She reached out her hand, not as a formal invitation, but as soone who was connecting two points and needed the physical contact to finish the transit geotry.
Rex looked at her hand. "You’re not taking any chances, are you?"
"HWHAAT?! N-no! Of course not!" Lilith shook her head. "This is just part of how the teleportation works, rember?"
Rex raised an eyebrow, still skeptical, but he could see the determination in her eyes. When Rex took her hand, Lilith’s expression transford from joy to a more sultry gaze.
She let out a soft moan, overwheld with joy at finally holding his hand again after so long. "Ahhhnnn... Master’s hand... it’s been so long."
"Waste more of my ti, and you’re really going to get it," Rex said with a low tone.
"On it now! To the underlayer, we go!!!" With a sudden burst of energy, Lilith tightened her grip on Rex’s hand, her excitent palpable.
ZWINGGG!
The underlayer’s transit was different from surface-to-surface teleportation. It was a movent straight up and down through a special area with unique energy, changing from one zone to another instead of just moving from one place to another, and Lilith’s succubus nature allowed her to navigate this area more easily than surface-born teleportation could.
SWOOOOSH!
The open ground disappeared.
What replaced it was the Underlayer’s ambient darkness, the specific quality of light in a space that was hundreds of ters below the surface and was lit by luminescent fungi and architectural installations rather than anything that had a relationship with the sky.
Rex had visited this place before, so he felt that every process was taking longer than usual, which bored him. However, at least Lilith’s transit brought him to Castle Nocturna’s receiving corridor, akin to walking through soone’s front door in the Underlayer.
The corridor was familiar. Rex had walked it twice before.
At the end of the corridor was the hall where Mordecai t with visitors. The doors stood open, suggesting that either Mordecai was anticipating guests or he had yet to conclude his previous discussion.
Rex went through them.
After a while, Rex noticed that Mordecai was in the hall, which was typical for him. However, the arrangent of the hall was different from what Rex rembered during his previous visits.
Mordecai occupied the main chair, which resembled a throne but was not quite one, and his body language indicated that he was being cared for rather than attending to soone or sothing.
On his left side, there was a figure Rex had never seen before who seed to be working on his shoulder and back.
The first thing the Foresight noticed about her was that she was tall. The presentation she was in was exactly that of soone who had chosen how they looked on purpose and completely.
She wore white in a manner that suggested it was intended to convey a specific aning rather than just being a color, and the layering and cut of her garnt resembled formal attire that had been adapted for movent.
The feature that made Rex pause for exactly one second was the peacock arrangent at her lower back, white-feathered and full, the kind of detail that did not belong to any human presentation Rex had encountered in this world.
A non-human attendant, but still looking exactly like a human with extra animal features just like Linda has. Rex already believed that Mordecai’s gacha system produced presentations with so regularity, and he had stopped being surprised by the wide range of results it generated.
He put this aside and turned to Mordecai.
Mordecai noticed Rex’s entrance while he was in the midst of savoring a mouthful of grapes offered by the human peacock, a sight that was impossible to miss. His expression transitioned through the familiar stages he always exhibited when Rex visited: first surprise, then relief, and finally a slightly insincere warmth that suggested he recognized his reliance on Rex’s continued presence.
"Wahhhhh!" Mordecai scread, then sat as a demon lord should. "Ehem...!"
"Lustful villain," said Mordecai. "Well... this is... rather a surprise visit."
Rex did not return the warmth.
"I have questions," Rex said, and his voice through the Lustful Villain’s register had the quality it always had, which was the quality of soone who was not performing and was not pretending to be asking rather than requiring.
Mordecai sat up straight on his throne.
"Of course," he said.
Mordecai snapped his fingers, and then so demons brought Rex a chair. "Feel free to sit."
But... Rex stayed on his feet, ignoring the chair behind him.
"The Underlayer has pathways that connect to the surface island," Rex said. "The one that Aethelgard sits on."
"Ah yes, you’re talking about the subsurface system," Mordecai said. "They’re passive connections, which ans they don’t need to be maintained."
