Demonic Pornstar System novel Chapter 891

Chapter 891: Stark Difference

The last time Kaiden walked into this building, he came in a taxi.

Four nobodies in casual clothes, no escort, no cameras, no crowd.

They sat in a waiting room and drank complimentary water until a receptionist called their names. Two guards and a scientist in a back room. An orb that told them what the world already assumed: that they were nothing.

Today, the Awakened Association’s main branch had been transformed into something between a fortress and a stage.

The glass-and-mana-steel facade was draped with banners bearing the Association’s phoenix crest alongside the seal of the United States, and the security cordon extended three blocks in every direction, manned by Association fighters in full combat regalia who seemed to have been pulled off active dungeon rotations for the occasion.

The crowd stretched from the barricades to the far side of the street and three blocks deep in both directions, packed so tight that the Association fighters manning the cordon had given up on maintaining lanes and settled for maintaining breathing room.

People stood on cars. A group of university students had climbed a traffic light pole and were hanging off it with one hand while filming with the other.

Kaiden tapped with his mind’s eye, heard the familiar click of the stream interface activating, and a notification pulsed across millions of subscriber feeds at once.

➤ Valhalla’s Sinners: [LIVE]

He walked.

The stairs to the main entrance were wide, shallow, and lined on both sides by Association Awakened in ceremonial armor who stood at attention as they climbed.

Each step brought the noise up another degree: the chanting, the camera shutters, the raw, unfiltered roar of thousands of people who had been waiting for this moment since the day a taxi dropped four nobodies at a side entrance and no one thought to look twice.

"Kaiden!!!" Halfway up, a girl in the front row of the barricade screamed his name so hard her voice cracked. "I love you!!!"

His girls climbed behind him, unhurried, backs straight, and the crowd’s volume shifted when it registered what was following him up those stairs.

Six women and a teenager, moving in formation, every one of them carrying the kind of presence that made the armed escort on either side feel ceremonial rather than protective.

Vespera brought up the rear, a few paces behind them all, letting today’s stars shine unimpeded.

Kaiden reached the top of the stairs, paused for one breath to let the sound wash over him, and stepped through the main entrance.

Inside, the building had been gutted for the event.

The waiting room where they’d sat drinking water was gone, replaced by a security checkpoint staffed by eight people who had clearly rehearsed this morning, every motion crisp and practiced.

The hallways beyond had been cleared, lined with officials and staffers who pressed themselves against the walls as Eclipse passed.

Every one of them stared.

At the formation behind him. At Aria, whose silver hair caught the overhead light and flooded the corridor with it, walking with a poise that made the armed guards on either side of her seem like decoration. At Luna, hands in her pockets, purple hair loose, scanning the corridor with flat, bored alertness. At Nyx, whose curves in that outfit drew eyes she didn’t acknowledge and whose spatial awareness was already mapping every exit, every corner, every line of sight in the building.

At Bastet, barefoot on polished stone, gold jewelry chiming with each step as though the desert queen had decided this government building was now part of her court. At Calypso, red-skinned and horned and walking through the seat of human authority like she’d been invited to dinner.

Two monster girls in the halls of the Awakened Association. Mere months ago, the entity reclassification that made this legal hadn’t existed.

Alice kept to Kaiden’s left, chin high, arms crossed, radiating the particular energy of a teenage girl who believed every person in this building existed as an obstacle between her brother and the door. Alexandra trailed half a step behind Alice, hands clasped in front of her, posture perfect, eyes wide but steady.

They were not the same people who’d come here in a taxi.

...

The conference hall was the largest room in the building, and it wasn’t large enough.

Every seat was taken.

Press filled the first twelve rows, cameras bristling from tripods and shoulders and overhead rigs that hung from the ceiling like mechanical birds.

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