The air in the plaza didn’t just feel heavy; it felt thick, like breathing liquid lead. The tension was a physical cord stretched so tight it threatened to snap the very reality of the space around them.

Rex didn’t even move his feet. He simply raised his right hand, his fingers curling as if grasping the throat of the world itself.

"Gravity," he commanded.

The effect was instantaneous and brutal. The gravity field didn’t just increase; it slammed into Calivara like a falling mountain.

The force quadrupled, a crushing weight that demanded every ounce of her will to resist. She didn’t fly back; she was driven down.

Her knees hit the cracked stone with a sound like a hammer striking an anvil, the impact sending a shockwave of dust through the air. She went to her knees with the practiced, grim precision of a veteran, her body instinctively bracing for the load she knew was coming.

She attempted to fight back, her blood magic pulsing as she tried to generate internal pressure to counteract the external crush, but it was a losing battle.

"Blood working," Rex observed, his voice dripping with a terrifyingly calm arrogance. "It generates localized pressure."

"But gravity? Gravity is universal."

"It hits every atom of your mass simultaneously..." Rex laughed. "You’re trying to fight a tide with a spoon, Calivara."

She looked up at him, her eyes burning with a defiant intelligence. "Tch!"

"I know," she grunted through clenched teeth. "Just confirming... we’re on the same page."

"Good," Rex smirked, his eyes cold. "Some people get noisy when they’re about to break."

"I find the noise... tedious."

He didn’t wait for a rebuttal. He increased the pressure again.

The weight doubled, then tripled. Calivara was forced down, her face inches from the dust, her breath coming in ragged, stifled gasps.

She was no longer standing; she was a warrior pinned under the weight of a god.

But then, a new sound erupted from the periphery. A sound of pure, unadulterated fury.

Kaelira was coming.

She wasn’t just running; she was a streak of heat and rage, a living conflagration. The berserker designation had triggered.

The death of her companion, the collapse of Calivara, the sheer brutality of the fight—it all fed the flame. She was a walking explosion of biological fury.

Rex turned his head, a predatory grin spreading across his face.

"There it is," he muttered. "The ceiling breaker."

Kaelira hit him like a meteor. The impact was a cacophony of cracking stone and roaring flame.

Her first strike was a conflagration of eight hundred degrees, a heat so intense it seemed to melt the very air. The outer plates of his armor groaned, the stone shrieking under the stress.

CRACK.

She began to strike. Her fists were not just fists; they were hammers of fury.

Thud. Crack. Boom.

Each blow was a sledgehammer of flesh and force. The armor groaned, the Earthen Authority working feverishly to repair the fractures even as she created them.

The sound was a rhythmic violence: the crunch of stone, the hiss of steam, and the grunt of exertion.

Rex stood there, a monolith of calmness in the center of the storm. He let her strike and he let the heat burn. He let the rage wash over him.

"Go on," he taunted, his voice cutting through the roar of the flames. His face was inches from her fist as she swung. "This is the part where the rage is supposed to make you stronger."

"Show me the limit!"

"Shut... up!" Kaelira screamed, her voice a raw howl of pain and power.

She was pounding him, her body a blur of motion, her hits turning the armor into a grinding mill of shrapnel and dust. But Rex was counting.

He was watching the rhythm of her breath, the cadence of her strikes, the way her energy signature began to flicker like a dying candle.

He saw the moment the rhythm broke. The moment the exhaustion overrode the adrenaline.

"There it is," Rex said, his voice almost gentle, almost pitying. "The ceiling."

As the exhaustion threshold was crossed, Rex didn’t give her a second to recover. He didn’t give her a chance to breathe.

He unleashed the gravity again.

The weight slammed into her like a physical hammer. The momentum of her rage was shattered. Kaelira’s limbs, heavy as lead, were forced down.

She fell to her knees, her breath coming in ragged, wet sobs of exhaustion. The heat was still there, but the fire was dying, leaving only the smoldering embers of her will.

Rex stepped forward, his shadow looming over her like a tombstone.

"You’re done," he said, the words as final as a closing grave.

The air in the plaza didn’t just hum; it screamed. The tension had reached a fever pitch where the atmosphere itself felt brittle, like glass ready to shatter under the weight of the unspoken will of gods.

The punch didn’t just arrive; it detonated.

It wasn’t Kaelira’s fury this time. It was a calculated catastrophe.

Apollo had leveraged the debris of the eastern wall, using the shattered remains of the merchant district as a tactical shroud. The punch came from a blind spot in the geometry of the fight, a sudden, divine class impact that bypassed Rex’s perceived defenses.

CRACK BOOM!

The sound was like a mountain splitting in two. The force of the blow, a concentrated burst of divine output, slammed into Rex’s armored flank.

The stone plates didn’t just crack; they exploded into shrapnel, shards of granite and dust flying like lethal shrapnel. Rex was thrown sideways, his boots carving deep furrows into the plaza floor as he was launched backward.

He cleared fifteen meters of rubble in a single, violent arc, his body a blur of motion until he slammed into the ruins of a merchant’s ground floor. The wall buckled and the ceiling groaned.

He came to a halt amidst the splintered wood and crushed stone of a home turned grave.

Rex stood up, brushing a layer of dust from his shoulder. He didn’t look hurt; he looked annoyed.

He looked back across the plaza, his eyes narrowing as he analyzed the chaos.

Apollo stood there, his arm wrapped around Kaelira’s waist to support her exhausted frame. But they weren’t just standing; they were fusing. A radiant, golden light was flowing from Apollo into Kaelira, not the slow, healing drip of a spell but a violent, rapid surge of entropy reversal.

It was a biological overclocking. Apollo was feeding his very essence into her cells, rebuilding her stamina in real time.

Kaelira’s energy signature was rebuilding itself, her breath hitching as her body was forced back into a state of combat readiness. The rage conversion was still active, fueled by the life affinity surge.

It was a loop: Apollo gave her life, and her rage converted that life into pure, destructive output.

Rex watched them, and for the first time, a genuine spark of respect flickered in his eyes. "Hoh...?"

"That’s... new," he called out, his voice cutting through the dust like a blade. He stepped out from the wreckage, his presence commanding. "I take it back."

"That’s genuinely a fucking good idea, and you should have led with that."

"We were saving it," Apollo grunted, his voice strained, his face tight with the effort of the transfer.

The energy flow was a double-edged sword; it was rebuilding her, but it was draining him at a terrifying rate.

"Smart," Rex countered, his voice dripping with his usual arrogance. He began to walk forward, his gait steady. "But let’s be real."

"You’re advertising your limit right now, and I can see it," Rex crossed his arms. "The drain is visible."

"You’re bleeding energy faster than you can replenish it."

He paused, his eyes scanning the field with the precision of a predator. "You have four minutes max, and that’s your ceiling."

"You’re already halfway there."

But Rex’s gaze didn’t just stay on the people. He looked at the ground.

He looked at the way the life affinity field was bleeding into the environment. The entropy reversal wasn’t just healing Kaelira; it was rippling outward. It was touching the broken stone.

It was touching the debris.

And then, Rex realized.

A low, dark laugh bubbled up from his throat. It wasn’t the mocking laugh of a villain, nor the theatrical boast of a conqueror.

It was the laugh of a man who had just seen the punchline to a cosmic joke. It was a genuine, unfiltered burst of amusement.

He laughed because the very thing they were using to survive was changing the rules of the fight itself.

"You healed... the outer plates," Rex said, his voice booming across the plaza, his eyes shining with a manic, triumphant light. "You actually healed the armor."