Chapter 582: 582. After Giving Him Some Good Beating! He Deserve Mercy!
Rex’s fist collided with Zane’s jaw, a sickening CRACK SPLUTTER that sent a spray of teeth and gore into the air. Zane’s head whipped to the side, his body limp, looking for all the world like a man whose spirit had finally been crushed under the weight of a god.
But then, the air began to scream.
VREEEEEEEEE!
A sudden, violent eruption of violet black energy exploded from Zane’s broken form. It wasn’t a defensive shell this time; it was a raw, uncontained outburst of pure, jagged rage.
"HRAAAGGGHHHHHHH!!"
The void energy didn’t just surround him; it lashed out like whip cracks of spatial distortion, tearing at the very stone of the platform.
"HAAAH... HAAH..." Zane’s voice came out as a wet, bloody growl.
He forced himself upright, his eyes bloodshot and wild, glowing with a frantic, desperate light. He wasn’t just fighting for survival anymore; he was fighting with the fury of a man who had been pushed into the abyss and decided to claw his way back out.
Rex narrowed his eyes. His foresight flared, the world slowing down as the golden threads of causality wove themselves into a tapestry of the next few seconds.
He saw the trajectory of the void lash, the shift in Zane’s weight, and the exact moment the man would attempt to bridge the gap.
Zane lunged. He wasn’t using finesse; he was using the void to propel his broken body forward like a launched projectile.
He swung a heavy, void-infused fist aimed directly at Rex’s temple.
WHOOSH!
Rex didn’t even move his feet. He simply tilted his head a fraction of an inch.
The fist whistled past his ear, the vacuum of the strike pulling at his hair.
"Pah!" Zane spat a glob of bloody phlegm, a jagged, mocking grin splitting his battered face. "Is that it?"
"Is that the thing you could do...?!"
"Dodging and punching with some kind of raw power...?!"
As Rex moved to counter, Zane’s movement became a blur of chaotic, void-assisted motion. He wasn’t aiming to land a killing blow; he was aiming to touch.
He used the Foresight’s very existence against Rex, sensing the microscopic shifts in Rex’s muscles that signaled a dodge, and he adjusted his strikes to graze the air where Rex wasn’t going to be.
WHIP!
Rex subtly sidestepped a kick aimed at his ribs, but Zane had already anticipated the pivot. As Rex shifted, Zane’s boot connected with a glancing, stinging blow to Rex’s thigh.
THUD!
It wasn’t a heavy hit, but it was a taunt.
"You’re a monster, Rex! A freak of nature!" Zane roared, his voice cracking with manic laughter.
He unleashed a flurry of strikes, each one a desperate attempt to catch the untouchable. "But you’re just one man! One single, arrogant, singular reincarnator!"
He swung a wide, sweeping arc with his reaping blade, the void energy trailing behind it like a tattered shroud. Rex ducked, the blade whistling mere centimeters above his head.
In that moment of Rex’s descent, Zane lunged forward with a punch, his knuckles grazing Rex’s chest.
TAP!
"The Legion... the great Legion of the Solmordia kingdom..." Zane laughed, a sound of pure, unadulterated derision, even as blood leaked from his shattered nose. "We’ve spent decades building walls, cultivating strength, preparing for ’threats’... and all of it... all of it is a joke!"
He stepped back, his legs trembling, his chest heaving with the effort of keeping the void energy from tearing his own lungs apart. "We can’t even take down one of you!"
"One single reincarnator who thinks he’s a god!"
"You’re not a savior, Rex!"
’You’re a parasite! You’re a walking, breathing reminder of how pathetic we all are!"
Rex stood there, unruffled, his expression as calm as a still pond despite the chaos. He hadn’t taken a single real hit, his foresight having turned Zane’s rage into a series of beautiful, futile gestures.
"Is that all the ’rage’ the Legion has to offer?" Rex asked, his voice chillingly smooth, devoid of any irritation. "Words and grazes?"
"Don’t you dare look down on us!" Zane screamed, the void energy around him pulsing with a violent, rhythmic intensity that made the very air vibrate.
KRA KOOM!
A small fissure opened in the platform beneath him. "We are the foundation!"
’And if the foundation needs to break you to survive... then we will burn everything to do it!"
He gathered every remaining ounce of his essence, the void energy turning from violet to a deep, terrifying obsidian. He was preparing a final, suicidal burst of power, his eyes locked onto Rex with a hatred so pure it felt physical.
