He went up to the second floor and then went back to his room to prepare for the Apostle gathering.
His room was exactly how he had left it the day before, which ant it had been empty all night. This ant that Lily had either co back ho or had left his room alone and not said anything about it this morning.
Both of those outcos were favorable because he didn’t want to regenerate such a low desire point without any exploitative chanics involved. He also didn’t want to do it with Lilith, given how disappointed he felt.
Let’s consider it a punishnt for her. Soon, he would likely need her assistance to get closer to Cassandra, as he was already interested in dominating the Demon Queen, not only in battle but also in bed.
He started to wash up and changed into the Academy’s version of formal attire, which consisted of a standard uniform pressed to eliminate the usual casualness expected of students. He sat for a mont on the edge of the bed to think.
The mirror on the wall across from him showed Rex Rexilion: composed, presentable, and the specific variety of non-threatening that he had built over these weeks in Aethelgard with the patience of soone constructing sothing they intended to use for a long ti.
He smiled at himself, and it was the smile he only used when he was alone, not the one he used in front of other people when he was performing.
"Today was the Apostle gathering, huh...? I can’t fucking wait to go deep down into more lore of this fantasy world..."
The Apostle gathering is not just a normal eting. It was a eting of twenty to twenty-five of the most powerful sanctioned operatives in the world, all of whom were there to talk about the specific threat that Rex was helping to plan from two different directions at the sa ti.
He would sit in that room as Rex Rexilion, an invited guest, an honor student, a person who had recently saved several mbers of the Starlight family, and soone who was generally thought to be one of the good ones.
He would pay attention to everything.
He would learn the nas, abilities, operational plans, and internal politics of a coalition that had been forming for years, all while no one inside it suspected that soone with his unique set of skills might be sitting in the back of the room taking notes.
But that was just the tip of the iceberg of what today could make.
The deeper layer was the issue he had been grappling with during his walk back from Theo’s training hall, one that the Thornmaze operation had illuminated by revealing what was lacking.
What was lacking was a face.
It was not a mask.
He possessed the Lustful Villain, which effectively fulfilled its role: a robust identity with a clear profile that Mordecai understood and trusted. This identity was also recognized by the demon coalition as representing a specific type of threat.
The Lustful Villain served as a tool for managing relationships in the Underlayer and allowed Rex to assu whatever identity he needed when he didn’t want to appear as an innocent man.
Now, however, he required sothing different—sothing that functioned in the human world, with a specific threat profile that the Apostles, the Academy, and the Starlight Network would all recognize and respond to.
He needed a villain that Aethelgard could na, that Apollo could confront, and that would divert attention and resources away from Rex Rexilion or the Lustful Villain.
Then Rex rembered about the Apostle he killed when he was the Lustful Villain. "The loser that I crushed with my telekinesis... I rember that he was the apostle of..."
"...justice."
He thought about the Apostle of Justice and began to consult his system for information. With the aid of the system’s intelligence files, he uncovered the na Xavier Xenworth.
Xavier was the reincarnator who had been pursuing Lilith when Rex, in his Lustful Villain form, intervened and handled the situation so effectively that there was no evidence left for anyone to investigate.
Xavier was listed as missing and presud dead in the pre-gathering materials, leaving an open wound in the Apostle network.
Rex knew that he had the shapeshifting skill he got from Lustia’s bonus.
He had utilized it in practical, minor ways since acquiring the skill, but he had yet to test its full potential, which allowed for the complete adoption of another person’s appearance, mannerisms, voice, and physical profile. His instinctive mastery of the ability suggested that the limit was greater than he had previously explored.
Xavier Xenworth had participated in the demon battle in Aethelgard. Rex had been close enough to him to discern his physical characteristics with the precision that Foresight and Emotional Insight could provide.
He recalled the man’s height, his coloring, the distinct way he carried himself in battle, and the sound of his voice when he had shouted at Lilith just before Rex had concluded the confrontation.
He rembered enough. "I can use his identity to beco a different villain... yes..."
"But I needed a better na—one that suits my army of the undead and also reflects the essence of necromancy..." Rex rested his chin on his hand, already knowing what to call himself when he shapeshifted.
"The Undead Bringer."
"Yeah... that’s fucking badass."
That was the na. Not Xavier’s na, but the na of a villain who commanded armies of undead demons and appeared out of nowhere to destabilize the surface world, derived from Xavier’s face.
A threat with a visage that the Apostles could pursue, a face that was already known to be missing and might have returned transford, and a face entirely shielded from any connection to Rex Rexilion by the Energy Manipulation skill’s ability to obscure his magical signature.
The smile in the mirror did not change.
’You’re going to be very useful,’ he thought, addressing the idea the way he addressed tools that had not yet been used. ’But not today..."
"For today I’ll listen as Rex Rexilion...’
He stood, straightened his jacket, and went downstairs for breakfast.
...
Unsurprisingly, he found Lily waiting at the bottom of the stairs.
It seems like she made up her mind soti between last night and this morning that the best way to stand at the bottom of the stairs was with her arms crossed and a look on her face that was doing many things at once.
The primary expression on her face was the type of concern she displayed when she was worried about sothing, but had now concluded that the worrying was over and it was ti to address it.
"You weren’t here last night," she said.
"I was at Theo’s," Rex said.
"I know where you were," Lily said.
"Diana told this morning." Her expression shifted fractionally. "She seed strange when she told about it."
"Strange...? How strange is it?" Rex asked for clarification because he wanted to understand what "strange" ant to Lily in this context before continuing the conversation.
"Like she was being very careful about what she just said," Lily said. "I was watching her with the kind of focused attention that she gave to things she cared about and didn’t feel completely at ease with."
"That’s not like my older sister’s usual," she said.
Rex looked at her. "We shot arrows, and I let Theo sleep at his table. That’s all there is to it."
Lily held his gaze for a mont in a way that made him think she was judging his expression and either finding it acceptable or choosing not to push the part she wasn’t sure about.
"Well... okay," she said and moved away from the stairs.
He accepted the situation for what it was: a decision to trust his word and set aside the unresolved issues, and he appreciated the discipline involved, even though the motivation behind it stemd from a strong desire bond rather than any simple generosity.
Twenty minutes into breakfast, Diana showed up at the Silver Rest, supposedly to pick up Lily for the walk to the gathering.
When Diana walked in, her interaction with Rex was exactly what he had expected: professionally neutral, slightly more focused than her usual deanor, and prompting Lily to reflect on their conversation at the bottom of the stairs.
Rex drank his coffee and said they should go right now before it’s late.
...
The walk to the eting place, which was a formal eting hall next to the Academy’s administrative wing and only used for events of great institutional importance, took twenty minutes through the city’s morning.
Diana talked to Lily for most of it, which was both natural and helpful. It put Rex in the outside position in the group, which was just the right angle for him to see both of them without having to do anything.
Diana was managing sothing. He could read it in the specific quality of her attention to the conversation, engaged but only partially inhabited, a portion of her processing dedicated to sothing other than Lily’s comntary on the morning.
For the first ten minutes of the walk, she didn’t look at Rex directly.
When she did, her face was blank.
"Yeah, you can’t fool with that kind of reaction anymore." Rex thought and kept his face calm.
’She can’t go back now, and I know she wants to see it again...’
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