Chapter 1120. Give Them Their Victory, and We Will Give Them Their Graves

Chapter 1120: 1120. Give Them Their Victory, and We Will Give Them Their Graves

Back above, in the sterile, sunlit sanctum of the council chamber, the conversation had shifted from the mechanics of war to the nature of the enemy. The atmosphere was thick with the kind of tension that precedes a desperate gamble.

One of the surviving Apostles, an older woman whose face was a roadmap of scars from demon skirmishes decades past, leaned forward, her sharp eyes fixed on the Avatar.

"You spent time embedded as Tremor using his remains right...? Observing the Underlayer’s structure from the inside, more intimately than any of us," she said, her voice carrying the gravelly authority of someone who had seen too many young soldiers die for false intelligence. "What is your honest assessment of Mordecai’s true strength?"

"Are we facing a genuine existential threat that justifies committing every remaining resource we possess, or are we potentially overcommitting to a target that has been artificially inflated by recent chaos?"

The question hung in the air like a guillotine blade. Rex felt the question ripple through his dual consciousness.

In the darkness below, he felt the cold satisfaction of the trap tightening; above, he prepared to spring it.

The Avatar did not answer immediately. It allowed for a perfectly calibrated pause long enough to suggest deep consideration but short enough to maintain the illusion of confidence.

When it finally spoke, its voice was a masterpiece of manufactured honesty: measured, weary, and carrying the weight of hard-won experience.

"Mordecai’s forces should not be underestimated," the Avatar stated, meeting the Apostle’s gaze with unsettling steadiness. "My observations while operating as Tremor suggested a military capacity beneath the surface that far exceeds what our intelligence reports have suggested."

"Their coordination is tight, their leadership is decisive, and their defensive infrastructure proved... challenging."

"Even with my own enhanced capabilities, breaching their inner sanctums required significant effort and tactical precision."

The Avatar paused, letting the implied danger sink in. "That said, I do not believe the threat is insurmountable."

"But we cannot afford the luxury of either arrogance or paralysis... Overconfidence would be fatal; it would leave us exposed to a counterstrike we cannot weather."

"Yet, excessive caution would be equally disastrous, allowing this threat to grow unchecked until it becomes a cancer we can no longer cut out."

’Beautiful,’ Rex thought, his own lips curling into a smile in the pitch black throne room as his true voice echoed the Avatar’s deception in perfect synchronicity. ’Give them just enough fear to make them desperate and just enough hope to make them reckless.’

’Give them exactly what they need to believe they can win so that their death becomes inevitable.’

It was the perfect psychological gambit: enough acknowledgment of danger to ensure they didn’t treat the mission as a mere cleanup operation, but enough reassurance to ensure they would pour their entire bloodline into that killing corridor.

"But what exactly did you see during that infiltration?" a younger Apostle pressed, her curiosity cutting through the tension. "Did you see their numbers firsthand?"

"Did you witness their new weapons?"

The question was dangerous. It threatened to probe too close to the truth of Rex’s intimate knowledge of their weaknesses and his strengths.

Elizabeth moved before the Avatar could be forced into a lie that might sound suspicious. She leaned forward smoothly, her movements graceful as silk, cutting off the younger Apostle with the practiced ease of a seasoned diplomat.

"The specifics of Tremor’s reconnaissance are somewhat limited by the nature of the operation itself," Elizabeth interjected, her voice warm but firm. "During the reconstruction project, the dimensional interference between the surface and the underlayer made maintaining stable communication nearly impossible."

"Tremor was operating on the edge of sensory blackout... Any granular detail would be speculative at best, given the instability of the planes during that period."

She spun a web of plausible technical complexity around the question, citing dimensional harmonics and communication lag. The younger Apostle blinked, clearly overwhelmed by the technical jargon, and simply nodded before pivoting to a safer topic.

For a fraction of a second, the Avatar’s eyes flicked toward Elizabeth. It was a brief, almost imperceptible contact, a silent acknowledgment between two predators playing their parts in a grand, deadly theater.

To anyone else, it looked like a grateful glance between colleagues.

To Rex, it was the final confirmation that the stage was set, the curtain was rising, and the slaughter was about to begin.

Deep below, in the suffocating darkness of Castle Nocturna, Rex brought the briefing to its devastating conclusion.

The air in the throne room felt charged, heavy with the metallic tang of anticipation and the unspoken promise of violence.

His voice dropped lower, settling into the cold, final cadence of a commander who had already played out every possible outcome—every scream, every broken bone, every spray of blood—in the theater of his mind.

"Listen closely," Rex commanded, his words cutting through the silence like a blade through silk. "This entire operation hinges not on our strength, but on their delusion."

"The moment the Key activates and their forces begin pouring through that corridor, I want to see chaos on our side."

"I want their scouts to report panicked retreats..."

"I want their commanders to believe they have stumbled upon a disorganized rabble, unprepared for their sudden intrusion."

He paused, letting the implications sink in. The cruelty of the plan was its greatest asset.

"Let their initial momentum feel like victory," he continued, his eyes burning with a dark, predatory fire. "Let them taste the sweetness of an easy win."

"Let them believe the advantage sits entirely in their hands, that they are the hunters and we are merely the prey stumbling blindly into their trap."

"We will give them exactly what they desire: the illusion of dominance."

His gaze swept across the assembled leadership, lingering on each face like a predator assessing his pack. He saw Mordecai, whose nervous attention betrayed a flicker of terror at the sheer scale of the deception they were about to unleash.

He saw Pavellia, whose calm professionalism acted as the steady anchor for the coming storm. His eyes then moved to Cassandra and Gorvasha; he could almost see the hunger in their expressions, the way their muscles coiled with the need to feel stone-crushing flesh, and hearing the wet snap of vertebrae.

Finally, his gaze landed on Lilith, whose eagerness was barely restrained, her very breathing shallow with the anticipation of the carnage to come.

"The moment that misplaced confidence solidifies into overextension, the moment they commit their heart and soul into that kill zone, that is when we strike," Rex declared, his voice rising with a terrifying intensity. "We will not merely defend; we will annihilate."

"We will seal the exits with tons of unforgiving stone and let them realize their mistake only when the air becomes too thick with blood to breathe."

’I want to hear it,’ Rex thought privately, a twisted sense of satisfaction warming his chest. ’I want to hear the sound of their bones splintering under the weight of the ceiling.’

’I want to hear the wet, desperate gurgles as they realize they aren’t conquering a kingdom but walking into a slaughterhouse.’

"Make them feel they’ve won at the start," he concluded, his voice dropping to a lethal whisper that seemed to echo off the ancient walls. "Misplaced confidence is the most effective weapon we can hand to our own enemies."

"Give them their victory, and we will give them their graves."