Chapter 580: 580. A Fight That I Could Use As A Warming Up!
Mordecai looked at him with the expression of someone who has been given a statement that is both true and specifically designed to be acceptable and knows both things simultaneously.
"You’re very good at that," Mordecai said.
"What am I good at?" Rex said. "Repeat it again."
"You are good at saying things that are accurate and useful, and that also happen to be precisely what I need to prevent me from pushing back harder than I am," Mordecai said.
Rex said nothing.
"I’m aware of it," Mordecai said.
"I just can’t identify where the accuracy ends and the management begins." He paused. "Can you?"
Rex looked at him for a moment.
"Most of the time," Rex said.
Mordecai absorbed the information as someone does when they receive an honest answer to a question they asked, fully aware that they might not want the truth.
He appeared to be on the verge of saying something further when the alert reached Rex’s foresight approximately two seconds before it manifested physically.
Something large and swift was moving from the lower west district upward through the central vertical shaft, its trajectory aligned with the spire platform. The foresight resolved it in three components: mass, velocity, and intent, and all three components were pointing in the same direction.
"Get the fuck out of the way!" Rex grabbed Mordecai and displaced him to the left with a single push, stepping into the incoming trajectory himself, and the attack arrived.
Who’s coming towards him is a Legion member named Zane Mortavius, and he was not subtle about his approach.
Zane Mortavius came through the shaft opening with the specific momentum of someone who had been building speed for several vertical levels, using that momentum as the leading edge of his attack; he held a reaping blade in his right hand and what Rex’s energy perception identified as a void disruption in his left, with both arms extended and aimed at the space that Mordecai had occupied one second ago.
WHOOSH CRACK!
Rex took the blade flat on his left forearm, and thanks to his Peak Physique, the impact felt like pressure rather than penetration; he then redirected the momentum with a half rotation that sent Zane’s forward trajectory sideways instead of forward, costing Rex approximately three meters of ground while preventing Zane’s void from reaching anything behind him.
SKREEEEE THUD!
They landed on the spire’s upper platform with the grinding impact of two people who had made initial contact and were now establishing the geometry of what came next.
Zane recovered from the redirect faster than Rex had expected. He was a large man in his early thirties, possessing the specific build of someone whose body had been augmenting physical capabilities for a long time; he was broad through the chest and shoulders, with the condensed movement efficiency of someone who had engaged in extensive real combat rather than just training.
The reaping blade in his right hand was not decorative. The edge on it was cutting-edge sharp, the kind maintained by someone who trusted their weapon because they had put time into it.
He did not pause to reassess. He came back in immediately, which was the correct choice against an opponent who had just demonstrated they could read a momentum-based approach with enough precision to redirect it, because pausing gave that opponent time to settle into a defensive read and adjust the foresight parameters.
The second approach was different from the first. Not the same high diagonal line.
The attack was a low sweep from left to right, targeting Rex’s front leg, using the weight of the blade in a way that showed the user knew how to use the blade’s momentum effectively instead of fighting against it.
Rex stepped over the sweep with the specific economy of someone whose physical baseline made the adjustment trivial and drove the heel of his right palm into Zane’s right shoulder as the blade passed under him, a strike aimed at the rotator cuff rather than the joint.
CRUNCH!
"AGH!" Zane let out a sharp, pained grunt as the impact landed, and his right arm lost structural integrity for approximately half a second, the reaping blade dropping three inches before he recovered the grip.
Half a second was enough.
Rex was inside the blade’s range before the recovery completed, his left hand catching Zane’s right wrist at the grip point and his right elbow driving forward into the chest.
BOOM!
"GUH-!" The air was violently expelled from Zane’s lungs in a desperate, wheezing gasp as the elbow compressed the breath out of him, leaving him operating on reduced capacity for the next several exchanges.
