The Lustful Villain: Every Milfs and Gilfs are Mine!-Chapter 215. That Wimp Needed One Little Push (I Killed One of His Useless Harem)
The telekinesis field absorbed most of the physical force, but the blade’s electrical charge went through the field in the same way that energy attacks always do against containment barriers. Rex felt it in his left arm as a deep, specific pain that didn’t stop him from working but was very clear.
"Not bad at all... it seems like you’re going to give me a rather interesting fight!" Rex smirked.
He made a note of it and went on.
Then he picked her up.
Not with a grab or a directed push, but with the gravitational mode applied to one person instead of a general radius. The impact on a person standing and moving quickly was different from the impact on a person who was already sitting and kneeling.
Zeraphyra’s movement changed completely and suddenly. The speed that her system provided turned inward on itself as the downward force competed with the upward drive of her legs at a basic mechanical level.
And then she fought against it.
Rex didn’t think she would give up. She did the right thing by resisting, and she did it well.
She drove both blades into the plaza stone and used them as anchors. This pushed her system to the point where it arc-charged the ground around her in a two-meter radius and made a sound like the air being split lengthwise.
This intensity matched that of someone depleting their system’s reserve to maintain functionality against an overwhelming force.
But... Rex added fire.
The full channel, directed at the ground beneath her feet, heated the stone to the point where the anchor provided by her blades started to lose its structural advantage as the material changed state. This was not just the controlled column of fire.
’Damn... I didn’t know he’s this strong...’ Zeraphyra thought. "But... I couldn’t give up! This is for everything they did to Kaelira!’
She looked at him through the fire, the arc light, and the gravitational pressure with the look of someone who was at the limit of what their body could handle and knew it. What was in that look was not fear, but the specific quality of someone who would not let whatever came next decide how they would react to it.
"What’s wrong?" Rex laughed. "Done already...?"
"Even if you’re fast... I already know that you’re fragile as fuck."
"It’s different than that berserker who survived by mere luck."
"Grrggghhh...!!!" Zeraphyra strained against the pressure that continued to torment her body. "I won’t give up...!"
"Good... I won’t let you do that anyway." Rex respected it, just like he respected good opponents in a general way.
But that didn’t alter his intentions.
He released the gravitational compression and employed telekinesis directly, extending both hands fully. In one swift motion, he seized Zeraphyra by the throat.
"Gaggghhhh!" Zeraphyra struggled to breathe.
The telekinesis saw her as an object in space and used the force on her neck in a way that was very precise, lifting her three feet off the ground with the precision that molecular-level control allowed.
She still had her blades in her hands, and the lightning was still running on them. She swung one at the telekinesis field around her throat with the kind of skill that showed she knew this was the important part and would react the right way even now.
Rex held the field. "That won’t work..."
He slowly turned her around until she was facing the center of the plaza, where Apollo Brightsoul was still pressed against the paving stones.
Rex starts to scream at him. "LOOK AT YOUR USELESS HAREM, APOLLO!!!"
He had kept the gravitational mode going throughout the whole engagement, so his palms were flat against the stone, and his arms were shaking with the effort of pushing against something that recalculated with every push.
Apollo looked up, and then his face showed a certain sequence at that moment that came too quickly to be broken down into its parts.
Recognition was followed by the realization that occurs when a person observes something that contradicts their previous understanding of their situation.
"Let her go...!" Apollo shouted. "Please...!!!"
The word had everything in it. All the urgency and desperation of someone watching something happen that they can’t change.
"Stop this instant and fight me, you coward!" His voice grew increasingly louder. "This is just between you and me...!"
Rex continued to regard Apollo with a smug smile. "Oh, really...?"
"Why can’t you just save her now?" He tilted his head, a smirk playing on his lips. "Has your power of love not helped you at all...?"
"Please! I’m begging you...!" Apollo’s voice lost all of its calmness, and what was underneath it was the raw version, the one he didn’t show people, the one that lived in the space between his system’s support and what was really his. "She has nothing to do with this...!"
"Please, she—"
Rex held Zeraphyra in the air for two more seconds, looking at Apollo the way he looked at things he had already made up his mind about. Then he pushed the structure he was holding with a tremendous and final force.
"Here... let me give you a boost so that you can show me your power more." He snapped his finger.
