Chapter 607: 607. I Didn’t Expect The Gauntlets Could Provide With A Lot Of Power Like This!
He didn’t wait for her to descend. He extended one gauntleted hand toward the ceiling.
In an instant, the stone formation rose from the floor, manifesting in the shape of a massive, tectonic hand. The Earth Sovereign’s authority sculpted the geometry with terrifying precision, following the grain and structural preference of the mineral with the ease of a master artist.
The fingers of compressed, hyperdense stone surged upward through the hole in the ceiling, punching through the subsequent levels in a rapid-fire succession of cracks, hunting Gorvasha as she began her descent.
She was coming back down, a storm of muscle and rage, a falling star of orcish fury.
The stone formation met her midair. The collision was geological in its magnitude.
The impact sent a secondary shockwave through the three levels between them, a violent shudder that carried the unmistakable signature of a system being forced to absorb two massive, opposing forces at a single point of contact.
Rex did not let the momentum stall. He pressed the formation upward with unrelenting force.
The ceiling of the underlayer realized it was no match for a geological-scale pillar moving with the velocity Rex commanded. The shaft opened upward, level after level, a vertical tunnel of destruction, until the formation reached the very upper dome of the kingdom.
Cassandra watched the display from the chamber floor, her expression one of profound, stunned realization. She was no longer witnessing a fight; she was witnessing a demonstration of absolute dominion that far exceeded any parameter she had ever assigned to him.
"The dome..." she whispered, looking up at the massive, vaulted expanse of the kingdom’s ceiling.
"Yes," Rex said, his eyes glowing with the power of the Earth Sovereign.
"You could break it," she warned, her voice laced with a sudden, sharp anxiety.
"I would prefer not to," Rex replied, his voice regaining its calm, authoritative weight. "Two hundred thousand people live under it."
"And unlike her, they don’t have the luxury of being able to catch themselves."
Rex held Gorvasha pinned against the massive, vaulted expanse of the city’s dome, exerting a pressure so precise it was almost surgical. He was communicating the sheer magnitude of his available force without actually unleashing it; he was pressing the weight of a mountain against the structural limit of a civilization.
The dome groaned, the ancient, reinforced stone vibrating with a high-pitched, tectonic scream as it underwent a compression it was never designed to endure. The structure stayed intact, but just barely, struggling under the pressure that was only a small part of what it could really do.
Rex knew that if he were to apply his maximum output, the conversation wouldn’t just end; the entire world would cease to exist in its current form.
The dome held, but just barely.
Rex turned his gaze downward, looking past the swirling dust and the jagged vertical shaft to find Cassandra standing in the chamber below. His expression was one of calm, clinical detachment, as if he were a scientist observing a controlled chemical reaction rather than a man holding a goddess-tier warrior against the roof of a metropolis.
"The calibration result is in," Rex announced, his voice cutting through the settling tremors with absolute clarity. "Complete power from the earthen authority is directed through the gauntlets and applied to the main support structure underneath."
"The dome holds ninety-three percent of my current generation capacity."
He paused, the silence in the shaft heavy with the weight of his words.
"Seven percent more," he continued, a flicker of that dark, unshakeable smugness dancing in his eyes, "and we lose the ceiling..."
"That means we’ll all lose FUCKING everything." He let the implication hang in the air, a chilling reminder of the power he held in check. "That is very useful information."
Cassandra stared up at him, her face pale, her mind racing to grasp the sheer audacity of his method. To anyone else, the situation was a moment of near catastrophe; to Rex, it was a mere measurement.
"You’re calibrating your own ability to destroy not just the kingdom, but the whole Underlayer..." she said, her voice trembling with a mixture of awe and genuine terror.
"I’m calibrating the ceiling of what I don’t want to accidentally do," Rex corrected her, his tone smooth and infuriatingly composed. "There is a fundamental difference between a destroyer and a master."
"One doesn’t know his limits; the other knows exactly where they lie."
With a controlled, deliberate motion, he began to lower the formation. The massive stone hand, with Gorvasha still trapped within its unyielding grip, descended through the vertical shaft it had violently carved through the levels above.
The descent was rhythmic and steady, a display of absolute, terrifying control over the very bones of the earth.
