Chapter 1155. His Godhood Had Been Caught Like a Child’s Tantrum

Chapter 1155: 1155. His Godhood Had Been Caught Like a Child’s Tantrum

The roar that tore from Apollo’s throat wasn’t just a sound; it was a release of every ounce of grief, betrayal, and exhaustion he had accumulated since the first drop of blood hit the floor.

He didn’t just throw a punch. He threw his entire existence.

Every remaining reserve of his divine activation, every spark of the Life affinity that refused to die, was violently compressed. He channeled it through his shoulder, down his arm, and into the knuckles of his right fist.

The energy became so dense it defied physics; the air in front of his fist didn’t just move, it ignited. A corona of searing golden flame erupted before his knuckles had even traveled two feet, a localized supernova that screamed with the sound of tearing reality.

FWOOOOOM!

The sheer displaced air pressure hit the Aethelgard formation like a physical shockwave. Soldiers sixty meters back stumbled, their armor rattling as the invisible wall of force rolled over them.

This wasn’t a strike; it was a cataclysm. A strike that could have leveled a fortified citadel.

A strike that could have cracked the foundation of the world.

Apollo’s vision was nothing but white light and the burning agony of his own muscles tearing under the strain of containing that much power. He expected to see Xerollion vaporized.

He expected to see the corridor collapse into rubble. He expected to see the monster shattered.

Instead, reality simply... stopped.

CLACK.

The sound was small.

Pathetic.

Almost mundane. But in that moment, it sounded louder than the explosion.

Xerollion had caught it. With one hand.

There was no flashy magical barrier to absorb the impact. No telekinetic field to deflect the force.

No elemental counter surge to dissipate the golden fire. Xerollion simply reached into the heart of the supernova, raised his right hand, and closed his fingers around Apollo’s fist.

He stopped the strongest attack an Apostle of Life had ever produced with nothing but the raw, terrifying physical output of a body that had been elevated past every theoretical human ceiling months ago.

The golden flames licked against Xerollion’s palm, searing his glove, but he didn’t flinch. He didn’t even blink.

He just held it. He held the apocalypse in his grip.

Then came the silence.

It wasn’t just a quiet moment; it was a vacuum. Every voice in the northern corridor died instantly.

Ten thousand soldiers, spectators, and nobles stopped breathing in unison, as if the very concept of sound had been forbidden by divine decree.

The only thing that existed was the low, hungry hum of the golden activation still burning across the walls, casting grotesquely long shadows.

In the center of that golden hellscape, two figures stood locked together. Apollo’s fist was buried in Xerollion’s open palm, the divine energy grinding against his skin like molten glass, yet there was no forward momentum.

There was no recoil. There was absolutely nothing happening.

Apollo’s breathing had stopped. His eyes, wide and bloodshot, stared fixedly at the point of contact.

Rex watched him from across the space, and in that moment, Rex knew he would remember this expression for as long as he drew breath.

It wasn’t fear. Fear was a reaction to a threat.

What Apollo was experiencing was something far more devastating. It was the psychological vertigo that comes when a load-bearing assumption of reality gives way to the sickening, hollow sensation of discovering that the ground you have trusted beneath your feet for years was never actually there.

His entire understanding of power, of divinity, of the hierarchy of the world, had just been dismantled by a single gesture.

His godhood had been caught like a child’s tantrum.

Xerollion didn’t move.

He didn’t taunt, and he didn’t smile. He simply held the position, a monument of unshakable, terrifying certainty, waiting for the broken man to realize that his world was gone.

Xerollion held the grip. He didn’t just maintain contact; he maintained dominance.

He held Apollo’s fist for three agonizing seconds longer than any tactician would deem necessary. Those three seconds were not wasted; they were a performance.

Every second that passed without Apollo breaking Xerollion’s stance was a second that carved a new scar into the collective psyche of Aethelgard. Ten thousand witnesses—generals, nobles, and hardened soldiers—were watching, and they were all learning a lesson in humiliation.

They saw the golden fury of an Apostle fail to budge a single finger. They saw the impossible happen, and in that silence, the corridor’s understanding of power restructured itself in real time, bending to accommodate a new, terrifying truth.

’I am not the one who needs to fear the end,’ Apollo thought, his mind fracturing. ’I am the one who has already reached it.’

Then, Xerollion pushed.

It wasn’t a shove; it was a statement of absolute physical superiority.

SHRAK THUD!

Apollo was hurled backward. His boots screamed against the stone as he skidded six full steps, his entire body recoiling from the release of force. His arm felt as though it had been wrenched from its socket, the tendons straining at the limit of their elasticity.

And at the exact moment his heel caught the stone and his momentum died, the universe seemed to break.

The golden light around Apollo didn’t just fade. It died.

VROOOOM SHHHH.

The enormous radius of reversed entropy, the divine field that had been holding the very stones of the corridor together, collapsed inward with a sound like a dying star. The magical stitches holding the reality of the room together snapped.

Cracks that had been fused shut by Apollo’s Life affinity suddenly tore open across the walls with wet, grinding sounds. Dust that had been suspended in the golden glow resumed its slow, mournful fall from the ceiling.

And Apollo Brightsoul fell.

He didn’t fall gracefully. He crashed to one knee with a bone-jarring impact that echoed fifty meters away.

CRUNCH.

The price of divinity came due all at once. The accumulated exhaustion of four minutes of sustained, apocalyptic output slammed into a body that had already endured twenty minutes of systematic, brutal destruction.

His nervous system screamed in protest, each nerve ending firing off warnings of total shutdown. He collapsed forward, bracing both hands against the cold stone floor just to keep from faceplanting into his own blood.

Sweat and crimson droplets fell steadily from his chin, pitter pattering against the floor like rain. His chest heaved in ragged, desperate gulps, each breath feeling like he was inhaling broken glass.

’I am empty,’ Apollo thought, his vision tunneling into blackness. ’There is nothing left... Not even the spark.’

Xerollion stepped forward. His boots made soft, measured clicks on the stone as he approached the kneeling god.

He stood over Apollo, framed by the wreckage of the corridor, looking as though he had simply finished a light morning stroll. His armor was pristine.

His breathing was steady, calm, measured, and utterly devoid of the exertion that should have accompanied such a feat.

The contrast was more violent than any punch thrown during the fight.

"There it is," Xerollion said. His voice carried effortlessly through the stunned silence, dripping with a satisfaction that was absolutely, cruelly unconcealed. "Four minutes."

He looked down at the broken Apostle, his eyes cold and analytical beneath the mask. "I wanted to see it. I wanted to witness the exact moment the light gutters out."

"And now... now I have."