The Lustful Villain: Every Milfs and Gilfs are Mine!

Chapter 824: 824. You Poked The Skin Of A God And Expected Not To Bleed (Soon... Old Bitch)

Morwenna’s gaze drifted from Aurelia, lingering on her granddaughter with a heavy, silent scrutiny that seemed to weigh the very soul of the girl’s plea. The silence in the room stretched, becoming a jagged thing, sharp enough to draw blood.

She looked at the obsidian table.

She looked at Rex, her eyes searching for a crack in his monolithic composure.

She looked back at the table, her jaw set in a hard, uncompromising line.

"I am not withdrawing the observation," Morwenna finally declared, her voice a low, resonant vibration that commanded the room’s attention. "I want that noted formally in the annals."

"The capability similarity is not a phantom; it is a documented reality, and it is etched into the record by my own hand."

"If the truth is a mask, it is a masterfully crafted one..."

"If further information emerges that shifts the light and changes the picture, let the record show that the shadow was identified long before it was chased."

"Noted," Valentina intervened.

Her voice possessed the clinical, decisive quality of a judge closing a case not because she was entirely convinced but because the theater of debate had reached its natural, exhausted end. "The concern is officially on record..."

"The assessment proceeds."

Morwenna turned her head one last time to look at Rex. It was a final, predatory sweep, a last attempt to read the man behind the myth.

Rex, however, did not yield. He met her gaze with the same unnerving, steady patience he had maintained from the moment he entered the room.

He held the look of a man who had nothing to hide, nothing to prove, and nothing to fear—a man simply waiting for the world to move on to the next inevitable truth.

The room held its breath. The tension was a physical cord pulled taut, vibrating with the unspoken weight of everything they had lost and everything they still suspected.

Valentina drew a slow, deliberate breath, the sound amplified in the sudden stillness. Every eye in the room—Apollo’s hardened gaze, Aurelia’s hopeful eyes, Morwenna’s suspicious stare—latched onto her.

She was the pivot point, the one who would turn the page from suspicion to official verdict.

"Rex Rexilion," she said, her voice echoing with the gravity of the moment.

"Yes," Rex replied, his voice a calm anchor in the swirling uncertainty.

"The documented research history within the Academy archives," Valentina began, her eyes scanning the data before her, "is entirely consistent with the terrifying capabilities you demonstrated in the plaza."

"The timeline of the Earth Sovereign designation’s integration, the granular development of your elemental mastery, the depth of your underlayer intelligence studies... all of it is documented in a progression that predates the chaos of yesterday."

"Yes," Rex said.

"The Key to the Underlayer," Valentina continued, her voice hardening. "An artifact of mythic importance, documented as the primary research target of the last cycle."

"The key that was lost when Elizabeth’s husband first shattered the original... and the new key, the one reconstructed through your own painstaking efforts, which has now been confirmed destroyed in the final, violent phase of this morning’s engagement."

A flicker of something passed through the room, a reminder of the lie, the desperate, brilliant deception Rex and Elizabeth had woven together to protect the truth. They had convinced the world that the Key was gone, lost to the fires of the meteor, when in reality, the destruction was a calculated sacrifice to hide the true nature of the integration.

And the world, desperate for stability, had swallowed the lie whole.

"The Key has been the singular focus of your reconstruction analysis project for the last six months," Valentina stated, her gaze piercing.

"Yes," Rex said, his voice unwavering even as the weight of the lie pressed against his chest.

"And Elizabeth Starlight’s confirmation of your research access, the security protocols, and the specific, ironclad timeline of your development," Valentina concluded, her eyes moving to the woman beside him, "is a credible account from a source of impeccable standing."

"It is," Elizabeth said, her voice steady, her eyes meeting Rex’s for a fraction of a second a silent, shared moment of triumph and burden.

The lie was complete. The world believed the Key was dust, and in doing so, they had allowed Rex to remain a man rather than a monster.

