Chapter 148: 148. The Debrief Blamed Demons. I Helped Improve the Investigation. Into Myself.

The debrief took place in one of the Academy’s meeting rooms on the ground floor. The tables and chairs were long and designed for long meetings, so they were only comfortable enough to sit in for an hour before they stopped being comfortable.

Elizabeth ran it the same way she ran everything else: without unnecessary framing, without softening the parts that needed to be said plainly, and without the kind of institutional distance that some faculty used when they had to give blunt information.

She stood at the front of the room and said what she had come to believe. The people in the room paid close attention, as they always did after a day that had cost them something.

“What happened to Kaelira in the secondary chamber was not a random encounter…” Elizabeth said, “The positioning was intentional…”

“The floor compromise in the southwest passage was not a structural failure; the fracture pattern is consistent with targeted preparation, which worked through the stone’s existing weaknesses from below…”

“This shows shadow-based manipulation at a level of precision that requires skill and time.”

She stopped. “The undead constructs that showed up during the main chamber fight weren’t from the Thornmaze either…”

Rex thought. ’Ah shit… here we go… I just hope that she accuses those useless fucking demons because it actually makes sense if you put it that way together.’

“The behavior we saw doesn’t match anything in the dungeon’s recorded population, and the fact that the construct’s ambush and Kaelira’s isolation were planned together means that someone set up the dungeon before we got there.”

Rex listened to this with the expression of someone receiving difficult information and processing it carefully. He did not react to any specific detail more than any other.

He also noted, with a satisfaction that he kept entirely internal, that Elizabeth’s reconstruction was accurate about the “what” and completely silent about the “who,” because there was nothing in that secondary chamber that pointed to a “who.”

No magical signature that could be attributed to a known entity, no evidence of the necromantic channel that had run his constructs, no trace of Lilith’s shadow work beyond the physical modification to the floor.

’Now… I can actually see the true potential of energy manipulation.” Rex held his chin. ’It actually helps me get rid of any evidence and manipulate it with someone’s energy signature.’

’That’s actually some good shit…’

Elizabeth went on, “The most likely answer to this explanation is that this was a demon operation.”

“The way the shadows were manipulated fits with what we know about higher-level demons, and the timing, coming so soon after the attack on Aethelgard, suggests that this wasn’t an isolated incident but part of a longer-term effort to find and remove high-value targets from the Apostle network.”

Around the table, the group were listening and reacting in their various ways. Apollo was very still, like he had been since they came out of the dungeon.

His stillness was different from how he usually was because it didn’t have any energy in it. This one didn’t have any.

Rex noticed that reaction and thought about it. ’What are you going to do about it now, Apollo…?’

’Are you going to take revenge on your beloved useless girl by confronting those demons…?’

“What this means for all of you,” Elizabeth said, “is that we cannot assume public operational spaces are clean.”

“The dungeon was a known destination that was announced in advance, which gave whoever did this enough time to prepare a sly plan and attack.” Elizabeth fixed her glasses. “From now on…”

“…formation assignments won’t be given out until one hour before departure, and pre-entry sweeps will be standard.”

Rex clenched his fist. ’Those fucking bitches… this is all their fault that they’re starting to change plans.’

’I really need to up my game as well if this keeps happening, and I’m going to give someone a good beating out of this…!’

She looked at everyone at the table. “For now… I’m glad to inform you all that Kaelira is stable and resting until she’s fully recovered.”

“She won’t be going back to work for at least two weeks, and… I will decide on a case-by-case basis whether the rest of this class will continue with planned activities or take a break.” She closed her folder.

“Are there any questions before I dismiss it?”

And of course, there were a lot of them, mostly logistical, and they came from people who were going through the day in the usual way of organizing information that could be acted on.

Rex asked one carefully chosen question while raising his hand. “Did the Academy have a standard way of using the sweep method to find shadow-based floor preparation, or was someone making it up as she went along?”

“From scratch, based on what we saw today.” She looked at him. “Why?”

“Well, it’s because…” Rex said while holding his chin with his palm. “If the protocol doesn’t exist yet, it might be worth building one that accounts for the specific fracture pattern you described, rather than a general structural sweep.”

“A targeted demon operation would probably know what a general sweep looks for, right?”

Rex just made a mind-blowing statement that caused the others to react with shock and admiration, leading them to believe he was a genius; however, it was merely another manipulative tactic for him to appear trustworthy.

“I see your point…” Elizabeth looked at him for a moment with the look she used when she was judging something. “I’ll think about it.”

Rex nodded and said nothing else, because the goal of the question had been to demonstrate that he was thinking about the problem constructively and that his thinking was good enough to be worth considering.

Both of those things were now in Elizabeth Von Starlight’s file on him, which was exactly where he wanted them.

…

Twenty minutes after it began, the debrief concluded. The group dispersed in the late afternoon, much like people do after a long, tiring day: moving in a measured way that indicated they were not quite ready to be alone yet and not fully prepared to engage with one another.

’It’s finally over… now I can do my debrief for those bitches as well…’

Rex was retrieving his jacket from the back of his chair when Talyra approached him, Aisella a step behind her.

“Rex!”

“Hm?” Rex glanced at them, his jacket draped over his shoulders.

“Thank you,” Talyra said while rubbing the back of her head. “For today… Oh! Both the combat and the rest of it too, hahaha.”

Rex stared at her. “You don’t have to thank me for the fight. It was just work, and we all worked for it as well.”

“The rest of it, then,” she said, her voice less bright than usual, revealing the underlying sadness that she didn’t often show. “How you stayed and what you said to Apollo.”

Rex said, “It was the right thing to do when someone is feeling grief like that…”

“I don’t want to risk Apollo having a panic attack or some kind of mental breakdown. That would be the worst outcome for him, especially with the demons he has to face soon, right?”

Aisella watched him with her usual intensity: attentive and thoughtful, yet not unkind. “Are you going to see Kaelira right now?”

Rex stopped for a moment, and the pause was more about thought than building. ’Why the fuck would I visit a failed project that has been caused by those useless maids anyway…?’

“I’m sorry.” He said, “There’s something I need to take care of, and I can’t miss it.”

“It’s something that came up before we left for the dungeon that I put off as long as I could,” Rex says, patting her shoulder. “Please tell her that I hope she recovers well and that I’ll check in when I have the time for it, alright?”

“O-of course,” Aisella nodded.

Talyra added, “She’d probably rather hear from Apollo anyway because it’s official now.”

After that, she looked like she wished she hadn’t said it out loud. Not because it was mean, but because saying it made the weight of the day land in a certain place.

“Probably,” Rex said, and that was the end of it.

The three of them start to wave at each other. Then the three of them went their separate ways into the late afternoon in the city.

After that, Rex already knows where he’s going to transform into the Lustful Villain, but he just needs to look for a higher place.

…

It was about three kilometers north of Aethelgard’s outer wall and high enough to see the city’s light. It was also far enough away from regular traffic that the meeting he needed to have could happen without anyone seeing it.

Lilith knew where to find him when the signal went out because he had used it twice before.

It took Lilith only seven minutes to reach the meeting place, which was faster than the four minutes it usually took her within the city. At that moment, she was nearly there.

Waiting.

She landed in her full form and didn’t try to hug him. Rex saw this immediately, and it told him she knew what the meeting was about before it began.

She was already on her knees when she hit the ground, which answered the second question for him.

“Master…” she said. “I know what I and my fellow comrade did…”

“We messed up real time…”

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