The weeks that followed the first official Aegis raid settled into a rhythm that Elias found unexpectedly productive.
He cleared four more Gates in the following thirty days, each one selected based on soul-density analysis rather than public classification ranking. The official reports described straightforward dungeon clearances by Aegis's Vanguard Commander. The reality was considerably more complex — the Gates contained things the standard military assessment system was too crude to detect, ranging from trapped ancient entities to fragmented dimensional ecosystems to, in one memorable instance, a Gate that appeared to be generating entirely artificial weather systems that were affecting the real world's barometric pressure for thirty kilometers in every direction.
Each operation fed his Legion. By the end of the month, his shadow count had stabilized at 89/100, a figure Elias was deliberately holding back from the cap. A full Legion was a committed offense. An eighty-nine-strong Legion still left room for deliberate additions — the next S-Rank soul he chose to extract would push everything to a new level, and he intended to select that moment carefully.
His Level had climbed to 32 through the accumulated clearances and the residual experience from the Sovereign Covenant's registered system events.
The Vance political network had already proven its value twice. A proposed military regulation that would have required all Hunter guilds to submit monthly shadow-entity logs to the Ministry was quietly killed in committee before reaching a vote. A land-use ordinance that would have legally complicated the Red Gate's protected status was similarly buried.
Arthur himself called on the fifteenth day of this period. The call was brief and businesslike. He reported that the formal investigation into Marcus's disappearance had been officially closed, the conclusion being death by monster attack during the first Gate outbreak. He reported this without emotion, in the tone of a man who had accepted a cost and was moving forward.
Elias thanked him. He meant it, in the detached way he meant most things.
The meetings with other Guild Masters continued at intervals Elias controlled. Magnus Valerius came twice more, each time bringing information rather than gifts — intelligence on Guilds he thought might be planning aggressive moves against Aegis, which Elias accepted, triangulated against Aria's independent Sterling Family intelligence, and filed away.
The Guild Masters who had sent bribe-gifts and received nothing but silence in return began to grow anxious. Anxiety was productive. Anxious people made decisions based on fear rather than calculation, and fear-based decisions were easier to predict and exploit.
The one exception to the productive rhythm was a persistent notification that appeared in Elias's System interface on the twentieth day and had not gone away.
[The System has detected an anomalous Regression Event.] [One additional Regressor has been identified in the current timeline.] [This Regressor does not share your class or origin point.] [Caution is advised.]
Elias had been expecting this notification since around he not the only one on his mental roadmap. He had not expected it now
He sat with the notification for a long time before dismissing it.
Someone else had come back.
They were somewhere in this city, or at least in this country. They had different knowledge than his, had come from a different point in the original timeline, and had different goals — otherwise the System would have flagged them as an ally rather than flagging them as a caution.
They had also, critically, not made themselves known. Which meant they were watching. Assessing. Deciding.
Elias was doing the same.
He told Aria that evening.
She sat very still after he finished speaking. Then she asked one question.
"Do you think the rival Regressor is the person who ordered your death?"
"I think it is possible," Elias said. "If the architect of the original betrayal watched me die and then found a way to return themselves, they would have come back knowing exactly who I am and what I'm capable of. They would have used that head start to build a counter."
"Then everything you've done," Aria said slowly, "the public Exhibition, the Aegis announcement, the clearances — they've seen all of it."
"Yes," Elias said.
"You knew that was a risk."
"I calculated it was a necessary risk," Elias said. "If they are hiding, I need them to feel certain enough of their position to eventually move. A target that never appears cannot be fought."
Aria nodded once. Then she picked up her communication tablet and began composing a message to her family's intelligence network — a new query, framed carefully, looking for any Hunter who had demonstrated unusual foreknowledge of events since the first Gate outbreak.
They worked in silence.
It was, Elias thought distantly, an unusual peace — the kind that only existed because both people in the room understood the shape of what was coming and had decided to face it together rather than separately.
He did not examine that thought too closely.
There was still too much to build before the storm came.