Leveling Up by Seducing Milfs-Chapter 267. A Plan Given Form

After saying that, she left without any words spoken.

Rick looked up at the ceiling and felt that the socket didn’t hurt. It felt warm, but not the right kind of warm.

It was the kind of warmth that meant something had been using it and left heat behind. He would have to get used to that warmth, similar to how one acclimates to any new part of their body that behaves unusually.

Sebastian appeared at the foot of the bed.

"No," Rick said. "Fuck off."

"I wasn’t going to say anything big."

"You were definitely getting ready for something."

Sebastian said, "I was getting ready for something small," which was an admission.

He sat in the air with his legs crossed and was quiet for a while. "The affection notification."

"It went off when she said your name, not when she took your hand or pulled you back, and it’s also not when she stayed on the floor for twenty-four minutes."

"When she said your name in that specific register." He fixed his monocle. "There’s no Spirit Bond formed."

"She is not at the threshold, but the bond network registered the sound as significant..."

"All six of your existing partners felt it pass through the network."

"What did they feel?" Rick asked.

"A sound that cut through everything else that was going on, and that’s all they could say."

"Not what it was, just that it was something that cut through." He put his hands together. "You can take your time figuring out what that means."

He slowly disappeared.

"What an asshole leaving that complicated question when I’m just recovering from a weird-ass experience..."

Rick lay in the dark and thought about a shape that had been building something for thirty-two years, maybe even two hundred years. It had mapped out every magical connection in this building and every bond in his network.

It had read his recent memories and learned what was important to him. It had also retreated faster than it planned because it hadn’t thought about a woman with no magical connection to him saying his name on a wooden floor.

And then... he didn’t sleep for a long time.

...

Sebastian’s analysis was done by early morning, and he gave it to everyone in the common room. He spoke clearly and simply, as if he had spent the night with something scary and had turned it into useful information.

He said, "It seems like the fragment is not corrupted."

"The entity was using corruption as a medium, maybe... think of it like how a voice uses air. The air isn’t the voice, but it’s just what the voice travels through."

"The entity itself isn’t a corruption construct."

He put the piece on the table so that everyone could see it pulse.

"What it is: a concentrated ideological construct."

"Something built from accumulated belief, specifically the sustained conviction that the current structure of Zorathia’s power is irreparably wrong and has to be replaced."

"Surprisingly... this is not the Archon, but the Archon is grief accumulated into force and corruption given direction."

"Well, this is somehow different. More like that, this is a plan given form, someone who has held a specific goal with enough intensity for long enough that the goal itself became part of their power source."

Natasha said, "Someone who has believed the same thing for thirty-two years or more, with enough consistency that the belief started to work its own magic."

"And maybe a lot longer than thirty-two years." Sebastian said, "The identity theft happened thirty-two years ago."

"The plan it serves seems to have been made before that."

"The pre-coalition techniques are two hundred years old, which means either the entity is two hundred years old or it has been studying and preparing for two hundred years, which are both important in different ways."

"The pre-coalition techniques," Zephyra said from the end of the table.

Sebastian stared at her.

"The theoretical historian whose identity was stolen published work on restoring infrastructure before the coalition."

"The techniques used in the archive fire and the false nodes come from the same tradition." She had her folio open in front of her, but she wasn’t reading from it.

"Someone used the identity of a dead academic for thirty-two years because it gave them access to magical archives before the coalition."

"The identity was a tool with a purpose."

"Yes." Sebastian said, "That is consistent with what the fragment tells me."

Rick said, "So we have someone or something that has been working toward one specific goal for possibly two hundred years, using pre-coalition magic and stolen identities, with an oath bond to Fredrich, with surveillance infrastructure inside Valdris..."

Rick takes a deep breath after saying that long sentence. "...and with a dormant corruption node that was sealed and waiting under the Council building."

He looked at Sebastian. "And they just used my burned-out demon eye to look inside my head."

"They ran away when they lost their grip on the socket faster than they thought they would."

Sebastian said, "That’s right."

"So it’s decided then... they’re fucking scared, like pussies."

"It’s more like that; they are recalibrating."

"Rattled means that something stable has been disturbed, while recalibrating means that they have changed their plan to take new information into account," Sebastian paused. "We would rather the recalibration happen more slowly."

"In thirty-two years of documented operation, last night was the first time this entity made an unplanned choice..."

"They’re not used to making unplanned choices, which is good for us and unpredictable."

"What do they do next?" Zara asked.

"Not sure what they did, but they moved Fredrich last night, and he got instructions through whatever channel they use to talk to each other, and this morning he—"

Someone knocked on the door.

"Coming." Carmilla walked towards the door to pick it up.

It was a messenger from the Council building who gave her a sealed note and left without saying anything.

Carmilla read it and gave it to Rick.

It was an emergency summons from Grand Magister Fredrich to the full council, including Rick’s seat. The stated reason was a security threat.

The note indicated that Fredrich had evidence of someone operating inside Valdris under a false identity for at least thirty years and needed the Council assembled to address it as a formal matter.

Rick put the note on the table.

Everyone stared at it.

"They’re trying to control the situation right now." Natasha said, "If Fredrich calls the emergency council and says that the false identity is a threat he has found and is dealing with, he sets the story before we can."

Carmilla said, "And if the situation is Fredrich exposing a threat, then when we try to explain what we found, it looks like we’re undermining his investigation."

"What a fucking neat trick," Zara said.

Rick said, "It’s a good move," and he meant it without any praise.

"They spent a night recalibrating and came up with a response that puts us in a reactive position," he said, picking up the note. "But now..."

"We need to go to the council meeting, let Fredrich say what he wants to say, and then we listen for what he doesn’t say."

Zephyra, who had been watching quietly, said, "His evidence will be real."

"It will be partial and carefully chosen, but it will be real."

"He won’t lie in a council session because lying would be obvious," Zephyra fixed her glasses. "He will tell an accurate story with a carefully chosen frame."

"Can you identify the frame when you hear it?" Rick asked.

"That’s what I do," she said.