Chapter 743: 743. It Is Much Easier to Be Honest When the Engagement Is Already Over

"He was a good teacher, in a strictly academic sense," Rex said, his voice dripping with a patronizing lilt that felt like salt in an open wound. "The foundational analysis of the island’s geological platform was technically correct."

"The divine construction methodology identification? Accurate. The vulnerability point he identified was real."

As Ignivara lunged, her wings beating a frantic, heavy rhythm, Rex didn’t just defend; he countered with a brutal, sudden expansion of his stone shield. He thrust the massive slab of granite forward with a telekinetic burst so violent it felt like a physical punch.

The impact caught her mid-flight, the heavy stone slamming into her solar plexus. The sound was a sickening thud, the sound of air being forced from lungs and the groan of ribs straining against the pressure.

She was sent hurtling backward, three meters of dead air separating them as she struggled to stabilize her flight.

"The problem wasn’t his intellect," Rex added, watching her struggle with a predatory smirk. "The problem was his timing and his pathetic resource commitment."

"He had the right map, but he was too much of a fool to know when to walk the path."

Ignivara didn’t scream this time. She came back at him with terrifying, focused velocity, her eyes no longer burning with rage but with a cold, lethal intent.

She moved like a thunderbolt, her body cutting through the air with the precision of a veteran.

"You are trying to compliment the dead man just to provoke me," she hissed, her voice low and vibrating with a dangerous frequency.

"I am describing the data, Ignivara."

"Don’t be so sensitive," Rex said, his eyes tracking her every micro-movement. "Your analysis is literally etched into the rock."

"The survey methodology you used left distinct markers in the specific geological layers you assessed!"

"I didn’t just see them; I read them when I mapped the island’s marrow."

As she unleashed a concentrated burst of superheated air, Rex acted with surgical precision. He applied a unique, dissonant frequency of elemental magic, clashing against her thermal column.

The air shrieked as the two forces collided, creating an interference pattern that violently sucked the heat from her attack. The compressed air, which should have been a searing lance, simply dissipated into a harmless, lukewarm mist.

"You spent three months on that survey," Rex noted, his tone almost conversational, as if they were discussing a lecture rather than a life-or-death duel. "It was thorough..."

"For a man like Kregg, it was a masterpiece of wasted effort."

Ignivara froze in midair, her wings flared wide. A shadow crossed her face—not anger, but a dawning, horrific realization.

"You read the survey markers," she whispered. "You read them and you knew the Legion had already mapped the island’s vulnerability before you even set foot here."

"Before I completed my own mapping," Rex corrected, his expression bored. "Yes."

"And you did nothing?" she demanded, her voice rising. "You sat there, watching us, knowing the trap was already set?"

"I did quite a lot with it," Rex said, a cruel glint in his eyes. "None of it involved calling the Legion to warn them."

"That would have been... inefficient."

She hovered eight meters away, suspended above the jagged rooftops of Aethelgard, the wind whipping her hair into a frenzy. For a long, suffocating second, she said nothing.

The tension between them was a physical weight, a cord stretched to the point of snapping.

"You let us come," she said finally.

It wasn’t a question. It was a condemnation.

Rex tilted his head, a mocking, innocent gesture. "I had no mechanism to stop you."

"I am, after all, just an honorable student in this academy."

"SHUT IT!" she roared, the sound echoing off the stone buildings below.

The flatness in her voice had changed; it was no longer the controlled calm of a warrior but the hollow, jagged edge of someone who had finally run out of patience for a lie. "Stop this pathetic performance!"

"The ’student’ framing, the ’innocent passerby’ act... you have been playing this role since the plaza!"

"You are not a student, and you are not lost!"

"We both know it, and this little charade is more insulting than if you simply stood there in silence!"

Rex stared at her, his gaze unblinking, his face a mask of cool indifference. "What would you prefer I said?"

"Something true!" she screamed, the sheer force of her voice rippling the air.

Rex let out a short, sharp breath, his eyes locking onto her golden ones with a terrifying, predatory clarity. "Fine. You want the truth?"

"I let you come because the operational outcome I required needed a catalyst."

"I couldn’t generate the necessary chaos myself without exposing a level of power that would have ended my game too early."

