The Lustful Villain: Every Milfs and Gilfs are Mine! - Chapter 356. There’s No Point Trying To Hide It (I Know)

Chapter 356: 356. There’s No Point Trying To Hide It (I Know)

The second morning was crisp, reminiscent of the eastern land that had cooled off overnight and had yet to warm up in the sun. Rex sat in the front window seat of the carriage, and the other people sat in the same places as they had the first morning.

’Now’s a great time to study a druid’s reaction… based on her expression and, of course, those leaves.’ Rex thought. ’I’m also curious what would happen if I get to fuck her…’

’What kind of reaction will those leaves have…’

Nerith sat by the window on the other side of him.

She had gotten into the carriage before Rex, which was different from the first morning. She had also chosen her seat, settled into it, and found a specific point on the road outside that apparently required her full attention before anyone else had climbed in.

The leaves in her hair were a neutral green, which was the color they were when she was applying effort to making them that color.

Rex gave this two minutes, which was the right amount of time to be polite without being helpful.

’She looks normal… that’s weird.’

Aisella entered after Rex and settled beside Talyra. Nerith’s gaze fixated on the road even more, as if Aisella’s presence had altered the entire atmosphere within the carriage, prompting Rex to take notice.

’There it is…’

Nerith didn’t look at Aisella directly. She also didn’t look at Rex.

She looked at the road with the energy of someone who had decided it was the most important thing in the immediate environment and was prepared to maintain that position indefinitely.

Talyra noticed it as well and said nothing, which was its own form of noting.

“The morning session,” Rex said to the whole carriage, with the tone of someone opening something instead of starting it.

Talyra and Aisella were talking about the third level of the canyon’s sound quality on Rex’s side of the carriage. Their voices had the easy back-and-forth quality of people who had continued a conversation from the previous evening, and they sat close in the way that people sat when they were comfortable in a space.

Nerith registered this from the periphery of her attention and returned very deliberately to the road.

Iris was in the corner, where she always went when she was resting well.

Nerith’s eyes moved from the road to Rex by about fifteen degrees, which was the motion of someone saying yes without committing to having said it.

“The ambient-mimicry frequency,” Rex said. “We didn’t finish the talk.”

Nerith looked at the road once more. “I said all I needed to say.”

“You told me what you observed,” Rex said. “You didn’t say what you concluded from it.”

She didn’t say anything.

Rex said, “This implies that you reached a conclusion but decided not to express it verbally.”

Her hands, resting in her lap, moved slightly, resembling the gestures of someone deciding how much of their thoughts were worth expressing.

She had been doing this since she got in, Nerith realized, from the small movements that her hands made when she was managing more than one thing at once.

She looked at the road and said, “The thermal-displacement layer.”

“The natural energy around it reacted when it activated.” She paused. “Not to the thermal component, but to the layer underneath it.”

“The ambient-mimicry base frequency was tuned close enough to the natural background that my channel registered it as environmental,” she said. “But the compound’s interaction with the displacement layer made a resonance that I have only felt in one other context.”

Rex stared at her. “Which context?”

Nerith finally turned to him.

“Old growth,” she said. “Forests that have been building their own network for hundreds of years.”

“The frequency produced when you are at the center of the trees and the channel is fully open is remarkable.”

Rex held her gaze.

“You made something that resonates like old growth.” She said, “From basic elemental frequencies… not botanical ones.”

“Yes,” Rex said.

“That’s not possible,” she said. Her tone didn’t convey an argument; instead, it reflected the realization that a once-held belief was now incorrect, and she was recalibrating her understanding accordingly.

“It wasn’t,” Rex said. “Until recently.”

From beside Talyra, Aisella said in the casual tone she used for observations that were addressed at the carriage rather than at any specific person, “The second-day effect.”

“What’s that?” Talyra said, in the same register.

“The point in a field deployment when people stop describing what they were comfortable observing and start talking about what they actually saw.”

“Ah,” Talyra said. “I see…”

Their conversation flowed seamlessly, with neither of them acknowledging Nerith. Aisella’s voice maintained its usual quality—calm, precise, and completely at ease.

