Chapter 516: 516. As Usual Waking Up To Get Jumpscare By The Goddess Of Lust in Her Domain

When Rex woke up, the first thing he noticed was that the room was not the guest room at the Starlight household.

Rex registered the change in the first half-second of consciousness, just as he did with most things, by quickly inventorying the available sensory data and comparing it against his expectations. The ceiling above him was wrong.

Not wrong in a threatening way, but rather in the specific manner of a place designed to be no particular place—a type of architectural neutrality that exists only in spaces that transcend traditional architecture entirely.

’Ah... fucking great... it’s this bullshit again.’

He sat up.

’What does that bitch want from me now...?’ Rex thought. ’Although... I know that it’s been a while since we’ve met.’

’Better give me some good shit or else.’

The room swirled around him in the unhurried manner of a dream space taking shape, featuring white walls that were not quite walls, a floor that was not quite a floor, and ambient light that emanated from everywhere and nowhere at once. He had been here before, though the intervals between visits were long enough that each return carried a brief moment of recalibration.

Then the laugh started.

It was not a small laugh. It was the kind of laugh that someone produces after holding back their emotions for a long time, finally finding an audience worthy of sharing it with; it was warm, genuine, and carried the specific quality of a person who had been watching a performance they found deeply satisfying.

"Eight thousand points," Lustia said, and then she laughed again. "I really did choose a worthy Apostle that followed his own desire without giving a single fuck to anyone!"

She was sitting on something that was approximately a chair but had made its own decisions about chair geometry, her legs crossed, her chin resting on one hand, and her expression carried the particular delight of someone reviewing an excellent piece of work that they had partly commissioned.

"Eight thousand, one hundred and fifty, actually," Rex said. "Spare me the dramatic pause."

"I was getting there," Lustia said.

She sat up straighter and looked at him with the warm, proprietary interest she always had, the gaze of someone who had invested in a project and was thoroughly pleased with the return. "Do you know what I like most about watching you, Rex Rexilion?"

"You started with three charisma points and a system that required you to seduce someone over thirty within seventy-two hours or die."

"Yeah, fucking hated something that forced me to do something where the penalty is I have to die like a bum."

"And now you’re sitting here with eight thousand points, nine maximum bonds, a necromantic army, two divine authority absorptions, and enough blackmail on the Von Starlight family to run a small kingdom."

"Ten maximum bonds," Rex said. "Don’t you forget one of the most important things in my plan, which was Elizabeth."

Lustia’s expression reflected the same joy she displayed when she was genuinely delighted. "Ahhh~ right~!"

"Elizabeth," she repeated. "The woman who walked into your inn at midnight and said, and I am quoting with great love, ’You’re free to do anything you want with me as long as the secret stays between us.’"

She pressed one hand to her chest. "The most capable academic mage is in active apostle service, and she’s in the household review room studying key fragments at seven in the morning, waiting for you to wake up."

"She’s useful," Rex said. "And I think that I could actually plan more with her... because of the archive room."

"She’s devoted," Lustia said. "Which is better?"

"You say that every time someone reaches maximum," Rex said. "It’s starting to sound like a fucking catchphrase at this point."

"How dare you!" Lustia pointed at him. "It is not a catchphrase!"

"It is a recurring observation about a recurring truth. There is a difference."

"The difference is small."

"The difference is meaningful," she said, displaying the conviction of someone who has chosen to be offended on principle and is fully committed to that stance.

Then she dropped it because she was not actually offended, and she looked at him with an expression that was closer to the real thing underneath all her performances. "You know what I noticed this week? You didn’t look tired."

Rex looked at her.

"I have been watching you for days with full satisfaction," she said. "The canyon expedition... The Legion... The Key situation... and Elizabeth."

"You have been carrying a significant operational load for a person who is also attending academy classes and managing four different categories of relationships simultaneously." She tilted her head. "But this week you didn’t look tired."

"The work agreed with me," Rex said.

"Elizabeth agreed with you," Lustia said.

"The work was incidental." She said it without commentary, just as an observation, and then moved on before he could decide whether to respond to it. "Tell me something."

