Chapter 1160. Congratulations to Me, I Now Own a Doorway to Nowhere

Chapter 1160: 1160. Congratulations to Me, I Now Own a Doorway to Nowhere

The energy didn’t merely leave him; it hemorrhaged.

Fifteen thousand points a fortune built on the bones of fallen armies, the ashes of a conquered god, and the excruciating strain of nineteen maximum bonds surged out of Rex in a violent, invisible torrent.

It felt like his very marrow was being vacuumed out through his pores. For a heartbeat, there was a terrifying emptiness, a void where his power used to be, leaving him feeling exposed and fragile.

Then, something else flowed back in.

It wasn’t the familiar weight of a new skill settling into his muscle memory or the sharp clarity of a passive ability slotting into his consciousness. This was something fundamentally alien.

It didn’t settle into him; it unfolded around him. It was an expansion of his very existence, a sense of available volume where there had previously been only air and stone.

It was a giddy, vertigo-inducing awareness, the terrifying realization that he was no longer just a man standing in a corridor, but a man carrying a door. And behind that door lay a canvas of infinite potential, a private reality that would bend to his every whim, his every cruelty, his every law.

[Domain Creation (Initial Tier) integrated.]

[Warning: Anchoring principle not yet defined.]

[Reality stability compromised.]

[Structural integrity limited until anchor is established.]

Rex read the system warning with cold indifference. The warning flickered red in his peripheral vision, casting a bloody glow across the cracked surface of his mask.

’Stability?’ he thought, a dark, predatory amusement bubbling up through the pain in his ribs. ’I don’t need stability.’

’I need an arena.’

He dismissed the notification with a mental flick. The concept of ’stability’ was for those who feared the consequences of their own power.

Rex was done fearing consequences. He was ready to author them.

"Now this," Xerollion murmured, his voice a gravelly whisper that barely stirred the dust settling around him. "This is interesting."

The words were private, swallowed by the debris, but they carried the weight of a promise. The game had changed.

The rules were about to be rewritten.

Across the twisted wreckage of the corridor, Apollo Brightsoul remained unchanged. He stood amidst the rubble like a statue of wrath, bathed in a double sheath of gold and white light that burned so brightly it cast long, dancing shadows against the cracked walls.

His fists were still raised, knuckles glowing with divine heat, his chest heaving in a slow, controlled rhythm. His eyes, those burning crucibles of celestial intent, never left Rex.

Apollo wasn’t waiting for Rex to heal. He wasn’t waiting for the dust to clear.

He was waiting for the next opportunity to destroy, his entire being coiled in a state of absolute, unyielding readiness. He was a predator who had tasted blood and found he liked the hunt too much to let the prey escape.

The air between them hummed with lethal tension, charged with the static of Apollo’s divine aura and the gathering storm of Rex’s newly awakened domain. The corridor was no longer just a passage; it had become a threshold.

Rex planted his feet in the blood-soaked stone, feeling the raw, unanchored power of his domain pulsing like a second heartbeat. He looked at Apollo through the fractured lens of his mask and felt the hunger return.

"Come then, Apostle," Rex whispered, the words carrying a lethal edge. "Let’s see what happens when the world stops telling us what’s possible."

Xerollion raised both arms wide, his fingers splayed like claws as if he were physically tearing the fabric of reality apart.

The energy that erupted from him was not light; it was something far more sinister. A torrent of violet-black radiance bled from his pores, but it didn’t shine; it pulsed.

Each wave of color hit the air with a slow, heavy thrum, sounding less like magic and more like a massive, wet heartbeat echoing from somewhere deep beneath the stone floor.

Thump thump. Thump thump.

The sound resonated in the teeth and bones of every soldier present.

The atmosphere itself began to fail. Dust motes and shattered masonry rose from the ground, suspended in midair by some impossible new law of physics.

Then, the vibration sharpened into something agonizing.

Crrr ack.

Spiderweb fractures appeared in the empty space between Rex and Apollo. These weren’t cracks in the walls or the floor; they were cracks in the air itself.

Thin, jagged lines of nothingness spreading across the void, exactly like the dimensional hemorrhages Rex had witnessed while dismantling Kaeleth’s domain.

But there was a terrifying difference: this time, Rex wasn’t watching the destruction. He was the architect and he was the one writing the apocalypse.

"What are you—" Apollo started, his divine voice cracking as he saw the void opening before him.

The question died in his throat because the floor beneath them simply ceased to exist.

There was no thunderous explosion. There was no gust of wind.

There was only a sudden, terrifying absence—a hole in the world where solid rock had been a heartbeat before. From that abyss, a spiraling vortex of violet-black energy roared upward, hungry and absolute.

It surged like a leviathan’s maw, swallowing both Rex and Apollo whole in a single, silent gulp. The spiral collapsed inward on itself, sealing the wound in reality in under a second, leaving nothing behind but a faint, acrid smell of burnt ozone and dead space.

The corridor erupted into chaos.

The roar that tore from ten thousand throats was not the controlled chanting of battle; it was a primal scream of confusion and terror. The disciplined lines shattered.

Soldiers surged forward in panic, colliding with their own comrades in a desperate, blind scramble. Commanders screamed orders that were instantly drowned out by the cacophony of steel clashing against steel and the wet sounds of panicked men breaking ranks.

Elliot broke free from the formation, his boots skidding on blood-slicked stone as he sprinted toward the center of the carnage.

"APOLLO!" he screamed, his voice raw, tearing out of his lungs. "APOLLO, ANSWER ME!"

He launched himself at the spot where the vortex had been, but he didn’t hit stone. He slammed into an invisible wall of condensed energy with enough force to send him sprawling backward onto the hard ground.

THUD.

Gritting his teeth against the pain in his shoulder, Elliot scrambled up and threw himself at the barrier again. "APOLLO!"

WHAM.

Each strike against the emptiness produced nothing but a flat, violet ripple that shivered across a surface that had no visible form. It wasn’t a shield; it was a boundary between two different universes.

"Elliot, stop!" Evelyn’s voice pierced through his desperation.

She lunged forward, wrapping both arms around his chest in a desperate tackle, physically hauling him backward. "Stop it! Let it go!"

"He’s in there alone!" Elliot roared, fighting her grip, his eyes bloodshot and wild. "He’s trapped in whatever that hellscape is!"

"I know." Evelyn’s voice cracked, her composure fracturing like the air had moments before.

Her hands trembled as she held him, her gaze locked on the empty space where two titans had stood seconds earlier. "I know he is."

Behind them, the Underlayer continued to burn, but for those watching the void, the world had already ended.