Chapter 1177. You’re Fighting a War Against a Ghost That Can Wear Flesh

Chapter 1177: 1177. You’re Fighting a War Against a Ghost That Can Wear Flesh

The world seemed to stutter.

Apollo froze. His fist was already drawn back, coiled like a serpent ready to strike, suspended at the apex of its arc.

The divine energy crackling around his knuckles screamed in the sudden silence, a high-pitched whine that vibrated through the very atoms of the domain.

His chest heaved, each breath a ragged tear in the air, and the iron tight grip he held on Rex’s ruined coat slackened by a fraction, not out of mercy, but out of sheer, stunned disbelief.

The red gold corona surrounding him pulsed once, violently, like a dying star, before holding steady in a low, ominous glow. Apollo’s eyes, burning with a light that was no longer human, narrowed.

Suspicion flickered across his features, but it didn’t last; it quickly soured into something far more primal and ugly. It was the look of a predator that had realized its prey wasn’t just refusing to run; it was enjoying the hunt.

"What does that mean?" Apollo asked.

His voice was barely a whisper, but it carried more weight than the thunderous roars from before. It was quiet, precise, and lethally dangerous.

Rex didn’t flinch. He didn’t even blink.

With a wet, grinding sound, he turned his head to the side, dislodging a thick clot of blood that had been pooling in his cheek. He spat the crimson mass onto the cracked floor.

Ptu!

And watched it splatter against the stone before meeting Apollo’s gaze with terrifying clarity. His features were a horrific mosaic of trauma; the bone fragments were already grinding against each other as they reassembled, the flesh knitting with an audible, sickening squelch.

"It means," Rex answered, the grin splitting his blood-slicked face wider, "that you can break this body into as many pieces as you want."

"Go ahead... Burn it... Crush it!"

"Tear it apart until there’s nothing left but a red smear across this floor."

A wet chuckle escaped his throat. "It will never be enough to actually end me, Apollo."

"Not this body. Not any body you can reach."

"You’re fighting a war against a ghost that can wear flesh whenever it pleases."

For a heartbeat, the tension between them was so absolute it felt as though reality itself might snap. Apollo didn’t argue.

He didn’t lecture. He didn’t invoke justice or morality.

All of those things—the hero, the leader, and the protector—had been burned away in the furnace of Rex’s provocation. The man who had stood before four thousand soldiers that morning was dead; something singular and terrifying now stood in his place.

The last vestiges of Apollo’s humanity collapsed. There was no calculation left in his eyes, no consideration for collateral damage or the sanctity of life.

The divine fury had crystallized into a single, razor-sharp purpose: the complete and utter annihilation of the thing standing before him. He wasn’t trying to win anymore; he was trying to erase.

Slowly, deliberately, Apollo drew his fist back even further. The air around his arm began to distort, warped by the sheer density of the energy gathering there.

The red gold light intensified until it was blinding, casting long, demonic shadows across the dying domain. The sound of the energy gathering resembled the grinding of tectonic plates, accompanied by a RUMBLE and CRACKLE.

His face was a mask of divine hatred, cold and absolute.

"Let’s find out," Apollo said.

The strike did not just land; it detonated.

Apollo unleashed every remaining fragment of his existence.

The rage that had been simmering for months, the hatred that had been meticulously harvested by Rex, and the last, dying embers of the goddess’s borrowed light were all compressed into a single, impossible point of singularity.

His fist became the epicenter of a collapsing star.

BOOM!!!

When his knuckles connected with the center of Rex’s sternum, the sound wasn’t a punch; it was a sonic boom that shattered the silence of the domain.

The impact cratered the floor instantly, sending shockwaves rippling outward in twenty-meter concentric circles of pulverized stone and displaced air. The domain itself screamed in protest; the unanchored structure groaned as the violet pulse of the reality around them began to fail.

Whole sections of the horizon flickered like a dying fluorescent bulb, and the fabric of spacetime began to tear, leaving jagged, black wounds hanging open in the air where reality simply ceased to exist.

Rex’s body didn’t just fall; it was launched. The force of the blow sent him hurtling across the full length of the domain, a broken projectile tumbling end over end through the strobing, failing light.

He became a blur of crimson and shadow, crashing through debris before disappearing into the far reaches of the abyss where the floor had long since dissolved into nothingness.

The silence that followed was immediate, heavy, and suffocating.

Then, the sound began.

It started as a faint echo, bouncing off the crumbling walls and the fracturing sky. But as it traveled across the enormous distance of the ruined space, it grew louder, clearer, and more terrifying.

It was laughter.

Apollo stood alone in the epicenter of the devastation. His fist remained extended, his arm locked in place by the sheer aftershock of the blow.

His chest heaved in violent, ragged spasms, each breath tasting like copper and burnt ozone. He stood frozen as the laughter reverberated through the hollow bones of his own body, echoing off the surfaces that were coming apart at the seams.

Ha... Hahaha... AH HA HA HA!

He listened. He listened while the red gold corona around him pulsed erratically, struggling to maintain its form.

He listened while sections of the violet floor died in widening patches around his feet, plunging the world into a terrifying twilight. He listened as the very foundation of the space groaned like a dying beast somewhere in the distant dark.

And in that moment, with a clarity that felt like a blade sliding between his ribs, Apollo understood. He understood the horror of his situation.

The man he had just struck with the full measure of his divine wrath—the man he had tried to erase from existence—was not only still alive out there in the dark, but he was happy.

The laughter wasn’t the sound of a victim. It was the sound of a connoisseur who had just tasted something exquisite.

"I’m not going to stop," Apollo said.

His voice was hollow, directed at no one. He spoke to the darkness, to the void, to whatever pathetic remains of his own soul were still clinging to consciousness.

"I will not stop."

But the laughter did not cease.

It went on.

And on.

And on...

It was genuinely delighted, unforced, rich, and terrifyingly sincere. It was the sound of a man experiencing a moment of pure, unadulterated joy, more profound than anything he had felt in either of his lives.

And beneath the mirth, there was something worse than fear: there was a calm, unshakable certainty.

The laughter carried a message that echoed louder than any shout: regardless of what Apollo Brightsoul did next, no matter how far he descended into darkness, no matter how much of his humanity he burned away to fuel his vengeance... it would never, ever be enough.