He rose with Zeraphyra and Vireth’s weight behind him, with Kaelira’s two weeks behind him, with the specific grief of soone who had been holding too many losses for too long and had just been given one more.
The fire that erupted from him was not Apollo’s fire magic. The life-affinity system had reached its absolute maximum, producing an output that was the exact opposite of its usual function.
Instead of healing or reversing entropy, it generated a specific result from a system that was self-destructing to create sothing it was never intended to produce.
Apollo gazed at Rex with eyes that suggested he had lost touch with the part of himself capable of making moral decisions.
"EVERYTHING..." Apollo said, and the word was almost lost in the deep, constant sound of sothing basic working at its ceiling. "I’M GOING TO UNDO EVERY CHOICE YOU’VE EVER MADE...!"
"STARTING WITH THE CHOICE TO CO HERE TONIGHT, AND THAT INCLUDES KAELIRA, ZERAPHYRA, VIRETH, AND AETHELGAAAARDDDDD!!!"
"YOU MAKE MAD...! REALLY-REALLY MAD!" Apollo starts to dive forward. "AND NOW IT’S TI...!"
"...TO PAAAYYYYY!!!"
He stepped forward with a light step.
The speed matched that of Apollo’s activation at its maximum limit. However, it did not reach the lightning-class speed that is characteristic of Zeraphyra’s system.
It was indicative of sothing that had abandoned the search for a balance between effectiveness and sustainability, instead racing at the limit of its structural integrity before failure.
For the first ti, Rex’s foresight didn’t catch where he was moving.
And then Rex took the first MASSIVE hit that made his mouth spit out a lot of his blood.
"GAAAAGGGHHHH!"
Foresight at this output level was running at a margin that was too narrow to use for avoidance, and taking the first hit was the right choice if the goal was to give Apollo the experience of landing it cleanly. Furthermore, there were now other things that were more important to Rex than staying alive.
The impact knocked him off his feet.
He was blown away about fifteen ters, a precise asurent since the Infinite Regeneration assessed structural damage based on the force exerted. This force that launched him through the air matched the intensity of Apollo’s absolute ceiling when delivered without any control or restraint.
Rex hit the street when he landed, rolled, and ca to a stop against the base of a building that had already been damaged by the undead assault. The building absorbed his impact into its already weakened structure.
The Infinite Regeneration was recovering him at full speed.
"Yes...! This is what I fucking want!" Rex smirked while wiping his blood.
Rex lay at the base of the building and felt every single thing it was repairing; he noted that the list was longer than any list from tonight so far and was being worked through with the systematic urgency of a process that was designed for exactly this scale of input.
And then he saw Apollo approaching.
Rex sensed the temperature rising before Apollo arrived. He glanced up at the midday sky, its color shifting ominously as it moved toward him through the smoke and flas of the burning city.
"Now that I’ve seen what you’re capable of..." Rex laughed. "I’m honestly satisfied!"
Rex finally made the decision he had been working toward since the mont he stepped on Apollo’s head in the plaza.
He got everything he wanted tonight. The Undead Bringer had a real, undeniable fight with Apollo.
He had shattered two mbers of Apollo’s harem right before him. He had used Xavier’s face to complicate Apollo’s ability to fight at his best.
He had pushed Apollo beyond every limit his training had instilled in him, crafting the ultimate version of what Apollo Brightsoul looked like when there was nothing left between him and the world.
The objective was complete.
And now... he doesn’t have any interest in continuing the fight.
Rex closed his eyes.
[CONSCIOUSNESS TRANSFER PROTOCOL — INITIATING]
[PRIMARY BODY: THE UNDEAD BRINGER — DESIGNATING AS AVATAR CONSTRUCT]
[SECONDARY BODY: REX REXILION AVATAR — DESIGNATING AS PRIMARY VESSEL]
[TRANSFER COMPLETE]
[SYSTEM ACCESS CONFIRD IN NEW PRIMARY VESSEL]
[AVATAR CONSTRUCT: THE UNDEAD BRINGER — STANDING BY FOR FINAL SEQUENCE]
Rex woke up in the avatar form of Rex Rexilion, which he now fully embodies.
