Harem Cultivation System

By the time all four folds collapsed back into the wreckage of the plane’s exterior, Haruki and Ariel had already reunited near the cracked hull, Rosalia was in the middle of using Bruck’s unconscious body as a footrest, and Nibel dropped her own captive unceremoniously onto the growing pile without so much as a grunt of effort, dusting her hands off against her thighs like she’d just finished stacking firewood rather than subduing a trained kidnapper.

"Five for five," Nibel announced, surveying the small heap of unconscious bodies with something close to satisfaction. "Not a single one of them landed a real hit worth mentioning."

"Kagen landed one," Haruki said, rolling a stiff shoulder. "Briefly. It just didn’t stick."

"Semantics." Nibel waved a hand dismissively, already turning her attention toward the scorched section of hull behind him, inspecting the damage with idle curiosity.

"He hit Haruki-sama with his best attack, and Haruki-sama just walked out of the fire like it was a light drizzle." Ariel puffed her chest out with obvious, unshakeable pride, still not letting go of his arm even now that the danger had clearly passed. "I’d say that counts as a miss in every sense that matters."

"You weren’t even there to see it," Rosalia pointed out, stepping off Bruck’s chest at last and stretching her arms over her head with a satisfied groan.

"I heard about it, and that’s basically the same thing." Ariel sniffed haughtily.

Deiee, the Head Air Hostess, finally found her voice again as she stared out at the scene from the ruined section of hull — five hijackers unconscious or restrained in a loose, undignified pile, the fuselage scorched and visibly dented but structurally intact enough to still be flying, and not a single passenger so much as bruised in the crossfire despite everything that had just unfolded around them at altitude.

"I— on behalf of Wayde Airlines," she stammered, straightening her uniform with visibly shaking hands, smoothing down a crease that didn’t actually need smoothing, "I don’t even know what we could possibly offer you that would be equal to this. You saved this entire flight. Every passenger aboard."

"Extra honey bean donuts," Ariel reminded her cheerfully, already counting on her fingers as if tallying up a list only she could see. "We already discussed this before Haruki-sama’s little cliffhanger moment, remember? Honey bean donuts, chocolate cake, a smoothie, that parfait thing—"

"...Right. Right, of course." Deiee nodded, still faintly dazed, clearly still processing the fact that she’d nearly watched her aircraft go down in flames and was now being asked, quite earnestly, about dessert. She reached for the intercom mounted near the cabin wall, already composing in her head how she’d explain to ground control that the Cindre Consortium’s five most notorious operatives had just been neutralized somewhere over open sky by four passengers seated comfortably in first class.

Haruki leaned back against the cracked hull, letting out a long, slow breath now that the adrenaline had finally started to fade from his system in earnest. His Dao reserves ached from the double duty of tanking Kagen’s flame outright and forcing the borrowed rejuvenation trait to work overtime just to keep the technique from costing him more than he could afford — but nothing that a night’s proper rest wouldn’t fix, given time.

"So," he said, glancing sideways at Ariel, Nibel, and Rosalia in turn, taking a mental inventory of each of them — no visible injuries anywhere, not even the faint scuffing that usually followed even an easy fight. "Akiou Prefecture better be worth all this."

"Dion better have a damn good reason for sending us into this mess in the first place," Nibel muttered, arms crossed tightly over her chest, purple eyes narrowing at some point on the horizon only she seemed to be tracking. "A hijacking attempt before we’ve even landed doesn’t exactly scream routine cleansing mission. Routine missions don’t usually come with five hired trait-holders waiting to intercept the transport."

"Whatever the reason is," Rosalia said, grinning as she finally stepped fully off Bruck’s unconscious back, giving him one last idle nudge with her boot for good measure, "I hope it’s got more people to hit. That fight was over way too fast for my taste. Barely got to enjoy myself."

"You say that after every fight," Ariel pointed out, not unkindly.

"Because it’s true after every fight," Rosalia shot back without missing a beat, grinning wider.

The reserve cleansers who’d been hired to protect the plane finally reappeared from wherever they’d been hiding once the danger had clearly, definitively passed, sheepishly helping to zip-tie the unconscious Consortium members while carefully, deliberately avoiding eye contact with the four passengers who’d very visibly done their entire job for them without breaking so much as a sweat.

Haruki watched them work in silence for a moment, arms crossed, his mind already drifting past the immediate danger and toward the larger, more troubling question sitting underneath it, one he hadn’t voiced yet even to Ariel.

*A ransom operation with five trait-holders this coordinated doesn’t happen on a whim. Somebody planned this. Somebody funded it, trained them, and picked this exact flight for a reason.*

*Or somebody knew we’d be on it.*

He didn’t voice the thought aloud — not yet, not with Deiee still hovering nearby and the reserve cleansers within easy earshot. Instead, he pushed off the hull and rolled his shoulders, forcing the last of the tension out of them with a slow exhale.

"Come on," he said, gesturing toward the undamaged half of the cabin. "Let’s get cleaned up before we land. I doubt Dion’s idea of a warm welcome involves us walking off this thing covered in scorch marks and looking like we just crawled out of a battlefield."

"Speak for yourself," Rosalia said, glancing down at Bruck’s crumpled form one last time with something like genuine fondness, the way someone might look back at a mildly entertaining afternoon. "I think I look great covered in scorch marks. Very rugged. Very heroic."

"You look like you got into an argument with a chimney," Nibel said flatly.

"A very heroic chimney."

Ariel laughed, the sound bright and easy against the tension that had only just started to bleed out of the cabin, looping her arm fully through Haruki’s as they made their way back toward the undamaged half of the cabin, leaving the tied-up remains of the Cindre Consortium’s finest sprawled out behind them like discarded luggage waiting to be claimed.

Somewhere below, past the scattered clouds and the curve of the horizon, Akiou Prefecture waited — and with it, whatever mission Dion had deemed important enough to drag them across a continent and straight into an ambush before they’d even had the chance to land.

— End of Chapter —