Leveling Up by Seducing Milfs-Chapter 259. Before Rick Came To This World

Liora sat down without taking off her travel coat.

Rick noticed this because Liora always took off her coat when she came inside. It was one of those little things she did without thinking, like how Carmilla always looked for exits when she walked into a room and Natasha always looked at the seating arrangements to see how they lined up with the doors.

Rick could tell Liora was more worn out than her voice let on because she was still wearing her travel coat and sitting in the common room chair with both hands around the tea Carmilla had given her.

She spoke after drinking half of the tea.

She talked about what she had found in the Valdris faith network in the same careful, organized way she did everything else, starting with the least scary part and working her way up.

The Divine Temple’s faith communication system sent spiritual messages back and forth between the temple and the people connected to it through prayers, rituals, and divine warnings and guidance.

She said it was infrastructure, like Natasha’s ward networks, which were invisible but necessary.

Someone had been working on it for months, adding more nodes.

Not corrupting the network and not breaking it. Instead, they carefully and slowly added additional receivers to the channels where the signals were being sent.

The changes were so small that they didn’t affect how the network worked. They simply listened attentively to the signals.

"It’s surveillance." Liora said, "Whoever built this has been blocking every important spiritual message that has been sent through Valdris for months, maybe even longer."

"The oldest fake node I found has been up for almost a year."

"Before the crisis of corruption," Natasha said, and she wasn’t asking.

"Before the attack on Valdris by the corruption, and before the dragon attack... or, to be more precise, it’s before Rick came to this world."

The room got quiet in the way it does when people have just heard something that changes everything they thought they knew.

Liora pulled a small crystal out of her coat. It was dark, almost black, and there was a faint pulse running through it, like a heartbeat that didn’t belong to anything alive.

She put it on the table and said, "I found this in the deepest false node."

"It’s a storage crystal... The people who built the surveillance network were saving what it saw, and this is one of the archive units."

"What’s on it?" Rick asked.

"I don’t know yet... It’s locked with pre-coalition encryption," she said, looking at Zephyra. "I was hoping you could help me with that, Grand Sorcerer."

Zephyra picked up the crystal and looked at it through the analysis lens that she had taken out of her coat pocket. Her face didn’t change, but the edges of her eyes did.

"This encryption method is in the same family as the archive fire method," she said, putting the crystal back on the table. "Same age... and same theoretical origin."

Rick said, "So... it’s the same architect?"

"Yes. Same architect."

Sebastian appeared at the edge of Rick’s vision, where only he could see him. He looked at the crystal on the table.

He didn’t say anything right away, which was information in itself. Sebastian’s silences were purposeful and had specific meanings.

The one he was making now was the kind that came before a carefully planned statement.

"Sebastian," Rick said in a low voice that only the system administrator could hear. "Is that the same signature as the one on Fredrich’s oath-bond?"

Sebastian stared at the crystal for a little while longer. "I believe so."

Nobody in the room said Fredrich’s name out loud. But the understanding moved through the group like a current, visible in the way people sat a little differently, how Carmilla’s hand settled closer to her sword without her consciously deciding to do it, how Zara’s eyes went flat and assessing.

They had now linked three things that came from the same place: the faith network surveillance, the archive fire, and the oath-bond before the coalition. Everything pointed to one hand, working through layers and years to build something inside Valdris that was hidden from view.

Natasha said, "If someone has been watching faith communications for eleven months, they can see the Divine Temple’s internal threat assessments."

"They know what warnings Liora sent to the higher clergy and what the Temple thought was important and what it didn’t."

"They’ve been reading our mail before we sent it," Carmilla said.

Liora nodded. "I found fourteen false nodes in all..."

"I took out three and brought this one. The other eleven are still active." Her voice was steady, but her hands trembled around the teacup.

"We need to decrypt this," Zephyra said. "But we need to do it in a safe place, like a warded room with no faith network connection."

"That way... if we take this out of the node, whoever is watching it won’t know that something went offline." She stopped. "The Council building has separate ward chambers."

Rick said, "First thing to do in the morning, yes."

Everyone was in agreement. Natasha put a temporary ward over the crystal before they left it on the table.

This was a standard isolation seal that would keep anything inside from sending or receiving signals. Liora looked at the ward, liked it, and then added a second layer of divine suppression on top of it.

Heinz was sleeping somewhere in the mansion, dreaming about his usual thoughts and fantasies. He had no idea any of this was going on, and this would be important in the morning.

...

The city woke up like it always did, with the vendors and deliveries and the quiet, low noise of a place that had been through something terrible and was still acting like everything was fine. Rick had always appreciated the Valdris quality that allowed it to persist.

Sophia was staying with the staff of the house. Rick had learned to read Zephyra’s visible concern as her version of "yes" twice before they left the mansion.

When Zephyra checked something twice, it meant she had taken a threat into account and was making sure her accounting was correct.

They walked through the kitchen while Heinz was there. He was making something that mixed many different things together in a way that could have meant either a fun morning or a real cooking disaster.

When the group walked by, he looked up and said good morning to everyone with the calm friendliness of a man who was having a wonderful morning.

He mentioned he had some errands to run in the city today.

No one thought anything of this, which was a mistake that everyone would understand better in a few hours.

Rick noticed that Fredrich was already at the Council building when they got there. The Grand Magister welcomed them warmly and said that the isolated ward chamber had been set up as they had asked.

He also offered to help the Council staff if they needed it. His welcome was just right, his concern was just right, and his quick work getting the room ready could be explained in two ways.

Rick filed it and kept going.

The isolated room had everything it needed: no faith network connection, external monitoring blocked by overlapping ward layers, and the kind of sealed space that serious magical work required.

Within ten minutes, Zephyra had the crystal in the middle of an analysis array. She assembled the components she had with her as part of her job.

Liora used a divine suppression field to keep any leftover spiritual signals from leaking out of the room. Natasha ran around the outside three times, which was her way of saying she was happy.

It would take a few hours to decrypt. Rick stood in a spot where he could see both the chamber work and the hallway beyond the door.

The morning transitioned into a quiet and focused atmosphere, characterized by careful work being performed.

"It seems like today is going to be all about solving puzzles... well, at least I didn’t have to fight something stronger than the Cthulhu, which was better."