He stood in the third section of the market district, positioned within a defensive line that had held firm for the last twenty minutes. To his left were Lily’s barriers, while Nerith’s nature magic flanked him on the right.
Above and behind him, Diana occupied an elevated position she had found during the third minute of the fight.
The transfer felt the sa mild warmth in the hands as it had during the test, but it was a little stronger because it was farther away.
He was inside the Avatar’s body. The Avatar was 97.3% his own, while the remaining 2.7% existed in a vague sense, not tied to any specific physical sensation.
It lingered in the background of his awareness, similar to how a room feels different when the furniture has been rearranged in his absence.
Then the explosion erupted with a deafening roar akin to that of a nuclear bomb.
BAAAAAAAAAAMMMMMMMMM!
It wasn’t an ordinary explosion; there was no aningful target left. Instead, it was Apollo’s absolute ceiling unleashing everything it had in a single, sustained output without a specific target.
This indicated that the full extent of a life-affinity system at the bloodlust threshold was being exerted on the air, stone, water, and every physical surface within a substantial range.
The shockwave hit the market district at about forty percent of its source strength. This was still strong enough to knock everyone in the defensive line off their feet, take out every light source on the street at once, and make a sound that Rex could feel in his sternum from three hundred ters away.
The sky in the direction of the western plaza had the color of the sun.
Rex was on his feet before anyone else in the group, because the transfer had put him in the Avatar’s body at its current physical state, which was better than the Undead Bringer’s body had been at any point in the last hour.
"Get everyone out of the western district!" He gave the order with the urgency that the situation called for and the control that Rex Rexilion was known for. "On your feet and move now!"
"All of you... GOOO!"
Lily looked at him. "Rex—"
"Move as far away as you can with Nerith, Lily!" he said, using a tone that indicated the request was not negotiable.
"U-understood." Lily heard him, took Nerith’s arm, and began to move.
Diana landed next to him from her high place, already using her tactical skills to figure out the blast radius.
"W-what the heck is that explosion?!" She asked, "The western plaza... no... that explosion! It keeps getting bigger and closer to us!"
"Leave this place now, Diana!" Rex urged. "The explosion could reach us here!"
She looked him in the eye for a second, saw sothing that confird her judgnt, and then she left as fast as she could, following Lily from the back.
Talyra and Aisella were already on the move. Talyra pulled a shocked guard to his feet with both hands, and Aisella ran triage on three people who had been knocked down by the shockwave.
Rex looked at Aisella, and she looked back at him with a look that said she had already figured out how many of these people she could move before the second wave ca and was working toward that number.
"I’ll get the ones on the far side," Rex said. "Go."
He turned and ran toward the western part of the city.
He did not need to assist the Undead Bringer, as that was no longer relevant. Rather, there were people between him and the western plaza who had not escaped the blast zone.
Rex Rexilion was known for moving toward the problem instead of away from it. That reputation wasn’t rely a tactic; it was sothing Rex had cultivated so thoroughly that it had beco ingrained in his behavior.
He used telekinesis to pull people out of doorways that had collapsed as he walked, clearing falling debris from the paths of those trying to move in the right direction but who were blocked by the damage caused by the shockwave.
The Earthen Authority was actively mapping the damage to the substrate in real ti, identifying buildings that had beco structurally weak to the point where they could no longer be expected to remain standing.
"Another grind for to beco trusted in Aetherlgard so that I could get any won I want!" Rex thought with a smirk. "I fucking love this job!"
He was two streets from the western district’s edge when the Foresight showed him where Mireya was.
She was positioned at the end of the secondary approach to the western plaza, approximately a hundred and twenty ters from the source of Apollo’s output, and she was not running.
With both hands extended in front of her, she was pushing her ice system into the outer edge of the blast, forming a containnt barrier that was impressive in its design but ultimately inadequate for its purpose.
’There she is...’
’...one last piece I needed from his harem.’
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