Chapter 162: 162. Ten Points Away and She’s Leading the Way Herself (She Will be Mine Soon!)

The meeting went on until the middle of the afternoon, with a break for a working lunch that was more about getting things done than socializing. Then, as Valentina had said before, they got back together for the operational planning session.

Rex learned the most from operational planning, which showed him the network’s plans and the data he needed to navigate.

The primary operational objective for the next ninety days was the location of Mordecai’s underground stronghold. Everything else was secondary to this, because the network’s doctrine held that mobile threat actors could be managed, but entrenched threat actors with population-level resources required neutralization at the source.

Rex listened to the location methodology’s development and calculated how long it would take to produce useful intelligence based on the network’s knowledge.

The answer was “not for a while.” The network was good, and the methods were not wrong, but they were working with an incomplete picture of the Underlayer’s structure.

To fill in that gap, they would need either a lot of time or information they didn’t have at the time.

He filed this and didn’t seem to react to any of it.

By the time Valentina closed the formal session with the particular words that these things ended with, the afternoon light through the hall’s windows had gone from the bright clarity of midday to the warmer, more angled quality of late afternoon.

“It seems like the only threat this world faces is that fraudulent demon lord and the monsters from the Underlayer…”

“And that’s all there is to it. I suppose this is some sort of arc in a story where the main characters—some of those apostles—need to eliminate Mordecai and his entire army before confronting another threat.”

“But they remain unaware that the most dangerous and significant threat is me. It will likely take them a whole year to figure it out… assuming, of course, that they’re still alive by then.”

Rex stood and stretched with the naturalness of someone who had been sitting for several hours, which he had, and began the small social process of exiting a formal gathering without moving too quickly through the room.

He said the right things to the people he passed. He found Valentina near the head of the table, still holding the leather-bound folio she used to run the session.

“Thank you for having me,” he said. “Most groups that do this kind of work don’t let observers sit in the room where decisions get made.”

Valentina looked at him with the particular attention she gave to things she found worth examining. “You contributed more than an observer typically does.”

“I had a few thoughts that seemed relevant.” He paused just long enough. “You built something here that actually functions.”

“That’s rarer than the people inside it realize.”

Valentina received the thanks with the gracious precision of someone who had decided she liked Rex and was comfortable with him knowing it.

She said, “Come back when you have more than a few thoughts,” and the way she said it made it an invitation rather than a condition.

He exchanged a few words with Elizabeth about nothing in particular. She was standing near the window with her arms loosely crossed and the kind of stillness that looked like patience but was actually attentiveness.

“Long afternoon,” he said.

“They usually are.” Elizabeth’s eyes were doing the thing they always did: reading the space between what was said and what wasn’t. “You were quiet during the methodology review.”

“I was listening.”

“You were listening and thinking something you decided not to say.”

’Oh wow… She’s susceptible about that.’

Rex smiled at that—not the full smile, just the edge of it. “I thought the timeline was optimistic, but the team knows its own work better than I do. It just wasn’t the right room for that particular observation.”

Elizabeth held his gaze for a moment.

“It wasn’t,” she agreed.

Then she asked, “What was the observation?”

“That the gap in the Underlayer data is bigger than the current methodology accounts for.” He said it simply, without drama. “Not a criticism. Just a variable.”

Elizabeth’s expression, in those few words, had the quality it always had with him: assessing but not hostile, a continuous calibration. She nodded once, slowly, and filed away whatever she had just measured him against without revealing the result.

After that, he met up with Apollo and said a few things to him, since saying nothing would have been obvious. Apollo was in the same state that Rex had been watching since the dungeon: the careful state of someone who was holding something together through discipline instead of resolution.

“How is Kaelira?” Rex asked.

“She’s doing better,” said Apollo. “Aisella let her leave the medical wing this morning.”

“She’s resting at her family’s home,” he stopped. “She wants to come back to class when Miss Elizabeth gives her the go-ahead.”

