Rex
Ogoad Corporation headquarters
Readington, New Jarvis City
United States
Terra, Tellus solar system
Milky way Galaxy
Neutral Free Zone
March 8th 2019
Blackearth Virus.
What exactly was this phenomenon—this unseen calamity—spreading across both the mundane world and the Hidden World?
In truth, the Blackearth Virus was no natural plague.
It was a serum.
A creation of the Fallen Stars, deliberately released across key regions of Terra as part of their grand design—Project Starseed.
Its purpose had been evolution.
Ascension.
A forced awakening of the Terran race.
But something had gone wrong.
Something… intervened.
A cursed existence—known only as the Beast King—had twisted the experiment. What was meant to elevate humanity instead birthed something far more grotesque.
Abominations.
Terra had never been a world of significance.
Its World energy was thin, diluted—barely enough to sustain true ascension. It was the kind of planet that powerful entities ignored, a quiet backwater drifting beneath the notice of greater forces.
That had changed.
Now, Infernal energy seeped into its veins like poison.
The virus did not simply infect—it corrupted. It eroded the body, unraveled the mind, and stained the soul itself. Unlike traditional Infernal contamination, which targeted the soul directly and severed one's connection to the Odyllic, the Blackearth Virus began with the flesh… and worked its way inward.
A slow, insidious decay.
Across Terra, people fell.
Most never understood why.
To them, it was just another pandemic—another crisis contained behind quarantines and military blockades. Cities were locked down. Nations silenced the truth.
Nova York was among them.
A sprawling metropolis of over twelve million souls, now partially caged under the weight of unseen horror. Only a fraction—mere thousands—had been infected. Fewer still had resisted the transformation.
Those who endured…
Disappeared.
They were taken.
Collected under the guise of salvation.
The Ogoad Corporation, a pharmaceutical giant praised for its cutting-edge advancements, moved swiftly to "secure" these survivors. To the public, they were patients—lucky individuals being treated and studied.
But beneath that polished façade…
They were specimens.
The corporation was nothing more than a front—a veil for the Fallen Stars to gather those who showed promise. Those who had resisted Infernal corruption were valuable… rare… worth preserving.
When Rex thought of the hidden powers within the world—beyond Golden Dawn and the Seasonal Courts—this was what came to mind.
Not a kingdom.
Not an army.
But something quieter.
Something embedded within the world itself.
High above the scene, suspended in silence, Rex watched.
Below him, the convoy had just arrived.
Black vans bearing the Octagram emblem of Ogoad rolled toward a vast complex—a six-story glass structure shaped with geometric precision, surrounded by sprawling auxiliary buildings across a thousand acres of land.
They had come from Nova York.
Inside the vans were the latest acquisitions—humans who had survived the virus without succumbing to Infernal corruption. Each one a potential success.
Each one a future weapon.
The gates began to open.
And then—
It struck.
The attack came without warning.
A ripple through space.
A distortion in the air.
Then violence.
Rex's prey descended upon the convoy with brutal precision.
The guards reacted instantly, weapons drawn—Adamas-forged blades gleaming under artificial light. They were no ordinary men. Od-sensitive. Trained. Gifted with Internal Sight that pierced through the Grey—a veil that hid entities like Abominations from the mundane world.
They saw it.
The thing that shouldn't exist.
A mass of writhing black energy—like living vines twisting into a grotesque, shifting form.
This was no lesser creature.
This was something far worse.
The slaughter was immediate.
Black spikes erupted from the ground, impaling guards before they could mount a proper defense. Steel and flesh tore apart in the same instant. Even the drivers were not spared—the attack was absolute, merciless.
Within seconds—
Silence.
Only death remained.
Balial.
An Infernal Devil born from the forced convergence of lesser and mid-tier Beast Abominations.
A failed containment.
A mistake that had escaped.
Its form pulsed with unstable energy—a being without true flesh, held together only by Infernal will. It moved toward the van, its body shifting and writhing before coalescing into a crude, vine-like limb that tore the door clean off its hinges.
