"Against soone with primordial immunity," Rex said, "I beco significantly more dangerous in the physical register specifically."
"You beco the most dangerous thing in the physical register," Lustia said. "Because the physical register is the one category where primordial frequency has no answer."
"And of course... you can go even wilder if you’re trying to do genocide on those trash in the Underlayer or better... those reincarnators and apostles that roam around Aethelgard."
"Before you can get to the kingdom..." Lustia grinned. "Why not make Aethelgard beco your bitch first?"
"Aside from that, later," Rex said.
And then he thought about Celestina, the thirty years of operations, and the primordial-frequency immunity baked into standard Legion equipnt at a level that suggested it was not borrowed technology but developed technology. Soone who had understood primordial frequency well enough to weaponize it at scale.
"About Celestina..."
"She’ll have an answer for telekinesis," Rex said. "For elental workings."
"Probably for foresight interference as well, if she’s been dealing with reincarnators long enough."
"Yes," Lustia said. "That’s probably true."
"She won’t have an answer for anybody at a theoretical physical maximum moving faster than her threat assessnt can track," Rex said.
"No," Lustia said. "She will not."
He was quiet for a mont, and then he started to open up his system interface just to check the skill, only to get blown away with a big surprise. "What the fuck...?!"
"Twelve THOUSAND points?!" he shouted. "Are you fucking kidding ?!"
"Yes, and it’s best to not spend it with your points since you can get sothing even more worth it." Lustia moved her fingers so the system interface showed another skill, which was [Supre Healing].
"You can buy that skill to make you literally immune to all injuries, and of course... it’s not going to be another scam like Infinite Regeneration."
"Six thousand isn’t bad, yeah, and I have two thousand after buying that Supre Healing."
Lustia looked at him. "You said after Supre Healing... so I know that you’re probably going to make soone pregnant in order to get that free selection skill, huh?"
"I’m buying Supre Healing when I wake up," Rex said. "Six thousand points."
"It leaves at two thousand one hundred and fifty."
"There it is... my lustful apostle." Lustia was quiet for a half-second, which for her was approximately the sa as a full pause. "You’ve already decided on a backup plan as usual."
"The gap between thirty seconds and imdiate is the gap between surviving a specific class of engagent and not," Rex said. "I’ve been managing around Infinite Regeneration’s ceiling by not getting hit in ways that require it to work hard."
"That approach has a ceiling of its own," he looked at her. "Against Celestina’s network, or anything connected to it, that ceiling is exactly the kind of thing a patient observer finds and uses."
"You worked that out just now," Lustia said.
"I worked it out when you said the word ceiling," Rex said.
She looked at him with the expression she produced when she found him genuinely satisfying in a way that she did not have a cleaner word for.
"The path to twelve thousand for Peak Physique," she said, returning to it. "You’re not calculating it as twelve thousand points from your current balance."
"No," Rex said. "Free skill selection."
"Let guess... Alia Brightsoul," Lustia said.
"Correct because currently... she’s at ninety," Rex said. "One aningful encounter closes it."
"The free selection goes to Peak Physique, and that fucking overprice of twelve thousand points will be no cost for ." He looked at her. "And I’ll get that for sure before the underlayer... not after it."
"I indeed... planned a genocide in that fucking world to remove all the frauds and spies."
Lustia nodded once, and the nod had the specific quality of soone confirming a conclusion that they had been hoping he would arrive at without being pushed toward it.
"The Underlayer restructuring is not a canyon operation," she said. "It is not a Legion engagent."
"You are going down there to take over a network, which ans the people currently inside that network are going to have opinions about the transition." Lustia licks her lips. "So of those opinions will be expressed with violence."
"Gelion built in contingencies," Rex said.
"Yep, correct, he does build in contingencies," she agreed. "And the second-stratum contacts have been standing by for weeks with no signal."
