Chapter 1312. Please Hold, Your Soul Is Being Repurposed

Chapter 1312: 1312. Please Hold, Your Soul Is Being Repurposed

What followed was not a duel.

A duel implies two combatants of equal standing, two forces seeking victory through skill and strategy. This was something far more primal and lopsided.

This was a lesson a brutal, uncompromising demonstration of power delivered by a teacher who had finally stopped pretending to be gentle.

Rex moved with the terrifying economy of a predator that had no need for wasted motion. He closed the distance in a blur of crimson violet static.

His first blow struck Leonidas square in the solar plexus.

BOOM.

This time, the fist didn’t just land; it detonated.

The Wrath flowing through Rex’s arm acted like a hydraulic piston fueled by a collapsing star. Leonidas’s defensive man, the barrier that had weathered Rex’s previous assaults, didn’t just fail; it shattered like a thin pane of glass under a sledgehammer.

SHATTER CRACK!

The impact sent a shockwave through Leonidas’s torso that liquefied the air between them.

The man folded around Rex’s fist, his spine bowing unnaturally as he was lifted off his feet by the sheer kinetic energy.

He flew backward like a ragdoll hurled by a hurricane, hurtling straight through two ancient stone pillars that had remained standing from the old garden colonnade.

The stone didn’t just break; it exploded into rubble as Leonidas tore through them, leaving them in heaps of pulverized masonry.

Rex was already there before the dust could settle.

In midair, as Leonidas reeled from the collision, Rex launched himself upward. His knee came crashing into Leonidas’s ribs with the force of an avalanche.

CRUNCH.

The sound was sickeningly wet, the unmistakable noise of ribs splintering into fragments that pierced lung tissue. Rex seized the man by the collar mid-flight and drove him downward with everything his enhanced physiology could muster.

THOOOOM!

Leonidas slammed into the ground with such devastating force that the garden floor split open, creating two shallow, jagged gorges that radiated outward from his impact point. Leonidas lay in the center of the crater, gasping for air that his punctured lungs could no longer hold.

Rex didn’t give him a moment to breathe. The telekinetic threads lashed out again, lifting Leonidas into the air like a puppet on invisible strings, only to slam him down again.

Gravity became a weapon. Every hit Rex landed was now coated in a sheet of dark red light, the Wrath authority manifesting as physical impact.

Each strike burned away the last vestiges of divine resistance in Leonidas’s body, cauterizing his hope along with his flesh.

Thwack. Crack. Splat.

"Is this what you fought for?" Rex’s voice was low, devoid of anger, which made it infinitely more terrifying. "This desperate, pathetic clinging to a dying flame?!"

In a final, spasmodic reflex of survival, Leonidas swung his sword. It was a desperate, wide arc aimed at Rex’s throat.

Rex didn’t dodge. He didn’t parry with another weapon.

He simply reached out and caught the blade in his bare fist.

SCREEEEEEEEE...!

The sound of metal screaming against Rex’s skin echoed through the ruins. A web of hairline fractures raced up from Rex’s fingers, spiderwebbing across the steel.

For three agonizing seconds, the blade resisted, then SHATTER.

The sword disintegrated. A spray of silver fragments exploded outward, raining down across the dry, cracked bed of the garden pond like deadly metallic snow.

Leonidas stared at the empty hilt still clutched in his shaking hand. The silence that followed was heavier than the violence.

Then, something fundamental broke inside Leonidas. The last red line on his skin flickered, struggled for a heartbeat, and then winked out completely.

The Mark, the divine engine that had carried him through thirty minutes of impossible, supernatural combat, died like a candle snuffed out by a cold wind.

The divinity was gone.

The Wrath was gone.

The god-touched warrior was gone.

There was only a man left. A broken, middle-aged man with shattered ribs, a wrecked shoulder that hung at an unnatural angle, and a ruined arm that uselessly twitched at his side.

He collapsed into the bloody crater he had created, his body a roadmap of trauma and gore.

Leonidas coughed, a wet, gurgling sound that sprayed crimson across the grey stones. His eyes were hollow, the fire of defiance replaced by the dull stare of someone who had seen the end of the world and realized it was inevitable.

With a shuddering breath that sounded like tearing parchment, he began to crawl. His fingernails dug into the dirt, dragging his broken body forward inch by agonizing inch, leaving a smeared trail of blood behind him in the dust.

Leonidas’s functioning hand dragged across the wet, contaminated clay of the pond bed. Each movement was a grotesque display of human stubbornness.

Schlick. Schlick.

The sound of broken nails tearing through earth and flesh accompanied every agonizing inch he gained. He was pulling himself toward the far edge of the garden toward the small, motionless shape beneath the traveling cloak where his wife lay.

He did not look at Rex. He did not acknowledge the predator standing above him.

His entire universe had shrunk to that single point in the grass. His vision was a red haze of blood and pain, but his heart was fixed on her.

"He... le... na..." he gasped, each syllable punctuated by a wet, bubbling wheeze from his punctured lung.

His movements were desperate and clumsy, the actions of a dying animal trying to reach its mate.

Rex moved, not with anger, but with the terrifying inevitability of a closing trap. He stepped forward and placed his boot directly onto Leonidas’s outstretched hand.

He did not stamp. He did not deliver a crushing blow.

He simply transferred his full weight onto the back of Leonidas’s hand.

CRUNCH.

The sound of metacarpals snapping and tendons popping under the pressure was intimate and horrific. Leonidas’s fingers pressed flat into the clay, grinding into the grit.

The man stopped. His body jerked once, then went still.

He lay with his cheek pressed against the cold, sucking mud, his breath rattling in his chest like broken glass in a tin can.

In that moment of stillness, Leonidas understood with a clarity that transcended pain. There was no sorcery left.

No divine fury to summon. No last stand to make.

The man standing over him had not just defeated him; he had harvested him. Rex had absorbed the very essence of the Wrath that had made Leonidas feel like a god, leaving him hollow, stripped bare, and utterly mortal.

The sword was dust.

The Mark was dead.

The divine favor had been stolen and repurposed.

Leonidas lay in the dirt, a broken vessel of meat and bone, knowing that his death would not be a heroic sacrifice, but a quiet execution in a ruined garden.

Rex raised his right hand.

The air around his palm began to scream. Red and violet energies spiraled together, clashing and weaving in a small, savage whirlpool of concentrated power.

It was beautiful and obscene, a miniature vortex of sin that cast a long, flickering shadow of Rex’s head across the blood-soaked ground. The light was so intense it made the veins in Rex’s forearm stand out like cords of steel.

Whirrrrrr...!

The sound of the gathering energy hummed in the air, a low frequency vibration that made Leonidas’s teeth ache.

Leonidas didn’t scream. He didn’t beg.

He simply closed his eyes.

His consciousness began to retreat, slipping away from the agony of his shattered ribs and the taste of copper in his mouth. His thoughts did not rush or scatter in panic; they came slowly, like autumn leaves falling onto still water.

’Helena.’ He saw her clearly young and radiant, the hem of her green dress swirling as she turned at the end of a sunlit hallway.

Then, the children. Three small faces, warm and laughing.

And Apollo, his student grinning with mud up to his knees, brandishing a crude wooden sword above his head, his voice ringing out in a triumphant shout: "I won, Teacher! I won!"

A single tear tracked through the blood and grime on Leonidas’s cheek, disappearing into the mud.

"Forgive me, Helena," he whispered, his voice barely audible above the hungry hum of Rex’s palm. "Forgive me for failing you."