Chapter 518: 518. Peak Physical Upgrade? Does That Make Me Into A Super Kind of Man?

She stared at him for a long moment with the expression of someone deciding whether the situation was funny or aggravating and arriving, as she usually did, at some position between the two that she found more intriguing than either.

"You know," she said, "the other apostles are more forthcoming."

"I don’t know any other apostles personally," Rex said. "But eh... they’re probably frauds anyway, like the others."

"Apollo sends genuinely heartfelt prayers," she said. "Not to me, of course, but to his goddess, who’s a bitch, but the principle holds."

"He says things like ’I am grateful’ and ’Please guide my path.’"

"Apollo is earnest," Rex said. "It’s his defining characteristic of why he’s fucking naive like that while I’m not."

"I know you’re not," Lustia said. "I chose you specifically because you’re not."

"I would just appreciate occasional evidence that you register my existence as more than a system interface."

"I’m in your dream domain," Rex said. "I’m talking to you, and that’s evidence."

"Well, I pulled you here," she said.

"And I’m engaging with the conversation instead of waiting for it to end," Rex said. "Which, if you think about it, is more than you’d get from someone who was simply indifferent."

Lustia looked at him. Then she sat down on the edge of the non-chair with the specific movement of someone who has decided to accept what is available rather than hold out for what they actually want.

"That is technically correct," she said.

"It’s accurate," Rex said. "Not an endorsement."

"I know the difference," she said, with a particular quietness that was more genuine than most of her registers.

Then she looked at him for a moment longer, reading something in his expression that she seemed to find satisfying in spite of itself. "You are exactly as difficult as I anticipated when I selected you, and I anticipated you being extremely difficult."

"I want you to know that."

"I’ll file that," Rex said.

"Don’t file it," she said. "Experience it, and try to feel something about it."

"I am feeling something about it," Rex said.

"What?"

"I’m thinking it’s consistent with everything I already knew about this arrangement," Rex said, "and that consistency is reassuring from an operational standpoint."

Lustia pressed both hands over her face briefly, with the theatrical despair of someone performing an emotion that had a genuine foundation underneath it.

"Operational standpoint," she said. "I said feel something, and you gave me an operational standpoint."

She looked at him over her hands. "How do the women in your life tolerate you?"

"They find it interesting," Rex said.

"It’s more like that they find you interesting," she said. "That’s different."

"I mean that they find you personally interesting, rather than just from an operational standpoint." She dropped her hands. "Elizabeth... At the end of day seven..."

"You knocked on the door and she opened it and she looked at you with, and I am telling you this because I was watching, the expression of someone who had completely stopped managing anything."

"Tell me, my lustful apostle," Lustia grinned. "What did you feel at that moment?"

Rex considered the question with the same attention he gave to questions that were worth answering carefully.

"That the week had gone exactly as intended," he said. "And that the result was better than the projection."

Lustia waited.

"And that she looked well," he said.

She looked at him for a long moment. "She looked better than the projection, and she appeared well."

"That is what I get."

"Okay, enough with that yap," Rex said. "What did you want?"

"I wanted you to tell me something that wasn’t a strategic assessment," she said. "Just once to be something human."

"She looked well," Rex said. "That’s human enough."

"I noticed it and I thought it... that’s not a calculation."

Lustia was quiet for a moment, regarding him with the specific expression she had when she was recalibrating something.

"Fine," she said. "I accept that."

"Good," Rex said.

"I’m still noting that you’re impossible," she said.

"You can note it," Rex said. "I won’t object."

She moved away from him with the deliberate, unhurried grace that she reserved for moments when she intended to say something final, allowing her movement to convey its significance.

"The system," she said. "You have eight thousand, one hundred and fifty points."

"You know what you want."

"I know what I want," Rex said.

"Then use this moment wisely," she said.

She paused at the edge of the space, which was also approximately the edge of the dream, and looked back at him with the expression she seemed to reserve for goodbyes. It had more in it than she put into most of her other expressions, and Rex registered this the way he registered most things about Lustia, which was accurately and without deciding what to do about it.

