If it isn't patched, it's a Cheat Code, right?
That was the next thought that popped into Li Ke's mind. While he was definitely surprised by this turn of events, it wasn't as if he was completely caught off guard.
After all, Seria had already put him through something very similar once before.
The last time, she had entirely drained his 7 Days to Die levels and perks, leaving him with a fractured version of the Power of the Primordial without any explanation. This time, she had drained his World Power and Energy Points. In all likelihood, this was a repeat of that exact phenomenon.
Li Ke felt his previous hypothesis was likely correct. Certain aspects of his existence—namely things like this World Power—were clearly beneficial to Seria.
To put it more precisely, it was something harvested from other worlds.
And yet—
What is this total lack of moral restraint? It feels way too good...
Li Ke stared at his own hands, analyzing his mental state. He could tell something was profoundly off about him right now.
Currently, he felt a bizarre sense of liberation. It was that specific flavor of reckless abandon—a "screw everything, nothing matters anymore" sensation. It was like knowing a situation had completely blown past the point of no return, freeing a person to finally do all the things they never used to have the guts to do, entirely unburdened by consequences.
It felt like regressing back to early childhood. Free from morality, free from social responsibilities, and free from the constraints of rules. It was a state of pure, unfiltered autonomy—doing exactly what he wanted, precisely when he wanted to do it!
Li Ke was acutely aware of how dangerous this psychological state was. In reality, rules weren't designed to protect other people; they were designed to protect oneself. If he possessed the power to create and destroy universes with a single thought, such a state wouldn't be an issue. But right now...
While Li Ke was lost in thought, Seria's anxious gaze locked onto him. He had been muttering a stream of consciousness about killing, blood, and someone named Kiri. Even though she had long accepted that Li Ke was a textbook playboy, her deep worry and affection for him hadn't wavered in the slightest.
Strangely enough, while she wasn't thrilled about him having other romantic partners, she inexplicably didn't hold it against him...
She couldn't quite rationalize her own psychology. Viewing herself as nothing more than a simple village girl, the only thing she knew how to do was take care of Li Ke and shower him with affection.
"Li Ke, what's wrong?"
Leaning down, Seria gently stroked his hair, her voice dripping with concern.
However, her sudden movement caused her rather generous bust to sway fluidly. Li Ke's eyes instinctively fixated on the motion, a sudden wave of primal desire surging through his chest.
Almost the exact instant that desire manifested, Li Ke's hand moved without a shred of hesitation. He reached out and boldly cupped the soft, plump mounds, squeezing the beautiful weight of her chest to savor the exquisite sensation.
His fingers slipped deliberately against her smooth skin, intentionally catching the sensitive peak hidden beneath the fabric, sending a fierce jolt of electricity straight through Seria's body!
"Ah...!"
Hit by an overwhelming wave of sensory shock, Seria couldn't help but cry out.
With their exceptionally sharp senses, both Ruohua and Roche immediately snapped their heads toward the commotion. What they saw was Li Ke, looking completely serious, resting comfortably on Seria's lap while shamelessly and aggressively fondling her chest.
The corner of Roche's mouth twitched violently, while Ruohua simply slapped a hand over her face.
She was completely speechless when it came to this man.
Seria's face flushed crimson. She clamped one hand over her mouth to muffle her gasps while using her other hand to weakly press against Li Ke's wrist. If they were entirely alone, she wouldn't offer a single shred of resistance no matter what he wanted to do. But out here in broad daylight...
"Li... Li Ke, don't..."
Li Ke, however, didn't feel the slightest bit of shame or hesitation. In his current state of mind, everything else in the universe felt entirely superficial.
"Don't be shy, Seria."
Li Ke sat up smoothly. Extending a finger, he gently and tenderly pressed his index finger against her trembling lips.
"You belong to me. It's only natural that I let you feel my affection whenever and wherever I please. Honestly, if I didn't mind other men catching a glimpse of your beautiful body, I would carry you everywhere, traveling to every corner of the world with our bodies permanently fused as one!"
His eyes burned with absolute sincerity; his words vibrated with pure conviction.
At this exact moment, Li Ke could honestly claim to be the most reliable, trustworthy man alive. Everything he was doing was born from his absolute, unfiltered core desires!
He thought it, so he did it!
"Ah..."
Seria's brain short-circuited. She was simultaneously overwhelmed by his intense sweet-talk and completely thrown off by his utterly unapologetic attitude.
Fused together as one... The clever girl instantly decoded exactly what he meant by that phrase. It was precisely because she understood that her expression turned incredibly complex, her mind grinding to a halt under a wave of sheer bewilderment.
"You... what the hell is wrong with you?"
Sitting nearby, Ruohua couldn't help but knit her brows tightly. It was true that Li Ke was a total playboy and never bothered to hide it. However, through their actual time spent together, she had noticed that as long as a girl didn't show romantic interest in him, his gaze remained relatively clean. Sure, he would steal glances at her chest and hips, but he never stared like a total creep. If she ever called him out on it, he wouldn't push back; he would just sheepishly admit his mistake.
