The Lustful Villain: Every Milfs and Gilfs are Mine!-Chapter 212. Meeting Apollo With New Identity (Our Battle is Going to Be Legendary)
Rex looked at the assembled undead army.
Three hundred and eleven constructs stood in the open ground north of Aethelgard’s walls in the early hours of the morning, and every single one of them was oriented toward him.
Demon King Kael Vrael stood at the back, his presence distinct from the others, not only in size but also in the quality of undead awareness that powerful constructs retained; this awareness included a remnant of command-level consciousness, which made him more than just a tool or an enemy.
"Let’s just hope I didn’t destroy all of Aethelgard, as there are some women I wanted to taste. However, as long as the useless reincarnator and apostle are dead, that’s good enough."
Rex looked at all of them for a long time.
"Listen up, undead minions!" Rex shouted. "Today is the day where we ARE going to cause some destruction everywhere by killing and destroying!"
"No need to hold anything back tonight," he said, and his voice through Xavier’s face and the skull mask had the quality of the Undead Bringer, a voice that wasn’t performing anything and wasn’t asking.
"There are no formations you need to perform, and also no approach patterns."
"All of you go over the wall, through the gate, and destroy everything that stands in your way." Rex pointed at them all. "Don’t cluster together!"
"Spread out and keep them on their toes."
He looked at Kael Vrael at the back of the formation.
"Vanguard from the eastern approach, and everyone else from the north and west!"
"We’ll start moving in sixty seconds!"
He turned toward the city wall, and the skull mask caught the moonlight for a moment.
"Let’s go, and fuck them all without mercy!"
...
The guards on the north side of Aethelgard’s outer wall had been there for the usual four-hour shift. They had been there for the previous three hours and fifty minutes without any problems, which is what made the last ten minutes the most dangerous.
The first two went down before either of them understood they were under attack, because the attack came from the direction they faced away from. The undead had emerged from the emergency drainage outlets in the wall’s foundation, which Rex had mapped hours earlier using the Earthen Authority’s substrate reading; attacks that come from behind a fortified position do not provide any warning.
The third guard was able to shout half of the time before the fourth pulled the alarm lever with both hands, sure that this was the only thing that mattered.
The alarm that went off in Aethelgard’s warning network was loud and clear. For two hundred and forty years, the city had used three bell tones followed by a long horn blast to mean only one thing: an enemy force of scale had broken through the outer perimeter.
HONKKKKKKKKKK!
As Rex walked through the gate that the undead had just broken open, he heard it from the street level of the northern district. He felt the city wake up around him, with lights coming on in windows, voices starting, and armored feet moving toward the walls.
By the time the first defensive response units got to their posts, the undead were already inside.
They didn’t fight in formation because they understood Rex’s order not to do it. They spread out across the northern and western districts, forcing the defenders to react and breaking up the city’s response.
Units divided to address multiple breaches simultaneously. The rapid pace of the spread disrupted command chains, resulting in confusion and disorganization among the defenders as they grappled with coordinating an effective response.
Reincarnators, awakened from their sleep, emerged into streets that were already compromised. They faced the challenge of making engagement decisions without having the full picture of what they were up against.
The larger structures impacted the foundational elements of the outer market district, producing sounds of breaking from materials that were designed to endure. The second market bridge was hit directly by a structure the size of a cart horse, but it held on, barely, and the stone dust it let out hung in the lamplight like something lovely.
Three blocks north, a warehouse that had been storing grain for the winter surplus fell down, and the undead that had caused it walked through the debris without stopping.
Rex moved through it all with the calmness that the Undead Bringer’s identity required. He didn’t fight everyone he passed, but he did keep track of everything and move forward, heading toward the areas with the most reincarnators, which the Foresight mapped in a thirty-second rolling window.
He was searching for something in particular.
He found the first reincarnator he wanted about six minutes into the attack, at the crossroads of the second market district street, where fighting had been occurring around a choke point. She was in her late twenties, thin, and quick.
She was working with a system based on fire magic that made the exact signature he had been looking for. It wasn’t the amateur version that showed up as random bursts, but it was the disciplined version that looked like a proper offensive skill set with range and precision behind it.
She had just pushed back two undead with a sustained column of fire when Rex turned the corner. She caught a glimpse of Xavier Xenworth’s face behind a skull mask, his body armored in striped demon plate.
"X-Xavier...?" Her expression shifted, revealing the instinctive reaction that occurs when one encounters something that disrupts their current threat assessment.
"N-No... it couldn’t be! I must have dozed off!" she thought.
Rex utilized telekinesis to accelerate his movement beyond the capabilities of his legs. He swiftly closed the gap between them and seized her arm just as her fire magic was in between discharge cycles.
"I’ll be taking that..." Rex said with the same voice as Xavier’s, which shocked her even more.
In the usual sense, Energy Manipulation does not function as a stealing ability. Instead, it allows one to read the structure of magic as if it were a living system and interact with it on its own terms.
This process involves locating the signature within the operating channel and replicating its architecture before the system’s owner can react to the intrusion.
There was a signature for the fire magic in her system. He found it in four seconds and copied it in six seconds.
[ENERGY MANIPULATION — FIRE AFFINITY COPIED]
[FIRE MAGIC ACCESS: TEMPORARY, DEGRADING OVER ~6 HOURS]
[COMPATIBLE WITH EXISTING ENERGY MANIPULATION FRAMEWORK]
’So this is the real potential of energy manipulation apart from hiding my signature, huh...? Fucking useful.’
The reincarnator looked at him like someone who had just lost something and didn’t know how. Rex let go of her arm and stepped back.
A small flame appeared in his open palm, clean and controlled, burning with the exact temperature and color signature of her system’s output.
"Thank you for your power," Rex said. "I’ll make good use of it and allow you to live with the consequences..."
"Here is my gratitude..." Rex snapped his fingers, and the reincarnator’s bone legs shattered into fragments with his telekinetic power.
He was gone before she could let out a hysterical scream.
From that point on, the attack entered its second phase, in which the undead were not only causing destruction but also actively clearing. Rex used the necromantic link to control the constructs, pushing them into the holes that the defensive response had made by focusing on the wall.
The damage they did in the next twenty minutes was thorough and systematic. The larger constructs caused damage to the buildings in the northern residential area.
Three reincarnators who had been working as a coordinated unit engaged Kael Vrael’s construct in the northeastern corner and discovered, at some cost, that the Demon King’s preserved combat capability was not nominal. Two of the three retreated with significant injuries.
Rex observed the third reincarnator, who chose to hold their position instead of retreating. Someone with that combination of tactical awareness and personal stubbornness was worth knowing about.
Then the Foresight updated, and the information it provided was what Rex had been waiting for.
Apollo Brightsoul was in the western plaza.
He was by himself.
Rex’s heart raced at the thought of finally facing Apollo. He had been planning for this chance, and he couldn’t let it go. He took a deep breath, steeled himself, and flew toward the plaza, ready to fight in a battle that could change the balance of power.
"I’ve been waiting for you, Apollo, and..."
"...I can already tell that our battle will be legendary."
