The Lustful Villain: Every Milfs and Gilfs are Mine!-Chapter 294. Apollo Is Looking Better Now (Well, He’s Ready To Suffered Again!)
Something in Nerith’s posture changed, not dramatically, just a small settling, like a person who has been holding themselves carefully for a long time and has just found a surface they trust enough to put some of the weight down on.
"O-okay..." she said.
It was a small word, but the way she said it meant more than the word usually carried.
Rex looked at the woven arrangement on the table again.
"The flowers," he said. "Which ones did you use?"
Nerith glanced at them. "Oh, uhm, there’s the Windbell for clarity, and then there’s also the Silverleaf for gratitude."
"The small blue ones here in the center are heart mosses." She paused. "They only grow in places where the natural energy is calm and consistent."
"And you wove them this morning," Rex said. "In the courtyard."
"Yes, early in the morning... before the sun had risen."
"So the natural energy around this inn," Rex said, "is calm and consistent."
Nerith looked at him.
"That’s what the heartmoss says," she said, quietly.
Rex looked back at her with a warmth he rarely displayed, a look that conveyed he was not performing but simply present.
"Good to know," he said.
The leaves in Nerith’s hair went slowly, quietly, and completely amber.
She noticed that she had been sitting in the chair for considerably longer than she had planned and that she did not particularly want to leave, and that both of these things were new information.
She looked at her hands.
"I should probably let you have your morning," she said, without moving.
"You’re not interrupting anything," Rex said.
"I’ve been here a while."
"Yes," Rex said. "And the conversation has been good."
"Those two things aren’t problems."
Nerith looked up at him one more time, with the full version of the expression she had been building since she walked in, the one that had gone through several revisions on its way to this point and had finally settled into something honest and unguarded.
"Thank you..." she said. "...for listening."
"Nah, I should’ve been the one thanking you for coming," Rex said. "And also for the flowers."
She stood, smoothing her robe with the careful motion of someone reestablishing their composure, but the leaves in her hair were still amber, and she hadn’t noticed.
Rex noticed.
He said nothing about it.
Some information was more useful when it stayed where it was.
"Would you like to have breakfast together here at the inn? The food is quite good, you know," Rex suggested. "It’s on me."
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah, don’t mind it."
"Thank you...
[NERITH SYLVARUNE — DESIRE LEVEL: 37 → 52/100]
’Faster than I thought it could go... I know that something fishy is probably going on around her.’
...
They went downstairs together, and Nerith said something. "Also... I remember that I’ve been meaning to tell you something, but I think it’s best to start while we have breakfast together."
"Sure."
Mara had the exact look on her face that she always did when Rex came down with someone she didn’t know. It wasn’t suspicious, but it was attentive. Rex gave her a small look that said everything was fine, and she settled into the warmth she provided to everyone she served.
They sat at the eastern table, and Linda came in with coffee and the first service of the day. She looked at Nerith with the calm, professional attention of someone who had worked in service long enough that it was second nature to her.
Nerith looked at the coffee and picked it up with both hands.
"Thankfully... Apollo has gotten better these past few days," she said. "And that’s the first thing I’ve been meaning to tell you."
"Good to hear it." Rex’s face stayed the same. "How much better?"
"Better enough that Miss Elizabeth assigned him a task," Nerith said. "Which is how she manages people who need to feel useful before they can feel themselves again."
’Huh...? A task...?’
"Not going to lie..." Rex said, "She’s good at that."
"She is." Nerith looked at the coffee. "The assignment is an expedition."
"There’s an artifact that Miss Elizabeth’s been tracking for years, and it’s come back into the records because of the undead attack."
Rex looked at her with the expression of a person who was receiving information rather than someone who already had a significant stake in the outcome.
’Undead attack...? Don’t tell me I mess up, but there’s no fucking away...’
"It’s called the Key to Underlayer." Nerith said, "Miss Elizabeth says it’s a physical object, probably from before the Apostles’ era, and that artifact was made to allow people to travel from the surface to the Underlayer before the current passage systems were set up."
