Chapter 749: 749. The Rooftop Liquefied. We Moved The Meeting To The Stratosphere.

"You are going to keep doing this," she said.

It wasn’t a question; it was a condemnation. "Whatever this is... The Academy... The Underlayer... The masks you wear..."

"You are going to keep playing these games, and most people are never going to know what they are actually looking at."

"You’re still accusing me for all the things you said, huh?" Rex chuckled. "Well, it’s fine... I feel honored for you to think of that because that means I’m stronger than before."

"For your question, well yeah, most people," Rex said, his voice smooth as silk, "are not looking at all!"

"But you are the one who’s probably so keen about it, thanks to your Dragon’s nature, I guess... That is the only difference that matters."

"Is that meant to be a compliment?" she asked, her voice trembling with a mix of exhaustion and rising heat.

"It is an accurate observation," Rex said. "Whether it is a compliment depends on what you think looking clearly at things is worth."

"What do you think it is worth?"

Rex paused, choosing his words like a surgeon choosing a blade. "Everything. Eventually. The problem is the timeline."

"What happens now?" she demanded, her hands clenching into fists on the rooftop tiles.

CRACK.

Rex looked down at the plaza, at the chaotic skirmishes still raging between Apollo and Zane, at the circling dragon, and at the broken city.

"Now," Rex said, "I go deal with the rest."

He turned to walk away, his back turned to her, a gesture of supreme confidence, or supreme arrogance.

"DON’T YOU DARE!"

The roar didn’t come from her throat; it came from her soul.

RRRRRRRR AAAAAAGGHH!

The air around Ignivara suddenly ignited. It wasn’t the controlled, channeled fire of her dragon form but a raw, volcanic eruption of pure, unadulterated rage.

The temperature on the rooftop skyrocketed in a heartbeat.

FSSSSSSSSSS BOOOOOOOOOM!

A shockwave of heat slammed into Rex’s back, forcing him to halt. He turned just in time to see her rising, not with the grace of a dragon, but with the violent, jagged energy of a supernova.

Her eyes weren’t just gold anymore; they were bleeding light, the pupils slitting into vertical lines of pure white heat.

"You think you can just... analyze me?" she screamed, her voice cracking with a terrifying, primal power.

SKREEEEEEE!

"You think you can categorize my life, my work, and my fury into your little notebooks?!"

The rooftop beneath her began to liquefy, the tiles turning to glowing slag.

Ssssssssss...

"You want to deal with the rest?!" she roared, her energy flaring so violently that the very air began to scream in protest.

VREEEEEEE!

"Then deal with ME first!"

She didn’t transform back into the dragon; she did something far more dangerous. She pulled the dragon’s essence into her humanoid frame.

Her skin began to crack like cooling lava, revealing a blinding, molten core beneath. Her hair whipped around her head like a crown of white fire, and the sheer pressure of her aura sent cracks spider webbing across the entire roof.

KRA KOOOOOM!

She lunged. She didn’t fly; she exploded toward him, a streak of golden light and pure, vengeful heat, her fingers elongated into shimmering claws of solidified flame.

She wasn’t fighting to win anymore; she was fighting to burn the world and him to ash.

The impact was not a mere collision; it was a kinetic catastrophe. When Ignivara struck, she didn’t just hit Rex; she detonated against him.

BOOOOOOOOM!

The rooftop didn’t just crack; it disintegrated. The shockwave sent a plume of pulverized stone and molten tile screaming into the sky.

Rex, caught mid-turn, barely had time to snap a gravity Well around his body to prevent being flattened by the sheer momentum of her lunge. He felt the heat of her molten skin searing through his clothes, the smell of singed fabric and ozone filling his lungs.

"Then let’s see how much data you can process in a single second!" Rex grunted, his teeth gritting as he braced himself.

Ignivara didn’t give him the luxury of a breath. She was a whirlwind of incandescent fury.

Her fists, wreathed in white-hot dragon fire, became a blur of violent motion.

WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP!

A barrage of strikes rained down on him, each one accompanied by the deafening CRACK of displaced air.

KRA KOOOOM!

A heavy hook caught him in the ribs, the sound of bone groaning under the pressure echoing through the air.

CRUNCH.

Rex felt a rib hairline fracture, a sharp spike of agony lancing through his side, but he didn’t retreat. He used the momentum of her strikes to propel them both upward.

"Higher!" he commanded himself, lashing out with a burst of telekinetic propulsion from his feet.

They tore through the clouds, a streak of golden light and silver shadow ascending toward the stratosphere. Ignivara was relentless.

She wasn’t just using physical force; she was venting her very soul.

FSSSSSS HAAAAAA!

She unleashed a continuous stream of concentrated dragon fire from her palms, a lancing beam of solar intensity. Rex spun in mid-air, the beam grazing his shoulder, the heat so intense it instantly cauterized the wound, leaving a blackened, smoking welt.