"Soone has utilized one of those pathways," Rex stated. "This occurred recently—within the last week. It was used to deploy personnel onto the surface island for a coordinated hostile action."
Mordecai’s expression reflected the reaction people have when they receive unexpected news and must process it.
"Wait a minute... that was not my operation," Mordecai said. "I have standing orders not to—"
"I know about your standing orders," Rex said, and the interruption was precise, not loud, just clean. "I wrote so of them."
"I’m not fucking asking if it was yours," he added. "I’m asking if you know whose it was."
Mordecai was quiet for a mont, which is what soone does when they don’t have anything to say but are trying to figure out what to do with the information they do have.
"There has been activity in the northern shaft system," Mordecai said finally. "The system that connects to the canyon network under the island’s northeastern section."
"Activity...?" Rex repeated.
"Movent signatures," Mordecai said. "A week ago. Multiple individuals, but the signature profile was unfamiliar. Not demon-native. Not undead construct."
He looked at Rex like soone who had co to a conclusion they didn’t like.
"Are you talking about apostles?" Rex asked.
"No," Mordecai said. "The Apostle signature is unique and easy to spot."
"These were reincarnators, but I’ve never seen running system signatures like these before."
He paused to think more deeply.
"The keyword the monitoring system flagged," Mordecai said, "was a working that reads like a search pattern... well, it was not a transit, but so kind of a search."
Rex thought about this.
Soone had co up through the Underlayer’s pathway system, not to get to the surface but to look for sothing in the area between the Underlayer and the canyon network that is below the surface.
They were searching for the Key to the Underlayer.
Instead, they had found Iris’s team of explorers.
"You knew about this," Rex said. His voice remained steady, lacking volu, yet it carried a weight that made it feel more intense than loud.
Mordecai’s posture changed the way it did when he was on shaky ground.
"I saw the activity signature," Mordecai said. "I assessed it as exploratory rather than hostile, which it appeared to be from the Underlayer side of the threshold."
"You thought it was exploratory," Rex said, "but you didn’t tell ."
Mordecai said, "You’ve been busy on the surface."
Rex stared at him for a long ti. "You know what...?"
"You’re a fucking stupid demon lord."
Everyone in the room was shocked when Rex openly mocked Mordecai, and so of them had already assud an offensive stance, ready to attack him at any mont when Mordecai gave the order.
But Lilith, clearly frightened, kept taking steps backward.
"The Academy now knows about the Key to the Underlayer," Rex said. "They are sending a team to retrieve it tomorrow, asshole!"
"The team will be moving through the sa canyon system where that team was ambushed."
He looked Mordecai in the eye.
"If the people who were searching the subsurface zone are still in the system," Rex said, "and if the Academy team encounters them, then the subsurface pathway system becos a surface-level political problem before you’re all ready for it to be one."
Mordecai had beco very still.
"I didn’t know the Academy was sending a team," he said.
"No," Rex said. "Of course, you fucking didn’t!"
"It’s because you decided the search activity was not relevant enough to report, and now the search activity has intersected with sothing that changes what I’m working with on the surface."
He took one step forward.
"This is not a mistake I am willing to absorb a second ti, dumbass," Rex said, and the way he said it had the specific quality of sothing that was a statent of position rather than a threat. "If information about Underlayer activity reaches the surface through any channel other than , then the position I hold here becos untenable."
Mordecai’s eyes looked the sa as they always did when Rex reminded him of the geotry of the situation. This geotry placed Mordecai’s operation in a position where it required Rex’s help to function, rather than the reverse.
Mordecai said, "I-I get it..."
"Tell everything you know about how the search pattern works," Rex said. "Every detail that the monitoring system picked up."
Since Rex walked in, the attendant with the peacock feathers behind Mordecai’s chair had been very still. Rex had seen her around, but the stillness made it seem like she was paying attention instead of trying to hide.
These were not the sa things, and the difference was important.
He filed it and then turned his attention back to Mordecai, who had started to talk.
"So..."
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