Chapter 742: 742. He Was a Handler. You Were the Most Expensive Hound He Ever Trained

Rex didn’t flinch. He stood his ground in the empty sky, a man who had seen the bottom of the world and wasn’t afraid of the heights.

"You are not here because Celestina sent you," Rex said, his voice cutting through her fury like a blade. "You are here because Kregg is dead, and Celestina gave you an operational directive that happened to point directly at the man responsible."

"Those are not the same thing, Ignivara..."

"The motivation is different, and so is the fighting style."

"A true operative of Celestina would be patient."

"She would be methodical. But you?" Rex laughed. "Oh boy... you are pushing this engagement forward with a reckless, violent urgency because you don’t just want the mission accomplished... you want it resolved."

Ignivara’s next assault was a frantic, jagged thing. The disciplined, economical grace of her aerial combat had vanished, replaced by a desperate, unrefined ferocity.

She was no longer fighting like a soldier; she was fighting like a wounded animal, her movements wide and heavy, her emotional instability bleeding into her technical output. The air around her didn’t just whistle; it screamed with the turbulence of her rage.

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

He let her close the distance, his eyes cold and analytical, watching the flaws in her technique widen with every heartbeat. He redirected the first strike with a flick of his will, caught the second on a rebuilt stone shield that groaned under the impact, and as the two of them collided in a mess of heat and kinetic force, he spoke with a chilling, detached clarity.

"He was important to you," Rex said, his voice cutting through the roar of the wind like a scalpel. "Not professionally. Not as a commander. He was actually important."

"A sentimental attachment in a profession that demands none."

"He was my mentor!" she snarled, the words tearing from her throat as she slammed a fist toward his chest.

The close-range physicality of the fight had neutralized her aerial advantage; there was no room for her wings to build momentum, forcing them into a brutal, grinding struggle of pure strength. "He was the one who found me!"

"Before Celestina... before the Legion... He was the one who explained what the hell I was and why it meant something!"

Rex didn’t offer a comforting look. He didn’t even offer a moment of silence to respect her grief.

He simply held her at bay, his telekinesis acting as a buffer between her fury and his skin, his expression one of mild, almost bored observation.

"Then I am sorry," Rex said, though the words held zero warmth.

They were as hollow as a tomb. "That he died the way he did... It was a pathetic way for a man of his supposed caliber to go out."

Ignivara recoiled as if he had physically struck her. She broke the close distance deliberately, soaring backward and upward, her wings beating a frantic rhythm as she fought to create space and find the air she needed to breathe again.

"You killed him," she accused, her voice trembling with a lethal, vibrating tension. "YOU FUCKING KILLED HIM!!!"

"Well, duh, he was going to kill more people who couldn’t defend themselves," Rex countered, his voice devoid of any moral weight.

To him, it was a simple equation of efficiency. "Kregg was a man of grand ambitions and small morals."

"The choice he made in that canyon, the choice to prioritize his own tactical advantage over innocent lives, is why he is a corpse."

"I was merely the mechanism that executed the consequence," Rex smirked. "Do not confuse the tool with the cause."

"It is close enough!" she screamed, her golden eyes flashing with a terrifying, primal light.

"It really is not," Rex said.

His voice wasn’t hard or furious; it was worse. It was the voice of a man stating a mathematical fact, a man who had weighed the lives of hundreds against the life of one man and found the trade to be a bargain.

"If you had arrived at that canyon and found those same people, and Kregg had made the same call, would you have stopped him?"

"Would you have stood in the way of his ’glory’ to save a few peasants?"

"But fuck it... you’re one of them anyway." Rex laughed.

Silence fell between them, heavy and suffocating, broken only by the distant, mournful cry of the wind. Ignivara remained still, her wings poised, her chest heaving.

"And that is the honest version of the question," Rex continued, his eyes narrowing with a hint of predatory disdain. "Don’t give me the ’justified’ bullshit just because you’re right in your point of view!"

