The Lustful Villain: Every Milfs and Gilfs are Mine!-Chapter 224. My Plan Has Been Improvised by Him?! What A Win-Win Situation!
Rex stopped two streets away from the edge of the western plaza.
He had been moving toward the remaining scattered undead constructs in the northern district with the intention of managing their shutdown in a way that looked like active combat rather than a dead link’s passive shutdown, because the distinction between those two things mattered for the record of tonight’s events.
Rex stopped to admire the view, which he found increasingly interesting the longer he looked at it.
From where he was standing, at the intersection of two streets in the northern market district, he could see the western sky where the plaza was. Rex had imagined what the sky above the plaza looked like at this hour, after Apollo’s absolute ceiling release, but he hadn’t fully expected it.
The buildings that were still standing were missing their upper parts in a way that spread out from the center of the plaza like a statement. The three that were closest to the release point were only structural exteriors, facades without interiors.
They were standing because stone took longer to process that kind of heat than wood did, but they were standing in a way that would require a lot of careful inspection before anyone would trust them to stay standing.
There were lines of rubble in the east and northwest approach streets that showed where the two had completely fallen.
"Holy fucking shit..."
"I didn’t know that he could do some stupid shit like this, even though I have to be honest that his power is really impressive if he’s in an enraged state."
"But still..." Rex smirked.
Rex looked at everything and made a sound that was very quiet and very real, like someone who was looking at something that had gone above and beyond what they had hoped for in a specific and satisfying way.
"This is just another key for me that I could use to open another fucked-up manipulation trick..."
"That bum played the role of a hero for so long in Aethelgard, and I know for a fact that the one thing they love more than a hero is to witness a hero fail, fall, or die trying.
"Despite everything he’s done for them, they will eventually turn against him for the destruction and casualties he caused."
He laughed.
It was a low, brief laugh he used when something deeply personal and true had just been validated, not the polished version he offered in social settings or the version he shared when he wanted someone else to hear it.
He had meticulously orchestrated Apollo’s catastrophic failure and had also anticipated the surge of rage that would follow.
He had carefully planned the psychological sequence that led to this result, building it over weeks with the patient care of someone who knew that each piece of the structure they were building needed to be put in the right order before the next one could go on top.
What he had not anticipated, specifically, was that Apollo’s absolute ceiling would be this high and even uncontrollable. 𝑓𝑟ℯ𝘦𝓌𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝑐ℴ𝓂
That was not an error in his planning. He had made a cautious estimate, and that estimate had turned out to be incorrect in a way that led to greater destruction rather than less.
This was the direction that caused more of everything Rex was working toward, including increased distrust among the community and a setback in his efforts to rebuild their trust. And Rex didn’t make the social and political effects of what Apollo had just done to the city that trusted him.
Apollo had manufactured them himself, with the specific motivation that Rex had spent weeks cultivating.
Rex let the laugh go on for a while before putting it away.
"Hahahahahahaha...!" Rex then wiped a tear that came from his laugh. "Hahhhh... he just improvised my plan."
"Good enough..."
"Well, anyway."
"I had to take care of things before executing this new plan, which his improvisation caused."
...
He moved to a place outside the undead constructs’ current range, in the dark space between two damaged houses, and used the necromantic link in a way that let him send commands to every undead instead of just one.
The command was simple: withdraw.
Back through the tertiary emergence point in the northern perimeter, back down into the Underlayer burial grounds, and back into dormancy.
All three hundred and eleven of them, in the specific order that minimized the chance of any of the city’s defensive response units identifying where they were going.
The city’s defense units were busy dealing with the aftermath of Apollo. Most of them weren’t even looking at the undead constructs.
The constructs started to move.
Rex watched as the first twenty constructs cleared the northern perimeter wall, utilizing the same drainage outlets from which they had emerged. He sensed that the necromantic link weakened with each construct that descended back below the surface.
It took about six minutes for the whole process to finish. By the time the last construct had cleared the wall, the defensive units that had been keeping an eye on the undead in the northern district were fully focused on counting the dead.
They were too late to stop them.
"Alright... that’s out of the way..." Rex turned south and then teleported. "Now’s the time to become the real Rex Rexilion who does his shit like always."
He arrived at the market district’s third section in the position his foresight had confirmed was clear, which was the shadow side of a supply warehouse that had sustained shockwave damage to its eastern wall but was otherwise structurally sound.
Lily found him before he found the group.
She had a special skill that had been growing since Rex first arrived in Aethelgard: the ability to find him in a crowd or on a dark street. This was because of the telepathic link and the internal sense she had built up over weeks of carefully watching where he was at all times.
She came around the corner of the warehouse with her light barriers still partially active, reduced from their combat configuration but not fully down, and when she saw him, she stopped.
She stared at him.
He stared back. ’Yeah... someone that I want to meet first. Good.’
The look she was giving him was the one that came after a crisis. This look was meant to determine whether the person she was observing was genuinely present and unharmed or merely feigning presence and well-being.
Rex had learned to respect how precise it was.
She said, "You didn’t get injured at all," and it felt like half a question.
"Yup... as you can see with your own eyes," Rex replied. "I’m more than fine."
She walked the rest of the way to him and put her arms around him. Rex let her hug him and put his arms around her.
This was because Lily’s continued embrace after a traumatic event resembled the behavior of someone who had been very frightened but was now demonstrating that their worst fear had not come to pass.
"I heard the explosion," she said into his shoulder. "From three streets away... I felt it even through the barriers."
"I know," Rex said.
"What happened at the western plaza?"
"It seems like Apollo has lost control," Rex said. "His activation reached something I haven’t seen before."
She was quiet for a while.
And then. "Is he—"
"He’s alive," Rex said. "He’ll be on the ground for a while..."
"The individuals responsible for managing the aftermath are already on-site, and it appears he will face significant consequences for his actions."
"The explosion has resulted in numerous casualties, and there are some citizens who may be deceased..."
Lily pulled back slightly to look at his face, performing the same assessment she had when she rounded the corner and finding whatever she was looking for in it.
"Diana is two blocks east with Talyra and Aisella," she said. "Nerith is with them."
"They held the eastern line for about forty minutes before the signal came to fall back."
"Good girl," Rex said, and he meant it.
"Nerith kept asking where you were," Lily added, with the neutral tone she used when she was delivering information she had feelings about but had decided to manage those feelings rather than express them.
"Glad to hear that then." Rex said, "I’ll talk to her."
Lily gave him one last glance with a steady look, then nodded and turned to lead him back to the group.
The streets of the northern market district had the exhausted quality that the streets developed after a long engagement when the engagement was over and the cleanup had not yet begun, the specific stillness of a place that had been very active and was now processing the transition.
Diana was where Lily had said she was, at the wide intersection two blocks east. Talyra, Aisella, and Nerith were all lined up at the edges of the intersection like people who had been holding a position and had gotten the stand-down signal but hadn’t yet fully unwound from being ready for combat.
Diana’s eyes found Rex first when he came around the corner, just like a tactical person’s eyes always found the thing they were tracking. The look she gave him was the one that lived behind everything else she showed in public, the one that said all the things the public version didn’t.
Rex gave her a small nod that said, "I’m here, I’m fine, and we’ll talk later."
She made the sign that said, "I understand, and you’re going to tell me everything."
