The Lustful Villain: Every Milfs and Gilfs are Mine!-Chapter 194. I Said I Don’t Know and That Was the Biggest Lie I Told All Week
The third day began with the same quality as the last days, which wasn’t a big change from the other days but made the light look a little clearer and the air move a little more noticeably.
The group completed the morning’s assessment work quickly and effectively, demonstrating that they had found their operational rhythm and were working at a pace that this rhythm allowed. Aisella finished cataloging her botanical collection by comparing the specimens she had pressed with the ones she had prepared for transport.
She held one of them up to the light—a broad-leafed specimen with a vein structure that didn’t match anything in the existing regional profiles—and tilted it slightly, the way she did when she was deciding whether something deserved a second classification entry or whether the first one had been correct.
"This one’s going to cause problems," she said, not to anyone in particular.
"Good problems or bad problems," Rex said, without looking up from the supply manifest he was working through.
"The kind that make three other researchers argue with each other for two years and then cite me when they finally agree." She set it down. "Good problems."
"Miss Elizabeth will enjoy that."
"Miss Elizabeth will start the argument," Aisella remarked, her tone filled with a fond certainty that suggested she knew the person being described very well and had no complaints about it.
With that, she returned to the press.
Rex thought Elizabeth would read the research record she was making twice to make sure she understood it correctly.
Talyra, meanwhile, was finishing the creature population survey for the western shoreline from the rock shelf at the camp’s edge, cross-referencing her count tallies against the behavioral notes she had taken the previous morning with the focused efficiency of someone who was already mentally drafting the final section header.
"The sub-pack distribution doesn’t align with the territory markers," she murmured, her pencil gliding across the page. "It appears they’re sharing a range."
"Territorial overlap," Rex said.
"Without conflict indicators," she looked up. "That’s not standard for this species class."
"You’re sure about the conflict indicators?"
"I’ve been watching them for three days, Rex."
"Then it’s not standard," he said. "Write it up exactly as you observed it."
"Let the committee figure out why."
Talyra looked at him with the expression she used when he said something she agreed with but hadn’t expected to agree with, and then she went back to her notes. "That’s unusually good advice."
"I have my moments."
"You have many moments," Aisella said from across the camp, without looking up. "You just don’t announce them."
Rex didn’t say anything to that. He finished the manifest and moved on to coordinating the morning’s final collection schedules.
This added to the coastal pattern data they had gathered over the first two days and made a distribution map that was much more detailed than anything in the existing profile.
Rex helped with both, mostly by handling the logistics that sped up the work of the other two—organizing supplies, coordinating schedules, and ensuring the survey and data collection moved at the pace the morning allowed.
At one point, Talyra looked over at him from the rock shelf while he was reorganizing the transport cases with the focused economy of someone who had already worked out the optimal arrangement and was simply executing it. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝕨𝕖𝗯𝚗𝚘𝕧𝕖𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝕞
"Do you ever do anything slowly?" she asked.
"When it’s worth doing slowly," he said.
"And packing supply cases isn’t."
"Packing supply cases is a logistics problem, and of course, logistics problems have optimal solutions." He closed the first case. "Doing it slowly doesn’t make it better."
Talyra considered this. "What is worth doing slowly?"
’Probably sex.’ He answered, but in his mind.
Rex didn’t answer immediately. He moved to the second case, and for a moment the only sound was the ocean and the morning wind and the quiet scratch of Aisella’s documentation pen.
"The things you only get once," he said.
Talyra looked at him for a moment, then looked at the ocean, then went back to her survey with the expression of someone who had received an answer and was going to spend a while deciding what to do with it.
He spent the morning with the island’s geological map running in the background of his awareness, with a secondary layer tracking the underwater shelf where five dormant figures were waiting for the signal he was going to send at noon.
The morning was lovely. It was the kind of morning that three people experienced after working well together for three days, during the final phase of their project, as they sensed the end approaching.
There was a natural warmth to that kind of morning.
Aisella paused her work at one point, looked up at the tree line where the light was doing something specific with the canopy, and said, "I’m going to miss this island."
