Chapter 1162. Turns Out Gravity Is Just a Suggestion, and So Is My Dignity

Chapter 1162: 1162. Turns Out Gravity Is Just a Suggestion, and So Is My Dignity

The middle stretch of that hellish engagement stretched on for nearly six minutes of unrelenting, bone-crushing contact. It didn’t feel like a fight anymore; it felt like two fundamental forces of nature trying to annihilate one another.

The battle moved through phases, shifting from tactical probing to raw, unbridled slaughter, the way a conversation might shift from polite inquiry to screaming accusations.

It began as a test of physics. Both men sought to understand what this new, impossible space would permit, and the domain Rex’s own creation was terrifyingly accommodating.

Within the first thirty seconds, Rex discovered that he didn’t need to work to manipulate the local gravity; he simply had to will it.

The violet-black floor would rise like a liquid wave to meet his feet if he needed leverage; the very air would thicken into a solid mass if he needed something to brace against. The environment wasn’t just a stage; it was an extension of his own nervous system.

He put that power to immediate, lethal use.

WHOOSH.

Rex dropped the local gravity to a quarter of its normal strength. Apollo, committed to a devastating forward lunge, overextended.

His momentum carried him forty meters past Rex in the sudden weightlessness. Rex didn’t hesitate; he snapped his fingers, restoring gravity to full force at the exact apex of Apollo’s flight.

CRUNCH.

The sudden return of weight sent Apollo plummeting, his body struggling to reorient as he fell through the void. But Apollo was not a man who obeyed the laws of physics; he commanded them.

The second time the gravity shifted, Rex felt a spike of genuine surprise. Apollo didn’t tumble helplessly.

Mid-fall, Apollo twisted his body with inhuman grace, his golden aura flaring like a gyroscope. He slammed into the underside of a floating formation of violet light as though it had always been solid ground.

With a grunt of exertion, he pushed off, propelling himself back at Xerollion from a vertical angle that Rex’s gravitational manipulation had been specifically designed to make impossible.

"Too slow," Apollo growled, his voice carrying through the void like grinding stone.

What followed was eleven seconds of pure, claustrophobic brutality. There was no footwork, no tactical retreat, no measured distance.

They entered each other’s guard and stayed there, two titans locked in a death embrace, trading strikes that neither could fully block.

CLANG. THUD. CRACK.

Gold and violet light hemorrhaged from every point of impact, flaring like miniature suns. The domain rippled outward from their collision in violent, concentric waves that screamed across the empty expanse, each impact sending shockwaves that would have liquified a normal human’s organs.

Rex took the brunt of it. A devastating hook to the ribs produced a wet, splintering sound as two bones snapped clean through.

Worse still, the blow struck a hairline fracture in the divine layer protecting his core, preventing his regeneration from sealing the wounds for four agonizing seconds. Blood sprayed from Rex’s mouth, tasting of copper and burnt energy.

’Not today,’ Rex snarled internally. ’Not like this.’

He seized the moment of Apollo’s close proximity. Using a precise telekinetic tether, he yanked at Apollo’s front foot, sending the divine warrior stumbling.

In the same fluid motion, Rex drove his elbow upward with everything he had.

SHATTER.

The elbow connected directly with Apollo’s collarbone. The sound was like a sledgehammer hitting a marble pillar.

Apollo’s shoulder collapsed inward, the bone grinding into fragments. But before Rex could savor the victory, he watched in grim fascination as the goddess’s residual light flooded Apollo’s system.

The shattered bone knit itself back together in less than half the time Rex’s own body took to repair itself.

Rex skidded back three meters, his boots carving grooves into the pulsing violet surface as he fought to regain his equilibrium. His breathing was ragged, each inhale a battle against the pain in his ribs.

"That’s the part I find genuinely unfair," Xerollion said, wiping crimson from his chin.

His voice was calm, but there was an edge of something new beneath it—recognition. "You’re healing faster than I am now."

"Do you understand how rare that is? The power imbalance is shifting."

