He looked at her with the terrifying, unhurried attention of a butcher inspecting a carcass. "There are... And I counted."
"And I do think that doesn’t matter now... is it?"
"Six system holders," she spat, her voice trembling despite her bravado. "Against one."
"Six system holders have been in the Underlayer for varying periods of ti and have optimized their abilities for a kingdom environnt," Rex said, his voice gaining a heavy, authoritative weight. "This is in contrast to one person who has been operating at approximately sixty percent of his capacity since the speech began, specifically to avoid damaging the infrastructure I plan to use afterward."
He paused, the silence in the plaza becoming suffocating. "I’m going to be honest with you about the math..."
"It is not in your favor."
"You could be lying about the sixty percent," a third man challenged.
He was lean, his very presence causing the air to ripple, a wind type. He was already modulating his energy, preparing for a high-speed assault.
"That’s the kind of thing soone says when they want you to not try."
"It’s the kind of thing I say when it’s true," Rex replied, his gaze locking onto the wind type.
"Why...?" the wind type asked, his brow furrowed in confusion.
"Because if I tell you it’s sixty percent and it’s actually eighty percent, you fight harder than you would have, and I get a better read on your ceiling," Rex explained, his tone as matter-of-fact as if he were discussing the weather. "If I tell you it’s sixty and it’s actually sixty, the sa thing happens."
"Either way, the accurate number serves better than a conservative one."
Rex’s eyes flared with a sudden, dark intensity. "I want you to co at with everything you have."
"I’ve been watching controlled engagents for the past two hours..."
"I’m interested in what an uncontrolled one looks like from the inside."
The wind type looked at his companions, his face pale. He saw the truth in Rex’s eyes: a hunger for chaos, a desire to see how much force it took to truly shatter a soul.
Verakis, sensing the shift in the atmosphere, nodded slowly, his face a mask of grim realization. "Gulp..."
"He wants us to," Verakis whispered, his voice trembling. "He isn’t just fighting us... he’s inviting us to die."
"Yes," Rex said, his voice dropping into a register that was low, resonant, and utterly devoid of human warmth. "I do..."
"I want to see the exact mont the light of ’willpower’ turns into the frantic, wet panic of a dying animal."
"I want to see how much pressure it takes to turn your bones into powder and your pride into a red sar on the pavent."
A heavy, suffocating silence fell over the plaza. The six reincarnators stood frozen, realizing they weren’t facing a warrior but a predator who found their very existence to be a mild curiosity.
The broad-shouldered woman stepped forward, her chest heaving. Her eyes were wide, burning with a mixture of fury and a primal, instinctive terror.
"You arrogant piece of shit," she spat, her voice cracking. "You think we’re just toys?!"
"You think this is a ga for your amusent?"
Rex tilted his head, studying her. He looked at her muscular fra, the way her skin pulled tight over her augnted muscle fibers, as if he were looking through her flesh to the bone beneath it.
"You have a certain... sturdiness to you," Rex remarked, his eyes gleaming with a cruel, dark light. "A density that suggests you’ve spent years hardening yourself."
"It’s a sha honestly... Harder things tend to shatter more spectacularly when they finally break."
He took a step closer, his presence expanding until it felt like the gravity in the plaza had doubled.
"Tell ," he murmured, his voice a silken caress of malice. "Before I turn your ribcage into a collection of jagged shards... what is your na?"
"I want to know the na of the first one to break."
The woman gritted her teeth, her aura exploding in a violent, golden flare of physical enhancent. "It’s none of your fucking business!"
"Oh, it becos my business the mont your blood starts staining my boots," Rex countered with a predatory grin. "Don’t be shy."
"Give a na to scream while you’re begging for a death that won’t co fast enough."
"That’s supposed to make us not want to," the broad-shouldered woman said, her voice a roar of defiance as she launched herself forward.
She was excellent. Her physical enhancent was a masterpiece of biological engineering; every muscle fiber was a coiled spring of pure, kinetic potential.
She closed the distance across the plaza in four thunderous steps. Each footfall cracked the stone beneath her, generating a shockwave of force that grew exponentially with every stride.
By the fourth step, she was a living projectile, a mountain of muscle and intent. She swung a massive, hamr-like fist aid directly at Rex’s sternum, a strike designed to cave in his chest and end the fight in a single, bone-shattering instant.
Rex didn’t flinch, and he didn’t even brace. He simply rotated forty-five degrees, a movent so minimal and precise it seed almost casual.
The strike whistled past his chest, the sheer wind pressure of her fist tearing at his clothes, but her montum was too powerful to be easily halted. As she surged past him, Rex moved. It wasn’t a punch; it was a surgical application of devastating force.
He brought his right elbow down in a sharp, vicious arc, catching her precisely at the junction of her shoulder and neck. He didn’t use his maximum strength; that would have been too rciful. Instead, he used his strong body to make the hit just strong enough to cause serious damage, taking advantage of her own speed to increase the impact.
CRACK SPLAT!
The sound was sickening: the wet, splintering crunch of the clavicle snapping and the vertebrae grinding against one another. The force of the blow shook her entire nervous system, a violent jolt of agony that seed to turn her bones to jelly.
The woman didn’t fly backward; she collapsed inward. Her montum died instantly as she slamd into the stone, her legs buckling beneath her.
She fell heavily to her knees, her hands clawing weakly at the ground. A violent, convulsive cough tore from her throat, and a thick, hot spray of bright, frothy crimson erupted from her mouth, spilling over her lips and splashing onto the cracked pavent in a grueso, steaming puddle.
The woman, gasping for air through a throat filled with copper-tasting sludge, let out a roar that was less a battle cry and more a primal scream of pure, unadulterated rage. Her eyes, bloodshot and bulging from the internal pressure, locked onto Rex with a hatred so intense it felt physical.
"You... you monster!" she scread, her voice a ragged, wet rasp. "I’ll tear your fucking heart out with my bare hands!"
She lunged again, her movents no longer precise but fueled by a frantic, suicidal desperation. She swung wild, heavy blows, her augnted muscles bulging and tearing under the strain of her own fury.
Rex didn’t even bother to dodge fully this ti; he moved with a mocking, fluid grace, dancing just out of reach of her desperate claws.
"Is that it?" Rex taunted, his voice smooth and dripping with sadistic amusent.
He leaned in close as she swung, his face inches from her blood-splattered cheek. "All that rage, all that ’sturdiness,’ and you’re still just swinging at shadows!"
"Tell , does it hurt?" Rex laughed. "Does it hurt to realize that your entire life of training was nothing more than a prelude to being dismantled by a man who isn’t even trying?"
"Shut up! SHUT THE FUCK UP!" she shrieked, a gutted, animalistic grunt escaping her as she threw a desperate haymaker.
Rex caught her wrist. The sound of her radius and ulna snapping under his grip was like a dry branch breaking.
"GAAAAH!" She let out a strangled grunt of agony, her body trembling violently.
"You’re too loud," Rex whispered, his eyes turning dark and predatory. "Let’s quiet you down."
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