The silence that followed was the silence of a room where everyone had just lost an option they hadn’t realized they were relying on.
"Veylor..." Iris said with her voice controlled even with blood on her coat.
"All of them," Kregg confird. "The Balance Keeper has been patient."
"This assessnt has been scheduled for so ti, and today is... simply the day it begins."
He pressed his free hand flat against the chamber floor.
A deep vibration built from below, not fast but sustained, propagating upward through the stone in a low frequency that Rex felt through the soles of his boots before he heard it. The chamber walls began to exhale dust in thin, continuous lines from every fissure in the ceiling.
Then the vibration intensified, and the chamber shook in earnest.
Kregg was smiling, which was a specific kind of confident that had no uncertainty in it.
"My apologies for the inconvenience," he said, which was not an apology.
He snapped his fingers.
The chamber jolted violently, not with a gradual shake but with an instantaneous movent that sent loose stones and mineral deposits skittering across the floor. A crack raced through the left wall from floor to ceiling in roughly half a second.
A section of the ceiling collapsed along the crack line—though it didn’t fall directly onto anyone, it was close enough for debris to fan out across the floor and fill the air with dust.
In the white-grey, dust-filled air, Kregg, still gripping Apollo’s limp body by the collar, stopped smiling and abruptly vanished. There was no sound, no visible transition—one mont he was there, and the next, he wasn’t.
’He had teleportation magic, huh...’ Rex clenched his fists. ’But still... you’re not going to get away until I get all my answers.’
Apollo was gone with him.
The vibration continued without him, the geological pressure still working through the stone, and the chamber groaned around them with the tone of a structure beginning to consider the structural conclusions of what it had been subjected to.
Rex stood in the settling dust and thought to himself, "There are four minutes left before it becos inadvisable to be inside the third level."
For a mont nobody said anything, because they were all processing what had just happened at different speeds and arriving at the sa conclusion.
Iris was already trying to stand, and she succeeded on her second attempt by treating the pain from her back wounds as a secondary issue, which was appropriate given the current situation.
Aisella said, "Apollo," and stopped, because there wasn’t anything to follow that with.
Talyra had co down from the shelf during the final seconds of the engagent and was standing with her bow case in one hand looking at the place where Kregg had been standing.
Elizabeth had both grimoires closed. She was reading the chamber walls with the expression she used when she was assessing structural integrity, and what she was concluding from what she saw was not reassuring.
The chamber shook again, less violent than the initial snap but sustained, and another section of the ceiling cracked along a new line.
Nerith gets close to him. "Rex..."
"Get everyone out," Rex said. "Go to the upper passage now with every speed you have."
He looked at Alexander. "You go with them."
Alexander looked at him directly. "Rex, I’ll co with you to find where they’re trying to run to!"
"I’ll signal when I have what I need," Rex said. "Go now, I’ll handle them alone."
Alexander was quiet for a mont with the specific expression of soone choosing to trust a person they are not entirely certain about. "Make sure to stay alive when you try to signal us all."
"That’s the plan," Rex said.
Elizabeth had already taken Iris by the arm with the compressed efficiency she used when moving people faster than they’d move on their own. Aisella followed, pulling Talyra and Nerith into motion by the wrist.
Mireya had freed her legs from the stone hold with sustained ice working and was moving toward the passage entrance with one hand pressed against her knee, where the floor had caught her.
Talyra stopped at the passage entrance and looked back.
"Rex," she said. It was one word carrying several things.
"I’ll be right behind you," he said.
Aisella said, "Please don’t lie to us right now."
"I’m not," he said. "Stop worrying about the man who survived fighting those undead alone."
Nerith had remained silent throughout this exchange. She stood at the entrance of the passage, looking at him, while the amber leaves exhibited a rapid, subtle oscillation he hadn’t fully cataloged before.
This motion seed to convey a mix of fear and the deep-signal movent she used when drawing from ancient root mory, with both expressions layered over one another. She held his gaze for a mont.
"Go," Rex said simply.
Then she turned and went into the passage.
Alexander went last, moving fast, and the sound of footsteps in the passage receded upward and left the chamber for Rex, along with the continuing vibration in the stone and the dust still falling from the ceiling.
Rex stood alone and let the earthen authority’s passive awareness expand through the stone in all directions.
