Chapter 1115. A Surgeon Doesn’t Regret the Blood He Spills

Chapter 1115: 1115. A Surgeon Doesn’t Regret the Blood He Spills

Valentina opened the meeting with a summary that stretched into twenty agonizing minutes of bureaucratic recitation.

Rex sat motionless, the picture of attentive neutrality, listening to every syllable with the practiced patience of a man hearing a story for the first time even though he could have recited the entire timeline from memory with more precision and less dramatic flair than she managed.

She moved through the chronology like a prosecutor building a case against fate itself: first, the string of inexplicable deaths whispered to be the work of a specter known as ’The Undead Bringer’; then, the seismic devastation wrought by the entity Tremor that had reduced the northern district to rubble and corpses; the near apocalyptic dragon incident involving the defector Ignivara; and finally, the atrocity of Theo Von Nightwing.

She spoke of the fallen heir with a tremor in her voice, the boy who had somehow seized an Apostle of Time designation only to turn that temporal power against his own people before his inevitable end.

"Each of these incidents," Valentina said, her voice cutting through the stale air of the chamber like a blade, "has been traced back, through blood and shadow, to influence originating from the Underlayer."

"Whether through direct infiltration, corrupted contracts that bind the soul, or the exploitation of reincarnators dancing to the tune of demonic influence, the pattern is undeniable."

"We can no longer afford the luxury of treating these as isolated tragedies."

A low murmur, like the sound of distant thunder, rolled through the assembled Apostles. Rex watched them closely.

Several unfamiliar faces leaned toward one another, their brows furrowed as they whispered theories that ranged from dangerous half truths to delusional speculation. Rex felt a cold, almost clinical amusement stirring in his chest.

’How fascinating,’ he thought, ’that they search for a monster in the shadows, never realizing the monster is sitting three rows behind them, listening to their fear.’

He was the singular architect of their misery; he was the hand that had tipped every domino, yet he remained utterly invisible to their suspicion.

Valentina pressed further, her tone shifting toward desperate pragmatism. "We must exercise caution."

"We lack confirmed intelligence on the Underlayer’s true military capacity... A premature strike could be our last."

But her words of caution were failing. The room had already tilted; the gravity of fear was too strong.

As the names of the dead were spoken aloud, Veylor, Calivara, and Eryndra, the temperature in the chamber seemed to spike. Each name was a fresh wound, each name a reminder of a life Rex had personally extinguished, a casualty he had engineered to serve his greater design.

The grief in the room was palpable, a thick, suffocating tension that made the air feel heavy with the scent of old blood.

It was into this rising heat that Apollo finally broke his silence.

He rose from his position, his movement fluid and deliberate. He didn’t shout; he didn’t need to.

The sheer weight of his presence commanded the space. When he began to speak, his voice was quiet, almost conversational, which made the venom beneath it land with devastating force.

"For years, Aethelgard has done nothing but absorb damage," Apollo said, his eyes scanning the faces of the Apostles. "We have bled from our own foundations."

"We have taken blow after blow from below, never permitted to strike back, never permitted to defend ourselves with the same ferocity with which we are attacked."

His hands clenched at his sides, knuckles whitening. "I think of the families who woke up to empty beds."

"I think of the sons and daughters who vanished into the dark, victims of threats they couldn’t even comprehend!"

"As the Apostle of Life, my duty isn’t to political nuance or diplomatic caution!"

"My duty is to protect every living soul within these walls, regardless of how complicated the paperwork becomes."

His voice began to climb, shedding its measured restraint. The quiet conviction transformed into something raw, something primal, a genuine, burning passion that resonated in the hollow bones of everyone present.

The controlled diplomat was dying, replaced by a warrior who demanded retribution.

"We sit here discussing intelligence and capacity," Apollo growled, his voice now carrying to every corner of the chamber, "while the Underlayer festers like an infected wound beneath our feet!"

"We don’t need more reports! We need to cauterize it before the rot spreads to our very hearts!"

The effect was immediate and violent. Several apostles began nodding openly, their faces twisted with remembered pain.

A few murmured their agreement, the sound growing into a chorus of restrained fury. By the time Apollo finished, the chamber was no longer a place of deliberation; it was a powder keg.

