Chapter 673: 673. Lilith Is Being Brave By Having A Debate And Swearing At Me! (One Slap!)

He leaned back slightly, crossing his massive arms over his chest, looking every bit the bored tyrant.

"One hundred and fifty," she hissed, the number sounding like a curse.

"Do the math, Lilith. It’s not that complicated," Rex teased, a glint of dark amusement dancing in his eyes. "The foursome multiplier increased the base rate by three times."

"The two pregnancies? Those unlocked free skill selections."

"And your little succubus ’passive’ contributed a measly one hundred and fifty additional points at encounter resolution. It’s a rounding error, really."

Lilith bolted upright.

She sat up with the frantic, uncoordinated energy of someone whose brain had reached full consciousness while her dignity was still stuck in REM sleep. Her hair was a catastrophic nest of tangles, a testament to the inadequacy of the decorative cushion, and her wings were still half unfurled in a disheveled, awkward sprawl.

She looked less like a high-ranking lieutenant of the Underlayer and more like a demon who had lost a fight with a whirlwind. And then she glared at him, her chest heaving.

"One hundred and fifty," she said again, her voice trembling with indignation.

"That’s what the system awarded," Rex replied with a purely provocative shrug. "Don’t blame the messenger."

"I have been your liaison for months!" she exploded, her voice a sharp whisper to avoid waking the sleeping Queens. "I have managed the Underlayer’s entire communication infrastructure!"

"I have maintained your goddamn cover identity’s operational continuity!"

"I have handled every intelligence relay between the demon forces and your pathetic Academy persona! And last night..." She gestured wildly at the bed. "Last night, I was present for the entire reconstruction!"

"The purge, the speech, the Blood Oath, the engagement, and whatever the hell the fuck you were doing between the Gorvasha calibration and the throne room!"

"Yes, yes, you were there," Rex said, waving a hand dismissively. "Very impressive."

"Gold star for the succubus for swearing at me for the first time."

"S-sorry..."

"Don’t be sorry."

"So... the System," she continued, her voice dropping into a flat, terrifyingly precise monotone, the kind used when reading a death warrant, "gave me a species passive bonus of one hundred and fifty points."

"The base encounter rate accounts for the primary bond participants," Rex explained, as if he were teaching a particularly dim-witted child. "The passive is applied at resolution for secondary contributors."

Lilith froze. The silence that followed was deafening.

"Secondary," she whispered.

"It’s the system’s terminology," Rex said, his tone dripping with a ’don’t argue with logic’ smugness.

"I contributed to this entire operation!" she hissed, leaning into his space, her eyes flashing. "I have been the backbone of this entire operation since before you even had a throne room to walk into!"

"You have," Rex conceded, his gaze unwavering. "But the one hundred and fifty points don’t reflect your operational worth, Lilith."

"It reflects the system’s classification of the encounter type."

"Don’t conflate management with... well, whatever it was you were doing on the floor."

Lilith stared at him, her mouth slightly agape.

"You’re telling me," she said, her voice trembling with pure, unadulterated fury, "that after everything... after all the logistics, the spying, the blood, and the sheer exhaustion... the System looked at last night and decided my contribution was worth roughly two-thirds of a standard solo session?"

Rex considered the most accurate, most infuriating response. He let a small, cruel smirk tug at the corner of his mouth.

"The system isn’t evaluating your professional merit, Lilith. It’s evaluating encounter parameters."

"That is somehow more insulting!" she snapped.

"It’s accurate," Rex countered.

"Accuracy is not a comfort when the ’accurate’ truth is that I was categorized as a secondary contributor to an encounter in which I was physically, tangibly, and most importantly, exhaustingly present!"

Rex let out a short, sharp bark of laughter, then immediately regained his cold, dominant composure. He reached out and gave her a sharp, playful yet commanding slap on the shoulder.

"Get the fuck up, you dramatic bitch!"

"Clean yourself up and change."

"The throne room is in two hours." Rex pointed at her. "You are the underlayer’s liaison to the surface; it’s a significant position, and currently, you are sitting on a decorative cushion arguing with me about system taxonomy like a disgruntled servant."

Lilith looked down at the lumpy cushion. She looked at the bed, where the two queens lay in their triumphant, pregnant slumber.

Then, she looked back at Rex, her eyes brimming with a very un-lieutenant-like sense of injustice.

"They got pregnancies," she whispered, her voice cracking with the sheer unfairness of it all.

