Leveling Up by Seducing Milfs-Chapter 268. Not a Battle

Rick came downstairs before the meeting, and he saw that the kitchen was occupied.

Zephyra was making tea with the same ease that she did everything else, and the kettle was at the right temperature before Rick could say anything. Sophia was awake and strapped to her chest in the carrier.

She was looking closely at the embroidery on Zephyra’s coat sleeve.

Heinz was at the table eating and reading at the same time, and he didn’t seem to have any trouble doing both. When Rick came in, he looked up with the genuine warmth of a man who had caused a huge corruption explosion the day before, had dealt with it, and was now just being himself again.

Rick thought this was amazing and a little crazy.

"Are you okay, pal?" Heinz asked. "I heard some noise last night, and it sounded pretty bad... well, it’s probably not pretty."

Rick said, "I’m fine, thanks for asking, Heinz."

"You look more worn out than fine." 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ𝓋𝑒𝑙.𝑐𝘰𝑚

"I’m just a little tired."

Heinz thought about this with the same level of interest he brought to most things.

He said, "Some good tea might help," and pointed to Zephyra, the person who was making the tea at the time.

This made it seem like Zephyra was the only person who could help Rick feel better, which was such an accurate assessment that Rick didn’t know how to respond.

"Don’t read into that," Zephyra said without looking away from the kettle.

Rick said, "I-I wasn’t."

"You probably were... the perfect one eye can’t lie."

After that, she gave him a cup. The temperature was perfectly balanced, just as it always was when she poured it.

They stood in the kitchen. Sophia moved from the embroidery to Rick’s hand, which she took hold of with the grip she always used, decisive and thorough.

Rick didn’t move his hand. Sophia liked this and started looking closely at his fingers, like a researcher who has found a good subject.

Zephyra was watching but not saying anything.

Rick said, "So, uh... what did you do last night?"

She said, "Logical elimination of non-magical anchoring options."

"I know that’s what you said, but that’s not what I’m talking about."

She didn’t say anything. Sophia turned her attention to Rick’s thumbnail.

"You sat on the floor for twenty-four minutes." Rick said, "You don’t sit on the floor that long, you know."

"I’ve seen you find a place to sit in some really hard situations, and you always find something that isn’t the floor."

"You needed someone who didn’t have a magical connection like a spirit bond... I was there."

"You were there because you walked across the room and sat down."

She didn’t answer that question directly. She drank her tea and looked out the window for a while.

"I want to tell you something," she said.

"I’m listening."

"When the shape pulled back and the connection broke, I could see something in the pattern of the disconnection through the ward analysis I was still passively running." She put down her cup. "The entity’s structure isn’t just ideological."

"The piece Sebastian took out has grief in it. Not by chance, but by design."

Rick said, "Sebastian called it a belief construct."

"Beliefs based on grief have a different internal structure than those based on ambition or conviction."

"I’ve been studying pre-coalition magical theory for fifteen years, and the structural difference is clear in the fragment." She picked up her folio from the counter where she had left it, apparently before Rick got there.

"Whatever this thing has turned into, whatever it’s been doing for thirty-two years or two hundred years, it started out as something that was hurt very badly and couldn’t accept it."

Rick thought about that for a moment. The shape he had seen through the socket was big, patient, and careful.

It was building surveillance infrastructure, dormant nodes, and stolen identities, and it had been waiting for something for decades and longer.

"Does that change what we do about it?" he asked.

"No... but when you do find it, you should do things differently."

"You will find it eventually." She put the folio under her arm. "Entities built from grief don’t want to win the same way entities built from ambition do."

"They want to be understood and have their pain acknowledged, which is a different kind of vulnerability than you’re used to."

Then she left the kitchen, leaving Sophia alone with him.

Rick stood with his tea while Sophia continued her investigation. He had the wrong warmth in his eye socket and thought about something huge that had been hiding under a dead man’s name for thirty-two years and had been hurt badly at the start of it all, a long time ago.

Sebastian showed up long enough to say, "Affection update... still climbing," and then he left before Rick could say anything.

"There’s not a single notification from the system, which makes me even more concerned now!" Rick said.

Sebastian replied. "It’s on purpose from me. I’ve got to make sure you’re completely safe."

"Asshole."

Sophia laughed, and Rick had never heard her laugh before. It was a small, bright sound that came from the area where Sebastian had just been.

Rick looked down at her. She looked up at him with her mother’s eyes.

"Yeah," he said. "I know."

...

That night, after the Council meeting, Rick sat in his room and tried to find the center of it all, the point where all the pieces came together.

He had been listening to Fredrich’s carefully crafted presentation of half-truths that Zephyra had quietly torn apart at Rick’s side, and it would take him hours to fully understand what he had heard.

His bond with Liora pulsed. She had recovered enough for full communication.

She went to his room. Since the kitchen talk that morning, when word spread quickly through the mansion, she had been thinking about it.

"Grief as a foundation," she said. "Do you know what that means for an entity that has lasted this long in divine terms?"

"Uh... can you please explain it to me?"

She took a seat. "An entity sustained by grief doesn’t have an external power source."

"The grief is the power source... which means it doesn’t need a corruption ritual, or an artifact, or a ley line convergence."

"It sustains itself through the continued existence of the thing that hurt it, because as long as the wound is open, the power remains." She looked at him. "Rick, destruction isn’t the only thing that can really fix it."

"It just makes the grief worse and turns into some kind of grief about the destruction."

"So what fixes it?"

"Resolution of the grief itself... the wound has to be addressed at its origin."

"Whatever it lost or whatever it couldn’t accept." She was quiet for a moment. "That’s not a battle."

"No," he said. "It’s something else."

A knock on the door, and it’s from Carmilla.

"Rick." She spoke in a calm, neutral tone, which was how Carmilla showed that she was in a hurry without scaring anyone nearby. "Fredrich just sent another message, but not to the Council."

She opened the door and showed him the letter. There was no official seal on the paper she held.

"It’s for you," she said. "He wants to meet you alone tonight."

"He says he has something to tell you that he couldn’t say in the session." She looked at him. "And Rick... he says he’s been waiting a long time to say it."

Rick grabbed the paper while looking at it.

The shape had moved away from Fredrich last night and back this morning. Fredrich was now moving without the shape or in a way that didn’t look like a political move.

Or it was the best political move, the one that seemed like something else entirely.

Liora looked at Rick, and then she read the letter.

"Go," she said. "But not by yourself."

He was already thinking about which partner to bring and which ones to leave behind to watch everything else. He also wondered if the grief entity had seen this coming or if it was surprised for the second time in 32 years.

He stood up and folded the letter.

"Liora, come with me..."

"The only one that can purify a strong corruption is you, so that’s why I choose you."