Chapter 587: 587. I’ve Become So Strong That Torture Is My Daily Thing Now!
Verakis was paralyzed, forced to watch the carnage, his eyes darting between the mangled remains of the woman and the terrifyingly calm figure of Rex. He felt a sickening sense of helplessness; he was a seasoned reincarnator, a man of status, yet he felt like a spectator at a slaughterhouse.
But the others wouldn’t let him die alone. The remaining four reincarnators realized that if they didn’t act now, they would be next to be dismantled.
They moved in unison, a desperate, synchronized lunge toward the center of the plaza. It was a coordinated strike, a final, unified effort to overwhelm the monster.
The last four people came in together, which was the right choice and also expected, and Rex had used his three seconds of foresight to plan their spacing and timing, so what seemed like four people attacking at once was actually four separate attacks happening at the same time.
The first of them, a hulking man named Kaelen, came in with stone pressure working from the ground, a dense, rising column of granite aimed at Rex’s feet. Rex stepped off it as it rose, using the column as a launching surface, and the momentum of the step-off sent him at the second opponent at a height and angle that the second’s defensive working, which was lateral air pressure displacement, was not calibrated to intercept.
"Wrong angle," Rex said to the second opponent while he was airborne.
The second did not have an opportunity to respond before the impact.
The impact briefly lifted both Rex and his opponents into the air, and Rex used that moment to simultaneously deal with the third and fourth opponents through a telekinetic two-point application that caught them mid-approach and redirected their momentum into each other with enough force to knock both of them to the ground.
The fourth opponent collided with the third at the hip, while the third collided with the fourth at the shoulder, causing both of them to move sideways in a manner typical of individuals whose forward momentum had been redirected to a lateral direction without their input.
"You should have come from different angles," Rex said, getting up from the impact with the second one, his voice as smooth and unbothered as if he were taking a casual stroll. "Coordinated doesn’t mean parallel."
"If your approach vectors converge at the same point, you give your opponent one decision instead of four."
Kaelen, the stone pressure user, who was still on his feet, looked at him with the expression of someone who had just received combat advice in the middle of being beaten and did not know how to categorize the experience. His jaw was set, but his eyes were wide with a growing, existential dread.
"You’re critiquing our tactics," Kaelen said, his voice thick with disbelief.
"You have potential," Rex said, his eyes flashing with a cold, predatory light. "It would be wasteful not to."
The fifth, a lithe woman named Lyra, had a wind-type ability that she was using to stay mobile; however, this strategy was tactically sound but operationally pointless because Rex’s foresight was three seconds ahead, and wind-type mobility in an enclosed plaza had a finite range of available vectors.
Rex waited for the vector to converge with his position rather than chasing it. Lyra was moving in the pattern that wind-type users moved when they were trying to build an angle, the specific evasive arc of someone who was planning an approach rather than executing one, and Rex tracked the arc through foresight and stood in the place the arc was building toward.
"You’re moving toward me," Rex said to the wind-type user. "Not away."
Lyra froze mid-step, her eyes widening as she realized he had predicted her entire trajectory.
"You’ve been building toward the angle for eleven seconds," Rex said, his voice dropping into that terrifying, calm register. "You think it’s evasion, but the truth is... it’s approach."
"The geometry works against you when the target isn’t moving."
Verakis watched from the periphery, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. He watched as his comrades, men and women he had fought alongside in the most brutal depths of the Underlayer, were tossed around like ragdolls.
He watched their coordinated strikes, their optimized abilities, and their desperate, calculated movements. And through it all, Rex remained untouched. He didn’t stumble; he didn’t even seem to sweat.
He moved through their combined might as if he were walking through a gentle rain, leaving nothing behind but broken bodies and the echoing sound of his own mocking, brilliant critiques.
A low, vibrating sound began to emanate from Rex’s chest. It wasn’t a chuckle; it was a dark, melodic rumble that grew into a full, booming laugh that echoed off the stone pillars of the plaza.
