The Lustful Villain: Every Milfs and Gilfs are Mine!-Chapter 279. I Expected More, and He Knows His Place (That’s A Wise Move, Old Man)
A vein appeared at Therion’s temple.
"Don’t," Elaris said quietly, from the side, though it was unclear whether she was talking to Rex or to her husband.
Therion’s hands moved into the starting position for the lightning magic again, but this time they kept moving, building into a configuration that was significantly more complex. The air around him began to carry the specific charge that preceded a high-output lightning formation.
And then he spoke.
"Thundering Lance of the Ancient Ground!"
’He’s casting the spell’s name now...’
The name of the spell echoed through the courtyard as a distinct event, preceding the actual magic. This was an ancient magic, the kind that had been constructed and refined over enough iterations that a practitioner gave it a title because the title was easier than carrying the full construction sequence in working memory every time.
The lance of lightning that formed was considerably larger than anything Therion had produced before. It was also considerably faster.
Rex allowed the magic to approach him, but only by one meter.
One meter was closer than two meters, but he had spent the last several exchanges reading Therion’s lightning signature, and he knew the exact frequency of the internal oscillation at this point.
The reflection he made was adjusted to match that frequency, so the magic that came back followed the same route at the same speed, but with about fifteen percent more stability than when it first left. 𝓯𝙧𝙚𝒆𝙬𝙚𝒃𝙣𝙤𝒗𝓮𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢
Therion moved swiftly. For his age, he was remarkably fast, aided by his lightning magic, and he managed to evade the return path.
But the edge of it caught the stone bench at the courtyard’s center and reduced it to gravel.
Rex looked at the gravel.
"You’re going to want to replace that," he said.
Lily, from the side, had stopped writing again and was watching with both hands over her mouth. Elizabeth had her arms crossed and wore the expression of someone revising something significant.
Therion breathed once through his nose. Then he started casting again, and this time both hands moved in different sequences simultaneously, which meant he was running two workings in parallel rather than one.
"Earthen Cage of the Morr Bloodline!"
’They have their own magic that is related to their family’s bloodline, huh,’ Rex thought while also studying this world’s magic.
The ground around Rex erupted in six directions, thick columns of reinforced earth interlocking at the top like fingers closing into a fist. The interlocking mechanism was the part that was different from the four-column design.
It meant that destroying one column transferred structural support to the remaining five rather than collapsing the whole system.
It was a much better design.
Rex stood inside the cage and looked up at the interlocked ceiling.
"This is still not enough," he said.
He put ice into all six interlocking nodes at the same time. He did not use one entry point; instead, he employed six simultaneous ice workings, each precisely targeted at the specific load-bearing node of each column. This parallel operation required maintaining six separate magical constructs in an active state at the same time.
All six columns lost their nodes in the same instant.
The cage came down outward instead of inward, which meant it fell away from Rex rather than onto him, and he stepped out of the debris the way someone steps out of a room.
"I’ll be honest," Rex said, "the Morr Bloodline cage is a solid design."
"The interlocking node system is good thinking, but... the problem is that if all six nodes fail at the same moment, the load redistribution has nowhere to go."
He looked at Therion.
"You should rebuild it with staggered node positions. Harder to hit simultaneously."
Therion gritted his teeth.
"Are you..." Therion said, very carefully, "...giving me advice during our contest?!"
"Just saying," Rex said. "You looked like you wanted to know."
The vein at Therion’s temple was more visible now.
Elaris made a sound that was technically a cough.
Therion brought his hands up again, and this time the configuration was the largest one yet, with both elements running in parallel, earth and lightning feeding into each other in the dual reinforcement structure that Rex had broken earlier.
But this version was different. He had adjusted the integration node position, splitting it into three smaller nodes distributed across the structure’s length instead of one central point.
He had listened to the advice.
Rex noticed this and found it genuinely interesting.
’Good old man, indeed.’
"Converging Storm of the Nightwing Patriarch!"