"Whatever Gelion’s contingency says to do when the signal doesn’t co, they have been doing it or are about to start." She paused. "You want Peak Physique active before you go down."
"Not as a future acquisition, but as a current asset."
"Alia, before the underlayer," Rex said while rembering what he planned after he woke up. "Supre healing imdiately."
"Peak Physique from the free selection. Then down."
"That would be my sequencing," Lustia said.
"It’s also mine," Rex said. "I just needed the full picture of what Peak Physique actually does to confirm the order was right."
She looked at him. "You could have asked about it earlier."
"You could have explained it earlier," Rex said.
"I was getting there," she said, with the specific tone she used when she had been intending to do sothing and had been slightly outpaced by events.
"You were being appropriately dramatic," Rex said.
"I was," she said, with the unselfconscious honesty she sotis produced when the conversation had moved past the point where performance was worth maintaining. "It is a significant upgrade, and it deserved appropriate framing."
"It got appropriate framing," Rex said. "And now I have what I need."
She looked at him for a mont longer, standing at the edge of the dissolving space with the expression she seed to reserve for endings of this kind, the ones that had gone sowhere useful rather than rely completing themselves.
"Go," she said. "But before that... do you want to reward with sothing?"
Lustia starts to show her ass just to twerk it at him. "You know... I’ve been feeling lonely watching you dominating all those won..."
"Don’t you think I deserve sothing after providing you with a lot of useful information... and even help?" Lustia winked at him.
"Tch!" Rex made a disgusted expression. "Fuck off."
"I’ll reward you later."
"Aw. again..."
"Alright... the more you postpone the reward... the more I’ll enjoy getting dominated by my own apostle~! Hehehehehe~!" She starts to laugh like a freak.
"Yuck... disgusting piece of lust."
Then she was gone, and the dark was just the dark, and the guest room at the Starlight household was assembling itself around him through the usual morning process....
...
The first thing he did when he woke back to reality was to open the skill interface before he fully sat up.
Eight thousand, one hundred fifty points. The number sat there with the specific weight of accumulated ti and effort, and Rex ran through the list with the thodical attention he brought to resource allocation decisions.
[Supre Healing — 6,000 points. Instant, unlimited healing. No prerequisite. Works on all biological damage without exception, including damage sustained from divine ability activation.]
He read the description twice. Not because he had misread it the first ti, but because the second read was for the specific purpose of confirming that the qualifier he was looking for was not hidden in the fine print.
It wasn’t.
It works on all types of biological damage without exception. This included damage caused by primordial-frequency attacks, which his current skill set could not address effectively.
He had been carrying Infinite Regeneration as his primary healing chanism, which was excellent but not instantaneous. The gap between "heals in thirty seconds" and "heals imdiately" was between surviving a lethal strike and not surviving it.
Thirty seconds was long enough to die three tis in a serious engagent. He had managed around this limitation so far by not getting hit in ways that required the regeneration to do heavy work, which was effective until it wasn’t.
The Legion operation in the canyon had been the clearest demonstration of the ceiling. Primordial-frequency immunity ant that so percentage of threats he was going to face would have access to damage types that did not care about his existing defenses.
The calculation was simple. Six thousand points was most of his current balance.
But a healing ceiling was the kind of vulnerability that was fine right up until the specific mont when it wasn’t, and by that point, the opportunity to spend the points had already passed.
He purchased it.
[ELIZABETH VON STARLIGHT — MAXIMUM BOND REACHED: 100/100]
[FIRST MAXIMUM BOND BONUS: 1000 ENERGY POINTS]
[SEX ENCOUNTER AFTER MAXIMUM BOND: 150 ENERGY POINTS]
’Since I’ve silenced the system... it seems like I already reached her maximum bond... making get that useless 150 energy points when I have sex with the person I’ve maxed out.’
[CURRENT ENERGY BALANCE: 2150]
[YOU SPENT IT EARLIER]
’Yeah, yeah, I know...’
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