sitting on top of it the whole time."

Bruck didn’t have the strength left to respond, not even with that infuriating smile of his. His eyes fluttered shut, and his breathing settled into the slow, even rhythm of someone who’d be waking up with a very long list of regrets.

Rosalia stood there a moment longer, arms crossed over her chest, surveying her handiwork with the faint, genuine disappointment of someone who’d hoped for a longer, more interesting fight.

"Well, that was quick." She sighed dramatically, glancing around the featureless grey horizon stretching endlessly in every direction, already bored of the silence settling back in around her. "Nibel better be having more fun than this, or I’m renaming this whole mission the most anticlimactic ambush in recorded history."

With one last look at Bruck’s crumpled form, she let her hammer dissolve back into drifting pink motes and turned toward the fold that would carry her back to the others.

— End of Chapter —