Chapter 1330. Forty Minutes of Fighting, and Now Heaven Wants Overtime

Chapter 1330: 1330. Forty Minutes of Fighting, and Now Heaven Wants Overtime

It was a perfect, endless cycle of escalating devastation. Each time a bone snapped with the wet crack of kindling, each time a spell shattered like frozen glass, and each time a body was hurled across the courtyard like refuse, the other found an answer.

They weren’t just fighting with magic and muscle; they were communicating.

They were two unstoppable forces grinding each other down to their rawest essences, learning the fundamental architecture of each other’s souls through the only language that couldn’t lie: violence.

Around the edges of this apocalyptic theater, the watchers could do nothing but cling to their own humanity.

Cassandra stood frozen, her knuckles having gone bone white around the hilt of her sword, her breath coming in shallow, terrified hitches.

Gorvasha, whose cruelty usually demanded entertainment, had long since stopped laughing; his face was a pale mask of grim realization.

Lilith had bitten through her lower lip again, the copper taste of blood filling her mouth, but she seemed not to feel the pain, her eyes locked on the carnage.

Behind the protective stone ring at the plaza’s edge, Valentina murmured something under her breath, her voice trembling: "I have never... I have never once seen Justice used like that."

"It shouldn’t be able to bleed like this."

Lily had gripped Diana’s arm so hard her fingernails drew blood, holding on as if Diana’s arm was the last solid handhold on the edge of a crumbling cliff. And then there was Elizabeth.

She watched Rex with an expression that defied analysis, neither fear nor pity. She was the only one who could see the truth behind his murderous eyes: she knew he was enjoying this.

She knew he was savoring every ounce of agony, every spark of divine retribution. But she also knew he was running out of room to play.

At last, the storm broke. The cacophony of explosions and screams died down into a ringing, hollow silence.

They stood facing each other in the center of what had once been a plaza.

Now, it was merely a wasteland of pulverized stone, smoking craters, and arterial spray.

Evelyn’s right arm hung useless at her side, the bone clearly fractured beneath the skin, twitching spasmodically.

Her lip was split wide, blood streaming down her chin, and the golden lightning at her fingertips no longer roared; it guttered and flared weakly, like a candle struggling against a hurricane.

Rex was worse. Half of his face had been scorched away by the divine lightning, leaving raw, weeping flesh exposed, and his left eye was gone, replaced by a cauterized socket that leaked vitreous humor and blood.

His [Infinite Regeneration] was screaming, working at a pathetic crawl as it struggled to knit together tissue that was being burned faster than it could grow.

Both of them were breathing in ragged, wet gasps. Blood ran off their bodies in synchronized streams, flowing into the same deep cracks in the same broken stone, mingling until it was impossible to tell whose lifeblood was whose.

Rex let out a sound, a wet, bubbling noise that slowly transformed into a quiet laugh through a mouth full of crimson.

"A draw," he rasped, the words spraying droplets of red onto the ground. "After forty minutes of hell... do you know I’ve never had one of those before?"

"Never... never met someone who could match my hunger."

Evelyn didn’t laugh. She didn’t even blink.

Her good eye remained fixed on him with a terrifying, crystalline focus. She drew a shaky breath, one that sounded like grinding gravel in her chest, and forced herself to straighten.

"I don’t want a draw," she said, her voice soft but carrying the weight of an approaching storm. "A draw is for those who seek peace."

Slowly, painfully, she lifted her left hand toward the darkening sky. The air began to hum.

The golden light didn’t flicker this time; it began to solidify, drawing from the very concept of the Court itself.

"I want a verdict."

The sky above Aethelgard did not simply part; it surrendered.

There was no tearing of fabric, no dramatic parting of clouds like a stage curtain.

Instead, the atmosphere itself seemed to recoil in terror. The clouds didn’t drift; they fled, rushing outward from a central point in the heavens as if pushed by an invisible, divine gale.

Out of that impossible void emerged a phenomenon that defied every law of physics Rex knew.

A golden scale.

It was a construct of such incomprehensible scale that it blotted out half the afternoon sun. It hung suspended over the plaza like a celestial tower laid on its side, its two vast pans swaying in the ether without the aid of chains or gravity.

The light cascading from its polished surface wasn’t mere illumination; it was a physical weight, laying a pale, terrifying stripe of divine gold across every rooftop in the city.

Every soul in Aethelgard—every student, every teacher, every servant—turned their gaze upward simultaneously, frozen by the awe of witnessing a cosmic execution.

This was not the Court’s gavel. This was the Court’s wrath.

Evelyn stood directly beneath the epicenter of that golden shadow. Her broken arm hung useless at her side, blood still dripping from her fingertips to stain the cracked stones, but her posture was one of absolute, unshakable authority.

She did not scream. She did not roar.

She spoke in a voice that was clear, level, and terrifyingly calm—a voice that somehow carried across the entire island, cutting through the wind like a blade.

"For Apollo Brightsoul." Her words resonated in the bones of everyone listening. "For Veylor, for Calivara, for Eryndra... for Theo Morr Nightwing... and for everyone you killed!"

With each name, the golden scale above pulsed with increasing intensity.

"For every name you erased from under every mask you wore."

"For every soul you treated as a variable in your equation of power." Her eyes locked onto Rex’s remaining eye, burning with a light that made his own crimson gaze seem dim. "I pass the sentence."

Rex was not smiling. The cocky, blood-slicked grin that had defined his entire existence throughout this fight had vanished.

For the first time all day, his face went utterly quiet. A predator realizing he wasn’t the apex anymore.

Inside his mind, the system was screaming. His [Full Potential Adaptation] was working at impossible speeds, frantically reaching out toward the divine construct in the sky.

His consciousness tried to grasp the mechanism of the scale, to understand its weight, to find its weakness, but it came up empty.

It was like trying to strangle smoke.

It was like trying to wound the concept of Justice itself.

[SYSTEM WARNING: Unknown Entity Detected.]

[Analysis: Impossible Scale.]

[Adaptation Progress: 0.00001% ... 0.00002%...]

The estimate rolled up in the corner of his peripheral vision, numbers cycling faster than he could read. The system attempted to calculate his survival probability, but the numbers were spinning into infinity.

[Estimated Time to Impact: 30.0 seconds.]

Rex stared up at the descending doom.

Thirty seconds.

Thirty seconds before the weight of every sin he had ever committed was crushed into his skull by a god’s hand.

His mind raced through every contingency, every power, every desperate gambit he possessed.

He knew the math. And he knew the physics.

He knew that in thirty seconds, there would be nothing left of him but a crimson stain on the Academy’s stones.

In fact, he knew he didn’t even have thirty seconds. The scale was already beginning to descend.

He didn’t have thirty. He didn’t have three.

He had one chance to become something more than human before the verdict fell.

Rex drew a breath that tasted of copper and ash. His muscles coiled, his veins bulging with a pressure that threatened to burst his skin.

He stopped thinking about survival. He stopped thinking about winning. He stopped thinking about the island.

He channeled every ounce of his remaining life force, every spark of his shattered divinity, into a single, terminal point of existence.

"Come then," he whispered through gritted teeth. "Let’s see if I can break God."

He gave it everything in a single heartbeat.