"They are also not succubi," Rex said, standing up and looming over her like a mountain of dark muscle. "The species passive is the system’s acknowledgment that succubus biology produces a different encounter dynamic."

"It is a biological modifier, Lilith. It is not a ranking."

"It feels like a ranking!" she shot back.

"Many accurate things feel like other things," Rex said, his voice turning back to that smooth, commanding velvet.

He offered her no sympathy, only the cold reality of his command. "Now, get your ass up, or I’ll do it myself."

Lilith finally stood, a process that required a clumsy, ungraceful negotiation with her own wings. They had been in a state of deep, relaxed slumber and were not immediately cooperative about folding back into a travel-appropriate configuration.

She spent a moment wrestling with the leathery membranes, her face a mask of quiet, simmering irritation, as if the very laws of physics were personally insulting her.

When she finally managed to tuck them away, she turned to Rex. She didn’t look defeated; she looked like a woman who had decided to stop arguing a point simply because she hadn’t finished being annoyed about it yet.

"My new clothes are in the secondary chamber," she said, her tone clipped. "You broke it last night..."

"I know," Rex interrupted, his voice flat.

"Which is down two corridors and up a level," she continued, ignoring his impatience.

"I know, Lilith," he said, a warning note creeping into his voice.

"And," she added, pausing to select a word with agonizing deliberation, "I need to use the bathing room before the secondary chamber, because the floor was not... entirely adequate for a full night’s sleep in terms of certain... physical conditions."

Rex’s eyes narrowed. The amusement was draining out of him, replaced by the cold, sharpening edge of a man whose patience was a finite resource, and Lilith was currently burning through it like a forest fire.

"The bathing room is adjacent to the door," he said, his voice dropping an octave.

"I know where the fucking bathing room is!" she snapped back, her dignity flaring up in a sudden, uncharacteristic burst of sass.

She moved toward the door with the haughty bearing of someone who had decided to execute the next fifteen minutes with peak efficiency, intending to revisit the ’one hundred and fifty points’ debate at a much more convenient time.

But she didn’t make it to the threshold.

"The multiplier," she said, stopping dead at the door but refusing to turn around, her voice trembling with the need to have the last word. "Three times base... That was because there were four of us."

"Yes," Rex said, his jaw tightening.

"So in that sense," she pressed, her voice gaining strength, "my presence contributed to the multiplier structure."

"It’s basic math, Master."

Rex took a slow, deep breath, the kind a predator takes before a strike. "The foursome multiplier applies to three simultaneous maximum bond participants regardless of species, Lilith."

"The baseline is the participant count. It’s not a meritocracy; it’s a headcount."

"So I contributed to the multiplier!" she insisted, finally spinning around to face him, her eyes bright with a triumphant, stubborn light.

"You were one of three participants. Yes," Rex said, his voice dangerously calm.

Lilith beamed. It was the expression of someone who had found a version of an argument they could live with and was committing to it with everything they had.

"Exactly. I contributed to the multiplier."

"Go. Get. Cleaned. Up," Rex commanded, his patience finally snapping like a dry twig.

"I contributed to the multiplier," she repeated, a smug, self-satisfied grin plastered on her face.

She turned back to the door, her hips swaying with the unearned confidence of a woman who had just won a grand debate.

She didn’t even get two steps.

CRACK!

A heavy, stinging slap echoed through the room as Rex’s large hand connected squarely with her ass. Lilith let out a startled, high-pitched squeak, her entire body jolting forward.

"You little ungrateful shit!" Rex growled, his shadow looming over her like a storm cloud. "Stop fucking talking!"

"You’ve been standing there for ten minutes debating math like a goddamn accountant when you should be dressing!"

Before she could even gasp out an apology, Rex reached down. His hand clamped onto her slender, twitching tail with the strength of an iron vice.

With a sudden, violent jerk, he pulled it hard, yanking her backward toward him. "And how fucking dare you swear to my face!"

"Ahn~! Master~!" Lilith wailed, her face flushing a deep crimson as she was hauled against his muscular frame, her eyes wide with genuine, fluttering terror.

The sass was gone, replaced instantly by the instinctive, trembling submission of a succubus facing her master’s wrath. "I’m sorry! I’m going! I’m going!"

"Move your plump ass," Rex commanded, releasing her tail with a final, playful tug that made her stumble. "Before I decide the throne room can wait and you can spend the morning on the floor again."

"Yes, my master! Right away!" she squeaked, scurrying toward the door with her tail tucked between her legs, her dignity thoroughly bruised but her mission to claim her multiplier undiminished.