Chapter 741: 741. She Told Me to Tear It Out of Me. That Is the Most Honest Thing She Said.

Ignivara didn’t struggle against the telekinetic grip with the finesse of a mage; she fought it with the raw, terrifying power of a predator. With a violent, spasmodic jerk of her entire torso, she used the massive muscular leverage of her wings to snap the invisible tether.

It was a brutal, unrefined method of resistance, pulling against the force rather than trying to flow with it, but in her half-dragon physiology, it was entirely effective. The telekinetic pressure buckled, and she surged forward, her eyes burning with a renewed, predatory light.

"You were watching individual energy signatures in the Underlayer for four months?" she demanded, her voice cutting through the whistling gale.

"I was watching everything in the Underlayer for fourteen months," Rex countered, his voice steady despite the sheer kinetic violence of their exchange. "You were a known variable, Ignivara."

"I didn’t know your name, but I knew there was a Legion operative who had slipped out before the purge, someone far more careful about their exit than Zane was about his."

He didn’t give her time to process the jab. Reaching out with the Earthen Authority, he bypassed the air and tapped into the very marrow of the island below.

Through sheer force of will, he wrenched a jagged, massive slab of granite upward, tearing it from the island’s crust and hurling it through the sky at her. It was a feat of immense concentration, pushing his geological control to the absolute limit of its atmospheric range.

The stone construct slammed into the trailing edge of her left wing with a sickening, heavy thud. The impact was enough to crack the stone, and the force sent a shudder through her frame that looked painfully close to a bone-deep bruise.

Ignivara let out a sharp, guttural hiss, banking hard to the right to compensate for the sudden, jarring loss of lift.

"You mapped the entire population of the Underlayer," she stated.

It wasn’t a question; it was the cold, harsh realization of a strategist realizing she was fighting someone who had already memorized the entire chessboard.

"I mapped everything within my reach," Rex corrected, his eyes never leaving her. "That is what you do when you are trapped in a place for long enough."

"You don’t just survive it; you learn its shape..."

"You learn its rhythms. And... you learn its secrets."

"Fourteen months," she mused, her voice dropping into a dangerous, low hum as she began to circle him again, her wings beating a heavy, rhythmic pulse against the air. "Living in the Underlayer..."

"As several things," Rex replied, his tone almost conversational, even as he prepared for her next lunge. "Simultaneously. It is far more efficient to wear many masks than to struggle to maintain one."

"And yeah... I’ll fucking reward you after this fight, okay?" Rex grinned. "So just shut the fuck up and give me something that’s worth my time in this body right now!"

She didn’t wait for another word. She folded her wings and plummeted from the zenith of her arc, a vertical dive that utilized the terrifying mass of her half-dragon form.

She wasn’t just flying; she was falling like a meteor, the air screaming in protest around her. The sheer kinetic energy behind her was staggering, a weight designed to crush anything in its path.

Rex slid to the left, the wind whipping his hair into a frenzy. Just as she reached the intercept point, he slammed a massive, reinforced stone shield into the air between them.

He didn’t try to stop her; that would have resulted in his own bones shattering under her momentum. Instead, he used the precise geometry of her descent, angling the shield so that her own ferocious speed became her downfall.

She struck the stone, and instead of a collision, there was a violent redirection. She skidded off the surface of the shield, the friction sending a spray of sparks and dust into the air, and she was sent hurtling past him, forced to claw at the air to keep from spiraling into a death tumble.

She pulled out of the uncontrolled dive, her breathing heavy, her golden eyes narrowing as she regained distance.

"Celestina’s intelligence on you," she said, her voice regaining its lethal, calm edge, "labeled you an anomaly."

"A reincarnator who operated entirely outside standard behavioral patterns... Her analysts... they were driven to madness trying to build a consistent profile of you."

"That must have been incredibly frustrating for them," Rex said, a hint of genuine, almost pleasant amusement coloring his voice.

"They couldn’t decide," she pressed, her wings flared wide to catch the wind. "They said you were either impossibly lucky or impossibly controlled."

"They couldn’t determine which was the truth."