The result of this effort was the most impressive work Therion had produced during the engagement. The dual-element construction combined the heavy earth part with the fast lightning part, and the three spread-out nodes created an ice counter that couldn’t work like it did before.
Rex ran the interaction analysis in real time.
Three nodes, distributed. Each one was smaller, but the distribution meant that disabling one still left two active nodes carrying sixty-six percent of the load, which was enough to maintain the working’s coherence.
Disabling two simultaneously was possible but required a significantly more complex parallel operation than the six-column cage had needed.
Disabling all three simultaneously required something that was less about magical output and more about reading the exact resonance frequency of each individual node and matching an ice crystallization to that frequency precisely.
Rex spent about two seconds doing that.
He executed three simultaneous ice workings, each calibrated to a distinct resonance frequency and aimed at a separate node, all while sustaining the wind barrier he had established against the physical mass component of the workings.
The three nodes failed.
The workings shattered with a deafening noise, the kind that made the air itself seem to pause for a moment.
And then what followed was an eerie silence that enveloped the courtyard.
Rex stood in the middle of it, not breathing hard, looking at Therion with the expression of someone who had found this interesting and was being honest about it.
"Okay," Rex said. "That last one was actually good."
"The distributed node adjustment was the right call." Rex crossed his arms. "I told you the staggered design was better."
"YOU," Therion said, and stopped.
He started again. "You are the most..."
He stopped again.
Rex waited.
"Infuriating," Therion finally said it, with the exactness of someone who had picked that word from a list of options and decided it was the most accurate.
"People keep saying that," Rex said. "I don’t know why, but... I’m very easy to deal with."
Diana, standing at the edge of the courtyard, was truly captivated by how Rex handled the contest against one of the strongest mages in Aethelgard. Meanwhile, Theo, observing from a distance, noticed her expression, which only deepened his frustration.
Therion took a deep breath in through his nose and then exhaled as if he were completely reorganizing his strategy from scratch, since every method he had attempted had already been catalogued, countered, and critiqued.
His hands came up one more time.
This time, he did not speak the name of the magic.
This time, he released the strongest magic he could using all his elemental skills, without any complicated structure or design meant to confuse anyone trying to understand it.
Just pure, direct magical force—an approach that didn’t rely on cleverness but rather on sheer overwhelming power.
It was the right strategic decision, and Rex recognized it as such.
He matched it.
As the fight went on, Therion’s magic of work got easier. This was the right strategic move against an opponent who could read structural complexity by making things less complicated and rely on raw output instead.
Rex countered with raw output using fire magic, reaching the pinnacle of Elemental Mastery—a level without limits. When their two outputs collided, everyone on the training ground felt the pressure wave created by the clash of their powerful magic at their peak.
The wave of pressure moved outward.
Therion stood his ground. Rex kept his.
And then Therion let the magic go.
It wasn’t a significant event when it occurred. It represented the deliberate release of someone who had conducted a thorough evaluation during an extended engagement and had determined that releasing was the appropriate course of action.
He stared at Rex for a long time, like someone who had thought they would be in a different place at the end of this engagement and was changing every model that depended on that thought.
Therion lowered his head. "I yield."
Everyone was shocked to hear that Therion had given up so easily, especially Theo, who was on the verge of crashing out again. This marked the first time that one of the strongest mages in Aethelgard couldn’t finish a fight in less than ten seconds.
"Why did you yield?" Elaris asked while walking close to him.
"He knows every counter to my moves, and I figured it was better to yield before he really attacks me for real," Therion said, laughing. "It was honestly a good fight, and it makes me want to train my magic and skills again!"
Elaris smiled hearing her husband say that. "Rex Rexilion is indeed an interesting guy, huh?"
"Yeah, and I know he’s going to be a great mage indeed."
"Tell me your terms, Rex Rexilion!" Therion shouted. "Right in front of everyone here!"
Rex stared at him. ’That was fucking easy...’
’And it seems like he knows I was about to unleash a magic that could hurt him.’