But what was this?
Why had he suddenly shed every last shred of shame and basic human decency?
She felt something was deeply wrong.
Her voice successfully caught Li Ke's attention. Releasing Seria, he smoothly and confidently ran a hand through his long hair. Instinctively channeling a fraction of the mysterious power he had just unlocked, he locked his hair into a perfectly styled, rakish look before finally addressing her.
"Ah, Ruohua. There's absolutely no need to feel bewildered by my words or actions. After all, the person standing before you right now is a version of me that has completely discarded all unnecessary morality and societal constraints."
Li Ke felt absolutely phenomenal. He felt like a flawless, perfect existence. It was only now that he truly understood—everything in this universe boiled down to a simple matter of what he desired and what he did not!
As a true Harem King, his destiny was to ensure that every single beautiful woman on this planet bore his children!
He should be standing on a grand, elevated stage, showering down his boundless essence while a sea of gorgeous women below frantically scrambled to catch every single drop falling from the heavens!
He, Li Ke, was destined to be the one and only Harem King of this planet! The ultimate, supreme male!
The corners of his mouth curled into an involuntary smirk. His smile had transcended pure confidence—it was a display of sheer, unrestrained arrogance. A completely reckless, dismissive aura radiated from his very being.
Ruohua's frown deepened. Li Ke looked exactly like someone whose mind had been corrupted or bewitched by some malignant entity. This kind of mental distortion was incredibly common on this continent; it was the exact reason Ghost Slayers were universally shunned and feared by the public.
They could lose control and succumb to insanity at a moment's notice.
Witnessing this drastic, sudden shift in his personality, she couldn't help but ask, "That... that 'stroke of luck' you mentioned earlier. You didn't happen to inherit some kind of cursed, forbidden power, did you?"
Li Ke understood exactly what she was getting at, but he knew the truth of his own condition.
His core values hadn't magically flipped overnight, and his analytical capacity remained entirely intact. The only difference was that the current him no longer harbored any fear of the unknown, nor did he care about standard ethics. Rather than saying he was being possessed by an external force, it was more accurate to say his true, primal nature had finally been unshackled.
"Well, looking at it from that perspective isn't entirely wrong. But you see, the current me is simply the true self—stripped of all the artificial rules society forced upon me, entirely indulging in my own desires. So, how about it? Want to join my harem, Ruohua? Honestly, I've wanted to worship your legs and hips for a long time now! And your rack is absolutely top-tier!"
Li Ke praised her features with total, absolute sincerity.
Ruohua pressed her lips into a thin line. She had always walked through life relying on her overwhelming martial strength. Whenever people looked at her, they acknowledged her power first—which was exactly how she wanted it.
Yet Li Ke was completely disregarding her strength, treating her as if she were nothing more than a pretty face and a piece of meat...
"You are really pushing your luck," Ruohua growled, tightening her fists into white-knuckled balls.
"Oh? So you want to go a round with me? Let's get one thing straight first—I am not a man who treats prisoners kindly. Even without this power liberating my inner desires, I have never been the type to show mercy to those who choose to make themselves my enemy."
Li Ke found her tense, bristling demeanor highly entertaining. He was entirely ready to keep teasing her. After all, in his current state, he did exactly what he wanted!
"No. I have absolutely no intention of fighting you right now."
But Ruohua flatly refused.
Though she walked the path of the Iron Fist style—which primarily emphasized a rigid, unyielding resolve—she could see that a conflict with Li Ke right now was completely pointless. More to the point, her current self was simply no match for him.
Charging forward blindly like an idiot right now would do nothing but give him exactly what he wanted.
She practiced the Iron Fist style and valued relentless forward momentum, but a firm fist didn't mean she lacked the common sense to adapt or retreat. Her definition of "forward momentum" meant that no matter how grueling the road became, she would ultimately fulfill the goals she set for herself. No matter what obstacles blocked her path, she would expend every effort to find a way to overcome them.
It did not mean acting like a reckless hothead, throwing immature strength against an overwhelmingly powerful enemy.
That was called being stupid, not practicing the Iron Fist!
If she threw her life away like that, the things she truly wished to protect and the goals she actually needed to achieve would all come to an abrupt end. A fist wasn't swung merely to satisfy one's own ego or desires; it represented a person's life and their ultimate philosophy toward it.
Unless, of course, the sole meaning of your existence was to lose yourself in the pure thrill of battle.
"What a shame."
Seeing Ruohua turn her head away, Li Ke simply spread his hands. Even though he had been "liberated," his underlying moral framework and core personality hadn't actually been rewritten. He had simply become incredibly impulsive, operating on a wavelength very similar to being heavily intoxicated.
