Chapter 1154. A Predator Who Had Been Hunting Him With Foreknowledge

Chapter 1154: 1154. A Predator Who Had Been Hunting Him With Foreknowledge

Somewhere in the meat of that ninety-second hellscape, Apollo abandoned technique entirely. The disciplined structure, the flawless forms taught by the High Masters of Aethelgard, the measured breathing, and the calculated parries—it all burned away in the furnace of his desperation.

He stopped being a trained Apostle and became something primal, something ancient and starving.

He stopped fighting like a soldier and started fighting like an animal trapped in a cage with a god.

CRUNCH.

His elbow smashed into Xerollion’s jaw with enough force to shatter granite, but the masked man merely tilted his head, absorbing the impact with a sickening wet sound. Apollo didn’t stop.

He threw knees into ribs, headbutts that sent sprays of blood flying from his own nose, and desperate, ragged strikes that lacked any semblance of elegance.

For one heartbeat, Apollo managed to close the distance, wrapping his arms around Xerollion’s torso in a desperate grappling attempt. His fingers dug into the gaps of the armor, his muscles screaming as he tried to leverage the monster to the ground.

For one and a half seconds, it worked. The momentum shifted.

Then reality reasserted itself with brutal cruelty.

SHRAK.

Xerollion didn’t fight the grapple; he exploited it. With a terrifyingly precise twist of his hips and a sudden reversal of leverage that felt less like strength and more like physics bending to his will, Xerollion wrenched Apollo’s center of gravity away.

Apollo was hurled backward as if thrown by an invisible giant. His spine slammed into the stone floor with a bone-deep THUD that echoed through the corridor.

Apollo scrambled up immediately, his vision swimming in red haze. His lungs burned like they were filled with molten lead.

He lunged forward again, throwing a desperate overhand right that missed by a hair’s breadth, the sheer force of his swing cracking the stone floor where Xerollion had stood.

FWOOSH.

Xerollion met the onslaught with a quality of movement that defied human comprehension. To the soldiers watching, paralyzed by terror, he seemed to exist in the spaces between seconds.

There was never any hurry in him.

No wasted motion. No panic.

He moved through Apollo’s hurricane of violence like a ghost walking through rain.

A strike that would have severed a man’s head whistled past his throat, the wind of it ruffling his hair, but Xerollion was already rotating into the counter move before the first blow had even finished its arc.

THWIP TAP.

A two-knuckle strike landed with surgical precision against the inside of Apollo’s elbow. Apollo’s arm went instantly numb, the nerves misfiring in a cascade of useless electricity.

Before he could compensate, Xerollion’s palm connected with his hip, a short, sharp impact that killed Apollo’s balance mid-commitment. Then came the most insulting blow: an open-handed slap across Apollo’s temple, delivered with the casual nonchalance of someone brushing away a fly.

Apollo’s world tilted. His equilibrium shattered.

For three agonizing seconds, his brain couldn’t decide which way was up, giving Xerollion the opening to drive three consecutive strikes into Apollo’s left ribcage.

CRACK. CRACK. CRACK.

The sound of ribs snapping was like dry kindling breaking underfoot. Apollo gasped, a spray of crimson mist escaping his lips as his chest cavity buckled.

But the Life affinity roared to life. Gold light flooded the damaged tissue, the broken bone fragments grinding against each other before being forcibly fused back together. In under two seconds, the pain was replaced by a searing, artificial vitality.

Apollo kept coming.

"Why..." Apollo gasped, the words tearing through a throat raw from screaming.

Blood flecked his teeth as he steadied himself between exchanges. "Why are you drawing this out?"

His anger had mutated; beneath the rage was something raw, something terrifying and profoundly lonely. "You could have killed me ten minutes ago."

"I know you could have... Why let this continue?"

Xerollion caught Apollo’s rising knee on his forearm, the impact sending a shockwave up his arm that he welcomed. He allowed the force to push him back half a step—a deliberate gift, a tactical concession that both men recognized instantly.

"Probably closer to twenty minutes," Xerollion said, his voice unnervingly calm beneath the mask. "But then I’d never have seen what you actually are."

He stepped forward, the golden light of Apollo’s aura reflecting off the dark surface of his mask. "Nobody has ever pushed you far enough to find your floor, Apollo."

"Your enemies have all been beneath you, cowering in the shadow of your divinity."

