"Show me Dominance Aura levels."
The blue pane shifted without ceremony.
[DOMINANCE AURA LV.2
Range: 25 feet. Submissive women feel stronger draconic authority; mild physical arousal in your presence. Weak-willed men experience fear; will actively avoid you. Passive ability – always active
Example: Mrs. Adriana feels warm and wet when you're near, cannot identify the cause.Brett crosses the street to avoid you.]
Phei snorted softly. Subtle. Insidious. The kind of effect people blamed on vibes or bad moods or mercury being in retrograde.
Then his eyes slid down.
[DOMINANCE AURA LV.3]Range: 40 feet. Submissive women feel overwhelming draconic authority; moderate physical arousal; desire to submit. Weak-willed men experience terror; may suffer erectile dysfunction in your presence. Average-willed men feel intimidation; avoid confrontation
Passive ability – always active
Example: Mrs. Adriana's panties soak the moment you enter the room. Brett is physically unable to achieve an erection around you. Anderson stutters while speaking to you.]
Phei went still.
Brett. Impotent. Just from proximity.
He let that image bloom fully, luxuriantly. Years of cheap shots, smug grins, shoulder checks in hallways, the quiet satisfaction Brett took in knowing he'd always been stronger, louder, more wanted.
Reduced to a nervous wreck whose dick filed for conscientious objector status the moment Phei walked into the room.
Poetry. Actual, honest-to-God poetry.
And it didn't stop with the weak ones. Average-willed men too. That meant the pressure bled outward, caught more people in its wake. Paradise boys who'd once sneered would suddenly find excuses to be elsewhere. Voices lowering. Spines bending just a little.
He exhaled slowly through his nose.
"Cucklord's Dominance levels."
The system obliged.
[CUCKLORD'S DOMINANCE LV.2]
Married or taken women feel 35% more attracted to you. Partners of marked women experience severe inferiority; may develop anxiety around you. Marked women actively disparage their partners (even subconsciously)
Passive ability – always active
Example: Harold feels inadequate in your presence. Melissa finds reasons to criticize him more frequently.]
Predictable. Cruel in that slow, grinding way that never left bruises but still did damage.
Then—
[CUCKLORD'S DOMINANCE LV.3]Married or taken women feel 50% more attracted to you. Partners of marked women experience crushing inferiority; may avoid you entirely. Marked women become sexually repulsed by their partners. Unmarked women in relationships grow curious about you
Passive ability – always active
Example: Harold cannot meet your gaze. Melissa feels disgust when he touches her.Sienna hypothetically, begins noticing you.]
Phei hissed under his breath as his cock gave an unmistakable twitch.
Disgusted.
That was savage. That was surgical. It didn't just pull women toward him; it burned the bridges behind them, salted the earth so nothing else could grow.
No competition. No nostalgia. No guilt-fueled backsliding.
Just him.
"Jesus," he murmured. "That's not dominance. That's annihilation."
His eyes flicked back to the remaining ability.
"Taboo Multiplier doesn't scale with EXP," he muttered, rereading it to be sure. "Needs actual conquests. Three more to hit level two."
Of course it did. No shortcuts. No grinding rats in a tutorial dungeon. If he wanted that multiplier, he'd have to earn it the old-fashioned way: by doing things society pretended not to want while secretly obsessing over them.
Fine. He was already one-third of the way there.
Which brought him back to the real question.
Which three?
Charm Speech to level three was non-negotiable. That hostile-target penetration alone made it essential. Five percent didn't sound like much until you understood it as leverage, as a crowbar slipped into a sealed door.
And eighty percent effectiveness on aroused targets meant seduction stopped being an art and started being logistics.
Catch Sierra after a fight. Say the right thing. Watch her crumble.
Dominance Aura needed at least level two, maybe three. The range, the pressure, the way it rewrote rooms before he even spoke. Submissive women responding before they understood why. Men shrinking without knowing what they were afraid of.
And Brett?
Yeah. Brett alone almost justified the cost.
CuckLord's Dominance was… tempting. Deeply so. But it was a long game ability, one that scaled with bodies and broken marriages. Right now he had one marked woman and one humiliated husband. Harold was already finished.
Middle-aged, soft, exhausted. A ghost haunting his own home.
That ability could wait until the pile got bigger.
Phei leaned back slightly on the stool, the glow of the system painting his vision in cold blue certainty.
Three upgrades. One decision tree. A future that suddenly looked less like hope and more like inevitability.
He smiled.
So. Charm Speech to three. Dominance Aura to three. Save the rest for later.
He ran the numbers again, slower this time, because optimism had a habit of lying to him.
Three hundred and fifty EXP for Charm Speech. One-fifty to hit level two, two hundred more to claw up to level three. Same cost curve for Dominance Aura.
Seven hundred total.
He had six-fifty.
"Bollocks," Phei muttered.
He leaned back on the stool, fingers drumming once against the marble as the disappointment passed. Not anger. Not frustration. Just recalibration. Dragons, he suspected, didn't sulk. They adjusted.
Fine. Compromise.
Charm Speech to three. Dominance Aura to two. Keep a reserve. Future-proofing mattered more than posturing.
That worked. That was clean. That was intelligent.
"System," he said quietly, voice steady now. "Confirm. Charm Speech to level three. Dominance Aura to level two."
The blue panes stacked neatly in his vision.
[CONFIRM LEVEL UP?]
[CHARM SPEECH: LV.1 → LV.3 | COST: 350 EXP]
[DOMINANCE AURA: LV.1 → LV.2 | COST: 150 EXP]
[TOTAL COST: 500 EXP]
[REMAINING EXP: 150]
[CONFIRM? YES / NO]
"Yes."
There was no flash. No lightning. No cinematic nonsense.
Just warmth.
It flooded his throat, not burning exactly but close—like swallowing hot tea that was just on the edge of too hot. It settled there, sank into his vocal cords, did something to them that he couldn't quite name. He cleared his throat experimentally and the sound came out smoother, richer, more compelling in a way that made even him want to listen.