Chapter 1209. Did You Really Think I Wouldn’t Know How to Use It Against You?

Chapter 1209: 1209. Did You Really Think I Wouldn’t Know How to Use It Against You?

"You did better than I expected," Xerollion said softly.

His voice was intimate, almost tender, carrying only to the two of them like a secret shared between lovers in a graveyard. "Ninety seven point three percent... An extraordinary number."

"A masterpiece of behavioral fidelity."

He reached out, almost gently, and brushed a speck of stone dust from the construct’s forehead.

"I built you well, little echo... I truly did." A dark, satisfied smile played beneath his mask as he leaned closer, his breath ghosting over the construct’s face. "I just happen to be the other two point seven."

Rex Rexilion’s fingers scraped against the jagged debris, leaving faint trails in the stone dust. His hand twitched a weak, spasmodic curl of tendons, and his eyes cracked open halfway.

Through the haze of simulated agony, he fixed his gaze on the masked nightmare hovering above him.

In that moment, something flickered across the construct’s face—not quite a human emotion, but a ghost of it. A final, defiant spark of hatred that burned brighter than any programmed directive.

Xerollion didn’t flinch at the gaze. Instead, he raised one hand.

Between his fingers, violet black energy began to writhe like living smoke, coalescing into a sphere of concentrated annihilation.

VROOOOOM.

The air began to hum with a lethal, low-frequency vibration that made the teeth of every witness ache. Across the ruined corridor, every soldier still conscious held their breath.

They weren’t just watching a fight anymore; they were watching an execution.

But Rex Rexilion was not ready to die. His systems screamed for one last gambit, a desperate fusion of everything he had learned from his creator.

KRA KOOOOOM!!!

The ground beneath the construct didn’t just shake; it exploded upward. Rex channeled Earthen Divine Authority, forcing the very bones of the corridor to reshape themselves.

A massive stone golem, three times the height of a man and rough hewn from the foundation itself, tore free from the floor in a shower of gravel and ancient mortar.

RUMBLE SHHHH!

Simultaneously, the construct’s other hand clawed at the air, channeling Sovereign Necromancy. The effect was instantaneous and horrific.

From the scattered remains of soldiers fallen earlier in the siege, corpses began to twitch. Bone scraped against stone as they dragged themselves upright, their movements slack and purposeless, their eyes empty sockets animated by necromantic threads.

CLACK. DRAG. SHUFFLE.

For three terrifying seconds, the tactical calculus shifted. Three independent threats—the towering golem, the reanimated dead from the left, and the shambling horrors from the right—converged on Xerollion at once.

Even Xerollion’s god-like focus was forced to fracture.

"You dare... use my own filth against me?" Xerollion hissed, his voice distorted by the gathering energy.

The golem’s first swing came down like a guillotine.

WHAM!!!

Xerollion rolled sideways just as the fist struck, the impact sending a shockwave through the corridor that split the floor into a spiderweb of fresh, lethal cracks.

CRACK THUD.

Xerollion began to rise, but he was too slow. The nearest corpse had already closed the distance with unnatural speed, its cold, dead fingers locking around his ankle like a vice.

GRIP.

The necromantic energy coursing through the corpse gave it strength beyond what flesh should possess.

Xerollion’s balance wavered. His heel slipped on the loose debris.

WHOOSH CRUNCH!!!

The golem’s second swing didn’t graze him. It found him.

The massive stone fist connected squarely with Xerollion’s ribs as he was off balance, the sound of the impact echoing like a cannon shot through the chamber.

KRA A AACK!

The force sent him crashing sideways into a wall, the stone behind him spiderwebbing from the blow.

The chaos was absolute. For the first time in his existence, Xerollion was not the one orchestrating the symphony of violence; he was drowning in it.

KRA THOOOM!

The golem’s massive fist slammed into his shoulder while his focus was momentarily fractured by the necromantic tether around his ankle. The sound was sickening—the wet CRUNCH of cartilage and bone grinding beneath the supernatural force.

Xerollion grunted, the pain a foreign but sharp stimulus that cut through his usual detachment. But he had no time to compensate.

In the split second of vulnerability created by that distraction, the construct Rex Rexilion lunged forward.

WHACK!

A follow-up strike, precise and vicious, caught Xerollion across the jaw. His head snapped sideways with enough force to make his vision blur into static.

SHHH...!

A fresh crimson line split open along his cheekbone as blood sprayed across his mask, warm and metallic.

"Impressive... truly," Xerollion hissed through clenched teeth, though his inner mind was racing, recalculating variables at lightning speed.

’Target acquisition compromised.’

’Defensive protocols failing.’

’Need to sever the threads immediately.’

A second corpse, a former Aethelgard captain with hollow eyes, clawed at his other side, its teeth gnashing in a silent, undead hunger.

Xerollion didn’t waste motion trying to pry the dead fingers off. Instead, he channeled a burst of kinetic energy through his leg and drove his knee upward.

CRUNCH SQUELCH!

His knee connected with the corpse’s sternum with the force of a battering ram. The ribcage collapsed inward like dried kindling, the chest cavity caving in with a wet, splintering sound.

The body crumpled to the floor, a broken husk, but the necromantic threads were stubborn; even as the corpse lay motionless, its fingers continued to twitch uselessly against the stone in a macabre parody of life.

TAP. TAP. SCRAPE.

The golem pressed forward, its massive weight causing the corridor to groan.

GRRRRIND.

Each step it took dragged a foot through the rubble, creating a grinding scrape that sent showers of dust and pebbles raining down from the cracked ceiling.

SHHHHHHH.

It swung a third time a low, devastating horizontal sweep aimed directly at Xerollion’s ribs.

BOOM!

Xerollion crossed his forearms to block, but the sheer mass behind the blow was overwhelming. The impact drove him backward, his boots skidding across the debris as he fought to maintain his footing.

The stone beneath his heels shattered under the pressure of his resistance.

CRACKLE.

"You taught me how to raise the dead," the construct spoke.

The voice was chilling. It wasn’t the mechanical drone of a machine; it carried the exact timbre, the exact unshakable conviction, the exact heroic resonance of the real Rex Rexilion.

It was a weaponized echo of a soul. "Did you really think I wouldn’t know how to use it against you?"

Xerollion’s eyes narrowed behind his mask. The golem’s massive hand was already reaching out, its stone fingers poised to crush his throat.

VROOOOM SHATTER!

With a sudden, violent flick of his wrist, Xerollion unleashed a concentrated telekinetic pulse. The golem’s reaching hand didn’t just stop it; it exploded.

Stone fragments flew in every direction like shrapnel as the limb was pulverized before it could make contact.

KRAK CHHH!

Xerollion straightened his spine, blood dripping from his split cheek onto the ruined floor, his violet black energy flaring brighter than before.

"I did think that," Xerollion admitted, his voice dropping to a dangerous, purring register. "I anticipated the move, the timing, even the desperation."

"I accounted for everything."

He stepped forward, the ground cracking beneath his renewed magical pressure.

"Right up until you actually did it..."

"Credit where it’s owed, little echo."