Chapter 753: 753. I Can’t Believe Apollo Is Actually Smart (If He’s Not Fighting Me)

The reality of the present was demanding a response.

The tension in the air reached a breaking point, a silent scream of mana and intent.

He moved.

The air didn’t just move; it screamed.

Zane didn’t lunge; he simply ceased to be where he was. He activated his Void working at full, terrifying depth, and the space between them groaned under the sudden, unnatural stress.

The space between Apollo and Zane twisted in a way that broke the basic rules of physics, creating a disturbing shift in reality as the tool used to change their positions ripped a hole in the surrounding area.

VWOOM!

By the time Apollo’s momentum carried him toward the space Zane had occupied a millisecond before, Zane had already reappeared at his left flank, a shadow manifesting from the void.

But Apollo wasn’t caught. He had been forged for this.

His training hadn’t been a response to Zane specifically but a desperate, calculated evolution driven by the Apostle of Life’s designation. The system had flagged spatial manipulation as a high-priority threat, a category of Reincarnator ability that could render traditional combat obsolete.

Apollo had spent countless hours in the mental simulations of his designation, deconstructing the very mathematics of displacement.

As Zane’s form began to solidify, Apollo didn’t swing at the man.

He swung at the math.

He released a powerful life affinity boundary condition, not aimed at Zane’s chest or head, but at the exact point on the displacement axis, the hidden pivot where the spatial bend was supported.

CRACK THOOM!

The collision was visceral. The boundary condition slammed into the axis of the displacement, and for a heartbeat, the universe seemed to stutter.

The chaos of the space around him pushed back, creating a sudden, sharp instability in Zane’s movement.

Zane stumbled. It wasn’t a fall, but it was a disruption, a microscopic hiccup in his godlike grace.

Half a stumble.

Zane was a master of the Void; he corrected almost instantly, his feet finding purchase in the cracked stone with predatory precision. But the correction was imperfect.

The cost of regaining his balance was the loss of his optimal trajectory, and Apollo was already there, closing the gap with the ferocity of a closing trap.

Apollo didn’t give him a second to breathe. He drove his fist forward, channeling a concentrated burst of directed force at point-blank range.

BOOM!

Zane’s instincts flared. In a fraction of a second, a mere quarter pulse of time, his Void working assembled a defensive shield of pure spatial absorption.

The impact was deafening, a heavy, wet THUD that sounded like a sledgehammer hitting a slab of meat. The shield caught the brunt of the kinetic energy, preventing the force from shattering Zane’s ribs instantly, but the sheer magnitude of the blow was too much to fully negate.

SKREEEE CRUNCH!

The edge of the force wave bled through the shield. Zane’s feet skidded backward, his boots carving deep, jagged trenches into the plaza’s stone.

He took two heavy, staggering steps back, his breath hitching as the residual kinetic energy rattled his internal organs, a dull, sickening ache blooming in his chest.

Two steps back was a death sentence in a high-level engagement.

Apollo didn’t hesitate. He surged forward, a blur of motion, his eyes locked on the opening.

"The boundary condition targeting..." Zane grunted, his voice strained as he forcibly pulled back, reasserting his range with a desperate flick of his wrist.

His Void working was already cycling, humming a low, frantic note as it prepared to reset. "You... you weren’t even aiming for my vitals..."

"You were targeting the displacement axis itself."

Apollo didn’t slow down, his presence looming over Zane like an impending storm.

"You think spatial manipulation is a magic trick?" he asked, his voice low and lethal. "It’s not. It’s a structure."

"You aren’t just moving; you’re bending a framework!" Apollo pointed at him. "You target the output, you lose. You hit the structure..."

"Who taught you that?" Zane demanded, his eyes wide with a sudden, sharp realization of the danger he was facing.

The clinical detachment was gone, replaced by the raw intensity of a combatant who had just realized his opponent could see the invisible.

"The Designation’s guidance," Apollo replied, his body coiled like a spring, ready to strike again. "It flagged spatial manipulation as a known category."

"The rest... the rest was just working out the geometry."

Zane didn’t retreat; he pivoted. He executed a lateral displacement, a shorter, sharper burst of spatial movement designed to conserve mana and shift his angle rather than his distance. It was a subtle, efficient maneuver.

But Apollo didn’t fall for the illusion. Instead of adjusting his trajectory after the shift, Apollo adjusted during the transition, his body swaying in a preemptive arc that accounted for the change before it even fully manifested.

