Rex wasn’t rely engaged in combat; he was dissecting a chaotic symphony of destruction. Neither of them offered him the satisfaction of a reply because they operated like a machine of war.
Gorvasha lunged, her leg executing a low, brutal sweep aid at his ankles, designed to destabilize him and leave him vulnerable for the kill. Rex remained unflustered.
He stepped over the arc of her leg with a cocky, rhythmic grace, letting the montum of her sweep carry her past him. As she moved, he drove his elbow downward with the force of a falling hamr, slamming it across the expanse of her back. It was a dirty, efficient strike, designed to use her own forward montum to amplify the impact, turning her strength against her own spine.
Gorvasha was a goddamn professional. Instead of buckling, she rolled with the blow, converting the jarring impact into a controlled, fluid tumble. She was back on her feet in exactly two seconds, a movent so practiced it was instinctive.
And that was the trap.
That two-second window was the exact heartbeat Cassandra had been waiting for. As Gorvasha stabilized, Cassandra unleashed a second void compression, a concentrated burst of nothingness aid precisely at the angle Rex was forced to face after his elbow strike.
Rex dropped. He hit the floor in a low, predatory crouch, the void compression roaring just inches above his head, the pressure so intense it felt like the air itself was trying to crush his skull.
"You built the recovery ti right into the fucking sequence!" Rex shouted from the floor, his eyes gleaming with a sadistic sort of joy.
He looked up at them, a grin splitting his face as he dodged a spray of stone. "Her two-second roll isn’t just a recovery; it’s the goddamn timing chanism for your follow-up!"
"You’re fucking synchronized!"
"Shut your goddamn mouth and fight!" Gorvasha roared, her face a mask of focused fury as she pivoted to reset her stance.
"I’m doing both, you magnificent bitches!" Rex laughed, his voice echoing through the chamber as he sprang back up, his body coiled and ready for the next onslaught. "The talking is the best part! It’s how I figure out which of your fucking combinations I haven’t broken yet!"
Rex snapped back to his feet with a violent, predatory, explosive speed. The Peak Physique didn’t just make him fast; it made him move instantaneously.
He didn’t just move; he reoriented himself in a way that defied the laws of physics, and by the ti Cassandra and Gorvasha launched their four-second combined sequence, Rex was already gone from the impact zone.
They had spent the last few minutes building toward this specific mont, but Rex was no longer where the math said he should be.
Cassandra adjusted mid-strike, her body twisting in a desperate, reflexive correction. It was a goddamn masterpiece of combat adaptation, the kind of shift that only a veteran of a thousand wars could pull off. But even a masterpiece is too slow when you’re fighting a monster.
Rex was already inside her guard, his face inches from hers, his eyes dancing with a cruel, smug delight.
"You over-indexed on the fucking contingency," Rex whispered, his voice a sharp, jagged blade. "When the primary failed, you committed to the backup too hard!"
"There’s a goddamn middle ground between the two that you’re too scared to use."
Cassandra didn’t waste her breath arguing. She drove her knee violently into his thigh, a strike that connected with a sickening crack.
It was the right move, the only move, given how close he was. For a split second, Rex’s leg buckled, and the smugness on his face flickered.
"That," Rex grunted, a dark laugh bubbling in his throat, "is the fucking secondary option."
"I know," she hissed, already pulling back to launch another strike.
The chamber beca a blender of violence. The exchange tore across the floor, each clash sending shockwaves that ripped through the architecture.
Three structural fractures spiderwebbed across the walls; two more tore through the ceiling. The window section, the one Rex had already weakened with Cassandra’s first void compression, finally gave way.
It exploded outward in a rain of jagged glass, the roar of the purge below rushing in to fill the silence with the screams of a dying city.
At the far edge of the room, Mordecai was pressed against the wall, his face the color of a fucking sheet.
"Pavellia," he managed, his voice barely audible over the sound of the carnage.
"My lord," she answered, her gaze unwavering.
"I made a mistake," Mordecai said, his eyes tracking the blur of Rex moving between the two won.
"Which one?" Pavellia asked.
"I’m not... sure," Mordecai said, his voice trembling. "There are too many to count."
"The authorization," Pavellia said.
"I was thinking about working with him in the first place," Mordecai said.
He watched Rex flow around Cassandra’s fourth void compression with a casual, insulting ease. "I thought he was an asset... A strong one, sure, but sothing we could use... sothing we could put back in the box."
"He is an asset," Pavellia said. "That part was accurate."
"An asset," Mordecai said, "is sothing that serves a purpose and then gets set down when it’s finished."
"But now... What the actual fuck am I witnessing?"
Pavellia remained silent. There was no need for her to respond.
...
Rex was playing with them. He was using all his powers: small bursts of telekinesis to slightly change their attacks, full foresight to see their every move, and his connection to the ground giving him constant updates on how stable the floor was beneath them.
He hadn’t taken a single hit that mattered. He was a ghost in the machine of their offense, slipping through their attacks effortlessly.
"You’re holding back," Cassandra said, her chest heaving, her voice raw.
She stood in the brief, suffocating gap between her sixth and seventh approaches, her sword trembling in her hand.
"Well, no shit," Rex said, his voice cool and detached.
He looked completely unbothered, a stark contrast to her desperation.
"Why?" she demanded, her frustration boiling over.
"Because I’m interested in finding your fucking ceiling," Rex said, a thin, cruel smile touching his lips. "I can’t find out where you break if I stop you before you even get there."
Cassandra stared at him, her expression a chaotic blend of rage, respect, and pure, unadulterated hatred. "You’re using this fight as a goddamn assessnt."
"I use every fight as an assessnt," Rex said, his eyes darkening. "You’re not special, Cassandra."
"You’re just another variable in the equation."
"You arrogant piece of shit," she sneered, and without another word, she pivoted and unleashed the full force of her next work, a wave of pure void energy that threatened to tear the room apart. Rex just laughed, his eyes alight with the thrill of the kill.
The void disruption wave roared toward him, a jagged tear in reality, but Rex didn’t flinch. As the edge of the energy wave lashed out, he caught it on his forearm.
He didn’t just block it; he tapped into it. With a sickeningly smooth motion, he absorbed the kinetic violence of the void and converted it into a lateral burst of montum.
He used Cassandra’s own power to slingshot himself across the chamber, repositioning with a predatory grace that made it look like she was the one doing the work for him.
"You’ve been doing that the whole fucking fight," Gorvasha growled, her voice cutting through the settling dust as she surged in from his left.
"Yes," Rex replied, his voice infuriatingly casual, as if he were discussing the weather instead of a life-or-death duel.
"Using our attacks to move yourself," Gorvasha said, her eyes narrowing.
She skidded to a halt, her massive fra tensed. She wasn’t just fighting anymore; she was dissecting him.
She was looking at the geotry of the last seven minutes of carnage with the cold, calculating gaze of a master strategist. "Every ti one of us commits to an output, you redirect it!"
"You use the force to put yourself exactly where the next input is coming from."
"Bingo," Rex grinned, his eyes gleaming with a dark, mocking pride.
"So the more we attack, the more efficiently you move," she realized, her voice dropping an octave. "The harder we hit, the faster you get."
"That’s the goddamn design," Rex said, spreading his arms wide as if inviting them to try harder. "Co on! Give sothing real!"
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