Zane’s roar was the final signal. The obsidian void energy around him reached a screaming crescendo, the air itself groaning under the pressure of a man trying to force a supernova out of a dying star.
"YOU’RE DEAAAADDDD!!!"
He lunged, his movements a chaotic, jagged blur of spatial distortions, aiming a desperate, all-or-nothing strike at Rex’s heart. But to Rex, it was like watching a man move through thick honey.
Through the lens of Foresight, the world turned into a series of glowing, predictable vectors. Rex saw the twitch in Zane’s shoulder before the arm even moved; he saw the microscopic shift in the platform that signaled the next void burst.
Zane was a storm, but Rex was the eye of it, perfectly still and perfectly aware.
WHOOSH!
Zane’s obsidian fist passed through the space Rex had occupied a millisecond prior.
"Too slow," Rex whispered. "I’m tired of showing you something, but well... let’s say you’ve passed the score that I wanted!"
It was Rex’s turn. He didn’t just want to win; he wanted to dismantle Zane to demonstrate who he was messing with.
CRACK BOOM!
Rex stepped into Zane’s guard with the speed of a lightning strike. His fist, backed by the terrifying density of his Peak Physique, buried itself into Zane’s left ribcage.
The sound was sickening: a wet, splintering explosion of bone.
KRA SPLAT!
A jagged shard of a rib pierced through the muscle, and a geyser of dark, arterial blood sprayed from Zane’s mouth, painting Rex’s face in a warm, crimson mask.
"GAAAAAAH!!! HUURRGGHHH!" Zane’s scream was cut short as Rex followed up instantly.
THUD CRUNCH!
A brutal knee to the solar plexus forced the remaining air out of Zane’s lungs in a violent, bloody mist. Rex didn’t let him fall.
He grabbed Zane by the throat, lifting the man’s heavy, trembling frame, and unleashed a barrage of strikes that felt less like a fight and more like a butcher working a carcass.
BAM!
A hammer fist to the jaw, shattering the bone into a mess of white fragments and red pulp.
CRUNCH!
An elbow to the sternum, collapsing the chest cavity inward.
WHACK!
A heavy, downward strike to the collarbone, snapping it like a dry twig.
The platform became a slaughterhouse. Every time Zane tried to manifest a void shield, Rex’s sheer physical force smashed through it, the kinetic energy transferring directly into Zane’s breaking bones.
Blood wasn’t just leaking anymore; it was splashing, pooling in the cracks of the stone, and dripping from Zane’s chin in thick, rhythmic globs.
"H... h... ngg..." Zane’s taunts were gone. His voice was a dying rattle, a wet, bubbling sound coming from a throat filled with blood.
"Please..." His eyes, once fierce with rage, were now glazed, rolling back in his head as his nervous system struggled to process the sheer volume of agony. "S... stop... mercy..."
Rex finally stopped. He let go of Zane’s throat, and the Legionnaire collapsed.
Zane didn’t fall flat; he fell to his hands and knees, his body a ruined, shuddering wreck. His breathing was a horrific, wet wheeze, each gasp a struggle against the blood filling his lungs.
His left side was visibly caved in, his ribs a jagged mess beneath his torn skin, and his face was a swollen, unrecognizable mask of gore. He could do nothing but tremble, his hands clawing weakly at the blood-slicked stone, trying to keep his shattered frame from sliding into unconsciousness.
Rex stood over him, looking down with a terrifyingly calm expression. He reached up, using the back of his hand to wipe a thick smear of Zane’s blood from his cheek, then licked a stray drop from his thumb.
He looked almost bored, as if he had just finished a light workout rather than a systematic demolition of a high-level combatant. "I was expecting something more from you."
"You talked a lot about the Legion being the foundation," Rex said, his voice low and dripping with cold derision.
He stepped closer, the shadow of his massive, muscular frame swallowing the broken man.
"But look at you." Rex nudged Zane’s trembling shoulder with the toe of his boot, a gesture of pure disrespect. "You’re just like the rest of them."
"All that ’strength,’ all that ’infrastructure’... and in the end, you’re just another weak, fragile thing that breaks when the real world touches you."
Rex leaned down, his eyes boring into Zane’s fading vision. "You aren’t a foundation, Zane."
"You’re just more debris for me to clear away."
Zane could only let out a pathetic, choked sob of blood, his forehead nearly touching the ground, completely broken and defeated.
"And for now... I’m going to give you some mercy because you could give me some good shit that I want."
