Chapter 581: 581. It’s Been A While Since I’ve Make Someone My Punchingbag!
"My turn...!" Rex smirked, the expression more predatory than human.
He didn’t wait for a response. Rex drove his weight downward, his entire mass focusing into a singular, violent point of pressure against Zane’s shoulder blades.
CRUNCH GRIND!
"GAAAAH!" Zane’s voice was a strangled roar of agony as the stone beneath him groaned under the combined force of his body and Rex’s Peak Physique.
The pressure was so immense that the capillaries in Zane’s eyes began to burst, painting the whites of his eyes with a terrifying crimson bloom.
But Zane was a veteran of the Legion for a reason. Instead of fighting the downward pressure, he leaned into the pain.
He drove his left hand, the one still humming with the residual energy of the void, directly into the stone platform beneath his own chest.
WHIRRR SHATTER!
He triggered a micro burst of the void disruption, not as a wave, but as a localized explosion. The stone beneath him disintegrated into a spray of razor-sharp shrapnel.
The sudden loss of solid ground caught Rex off balance for a fraction of a second, and Zane used that heartbeat to twist his torso with a violent, spasmodic wrench.
SLIP THUD!
Rex’s weight shifted, and Zane surged upward from the debris like a breaching whale. He swung the reaping blade in a brutal, horizontal arc, aiming to catch Rex across the midsection.
SWISH WHACK!
Rex didn’t just dodge; he leaned into the danger, twisting his torso so the blade’s edge grazed his ribs rather than biting deep. The steel tore through his skin, leaving a shallow, bleeding furrow, but the momentum of the swing left Zane’s flank exposed.
Rex seized the opening. He stepped into Zane’s guard, his fist a heavy, unyielding piston.
BAM!
"H-HUUUAGH!" Zane’s ribs buckled inward.
The sound was sickening: the wet, muffled snap of bone meeting high-density muscle. A spray of crimson mist erupted from Zane’s mouth as he coughed, the blood painting Rex’s forearm.
Rex didn’t give him air to recover. He transitioned the momentum of the punch into a brutal upward headbutt.
CLACK!
The impact of the forehead against the nose was deafening. Zane’s head snapped back, his nose shattering into a mess of cartilage and blood.
As Zane stumbled, his vision swimming in a red haze, Rex grabbed the back of Zane’s head with one hand and his wounded right shoulder with the other.
"Stay focused, Legionnaire," Rex hissed, his voice a low, terrifying vibration. "Or you’ll die before you even see what’s coming."
Zane, blinded by blood and reeling from the concussion, forced his body into a desperate, high-level defensive maneuver: the Void Shell. He pulled the spatial disruption inward, wrapping a flickering, unstable layer of void energy around his skin like a second, translucent layer of armor.
VREEEEE!
The air around Zane began to hum and warp, the very space around him shivering. Rex swung a heavy, punishing kick aimed at Zane’s temple, but as the foot connected with the void shell, the energy buckled.
BOOM!
The kinetic energy was redirected, causing a violent backlash that caused a shockwave to pass through Rex’s leg, but the sheer density of the void shell prevented the bone from breaking.
However, the cost was massive. The strain of maintaining such a tight, concentrated field was tearing Zane’s muscles apart from the inside out.
"HAAH... HAAH..." Zane’s breath came in ragged, wet sobs.
Blood leaked from his nose, his ears, and the corners of his eyes. He was a man standing on the precipice of total physical collapse, yet his eyes remained sharp, calculating.
He saw Rex pulling back for a finishing blow, and he acted. He didn’t use the blade; he used the void.
He thrust his left hand forward, not to hit Rex, but to puncture the space between them.
KRA KOOOM!
A localized spatial tear erupted between them. The vacuum force was immense, pulling at Rex’s clothes and skin, attempting to drag him into the miniature singularity.
Rex felt the skin on his chest tugging painfully, the sensation of being pulled apart by invisible hooks. But Rex’s physique was too dominant.
He planted his feet, his muscles bulging and corded like steel cables, and forced his way through the vacuum. He reached through the shimmering, distorted air, his hand closing around Zane’s throat with the finality of a closing trap.
CRUNCH!
"G-GAK!" Zane’s hands flew to Rex’s wrist, his fingers trembling as he tried to find leverage.
The void shell flickered and died, its energy spent.