"You say that about every island back then," Talyra said.
"I mean it about every island."
"So this isn’t your first time doing this, is it?" Rex asked. "Now I understand why both of you are so experienced."
Both smiled at that—a small, genuine expression that didn’t require an audience—and returned to their own work.
Rex allowed himself to immerse himself in the moment. He fully embraced the experience, feeling the genuine warmth and enjoying the excellent company around him.
There was no conflict between savoring the present and being aware of what would occur at noon.
He was adept at balancing both realities simultaneously.
...
At eleven-fifty, he sent the signal.
’Time to execute the plan now before it’s too late...’
It was a short command, a short instruction sent through the Underlayer relay. It said to wait twenty minutes and then approach from the eastern waters.
Two went to the shelters, two to the open ground, and one to the supply cache where the gauntlets were kept.
He put the communication sphere back where it belonged.
At noon, they sat at the camp’s work table, finishing the last of the food they had brought that morning when they noticed movement in the eastern tree line.
These figures were not the constructs; they were not the same type of creature as the pack elder.
Rex’s Foresight revealed that the figures were moving in an organized manner, were human-sized, and were coming from the water rather than the island’s interior. They were moving quickly.
"We got company," Rex said, and the way he said it made both Talyra and Aisella get up at the same time.
Before Rex could finish the word, Talyra had her bow on her shoulder. Aisella’s hands went up in the diagnostic position, and what the diagnostic showed her made her face go still in the way it always does when the information is important.
"Wait... something’s wrong," Aisella said. "They’re not organic."
Rex said, "No."
"They’re not constructs either," she said. "The energy signature is—"
"Undead," Rex said, and he said it with just the right amount of alarm for the situation.
It was enough to make him sound credible but not so much that it made him sound like someone who had lost their operational footing. "Same signature as the attack on Kaelira’s dungeon."
"No way... it’s those undead that attacked Kaelira...?!" Talyra’s face changed from fear to something else, something that was the specific hardness that came before fear turned to action. "How many are there?"
"For now... I can only see five," Rex said. "Spread into formation, with two moving towards the shelters."
The first two emerged from the eastern tree line at a pace that suggested they were operating under specific instructions, rather than reacting to a threat. Their movement embodied the qualities Rex had aimed for: credible, deliberate, and focused on defined targets.
The target of the first two was the shelters. Talyra read the angle and moved without prompting. Rex watched her take position on the rock shelf, demonstrating the same focused skill she had displayed in every battle on this island.
"I’ll handle those two!" Talyra said.
For a moment, he held two perspectives simultaneously: the operational picture of the unfolding situation and the specific quality of Talyra’s performance—someone exceptional, showcasing her abilities under real pressure. He allowed her to handle the two undead approaching the shelters.
He was responsible for the two undead targeting the open ground, and he addressed this by using the full-radius field application that had become his standard approach in contained engagements. He lifted both of them off the ground with the same effort he had exerted to control the guardian constructs the previous day.
Additionally, there is a fifth individual moving towards the supply cache.
"Rex...! The fifth one!" Aisella shouted to get his attention.
"I’m trying!"
Rex watched it cross the camp’s perimeter with his attention divided between the four he had contained and the one that was still moving, and the fifth reached the supply cache in the time it took the engagement’s initial phase to play out, and it picked up the gauntlets from the cache with the specific intention Rex had instructed.
"It took the gauntlets...!"
And then it moved back toward the water.
Talyra targeted the two shelters with two arrows, using the close-range precision provided by her position on the rock shelf, and both targets went down with clean efficiency. Rex had come to expect from her.
"Stop that bastard before our treasure gets taken...!" Talyra said.
Aisella had gone to the highest point of the camp and was running the passive diagnostics on the full engagement. She was keeping track of the energy signatures of all five undead and adding her own assessment of the threat picture to the information Rex was using.
"Why did the undead want to steal that gauntlet?" Aisella asked, her expression reflecting confusion.
Rex answered. "I don’t know for sure..."