As the hand descended, Gorvasha’s voice drifted down through the shaft. The stone, acting as a natural resonator, carried her words with a deep, vibrating quality that made the air itself seem to hum.
"I’m going to remember this," she declared, her voice now devoid of rage, replaced with a cold, sharpened resolve. It was the vow of a warrior who had stared into the abyss and found it staring back.
"Good," Rex replied, his voice echoing up the shaft, final and absolute. "That’s exactly what demonstrations are for."
The descent was a controlled, terrifying spectacle of architectural violence. The massive stone hand, having carved a vertical wound through the very heart of the city, lowered Gorvasha back toward the chamber floor.
Rex moved the formation with a precision that defied the sheer scale of the destruction; he understood the difference between a mere release of force and the deliberate placement of a mountain. When the formation finally settled, Gorvasha was set down with a heavy, resonant thud.
She stood upright, not because she was comfortable, but because her orcish heritage demanded she remain unbowed despite the seismic chaos she had just endured.
She stood in the center of the fractured chamber, her breathing heavy, her eyes burning with a primal, intelligent fire. She looked at Rex, her gaze sweeping over his unruffled posture.
She looked at the obsidian gauntlets, still humming with the residual vibration of the world. Finally, she looked up through the jagged shaft at the dome above.
The ceiling still bore the terrifying, permanent impression of the stone hand, a fossilized memory of the pressure Rex had exerted.
"The Underlayer is made of earth," Gorvasha stated, her voice low and vibrating with the tension of a coiled spring.
"Yes," Rex replied, his tone maddeningly casual.
"You have divine authority over the earth," she pressed, her eyes locking onto his.
"Correct."
"You came into our kingdom," she said, her voice rising with the weight of her realization, "which is built inside the earth, carrying the divine authority over the very foundation it stands upon."
"Look at you, Queenie," Rex said, a small, knowing smirk playing on his lips. "Being an obvious smartass, are we now?"
She held his gaze, the air between them thick enough to choke a lesser warrior.
"That is," she whispered, "a very specific choice of location for a demonstration."
"The Underlayer is where the demonstration needed to happen," Rex countered, his voice echoing with a sudden, heavy authority. "The surface lacks the geological depth to produce this kind of output."
"To test the limits of the Sovereign, one must go to the roots."
"The surface," she countered, "would have noticed your arrival much earlier."
"True," Rex admitted, "it would have."
Cassandra stepped forward, moving to stand beside the orc queen. The two women, once adversaries in spirit, now shared a singular, chilling expression, the look of two predators who had reached the same conclusion at the exact same moment.
"You chose the Underlayer," Cassandra said, her voice sharp with the sudden clarity of her thoughts. "Not because it was convenient."
"No," Rex said.
"The perfect environment for what you are building is here," she continued, her eyes scanning the massive, subterranean infrastructure.
"An underground civilization with two hundred thousand people, direct access to the second layer of the earth, a system from a Demon Lord who offers expert support, and divine earth authority in every part of the structure." She paused, her gaze turning piercing. "You aren’t just building an ally, Rex. You’re building a base of operations."
Rex met her gaze, his eyes glowing with a cold, anticipatory light.
"When the time comes," he said, his voice dropping to a tone of absolute, undeniable truth, "make sure you’re ready."
The silence that followed was not peaceful; it was the silence of a storm gathering its strength. Outside, through the fractured windows of the chamber, the distant, chaotic sounds of the purge continued to echo, but inside, a new tension was birthing itself.
Gorvasha’s shoulders began to tremble. A low, guttural sound started in the depths of her chest, a sound that wasn’t quite a growl and wasn’t quite a scream.
It was the sound of the primal rage, the ancient orcish blood, finally finding its voice after being suppressed by the sheer weight of Rex’s divinity. Her skin began to flush a deep, violent crimson, and the air around her began to shimmer with heat.
She wasn’t just angry; she was ascending. The ground beneath her feet began to crack, not from Rex’s power, but from the sheer, unadulterated pressure of her own rising essence.
Her eyes turned a molten gold, glowing with a ferocity that promised a collision unlike anything the Underlayer had ever witnessed. The demonstration was over; the war was beginning.