Inside—
Four bodies.
Three female. One male.
Each lay strapped to stretchers, unconscious… yet alive.
Around them, a cocoon of faintly glowing World energy shimmered—thin, transparent, fragile.
Transformation was already underway.
Balial ignored the others.
Its focus locked onto the male.
It felt it.
The potential.
The strength of the soul core within.
Its current state was unstable—temporary. A consciousness bound to a body of Infernal energy. It could not sustain itself indefinitely, not here, not without the ambient corruption of Cedar Lake.
It needed a vessel.
A body strong enough to endure it.
Not just any body.
An Awakened one.
The vine-like limb extended slowly, almost reverently, toward the chosen host.
Closer…
Closer—
—
It stopped.
Mid-motion.
Frozen.
Something had changed.
A presence.
Behind it.
Descending.
Rex.
"I never thought we would meet again so soon, Pendragon," Balial rasped, its voice a distortion of something once living.
Rex's lips curved faintly.
"Ah… you remember my name," he said. "See? That wasn't so difficult."
Balial's form shifted, its mass of writhing black energy tightening as its attention fixed entirely on him.
"To think you would hunt me across the stars," it said. "You Paladins are… persistent."
Rex exhaled softly, almost amused.
"Sorry to disappoint," he replied, slipping one hand into his pocket as his gaze remained steady, measuring. "But I didn't come to this planet for you."
That much was true.
Their first encounter had never been coincidence—not on Rex's part.
Back then, on Avalor's colony, when the alarm of the Infernal incursion had rung through the base… Rex had already been there. Waiting.
He hadn't gone for the resources. Not really.
He had gone because he knew.
The Devil would appear.
And it had.
Rex tilted his head slightly, studying Balial as though reacquainting himself with an old enemy.
"Still," he added, voice sharpening just enough to carry intent, "since I didn't get to kill you last time… I'll settle for it now."
His eyes flickered, cold.
"It's a shame your real body isn't here. But if I destroy your consciousness—"
A faint pause.
"You're as good as dead."
Balial's limb halted mid-motion.
The vine-like appendage withdrew from the unconscious man without hesitation.
It understood.
If it attempted possession now, it would leave itself exposed—vulnerable to the Paladin standing before it.
And that…
Was unacceptable.
If it wanted that body—
It would have to kill him first.
With a violent surge, Balial's form expanded.
Four jagged, bat-like wings burst from its back, tearing through the air as Infernal energy coiled around them. Its tail lashed once—sharp, precise—
And it launched forward.
The wind screamed in its wake.
A lance of condensed darkness formed instantly, black as void, thrumming with corrosive power as it shot straight for Rex's face.
Fast.
Lethal.
Unforgiving.
Rex moved.
Not a step.
Not even a shift in stance.
Just a slight lean of his upper body.
The lance tore past him—close enough to graze the air where his face had been an instant before.
At the same moment, Rex's fist dropped.
A simple motion.
Downward.
Unadorned.
But the force behind it—
Balial reacted instantly.
Its wings snapped forward, pushing against the air in a violent burst that propelled its body sideways.
The next second—
Impact.
The ground where its head had been collapsed.
Not cracked.
Not shattered.
Collapsed.
As if space itself had been compressed under the weight of that strike.
A shockwave rippled outward, tearing through the surrounding earth and sending fractured debris spiraling into the air.
Balial froze mid-motion for a fraction of a second.
It understood.
If that blow had connected—
It wouldn't have simply damaged its vessel.
It would have carved away a piece of its consciousness.
Erased it.
Its gaze snapped back to Rex.
The aura surrounding the Paladin was… wrong.
Not in shape.
Not in form.
But in nature.
The mana coiling around his body was denser than anything Balial had encountered in this world—refined to a level that bordered on something else entirely. It wasn't just the quantity.
It was the quality.
Every strand of energy wrapped around him with perfect cohesion, as though it obeyed a higher law. Controlled. Compressed. Alive.