Scattered applause broke out, quickly swelling into a thunderous display of approval that shook the very air Rex breathed. The war they had been discussing was no longer a possibility; it had become an inevitability.

Rex watched the spectacle from his seat in the middle of the chamber, his face a masterpiece of carefully constructed performance.

He wore an expression of solemn agreement laced with quiet resolve, nodding at precisely the calculated intervals that a genuinely concerned ally would just enough to reinforce Apollo’s momentum without appearing to lead it.

Inside, however, a cold, private amusement coursed through him with the unhurried satisfaction of a grandmaster watching a complex gambit unfold exactly as anticipated.

Every name Apollo invoked, every grievance he listed, every tear shed in righteous fury traced its lineage directly back to Rex’s own fingertips.

The irony was delicious: the very people who had suffered those devastating losses were now standing in this room, their hearts pounding with the drums of war, preparing to march willingly into a slaughterhouse that Rex had spent months constructing specifically to receive them.

There was something almost artistically exquisite about it. Watching Apollo sincere to the point of near naivety, his voice cracking with genuine passion, deliver a rallying cry that would ultimately serve no one’s interests but Rex’s own was a rare pleasure.

He thought briefly of Lustia’s earlier comments regarding proportion and pride. He decided then that whatever pride she felt watching him dismantle a god paled in comparison to the intoxicating sensation he felt now: watching an entire civilization dance to a script that none of them knew existed.

’Let them burn with purpose,’ he thought. ’Let them believe their rage is their own.’

As the meeting dissolved into the tedious machinery of logistics troop estimates, supply chain vulnerabilities, and the desperate attempt to coordinate with the nearly nonexistent intelligence from the Underlayer Rex, the chaos continued.

He waited for the perfect moment of distraction before leaning toward Elizabeth, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial murmur.

"I need to finish the final work on the key reconstruction," he said. "The timing is becoming critical."

The room already recognized the Key as their holy grail, the essential instrument for any coordinated strike.

Valentina, her mind already half consumed by Apollo’s fervor and the tactical implications of the coming war, waved them off without breaking her conversation.

Rex and Elizabeth slipped through the side entrance, leaving the rising fever of the council chamber behind them.

The walk to Elizabeth’s private laboratory took them through a hushed wing of the Academy. Through the tall windows, Rex could see the northern district, a skeletal landscape of shattered stone and twisted metal.

Scaffolding rose against the skyline like crude stitches on a half-healed wound, a reminder of the violence that had already passed and the greater violence that was now inevitable.

"They’re going to walk into it exactly the way you wanted," Elizabeth said quietly.

Her voice was flat, devoid of judgment but heavy with the truth, once they were far enough that the stone walls would swallow her words.

"They’re going to walk into it exactly the way they wanted," Rex corrected smoothly, not breaking his stride. "Which happens to be the same direction I wanted."

"That’s the entire art of it, Elizabeth..."

"True power doesn’t require chains. I’ve never had to force anyone into anything; I’ve only ever had to make sure the door they were already walking toward led somewhere useful to me."

Elizabeth stopped walking and gave him a long, considering look. It wasn’t the horrified stare she might have given him months ago, nor was it the easy comfort of someone who had found moral peace.

Her expression sat in the uncomfortable gray space between the two, a place of grim acceptance that Rex suspected she would occupy for the rest of her life.

"Does it ever weigh on you?" she asked suddenly. "Any of it?"

Rex stopped and turned to face her, his eyes unreadable in the dim corridor light. "Would it change anything if it did?"

"No," Elizabeth admitted, her voice barely above a whisper. "But I’d still like to know."

Rex considered the question. He didn’t answer with evasion; he answered with the honesty of a predator.

"Some of it settles somewhere."

"Theo, occasionally the memory of the boy’s screaming before the end."

"Veylor, a little mostly because of the cost it extracted from Iris rather than what it cost him directly."

"But weight isn’t the same as regret, Elizabeth."

He stepped closer, his presence filling the narrow space between them. "I can hold the shape of what I’ve done: the blood, the broken bones, the lives ended without ever wishing I’d done it differently."

"A surgeon doesn’t regret the blood he spills to remove a tumor..."

"I am simply performing a necessary operation on this world."