Chapter 600: 600. Playing God...? Oh... I Loved That! But I’m More Supreme Than A God!
Rex thought about it, and then there was no point in hiding it, so he gave her the three names in the specific order he had listed them in the intelligence review, including the function each of them served in her household and the category of information each had been providing. He delivered them with a clinical, almost sadistic precision, enjoying the way each name landed like a hammer blow.
Gorvasha held the names and said nothing for a long moment.
"How long have you known," she asked, her voice barely a whisper of rage.
"Since I’ve been keeping my eyes on the canyon operation," Rex said, leaning back and crossing his arms, looking entirely too pleased with himself. "The intelligence was in Kregg’s documents."
"It was all right there, and thanks to the man named Rex Rexilion... he fucking killed Kregg and discovered the founder of the Legion." Rex laughed. "Smart man, indeed."
"You’ve known since watching those humans in the canyon..." she said, her eyes locking onto his with lethal intent. "And you didn’t tell us?!"
"You let them stay, and you let them breathe around here!"
"Look, I’ve discovered this weeks ago, and I needed the marking to be the moment of revelation," Rex said, his voice dropping into a low, triumphant purr. "If you had known in advance, you would have moved on them yourself, and the movement would have told their relay network that the underlayer had the intelligence."
"The relay went dark tonight because no one had time to send a fucking warning before the marking made their status visible to everyone simultaneously."
"I didn’t just catch them, Queenie. I paralyzed them."
Gorvasha was quiet.
"That’s a correct tactical decision," Gorvasha said, her voice vibrating with a suppressed, tectonic rage. "But don’t you fucking dare think for a second that it makes it right! I don’t like it."
"I didn’t fucking ask you to like it, Queenie," Rex shot back, his tone dripping with a smug, unearned superiority.
He didn’t even look at her, instead focusing on the sheer, delicious chaos he had orchestrated. "I asked for results, and you’re all getting them, thanks to me!"
"If you wanted a goddamn hug, you should’ve called a priest, not a soldier."
"No," she said, her eyes narrowing as she reassessed the scope of the monster standing in front of her. "You didn’t..."
"You just wanted to play God."
"Playing God...?" Rex laughed. "Oh... I loved that, but I’m more supreme than a god!"
Mordecai, still standing by the window, looked like he wanted to vanish into the floorboards. The man was trembling not with anger but with a profound, soul-deep fear. He looked at Rex as if he were a predator that had just finished eating its fill and was now eyeing the observer.
"Cassandra agrees with me," Gorvasha said, her voice turning into a formal declaration of war.
As if summoned by the very mention of her name, Cassandra entered through the side entrance. She didn’t walk; she marched, her presence cutting through the heavy, blood-scented air of the chamber.
She looked at Rex with an expression of pure, unadulterated disdain, the kind of look one reserves for a beautiful, poisonous thing that has finally bitten too hard. Her sword was on her back, not because she was peaceful, but because she knew a blade was a poor defense against the sheer, arrogant malice radiating from him.
"The restructuring has become a fucking purge, Lustful Villain," she said, her voice hard as iron. "You know that, so stop trying to dress it up in fancy words."
"It’s not a purge; it’s a fucking correction," Rex snapped, turning to face her with a cocky, lopsided grin. "The purge is just the part where we clear out the garbage so the restructuring actually has room to breathe."
"You can’t build a palace on a pile of shit, Cassandra."
"People who were not even fucking Legion contacts are dead!" she yelled, stepping into his space. "And I mean those innocent civilians! People who were just living their lives!"
"People who were useless!" Rex roared back, his eyes flashing. "People who weren’t positioned to contribute to what this kingdom needs to survive are no longer a goddamn problem!"
"I made the judgments! Some of them you’ll fucking disagree with, and that’s fine." Rex pointed at her. "Cry about it."
"All of them! I’ll disagree with every single one of your goddamn judgments!" she spat. "You don’t have the right to play judge, jury, and executioner!"
"Someone has to, you stubborn bitch!" Rex stepped even closer, his aura heavy and suffocating. "Mordecai’s ’gentle’ governance philosophy produced fourteen months of Legion infiltration in a kingdom he was supposed to be ruling!"
"He was too busy being ’fair’ to notice the wolves were already in the fucking sheepfold!"
Mordecai flinched at the mention of his name, his face pale and haunted.
"I’m not defending Lord Mordecai’s incompetence," Cassandra said, her voice dropping to a deadly, quiet hiss. "I’m saying the solution you’ve chosen has no goddamn floor!"
"There’s no limit to the blood you’ll spill just to prove you’re right."
"It has no floor because the problem had no fucking floor!" Rex countered, his voice rising in a manic, triumphant crescendo. "You can’t do selective reconstruction of a city that has been systematically compromised!"
"You want to pick and choose? Fine. But you can’t pick a single clean brick when the whole fucking foundation is rotten!"
"So you just burn the whole building down?" she asked, her eyes searching his.
"I’m clearing the site!" Rex grinned, and it was the most terrifying thing in the room. "Comprehensive reconstruction looks like this from the inside."
"It’s messy, it’s bloody, and it’s fucking necessary."
Cassandra stared at him, her breath hitching. The silence that followed was deafening.
"I’ve been watching and hearing you since the speech," she said, her voice trembling with a mix of awe and horror. "Not the marked contacts, but you!"
"The way you moved through the kingdom, the engagements you chose to handle personally versus the ones you left to the militia... the ones you just walked past like they were fucking ants." She held his gaze with a brutal, direct intensity. "You weren’t just clearing threats, Lustful Villain..."
"You were enjoying every goddamn second of it."
"Yes," Rex said, his voice a low, unapologetic purr.
The single-word answer hit her like a physical blow. She stood there for a second, stunned by his sheer, unashamed villainy.
"Most people lie about that," she whispered, her voice thick with disappointment. "They pretend it’s a burden..."
"They pretend they hate the blood."
"Most people are fucking liars," Rex replied with a shrug.
"And you’re not most people," she said, the realization finally settling in. "I’ve been telling myself for weeks that the difference between what you are and what you’re willing to do is navigable."
"The kingdom could benefit from your capabilities without the rest of it suffering due to your ego."
"And now?" Rex prompted, his eyes mocking her.
"And now I’ve watched you mark twenty-eight people and let this kingdom hunt them like animals for over an hour," she said, her voice rising in fury. "Eleven of them were genuine threats."
"Seventeen of them were just... people! People who had the wrong fucking system profile for what you want to build here!" She stepped right up to his chest, her eyes burning. "The seventeen weren’t threats; I said it again, Lustful Villain."
"They were inconveniences..."
"You removed them the same way you removed the killers because you had the power, and you decided the kingdom would be ’better’ without them."
"You’re not leading; you’re pruning!"
"Yes," Rex said, his grin widening into something truly predatory. "And the garden is looking a lot fucking cleaner already."
"That is not governance, you arrogant prick!" she screamed. "A person who governs makes decisions within constraints."
"You just removed the fucking constraints and called the carnage ’governance’!"
"The constraints," Rex said, leaning in until their noses almost touched, his voice a dark, seductive growl, "were the constraints of a kingdom that was already dead."
"I just removed the rot. The only constraints that remain are the ones that actually fucking work."
"You’re very good at framing it," Cassandra said, her voice shaking as she looked into the abyss of his eyes. "I’ve been watching you do it for months."
"Every decision has a clean, structural justification."
"Every outcome fits perfectly inside your little logic games."
"The justifications are always accurate..." She paused, a single tear of pure frustration tracing a path down her cheek. "But they are never fucking complete."