"I’ll want to hear about the Underlayer when you get back," she said. "Not through the usual channels, but by actually telling me about it."

"Why in the world would I do that?"

"You watch everything," Rex said. "You already know."

"I know what happens," she said.

"I want to hear how you describe it." A pause. "There’s a difference if you’ve heard it while also watching it."

"The difference is sentimental," Rex said.

"Yes," she said. "It is... Indulge me."

He looked at her for a moment. She stood at the edge of the dissolving space, her expression revealing a vulnerability that only emerged in this particular moment, in the space between the strategic and the personal, where she had ceased to perform and was simply present. He registered this as a data point and also as something slightly outside the category of data points.

"When I get back," he said.

It was two words and carried very little weight. But she looked at him when he said it with the expression of someone who has been given something small and is choosing to treat it as sufficient, which was, for a goddess who had altars and devotion and centuries of prayers to draw from, a specific kind of patience.

"Good," she said quietly.

The light shifted once more, and the space that was not a room began to dissolve back into the particular darkness that was the boundary between the dream domain and ordinary sleep.

"Rex," she said from the dissolving edge.

He looked at her.

"The Peak Physical upgrade," she said. "Don’t wait too long for it."

"There are people in this story who will require you to be at absolute capacity."

The space had half-dissolved already, the walls losing their definition and the floor becoming uncertain under him. But she was still there at the edge of it, with the quality of someone who had said something important and was waiting to confirm it had registered.

"You’re being vague on purpose," Rex said.

The dissolving slowed.

Lustia turned back to face him fully. "I’m not being vague."

’I’m being appropriately dramatic about something that deserves it."

"Describe the upgrade," Rex said. "What does it actually give me if you keep saying that?"

She looked at him for a moment, then came back into the space properly, the dissolving pausing around her like it was waiting for her to finish. She sat down on the edge of the non-chair again with the movement of someone who had more to say and had decided to say it.

"Your current physical baseline," she said, "is good."

"It’s genuinely good because you already have full mastery of combat skills, weapon disciplines, and elemental command."

"But still..."

"What you do not have is the foundation those skills are built on operating at its ceiling." She looked at him. "Peak Super Human Physique elevates every physical attribute to the theoretical maximum of what a human body can produce."

"It’s not a trained human body nor an enhanced human body, but it was the absolute ceiling as defined by underlying biology."

"The fuck do you mean by ’ceiling’?" Rex said. "Does it make me like a super kind of man?"

"A strike from your hand carries force appropriate to the structural limits of the target, not the structural limits of your body," she said. "Your movement speed reaches the point where standard threat response windows become functionally irrelevant because you can move faster than most opponents can recalibrate their targeting."

"Your sensory range and precision both extend to the outer boundary of human biological potential." She paused. "And every combat skill you currently have gets recalibrated to that new baseline." 𝘧𝓇𝑒𝑒𝑤ℯ𝑏𝓃𝘰𝑣ℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

"Martial arts at full mastery, running on a body at its theoretical physical maximum, is not the same discipline as martial arts at full mastery, running on a body that is merely very good."

"And against primordial frequency," Rex said.

Lustia’s expression shifted slightly. This was the part she had been building toward.

"Primordial frequency affects system-granted abilities," she said. "Your telekinesis gets deflected."

"Your elemental workings get suppressed or forced to work around the immunity layer."

"Your foresight gets interference applied to it." She looked at him steadily. "It does not affect the momentum of a body moving through space."

"It does not affect the mass of a fist making contact with a surface, and it also does not affect what you can do with physics that was already in motion before the frequency was applied."

Rex understood the principle. It was the same logic as the canyon, where the physical objects he moved with telekinesis were partially immune to primordial deflection because the momentum was native and only the direction was system-granted.

The frequency could suppress the direction. It could not suppress the momentum that already existed.

Peak Physique extended that principle to his own body. Which had never been system-granted because it was simply him, moving.