Chapter 576: 576. Watching A Fight That Honestly Amuse Me! I Want To See More!
He turned his gaze back to Pavellia, his expression hardening into something professional yet equally ruthless.
"So, don’t worry about his ’opinion.’ His opinion is a variable that has just been neutralized."
"We are moving forward with the implementation of the correction."
"He’s just the fucking obstacle we’re moving out of the way so the real work can begin."
"I’ll tell him tomorrow," Rex corrected. "You’re the most competent administrative asset in this kingdom."
"And I mean that not as a compliment, but as a structural assessment."
Pavellia was quiet for a moment. The kind of quiet that came from someone who had received something they had wanted without having known they were waiting for it.
"The review scope," she said. "Full infrastructure or tiered?"
"Full," Rex said. "Starting from the monitoring network and working outward."
"That’s a six-week process at minimum," she said. "Four if I pull the right people from the gacha specialist pool."
"You have four," Rex said.
"I’ll need authority over the council members’ staff access," she said. "Otherwise the review hits walls at every tier that has political cover."
"You’ll have it," Rex said. "I’ll give you a document before I leave the spire tonight."
Pavellia turned back to the kingdom below without responding further, but her posture had changed, indicating that she had received information that recalibrated her understanding of her own position.
"The earth-manipulation contact," Lilith said from his left. "Northern commercial district."
"He’s trying something."
Rex looked.
Below, in the northern commercial district, one of the remaining marked Legion contacts, a compact male figure whose ability set Rex had assessed as earth-manipulation-based, was attempting to use a controlled structural collapse to create a path through the patrol units that had closed around his position.
The attempt had a specific logic to it. Earth-manipulation in a district made of stone and mineral deposits was a powerful skill, allowing the user to control the environment as if it were an extension of their own reach.
Rex had noted the ability profile when he ran the initial scan and had flagged it as the most technically intriguing of the remaining eight.
The collapse he triggered was precise. Not a broad demolition, which would have drawn every patrol unit in the district to the sound, but a targeted failure in the ceiling infrastructure above the patrol unit’s forward line, with three meters of corridor dropping in a controlled cascade that scattered the unit’s formation without collapsing the structural backbone that the corridor depended on.
"He knows what he’s doing," Lilith said.
"He does," Rex said. "He’s been in the Underlayer long enough to understand the geological infrastructure."
"He knows which sections of ceiling are load-bearing and which are cosmetic fill."
"Then why is it not working?" Lilith said.
"Watch the patrol unit’s second line," Rex said.
The collapse had scattered the patrol unit’s forward line, precisely as the contact had intended. But the second line, positioned at the corridor junction forty meters back, had not moved.
They were not rushing to the collapse. They were holding their position and watching the two lateral corridors that branched from the junction, as these were the routes a person who had just used a ceiling collapse to create an escape would logically attempt.
"He planned for the collapse," Lilith said slowly. "They didn’t plan for what he did after the collapse."
"They planned for what someone with his ability set would do after the collapse," Rex said. "The options for earth-manipulation in a corridor system are finite."
"Collapse to scatter, shore to defend, or reshape to redirect."
"He chose collapse to scatter. The second line was positioned for the redirect that follows."
Below, the contact had moved into the left lateral corridor, which Rex had identified as the higher-probability option based on his foresight, and the second line’s left flank had advanced to intercept the contact before it reached the midpoint of the corridor.
The contact stopped.
He had reached the point where the options had run out.
What he did next was not the option Rex had fully anticipated, which was the specific quality that made this contact the most interesting of the remaining eight. Instead of trying to move further, he turned, placed both hands against the corridor wall, and began to pull energy from the surrounding stone in a patient, systematic manner, as someone would do when they have decided that if movement is not possible, restructuring the environment itself is the only remaining option.
"He’s reshaping," Lilith said.
"He’s building," Rex said. "Watch the wall behind him."