"Tell me if you would have done exactly what I did with a different point of view when you didn’t discover the Legion... given the same information and the same options."

"Or are you just a hypocrite clinging to the memory of a man who was too weak to be truly great?"

"I would not have been in that position!" she snapped, her voice defensive, a desperate attempt to shield her ego from his scrutiny.

"That is not an answer," Rex said, his lip curling into a faint, mocking sneer. "That is an escape."

"It is the only answer I have!" she hissed.

The flatness in her voice was the sound of a cornered creature, the sound of someone who realized they were being mentally dismantled, maneuvered into a corner where the only way out was to confront the ugly truth they were terrified to face.

Rex let the silence stretch, watching her struggle, enjoying the way her certainty was eroding under the weight of his logic. He let the tension hang, a predator waiting for the final, inevitable crack in her resolve.

The silence didn’t last long. Rex broke it, not with a counterattack, but with a sound that was far more insulting: a low, guttural chuckle that rapidly escalated into a full, mocking laugh.

It was a sound of genuine amusement, the kind a man makes when watching a child struggle to stand against a gale.

"You want more explanation about the escape I just said...? Well, yes. Exactly as you thought," Rex said, his eyes dancing with a sadistic light. "You’re clinging to a ghost, Ignivara!"

"You’re fighting for a man who was nothing more than a glorified butcher with a sentimental streak."

"Shut up!" she screamed, her voice cracking under the sheer pressure of her rage.

Her whole body became a projectile of gold and fury as she lunged. She unleashed a flurry of wing strikes so rapid they blurred into a singular, devastating arc of kinetic energy.

Rex didn’t even bother with a shield this time. He danced.

He moved with a fluid, almost insulting ease, his body tilting and weaving through the air as if he were performing a choreographed routine. A massive wing swept toward his head; he leaned back just enough for the wind of the strike to ruffle his hair.

As a second strike aimed at his ribs, he spun on his axis, the edge of the wing whistling past his chest by a hair’s breadth. He was dodging her most lethal blows with the nonchalance of a man walking through a light rain.

"He was a good teacher!" Ignivara roared, the sound a primal, agonizing scream that tore from her lungs.

She was losing control, her movements becoming frantic and heavy. "He taught me discipline! He taught me strength! He taught me what it meant to be a predator!"

"He taught you how to be a loyal dog!" Rex barked back, laughing even harder as he ducked under a sweeping blow that would have decapitated a lesser man. "He taught you how to follow orders and die for a cause that didn’t even care if you lived!"

"He wasn’t a teacher, Ignivara!"

"He was a handler. And you? You’re just the most expensive hound he ever trained."

"You don’t know him!" she screamed, her eyes brimming with a mixture of tears and pure, unadulterated hatred.

She threw herself at him, her hands glowing with concentrated thermal energy, her strikes coming in a desperate, wide arcing barrage.

Thwack. Whoosh. Crack.

Every time she thought she had him pinned, he was gone, a phantom in the sky, leaving her to strike at nothing but empty air and the echoes of her own frustration.

"I knew him well enough to see the rot!" Rex shouted over her screams, his laughter booming through the clouds.

He dodged a lunge that sent her flying past him, her own momentum nearly sending her into a tailspin. "He was a man who thought he was a god, but he died in the dirt like the rest of the cattle!"

"And you’re here, crying over his corpse like a heartbroken girl instead of a warrior!"

"Die!" she shrieked, the word a jagged shard of glass.

She channeled every ounce of her dragon kin’s strength into a single, massive downward strike, her wings snapping shut to drive her like a spear toward his center.

Rex watched her approach, the sheer violence of her movement enough to make the very air tremble. He didn’t look afraid; he looked delighted.

As the shadow of her descent fell over him, he let out one last, mocking peal of laughter.

"Look at you!" he taunted, his voice dripping with venomous glee. "All that power, all that heritage, and you’re nothing but a weeping widow for a dead man’s mistakes!"