Eve stepped ahead and turned to me.

Before [Awakening], she had been a blue-eyed brunette with a healthy body and perfect figure.

Now, she had reached the realm beyond perfection.

Her eyes not only shone with vitality; they drew me to her. Her lips were full, red, delicious looking, begging for me to have a taste. Her hair looked and felt like silk and had become longer, now reaching below her waist. She had no hair other than in her eyebrows and head, and her sexual assets weren't either too big or small. Symmetry defined her, except for the slightly excessively thin waist.

Her class came with specialized equipment too. She had piercings in key locations, a panties-less white garter belt with stockings of the same color, and... a leather collar attached to a metal chain.

She, I realized, had become the woman of my dreams. The Goddess of Revenge hadn't given her just any class.

She wasn't a [Temptress].

Eve was a [Targeted Submissive].

Everyone looking at her tight now was seeing the illusion of everything we physically wanted in another person. The illusion would hold until someone claimed her. When she did, her body would change to fit the illusion.

[Targeted Submissive] was a legendary class that should only be available on the Seventy-Fifth Floor. Just like the God of Beginnings had claimed, Eve's existence was against Tower Law. Just not the way he had thought.

At least the Goddess of Revenge had that going for her. She hid the class from the God of Beginnings somehow. Else nothing would've prevented the gods' ire to befall on Eve; not even me.

"I wish to be yours in any way you would have me," she said, grabbing her chain and offering it to me with two hands.

Some people were already approaching to claim her for themselves.

So, I quickly grabbed the chain.

Electricity shot throughout our bodies. Our souls connected. I could feel her in the corner of my mind the same way she could feel me.

 

Soul Link established
Type: Dominant-Submissive
Subtype: Feeling sharing
Dominant party: Black Reaper
Submissive party: Bianca Eleanor Evans

 

Her class was the first to be affected by the soul link.

It knew what I wished of her. What I truly wished. And it molded Eve.

The chain disappeared, but everything else remained as her body changed to look just like illusion had. The piercings, garter belt, and stocking also materialized out of nowhere.

Then a business suit grew around her, one that couldn't be more formal or puritan. I wasn't prone to sharing what was mine.

From now on, she could never take her clothes off unless it was to maintain her body clean for me or to serve me. Nobody else would be able to take it off her either, not unless they had a strength attribute higher than mine. At least there was that.

Next, the class rearranged her attributes the way I thought it better for a First Councilor, no matter how the class set them before.

Also, she would have an easier time getting skills that fit my will for her future, and a harder time getting skills that went against it.

Or so it should be.

At once, all my social attributes stopped working on her.

I wasn't having any of that slave-like shit.

I liked my women submissive, yes, sue me. But it had to come from them. They had to see the value in submitting to me, they had to want it, they had to submit themselves. I didn't like mindless slaves or people forced into obedience.

Real women attracted me. Women with real feelings, real ambitions, and real desires of their own.

Well, nobody could take her physically unless she abandoned her class on her own. It sucked for her, but it was my nature to not share. I couldn't fool a soul link any more than I could fool myself.

But she had a way to have someone else; she only had to give up the power of her class for that. It was even romantic in a way. A genuine love drama. It also made it easier for her to wait for me if she wanted. It was alright for her, all things considered.

As my hold over her disappeared, her eyes cleared. And by my own wishes, the artificial temptation her class held over me disappeared. I still liked that she was top model material though.

The proof that I truly didn't want to shape her into my will was a physical one. I could tell she liked her own image and even subconsciously, I wanted her to be however she wanted. Her face returned to what it had been before, except she would never have skin issues anymore. A gift of mine.

And her hair was kept long. Like I said, sue me.

Not a terrible deal for me. Eve was beautiful, she was waiting for me, and I would know if she ever let go of her class. I wouldn't be cheated on.

I believed I got the better part of the bargain.

That's until I felt it.

I was the second one affected by the soul link.

My social attributes weren't affecting her anymore, so when her feelings for me came through the soul link, they surprised me. More than surprised. She didn't love me, I could tell that much. But she was more than interested. She had a very real crush on me for who I was, not for what my attributes did to her mind.

That... was even more flattering now. It even made me wonder for a second if I should get to know her, to see if I could like her for who she was, not only her body. If I should invest in her.

But only for a second.

I immediately crushed the feeling, remembering Sophie.

Unfortunately, Eve was the third one affected by the soul link.

The same way I could feel all she did for me, she could feel all I did for her — or anything that stood between us.

To begin with, she felt the overwhelming physical desire I had for her. I desired her even before and now that she had become the embodiment of my dreams? I simply couldn't desire her more than that.

She felt it like a physical hit. She had to step back and take a deep breath. Her face flushed.

Then came the way I had just felt flattered, followed by the curiosity about her, followed by...

Sophie.

That was a mess.

The most divine love and the most terrible hate, the greatest happiness and deepest despair, the determination set in stone and the recurring doubts.

Eve felt it all.

She grasped her heart with both hands and fell to her knees.

Then she cried her heart out.

It wasn't over, for something else stood between us.

Next came all the suffering from my years in the Tower. All the desensitization. All that had molded me into something that just didn't deserve love.

I loved Sophie, and I used her as the only justification to not pursue other women, even to myself.

But deep down, I knew the things I had done both in my crazy resets and in my pursuit for a way out for humanity...

Those things set me apart.

I fought for humankind, but I wasn't human anymore.

I couldn't allow any woman to share this terrible burden with me.

And Eve was feeling each of the things I had felt in my eight hundred years together with vague glimpses of why I felt that way. For every single one of them were part of me and stood between us in my heart.

She looked at the skies and wailed in misery and desolation. Then she looked at me. "How... How can you live like this?"

