Chapter 619: 619. This Is What I Want! Pain... It’s Been A While! (I’m Trolling)

He stood in the center of the crushing void, his blood spraying into the darkness, looking less like a man dying and more like a man who had finally found a reason to truly live.

He was delighted. He was ecstatic.

He was, in the most beautiful and brutal sense, experiencing the time of his life. "I want more! Hahahahahaha!!!"

"You’re laughing?!" Cassandra’s voice broke, a high-pitched, jagged sound that tore through the vacuum of the void. "You’re standing there, bleeding out, and you have the audacity to laugh at me?!"

Her rage was no longer a simmer; it was a volcanic eruption. His sheer disrespect, treating his own near death as a delightful novelty, sent her into a state of pure, unmitigated frenzy.

She didn’t just want to win anymore; she wanted to erase the smugness from his face. She wanted to grind his laughter into the dust of the shattered chamber.

"Then let’s see how much you can laugh when there’s nothing left of you to feel!" she shrieked.

She became a blur of impossible, violent motion. She didn’t just attack; she unleashed a symphony of carnage.

She began a sequence of combos that defied every law of combat Rex had ever mastered. She would strike with a heavy, vertical cleave that shattered the void’s pressure, only to instantly transition into a series of micro stabs so rapid they looked like a single, continuous beam of red light.

She used the Blood Oath to create lances of solidified, high-frequency blood that shot from the air around Rex, forcing him to move, only to pull him back into the path of her blade with gravitational tugs of her divine authority. She was a storm of steel and blood, a whirlwind of unpredictable, chaotic geometry.

Rex, however, was doing something that drove her even deeper into madness.

He wasn’t dodging. He was receiving.

He moved with a minimal, almost lazy efficiency, not to avoid the blows but to ensure they landed. He would tilt his head just enough to let a blade graze his mask and even his cheek, or shift his torso just enough to let a blood lance pierce his shoulder.

He was testing the limits of his own durability, a man walking through a hurricane just to see how much the wind could push him. Each time a strike landed a heavy kick to his ribs, a slash across his chest, a concussive blast of void energy, Rex would only grin wider, his eyes gleaming with a dark, sadistic fascination.

"More!" he taunted, his voice muffled by the roaring magic. "Is that all the hatred you’ve got?!"

"Give me more, Cassandra! Show me the depth of that void!"

"SHUT UP!" she roared, her eyes glowing with a terrifying, incandescent light.

She reached the apex of her madness. She began to weave her abilities together in a way that shouldn’t have been possible.

She channeled the void magic into her blade, coating the steel in a layer of absolute nothingness, and then she began to spin. She became a vortex of red and black, a literal cyclone of divine destruction.

The air in the chamber began to scream as she unleashed a continuous, unrelenting barrage of attacks. She launched massive, exploding spheres of blood that detonated with the force of falling stars, followed immediately by sweeping arcs of void energy that tore through the very fabric of the room.

She was a continuous loop of violence—slash, explode, pierce, crush—each movement feeding into the next, a seamless, terrifying cascade of high-tier magical combos that turned the entire observation chamber into a chaotic, swirling hellscape of crimson light and black, devouring shadows.

The pressure was immense, the energy was blinding, and in the center of the madness, Rex stood amidst the wreckage of his own body, his laughter rising above the roar of the apocalypse she was creating.

The carnage was absolute. The observation chamber was no longer a room; it was a slaughterhouse of divine proportions.

Crimson spray coated every inch of the walls, and the air was so thick with the metallic scent of blood and the ozone of void magic that it felt like breathing liquid fire.

Cassandra was no longer fighting a man; she was fighting a monument of arrogance. Every time Cassandra saw him smile through the gore and every time he laughed as a shard of her blade buried itself in his thigh, her sanity frayed a little more.

She was losing herself to the Blood Oath, her movements becoming less like a warrior and more like a starving predator.

"Just take a good, long look at yourself!" she screamed, her voice cracking with a manic, desperate edge. "Look at the mess you’ve made!"

