Chapter 597: 597. That Was Actually Fun To See A Man Slowly Burning Into Ashes! (No Chance!)
The battle transitioned from a duel into a frantic, rhythmic slaughter of physics.
Raizen was no longer a man controlling fire; he was a vessel being hollowed out by it. As he surged forward, his movements became jagged, the sheer intensity of his mana output beginning to cook him from the inside out.
Every time he channelled a burst of his modified frequency, the heat didn’t just radiate outward; it lashed back. His skin began to crack, not from external impact, but from the internal pressure of the combustion. Tiny, glowing fissures appeared along his forearms, weeping golden, liquid mana like blood.
He threw a heavy, sweeping kick, his leg trailing a wake of white-hot plasma that turned the air into a vacuum. Rex met the strike with a telekinetic lunge, the two forces colliding with a sound like a mountain splitting in two.
CRACK.
The shockwave sent a spray of pulverized stone outward, but the recoil was what killed Raizen. The kinetic feedback from hitting Rex’s reinforced field slammed back into Raizen’s own leg, the force traveling up his femur and rattling his teeth.
He gasped, a spray of crimson mist escaping his lips, but he pressed on. He had no choice. Slowing down meant death.
He spun, a desperate, spinning pirouette of flame, launching a series of rapid fire, staccato lances at Rex’s chest.
Thrum thrum thrum thrum!
Rex danced through the barrage, his movements a terrifyingly efficient choreography of violence. He leaned back, the first lance whistling past his nose with enough heat to singe his eyelashes; he pivoted on one heel, letting the second strike graze his ribs to feel the exquisite, stinging vibration; he swiped a hand through the air, catching the third and fourth in a telekinetic swirl that redirected them into the ceiling.
"Beautiful!" Rex shouted, his voice a jagged edge of excitement. He lunged into the gap, his fist wreathed in a dense, gravitational field.
Raizen sensed the attack approaching. He chose not to dodge. Instead, he launched a desperate, upward palm strike, colliding with Rex’s fist head-on.
The collision was a sensory nightmare. The air howled with intensity, and the light blazed so fiercely that it felt as if it had mass, pressing against the eyes like a tangible weight.
For a heartbeat, they were frozen in a deadlock of pure, unadulterated force. Raizen’s eyes were blown wide, the capillaries bursting from the pressure, turning the whites of his eyes a terrifying, bloody red.
He could feel his own ribs groaning, the bone structure vibrating at a frequency that threatened to turn them to powder.
Snap.
A piece of Raizen’s shoulder armor shattered, and a trickle of blood ran down his bicep, sizzling as it hit his overheated skin. His muscles were twitching uncontrollably, the nervous system misfiring under the tidal wave of energy.
He was a machine redlining, the gears grinding themselves into dust just to keep the engine turning.
Rex, however, was in his element. He felt the tremor in Raizen’s grip, the way the man’s strength was beginning to fray at the edges, and it only made him more voracious.
He leaned in closer, their faces inches apart amidst the roaring heat, and instead of pulling away from the searing pain, Rex pressed harder. He wanted to feel the exact moment the man’s spirit began to crack.
"Don’t you dare fade on me yet!" Rex growled, his eyes gleaming with a sadistic, manic hunger.
He released his grip and transitioned into a brutal, sweeping elbow strike, forcing Raizen to roll backward.
As Raizen hit the ground, he didn’t just roll; he exploded upward in a desperate, lunging thrust, his hand glowing with a concentrated, singular point of white light. It was a strike that used every remaining drop of his life force, a concentrated needle of pure existence aimed at Rex’s throat.
But the cost was visible. As the strike left his hand, Raizen’s left arm slumped, the skin there blackened and charred, the muscle underneath visibly trembling from the sheer, unmitigated trauma of the discharge.
He was burning his own life as fuel, a candle melting itself to produce one final, blinding flash.
Rex saw the opening, saw the man’s crumbling state, and his grin became something truly monstrous, a predator seeing the prey finally, beautifully, begin to break.
The battle had descended into a beautiful, gruesome ritual of attrition. Raizen was no longer fighting a man; he was fighting the inevitable.
Every breath he drew felt like swallowing molten glass. The internal thermal damage was compounding, his own regeneration magic struggling in a losing battle to knit together tissue that was being vaporized faster than it could regenerate.
His vision was blurring, the edges of the world fraying into a haze of white light and dark shadows, but his spirit remained a jagged, unyielding blade.
He lunged again, a desperate, staggering forward motion. His movements were no longer fluid; they were the heavy, rhythmic lurches of a dying star.
He threw a punch, but it was slow, the mana trailing behind it like a tattered shroud.
Rex met him with a series of surgical, punishing counters. He didn’t aim to kill, not yet. He aimed to sculpt.
A heavy knee to Raizen’s midsection to buckle his stance; a telekinetic burst to his temple to disorient his senses; a sharp, stinging lash of fire to his wounded shoulder. Each blow was a masterpiece of controlled violence, designed to keep Raizen in that exquisite, agonizing threshold between life and death.
"Is that all?" Rex taunted, his voice a low, vibrating hum of delight. He caught Raizen’s wrist, feeling the frantic, dying pulse beneath the charred skin. "You’re flickering, Raizen."
"The light is getting dim."
Raizen’s head snapped up. His face was a ruin of blood, soot, and sweat, but his eyes—those eyes—were still burning with a terrifying, holy fire.
He gathered the very last of his essence, pulling the heat from his marrow, the strength from his very soul, into a final, singular roar.
"FOR THE LEGION!"
The scream wasn’t just a sound; it was a physical release of everything he was. He unleashed a final, catastrophic burst of primordial fire, a supernova that turned the tunnel into a sun.
He threw himself at Rex, a human comet of pure, suicidal intent, aiming to take the monster into the grave with him.
Rex didn’t move away. He stepped into the heat.
He took the brunt of the explosion, his skin blistering, his muscles screaming, but he laughed through the roar of the flames. He struck back, a massive, downward hammer fist that met Raizen’s rising head, the collision sounding like a thunderclap in a cathedral.
The force of the impact, combined with the total depletion of Raizen’s energy, was the final breaking point.
Raizen’s body couldn’t hold the shape anymore. The internal combustion, once his weapon, became his executioner.
As he fell back, his form began to lose its solidity. The edges of his silhouette flickered and dissolved into glowing, golden embers.
He wasn’t just burning; he was disintegrating. The skin on his arms turned to grey ash and drifted away on the thermal currents of his own dying heat.
His very bones seemed to glow white hot before crumbling into fine, shimmering dust.
He was dying. He was turning into a ghost of ash and light, a warrior fading into the legend he had fought so hard to uphold.
Rex stood over the dissipating embers, his chest heaving, his skin glowing with the residual heat of the encounter. He watched with a terrifying, hungry patience as the last of Raizen’s physical form began to scatter into the dark.
He knew Raizen wasn’t gone yet.
Rex had already mapped out the possibilities. He had already calculated the exact amount of energy required to stabilize the core of Raizen’s consciousness, to keep the soul tethered to a fragment of charred flesh, and to keep him in that agonizing, half-dead state for weeks, months, or years.
He had a thousand scenarios for the torture to come, ways to break the man’s mind while his body was kept in a perpetual state of reconstruction and ruin.
But for now?
For now, Rex simply stood in the silence of the settling ash, a dark, satisfied god, savoring the lingering warmth of the fight on his skin. He had enjoyed the dance, and he was already looking forward to the encore.
