Chapter 517: 517. She’s Actually Speaking Some Good Shit, And I Kept Listening To Her

Rex had been thinking about Gelion since the canyon. The specific shape of Gelion’s arrangement with the Legion and the second-stratum contacts and the fourteen months of carefully built infrastructure inside Mordecai’s monitoring network had been a thread he’d left unresolved because the expedition had occupied the available attention.

"I fucking forget about that slimy asshole, and... Mordecai isn’t equipped to handle Gelion long-term," Rex said. "He’s a fucking bum... every single fucking time I have to come back into the Underlayer."

"I have to do all the fucking work because all of them are fucking frauds that need to get killed!" Rex said with a high tone. "And not just that... every time they spill some bullshit... it only made my head spin around."

"I know, I know, but hey... about what you said... Mordecai isn’t equipped to handle many things long-term," Lustia said. "That’s not news."

"But the specific problem with Gelion is that he is smart enough to understand that being under observation is a temporary status and patient enough to wait for the window when observation relaxes."

"Fourteen months," Rex said. "He built that network in fourteen months."

"He did," Lustia said. "Which tells you something about how quickly he can rebuild it once you take it apart."

She looked at Rex with the focused, warm attention that she brought to strategy.

"The Underlayer needs a restructuring," she said. "Not a partial one, and also not the kind where you go down, discipline the council, and come back up with Mordecai still nominally in charge of a demon city you’ve been running from a distance."

Rex raised his eyebrows, and for the first time he felt helped by Lustia, who finally showed his worth for the first time with his plan. "Alright... I’m listening..."

"What I meant about restructuring is a real one," she said. "The kind that requires you to be there."

"That requires the Lustful Villain to be a presence, not a rumor." Lustia then grinned. "A genocide to replace those frauds with the real one!"

"And the Legion connection," she said. "There are people in the Underlayer who are Legion contacts and don’t know that their operation has been decapitated."

"They’re still operating, still reporting to relay points that are now dead."

"Those are loose ends," Rex said.

"Those are opportunities," Lustia said, "if you want them, especially the information... it connects to those who currently think they’re functioning normally."

Rex thought about the shape of this. A relay contact who doesn’t know their network is compromised will continue sending information outward and receiving none back.

They will eventually notice the silence, but in the gap between when the network died and when the contact notices, they are a source. ’Holy fucking shit... she’s spilling some good beans right here, and for the first time... I’m almost impressed.’

"I need the second-stratum contacts to confirm their standdown before anything else moves in the Underlayer," Rex said. "If they’re waiting for a signal that the Key situation is resolved and they don’t get one, they’ll assume it wasn’t and act on whatever contingency Gelion built in."

"Which means Gelion built in a contingency," Lustia said.

"Heck. Gelion always builds in a contingency," Rex said. "He’s been doing it for fourteen months in a hostile environment, they said, and not going to lie... he’s good at it."

"You see what I’m trying to talk about, right?" Lustia smiled.

"So you go down," Lustia said. "You resolve the Gelion situation."

"You signal the second-stratum contacts through his network before he can, which means they receive the information from the source they trust rather than from a stranger."

"And while you’re there," she said, "you use the time to address the Legion contacts still operating in the Underlayer, in whatever way best serves the larger plan."

Rex looked at her. "You’re describing a full Underlayer operation."

"I’m describing what’s already overdue," she said.

"There’s also the question of what you tell Mordecai," Lustia said, with the lighter tone she used when she found something genuinely amusing. "He’s been sitting on your instructions for months, pulling gacha rolls for expertise-class demons and restructuring the monitoring network, and he genuinely believes he’s contributing to a plan you’ve explained to him."

"He is contributing," Rex said. "And sometimes it’s gold or shit."

"He is contributing to a plan you haven’t explained to him," she said. "Those are different things."

"For me, honestly... no matter how much of a fraud or bum he is... that Mordecai... is a useful tool," Rex said. "And you know my way of thinking that tools don’t need the full schematic."

"They need enough of it to avoid breaking themselves," Lustia said. "Mordecai has been running a demon city with increasing independence from your direct input, and independence in Mordecai tends to produce decisions that you would not have made."