Rex drifted in the air, his gaze piercing through her, his expression one of absolute, terrifying clarity.

"The answer is both," Rex said. "The luck is controlled. And the control?"

"From far enough away, it looks exactly like luck. When playing for keeps, this combination proves to be extremely beneficial."

Ignivara didn’t wait for the wind to settle. She lunged again, a ferocious, layered assault.

She unleashed a screaming column of superheated air, but this time it wasn’t a solo strike; it was the precursor to a devastating wing strike follow-through. The combination was a tactical trap, a forced dilemma designed to paralyze a combatant: you either braced for the thermal blast and left your flank open to her wings, or you dodged the heat and took the full, bone-shattering weight of her physical strike.

Rex saw the trap, and he chose to walk straight into it.

He addressed the ranged attack first, but instead of reflecting the fire, he summoned a dense, reinforced stone shield to absorb the brunt of the heat. As the thermal energy washed over the granite, he didn’t retreat.

He stepped into the path of the oncoming wing strike. It was a move of insane, calculated risk, the very thing the combination was designed to prevent.

By closing the distance so abruptly, he disrupted the arc of her wing. Instead of a clean, crushing blow, the massive limb caught him at a jagged, glancing angle.

The impact was sickening. A dull, heavy crunch echoed through the air as the force of her wing slammed into his left shoulder.

Rex felt the immediate, white-hot flare of pain as muscle fibers strained and the clavicle groaned under the pressure, but he didn’t brace against the hit. He used the violent momentum to rotate his entire body, spinning with the blow to bleed off the kinetic energy.

"Kregg told Celestina about you," she spat, her voice cutting through the roar of the wind as she banked away, her golden eyes burning with a sudden, fierce intensity. "His final communication..."

"The one adjacent to the Starlight family. The one who eliminated him in the canyon."

"Kregg was good," Rex said, his voice remarkably calm despite the throbbing ache in his shoulder.

He adjusted his stance, his eyes tracking her every flutter. "He was the best Legion operative I encountered in that canyon..."

"...If that matters to you."

"It does not," she snapped.

There was a tremor in her voice, a microscopic fracture in her composure that told Rex everything. It wasn’t just a report; it was a eulogy.

The way she said it revealed a depth of connection that went far beyond a simple commander and soldier.

Rex felt the realization settle in his gut like lead. The pieces of the puzzle were finally clicking into place.

"He trained you," Rex said, his voice dropping to a low, knowing tone.

She didn’t answer, but the way she tightened her grip on the air, her wings flaring in a sharp, agitated snap, was enough of an answer.

She came at him again, a whirlwind of gold and fury. Rex intercepted the strike with a stone shield assembled around his left forearm, but the impact was unlike anything he had felt before.

The force vibrated through his very marrow, a terrifying display of raw, physical output. Her energy signature had lied; she was significantly more powerful than her aura suggested.

In the air, her half-dragon physiology was a weapon of mass destruction, her wings adding a terrifying structural mass that translated into overwhelming upper-body force.

"Eight years," Rex said, his voice steady even as he felt the shield begin to spiderweb under her strength. "Approximately... Based on the way your technique is layered."

"Your foundational movement set is old; it’s part of your muscle memory, something you don’t even think about anymore."

"The aerial adaptations are newer, maybe three or four years."

"He started you on the ground, building the core, and only moved you to the sky once your physiology was stable enough to handle the full expression of the dragon."

CRACK.

She slammed into the shield with a ferocity that surpassed the previous exchange, the stone shattering into jagged shards that flew past Rex’s head like shrapnel. A spray of dust and grit coated his skin, and a thin line of blood trickled from a small cut on his cheek.

"Stop analyzing me!" she roared, her composure finally fracturing.

Something much more primal was replacing the calm, calculated warrior.

"I am not analyzing you," Rex countered, his eyes locking onto hers with terrifying intensity. "I am reading you."

"There is a massive difference. Analyzing implies I am still working something out."

"I worked you out approximately two minutes into this engagement."

"Then tell me what you worked out!" she screamed, her voice cracking with an edge of desperation and rage that she could no longer hide. "Tell me what you think you know, so I can tear it out of you!"