Rex pulled him close, their faces inches apart, one man looking like a god of war, the other a broken, blood-soaked wreck of a soldier. Rex’s eyes were dark, filled with a terrifying, ecstatic intensity.
"You’re incredible, Zane," Rex whispered, his thumb pressing deep into the bruised windpipe. "Truly..."
"Let’s see how much more you can take before you break."
Rex’s eyes didn’t just look at Zane; they looked through him, as if he were dissecting the man’s very soul while his hands dismantled his body. The "test" had begun.
Rex released the throat grip only to transition into a devastating, short-range hook.
BOOM!
The blow caught Zane square in the solar plexus. The sound wasn’t just a thud; it was the sound of a heavy mallet hitting a sack of wet gravel.
"GGGAAAHHHH!" Zane’s entire body convulsed, the air forced out of him in a violent, bloody spray that coated the platform.
Rex didn’t let him fall. He caught Zane by the hair, yanking his head back to expose the neck, and began a systematic, rhythmic demolition.
THWACK!
A knee to the midsection.
CRUNCH!
A hammer fist to the cheekbone.
BAM!
A brutal elbow to the ribs. Each strike was delivered with the terrifying, calculated precision of a man testing the structural integrity of a building.
Rex wasn’t just fighting; he was measuring the exact amount of force required to shatter a human being piece by piece.
"H-HAAH... NNGH..." Zane’s responses were becoming less verbal and more animalistic guttural, wet grunts of pure agony as his face became a mask of swelling purple flesh and leaking crimson.
’I didn’t know... such power could exist like this...!’
’What the... hell is he anyway!?’
The gravitational pull of Rex’s brutality caught the observers standing a few meters away.
Lilith was trembling, but not from fear. Her eyes were wide, shimmering with a terrifying, almost fanatical devotion.
She watched the spray of Zane’s blood hit the stone, and her breath hitched in a way that was far from clinical. To her, the scene wasn’t just violence; it was a divine manifestation of power.
"Look at him..." she whispered, her voice a feverish, honeyed tremor, her hands pressed against her chest as if trying to contain the sheer heat radiating from her soul. "So magnificent... so absolute...!"
"Master... ahhnnn... you are truly the center of all things, and it really made me horny~!"
"Every strike is a masterpiece of destruction..." She looked like a woman watching her god ascend, her love morphing into something dark, hungry, and utterly consumed by his dominance.
Beside her, Pavillia stood like a statue carved from ice, but her eyes were burning. While Lilith felt the passion, Pavillia felt the weight.
She saw the way Rex moved, the total lack of wasted energy, the way his peak physique turned every movement into a lethal, inevitable event. She had seen many warriors, but Rex was something else entirely.
He was a force of nature that had chosen to take human form. A deep, profound sense of reverence settled in her gut. She didn’t just respect him; she recognized him as the apex. To her, Rex was the standard by which all existence should be measured.
Then there was Mordecai... acting like the bum he really is.
Mordecai had retreated several steps, his back nearly against the edge of the spire. His face was pale, a cold sweat slicking his brow. He had seen Rex’s efficiency before, but this... this was different.
This was sadism wrapped in perfection. He watched Rex drive a fist into Zane’s wounded ribs CRACK SPLUT! and saw the way Zane’s body jolted like a puppet with cut strings.
Mordecai’s stomach churned. He looked at Rex’s face, calm, focused, almost serene amidst the carnage, and felt a primal, shivering terror.
’He’s not just winning,’ Mordecai thought, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs. ’He’s playing with him.’
’He could turn that gaze on me in a heartbeat, and he wouldn’t even blink as he broke my bones.’
’Every time the Lustful Villain’s fist connected with a sickening thud,’ Mordecai flinched, his eyes darting between the dying man and the monster who was killing him.
Rex pulled back, his knuckles coated in Zane’s thick, dark blood. He looked at his hand for a moment, then turned his gaze toward the onlookers, his expression unreadable but his presence suffocating.
"He’s still breathing," Rex noted, his voice chillingly casual, as if commenting on the weather. "Which means he hasn’t answered the question yet."
He turned back to the mangled Zane, grabbing him by the collar of his armor and lifting him nearly off his feet. "Let’s try again."
"And this time, Zane... try not to let the pain distract you from the truth."
WHAM!
Rex’s fist collided with Zane’s jaw, sending a fresh spray of teeth and blood into the air.
"I dare you to show me all your power... and with that... you deserve my mercy before you fucking die by my hands!"