Nerith was acutely aware of her surroundings, in the particular way she had been aware of Aisella throughout the morning: as a presence she deliberately chose not to look at while simultaneously struggling to avoid thinking about her.

She had told herself, in the tent last night, that she was not going to think about it. She had held that position until approximately the moment Aisella had climbed into the carriage.

She looked at the road.

Rex let her choose, and she chose silence, and he didn’t push for more because he knows one of his plans has succeeded.

[Nerith Sylvarune — Desire Level: 68 → 74/100]

’I love the fact that she’s trying to hide it, but eh… I’m going to edge her even more by using Talyra soon so that she can know that truth.’

…

The second attack came without warning, unlike the first one, which at least had the courtesy of blocking the road.

The arrow came in through the front window at an angle that showed it had been shot from above and to the right. Rex had been watching the scene with the Foresight since the tree cover changed about three minutes earlier.

He caught it.

The motion wasn’t dramatic. He used telekinesis to redirect its path when it was thirty centimeters from Nerith’s head, which was where it had been aimed.

The arrow stopped in the air between them.

“A-Ahh…” Nerith was shocked to see the arrow stop just before it struck her head.

Rex held it there and looked at it. Then he looked out the front window at the trees.

“Stop the carriage,” he said into the speaking tube.

He stepped out while the carriage was still slowing down and said something to the first carriage that Nerith couldn’t fully hear, but the instruction was clear enough.

’Stay put.’

She looked out the window.

Rex walked to the center of the road, looked up at the trees, and used Elemental Magic Creation. What he produced was not the compound-frequency working from the morning engagement.

What moved through the air this time resembled weather more than a working, akin to how vine and root growth shifted when a high-level druid operated at full power and full channel. However, it was faster and more directed rather than simply growing.

It emerged from both margins of the road simultaneously, weaving through the undergrowth with the precision of something that knew exactly where it was headed.

’I don’t know what this guy’s purpose is by saving me there…’

’I know that he’s a good guy, but what I saw from him last night… the way he badmouthed Apollo while having his way with Aisella…’

’I think this is… some kind of manipulation…’ Nerith shook her head. ’No… I need to focus on the attacks first!’

Nerith focused on the fifteen figures hidden in the tree cover. Before she fully registered the arrow’s pause, they all remained motionless.

Rex said something to the locked figures that she couldn’t hear, then turned and walked back to the carriage.

He stepped in and looked at Nerith.

“You’re fine,” he said.

Nerith looked at the arrow still suspended in the air between them, and her voice came out more carefully than she intended. “You caught it.”

“Yes,” Rex said.

“Before I saw it,” she said.

“Well, it’s all thanks to my instinct and the change of wind,” Rex said. “And I was waiting to see if they would stand down on their own.”

“They didn’t.”

“Nope.”

Nerith stared at the suspended arrow, then glanced at Rex before returning her gaze to the arrow. The expression on her face resembled that of someone who had unexpectedly arrived at the end of an unforeseen path.

The arrow hung between them, still and precise, held in place by the same force that had deflected it from her head without any visible effort on Rex’s part. He had waited, armed with three minutes of foreknowledge, and when the moment arrived, he had been precisely where he needed to be.

She found herself thinking, almost against her will, about the heartmoss. “Don’t tell me… if his instinct is that strong and he can feel the change of wind…’

She contemplated what the heartmoss grew toward and the significance of its growth in those places. Her mind wandered back to the forest clearing from the previous night and the fact that she had stood hidden behind a tree, observing something she should not have been watching, remaining there far longer than was prudent.

The leaves at the edge of her hair shifted to amber before she could stop them.

Rex released the telekinesis on the arrow. It dropped between them and hit the carriage floor.

’Yeah… you start to notice that you’ve fucked up, huh?’ Rex thought, holding a smile. ’Of course, I fucking know you were watching us…’

“We’ll be at the rest stop in four hours,” Aisella said.

Nerith looked out the window.

She did not look at Aisella, and she did not say anything else, and the road went on ahead of them in the direction of the canyon.

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