The Lustful Villain: Every Milfs and Gilfs are Mine!

Chapter 821: 821. The Information Didn’t Exist To Anyone Without My Specific Ears

Morwenna turned her gaze toward him, her eyes narrowing as if she were attempting to peel back the layers of his composure to see the machinery beneath.

"Your preliminary report," she began, her voice dropping into a low, dangerous register, "is the first comprehensive assessment of the underlayer’s current governance structure this network has produced in eight years."

"The last one required a four-person specialist team and six months of direct, high-risk access to the Underlayer’s inner sanctums." She leaned forward, the tension in her posture tightening the air. "You produced it in a single night... and alone..."

"In the wake of a combat engagement that bled you dry for most of a morning."

"The forty-year archive provides the historical methodology of the underlayer in significant depth," Rex replied, his voice remaining a calm, unshakable anchor amidst her scrutiny. "Ignivara’s direct knowledge of the transition is recent."

"The synthesis of the two produced a structural picture that neither source could have rendered independently."

"And Ignivara was remarkably forthcoming," Morwenna pressed, her eyes searching his. "Why?"

"Because the terms I offered her were more beneficial to her survival than the alternative," Rex said, his tone devoid of ego, stating it as a simple matter of predatory mathematics. "She arrived for an operation that failed."

"Her operational value to the Legion, in its current configuration, has been decimated."

"The intelligence she holds regarding the Legion’s surface network becomes a far more valuable currency if she is in a position where providing it serves her own interests."

"You assessed her interests with surgical precision," Morwenna conceded, though she didn’t look entirely convinced.

"I assessed them as accurately as the available data permitted," Rex countered smoothly. "I may have miscalculated the finer nuances, but the central calculation, the core of the transaction, was sound."

Morwenna stared at him for a long, heavy moment. It was the look of a grandmaster deciding whether to commit her most powerful piece to a sudden, decisive strike.

She was weighing his honesty against his potential for manipulation, deciding if this was the moment to press him until he cracked.

Then, with a sharp, decisive exhale, she set the matter aside. She had reached a conclusion, even if it wasn’t the one he wanted her to reach.

"Tremor," Morwenna said, her voice suddenly cold and hard as granite.

The atmosphere in the room shifted instantly. Every head turned toward her.

"The Forbidden Earthen Apostle," she continued, her words landing like heavy stones. "The individual responsible for approximately seventy percent of this morning’s casualties."

"The entity that manifested tore through our lines with catastrophic efficiency and then vanished into the dust before a formal capture attempt could even be organized." She swept her gaze across the table, her eyes lingering on each of them. "I want to move past the generalities."

"I want to dissect the specific details of what we know about Tremor and, more importantly, the terrifying gaps in our knowledge."

"A preliminary assessment is already being compiled in the archive," Rex offered.

"I know," Morwenna snapped, her patience fraying at the edges. "I read it."

She turned her full, piercing attention back to Rex. The look in her eyes was no longer one of curiosity; it was the flat, direct gaze of a hunter who had been tracking a scent all afternoon and had finally cornered the prey.

"The assessment describes several abilities demonstrated during the engagement..."

"Geological authority at a Divine Designation tier..."

"Elemental mastery with compound output. And a physical capacity that shatters every known system class baseline."

"Correct," Valentina affirmed, her expression grim.

"These abilities," Morwenna said, her voice dropping to a whisper that carried more weight than a shout, "were also demonstrated by Rex Rexilion during the final, most violent stages of the engagement."

She looked Rex directly in the eye, stripping away the polite veneer of the meeting. "Against Ignivara in the sky... In the blood and debris of the plaza’s aftermath."

"And in the specific, impossible moment where you threw the meteor construct that obliterated the Tremor form."

The silence that followed was absolute. It was a heavy, suffocating vacuum, the kind of silence that precedes a lightning strike.

"The similarity," Morwenna said, her voice trembling slightly with the sheer gravity of her accusation, "between the power Rex demonstrated and the power Tremor demonstrated is not a coincidence of scale or intensity."

"It is not merely a resemblance... It is specific... and it is also structural..."

"The same geological authority. The same elemental compound expression. The same terrifying physical baseline."

Rex did not flinch. He did not offer a defensive posture or a nervous glance.

Instead, he met Morwenna’s accusation with the terrifyingly calm, attentive expression of a grandmaster who had been anticipating this exact move for a dozen turns and had already mapped out the counterplay.