CRACK.
Zeraphyra Voltaris went still in the air, and the lightning on her blades went out.
Rex released the telekinesis, and she fell.
She struck the plaza stone to Apollo’s left, landing with her face directed toward him. She resembled someone who had not yet completed their task and remained poised for battle, rather than appearing as if she had already concluded.
There was silence for two seconds after that.
And then Apollo emitted a sound that transcended words. It originated from a place untouched by language, from the depths of a person concealed beneath their carefully crafted responses to the world.
It resembled the sound of something structural giving way, like a crucial element of one’s self-image encountering a burden it was never designed to bear.
"No...! Zeraphyra...!"
"You didn’t—you can’t have just—" He let out a breath that didn’t steady anything.
"Zeraphyra... please..." He said her name the way people say the names of things they are certain are permanent. "Zeraphyra, I’m begging you...! Get up!"
He pushed against the pull of gravity with both arms and legs at the same time, and his system’s activation came up. It wasn’t the controlled deployment-ready kind he had been holding in standby throughout the engagement.
It was the full uncontrolled kind that comes from someone who is no longer making tactical decisions and is working from something simpler and more absolute than tactics.
"There it is..." Rex crossed his arms. "Let me see your Apostle of Life’s power with my own eyes..."
ZHINGGGG!
The plaza got brighter.
The plaza was illuminated not by fire or any singular source, but by the collective output of a life-affinity system that had been pushed beyond its limits. This surge was fueled by an emotional state that Rex had meticulously cultivated through each careful interaction, every strategic loss, and the gradual disintegration of relationships that had once stood strong.
The light had heat, and the heat had power. The power spread out from the point where Apollo’s hands met the paving stones in all directions at once.
"Hohhh...!" Rex’s eyes opened wide when he saw it close.
Rex’s gravitational pressure couldn’t hold up against a full activation at uncontrolled output. Apollo came off the ground with the same force as someone who has been held down and is now free and won’t stop to think about what comes next.
And then Apollo moves instantly, appearing next to Zeraphyra in the blink of an eye, surprising Rex for the first time.
He picked up Zeraphyra’s body with both arms and looked at her face. The look that came over his face was the same one that Rex had been trying to get since the first day he realized that Apollo Brightsoul was the person whose death would be the main idea behind everything that happened after that.
This was the look—neither anger nor the restrained sorrow of someone trying to maintain control.
It embodied the raw essence of a person who has lost something fundamental to their existence, standing amidst the ruins of that loss, clutching evidence of what once was, with no framework left to contain their feelings.
"Zeraphyra... wake up..." He said with a low tone. "Please wake up... that’s an order..."
"Wake up right now... you don’t—you’re not allowed to—"
And then, what came next was...
Fire and light spread out from Apollo in an uncontrolled release of a system with no governor engaged. The buildings at the edge of the plaza took the brunt of the damage, with stone facades cracking along their upper sections and several archways losing their keystones in a ragged line across the plaza’s perimeter.
The fountain behind Rex shattered and sent water flying in all directions. The paving stones between them fractured in a spreading pattern from where Apollo’s knees were.
Rex stood in the middle with his hands at his sides.
"Yes...! That’s it! Give it all to your anger!" Rex kept taunting him. "Embrace those, and fight me with everything you’ve got!"
As it pressed against the energy manipulation field Rex was running, the skull mask caught the light of Apollo’s own fire. Rex held it with ease, taking the combined output like a wall in weather and not moving in response.
He smiled behind the mask when he saw Apollo Brightsoul standing in the ruins of the western plaza, holding Zeraphyra’s body. The shattered stone around him showed all the evidence of what Rex had been working toward.
"Good," he said in the voice of the Undead Bringer.
The word was barely audible against the roar of Apollo’s fire and light, which relentlessly pressed against the field. "We’re just getting started."
The combined magic of Apollo pushed harder, making the fire feel like it was no longer under anyone’s control but the force that was driving it. The remaining facades of the plaza began to crack along their upper edges, letting stone dust filter down into the light.
Rex watched the size of it with satisfaction. "How does it feel?"
"You’re going to pay for everything you’ve done...!!!" Apollo screamed, his voice reverberating through the air and shaking everything around them.