"I know," Rex said while holding his chin. "I’m thinking right now..."

"The Key reconstruction question," Lustia said. "Elizabeth has the fragments and the resource authorization."

"You’ve told Valentina you’ll work on it... let’s see here..." Lustia raised her head. "What do you actually plan to do for those smartass words?"

"Face it... The Key can’t be reconstructed; they’re just delaying the inevitable," Rex said. "Not by any surface-level magical methodology."

"I read it when I was fucking Elizabeth in the archive room..." Rex starts to remember the books and Elizabeth’s information. "The dimensional compression requires a stable-matter substrate that doesn’t exist in any accessible material on this island."

"However," he said, "it does exist in the second stratum."

Lustia looked at him. "Oh?"

"The second-stratum civilization predates the current divine framework by three thousand years," Rex said. "They built things that the current understanding of dimensional manipulation doesn’t have the context for."

"If the Key was originally created using second-stratum methodology, which the material composition suggests, then the only path to reconstruction goes through a second-stratum contact."

"Which you now control," Lustia said slowly.

"Which Gelion built and which I will inherit when I take his operation apart," Rex said. "Yes."

"You’re going to tell Elizabeth and Valentina that you’re working on the reconstruction," Lustia said, "and simultaneously use the Underlayer operation to acquire the actual reconstruction method and present the solution through channels that make you look like you’ve done genuinely productive analysis work."

"Oh my... That’s very tidily evil," she said.

"Nah, more like it’s efficient," Rex said.

"It also gives you six months of legitimate access to Von Starlight family records and Academy archives under Valentina’s personal authorization," Lustia said. "During which you will be looking for considerably more than Key reconstruction methodology."

"Celestina’s history," Rex said. "Valentina confirmed she’s her half-sister."

"The father kept the relationship off the public record, but family records wouldn’t be sanitized the same way." Rex started at her. "There will be documentation somewhere."

"Understanding the full shape of Celestina’s position within the family network tells you how much damage the name can do if it surfaces," Rex said. "And controlling the rate at which it surfaces is significant leverage."

"Over Valentina," Lustia said.

"Nope! It’s even better," Rex said. "Over the entire institution."

Lustia was quiet for a moment, regarding him with the expression she used when she was genuinely proud of something.

"This is what I mean," she said. "When you said you needed to build the position before using it..."

"This is it! It’s the version of that statement that makes sense."

She stood again and crossed toward him, and her movement this time was the one that was less about strategy and more about the other thing she was, which was the goddess of lust who had chosen him specifically and had opinions about proximity.

"You’ve been in the patience phase for a long time," she said, and her voice had dropped into the register she used when she was being sincere rather than performative. "I’m not telling you to burn it all down immediately..."

"I know that’s not the plan."

"But I want you to feel the full scope of what you have," she said.

She stopped close enough that the ambient light of the space shifted again, this time into something that had a particular quality: the warmth of someone standing very close.

"You have the most powerful mage in the city afraid of a name," she said. "You have the institutional review under your de facto management."

"You have a demon army, a divine authority absorption, an undead army, and ten women who love you with the particular quality of people who have given up on the version of themselves that existed before you."

"And in the Underlayer, you have a network inherited from a man who built it to betray you, which is now yours to do with as you decide."

She tilted her head and looked at him directly, which was more unguarded than she usually allowed herself.

"I’m very fond of you, Rex," she said. "I know you find that inconvenient."

"It’s not inconvenient," Rex said. "It’s noted."

"Noted," she repeated.

She looked at him with the flat patience of someone who had expected more and received exactly what they had statistically projected they would receive. "I express my fondness for you, and you respond with ’noted.’ I am a goddess."

"I have been the object of devotion for longer than this island has existed... Temples... Offerings... Prayers at every hour... People weeping at altars because of what I represent."

"And you," she said, pointing at him again, "give me noted."

"You get noted with genuine regard," Rex said. "That’s different from most things I give genuine regard to."

"That is not the comfort you think it is," she said.

"It was meant as information, not comfort," Rex said.