Chapter 733: 733. She Used My Own Cage As A Coordinate To Strike My Golems

Valentina hit a ruined pillar, her body snapping back as the stone disintegrated under the force. She coughed, a spray of blood painting her lips, her eyes unfocused for a fleeting second.

"You’re getting sloppy, Headmaster!" Rex teased, his voice echoing with a cruel, playful edge.

He appeared in front of her, his hand glowing with a dark, oppressive energy. "Too much time in the classroom, not enough in the trenches!"

He launched a wave of [Void Tsunami], a crushing mass of dark water and compressed gravity.

WHOOOOOSH!

Valentina’s eyes snapped open, glowing with a fierce, desperate intensity. As the wave crashed over her, she didn’t try to block it. Instead, she merged with it.

"ELEMENTAL PHASE: AQUATIC SPIRIT!"

SPLASHHHH!

The wave passed through her as if she were a ghost. Rex’s eyes widened.

He lunged forward to grab her, but his hands passed through a shimmering, liquid silhouette.

SISSLE!

"You think I’m just a teacher, Tremor?" Valentina’s voice came from everywhere and nowhere, resonating from the very droplets of water hanging in the air. "I am the one who defined the curriculum."

Suddenly, the water around her solidified into a thousand razor-sharp blades of ice.

SHIIIIIIIIIING!

She propelled them all forward in a single, blinding flash. Rex crossed his arms, his [Infinite Regeneration] already working overtime as the blades shredded his skin.

SHLICK! SLASH! SNICK!

He grinned through the pain, his wounds closing as fast as they appeared. "I love this! I actually love this!"

Valentina materialized behind him, her hands glowing with a pale, ghostly light. She struck him with a [Soul Searing Palm], a strike that didn’t damage the flesh but attacked the spirit directly.

ZAAAAP!

Rex gasped, his lungs seizing as the spiritual shockwave surged through his system.

But as he fell to one knee, his body roared back to life. The [Supreme Healing] didn’t just fix his body; it purified his mana, purging the spiritual poison.

He surged back up, his fist wreathed in a chaotic mix of lightning and molten lava.

KABOOOOM!

The two mages collided again, their magic clashing in a series of rapid fire, deafening explosions.

BOOM! CRASH! VREEE! THUD!

Rex swung a massive hammer of earth, which Valentina countered by turning herself into a burst of white-hot plasma, melting his attack and reforming behind him to deliver a crushing kick to his spine.

CRACK!

Rex snarled, his vertebrae snapping and immediately knitting back together with a sickening

POP!

He spun, throwing a gust of razor wind that sliced through her robes, but she countered by summoning a pillar of obsidian that rose from the ground to protect her.

KRAAANG!

The wind shattered against the stone.

Rex laughed, the sound manic and wild. "Look at us!"

"Two immortals tearing up the world! Do you get it now, Valentina?!" Rex raised his arms. "This is what I wanted! A fight that never ends!"

Valentina stood her ground, her own regeneration working in tandem with his. A deep gash on her cheek sealed itself; the broken ribs from his earlier knee strike snapped back into place.

She looked at him, seeing the same fire in his eyes that burned in her own.

"You’re a monster, Tremor," she said, her voice steady despite her heaving chest. "But you’re a monster I can actually fight."

"I’m not a monster," Rex countered, his hands glowing with a dozen different elemental colors, weaving them together into a single, unstable orb of pure energy. "I’m the next evolution."

"And you’re the only one who can keep up!"

"ELEMENTAL SUPERNOVA!"

He hurled the orb. Valentina didn’t flinch.

She raised her hand, her mana condensing into a single point of absolute density. "SINGULARITY IMPLOSION!"

The two attacks met in the center of the crater. For a heartbeat, there was total silence.

Then...

KRAAAA BOOOOOMMMMM!!!

The resulting explosion was so powerful it sent both of them flying in opposite directions, crashing through the ruins of the courtyard. They slid across the ground, leaving deep furrows in the stone.

Rex stood up first, his clothes burned away, his skin charred and raw but already turning a healthy tan again. He looked at Valentina, who was rising slowly, her hair wild, her eyes burning with a mix of fury and respect.

"We could do this for a century," Rex said, his voice low and dangerous. "And neither of us would ever win. Isn’t that beautiful?"

Valentina smiled a cold, sharp expression that promised even more violence. "Then let’s make it a century, Tremor."

...

The eighteen-minute mark hit like a physical blow to the world itself.