Valentina looked down at the obsidian table, her gaze sweeping over the data as if searching for one final, microscopic flaw in the logic. Finding none, she straightened her posture, her presence filling the room with the cold, unyielding authority of the law.

"Rex Rexilion is cleared of the concerns raised by Morwenna," she declared, her voice ringing out like a hammer striking an anvil. "The documented archives do not support the suspicion of deception, and the operational reality of the engagement supports a conclusion entirely different from the one proposed."

"The evidence points to a man of immense capability, not a man of immense treachery."

She looked up, her eyes sharp and final. "The contribution this network owes him for the reconstruction analysis, for the vital intelligence gathered on the Legion’s surface operations, and for the surgical intervention in the plaza that saved countless lives from certain, bloody annihilation is monumental."

"It will be formally recognized."

The verdict was cast.

Morwenna did not flinch. She did not protest.

She simply looked down at the table, her silence a heavy, suffocating shroud of unspoken doubt. She had lost the battle of words, but her eyes still held the glint of a predator who knew the prey had merely escaped a trap, not escaped the hunt.

Rex met Morwenna’s gaze. In the room, he was the picture of stoic grace, the calm, even expression of a man who had been vindicated by truth and felt no need to perform the cheap theater of triumph.

He was the hero, the savior, and the scholar.

Beneath that impenetrable mask, Rex was doing something far more calculated in the dark, silent sanctum of his mind where he filed away every debt, every sin, and every potential weapon. He looked at Morwenna, and in the private theater of his consciousness, he began to draft her sentence.

’You were close, old fucking bitch,’ he thought, his inner voice a low, predatory growl. ’Too close...’

’You poked at the skin of a god and expected not to bleed.’

His mind drifted momentarily to Elizabeth. A rare, genuine warmth flickered in the dark corners of his psyche.

’Elizabeth... you played your part perfectly...’

’You stood in the line of fire to shield my shadow.’

’You will be rewarded for this... When the dust settles and the masks are truly stripped away, you will be the first to taste the spoils of my ascent.’

’You will be treated like the worthy woman you have become to be my true bitch.’

His thoughts shifted, turning colder, more clinical. ’And the others... Apollo, the fucking bum who thinks he knows the scent of war... and Aurelia, the girl who thinks her blood ties her to the truth.’

’They have all played their roles in this grand deception...’

’They will all get their due. A little discipline, a little redirection... a small punishment to remind them that even allies must walk a careful line.’

Then, his focus snapped back to Morwenna. The warmth vanished, replaced by a visceral, jagged rage that would have terrified anyone who could hear it.

"But you..." The thought was a violent, swearing crescendo in his mind. ’You fucking bitch...’

’You had the audacity to try and strip the skin off my lies.’

’You tried to drag me into the light before the world was ready to burn in it.’

’You think you’re so clever, watching me like a hawk?’

’Just wait... When the time comes, I am going to fucking destroy you.’

’I won’t just expose you; I will break you so fucking bad that the history books will forget you ever breathed.’

’You tried to unmask a monster, Morwenna? Fine. I’ll make sure you’re the first one to drown in its shadow.’

He revised the timeline in his mind, dragging the date of her reckoning closer to the present. He wouldn’t wait years. He wouldn’t wait months.

He would make her wait just long enough to feel safe before he tore her world apart.

The meeting was winding down, the air thick with the stale residue of intense debate. Valentina was methodically clearing the remaining administrative minutiae, her voice a rhythmic, efficient cadence that signaled the approaching end of the session.

The tension had begun to ebb, the heavy atmospheric pressure of the room starting to lift until Apollo cleared his throat.

It wasn’t a casual sound. It was a sharp, deliberate interruption that sliced through the administrative drone.

The room shifted. Every gaze, from Aurelia’s weary eyes to Morwenna’s predatory stare, snapped toward him.

Apollo sat with the posture of a man who had been carrying a heavy, jagged stone in his gut for the last hour, and he had finally decided that the approaching conclusion was the only safe moment to drop it.

"There is one more thing that was important for us to discuss," Apollo said, his voice cutting through the silence like a blade.