Chapter 1166. The Parts That Helped You Grow Were the Parts Designed to Kill You

Chapter 1166: 1166. The Parts That Helped You Grow Were the Parts Designed to Kill You

Rex didn’t stand over him like a conqueror. Instead, he crouched down, bringing himself level with Apollo’s kneeling form.

The movement was fluid, predatorily graceful, and utterly devoid of any reverence. Up close, the intimacy was nauseating; Rex looked like a friend sharing a secret, his breath steady despite the magical turbulence swirling around them.

"I’m not going to give you that luxury," Rex said, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial murmur. "You’ve earned the real thing, Apollo."

"And the real thing is that there is no grand design..."

"No cosmic accident. I looked at the situation, I saw what was available to be taken, and I took it."

’And I enjoyed taking it more than I have enjoyed anything else in either of the lives I’ve ever lived."

"Nothing controls me," Rex cut in again, and there was the first genuine edge of amusement in his voice, a dark, razor-sharp amusement.

Watching Apollo desperately construct elaborate excuses for him was genuinely entertaining. It was a game: Apollo was trying to build a cage of logic to contain a monster, and Rex was simply enjoying watching the bars bend.

"I did all of it because I chose to..."

"Because every drop of blood, every scream, every broken promise... I did it because I enjoyed it."

"How... long?" Apollo’s voice was hollow, the sound of a man whose internal compass had just been shattered.

"Be more specific."

"All of it... From the very beginning." Apollo’s hands had clenched into fists so tight against his thighs that his knuckles turned bone white, the tendons standing out like cables.

He couldn’t bear to look at Rex’s face anymore; he stared instead at a single spot on the violet floor between them, as if trying to anchor himself to reality. "When we met, at that academy..."

"When you helped my friends fight off those monsters and we shared that first drink... was it already decided then?"

"Was I already a target before I even learned your name?"

Rex let out a soft, almost thoughtful hum. "You weren’t a target then, Apollo..."

"Don’t flatter yourself. You were a resource I hadn’t finished evaluating."

"A variable in an equation I hadn’t finished writing..."

"The decision came later once I understood the true scale of what you actually were and what having you standing beside me as an ally would be worth to my objectives."

"That evaluation took a few months."

"So there was a point." Apollo’s voice cracked, a wet, splintering sound. "There was a moment where the path could have diverged."

"Where you could have chosen differently... Where we could have..."

"Probably not." Rex considered it for a heartbeat, tilting his head as if weighing a trivial question.

Then he shook his head with finality. "No. Being honest with you, which I have decided to be exactly once, and only today, there was never really a version of this where you and I ended up somewhere other than here."

"You were always going to be what you are: a shining beacon of naive heroism."

"And I was always going to be what I am..."

"The only real variable was how long the charade would take and how much entertainment I could extract from it along the way."

Rex’s eyes crinkled at the corners, a smile touching his lips that never reached his cold, dead eyes. "I got a great deal out of it, if that helps."

"It doesn’t," Apollo hissed, the word dripping with venomous agony. "It helps nothing..."

"It changes nothing."

"No," Rex agreed cheerfully, his tone as light as if they were discussing a pleasant afternoon stroll. "I didn’t think it would."

Apollo did not rise immediately. He remained collapsed on his knees, his forehead nearly touching the pulsing violet floor.

His hands were splayed flat against the ground as if trying to anchor his very soul to the earth, but his breathing betrayed him; it came in short, ragged, uneven gasps that sounded more like the death rattles of something broken than the breaths of a living man.

Rex watched him with the detached fascination of an entomologist observing a beetle struggling beneath glass. He made no move to comfort him nor to threaten him.

He simply let the silence stretch, thick and suffocating, allowing the weight of Rex’s confession to settle into Apollo’s bones. He knew that words were useless now; the real torture was letting Apollo sit inside the ruins of his own reality.

"Kaelira," Apollo finally whispered.

The name was a plea, a desperate attempt to find one single thread of goodness in the tapestry of betrayal. "What about her? Did you touch her?"

"Not hers... No." Rex shrugged one shoulder with casual indifference. "I never got to her..."

"She’s been too close to you too, perceptive, too suspicious by temperament..."

"And frankly, the tactical return on investment wasn’t worth the risk of her catching wind of my true nature too early."

"You still have her, Apollo... Consider it your one remaining victory."

"Congratulations."

A sound tore itself from Apollo’s throat. It was a laugh, but it was the most horrific sound heard in the domain thus far—wet, cracked, and utterly devoid of any human mirth.

It sounded like bones grinding together in a jar of blood.

"You want to know something truly interesting?" Rex continued, his voice dropping to a register that was almost gentle, almost tender. "The advice I gave you about her was the best advice I’ve ever given anyone."

"I meant every word of it... You did come back from that experience better than you went in, stronger, more self-aware."

"That’s the part that’s going to haunt you the most later if there even is a later."

"Not the lies, Apollo... Not the betrayal... It’s the fact that the parts of me that helped you grow were real."

With a guttural groan of exertion, Apollo began to force himself upright.

The process was agonizing to witness. He moved badly, his muscles twitching with suppressed tremors, using one unsteady hand against the throbbing floor to prevent himself from collapsing again.

When he finally stood fully upright, his face was a mask of something Rex found genuinely fascinating. The grief was still there, a crushing, tidal wave of sorrow, but layered over it was something else: a stubborn, pathological refusal to surrender.

He was clinging to the ghost of his friend with such ferocity that it seemed he might snap his own fingers trying to hold on.

"You helped me with Kaelira," Apollo said.

His voice was hoarse, and he sounded as though he were arguing with his own conscience as much as he was addressing Rex. "When she was recovering after the dungeon raid... when she couldn’t even stand without shaking... you were the one who told me to stop hovering."

"You told me to give her space to want to come back to me, instead of making her feel like her recovery was an obligation to my needs."

Apollo took a step forward, his boots squelching on the violet surface. "You gave me advice about my harem."

"You told me I was neglecting Nerith..."

"You told me I was being unfair, that I had to actually see each of them as individuals instead of treating them like a collection of assets."

"You taught me how to be a better partner, how to be a better man."

His eyes burned with a terrifying, confused light. "Why would you do that, Rex...?"

"Why would you invest that much effort into my happiness if your only goal was to destroy me?"

Rex’s smile didn’t falter. If anything, it sharpened.

"Because the advice was correct," Rex said simply, as if stating a mathematical truth. "And because the better your relationships became, the more deeply you trusted me."

"The more you believed I was your confidant, your brother, your guide, the more valuable you became."

"And the more deeply you trusted me, Apollo... the easier it was to reach in and tear each of them away from you, one by one, without you ever seeing the blade until it was already buried in your throat."