Rex thought about what the streets they walked through showed him.
The creatures they passed moved with a certain caution upon seeing him. It was a studied way of avoiding direct acknowledgnt, distinct from the way people on the street often overlook things.
They knew who had been in the yard. News of the fight with Gelion had spread, and the sight of Rex walking through the Underlayer’s central district with Lilith by his side—his Lustful Villain’s mask glinting in the fungal light—had circulated through the Underlayer’s social network at a speed typical for significant events.
A cluster of voices started up behind him, at a distance calculated to be respectful.
"That’s him."
"I know that’s him. I was there. I watched him throw Gelion through the courtyard wall."
"Which wall."
"The outer one."
A pause.
"...the stone one."
"Yes, the stone one."
Another voice, which was lower in tone, belonged to a creature with a wider chest than the first two. "He’s surface-trained..."
"You can see it in how he walks... he still did that to a primordial-class sli."
"Gelion isn’t just any sli."
"I know he isn’t just any sli. That’s what I’m saying."
A fourth voice, a woman’s, carefully cut in and said, "He’s with the succubus."
"The one from Lilith’s line. Which ans he has connections to the fourth district and probably the monitoring sector."
"He rearranged Mordecai’s guard setup too. I heard that from soone who works the inner gate."
"So he has connections to the first district as well."
"He has connections everywhere, is what you’re saying."
"I’m saying he walked in from the surface not that long ago, and now the second-stratum retrieval team is standing down, and Gelion is sitting in a chair sowhere."
There’s silence between them for a mont.
"Is that good or bad for us?"
"I don’t know yet."
"It’s good," the wide-chest voice said. "The monitoring network hasn’t been updated in sixty years."
"Gelion’s been running the sa three interfaces unsecured since before my youngest was born. If this surface person actually fixes that—"
"If."
"Yes, if."
The female voice spoke again, her tone quieter now. "He didn’t kill Gelion."
"So?"
"He could have done it. Everyone in that courtyard is aware he has the ability. Yet, he chose not to."
Another pause, longer than the others.
"That’s either very good," she said, "or it ans he’s saving it for sothing."
Rex kept walking, ignoring all of those words.
Lilith said, "They’re afraid of you," and the way she said it made it sound like she was soone who had been in this situation for a while and was providing him accurate information instead of an opinion about the information.
"Good to hear it," Rex replied. "It’s better that way."
Lilith gave him a look.
"This place runs on strength," Rex said. "Not the performance of strength, but the actual thing."
"They had a performance of strength for a while, and what they had was a council that held etings about geological data and a monitoring system that hadn’t been updated in sixty years."
He looked at the street ahead of him.
"Fear of sothing real is better than comfort about sothing that isn’t working," Rex said. "They’ll figure out whether to trust the real thing after they’ve had so ti to see what it does."
’Anyway... ti for to choose that free skill.’
He had the free skill selection open in the back of his mind and was going through the catalog with the part of his mind that wasn’t focused on the street, the briefing notes, and the expedition that was about to start in a few hours.
The catalog was large, and the free selection was the kind of choice that deserved to be made with full information rather than the first thing that seed useful.
He had been running the assessnt with two criteria: what the encounter with Gelion’s sli forces had revealed about the limits of his current toolkit and what the expedition into the canyon system tomorrow was going to require.
Gelion’s primordial-class working had done sothing that no other working he had encountered had done before, which was to penetrate his telekinetic field through frequency resonance rather than force. The field had adapted, and the adaptation had been sufficient, but the specific vulnerability it had exposed was real.
The Elental Mastery’s ability to analyze frequencies in real ti and make a tuned counter was what had closed that hole. The technique worked once, against one opponent, in a long fight that gave him ti to co up with the counter.
In a faster engagent or when facing multiple opponents of the sa primordial-class type, the ti margin would be nonexistent.
He required a solution that functioned without relying on ti.
After an extensive search, he finally located what he needed on his fourth review of the catalog.
[ELENTAL MAGIC CREATION — FULL POTENTIAL]
[DESCRIPTION: GRANTS THE ABILITY TO DESIGN, CONSTRUCT, AND DEPLOY ENTIRELY ORIGINAL ELENTAL MAGIC CONFIGURATIONS.]
[WORKING IN CONJUNCTION WITH ELENTAL MASTERY, PERMITS THE CREATION OF COMPOUND ELENTAL FORMS THAT DO NOT EXIST IN ANY CURRENT TAXONOMY.]