“That sounds like her,” Rex said.

“It really is… I’m glad she’s alright.” Rex thought Apollo’s almost-smile was significant because it showed the line between before and after.

’Fuck you.’

…

He found Lily, Diana, and Helena near the exit. The family had reunited during the time it took for the room to empty.

He bid farewell to the entire group with a sense of ease that came from having been woven into their perception of who Rex Rexilion was for several days.

He was outside, and the afternoon was following its natural course: growing darker and darker as it transitioned into evening. The light cast Aethelgard in the way one would imagine it in an idealized version of its tale: a city adorned with walls and towers, embodying the weight of valuable things worth protecting.

Rex was thinking about Xavier Xenworth, the shapeshifting skill, and the best time to bring a new name to the surface world’s threat landscape.

He was thinking about the three hundred and twelve undead structures that were waiting in the dark below everything.

He was calculating, but he got disturbed by a call.

“Rex.”

He turned.

It was Diana who called him, and she was a few feet behind him, and her face was not the professionally neutral one she had been wearing all day.

Unlike other things, the competitive one brought out the sharp focus that archery did in her.

’Oh yeah… here we go.’

She had her bow with her, he noticed. She had brought it to the gathering as a matter of course, the way fighters carry their primary weapon as a default, and she had it now, and her hand was on it in the particular way that indicated something specific.

She said, “Last night’s challenge was not fully completed.”

Rex stared at her and thought. ’There it is… the desire to end it, but I know that there’s a different desire there.’

“You got lucky once,” she said. “One arrow, one shot, conditions that I will not be conceding gave you a fair advantage.”

Her chin was slightly elevated. “I want a proper rematch.”

Rex said, “The gathering just ended.”

“The Academy’s archery range doesn’t close until the sun goes down.” Diana said, “We have time.”

“Even if it’s closed down… I have privilege from my grandmother to use it twenty-four hours straight.”

There was something in her voice that wasn’t quite competitive all the time. There was something underneath it that the competitive tone was partly hiding, and Rex’s Emotional Insight read it correctly without him having to say anything about it.

She wanted to know if she lost the arrow challenge or if the beer was to blame, so she wasn’t here.

She was here because the conversation in the hallway before sunrise hadn’t fully achieved what she wanted it to, and the rematch was the best way to point out something that didn’t have a clear explanation yet.

Rex looked at her and the bow and thought about ninety out of a hundred. He also thought about what ten remaining points looked like when Diana was carrying them.

She was deliberate and perceptive and not the kind of person who did things without knowing why she was doing them. But at ninety, she was already past the point where that understanding was completely in control.

He smiled, and it was the Rex Rexilion smile, the one that was warm and had just enough self-assurance to look like confidence instead of arrogance. Underneath it was the other smile, the one that only came out in private moments when it was dark.

“Are you sure?” he said. “We’re going to be naked again.”

“There will be no one here, so it’s going to be alright. Unless you’re chickening out on this one?” Diana smirks.

“Like hell I would!” Rex crossed his arms. “Lead the way.”

Diana turned toward the Academy, and the way she stood made it look like she had gotten what she wanted and was now moving on to the next thing with the focused confidence of someone who knew exactly what they were doing.

Rex walked up next to her.

[DIANA VON STARLIGHT: DESIRE LEVEL — 90/100]

[NOTE: MAXIMUM THRESHOLD WITHIN REACH — SUBJECT DEMONSTRATING ADVANCED APPROACH BEHAVIOR]

’Just needed those ten points, and I’ll go shoot her right away.’

He envisioned the archery range, picturing how the light fell at forty meters in the late afternoon. He also recalled how Diana looked when she was truly focused on something.

He thought, ’This is going to be easy.’

Then, realizing that “easy” was never quite the right term for anything worthwhile, he considered a term that was more than easy but less than interesting.

The Academy’s east wing came into view ahead, the day continuing its transition toward evening, and everything was precisely where Rex intended it to be.

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