This wasn't the wild, inefficient flow of mana most beings wielded.
This was something honed.
Something elevated.
And suddenly—
Balial understood something far more dangerous than the attack itself.
This wasn't prey.
This was a hunter that had already decided how this battle would end.
Strength Force Variance.
So he was going all out from the start.
The realization barely had time to settle before Balial's thoughts were torn apart—
Rex vanished.
No buildup. No warning.
One moment he stood before him—the next—
He was behind him.
A sharp, rising jab tore upward, Rex's fist colliding with Balial's form with brutal precision.
The impact wasn't just force—
It was weight.
A crushing, absolute pressure that detonated through Balial's body and launched him backward like a ragdoll.
He tore through the forest.
Tree after tree splintered and collapsed as his body carved a violent path across nearly an acre of land, the surrounding woodland reduced to shattered trunks and airborne debris in his wake.
The Ogoad grounds were vast—bordered by dense stretches of forest that now became the perfect battlefield.
Rex had chosen it deliberately.
Controlled chaos.
Contained destruction.
Balial's body slammed through the final line of trees before crashing into the earth, gouging a deep trench into the ground.
When he rose—
A quarter of his face was gone.
Not torn.
Not shattered.
Erased.
White light bled into the void where it had been, searing into his form—not physically, but mentally.
Balial did not feel pain.
Not in the way mortals did.
His body was Infernal energy—form without flesh, existence without nerves. Physical damage meant nothing. Exhaustion was irrelevant.
But this—
This was different.
The white radiance embedded in Rex's strike burrowed into his consciousness, unraveling him from within. It was as if something had reached directly into his mind and ripped.
For half a second—
Balial ceased to function.
That alone was impossible.
Ordinary aura-infused attacks would have dispersed harmlessly against his Infernal body. His energy could break them down, consume them, render them meaningless.
But this wasn't ordinary.
The Strength Force Variance changed everything.
It didn't just strike the body—
It imposed force as a law.
A principle that his Infernal nature could not simply dissolve.
Balial's form writhed, reforming as the missing portion of his head regenerated in shifting tendrils of black energy. The white light resisted, clinging stubbornly before finally being purged.
With it came something else.
Emotion.
Raw.
Violent.
Rage.
Hatred.
Contempt.
All of it surged through his consciousness, directed entirely at the man standing beyond the broken forest.
If that blow had landed clean—
If it had crushed his head completely—
He would not have regenerated.
He would have been erased.
"Never…" Balial's voice twisted, unstable, seething. "Never has an ant forced me to feel something like that."
The air around him darkened as his power flared.
With a flick of his fingers—
Dozens of black lances formed instantly, condensing from pure Infernal energy before launching toward Rex in a relentless barrage.
Rex didn't move.
Not immediately.
The silver-white hue that had coated his fist shifted—
Deepening.
Intensifying.
Until it burned.
Bright red.
Heat bled into the air around him, warping the space itself as the temperature surged violently upward.
The ground beneath his feet began to crack.
And the forest—
Seemed to hold its breath.
[Flame Creation — Dragon Claw]
Rex moved.
His arm carved through the air—and with it, an inferno was born.
Crimson fire erupted in sweeping arcs, forming jagged, draconic claw marks that tore forward with violent precision. Each strike cleaved through the incoming black lances, the flames burning so intensely that the Infernal constructs disintegrated on contact.
Yet—
Not a single tree caught fire.
Not a leaf singed.
The heat was catastrophic… but controlled.
Perfectly.
Fire Elemental Force Variance.
Those who walked the path of Mana Arts—mages, mystic artists—could tap into elemental energy, shaping it into spells or techniques.
But what Rex wielded was something else entirely.
Where ordinary elemental manipulation borrowed from the world—
Force Variance imposed it.
His flames were not just fire.
They were law-bound combustion, a principle made manifest.
And unlike normal elemental energy—
They could burn Infernal existence itself.
