The Lustful Villain: Every Milfs and Gilfs are Mine!-Chapter 161. They Analyzed the Entire Situation. (I Started All of It.)

Chapter 161: 161. They Analyzed the Entire Situation. (I Started All of It.)

Rex took this in.

The goddess of justice had not taken away Xavier’s blessing. He hadn’t expected this information, so he had to think about it carefully.

If the blessing continued, it meant that from a divine point of view, Xavier was possibly alive. This could mean that the goddess didn’t yet know everything that had happened to him, that divine awareness of mortal deaths worked on a different timescale than mortal awareness did, or that there was something about the way Xavier died that made it unclear in the divine registry.

Rex thought. "Lustia once said that I could steal their system or apostle power... but she also gave me a choice to destroy it."

"If I’m taking it, then... it’s going to be risky, but I need to remember that I have two skills that can clearly cover my whole identity."

"Maybe I need to discuss it again with Lustia, and the plan to attack Aethelgard, as Xavier needed to wait for a moment."

Rex found the last option most intriguing, so he added it to his list of things to research through Mordecai’s intel channels and Lustia’s knowledge.

He kept his face serious and focused the whole time, and when Valentina moved the meeting on to its main topic, Rex paid full attention to what was being said.

...

The agenda was full, as it always was for meetings like this one that came after an event that was important enough to need them.

The main topic of conversation was the demon attack on Aethelgard. The way it was talked about was thorough and helpful to Rex in some ways and impressive in others.

The Apostle network had gathered more operational intelligence about the attack than Rex had thought they would, which showed him that their ability to gather information was better than Mordecai’s intelligence on the subject had led him to believe.

Mordecai’s people had described the Apostle network as a coalition that was slow to move and prone to internal disagreement. What Rex was watching in this room was more organized than that description implied.

Valentina led the conversation like someone who had been doing it for a long time. She pulled out the important points from different speakers and put them together into a clear picture without making anyone feel like they were being managed.

It was a great political move, and Rex watched it with the same respect he gave to all skills, no matter where they came from.

The network treated the deaths of reincarnators during the attack with the same level of importance as the deaths of people who were both powerful and rare. Fourteen reincarnators are confirmed dead, and six more are still missing.

The six missing cases were split into two groups: those that had evidence pointing to capture by demon forces and those that had proof pointing to other causes.

Rex knew that there were three reincarnators that he captured, and he uses the three of them as proof to Mordecai so that he can trust him as their allies.

And, of course, Xavier Xenworth was not in either of the missing groups. He was in a different category called "Apostle," which meant that his case was tracked separately and given a higher priority.

The people at the gathering knew that he had been fighting a demon-like target in the eastern part of the city during the main attack, that witnesses had seen him going after a high-priority target, and that no one had seen him after a certain point in the evening’s timeline.

One of the Apostles of Life, a woman who had been introduced as Seraphina Dawnkeeper and spoke like someone who worked with probabilities for a living, said, "The most likely scenario is that he ran into a demon fighter..."

"And that demon fighter was probably much more dangerous than he thought and was either killed or incapacitated in a way that has not left any evidence that can be recovered."

She went on, "The lack of a body fits with high-energy magical termination that uses biological material as part of the effect, which is something that several high-level demonic abilities can do."

This was close enough to what had really happened that Rex thought it was a plausible guess without it being a risk, because it pointed to demon responsibility, which was where he needed attention to be drawn.

"The question of who specifically was operating at that power level in that sector," Valentina said, "is something we should discuss in the operational planning portion of the session."

"Before that," said another Apostle, a man whose name Rex had cataloged as Aldric Stonefall, Apostle of Valor, "I’d like to address the dungeon incident from yesterday."

The room shifted its attention, prompting Rex to mentally record how swiftly the dungeon operation had become a priority, surpassing his initial expectations.

Elizabeth gave the operational summary with the same clear accuracy she had used in the Academy debrief, and the room paid as much attention to it as it had to everything else.

"The targeting of a specific student during what should have been a training exercise suggests that the demon forces are now actively identifying and pursuing individuals connected to the Apostle network," Aldric said when Elizabeth finished. "This is a shift from their previous operational profile."

"It’s actually... consistent with what we know of Mordecai Vrael’s strategic thinking," Seraphina said. "He’s been systematically attempting to remove high-value targets from the surface coalition for the past eight months."

"The assault on Aethelgard was not purely a show of force; it was also intelligence-gathering."

"They came to see who we had, and now they’re acting on what they learned."

Rex thought about Mordecai receiving this assessment if it were fed back to him and concluded that Mordecai would be genuinely pleased by it, because it made him sound more strategically sophisticated than he actually was.

The assault had been a gacha-powered hammer swing motivated by ideology and a desire to demonstrate capability.

The intelligence-gathering had been incidental.

But incidental intelligence was still intelligence, and the gathering’s conclusion was not wrong about the outcome, only about the intention behind it.

The session moved through its agenda with the deliberate pace of a meeting that had significant ground to cover and enough participants that every significant point required time to surface and settle.

Rex listened to all of it, and all the time he tried his hardest not to laugh because nobody knew that all of this happened because of him, where he was the root of it. And seeing them acting all smart and saying a lot of bullshit just worsened it for Rex.

But again... he can still keep his cool while listening to the demon coalition’s operational assessments of their current abilities.

Some of these were more accurate than others. He then made maps of what the Apostle network could and couldn’t see based on both the accurate and inaccurate assessments.

He listened to the talk about the underground city, which the network knew existed and had some correct information about, like the right estimate of how many people lived there.

The only way to access it was through dimensional stepping or by knowing the precise channel that connected the surface to the Underlayer, which made it inaccessible to them.

Rex doubted that any of them had teleportation magic like Lilith or the demons, as such powers were likely exclusive to Underlayer residents.

As he listened to the discussion about the missing Apostles, he contemplated how the plans to locate and rescue any surviving members who might be held captive by demon forces aligned with his own objectives would unfold.

He listened as Valentina discussed the long history of the Apostle network, which spanned more than eight centuries and had endured many existential crises.

He sensed her pride, which was more than mere vanity; it was the pride of someone who had contributed to preserving something truly valuable.

He reflected on Helena, Valentina’s daughter, and considered the implications of Helena sending her children into this network’s operational sphere. He contemplated the unique weight that a grandmother, who led this institution, bore compared to the weight that Helena carried and how it differed from the weight that Lily shouldered. 𝗳𝐫𝚎𝗲𝚠𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝘃𝚎𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺

He had significant stakes in all three generations of this family.

He thought about how helpful that was.

’This is getting more interesting and I’ve become more invested in it...’