Leveling Up by Seducing Milfs-Chapter 264. It’s Still Me

"Oh my god, Rick...!"

Carmilla reached Rick first.

She dropped to one knee next to him on the floor, and the Unbreakable Bond told her what was wrong with him before her eyes did. This was the only reason she didn’t grab him right away.

His vital signs were present and working. He was alive and aware in pieces, with something wrong in the middle of him that she had only felt once before, during the corruption crisis, when the first corruption beast got close enough to press against her barrier and she could feel what was on the other side.

She reached for him, but the bond resonance pushed back. Not with pain or tiredness, but with a feeling she couldn’t name other than wrong.

Like reaching for a door and feeling the heat coming through it before you even touched the handle.

She pulled her hand back and stayed where she was, close enough to reach him in less than a second but far enough away to avoid touching something she didn’t yet understand.

Natasha came in with her analysis crystal already on and scanned the room in one sweep before she spoke.

"The corruption is... internal," she said, and her voice was flat and precise, like when she was trying diligently to stay functional. "It has settled in the eye socket..."

"It is not spreading, but it is anchoring."

Liora came in behind her and reached for her healing reserves right away. She found herself on the floor, and her face expressed a complex mix of emotions.

Instead, she reached out with her divine presence to Rick’s bond resonance and felt it touch the edge of what was in the socket. She pulled back a little, not from Rick, but from the thing that had settled next to him.

"S-Something is using the corruption as a lens," she said in a low voice. "I can feel a presence looking at him..."

Sylvia and Zara came from the same direction in the hallway, which meant they were close when the bond network went off. Sylvia looked around the room all at once, and for the first time in all the time Rick had known her, her face changed.

It went from calm to uncertain for a moment before she put it back. Zara saw Rick on the floor and reached for her sword handle, but then she stopped because there was nothing in the room to cut.

The last to arrive was Zephyra. She had come the farthest, all the way from the guest rooms at the other end of the mansion.

She stood in the doorway for a moment, observing the room and its emptiness with the same flat, professional expression she applied to everything else. Then she crossed the floor and sat down next to Rick.

Instead of kneeling, she sat down, cross-legged, at Rick’s level on the floor. Her folio was not in her hand this time.

No one asked about it. She was present, and it was evident that she had decided to stay; those were the only important facts.

Sebastian appeared at the edge of the room where there was space available. When he spoke, his voice didn’t sound like it usually did.

There was no sarcasm, no dramatic timing, and no adjustment of the monocle for effect.

"Everyone, pay attention to what I’m about to say," he said. "The corruption in the socket isn’t attacking him."

"It’s turned the burned-out artifact cavity into a receiver that is tuned to whatever that entity is."

"The shape is trying to push influence through the connection to Rick," he looked around the room at each of them. "The good news is that Rick’s bond network is the strongest corruption resistance available in this world right now."

"Six active Spirit Bonds are holding the line, but... the bad news is that the socket is inside that line."

"The entity cannot pass through the bonds from outside, but the socket is already past the perimeter, and if it pushes enough through that channel, Rick’s own body becomes the path."

"H-How do we get rid of it?" Carmilla asked.

"You can’t... Well, not directly."

"The corruption has mixed with scar tissue from the demon artifact, and purification strong enough to clear it would hurt the socket for good." And then there was a pause. "But Rick needs to actively help shape it or at least not fight it for it to fully push through."

"If Rick gets ahold of that thing, it can’t gain full control of him."

"And what if he doesn’t hold?" Zara asked.

Sebastian didn’t say anything about that, and this is the first time that he looked concerned for Rick.

That’s the reason why he stayed silent when seeing Rick acting weird because he didn’t want to risk the corruption getting to him.

The room took this in, and no one said anything. They spread out around Rick in positions that no one had given them but that everyone understood.

...

Rick’s room didn’t look like it was his.

It resembled his room, similar to how a drawing of a place appears—familiar yet not real, lacking the depth that gives it authenticity. He could see the purple-edged layer through the socket.

In that layer, Valdris was older and more transparent. The streets below were visible through the walls like tracing paper over tracing parchment.

The architecture beneath the surface consisted of pre-coalition stone and followed pre-coalition logic.

He was standing in his own body like someone does when they move into a house that already has a tenant. He could feel his own hands, and he could feel the floor under his feet.

It was still all his, but there was a heavy presence in the room that wasn’t him, and it was patient.

The shape wasn’t right there with him. It was far away and could be seen through fog, but only in outline, not detail.

It didn’t go toward him, and it didn’t say anything. It put a lot of steady pressure on him, like deep water does instead of a wave hitting him.

It wasn’t a blow, but a presence, and it was completely, peacefully sure that it had more time than he did.

Rick’s bond network looked like six threads of light in different colors from inside. Each one was pulling toward the people in the room above the socket layer.

They were holding on, and they couldn’t get past the shape.

He could see where it stopped at the edge of the network and moved its weight around, like water does when it finds the shape of what holds it.

The socket, on the other hand, was inside the network. Already gone beyond the limits set by the bonds.

And if it could push enough through the socket to use Rick’s body from the inside out, the outside bonds wouldn’t matter.

He thought, standing in his own head while something big and patient pushed on the walls. "Okay... I just... have to hold on.

The weight went up.

"But..." He wondered, "For how long?"

...

Rick’s hand moved after ten minutes.

Rick’s hand was not directed towards anyone or anything in particular. Rick’s hand simply moved in a way that was dictated by someone else, with his fingers closing on the empty air near his hip.

He had the muscle memory, but not the reason behind it.

Carmilla saw it right away. "Rick...!"

The bond didn’t respond, but something came back, broken up like a voice with bad interference. Rick could tell what it was, but he couldn’t read it all.

Then, both of his eyes, the normal one and the one with the purple edge, looked at the ceiling in a way that was just not how Rick looked at things.

The angle wasn’t right, and the focus was off. There was something in his eyes that was mapping the room.

Zara was the first to move. She didn’t reach for a weapon; instead, she put her hand on Rick’s arm in a firm and deliberate way.

Through the bond, she pushed the Demon Queen’s authority in a way that wasn’t a skill activation but something more basic: the territorial claim of something that has decided where its boundary is.

The motion stopped. The quality of it changed, and through the bond, they could all feel the shape pull back a little bit, not defeated but rethinking. 𝑓𝓇𝘦ℯ𝘸𝘦𝑏𝓃𝑜𝘷ℯ𝑙.𝑐𝑜𝓂

Then Rick’s voice came out. It was his voice, but there was something behind it that wasn’t quite still and wasn’t quite echoing.

"Hold on, everyone... I’m still here," he said. "Still me as well."

Then a pause.

"Well... It’s big alright... whatever the fuck this is, and it’s been here for a very long time and knows the building," Rick sighed. "It’s been mapping the room since we got here."

"Can you see it?" Carmilla asked.

"I can see the edges through the socket." They could hear the effort in it. "It knows all of you."

"It’s been watching the bond network for months, and it knows the quality of each connection."

"It knows Carmilla’s bond is the oldest and closest, and it has been mapping the structure of everything."

"Can it hear us through him right now?" Natasha asked.

"Welp... yeahhh..."