Balial understood this.
And still—
It attacked.
With a sudden thrust, the black lance in its grasp shot forward, aimed directly at Rex's core.
Rex didn't retreat.
His left hand snapped up, deflecting the strike with a sharp parry that forced the lance off its path. In the same motion, his right fist—already blazing with Fire Force—drove forward.
Impact.
A burst of condensed flame detonated on contact, ripping through Balial's arm in a violent explosion of red light.
The limb fractured—then unraveled.
Balial didn't scream.
Didn't flinch.
Pain meant nothing.
Instead, it moved.
Its body blurred backward, retreating just as the damaged arm reformed in writhing strands of Infernal energy. The regeneration was fast—but not without cost.
Balial knew.
This wasn't Cedar Lake.
There was no ambient Infernal field to sustain it.
Every strike. Every regeneration. Every manifestation—
Came from its own reserves.
And those reserves were finite.
If it exhausted them—
Its consciousness would be left exposed.
Vulnerable.
I can't use Word Soul Magic… the thought flickered through its mind. Too costly.
Then—
A shift.
Cold calculation.
Then I'll match him.
Balial raised its weapon again.
A second black lance formed in its grip, its surface rippling with unstable energy. With a sweeping motion, it slashed through the air—
And released it.
A surge of black wind exploded outward, corrosive and violent, tearing through the upper canopy of the forest as it surged toward Rex. Trees twisted, bark peeled away, and leaves dissolved into nothingness as the Infernal gale devoured everything in its path.
Rex blurred.
Rapid Step.
His form flickered from one position to another, slipping between the currents of destruction as the wind blades carved through the space he had just occupied. Each movement was precise—measured—leaving no wasted motion.
Infernal Force Variance.
So Balial had it too.
Of course it did.
Just as Rex's force could bypass Infernal defenses—
Infernal force could devour mortal existence just as easily.
Even the strongest healing arts would struggle to mend such wounds. The damage was not just physical—it was corrosive to the very essence.
Rex's fist ignited once more.
Flames spiraled outward, gathering and condensing until they took shape—
A blade.
A massive greatsword of roaring crimson fire formed in his grasp, its edge shimmering with unbearable heat.
Then—
It changed.
His Strength Force Variance settled over it, compressing the flames, giving them weight—substance. The wild inferno became something solid, something real.
And over that—
He layered another force.
Sword Force.
The air shifted.
Balial felt it immediately.
A presence.
A threat.
The weapon Rex now held wasn't just fire.
It was a convergence of principles—
Destruction.
Weight.
Precision.
A blade that could erase.
Rex exhaled slowly, stabilizing the weapon as the energies within it harmonized. Around his body, his Validus technique flared—now infused with Fire Force—wrapping him in a blazing mantle of controlled heat.
The temperature spiked.
It felt like standing near the core of a star.
And yet—
The forest remained untouched.
Not burned.
Not consumed.
Only the air trembled.
A testament to absolute control.
Balial didn't hesitate.
Its lance carved through the air once more, generating a spiraling vortex of black wind that roared forward like a devouring storm. Trees were uprooted, twisted, and shredded as the Infernal maelstrom tore across the battlefield.
Rex rose.
He stepped into the air, ascending above the vortex, placing distance between himself and the consuming darkness below.
From above—
He struck.
The flaming greatsword swept forward, releasing a crescent arc of burning force—a deviation of the Flying Crescent Slash—that tore downward toward Balial like a falling sun.
[Burning Disk Slash]
Rex's blade turned—
And the sky split.
A blazing disk of crimson fire tore free from the arc of his greatsword, spinning forward with violent precision. It carved through the descending vortex of Infernal wind, its passage igniting the air itself as it collided head-on with Balial's attack.
Fire met wind.
But not as the world understood it.
There was no oxygen to feed the flames. No natural law to dictate the outcome. No balance of elements.
Only Force.
Only will.
And in that clash—
The stronger law prevailed.