VREEEEEEE ZAP!

She followed the fire with a volley of magical projectiles, shards of solidified mana that looked like falling stars.

SHING! SHING! SHING!

Rex danced through the barrage, his eyes darting, his mind calculating trajectories in milliseconds. He raised a gravity shield, the shards slamming into the invisible barrier with the sound of heavy hammers hitting an anvil.

CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

"Is that all?!" Rex taunted, his voice strained but brimming with that maddening, cocky edge. "You’re fighting like a wounded animal, Ignivara!"

"Where is the precision? Where is the work?!"

That was the wrong thing to say.

"SHUT... UP!"

Her roar was a tectonic event.

RRRRRR AAAAAGGHH!

She surged forward, her body becoming a living comet. She caught Rex in a mid-air clinch, her arms wrapping around his waist like heated iron bands.

The heat was unbearable, melting the very air between them.

Ssssssssss!

KRA KOOOOOOM!

She slammed him upward, a massive, singular thrust of mana that sent them skyrocketing past the cloud layer. The sky turned from blue to a deep, bruising indigo. The air grew thin, cold, and silent, save for the violent, rhythmic HAAAAH... HAAAAH... of her desperate, burning lungs.

She began a frantic, brutal assault of close-quarters combat.

THUD! CRACK! SMASH!

Her knees slammed into his stomach, her elbows drove into his collarbone, and her palms struck his chest with the force of falling meteors. Each blow was a percussion of violence.

WHAM!

A palm strike to his jaw sent a spray of crimson blood from his lip, the red droplets freezing instantly into tiny rubies in the sub-zero air.

SPAT!

Rex was taking a beating that would have killed a lesser man. His vision was swimming, his lungs felt like they were filled with hot lead, and his left arm was a throbbing mess of bruised muscle and strained tendons.

But he was smiling. A bloody, manic, beautiful smile.

"There it is..." he gasped, coughing up a spray of red that hung in the void.

PHTOO!

"The... the raw... unrefined... power..."

He waited for the exact moment her momentum peaked, the moment her rage left a microscopic gap in her defense.

VREEEEEEEEE!

Rex didn’t push her away. He pulled her in.

He expanded a gravity singularity in the palm of his hand, right against her chest.

KRA BOOOOOOOOOOOM!

The sudden, massive increase in localized gravity acted like a vacuum, snapping her toward him and then violently repelling her as he inverted the field. The sudden shift in G-force was so violent it felt like their internal organs were being rearranged.

CRUNCH SPLATT!

The force of the sudden acceleration and deceleration sent a jolt through both of them. Ignivara’s head snapped back, her eyes wide with the sudden, disorienting shock.

Rex felt a rib finally give way, a sickening POP that he felt in his very teeth.

They tumbled through the thin atmosphere, a chaotic mess of limbs and fire, falling back toward the earth like a dying star.

FSSSSSSSSS!

As they plummeted, Ignivara recovered, her rage turning from a frantic fire into a cold, focused sun. She grabbed Rex by the throat, her fingers glowing with a lethal, white heat.

Sssssss!

"You want to see the end of the timeline, Rex?!" she screamed, her voice echoing through the heavens.

SKREEEEEEE!

"Then look at it!"

She gathered every ounce of her remaining energy, her entire body vibrating with the effort. The air around her began to warp and distort, a halo of golden destruction forming a sphere around her.

VREEEEEEEEEEEEE!

"DIE IN THE LIGHT!"

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

She unleashed a point-blank explosion of pure draconic essence directly into his face, a supernova contained within the span of a heartbeat.

The explosion was absolute. A blinding, white gold supernova erupted from the point where Ignivara’s palms met Rex’s face.

KRA BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

The shockwave was so violent it cleared the clouds for miles in every direction, leaving a hollowed-out void in the sky. Rex didn’t dodge.

He didn’t even attempt to shield himself. He took the full, unmitigated brunt of the draconic essence, the heat stripping the skin from his cheekbones and the pressure threatening to liquefy his very bones.

Sssssssssss!

As the light faded, Rex was a broken silhouette in the indigo sky. He was reeling, his body limp, trailing a long, shimmering ribbon of frozen blood and scorched essence.

His eyes were glazed, his breathing a shallow, rattling mess.

Haaa... huff... haaa...

Ignivara saw it. She saw the cracks in his composure.

She saw the man who had been an immovable mountain finally start to crumble. A primal, predatory triumph surged through her veins, overriding her exhaustion.

The rage wasn’t a wildfire anymore; it was a focused, laser-like intent to erase him from existence.

"Finally!" she shrieked, her voice a jagged tear in the atmosphere.

SKREEEEEEE!

"Finally, you’re breaking!"