Zane took the elbow hit and did not step back. He absorbed the hit by turning into it, converting the compression into a rotation that allowed his left hand’s void disruption to work from the outside angle, making the spatial disruption wave tighter and more focused than the broad discharge he had used during his initial approach.
Rex released his grip on the wrist and dropped below the height of the working’s discharge, allowing the void wave to pass over him and strike the spire’s stone balustrade.
SHATTER KRAK KRAK KRAK!
The wave tore a channel through the rock in a pattern of fractured geometry that spread for two meters in each direction from the impact point.
Rex came back up from the drop with his knee driving into Zane’s left thigh, targeting the nerve cluster above the knee that governed the leg’s weight-bearing capacity.
THWACK!
"NNGH!" Zane’s left leg buckled for a half step, a strained, guttural sound of pain escaping his throat before he managed to redistribute his weight.
"You’re fast," Zane said, and his voice was still controlled and even, the voice of someone who had engaged with the first two exchanges and was updating his assessment in real time rather than reacting emotionally. "Faster than you’ve been showing in the city."
Rex did not respond.
"You’ve been operating below your ceiling," Zane said. "Deliberately... the whole FUCKING time!"
He looked at Rex across the platform with the flat, assessing attention of a combatant taking the full measure of his opponent. "You’re clearing the kingdom."
"You’re clearing the kingdom of things it doesn’t need," Rex said.
"Of reincarnators," Zane said.
"Of weak reincarnators who take resources without contributing to what the city needs to become," Rex said. "There’s a distinction."
"That’s a very clean line to draw from the outside," Zane said. "When you’re the one drawing it."
"It’s the accurate line," Rex said. "The kingdom requires certain resources to survive the approaching challenges."
"What’s coming...?" Zane said.
"It is something that this kingdom needs to be able to face," Rex said. "This situation requires the kingdom to stop being the kind that allows passive residents to occupy space while active threats build infrastructure within its walls."
Zane looked at him for a long moment. His breathing was measured.
His grip on the reaping blade had shifted slightly from the original hold to the one that worked better when the opponent’s distance management was making the blade’s full reach irrelevant.
Rex noted the change.
"You’re going to tell me you’re doing this for the kingdom," he said. "I’m going to tell you that’s what everyone says when they’re doing something for themselves."
"I’m doing it for what the kingdom needs to become," Rex said. "What I get out of it is secondary."
"Is it?" Zane said, and something in his voice had shifted, a register that was colder and more specific. "Because from where I was watching, you looked like someone who was enjoying himself."
Rex said nothing.
Zane moved.
The reaping blade came in on a high line, a diagonal sweep designed for maximum coverage against an opponent who was going to try to step inside it. Rex ducked below the arc and drove his right elbow into Zane’s lead arm at the triceps insertion point, a strike that was specifically aimed at the nerve cluster rather than the bone, and Zane’s right arm numbed for approximately two seconds.
In those two seconds, Rex was already behind him.
The void working from Zane’s left hand discharged into the space. Rex had just vacated, creating a wave of spatial disruption that tore the platform surface in a pattern of shredded stone that would have done significant damage to a person standing in it.
Rex was not in it.
He was at Zane’s back, and he drove his knee into the base of Zane’s spine with the specific force of the Peak Physique operating without restraint, and Zane went forward onto the platform face-first, and Rex followed with a controlling grip on his right wrist and both knees bearing down on his shoulder blades.
Zane did not go quietly. He used the fall to his advantage by turning the forward collapse into a partial roll, which absorbed most of the knee strike’s force on his lower rib section instead of his spine, making it both a smarter and more painful move.
The roll did not break the controlling grip on his wrist, but it changed the geometry, pulling Rex’s left arm into an extended position rather than the compressed one that the control hold depended on.
Rex adjusted by dropping his center of gravity, shifting from a kneeling control position to a full weight distribution across Zane’s upper back, and the adjustment cost him the wrist grip but gave him the shoulder blade control with enough downward pressure that the position was stable.
"My turn...!" Rex smirked.