"When you were sitting in that study room with her on day three and she said she wanted to go somewhere that was hers, did you know immediately what was going to happen?"

"Fuck yeah," Rex said.

"Before she said it or after?"

"Even better! Before she stood up from the chair," Rex said.

Lustia made a sound that was approximately a sigh but warmer. "You are very good at this."

"I know," Rex said. "And you shouldn’t be surprised as the goddess of lust; what a joke."

"How mean! I’m allowed to be impressed," she said. "I’m your patron goddess after all, and being impressed is within the scope of the role."

"You can be impressed quietly," Rex said. "Which means... shut the fuck up." 𝕗𝗿𝕖𝐞𝐰𝗲𝕓𝐧𝕠𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝐨𝚖

She looked at him with the expression of someone who has never done anything quietly in their existence and finds the suggestion borderline offensive. "I am a goddess of lust, Rex."

"Quiet is not a mode I operate in," Lustia sighed. "You knew this when you accepted the designation."

"I accepted the designation because the alternative was dying in seventy-two hours," Rex said. "My options were fucking limited."

"And yet here we are," Lustia said, with the specific warmth of someone who has heard this argument before and finds it endearing precisely because it is delivered without any softening. "Here we are with ten maximum bonds and eight thousand points, and you’re lecturing me about volume control."

Rex looked around the space. He had been here three times before, and the place never changed in any meaningful way except for the ambient quality of the light, which seemed to shift based on something he had never fully pinpointed.

"Alright, you lustful bitch, spill the beans now."

"Spill the beans...?"

"As usual... everything you brought my ass here... there’s probably a reason for it," he said. "Or I ended up here because something triggered it."

"Which is it?"

"You were sleeping very deeply," Lustia said. "You’ve been doing that more often."

"Sleeping deep, dreaming less. It’s a side effect of the Peak Physical upgrade that you haven’t purchased yet."

"What the fuck is that...? Peak Physical upgrade...?"

She stood up and walked toward him in the way she walked when she was going to say something specific and wanted to make sure she had his full attention before she said it. She was not performing this attention-seeking as manipulation in the conventional sense; she genuinely wanted him to listen, which was a different thing.

"Currently... you have eight thousand points," she said. "And a moment in the story that I would personally describe as a significant inflection point."

"Meaning what?" Rex said.

"Meaning that you have been doing the patient work," Lustia said. "The slow seduction, the careful positioning, the intelligence gathering, the network building. And you have done it very well."

She stopped a few feet from him and looked at him with the directness she reserved for things she was not willing to dress up.

"But you have been playing too much, Rex," she said. "Not poorly, and not wrongly, but you have been playing in the mode of someone who is building a position."

"You haven’t been in the mode of someone who is using one."

Rex considered this. "The position isn’t ready to be used yet."

"The position has been ready since the canyon," Lustia said. "You have the name Celestina Von Starlight and Valentina’s fear of it."

"You have Elizabeth’s loyalty and her access."

"You have a necromantic army in the Underlayer and a demon liaison and the full inventory of Legion intelligence, and you have Diana and Lily who would follow you into genuinely catastrophic decisions because they are entirely and permanently yours."

She paused.

"When is the last time you created actual chaos?" she said.

Rex was quiet for a moment.

"The Undead Bringer," he said. "Before the expedition."

"Which was when?" Lustia said.

"Months."

"You have been a very well-behaved student at a prestigious academy," she said, with the specific affectionate mockery of someone teasing a person they love. "You have attended classes and done your review work and been charming at family dinners."

"You have been, Rex, shockingly pleasant to be around."

"I needed the access," Rex said.

"I know," she said. "And you have it now."

She drifted away from him and settled at the edge of the non-chair, and the light shifted slightly warmer.

"The Underlayer needs your attention," she said. "Gelion has been cooperating under observation, but cooperation under observation is not the same as the problem being resolved."

"His second-stratum contacts are still standing by for the signal that the Key situation is resolved, which it technically is now, and someone needs to manage what that means before they decide to manage it themselves."