Rex thought about "The Key to Underlayer" while maintaining his expression.
"If they find that... they can access the Underlayer at will..."
"This discovery means they can access Mordecai’s land and the army of the dead."
"This also meant that everything I’ve constructed in the Underlayer could transform from a secure asset into a liability as soon as they have easy access to it."
He drank his coffee.
"I won’t fucking allow that to happen because I still have a lot of plans I will do for The Underlayer."
"Miss Elizabeth thinks the timing is connected," Nerith continued. "The undead attack used drainage vectors that suggest knowledge of subsurface pathways."
"She believes the artifact may have been used to plan the route."
’What the fuck is going on here...?’
Rex said, "That’s a good guess."
"She wants a team to retrieve it," Nerith said. "And I wanted to ask if you’d come."
"You know... you’re probably eligible to do it because you beat Therion himself with magic!"
"And also..." She said, "Apollo asked me to bring you," and the way she said it made it clear that her statement was true and not the only reason she was asking.
Rex looked at her from across the table.
"So there’s another reason, huh?" He said, "Apollo asked you to come find me."
"Yes, that’s true, and he said you had done more for him than he could thank you for," Nerith said. "And that he’d feel better about the expedition’s chances if you came."
"He really said that?" Rex then thought. "Oh yeah, it seems like what I did back in his house worked... but he probably didn’t know that his mother felt longing towards me."
"Those exact words," Nerith said.
Rex thought about the Key to Underlayer and what it meant, as well as the exact shape of the problem it caused. Then he thought about how the problem becoming an expedition would help him deal with it from the inside instead of the outside, allowing him to gather more information and potentially find a solution that would not be possible from a distance.
"Alright," he said. "I’ll be there."
Then...
The door of the Silver Rest opened, and Rex looked up.
It was Apollo Brightsoul who came through, and his movement was different from the last time Rex had seen him, which had been through a closed door, where two words had been spoken through the wood.
He looks less heavy now. The exact brightness Rex had recorded in Apollo’s presence—the effortless forward quality of someone who naturally played heroic roles—was still there, but at a lower level, like a lamp that had been turned down instead of off.
And Rex noticed Mireya Snowlith was next to him.
She was positioned near his left arm, though she didn’t grasp it. Her proximity indicated that she had adapted to his preference for closeness without direct contact, modifying her behavior to accommodate his comfort level.
’Oh...? A change of scenery I see...’
When Apollo looked at Rex, he gave him the expression Rex had been striving for over the past few weeks. The expression was devoid of any pretense and revealed what lay beneath: genuine gratitude, along with something more complex that underpinned it.
"I heard you were here," Apollo said.
"Well, I live here," Rex said.
Without being asked, Apollo sat across from him.
’That expression... he didn’t know what happened to his mother, huh?’
Mireya sat next to him and looked at Rex with the same look she had been developing since the secondary approach. It was the same look as Nerith’s, but it came from a different angle.
"I should have come to the door at my mother’s house," Apollo said. "But... my body... it felt so weak that I couldn’t get up just to greet you."
"It’s fine," Rex said. "You needed time."
"I know, but..." Apollo looked at the table for a second and then back at Rex. "She told me what you said, that I should come back when I was ready and not rush it."
"She told me that was you."
Rex didn’t say anything.
"Thanks," Apollo said simply.
He expressed his gratitude in a way that conveyed deeper meaning than the words themselves, without any show of thankfulness; it was genuine, and Rex accepted it with the demeanor of someone who felt no complexity about the situation.
"But I still need to ask..." Rex said, "How are you feeling right now?"
Apollo thought about it, which Rex had seen him do every time someone asked him something real.
"Still trying to work on it, but I’m fine for now," he said. "Also, Miss Elizabeth gave me something to do, which helps me to get my reputation back."
Rex said, "The artifact."
"So, Nerith has already informed you about that?"
"She got here early," Rex said.
Apollo looked back and forth between the two of them, then at the table with a small smile that would have been a smile if it had been a better week. "Good... she did what I asked her to do."
"Yeah, I know," Rex said.
