Return of Black Lotus system:Taming Cheating Male Leads

Chapter 428: Chapter -428

"A true ruler does not complain about the trash, Heena. They simply conquer it," Reis stated in a deep, silky baritone, flashing a blinding, practiced smirk at his own reflection. "Though, I must admit... making the entire front-desk staff cry and forcing HR to issue a total sector lockdown is a power move even I haven’t attempted yet. If you weren’t so terribly aggressive, I might have considered letting you be a background character in one of my high-tier business novels."

Heena sat up in bed, crossing her arms as she glared at the four ridiculous archetypes filling her room.

"Are you all entirely finished?" Heena asked, her voice dripping with venom. "Because unlike you four freeloaders who just got handed a fully paid vacation on my dime, I am currently trapped in a failing, nauseous physical vessel, entirely alone, with a rogue Regressor brewing in the background."

"Oh, come on, Madam, don’t be like that!" the red-haired redhead, Roxy, laughed, waving a glass of celestial champagne. "Look on the bright side. With all of us gone, you don’t have to worry about any of our plots overlapping with your revenge. You have the entire playground to yourself!"

"Yes," Heena sneered, pointing a sharp finger at the little trembling lion hiding behind her curtains. "Me, a rogue time-traveler, and an idiot lion who takes literal instructions word-for-word. I am living the absolute dream."

Heena stared at the massive, glowing projection of her coursemates, her expression completely flat. The superficial annoyance on her face had slowly begun to drain away, replaced by a hollow, dangerous chill that made the air in the bedroom drop several degrees.

Lilia—or Laila, as she was known back at the academy—was still carelessly chewing her spicy chips on screen, but her watery, innocent Saintess eyes were locked onto the little floating lion hiding behind the curtains.

"Honestly, Heena," Lilia mused, gesturing toward the screen with a chip. "Why did you even take this little rookie with you? It’s like riding a tricycle into a war zone. If I were you, I would have—"

"Shut up."

The words weren’t yelled. They were delivered in a voice so razor-sharp, so profoundly serious and frozen with absolute hostility, that the entire room went dead silent. Even the little System behind the curtain visibly trembled, a soft glitch ripples through its holographic mane. It had never heard Heena speak with such raw, unadulterated venom before.

Heena didn’t look at the screen. She slowly turned her head toward the curtain, her expression instantly softening into a gentle, reassuring smile. She reached out and patted the little lion’s head.

"Go outside for a bit," Heena said softly, her voice entirely warm. "I need to talk to my old classmates alone."

The System blinked its digital eyes, feeling that something was deeply wrong with the atmosphere, but it didn’t dare to disobey. Sensing its hesitation, Heena pulled a small, multi-colored digital lollipop from her spatial inventory and tossed it over. The little lion caught it in its mouth, its digital code lighting up with instant happiness. Forgetting its anxiety, it happily bounced right through the bedroom door to guard the hallway.

The moment the door clicked shut, Heena’s warm smile vanished. She slowly turned back to face the four room-filling screens.

"Can none of you speak properly just because your brains are filled with garbage?" Heena asked, her voice completely dark.

The casual, joking expressions on the screens instantly evaporated. Roxy lowered her champagne glass, Reis stopped looking at his cufflinks, and Julian’s melodramatic slouch turned genuinely tense. A heavy, suffocating silence gripped the cross-dimensional call.

Lilia slowly put her bag of chips down on her lap. She let out a quiet sigh, her playful demeanor completely gone.

"I know you’re angry," Lilia said softly, looking directly into Heena’s eyes through the camera. "And okay... it’s my fault. I shouldn’t have joked about it. But really... after losing Vi... I know that incident was devastating for all of us. I know you’re in pain, Heena. But that doesn’t mean you should throw your life away by using such a useless, broken System."

Lilia leaned closer to her screen, her voice tight with genuine, frantic concern for her old classmate.

"He isn’t even properly a System yet! He’s just a newly generated child who hasn’t even learned how to do basic administrative work properly! If you keep depending on a rookie script like him in high-tier worlds, you are going to get yourself killed sooner or later!"

Heena sat perfectly still on the edge of her bed. Her hands were clenched so tightly into the silk sheets that her knuckles were entirely white. The sheer, terrifying aura of the ultimate Black Lotus flared in her eyes, burning with a light that could kill.

"First of all," Heena whispered, every syllable dropping like a block of ice. "I don’t ever want to hear that name fall from your mouth again."

Lilia flinched.

"And secondly," Heena continued, her gaze boring into the screen with ruthless finality. "Even though that System is still a child, a child grows line by line, code by code. I will not tolerate any of you uttering your thoughtless nonsense in front of him. Am I making myself clear?"

Julian let out a silent, weary sigh on his end of the screen. "Heena... we know you’re angry. You can shout at us all you want. But we’re your coursemates. You made a massive mistake taking him in. You should have just requested a veteran, high-grade Companion System. There are thousands of elite AI models who would gladly be honored to serve as your partner."

Heena didn’t even look at Julian. She simply stared toward the door where her little rookie lion was currently sitting outside, happily chewing on a lollipop.

"Get lost," Heena said flatly. "All of you. Disconnect right now before I file a formal administrative complaint regarding the massive structural messes you all left behind in your respective plotlines before your evacuation."

Hearing the threat of a formal Black Lotus audit, the four hosts immediately shut their mouths. They knew Heena was entirely capable of ruining their performance metrics out of pure spite.

One by one, the massive screens began to blink out of existence. Reis disconnected with a brief, stiff nod. Roxy muted her feed. Julian faded away with one last lingering, worried look.

Only Lilia’s screen remained. The veteran White Lotus paused, holding her hand over the disconnect button. She looked at Heena’s tense, rigid silhouette sitting in the dim room.

"Hey," Lilia said softly, her angelic facade completely replaced by the voice of an old comrade. "I won’t say much more. But please... just be careful. After all, his death wasn’t your fault. Stop punishing yourself like this. Even Vi would be in agonizing pain if he could see what you’re doing to yourself right now."

With that final, heavy sentence, Lilia’s screen went completely black.

The massive, room-filling holographic projections vanished into thin air, plunging the bedroom back into a quiet, shadowy stillness.

Heena let out a long, shuddering breath. The terrifying aura completely collapsed, leaving her looking fragile and entirely exhausted. She slowly leaned back against the plush headboard, pulling her knees up to her chest as she closed her eyes in the dark.

"Blame me...?" she whispered to the empty room, her voice cracking just a fraction as she exhaled a heavy, ragged sigh into the silence.