Chapter 1163. Turns Out Getting Unmasked Is the Least of My Problems Right Now

Chapter 1163: 1163. Turns Out Getting Unmasked Is the Least of My Problems Right Now

Apollo came in for the last time.

There was no more posturing. No more tactical probing. The air between them didn’t just hum; it screamed, charged with a static intensity that made the very atoms of the domain vibrate in terror.

Apollo wasn’t just attacking; he was offering up his entire existence as fuel for one singular, devastating purpose.

The remnants of the goddess’s residual gift, which flickered like a holy ember, along with the last vestiges of strength in his shredded muscles after twenty-five minutes of hellish, bone-breaking combat, were compressed into a single point.

He coiled his entire body like a spring, his golden aura spiraling upward before snapping downward in a devastating overhand strike. The fist didn’t just move through the air; it tore it, leaving a double helix of blazing gold and pearlescent white in its wake, a comet of divine retribution aimed directly at Rex’s skull.

Rex saw it. His adaptation ability surged, granting him four full seconds of crystalline foresight. The world slowed to a crawl.

In that suspended moment, Rex ran the calculus. He saw the trajectory, the force, and the inevitable destruction. He made a cold, ruthless decision: he would take the hit cleanly.

He would allow the strike to connect, using the raw, unfiltered data of that divine impact to finally crack the code of Apollo’s power. He would pay in flesh to win the war.

’I can take it,’ Rex thought, his mind a fortress of cold logic even as his heart hammered against his cracked ribs. ’I’ll absorb the data...’

’I’ll learn the source...’

’I’ll—’

The calculation failed. The margin of error was catastrophic.

The divine energy didn’t just flow; it exploded outward in ways his foresight couldn’t predict, a cascade of holy interference that warped the physics of the strike at the moment of contact.

CRACK SHATTER.

The fist struck the center of Rex’s mask with the force of a collapsing star. The sound was horrific, not just metal breaking, but the sound of reality splintering.

A jagged, spiderweb crack tore across the violet-lit surface in a single microsecond, splitting the mask from temple to jaw. Then, with a sound like breaking glass amplified a thousand times, the entire helm disintegrated.

Fragments of reinforced material and dissolving energy sprayed outward like shrapnel, glittering deadly in the dim light.

The impact didn’t just knock Rex back; it launched him. He became a human projectile, hurtling thirty meters across the domain.

His body slammed into one of the slow-rotating light formations near the floor with a wet, meaty THUD. He tumbled through the construct, sparks of violet energy licking at his torn clothes, before finally coming to a stop on his side.

He lay motionless among the scattered shards of his mask and the fading embers of his power.

The mask was gone. His face was bare.

Apollo landed twenty meters away, his boots skidding across the pulsing floor as he fought to maintain his balance. His chest heaved in ragged, desperate gasps.

Blood dripped from his own split knuckles, his golden aura flickering dangerously low. His vision was swimming, his muscles screaming for release, but adrenaline forced his head up.

He raised his eyes, bracing for the counterattack, ready to see the monster he had just unmasked.

And then, the world stopped.

Apollo froze. His heart stuttered. The oxygen seemed to vanish from his lungs.

For a long, agonizing moment, his mind refused to function. The human psyche has safeguards and barriers designed to protect itself from truths too devastating to process, and his mind was slamming them shut.

He saw dark hair, matted with blood and sweat. He saw a jawline he had sat across from at a hundred meals, sharing quiet words and stolen glances.

His eyes traced the profile of the man who had pulled him from the rubble of a burning plaza when his own ribs had been shattered. He saw the man who had sat beside him in the dirt of a training yard during his darkest nights, offering words of wisdom that had saved his sanity.

He saw the man who had stood like an immovable pillar at his shoulder in the council chambers, defying the entire Apostle network to defend Apollo’s honor.

The monster wasn’t a monster. The enemy wasn’t an enemy.

The man he had been trying to kill was the only reason he was still alive.

"Rex."

The name escaped Apollo’s lips like a broken prayer. It lacked conviction; there was no anger in it, no triumph, no accusation.

It was merely the hollow, confused sound of a man reading a foreign word, a sound that carried the terrifying weight of recognition without understanding. His voice cracked, the syllables dissolving into the charged air of the domain.

But Rex did not hear him.

Rex lay sprawled on the pulsing violet floor of a domain he had authored less than twelve minutes ago, a space that, in his own subjective perception, had felt like an eternity of bloodshed and bone-deep exhaustion.

His ears rang with the aftershocks of the impact, his vision swimming in crimson droplets from the gash above his eye, but he was deaf to Apollo’s plea.

Rex was no longer engaged in the fight. He was no longer present in the moment.

His gaze was locked on something else entirely.

He wasn’t looking at Apollo’s devastated face. He wasn’t looking at his own reflection in the slick, violet surface beneath him, a reflection that showed a man broken, bleeding, and unmasked.

His eyes were fixed on something far beyond the reach of Apollo’s golden light, staring into the impossible emptiness of the domain’s far horizon.

He was looking at a point where there should have been nothing but the endless, swirling void. A point he had personally designed to be vacant. A point he had sworn was empty.

Someone was standing there.

The figure was a violation of every law Rex had written for this space. It wore the same dark clothing.

It held the same unnerving, motionless posture. And it wore the same plain, featureless mask, but unlike Rex’s shattered helm, this mask was perfect... uncracked... whole... and impeccable.

Beneath the eye slits, there was no human iris, no divine glow; there were only two burning pits of violet black energy, a darkness so dense, so ancient, that it seemed to drink the very light Rex had spent his life cultivating.

It didn’t breathe. It didn’t shift its weight, but it simply existed.

It was a foreign object inserted into Rex’s reality, standing with the terrifying, patient stillness of something that had been waiting behind the door long before the door was even built.

’No,’ Rex thought, his mind suddenly screaming. ’That’s impossible... I built this.’

’I am the architect... I control the parameters...’

’There is nothing there... There is—’

With a wet groan of pain, Rex pushed himself up onto one elbow, his muscles twitching involuntarily. Every contingency Rex had spent over a year constructing—every fallback position, every tactical deception, every calculated risk—vanished.

His brilliant, analytical mind, which had just danced circles around a divine warrior, suddenly went completely silent. For the first time in his second life, Rex felt something he had forgotten existed: genuine, primal dread.

Twenty meters away, Apollo took an uncertain step forward. His fists were still raised in a combat stance, knuckles raw and bleeding, but his posture was collapsing.

His face was a mask of agony, still trying to force the name he had spoken to carry meaning, to bridge the impossible chasm that had just opened between them.

"Rex!" Apollo called out again, louder this time, his voice cracking with desperation. "Rex, look at me!"

"What is this? What are you doing?"

Rex didn’t answer. He didn’t even flinch at the sound of his friend’s voice.

He couldn’t. His entire existence had narrowed down to that single point in the distance.

His pupils dilated, tracking the impossible.

Because the figure had finally begun to move.

It didn’t run. It didn’t charge.

It simply began to walk. Each step was silent, measured, and inevitable, cutting through the violet haze like a blade through silk.

Thump.

Rex felt it in his teeth. Not a sound, but a vibration.

A heartbeat that wasn’t his own.

Thump.

The figure was coming. And Rex knew, with the cold certainty of a dying man, that whatever was walking toward them wasn’t a guest in his domain.

It was the owner.