He still firmly held onto his baseline principle: If you don't make yourself my enemy, and you aren't consenting, I won't force myself on you no matter how beautiful you are. Unless someone actively chose to become his foe or committed truly atrocious crimes, he wouldn't cross that line.
Mainly because he felt doing that was completely devoid of class.
As for the people he would ruthlessly take by force? Those would almost exclusively be the types who richly deserved a firing squad anyway. If someone was a monster whose death would be a net positive for the world, Li Ke figured it would be an absolute waste to let a spectacular body go to the grave, so he would gladly step in for a bit of "waste reclamation."
For instance, female bandits, tyrannical and bloodthirsty princesses, high-ranking villainesses from evil organizations, or beautiful women who just wanted to watch the world burn—Li Ke wouldn't show a single shred of chivalry or mercy to any of them.
"Huh. Looking at it from this angle, I'm a textbook superficial visualist. I'm literally willing to let a beautiful woman off the hook just because she's hot."
Li Ke stroked his chin, openly criticizing himself out loud.
Normally, he would never utter such words to another living soul—even if he secretly agreed with the sentiment in his own heart—because he still valued his reputation.
But right now, he could speak the truth with absolute confidence, entirely devoid of shame.
Because the current him possessed zero capacity for embarrassment!
"Therefore, let Hendon Myre serve as the very first stop on my grand ascension to becoming the Harem King!"
Li Ke suddenly stood up straight inside the horse carriage. The aura radiating from his body exploded exponentially. As the sheer volume of raw power surged violently through his veins, the clothes covering his torso completely shattered, tearing to ribbons and scattering into the wind to fully expose his highly refined, muscular physique!
Basking in the open sunlight, he raised his fist high toward the heavens and threw a fierce punch straight into the sky!
"I, Li Ke, the supreme Harem King! Shall return to the heavens above and reclaim my rightful throne!"
As the words left his mouth, a staggering, cataclysmic shockwave of energy erupted from his fist, soaring directly into the sky. Under the utterly dumbstruck gazes of everyone present, the beam of light punched clean through Arad's thick cloud cover, detonating right against the lower boundary of the Great Magic Circle to form a breathtaking, incandescent firework display.
The sheer magnitude of this raw power instantly paralyzed both Ruohua and Roche with profound shock. Even the horses pulling the carriage collapsed straight onto the dirt road, trembling so violently they didn't dare move an inch. Li Ke didn't feel anything wrong with his display; he simply continued to aggressively siphon the collective power born from that ocean of player resentment.
However, as the energy flooded into his soul, his ears were suddenly assaulted by the overlapping, screaming voices of countless disgruntled gamers, and a swarm of chaotic desires began to sprout rapidly within his core.
"Kiri..."
"Reinforcement..."
"New Year's Pack..."
"Epic drop..."
"Why... why is it just crafting materials again?!"
"MY WEAPON!!!!"
The primal urge to ruin people, the raw desire for slaughter, the manic impulse to completely flatten Arad, the desperate urge to massacre the game developers, the burning hatred to murder lucky players, alongside a boundless, screaming curse against fate itself!
While there were a few positive wishes scattered in the mix, those wholesome thoughts were entirely trivialized and swallowed whole by the overwhelming, roaring tide of pure negative emotion!
Li Ke couldn't help but dig a finger into his ear to scratch it. He found the noise incredibly annoying. What was the point of all this slaughter and destruction? Staying focused on claiming more beautiful girls for his harem was the only real business he cared about!
Besides, what was the point of slaughtering everyone? How was he supposed to collect beautiful girls if they were all dead?
If it were up to him, he would gladly support and sustain the entire global population, actively encouraging a massive baby boom! Even if those beautiful women didn't marry him, he would still be genuinely thrilled, offering them his warmest blessings to go forth and populate the earth!
And why?
Because when beautiful women have children, the offspring are statistically far more likely to be gorgeous!
The more people there were in this world, the higher the absolute number of beautiful women! And the more beautiful women there were, the more beautiful daughters they would produce! He honestly wished the world's population would break past trillions—and the more stunning they were, the better!
Any idiot who only obsessively hyper-focused on the currently existing beautiful women was completely unworthy of the title of Harem King!
A true sovereign possessed a grand vision that spanned a thousand generations, backed by an eternal, absolute ambition to conquer all of existence!
Those who merely knew how to drag existing beauties into their own arms, while slandering, murdering, or extorting the ordinary men who happened to marry pretty women, were nothing more than common thugs. No matter how many women they managed to hoard, they would never be a true Harem King!
"Excellent!"
Having fully crystallized his ultimate ambition and solidified his grand oath, Li Ke suddenly roared at the top of his lungs. He clenched his fists tightly and shouted toward the horizon.
"The very second we arrive in Hendon Myre, I'm going to sleep with a hundred women and claim a hundred virgins right off the bat!"