[INCLUDES: NOVEL COMPOUND ELENT SYNTHESIS, FREQUENCY ARCHITECTURE DESIGN, ELENTAL INTERACTION MODELING AT MOLECULAR AND DINSIONAL SCALE.]
[NOTE: THE COMBINATION OF ELENTAL MASTERY AND ELENTAL MAGIC CREATION PRODUCES A CAPABILITY SET THAT IS NOT BOUNDED BY ANY EXISTING MAGICAL FRAWORK.]
[PRACTICAL CEILING: NONE CURRENTLY DOCUNTED.]
Rex thought about this information for a mont.
The combination with the Elental Mastery was the most important part.
’Gelion’s working got through because it had a resonance profile that matched the field’s internal structure... it’s like a key that fits because soone handed you the mold.’
He had complete control over every known elent thanks to the Mastery. The Creation gave him the power to make elents and configurations that weren’t already in any known taxonomy.
The issue with every known elent lies in the term "known."
’Every entity in the Underlayer old enough to have a primordial-class working has spent centuries cataloguing frequency profiles...’
’They absorb, they analyze, they counter... and the whole system assus that the person throwing the working is pulling from a finite library.’
’But...’
’What happens when the library doesn’t exist yet...’
What this ant for the frequency vulnerability that Gelion had discovered was that he could create a functional device operating at a frequency not listed in any known catalog.
’Not a counter... not a workaround... but it’s sothing that has never had a resonance profile because it has never existed before the mont it’s thrown.’
’No one can’t absorb sothing you’ve never seen, and you can’t tune a counter to a frequency you can’t asure.’ Rex held his chin. ’The absorption strategy that made Gelion comfortable in that courtyard only works if the opponent is drawing from a catalog.’
’Take away the catalog.’
This ant that any opponent who tried to counter his attacks by using absorption or resonance analysis would be looking at sothing they had never seen before.
The edge in preparation ti was taken away.
’Aight, that’s good shit indeed.’
’I don’t see WHY NOT to pick it.’
He picked it.
[ELENTAL MAGIC CREATION — FULL POTENTIAL — ACQUIRED]
The acquisition arrived in the sa layered way the Elental Mastery had, integrating rather than installing. He felt the design space open up in his awareness, the specific sense of capacity expanding in a direction that had not previously been accessible, allowing him to explore new possibilities and creative solutions that he had not considered before.
He said, "Lilith."
"Yes, Master?" Lilith looked at him with her tail starting to wave around curiously.
"I want to try sothing with you."
"HEH!?" Lilith was shocked hearing that, and she already anticipated this mont and knew what Rex was going to do. "Uhmmm... wait... I’m not that ready yet to do it..."
"I’m not sure if you can... be as rough with as you were with that sli queen," Lilith said, her expression shy. "I’m afraid I might get knocked out too quickly..."
"Stop daydreaming, you fool." Rex flicked her forehead. "I’m going to do so testing for my new skills."
"You’ll be my target."
"E-Ehh!?"
When he said that, she looked at him with the readiness that was natural for her.
Rex asked, "How many barrier layers can you keep going at the sa ti?"
"Six in the field," she said. "The seventh starts to break down the second while I’m still moving."
"Put up four," Rex said. "Now."
She did exactly what Rex said by making four layers of barrier from her dark magic. "Alright... m-make sure to go gentle on , okay?"
"I think I’ve been punished enough, you know..."
They were standing in an open area between two of the Underlayer’s smaller streets. This flat area was used for work that needed space.
Lilith’s barriers went up quickly, like a combat succubus who had been doing barrier work since she could think for herself. Four concentric fields, each a different color in the underlayer’s ambient light, were layered around her at two-ter intervals.
Rex stared at them.
He contemplated frequency architecture, a term from the catalog that described the design process he had now mastered. He reflected on what Gelion’s primordial-class frequency had accomplished and what it had failed to achieve.
It had entered through resonance.
A functioning circuit operating at a frequency without a resonance profile would lack the sa entry point.
"Get ready..."
He created one.
It took him four seconds to build, which was longer than usual. The result was a small projection, no larger than his fist, slowly moving through the space between him and Lilith’s barrier.
"W-whoa... I don’t think this is a great idea to test it on , even though I already have my barrier ready."
"This is the last of your punishnt, so brace yourself for a huge impact from my magic!"
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