The corridor wall behind the contact was doing something corridors were not designed to do: it was becoming thicker. This was not due to collapse or the accumulation of rubble; rather, it was a genuine compression of the existing stone. The wall’s mineral structure became more compact and dense as the contact pulled its mass inward, forming a barrier that, although not a traditional wall, was as effective as one that was three times thicker.
"What the hell...?" Lilith said. "He’s sealing himself in!"
"Yeah, that’s called buying time," Rex said. "The barrier behind him gives him sixty seconds before the patrol units can force through it."
"He’s using those sixty seconds to do something to the floor in front of him."
"But still... What is he doing to the floor?" Lilith said.
"He’s listening to it," Rex said.
Lilith looked at him.
"Earth-manipulation at the skill level he’s operating at," Rex said, "is not just about moving stone."
Rex knows this because he possesses the Earthen Apostle power along with Elemental Mastery, which enhances his understanding of various magical topics. "It’s about understanding what the stone is connected to."
"The floor of that corridor connects to the geological substrate four levels below..."
"He’s running a read through the connection, looking for an access point in the substrate layer that the patrol units haven’t sealed."
"Is there even one...?" Lilith said.
"Nah," Rex said. "Pavellia’s sweep closed the substrate access points eighteen hours before the speech."
"He doesn’t know that," Lilith said.
"He’ll know in about forty seconds," Rex said. "When the read comes back, it will indicate that there is no viable path."
They watched.
The forty seconds passed, marked by a sense of inevitability, leading to a specific conclusion. As the contact’s mental "read" of the substrate returned, the realization hit him with the force of a physical blow.
There was no path. No secret vein of earth to slip through, no geological loophole to exploit.
He was standing on a solid, unyielding tomb of his own making.
The silence in the corridor was deafening, a heavy, suffocating thing, broken only by the frantic, ragged breathing of a man who had just realized he was a dead man walking.
Then, the desperation turned into something far more dangerous: a cold, murderous clarity.
He went for the patrol units.
Not running, but moving with the deliberate, committed pace of someone who had decided that the only remaining option was the direct one and was not going to pretend otherwise. His hands came up, and the earth’s ability was running at full output, pulling stone from every surface around him simultaneously, building a leading wave of compressed mineral that he drove ahead of him like a physical extension of himself.
The air screamed as the stone was torn from the walls. The sound was a violent, grinding cacophony of tectonic friction.
He wasn’t just moving dirt; he was weaponizing the very bones of the district. A massive, jagged wave of hypercompressed granite and basalt erupted from his palms, a roaring tide of crushing weight that surged down the corridor with the intent to pulverize everything in its path.
The patrol unit’s front line caught the wave with a coordinated defense that Pavellia’s restructured training had prepared them for. They didn’t flinch and they didn’t scatter.
As the crushing wall of rock roared toward them, three Voidkin, shadowy, ethereal figures that seemed to exist in the spaces between heartbeats, simply stepped sideways out of reality. They vanished into the spatial plane just as the wave reached them, leaving the front-line soldiers to brace.
The remaining units spread laterally to the corridor walls, planting their feet and interlocking their kinetic shields. The stone mass rolled between them like a tidal wave of liquid mountain, a terrifying display of raw, unadulterated force.
The sound was deafening: the screech of stone grinding against kinetic shields and the thunderous boom of the wave slamming into the corridor’s infrastructure.
But the contact was that of a possessed man. He didn’t just send the wave; he rode the fury of it.
He lunged into the chaos, his hands clawing at the air, trying to shape the debris into spears, into hammers, into anything that could pierce the disciplined line. He slammed a fist into the floor, sending a jagged spike of rock upward to impale a soldier’s leg, the sound of the tibia snapping like a dry twig echoing through the hall.
The soldier let out a guttural, wet scream as the jagged stone tore through muscle and sinew, spraying a fan of crimson across the grey rock.
He was a whirlwind of geological violence. He caught a patrol unit in a sudden, localized pressure trap, the stone lashing around the man’s waist and crushing his ribs inward with a sickening, wet crunch.
"AAAGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
