Power Bestowal was an ability I had read about that high-level heroes could do. A standard hero tended to have strengths built around two purposes. The first purpose was working in a party. The second purpose was self-sacrifice. Many of the abilities could give a great deal of power, but it usually involved injuring or giving something of oneself in the process. It stood to reason that Harem Power Bestowal would work in the same way toward your harem.

In short, I could weaken my own body to gift strength to my harem. This was on top of all the other various benefits they were already receiving thanks to being slaves and harem members. However, it stood to reason that as a harem master himself, Roth was similarly providing his girls’ benefits simply for their connection to each other. However, usually, those benefits were symbiotic, where this required a sacrifice of my strength.

I had already been weakened by cutting off a piece of my soul a few days ago, so as soon as the skill took effect, a feeling of exhaustion ripped through me. At the same time, all of the girls suddenly seemed to be strengthened. In a way, it worked a lot like Calypso’s Blessing. There, the dungeon points I gained were distributed to the others in my party at the time. Rather than dungeon points though, it took away my stats and divided them up among the girls.

They were able to move faster and fight better. Whether they understood that the strength was coming from me or not, I didn’t know, but they all immediately took advantage of the strength I was giving them. In that respect, the battle that had been overwhelming at first ended up breaking even once again. As long as I could lend them my power, we still had a chance. I couldn’t give up now. We had come so far.

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At that point, I saw a woman walking through the crowd. It was the lioness queen! She had started to casually move forward. As my girls went to block her, her lionesses immediately moved to prevent them. With every movement locked down, I could only watch as she casually slipped through the crowd. Her tail whipped back and forth, and she looked every bit like a lion slowly moving on a weakened prey. Knowing that I was the prey gave me a complicated feeling. She had somehow anticipated it and had been waiting for this moment.

As she drew closer, a small smile formed on her face. “Poor Deek Deekson. I’ve said it before, but you are a failure. Your harem is supposed to be your strength, but they can’t even lift a finger to protect you. Look at you here, giving everything, you have to them, and still, they failed you.”

Her words were loud enough that they could be heard by everyone. My girls started to fight harder, but even with my strength, the others were able to block their movements every time. An occasional attack was made, but the queen easily blocked them, and the attacker was awarded for their inattentiveness with a strike to the back. I wasn’t able to heal them in my current state, so they were quickly accumulating wounds.

“You think… what you have can even be called a harem?” I responded through clenched teeth. “Do you even love King Roth? Does he even love you? Does he even respect you? You kill and step on each other, in a state of constant battle and fear, all for the affection of a man that couldn’t care less.”

“You wouldn’t understand.” She scoffed, but her eyes looked uncertain for just a moment.

“This is just a perversion of a harem. In the same way that dungeons corrupt the lore, this harem lore has also become corrupted.”

“Are you done?” Her eyes flashed angrily.

“Not yet!” I pulled out my last card. “Alysia, are you ready?”

“I-I’ll do my best!”

“Soul Merge!”