"Fucking finally... I can finally use all my powers now!"
The substrate in this area consisted of ancient listone with a high mineral density, which is a geological layer capable of clearly holding compression signatures and accurately transmitting vibrations over considerable distances.
He could feel so people moving through the stone northwest of him, with the efficiency of a group that knew exactly where it was going and had a route already planned.
The team was advancing forty ters northeast, navigating upward through a natural shaft system.
He turned his attention to the fracture lines in the chamber floor and found the compression fault running northeast from the lower right corner, a geological seam parallel to the path the Legion extraction team was taking but forty ters below it.
Rex pressed both hands to the floor and let the earthen authority open the fault line.
The stone parted ahead of him along the natural fracture, separating smoothly without breaking, much like how stone moves when influenced by a force attuned to its structure.
He followed the fault line swiftly, the stone closing behind him as he advanced, with his passive awareness continuously tracking the extraction team’s vibration signature above him throughout the journey.
The fault line opened into the base of a natural shaft about forty ters northeast of the chamber. A column of pale light fell from the canyon floor above, the shaft opening forty ters overhead.
Telekinesis at full output reduced the forty-ter vertical to approximately four seconds of controlled ascent, and Rex ca out into open canyon air with the afternoon light cutting down in long columns with the greenish tint of the moss on the upper walls.
He took a position in the airspace ten ters above the canyon floor and looked at what was below him.
His eyes locked towards the ten Legion mbers, moving northwest at a disciplined pace. Not five. Kregg had understated the number, which was either deliberate misdirection or full deploynt of both his reserve and the extraction team.
Apollo lay in the center of the group, completely inert, while the ring’s extraction field operated at a maintenance level, suppressing his designation.
Veylor was slung between two Legion mbers, his injured ankle apparent in the way they supported his leg; his head hung low, and he remained motionless.
A third figure, dressed in Academy expedition gear, was draped over one Legion mber’s shoulder, limp. This individual was one of the scouts from Aurelia’s subgroup.
All three were completely unconscious. None of them were waking up.
Rex matched their speed in the airspace above them without making any sound.
Then he said, clearly, at a volu that carried over the canyon ambient noise without effort, "Those three are mine."
The ten Legion mbers stopped and looked up at different speeds.
Rex could imdiately distinguish the combat-designated mbers from the support personnel by how fast they processed what they were seeing and what they did with that processing. Combat mbers had weapons up in roughly half a second.
The others were still looking up, displaying the expressions of people assessing a threat level.
"He’s a reincarnator," one of them said. "Why didn’t we capture him yet?!"
"I know what he is," said another. "It seems like we forgot one!"
"Get him, you dumbasses!!!" Kregg shouted.
The first attack ca from the left side of the group, a shaped stone projectile moving at genuine velocity, well-aid at center mass. Rex stopped it in the air with a flat telekinetic field and held it there.
The second and third and fourth ca from different positions simultaneously, a coordinated volley designed to test the field’s coverage and find its edges. Rex held all of them without a sweat.
The stone fragnts hung in the airspace between him and the group like a scattered exhibit, perfectly still.
"There’s no need for to hold back anymore..." Rex said while slowly using his elental mastery to bypass their primordial energy and signature.
Two of the Legion mbers had moved during the volley, flanking left and right under cover of the noise and motion. Rex let them complete about half the flanking movent.
Then he released all the suspended fragnts along their original trajectories, directing them not toward the individuals who had launched them but backward, away from the group, into the canyon walls behind them.
The fragnts struck with the sound of objects traveling at high speed. Since they were moving backward rather than forward, the fragnts posed no threat.
BAAMMM!
The flankers stopped.
Rex ca out of the airspace with both of his arms crossed. "It’s better to bring the strongest reincarnator to the Balance Keeper, right?"
All of the Legion mbers started to shiver at the sight of him.
And they are not saved at all because there was no one watching. Elizabeth and the others were still in the passage.
The Legion group was isolated in the open canyon with five hundred ters of stone in every direction. There was no one to perform restraint for, and no strategic reason to employ it here.
He crossed the distance to the nearest unnad Legion mber in approximately two seconds, using telekinesis as propulsion, and the engagent began.
"It’s been a while since I’ve killed anyone, so be grateful for what I’m about to do to you all...!"
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