For eighteen minutes, the wasteland had been a slaughterhouse of gods. The air was thick with the metallic tang of blood and the ozone sting of shattered energy.

It wasn’t a duel anymore; it was a war of attrition that defied the laws of biology.

Rex had been torn apart more times than a man should be able to survive. He had felt his arm snap like a dry twig under a heavy gravitational pull only to watch the bone shards pierce through his skin in a spray of crimson before the [Infinite Regeneration] forced them back into the marrow with a wet, sickening SLURP!

He had felt his skin peeled back by her spatial shears, the raw muscle exposed to the freezing wind, only to have the [Supreme Healing] knit the flesh back together in a frantic golden pulse.

CRACK! THUD!

But Valentina... she was a force of nature. She wasn’t just fighting him; she was deconstructing him.

Rex stood amidst the wreckage, his chest heaving, blood dripping from his chin and mixing with the golden glow of his regenerating skin. He wiped a smear of red from his temple, his eyes locking onto her.

He was panting, his muscles twitching from the sheer volume of kinetic energy he had absorbed, but the cocky, predatory grin hadn’t left his face.

"You’re a goddamn genius, you know that?" Rex rasped, his voice gravelly from the dust and the screaming.

He gestured to the cratered landscape around them. "Most people try to hit me hard. You... you try to hit me smart."

He had realized it mid-combat. He had felt the ground beneath his feet lose its very essence.

She hadn’t just attacked him; she had manipulated the geological substrate, using a precise, high-level working to disrupt the mineral coherence of the earth itself. For three agonizing seconds, the very foundation he stood on had turned to a fluid, unstable slurry, leaving him anchored to nothing while she unleashed a torrential barrage of elemental strikes.

KRA BOOOOM!

The memory of the impact still vibrated in his bones.

"And that trick with the meteors..." Rex continued, his eyes narrowing as he recalled the sensation of his own golems being torn apart. "Using Lily and Diana’s stone cage as a spatial triangulation point... referencing my own construction coordinates to strike my machines at three sites simultaneously..."

"That was cold, Valentina. Truly cold."

Valentina was on her knees. She wasn’t collapsed, but she was teetering on the edge of total exhaustion.

Her breathing was a series of ragged, shallow gasps, and her elegant robes were shredded, soaked in a mixture of her own blood and the soot of the battlefield. Her hands were trembling, but she kept them pressed to the earth, maintaining the telepathic network, keeping the spatial separation active to protect Apollo’s recovery plaza.

"They’re children, Rex!" she spat, a spray of blood flying from her lips as she glared up at him. Her eyes were fierce, burning with a righteous, exhausted fury. "You put two girls in a stone cage suspended over the city like trophies, and then you had the audacity to use that very cage as a landmark for your war machines."

"You turned their fear into a coordinate! I would have been a fool, a blind, sentimental fool, not to use your own cruelty against you."

Rex let out a low, dark chuckle, a sound that was half admiration and half challenge. He stepped forward, the ground groaning under his weight.

"I never said you were a fool," Rex said, his voice dropping to a dangerous, intimate register. "In fact, seeing you fight like this... it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen."

"You don’t just command the elements; you command the logic of the world itself."

He paused, his gaze intensifying. The tension between them was a physical weight, a cord stretched so tight it was humming.

The eighteen minutes of brutal, bone-breaking, blood-soaked combat had stripped away the titles of ’Headmaster’ and ’Rebel.’ They were just two titans, standing in the ruins of a world they were both capable of breaking.

"But eighteen minutes is a long time to keep up a lie, Valentina," Rex whispered, his aura beginning to flare again, a violent, swirling vortex of all elements clashing at once.

VREEEEEEEEE!

"You’re tired." Rex grinned. "Your bones are aching and your mana is screaming."

"And yet... you’re still standing."

He crouched low, his muscles coiling like a predator ready to spring. The smugness was gone, replaced by a terrifying, focused intensity.

"Let’s see if we can make it twenty," he challenged, his eyes gleaming with a manic, beautiful hunger. "Let’s see how much more of this world we can break before one of us finally stays down!"

Valentina gritted her teeth, a guttural sound escaping her throat as she forced herself to stand. Her legs shook, her vision blurred, but she raised her hands, the air around her beginning to hum with the desperate, final strength of a master.

SHHHHHHHH...

The sound of gathering energy filled the silence, a precursor to the next explosion of divine violence.