"The Legion’s arrival served that function."

"You, the dragon, served that function. The entire bloody chaos of this morning? It was all part of the design."

He leaned forward slightly, his voice dropping to a chilling, intimate register. "That is the truth. And it is the truth that is going to make you hate me more than the man who killed Kregg ever could."

Ignivara looked at him with the vacant, stunned attention of a person who had just realized they were standing inside a cage they had helped build. The realization was a physical blow, more crushing than any wing strike.

"We were tools," she said, her voice barely a whisper, stripped of all its former grandeur.

"Every single element of this morning was a tool," Rex countered, his voice devoid of any remorse. "The Legion was a tool."

"The Underlayer’s operatives were tools."

"Even the Academy’s response was just another gear turning in the machine."

"The only people in this engagement who weren’t tools were the ones who chose to be here for their own reasons, and even then, their reasons were just more variables for me to account for."

A grim, bitter smile touched Ignivara’s lips. "That is the most honest thing you have said all day."

"Of course," Rex said, his eyes darkening as he prepared to end the charade. "It is much easier to be honest when the engagement is already over."

The admission was the final snap of the tether. Ignivara didn’t scream this time; she detonated.

A roar, primal and tectonic, erupted from her throat as her golden aura flared into a blinding, incandescent corona. She didn’t just fly; she became a meteor.

She slammed into Rex with such ferocity that the air itself seemed to shatter, creating a sonic boom that sent tiles raining from the rooftops of Aethelgard below.

Rex’s eyes widened for a fraction of a second, not in fear, but in the thrill of the hunt. He threw up a massive, reinforced slab of granite, but Ignivara wasn’t aiming for the shield.

She was aiming for him.

As she collided with the stone, she used the impact to pivot in mid-air, her wing snapping like a whip. The edge of her wing, reinforced by a layer of superheated plasma, sliced through the granite slab as if it were wet parchment.

The stone didn’t just break; it exploded into jagged, razor-sharp shrapnel. One massive shard, the size of a man’s torso, whistled past Rex’s ear, while a smaller, needle-like fragment caught him across the cheek, carving a deep, red furrow that immediately began to weep blood.

"Is that all?" Rex taunted, his voice a jagged edge of mockery even as he spun to avoid a follow-up strike. "All that heritage, all that grief, and you’re still just swinging wildly like a child in a tantrum!"

Ignivara was a whirlwind of gold and heat. She unleashed a barrage of thermal lances, concentrated beams of white-hot energy that tore through the air with a high-pitched scream. Rex was forced into a frantic, high-stakes dance.

He wasn’t just dodging anymore; he was weaving through a literal gauntlet of destruction. He ducked a beam that turned the air behind him into a vacuum, then lunged to the left as a wing swipe caught the space where his chest had been a millisecond before.

The heat was becoming oppressive, the sheer friction of her movement turning the atmosphere into a furnace. Rex felt the sweat stinging his eyes, the scent of ozone and singed hair filling his lungs.

"You talk of tools!" she shrieked, her voice sounding less human and more like the grinding of tectonic plates.

She dove, her body a golden streak. "But a tool can be broken! A tool can be shattered!"

She caught him. It wasn’t a clean hit, but it was enough. Her forearm, glowing with thermal intensity, slammed into his ribs.

There was a sickening, wet crunch, the unmistakable sound of bone splintering under immense pressure. Rex gasped, the air driven from his lungs in a spray of crimson saliva, but he didn’t fall.

He used the momentum of the blow to roll backward in the air, his body twisting with a desperate, instinctive grace.

As he rolled, he lashed out with a telekinetic spike of stone, aiming for her midsection. The jagged rock caught her in the thigh, tearing through her flight leathers and slicing deep into the muscle.

A spray of bright, hot blood misted into the air, caught in the updraft of her own heat.

Ignivara didn’t even flinch at the wound. The pain seemed to fuel her, turning her golden eyes into pits of molten sun.

She surged forward again, her movements becoming a blur of violent, uncoordinated power. She was sacrificing defense for pure, unadulterated lethality.

"Look at you!" Rex laughed, though it was a strained, breathless sound now.