Apollo straightened his shoulder, the golden glow around his neck fading as the bone fused perfectly back into place. His eyes were twin furnaces of celestial wrath, burning brighter than the domain itself. He didn’t look tired; he looked consecrated.

"Good," Apollo said, his voice dropping to a lethal whisper. "Then I’ll just have to break you faster."

And he came again.

The battle shifted gears with the deadly precision of a predator changing its hunting style. The raw, unbridled violence of the previous minutes crystallized into something far more dangerous: a cold, calculating war of attrition. The phase turned technical.

Rex stopped simply reacting; he began actively hunting the divine mechanism at the core of Apollo’s power. He started playing a lethal game of baiting.

He would deliberately overextend a guard or leave a rib exposed, not out of carelessness, but to provoke a specific expression of Apollo’s divine energy.

He needed to see how the goddess’s residual light reacted to different pressures, how it flowed when Apollo struck with anger versus when he struck with calm resolve. He was feeding data into his adaptation ability, trying to force a clean read on the unpredictable variable.

But Apollo was not some mindless brute or a god playing at being a warrior. He was a graduate of the Academy’s most elite tactical programs, a man who had spent six years mastering the art of reading opponents before he ever received his divine designation.

By the fourth repetition of Rex’s pattern, Apollo recognized the trap. He saw the deliberate openings. He saw the way Rex was trying to map his soul.

In response, Apollo began varying his commitment patterns. He would initiate a strike with maximum force, then abruptly cut the power mid-swing, or he would feign a lunge only to pivot into a defensive posture that denied Rex the very data he craved.

’Fuck,’ Rex thought, his teeth grinding together as his enhanced senses screamed at him. ’He’s reading me.’

’He’s not just fighting me; he’s fighting my ability to learn.’

For the first time in Rex’s entire second life, he faced someone who understood his process well enough to weaponize it against him.

Then, something unexpected happened. A sound tore through the oppressive silence of the domain, a sound so foreign to the terrifying, masked figure of Xerollion that it seemed to violate the very air.

Rex laughed.

It wasn’t a cruel chuckle or a villainous cackle. It was a genuine, startled laugh, the sound of a man who had just stumbled upon something magnificent in the middle of a massacre.

It was raw, unfiltered surprise that broke through his controlled persona.

HA !

The sound echoed off the nonexistent walls, disorienting and alien. For Apollo, that laugh was a glitch in the matrix.

His concentration wavered. His divine aura flickered as he searched for the meaning behind that sudden outburst of humanity.

That quarter-second of hesitation was everything.

NOW.

Rex didn’t waste a heartbeat. He slammed his fist into the floor, triggering a localized gravity spike.

"Stay down," he snarled.

BOOM.

The gravity around Apollo instantly surged to nine times his own body weight. Apollo was slammed into the violet surface with the force of a falling star.

The impact produced a wet THUD as the air was punched out of his lungs. Rex didn’t stop there; he lunged forward, driving his armored heel into Apollo’s chest with enough force to crater the pulsing floor beneath them.

CRACK CRUNCH.

The surface beneath Apollo shattered like obsidian, sending spiderweb fractures racing through the violet light. Rex could almost feel the ribs beneath Apollo’s armor buckling under the concentrated pressure.

But Apollo was a creature of divine resilience. His white sheath flared with blinding intensity, the holy energy absorbing the brunt of the crushing force and redistributing the kinetic energy across his entire frame.

Apollo roared through the pain, his eyes blazing gold as he exploded upward from the crater.

WHAM.

Before Rex could recover his stance, Apollo’s fist connected with Rex’s jaw. The force was catastrophic.

Rex’s head snapped sideways with enough torque to send his entire body spinning ninety degrees through the air. His vision blurred into a kaleidoscope of violet and gold as his teeth clattered together, blood spraying from his split lip like crimson confetti.

The two men separated, panting, blood dripping onto the floor where it sizzled and burned. The tension between them was no longer just physical; it was psychological, a coiled spring wound to the point of snapping.

They stood there for a heartbeat, two gods measuring each other’s remaining life force, knowing that the next move would not be a probe or a test.

The end of it came four exchanges later.