"Your allies have all been careful with you, treating you like something precious that might break."

Xerollion’s head tilted slightly, almost inquisitively. "I’m the first person in your life who has ever been genuinely curious about where the bottom is."

"I want to see what’s left of you when the god dies and only the man remains."

"That’s what this is to you," Apollo spat, blood dripping from his chin. "Curiosity... A game."

"That’s what everything is to me."

Apollo launched into a desperate, spinning backfist, a technique so violent it carried enough centrifugal force to decapitate a lesser man. The air whistled as his fist cut through the space where Xerollion’s temple should have been.

WHOOSH CLANG!

Xerollion didn’t just dodge; he flowed. He ducked beneath the arc of the strike with the eerie grace of something that wasn’t entirely human, his expression remaining as impassive as stone.

In the same fluid motion, he surged upward, driving his shoulder directly into Apollo’s sternum.

CRUNCH.

The impact sounded like a sledgehammer hitting a sack of wet gravel. Apollo’s ribs groaned under the pressure, and the force was enough to lift his entire muscular frame off the ground.

He was launched backward, his boots skidding helplessly against the stone as he slid eight meters across the corridor floor, leaving bloody streaks where his armor scraped against the masonry.

A collective sound rose from the Aethelgard soldiers, a strangled, horrified noise like a wounded animal sensing its pack leader had been broken.

Apollo’s vision swam in crimson. His lungs felt flattened, his diaphragm spasming as he fought to pull air into a chest that felt like it had been collapsed by a siege engine.

Gritting his teeth until they threatened to shatter, he pushed himself up onto one unsteady knee. His muscles screamed in protest, each fiber twitching with exhaustion.

Finally, he forced himself to his feet, but the golden radiance that had once been an all-consuming sun had noticeably dimmed. It was guttering now, flickering like a candle caught in a hurricane.

’Two minutes and fifty seconds.’

The number burned in his mind like acid. He could feel the ceiling coming—not the physical stone above him, but the invisible, absolute limit of his power approaching from within.

It was a specific, cold dread, the feeling of a man watching his own executioner approach from the inside of his own ribs.

"You’re running out of time," Xerollion observed.

His voice was horrifyingly level. He sounded like someone commenting on the weather, despite the fact that Apollo had just driven a fist into his sternum with enough force to crack the reinforced plate armor beneath his robes.

Beneath the metal, Apollo could see the faint glow of divine energy as Xerollion’s internal organs knit themselves back together in the microscopic space between one word and the next.

"Four minutes," Xerollion continued, stepping forward with measured, predatory strides. "That’s your ceiling, isn’t it?"

"I’ve been curious for quite some time about what actually happens to you when the clock runs out."

"What happens when the light fails?"

Apollo’s pupils dilated. His heart hammered against his damaged ribs like a trapped bird.

It was a small moment, a fractional lapse in his combat focus, but in a duel fought at this lethal velocity, it was an eternity. And Xerollion saw it.

He saw the way Apollo’s entire posture shifted from defiance to genuine, bone-deep terror.

The four-minute limitation was not public knowledge. It wasn’t written in any Academy text, nor was it whispered in the halls of Aethelgard.

Apollo had discussed it precisely four times in his entire adult life: once in confidence with Kaelira, once with his mother, once during a classified strategic briefing with Valentina, and once most devastatingly during an exhaustive, hour-long tactical session with Rex Rexilion in a private training yard six months ago.

They had been planning for exactly this scenario.

The suspicion didn’t just enter Apollo’s mind; it crystallized. He watched the horrific realization surface with the clarity of a blade cutting through fog.

The implications were catastrophic. If Xerollion knew about the four-minute limit, he wasn’t just an opponent; he was a predator who had been hunting Apollo with foreknowledge.

He had been waiting for this exact moment of vulnerability.

For a heartbeat, Apollo stood frozen, his mind caught between the terror of the betrayal and the immediate need to survive.

Then, the sheer weight of the injustice broke him. Rage, hot and corrosive, rolled over the realization like a tidal wave, burying the question beneath a mountain of fury.

He didn’t have the cognitive capacity to process a betrayal of this magnitude while simultaneously trying to prevent his own death.

"SHUT UP! "Apollo roared, the sound less human than divine. "SHUT YOUR GODDAMN MOUTH AND FIGHT ME!"