It was the difference between a man reacting to a shadow and a man predicting where the sun would move.

Zane’s eyes widened, a flash of genuine, predatory surprise cutting through his calm.

"You aren’t reacting to the displacements," Zane said, his voice tight as he stabilized in his new position. "You are reading the rhythm of the void itself..."

"You’re pre-positioning!"

"You’re a creature of habit, Zane," Apollo countered, his breath coming in sharp, controlled bursts. "When you manage close range, you rely on a triad of angles!"

"Forty-five degrees left, forty-five degrees right, and a direct vertical retreat!"

"The left is your primary instinct, and the right is your contingency!" Apollo smirked. "You only go back when you’re truly cornered."

A heavy silence fell between them, punctuated only by the distant, dying crackle of the battlefield above.

"I have been perfecting that movement for two years," Zane said, his voice dropping to a low, dangerous hum.

"And that is your greatest weakness," Apollo snapped. "The pattern is ingrained!"

"You’ve used it so long you’ve stopped thinking about it!"

"You’ve turned your greatest strength into a predictable script."

Zane didn’t wait for another lecture. He vanished.

WHIP CRACK!

Zane attempted to lunge into the forty-five-degree left angle, but Apollo was already there. He had moved into the space before the displacement could complete, occupying the destination like a ghost.

CLANG!

Caught off guard, Zane was forced to abort his left turn and make a desperate displacement to the right. But Apollo was already rotating, his entire body becoming a centrifuge of kinetic energy.

He extended his boundary condition field to his right in a sweeping, violent arc.

SHATTER!

The spatial displacement axis on the right slammed into the edge of Apollo’s field. The collision was brutal.

The instability wasn’t a mere stumble this time; it was a violent, spatial seizure. Zane’s movement stuttered mid-transit, his form flickering like a dying candle.

He was caught in a horrific limbo, neither at his origin nor his destination; his body partially phased through the very fabric of reality.

CRUNCH THUD!

Apollo closed the gap in that half second of stutter. He drove a heavy, energy-saturated strike into Zane’s midsection.

Zane managed to force a Void absorption shield into existence just in time, but the impact was catastrophic. The shield held, preventing his organs from being pulverized, but the sheer, unadulterated force sent him skidding across the plaza.

SKREEEEEEEEE!

His boots tore through the debris, his footing treacherous on the uneven, blood-slicked ruins.

"The plaza is working against you," Apollo shouted, refusing to let the pressure subside, stepping into the wake of the impact. "You need clean geometry for your displacements!"

"The cracks in the stone are fracturing your axis calculations!"

Zane gasped, spitting a mouthful of crimson onto the gray dust. "You... you noticed the terrain?"

"I’ve been dissecting your footwork since the first exchange!" Apollo yelled, his eyes burning with a terrifying clarity. "You step around the cracks."

"You treat the broken ground like an obstacle to be avoided, and you’re trying to map your displacement onto a clean grid, but the cracks are breaking your math!"

Zane realized the truth of it. He was fighting the ground as much as the man.

With a desperate, wide-reaching burst of Void energy, he displaced a massive fifteen meters back to the plaza’s edge, where the stone remained relatively intact.

VWOOM! SHHH!

Apollo let him go. He was a pragmatist; charging across fifteen meters of jagged, broken debris to reach Zane would be a waste of momentum.

He stood in the center of the ruin, a predator waiting for the prey to regroup.

"You are far more dangerous than Celestina’s briefing suggested," Zane said, wiping blood from his lip, his breathing heavy and ragged.

"And what did the briefing say?" Apollo asked, his stance widening, ready for the next storm.

"That you were the Apostle of Life," Zane said, his eyes narrowing. "Strong in restoration, moderate in offense, and most importantly... designation loyal."

"A man of predictable principles."

"I am principled," Apollo said, a fierce grin tugging at the corner of his mouth.

"Principled people are usually easy to read," Zane countered.

"Principles are not predictions, Zane!" Apollo roared.

He moved again, but this time, he did the unthinkable. Instead of avoiding the cracks, he used them.

He channeled his boundary condition field into the fractures of the stone, letting the energy flow along the jagged lines like lightning through a circuit. "I know what I am fighting for!"

"That doesn’t mean you can anticipate how I fight!"