But I didn't hear her, for her own feelings were now drowning me.

I expected disgust, revulsion, even hoped for pity. But nothing of that came.

No, instead, I felt so much compassion it made it hard for me to breathe. It choked me. I grasped for air, drowning in her feelings.

I felt to my knees.

Our eyes met.

And then the world became chaos.

For my village had seen a [Targeted Submissive] for a few moments, and that sung to their blood in a most primal way.

They were already coming to kill me and take Eve for themselves. But even if they weren't doing that, I couldn't allow them to spread the secret of her class to anyone. Today, they all had to die.

The goddess' revenge couldn't have been more brutal.

I danced with death.

Meanwhile, Eve cried.

 

---

 

I stood covered by dirt in front of a couple hundred tombstones. A guilty-ridden Eve had asked me to bury them and I consented.

"So many people dead because of me," Eve said beside me, tears running down her cheeks.

It felt like she hadn't stopped crying since her [Awakening].

"No, because of me and the Goddess of Revenge," I replied somberly. "Don't ever think this is your fault."

"As you wish, my Master," she said.

"You know I don't want you to treat me like that," I said coldly.

She answered physically first, by holding my hand. "We both know you do. You fear this is because of my class. It isn't. I love you, I want to be belong only to you, and I believe having me call you this will be good for you."

I had broken her.

After I killed everyone in the village, Eve had kept crying for the better part of an hour before simply looking at me and calling me her Master. That was the only way she had found to cope with both everything she had felt from me and the slaughter around her.

I hadn't expected her to react this way. Sophie never did when we linked our souls. But I had never been in a dominant-submissive soul link either, so maybe this was the reason.

She clenched her hand on mine. "I crave for more than your pity, my Master. But it'll do for now."

When I looked at her, there was pity. A lot of it. Enough for me to tear up.

I had never broken someone's mind like that before. Eve was gone, replaced by a woman that wanted nothing more than my happiness.

She had told me it was her natural reaction. That even on Earth she had been a sucker for self-demeaning men who were so much more than they thought. That she just had a motherly instinct that couldn't resist a man in suffering.

But I knew better.

My mother was a drug addict that hit me for breathing. I had seen how my friends' mothers treated them, but it was nowhere near what I was feeling through the soul link.

No woman could love like Eve's broken mind loved me.

No one could.

Even what she called my obsession for Sophie paled in front of that, which was the irrevocable proof of her love being artificial.

"I can. I do." she whispered.

She couldn't hear my thoughts, but sometimes my feelings of doubt were clear enough. I was used enough to soul links that it didn't bother me when she replied to them. But it couldn't go on.

"Don't reply to my feelings," I said. "It'll make people suspicious. We can't allow anyone to even have the thought of you being a [Targeted Submissive]. Entire races would go to war for it."

"Is it that bad?"

"Eve, if anyone finds out, you'll be seen as one of the rarest living trophies in the Tower. Your class can turn you into the perfect partner for anyone in the Tower. Gender, sex, race, anything about you can change. Whoever holds your leash can shape you to their will in a way that defies reality itself. No matter how low someone's perversion might be, your body can take it without killing you."

She felt aroused at that, but I could tell she was directing it at me. She wanted me to do the perverted things she was imagining to her.

I sighed. "The Goddess of Revenge knew what she was doing. I know myself well, so I took the chain believing it wouldn't hurt you, that you could release yourself from the class any time you wanted. That I wouldn't be enslaving you to me. But that didn't happen."

"I'm thankful for that," she blurted.

Ignoring her, I continued, "And in knowing myself, I also know I can take you leaving me, but I can't do it myself. Not when I feel so much love from you. It doesn't matter if I know they are fake feelings, that removing the soul link would be enough for them to go away. I like it and deep down I hope they are true. I can't stand facing the harsh true if it comes from my own actions. I'm a monster and I know it. I allow my heart to rule over my mind."

Eve laughed for the first time since everything had happened. She moved to stand before me, facing me. Her smile was like the sun piercing the clouds in the sky.

"She was the one who ruled over revenge, wasn't she?" she said playfully.

I knew she was purposefully taking my thoughts away from things that made me suffer to think about. And I was thankful for that.

"So she was," I replied with a smile before my eyes turned to the graves. "All my work was for naught. Everything is gone. I could have at least five extra points to each attribute for now if I went a different route too."

There was no reason in lying to Eve or hiding my thoughts from her. She had felt me at my worst and thought she loved me. Some offhand comment valuing my objectives more than the lives of hundreds wouldn't scare her away.

The only ways for her to betray anything I told her were mind control or the death of one of us. And if someone was mind controlling her, I had bigger problems than some secrets about my personality becoming public knowledge. Even mind reading was impossible because of her legendary class.

"Not for naught. You got me," she said playfully, but I could feel the need of validation from her.

I guess I owed her at least that much.

"And as much as I feel conflicted and guilty about it, I'm glad to have you in my life." Then I had an epiphany. "Bianca."

My village was gone, and with it both my plans for it and Bianca. No reason to keep calling her Eve.

The fresh smile she gave me, and the feelings of gratitude and fulfilment that came through the link were much more than I deserved for such a simple gesture.

I had been sincere too. I couldn't leave her behind; she would have to climb with me. And I would enjoy having someone climbing with me who I could trust for once. Someone to share some hardships and victories with. It would be fun.

At least until I met Sophie.

That could break Bianca even more.

I had no idea what to do about it.

"Don't anguish about the future," she said. "We can cross whatever bridge you're thinking about when we came to it. Focus on what you can do now, my Master. You said something about teaching me to hunt?"

I nodded. "Let me rearrange your attributes and we can get to it."