Chapter 567: 567. I’ll Let That Slimy Bitch Knows The Truth That His Wife Is Pregnant By Me
"You wanted to use the Key to make the Underlayer impossible to ignore." He looked at Gelion with the flat patience of someone explaining a conclusion that is not in dispute. "And to fund that operation, you were selling information about the people living in the city you claimed to be trying to elevate."
"I was trying to keep them alive," Gelion said, and the specific quality of his statement carried genuine heat, reflecting the intensity of someone who had held this position for a long time and truly believed in it. "Every reincarnator in this city is a target the moment they step onto the surface!"
"The Legion operates up there with impunity!"
"The only way to change that is to give the Underlayer enough leverage that the surface can’t pretend it doesn’t exist."
"That’s a coherent argument," Rex said. "It’s also completely fucking stupid."
Gelion stared at him.
"You built leverage by destroying the security of the people you were supposedly protecting," Rex said. "You handed an organization that kills reincarnators a detailed map of where the reincarnators were and what their capabilities were, because you believed the political outcome you were working toward was worth the cost."
He looked at Gelion with the calm of someone who has already decided the conversation’s conclusion and is simply allowing it to arrive. "You made that decision for two hundred thousand people who did not ask you to make it for them."
"Someone had to," Gelion said.
"No," Rex said. "Someone wanted to, and that’s different!"
"Someone wanted to be the architect of the solution badly enough that they were willing to accept a body count in the process and call it strategy."
Gelion looked at him with the expression of someone who has been accurately described and finds the description infuriating.
"You want to talk about body counts, huh?!" Gelion said. "You fucking cleared ten Legion members in a canyon in one afternoon!"
Rex was surprised for the first time that maybe Gelion was the one that would expose him as Rex Rexlion behind that mask, but it’s already too late for him to deny it because he can still do what he wants even after all of this.
"I know what that means, and I fucking know what you are."
"You know what I am," Rex agreed. "The difference is that I’m not pretending to be something else while I do it."
"Proof," Gelion said. "You’re making claims about Legion frequency, about contacts, and about a network."
"Where’s the actual—"
Rex formed one of his original elemental frequencies in his left hand with the help of his Energy Manipulation Skill and Elemental Mastery that could expose any energy frequencies.
He directed it at Gelion.
The frequency found the original energy signature and strengthened it, pulling the hidden Legion-calibrated resonance from Gelion’s system. This process resembled how a specific frequency brings forth a particular sound within a space—not creating it, but making it perceptible to everyone else in the room who had the capacity to sense it.
The resonance filled the chamber for approximately five seconds, the specific frequency that the Legion built into its assets, and anyone in the room with elemental perception could read it like a marking.
Cassandra came through the chamber door at that precise moment.
She had not knocked; instead, she had either been standing just outside the door or had sensed the frequency change from another part of the facility. She entered with the purposeful stride of someone who had been anticipating a moment and had finally decided to act.
She turned her gaze toward Gelion. Then, she focused on the resonance that Rex’s work was currently revealing. Finally, her attention shifted to Rex.
"That... energy frequency," she said. "It only belongs to the Legion, where they’re granted a different kind of magic and energy..."
"Even though some creatures in the Underlayer had primordial energy... it’s not as strong as this one."
"It is," Rex said.
"He’s been carrying it the entire time," she said. "And I’ve noticed it since the first time we’ve fought back then."
"Also for the fourteen months’ statement he just said," Rex said.
Cassandra regarded Mordecai with an expression that conveyed a mix of disappointment and something sharper.
Mordecai’s gaze was fixed on Gelion, reflecting the demeanor of a man who had placed his trust in someone for fourteen months, now enveloped in the heavy silence that follows the painful realization that that trust was entirely misplaced.
Rex released the frequency and let the room settle.
Gelion, still suspended, was breathing in a controlled manner, like someone managing a situation they cannot physically escape and are therefore trying to handle in any way possible.
"Your wife," Rex said, conversationally.
Gelion’s breathing changed.
"Viscaria," Rex said. "The Slime Queen."
"Fourteen months in the Underlayer alongside you."
"You built the intelligence network together, I assume, or at minimum she was aware of the shape of it," he paused. "She’s well, by the way, and of course healthy."
