Chapter 1182. Strangers Can’t Hurt Each Other This Thoroughly

Chapter 1182: 1182. Strangers Can’t Hurt Each Other This Thoroughly

Rex tried three separate times to create distance—three desperate attempts to reclaim even an inch of space—and each failure felt like another nail being driven into his coffin.

The first attempt was a telekinetic pulse, a concentrated wave of force designed to shatter bone and throw a mountain backward. Rex channeled everything into it, expecting a satisfying recoil.

Instead, the wave washed over Apollo like water over polished marble. The divine channel had rendered Apollo functionally immune to displacement; he was no longer a body subject to physics but an anchor point for reality itself. He didn’t even stagger.

The second attempt was more desperate: a burst of that unclassifiable, chaotic elemental frequency, the same raw distortion that had once dissolved three stacked barrier workings in a single pass.

Rex unleashed it in a searing arc, expecting to see Apollo’s skin blister or his divine aura fracture. The energy washed over Apollo’s luminous skin with a pathetic hiss, producing nothing.

No burn, no flinch, not even the courtesy of a delayed reaction. It was like throwing pebbles at a hurricane.

The third was a last resort: a localized gravity spike, meant to pin Apollo to the floor with enough force to crater the entire domain. For half a second, it worked.

The ground beneath Apollo cracked as the pressure intensified. Then, with a sound like tearing silk, Ssssshhhhhk, the open divine channel simply overrode the spell.

Apollo didn’t struggle against the gravity; he simply walked through the compressed space as though it were ordinary air, each step grinding the stone beneath him into fine dust.

Apollo closed the distance in three strides, his fist connecting with Rex’s jaw in a wet, bone-splintering crack. CRUNCH.

"Do you feel pain now?" Apollo asked between blows.

His eyes had changed; the warm gold had been consumed, leaving behind two burning pits of saturated, blood-red fury. He watched the wreckage of Rex’s body—the torn flesh, the exposed bone, and the spreading crimson pool—with a hollow satisfaction that lacked any trace of the man who had once offered comfort at a funeral.

"Are you afraid now, Rex? Or whatever your real name actually is?"

Apollo’s fist came again, a gut punch that made Rex’s vision go white.

Even now, even with his left arm bent at an angle that defied every law of anatomy, the bone protruding through the skin in a jagged white spike, Rex forced a laugh. It was a wet, gurgling sound that sprayed blood across his own lips.

His eyes stayed open, fixed on Apollo’s face with a terrifying, unshakable certainty.

"My name... is Rex," he wheezed, the words barely audible through the blood filling his throat. "That’s never changed."

"I never hid it from you, Apollo."

"You simply... never looked closely enough to see it."

Apollo’s next strike was a backhand that sent Rex spinning.

"Stop saying my name like that!" Apollo roared, his voice shaking with something far more dangerous than rage; it was a raw, bleeding vulnerability. "Like we’re still friends!"

"Like any of this is still a conversation between two people who know each other!"

Rex dragged himself upright, his movements mechanical, pained, but stubbornly defiant. His grin didn’t falter, even as blood ran freely down his chin, dripping onto his ruined chest.

"We are two people who know each other." Rex’s voice steadied for a heartbeat, carrying a chilling calm despite the carnage of his body. "That’s rather the entire point, Apollo."

"I know you better than anyone alive... I know what makes you angry, I know what makes you kind... and I know exactly which of your own weaknesses will hurt you the most if I press on them."

Rex leaned forward slightly, despite the agony, his eyes locking onto Apollo’s crimson gaze.

"Strangers can’t hurt each other this thoroughly, Apollo."

"You can’t break a man’s spirit with just fists and magic... It takes genuine intimacy to do what I’ve done to you today."

"I didn’t just fight you... I tore through everything you believed you were...!"

Apollo did not answer with words. He answered with violence.

A knee driven upward with the force of a collapsing star connected squarely with Rex’s sternum.

CRUNCH SHHHH.

The sound was wet and hollow as three more ribs snapped simultaneously, the jagged bone fragments grinding against each other like broken glass. The impact drove every last molecule of oxygen from Rex’s lungs in a spray of crimson mist.

Before the air could even attempt to return, Apollo followed through with a vicious, downward elbow to Rex’s jaw.

WHACK.

The force was so obscene that Rex’s head twisted nearly one hundred and eighty degrees on his neck, his vision exploding into a static-filled void.

For a heartbeat, Rex hung limp, his consciousness flickering like a candle in a hurricane, suspended only by Apollo’s white knuckled grip on his ruined collar.

’Come on... adapt... find the gap... find one fucking gap...’ Rex’s mind screamed through the static.

[SYSTEM CRITICAL: KINETIC OVERLOAD]

[ADAPTATION PROTOCOL: PARTIAL SUCCESS KINETIC REDIRECTION ENGAGED]

As Apollo wound up for a killing blow, a fist glowing with enough divine heat to melt steel, aimed directly at the ribcage that had already been shattered twice, Rex found his opening. It was a microscopic window, a desperate gamble born of pure instinct.

At the last possible millisecond, Rex poured every remaining scrap of his telekinetic will into a single, focused point. He didn’t try to stop the blow; he simply nudged it.

’Just three inches... just three inches to the left...’

The divine fist tore through the air with a scream like rending metal. Because of Rex’s last-second intervention, the impact missed his punctured lung by a fraction of an inch, slamming instead into the already pulverized muscle of his flank.

The pain was so intense it transcended feeling; it became a pure, white noise that drowned out reality. It bought him four seconds of precious, agonizing survival, but the reprieve was meaningless; the next strike arrived with such devastating momentum that the correction was rendered irrelevant anyway.

Apollo hauled Rex upright by the collar with one hand, lifting his broken body off the fractured ground. The divine energy flowing through Apollo’s veins burned with such terrifying intensity that it cast a long, harsh, jagged shadow across the domain’s floor, a shadow that looked more like a demon than a man.

The face staring at Rex was no longer that of the healer, the protector, or the friend. Every trace of restraint, every shred of the compassion that Aethelgard had built its faith around, had been incinerated.

In its place was something primal and ancient: a mountain of hatred born from the deepest, most corrosive betrayal a soul could endure.

"I am going to end you here," Apollo said.

His voice was low, vibrating with a terrifying, quiet certainty that was far more frightening than his earlier roars. "Now... Today... And I will not regret a single moment of it..."

Rex dangled there, his body a marionette of broken bones and torn sinew. His ribcage was visibly wrong beneath the tattered remains of his skin, shifting grotesquely with every shallow, bubbling breath.

He tried to nod, but his neck refused to cooperate, his vertebrae grinding against each other in protest.

Instead, he simply stared into those crimson depths. A bloody, defiant grin split his face.

"Good," Rex rasped, the word coming out as a wet gurgle through the blood coating his teeth. "I was starting to worry... you’d talk yourself out of it... before we got to the interesting part."