Rex's Fire Force did not grow.
It consumed.
The Infernal winds were not fanned—they were erased. Incinerated down to their very essence, every trace of Infernal energy burned away as the disk carved cleanly through the vortex.
What remained surged forward.
Unstoppable.
The moment it reached Balial—
It detonated.
Not as a simple explosion, but as a controlled annihilation.
The disk fractured into countless razor fragments, each one a shard of Sword Force wrapped in searing Fire Force. They scattered outward in every direction, tearing through the battlefield like a rain of burning blades.
It was less like a single strike—
And more like a cluster bombardment, each fragment carrying lethal intent.
Balial reacted instantly.
A barrier of compressed Infernal Wind Force formed around him—dense, layered, reinforced with everything he could muster in that moment.
It wasn't enough.
The flames ate through it.
When the blast subsided—
Balial staggered.
Half of his left arm was gone.
His ribs—if such a structure could even be called that—had been carved away, leaving gaps in his form that struggled to stabilize.
And his mind—
His consciousness—
Burned.
"Those flames… humph…—" Balial's voice faltered, jagged, unstable. "They're… not… ordinary…"
For the first time—
It struggled.
Not physically.
But existentially.
Breathing shouldn't have been necessary. It didn't possess lungs. It didn't require air.
And yet—
The heat pressed in on it, suffocating, overwhelming, as if the very concept of its existence was being scorched.
Balial's gaze locked onto Rex.
Recognition flickered.
Understanding followed.
It was a Greater Devil. A Herald of a Demon King. A being that, at full strength, could devour entire worlds with a single thought.
And yet—
Since its descent into the physical plane, it had been stopped.
Again.
And again.
By this… mortal.
Even now—on the verge of securing a vessel worthy of its power—
That same mortal stood in its way.
And worse—
Even in this diminished state—
Rex fought it with ease.
The answer became clear.
"…Draconic Fire Force," Balial muttered, its voice lowering as realization took hold. "So that's it…"
Its form shifted, wary now—calculating in a way it hadn't been before.
"The blood of dragons flows through you… Pendragon."
A pause.
"A Dragonkin."
That explained everything.
Infernal Wind Force should have been more than enough to defend against standard elemental attacks. It should have dispersed them, consumed them, rendered them ineffective.
But not this.
Not dragonfire.
These flames didn't just burn matter.
They burned essence.
They devoured energy, erased corruption, and imposed a higher order of existence upon whatever they touched.
Only something of draconic origin could do that.
Only a flame born from a lineage that stood above the natural order itself.
Balial's form steadied, though the damage remained evident.
For the first time—
It wasn't looking at Rex with contempt.
But with something far more dangerous.
Caution.
"It's in my family name," Rex said.
And it was.
Pendragon.
A lineage etched into history across countless worlds—a Pleiadian bloodline born from dragon slayers… who themselves carried the blood of dragons. For millennia, they had hunted those ancient beings, their legend spreading far beyond their home system, echoing through civilizations both advanced and primitive.
Even Terra remembered them.
Fragments of truth, distorted into myth—the tale of Arthur Pendragon, the kingdom of Camelot—shadows of a far greater reality. And not just Terra. Across the Neutral Free Zones, across distant, undeveloped worlds, the name had taken root in different forms.
That was the weight of a Named Family within the Divine Federation.
Power was only part of it.
The rest—
Was legacy.
Reputation that transcended stars.
The same could be said of families like the Haravoks… the Sinclairs…
And many more who shaped the Federation from the shadows.
Balial laughed.
A harsh, grating sound that rippled through the air.
"Hah… hah… hah!" it barked. "So the dragons are gone… and now your kind turns its blade toward us?"
Dragons were nearly extinct—whether truly gone or simply hidden was unknown. But the hunters had not stopped.
They had adapted.
And Abominations had become their prey.
Abominations.
Beings of madness and corruption. Entities that defied the natural order—intrusions from the Infernal plane that had no place in the Physical world.