"The pregnancy is progressing without complications."
"And since she’s not a reincarnator and already got the punishment she deserved... I think that’s enough."
The specific quality of Gelion’s expression after Rex mentioned the word "pregnancy" was not easily defined by a single emotion. It was the look of someone receiving unexpected information from an unanticipated direction, so significant that it shifted the entire atmosphere in the room.
"What the fuck... did you just say...?" Gelion said.
"Viscaria is pregnant," Rex said, in the same conversational tone. "What? You didn’t know that?"
"That’s—" Gelion stopped.
Something within him was experiencing multiple, conflicting sensations simultaneously, leading to a profound stillness typical of someone overwhelmed by information.
"She found me," Rex said, "in the way that people find me when they have decided to."
"The child is mine."
The stillness broke.
"You—" Gelion’s voice came out at a register it had not been at before, lower and without the professional control that had been running underneath everything he said since the working released. "You FUCKING touched my wife."
"She made a decision," Rex said. "I respected it."
"She is my wife," Gelion said, and the specific quality of his statement was not intended to be strategic. The statement conveyed the raw emotion of someone who has been struck in an area they were unaware was vulnerable.
"She was your wife while you were building an intelligence network for an organization that kills reincarnators," Rex said. "She was your wife while you were making decisions on behalf of two hundred thousand people who didn’t ask you to."
"She was your wife for fourteen months while you were doing all of that and presenting her with a version of events that was considerably cleaner than the actual version."
"Don’t," Gelion said, and the word came out with more force than anything else he had said, and it carried the quality of a line rather than an argument.
Rex looked at him.
"You want to talk about what I did to your wife," Rex said. "But what you actually mean is that you want something in this room to be my fault rather than yours."
"Because right now everything that has happened in the past fourteen months is sitting in front of you, and it is all, directly or indirectly, a consequence of decisions you made."
Gelion looked at him with eyes that had moved past the professional register entirely and into something that was older and less organized.
Gelion moved. Or rather, he tried to.
The moment his body shifted forward, the telekinetic force around him tightened with brutal precision. The sound that escaped him was half-snarl, half-choked breathing as invisible pressure slammed into his shoulders, spine, and chest hard enough to stop momentum entirely.
His feet cracked the stone floor beneath him. But he did not advance even an inch.
"YOU—" The words tore out of him violently.
"YOU FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT—!" The room trembled slightly from the surge of unstable energy exploding out of his body.
Gelion strained harder until veins stood out along his neck. The slime-derived energy around his arms distorted wildly as he tried to force movement through pure rage alone.
Rex did not move. He did not move even slightly because the telekinesis held him perfectly in place.
"YOU TOUCHED HER?!" Gelion’s voice broke apart into something rawer.
"YOU TOUCHED MY FUCKING WIFE?!" His body jerked again against the invisible restraint.
But nothing is happening because the force holding him is absolute.
His breathing became ragged. "I’LL FUCKING KILL YOU—!"
Another violent attempt. The restraints compressed harder instantly.
A horrible metallic cracking sound echoed from the armor around his shoulders as the pressure increased.
Gelion gasped, but still he kept struggling. "YOU THINK THIS IS FUNNY?!"
His eyes were bloodshot now. "YOU THINK YOU CAN JUST TAKE WHATEVER YOU WANT?!"
Rex looked at him without expression. Gelion hated that expression more than anything.
The calmness.
The lack of urgency.
The complete certainty.
It made him feel small in a way that bypassed pride entirely and reached something deeper and uglier.
"YOU USED HER—!"
"I didn’t," Rex said flatly.
"SHUT THE FUCK UP!"
The scream echoed through the chamber. Gelion’s body twisted violently again against the telekinetic hold.
The floor beneath him fractured further. But his body still would not move.
Not forward. Not backward.
Nothing but futile struggling remained. His breathing hitched suddenly, as beneath the layers of rage—beneath the humiliation—beneath the desperate hatred—another realization began to push its way to the surface.
Viscaria had chosen the truth. Rex had already said it.
And Gelion knew Rex was not the type to lie about something like that. That was the part that was destroying him.
It was not force, nor violation, but a choice.
His wife had made a choice. And that realization hollowed him out from the inside with surgical precision.
"...No..." he said weakly.