"The Earth Sovereign’s designation," Rex began, his voice steady and resonant, "was documented in the Academy’s most restricted archives as being transferable through prolonged, intimate contact with mineral divine material."

"The Sable Island assessment successfully retrieved the gauntlets from the sealed chamber..."

"The official report stated those gauntlets were lost to an undead surge during the team’s extraction."

"They were reported lost," Morwenna corrected, her voice a low hiss of skepticism.

"They were not destroyed," Rex countered, his eyes locking onto hers with unyielding clarity. "I tracked them through the geological substrate."

"I retrieved them from the deep stone of the northern agricultural district four days after the assessment team had returned."

A heavy, stunned silence rippled through the room. Morwenna’s eyes widened almost imperceptibly.

"You retrieved them?"

"I have been in continuous contact with the gauntlets for approximately ten weeks," Rex said, the admission landing like a heavy weight on the table. "The archive documentation described a partial integration threshold at fourteen days of continuous contact."

"Based on my own physiological monitoring, I reached that threshold ten days ago."

He leaned forward slightly, the sheer gravity of his presence filling the space between them.

"What Tremor demonstrated was the full, unbridled designation," Rex explained, his tone clinical, as if he were describing a weather pattern rather than a godlike power. "What I demonstrated was a partial integration."

"The difference is not merely a matter of scale; it is a matter of fundamental control..."

"Full designation authority produces the tectonic cataclysms the entire island felt during the earthquake protocol."

"Partial integration produces the localized, precise geological manifestations you witnessed during my exchanges with Ignivara."

"The documentation is all there in the archive," Elizabeth interjected, her voice a sharp, intellectual shield.

She looked at Morwenna with the poise of a scientist defending a proven theorem. "The integration methodology, the fourteen-day threshold, the specific capability differential between full and partial... it’s all laid out."

"I personally authorized Rex’s access to those restricted files six months ago, and I have been meticulously reviewing the research he has been developing ever since."

"And he was there on the island with Aisella and Talyra."

Morwenna’s head snapped toward Elizabeth, her eyes flashing. "You authorized access to the restricted archives?"

"Six months ago," Elizabeth repeated, her voice cool and unbothered. "As part of the academy’s ongoing research collaboration with honor division students who demonstrate an applicable, high-tier capability set."

"Six months ago," Morwenna countered, her voice rising in a crescendo of suspicion, "was long before Tremor appeared on the battlefield!"

"Six months ago was when Rex demonstrated, during the Sable Island preliminary assessment, that his capability set was so anomalous it warranted specialized research access," Elizabeth shot back, her eyes narrowing. "The timeline is documented, Lady Morwenna."

"It is not a coincidence; it is a progression."

Morwenna fell silent. She stared down at the obsidian table, her mind working with the frantic, calculated speed of a strategist looking for a crack in a fortress wall.

She was weighing her second line of argument, deciding whether to deploy it now or wait until the first line had been completely exhausted.

She decided to push the same topic.

"But still... the Sable Island assessment," Morwenna said, her voice regaining its predatory edge. "The gauntlets were reported lost to an undead attack."

"That report was filed by the team’s designated reporter, and that reporter was not Rex."

"The reporter filed exactly what the team observed, which was part of my team," Rex said, his voice cutting through her doubt like a blade. "The team observed the undead swarming the group and seizing the gauntlets during the chaotic retreat."

"They did not observe the undead depositing them into the deep stone of the northern agricultural district when the swarm dispersed, because the dispersal occurred after the team had already crossed the city’s perimeter."

"And you tracked the dispersal?" Morwenna pressed, her eyes searching for a lie.

"Through the geological substrate," Rex replied. "The Earthen Authority’s passive awareness at the integration stage I had reached at that point was limited in its sensory range."

"The northern agricultural district sat at the very outer boundary of what I could ’read.’ It took four days of constant, grueling mental focus to confirm the gauntlets’ position with enough certainty to attempt a retrieval."

"Four days," Morwenna repeated, her voice dripping with implication. "During which time the gauntlets were sitting in the deep stone of the northern district... and not a single soul in this entire network knew they were there."

"No one else in this room possesses a geological awareness capable of reading at that depth or that range," Rex said, his voice final, closing the argument with the weight of a closing tomb. "The information was not being withheld, Lady Morwenna."

"It simply did not exist to anyone without the specific, specialized capability required to hear it."