Rex had been raised to despise them.
Not taught.
Conditioned.
It ran through his bones, as instinctive as breathing.
Cedar Lake had tested that resolve. He had wanted to purge it—wipe every last one of them from existence.
But he hadn't been able to.
Not then.
Now—
He would settle for this.
"You were born as one, weren't you?" Rex said, his voice calm, almost clinical. "Not fallen. Not corrupted. Just… made that way."
A slight tilt of his head.
"You're what—five, six generations deep?"
"So what?" Balial snapped, its voice twisting with irritation.
Rex shrugged faintly.
"Nothing," he said. "Just a shame."
His gaze sharpened.
"I don't get to fight you at your strongest."
A breath.
"That would've been a battle worth having."
He moved.
Just once.
A single step forward.
[Seven-Headed Dancing Dragon Style — First Movement: Roar of the Dragon]
The world buckled.
Air pressure collapsed inward, then detonated outward in the same instant. The ground shattered beneath Rex's foot, chunks of earth and grass ripped free as the space around him warped under the force of his movement.
Red light—
Hundreds of streaks—
Flashed through the battlefield.
Too fast.
Too many.
Even Balial couldn't track them all.
Impact.
Then another.
Then another—
A relentless cascade of slashes carved through Balial's form, each one laced with draconic fire and compressed force. The attacks overlapped, stacked, amplified—each strike feeding into the next with explosive precision.
Balial's body was launched once more.
Through trees.
Through earth.
Through space itself.
A thousand trunks shattered in its wake as it was driven across the forest, white-hot agony searing through its consciousness with every strike.
When it finally stopped—
It barely held together.
One arm gone.
A leg erased.
Large portions of its upper and lower body missing—unstable, flickering as it struggled to maintain cohesion.
Only its wings kept it suspended.
"You survived," Rex said from above, his voice steady as he looked down.
"Impressive."
The Seven-Headed Dancing Dragon Style was not a single strike.
It was a sequence.
A chain of precision attacks layered into one continuous motion.
Two hundred and ten slashes—
Executed within a single movement.
Seven movements in total.
Each one building upon the last.
Each one increasing in power.
If interrupted, the sequence collapsed.
But if completed—
It was said the final strike held enough force to bring down worlds.
And Balial had endured the first.
Even in a weakened state—
That alone spoke volumes.
But it had come at a cost.
To survive, Balial had burned through vast reserves of Infernal energy, reinforcing its form against the relentless assault. What remained now…
Was barely enough.
Not enough to heal.
Not enough to sustain a prolonged fight.
Certainly not enough to invoke its Word Soul Magic.
Balial's form trembled.
Then—
It roared.
"I'll drag you to the Nine Hells with me, Pendragon!"
The Odyllic trembled.
Something shifted.
Rex felt it instantly—the flow of Infernal energy within Balial destabilizing, compressing, then expanding beyond control.
Its body began to swell.
Growing.
Distorting.
Mass accumulating unnaturally, as though it were forcing more existence into a form that could no longer contain it.
Then—
It ruptured.
A catastrophic explosion of black energy erupted outward, devouring everything in its path. Infernal flames surged like a living tide, seeking to consume the forest, the land—
Everything.
Rex moved.
Not away.
But toward the Ogoad convoy.
He landed beside the van, where the unconscious humans remained cocooned in their fragile metamorphosis.
No hesitation.
His hand rose.
Before the explosion could breach the forest line—
His Ability activated.
A pentagonal barrier of crimson force materialized instantly, expanding outward and locking into place. It sealed the blast within its boundaries, containing the Infernal detonation as if reality itself had been stitched shut.
The black flames collided against it—
Raged—
Struggled—
Then collapsed inward.
Compressed.
Refined.
Reduced.
Until all that remained—
Was a flickering mass of dark fire.
Hovering.
Then settling—
Into Rex's open palm.
"Whew… that was close," Rex muttered, exhaling slowly as the last traces of heat flickered across his palm.
