Urban Plundering: I Corrupted The System! - Chapter 582

Chapter 582: Slice of Life

The vines above them pulsed with bioluminescent rhythm, glowing in sync with their breathing, as though the realm itself had a heartbeat. One tuned to theirs.

Parker lay there, unmoving for a moment, not because he was tired but because he was full. Full in a way he hadn’t known was possible—like some yawning hole in his soul had finally been kissed shut.

Scarlett, draped across him like sin and salvation wrapped in one body, was quiet now, her fingers still sketching circles into his chest like she was trying to memorize the texture of his existence.

“You know,” he said quietly, breaking the silence, “I didn’t go there looking for anything. I was just running. Running from my family just for a few hours, from myself and how I was in my family.”

Scarlett hummed. “And you ran right into me. Unlucky you.”

“Or maybe… lucky me,” he corrected without hesitation. “Because somehow, in the middle of all this madness, I found something real even beneath the pain you caused me. Someone real. Someone dangerous and beautiful and so fucking honest.”

Her eyes flickered up to his, glowing faintly like eclipsed moons. “Don’t romanticize me, Parker. I’ve torn people apart for less than a heartbeat. I’ve bathed in blood and kissed death on the mouth.”

“And yet,” he whispered, brushing her jaw with the back of his fingers, “you’ve held me like I was breakable. You’ve touched me like I was holy.”

Scarlett’s breath caught, her lips parting slightly as if his words had physically unraveled her. She looked away, hiding her face in the crook of his neck.

“You’re dangerous too, you know,” she said, her voice smaller now, fractured in a way that belied her power.

“I always stay,” Parker said, with a softness that carried the weight of lifetimes. “Even when I shouldn’t.”

A breeze swept through the realm then, carrying the scent of impossible flowers—blooms that only blossomed in the presence of soulbonded desire. The bed beneath them shifted again, morphing into a shallow pool of warm, luminous water. The glow climbed up their skin, painting them in celestial hues: deep violet, starlight blue, crimson-gold.

“I think this place is alive,” she murmured.

“It is,” he said. “But so are we.”

And then she looked at him with that same expression she’d worn when she’d first bitten into his lower lip and whispered, “Mine.” A look that said she’d fought too many wars to ever beg again—but she would, if he asked.

A look that said she’d kill gods to keep him safe—and if he left, she’d burn entire pantheons just to feel again.

“I’ve never loved before,” she said suddenly, voice bitter and broken at the edges.

Parker said nothing.

So, she continued, fingers tightening around his.

“But I loved you in not just Bloodlust. I loved in hunger. I loved because it was a weapon. But you…” She swallowed, hard. “You made me want. Want something that couldn’t be taken. Couldn’t be controlled.”

“And that scared the shit out of you,” Parker said gently.

She nodded.

He rolled, slowly, until she was beneath him again, and her breath hitched as his forehead came to rest against hers.

Her lips quivered, and he kissed them softly—not like a prince, not like a god, but like a man begging the universe to let this last.

The Omni Nexus Realm trembled around them, not in destruction, but in resonance. Two souls—chaotic, carved by trauma and time—finding stillness in each other. Not perfect. Not healed. But seen.

And as they sank into the glowing water, bodies pressed together, mouths hungry with devotion, the cosmos outside screamed with envy.

Because even in all its infinite stars, it had never felt something this raw, this real, this eternally damned and divinely loved.

***

“This is fucking insane,” Parker muttered, watching Scarlett lean over the edge of a floating crystal platform to peer down at what looked like an endless void filled with singing whales made of pure light. “We’re literally in a dimension where physics went to die, and yet you’re trying to pet the monster sea creatures.”

“They’re beautiful,” Scarlett said, not moving back from the edge even though one wrong step would send her tumbling into infinity. “When’s the last time you just… looked at something beautiful without thinking about how it could hurt you?”

The question hit him harder than it should have. Parker joined her at the edge, close enough that their shoulders touched, and realized she was right.

“About seven lifetimes ago,” he said honestly.

She glanced at him, those red eyes catching the light from the singing whales below. “That’s depressing as hell.”

“Yeah, well, immortality’s a bitch like that.” He bumped her shoulder with his. “You get paranoid after the first few times someone tries to kill you for cosmic reasons.”

“I tried to kill you for very personal reasons,” Scarlett pointed out with dark humor. “Does that make it better or worse?”

“Honestly? Better. At least it was about me specifically.”

They stood there in comfortable silence, watching light-whales breach through dimensional barriers like they were waves. The realm had this weird habit of being both completely chaotic and strangely peaceful at the same time.

“You know what’s fucked up?” Parker said eventually.

“Most things. Be specific.”

“I should hate you. Like, genuinely, bone-deep, want-to-watch-you-suffer hate you.” He turned to face her properly. “You tortured me for months. Conditioned me like some kind of psychological experiment. Turned pain into pleasure until I couldn’t tell the difference.”

Scarlett’s expression didn’t change, but he caught the slight tightening around her eyes. “I know.”

“But I don’t. Hate you, I mean.” Parker ran a hand through his hair, surprised with his own emotional stupidity. “I should, but instead I’m standing here thinking about how good you look with whale-light in your hair, and wondering if you’d let me kiss you without it being some kind of power play.”

“Parker—”

“And the really fucked up part? I think you’re just as confused as I am.”

Your gift is the motivation for my creation. Give me more motivation!