It was the laugh of a man who had found a particularly amusing way to spend his afternoon.
"Geometry, physics, momentum..." Rex wiped a stray droplet of the woman’s blood from his cheek, his eyes glowing with a sudden, terrifying intensity. "It’s all so predictable."
"You’re all playing a game of chess, but you haven’t realized that you’re not the players..."
"You’re just the pieces."
The laughter died instantly, replaced by a silence so heavy it felt physical. Rex’s aura shifted.
The casual air of a critic vanished, replaced by the suffocating pressure of a predator who had finally decided to stop playing with his food.
He...
’locked in.’
Rex’s system starts to identify their names. "I see..."
"Lyra... Kaelen... You two," Rex said, his voice dropping to a predatory whisper that seemed to vibrate in their very marrow. "You have the most interesting kinetic potential."
"Let’s see how much of it we can extract before you break."
Before they could even react, Rex exploded upward. He didn’t just jump; he launched himself into the sky, defying gravity with a violent burst of sheer force.
He caught Lyra by the throat mid-flight, her wind-type ability fluttering uselessly like a dying bird, and grabbed Kaelen by the waist with his other hand.
The ascent was a blur of violence. High above the plaza, suspended in the air by Rex’s overwhelming strength, the torture began.
"GGGAAAAAHGGGGHHHH!" Kaelen’s roar was muffled by the sheer speed of their ascent.
Rex slammed him against the invisible ceiling of the air, using his own body as a whetstone.
CRUNCH.
The sound of Kaelen’s ribs snapping echoed down to the plaza.
"Keep breathing, Kaelen! If you stop, the fun ends too early!" Rex taunted, his voice booming from above.
He turned his attention to Lyra, his grip on her throat tightening just enough to make her eyes bulge. He began to spin her, using her own wind currents to whip her body around like a flail, slamming her into Kaelen’s stone-hard frame.
"Hnggh... haaa..." Lyra could only produce wet, desperate grunts, her lungs screaming for air as Rex used her as a living projectile.
He would catch her, slam her into Kaelen, and then drive Kaelen into the air with a brutal upward strike. They were caught in a horrific mid-air dance of meat and bone.
"Look at you! A cyclone of agony!" Rex laughed, his face splattered with their combined blood.
He gripped them both by the hair and the neck, pulling them close. "Does it feel like you’re flying?!"
"Or does it just feel like you’re being dismantled?!"
Below, the survivors were paralyzed. Gale, still clutching his ruined midsection, could only stare up with hollow eyes. Verakis felt a cold sweat slicking his skin, his breath coming in shallow, terrified gasps.
Taiga, a man known for his stoic composure, was trembling so violently that his teeth rattled. They weren’t watching a fight; they were watching a divine execution.
"Watch closely!" Rex bellowed, his voice a thunderclap. "This is the final lesson!"
Rex began his descent. He didn’t fall; he plummeted like a meteor, holding Lyra and Kaelen by their heads, their bodies dangling like broken marionettes.
As they neared the plaza floor, he pulled them inward, forcing their skulls together.
SMASH!
The impact was cataclysmic. Rex slammed their heads into each other with such concentrated, explosive force that the collision acted like a detonator.
There was a wet, sickening THUD CRACK as their skulls met and shattered simultaneously. A geyser of brain matter, bone shards, and dark blood erupted upward, raining down on the onlookers like a gruesome storm.
Rex landed heavily in the center of the carnage, standing amidst the steaming, unrecognizable remains of the two combatants. He didn’t look a single bit winded.
He stood tall, the blood dripping from his chin, and slowly turned his head toward the remaining survivors. "Hahhhh..."
His gaze drifted, cold and calculating, until it locked onto Gale and Taiga. A slow, sadistic grin spread across his face.
He raised a single, bloodstained finger, pointing directly at them.
"Gale. Taiga," Rex said, his voice calm and terrifyingly conversational. "Don’t look so worried..."
"You two are next."
"And I promise... I’ll make your lessons even more... interactive."