It hadn't looked like much from the outside.
But that detonation—
It had been far more dangerous than its brief flash suggested. Enough to wipe out the entire sector. Enough to reduce the Ogoad facility—and everything around it—to nothing.
Sacrificial magic.
A violation of natural law itself.
Power drawn not from balance, not from flow—but from loss. From destruction willingly invoked. It twisted the structure of reality, amplifying force beyond what should be possible.
Rex clenched his fist.
Draconic Fire Force surged, tightening around the remnants of Infernal energy still lingering in his grasp. The black flame shrieked silently as it was consumed, burned down to nothing under the authority of his power.
The tension in his body eased.
"…That bastard gets to live another day, huh."
Balial's presence was gone.
Not destroyed.
Not entirely.
Its consciousness had fled at the moment of detonation—escaping before total annihilation. What remained of it now would be nothing more than a drifting ego, unstable, unable to sustain itself for long in the physical plane.
For now—
It was harmless.
A sharp crack split the air.
Rex's attention snapped toward the gates of the Ogoad facility.
Space fractured.
A thin, vertical line of darkness carved itself into reality, splitting it cleanly before expanding into a narrow portal. From within it, a figure stepped forward—calm, unhurried.
Robed in dark gold.
A white veil obscuring their face.
An aura of quiet, restrained divinity clung to them like a second skin.
"Tch… I didn't make it in time."
The voice that followed was soft—melodic, almost gentle—but edged with faint annoyance.
Rex relaxed slightly.
"Looks like your prediction worked out anyway," he said. "The bastard still slipped away like a roach."
His gaze drifted briefly to the van.
Inside, the children remained.
Three girls. One boy—no older than fifteen.
Still unconscious.
Still transforming.
World energy cocooned them in fragile light, their bodies caught between what they were… and what they were about to become.
Rex stared for a moment.
Then sighed.
And turned away.
His Internal Sense flared.
Multiple signatures.
Approaching fast.
Ogoad guards.
He had no interest in dealing with them.
Without warning, Rex moved.
He reached out, catching the robed priestess by the arm before she could react—then—
Rapid Step.
The world folded.
Distance collapsed.
Readington vanished.
Nova York surged into existence.
They reappeared atop a distant skyscraper, high above the city, far removed from the chaos left behind.
The wind howled faintly at that height, carrying with it the distant hum of a city trying to pretend nothing was wrong.
The priestess steadied herself, though her body had already been reinforced with mana in preparation for the sudden displacement.
It hadn't mattered.
Rex's own mana had wrapped around her, stabilizing her through the transition with absolute precision.
She turned.
Facing the city.
Silent.
Still.
Beneath the veil, her expression was hidden—but something in her posture spoke volumes.
A quiet solemnity.
A weight.
As if she could see beyond the skyline—
To everything that was about to come.
"This place… will soon become a city of bones and blood," the Priestess said softly.
Her voice carried no panic. No urgency.
Only certainty.
Rex remained silent.
He didn't interrupt. Didn't question. He simply let her speak, giving her the space to bear whatever weight her visions had placed upon her.
The wind swept across the rooftop, tugging faintly at her robes.
"How soon," she continued, "before you move against the Beast King?"
Rex exhaled, his gaze drifting across the skyline.
"Not long," he said. "Leon should already be with Samantha Sinclair by now. Sophia's sent Titus to retrieve her."
A brief pause.
Then, quieter—
"You sure it's wise, letting him get involved in this?"
The Priestess didn't hesitate.
"Leon must be the one to kill him."
There was no doubt in her voice.
No room for negotiation.
"Your role," she added, "is to guide him to that moment."
Rex glanced at her, then away again, shoulders rising in a faint, indifferent shrug.
It didn't matter to him.
Who dealt the final blow—
Who claimed the kill—
None of that held weight.
So long as the source was erased.
So long as the rot was purged.
"As long as the Abomination plague is wiped from this planet," Rex said, voice steady, "that's all that matters."