"You think this is funny?! You think you can hide behind that mask while you bleed out like a wounded animal?!"

A new, singular obsession took hold of her. She didn’t just want to kill him; she wanted to unmask him.

She wanted to see the expression on his actual face when the light finally left his eyes. She wanted to see if the man beneath the god was as untouchable as he pretended to be.

She surged forward, her speed reaching a point where she seemed to teleport through the crimson haze. She unleashed a devastating, concentrated burst of void-infused strikes, a flurry of blows aimed not at his vitals but at the structural integrity of his mask.

Clang! Crack! Shatter!

Her blade struck with the force of a falling mountain, each impact impacting Rex’s entire frame. She was relentless, a whirlwind of steel aimed at his face, her eyes wide and bloodshot with fury.

Rex, however, was playing a dangerous, almost suicidal game.

He saw the trajectory of the strikes. He saw the intent in her eyes.

He could have parried every single one. He could have used the geological authority to raise a shield of impenetrable, diamond-hard stone.

But he chose not to. He chose to let the chaos consume him.

He let her first strike catch him in the ribs, the sound of snapping bone echoing like a gunshot through the chamber. He felt the jagged edge of his ribs pierce into his lung, a hot, wet sensation that made every breath a struggle.

He let the second strike catch his shoulder, the joint grinding and popping as the bone shattered under the divine pressure.

He was a canvas of destruction. Blood didn’t just leak from him anymore; it erupted.

It sprayed in violent, rhythmic arcs with every heartbeat, painting Cassandra’s face and hair in a macabre mask of his own essence. His skin was a map of lacerations, his muscles torn, his very frame trembling from the sheer kinetic trauma.

"There!" Cassandra shrieked, her blade catching the edge of his mask. "Show me! Show me the man!"

She put every ounce of her remaining divine energy into a singular, twisting upward slash, intending to rip the mask from his face and peel the skin along with it.

But in that microsecond, the "unbeatable" Rex finally reacted.

It wasn’t a full defense. It was a surgical, minimal counter.

As the blade hooked under the rim of the mask, Rex didn’t move his body; he moved only his hand. His gauntlet, slick with his own blood, shot upward with a speed that bypassed even her heightened perception.

CRUNCH.

He didn’t catch the blade; he caught the force of the strike. His hand clamped around the flat of her sword just as it reached the mask, arresting the momentum with a jarring, violent halt.

The sudden stop sent a vibration up Cassandra’s arm that nearly dislocated her shoulder, but it was the precision that mattered. The mask didn’t shatter, and it didn’t fly off.

Instead, the force of his counter grip caused the mask to crack perfectly down the center, a single, clean fissure appearing right between his eyes.

Rex stood there, his body a ruin of broken bones and shredded flesh, blood pouring from his mouth and eyes, his chest heaving with a wet, rattling sound. The mask was cracked, revealing a single, piercing eye that burned with an intensity that rivaled her own.

And he was still smiling.

It was a bloody, terrifying, broken smile. He looked like a man who had just been through a meat grinder and come out the other side feeling refreshed.

"You’re getting... closer..." he wheezed, a spray of red mist escaping his lips as he spoke.

He looked down at his shattered ribs, then back at her, his eyes dancing with a dark, manic delight. "But you’re still... just scratching the surface."

Cassandra’s scream tore through the chamber, a raw, guttural sound of pure, unadulterated hatred that drowned out the collapse of the room around them. It wasn’t a battle cry; it was the sound of a soul breaking apart and reforming into something monstrous. 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

"DIE! DIE! DIE!"

She didn’t just swing her blade; she became the blade. She launched herself forward, her body a blur of motion, a streak of crimson and void.

KRA THOOM!

The first strike was a vertical cleave that split the ground beneath Rex’s feet. The floor erupted in a geyser of stone and fire, launching him skyward.

Before he could even begin to fall, Cassandra was there.

"HRAAAGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!"