Chapter 778: 778. Four Kingdoms, One Sequence, Zero Mercy (Solmordia Gets a Special Slot)

The channel fell into a silence so profound it felt heavy, a vacuum of sound that seemed to suck the very oxygen from the clearing. For two agonizing seconds, the only sound was the wet, ragged breathing of Ignivara and the distant, haunting groan of settling ruins.

"You... are the one who killed Kregg," Celestina said.

Her voice wasn’t filled with the rage of a grieving leader or the shock of a soldier; it was flat. It was the chilling, clinical register Zane had described in his reports, the sound of a high-functioning intellect processing a terrifying new variable with lightning speed, refusing to let the mask of confusion slip until the data was absolute.

"I am," Rex replied.

He didn’t boast. He didn’t gloat.

He simply stated it as one might state the weather, as if the slaughter of a legendary warrior were nothing more than a minor logistical achievement.

"The Lustful Villain," she whispered, the name tasting like poison on the transmission.

"Among other things," Rex said, his tone dripping with a cocky, infuriating nonchalance.

He looked down at his hands, as if checking for a stray speck of dust, though they were likely still stained with the lifeblood of the morning’s carnage.

Another pause followed, longer and more suffocating than the first.

"What do you want?" she demanded, the steel returning to her voice.

"I want to tell you something," Rex said, his eyes narrowing with a predatory focus. "And Celestina?"

"You are going to want to write this down... You won’t want to miss a single syllable."

"Tell me," she commanded.

When Rex spoke the next words, his voice possessed a terrifying, rhythmic quality. It was the voice of a man who had choreographed this entire conversation long before the first sword was drawn, a man who had arrived at this exact moment of psychological devastation precisely when he intended to.

"When I am finished with Aethelgard," Rex began, and he let the pause hang in the air, heavy and ominous, like the silence before a landslide, "I am going to move through every kingdom outside this island in sequence."

He began to list them, each name a death sentence, each one delivered with the cold precision of a butcher’s tally. "The Valdric Sovereignty first. Their military infrastructure is a magnificent component, and it will be mine."

"The Thornweald Collective second; their druid networks are a problematic resistance vector that needs to be pruned."

"The Aurelian Compact is third; their magical institutions are the relevant intelligence targets."

"The Sable Reaches fourth."

As he spoke, Rex turned his head, his gaze dropping to Ignivara. She lay on the blood-soaked earth, her golden eyes locked onto his.

There was no plea for mercy in her stare, only the grim, soul-crushing recognition of two titans standing on opposite sides of an inevitable catastrophe. They both knew the world was ending; they were just deciding how much it would bleed before it died.

"And Solmordia last," Rex concluded, his voice dropping to a low, dark velvet. "Wherever Solmordia may be hiding."

"Because by the time my shadow reaches its borders, I will not need to hunt for it... You will have told me."

The silence that followed was a physical blow.

"You are threatening my kingdom," Celestina said, her voice finally trembling, though she fought to keep it steady.

"I am not threatening you, Celestina," Rex corrected, a sharp, arrogant smirk cutting across his face. "A threat implies uncertainty."

"I am simply telling you what the next several years look like... The threat is merely implicit."

"You cannot..." she started, and her voice broke.

The flat, analytical register was gone, replaced by something far more terrifying: the specific, hollowed-out dread that only the most intelligent minds produce when they finally grasp the true, horrifying scale of the monster they are facing.

"You cannot possibly do all of that."

"I already dismantled the Underlayer in a single night," Rex countered, his voice rising with a terrifying, manic confidence. "Aethelgard required only a morning, but of course... I let some other people live just because I want to do even more fucked-up things to them."

He turned his head, surveying the devastation he had wrought. He looked at the jagged, broken skyline of Aethelgard, the scorched rooftops, the shattered districts, and the ruins of the plaza where blood had pooled in the cracks of the stone.

His gaze drifted to the north, to the massive, motionless heap of scales and broken bone that was the dragon, lying silent in the rubble like a fallen mountain.

He looked back at the crystal, his eyes burning with a dark, impatient hunger.

"Tell me where Solmordia is," he commanded, the sheer weight of his ego demanding an answer. "Tell me now, and I will come there directly... rather than making you wait for the sequence."

The silence that followed Rex’s ultimatum was not empty; it was heavy, suffocating, and thick with the scent of ozone and drying blood. It stretched on for an eternity, a void of sound that seemed to pull the very life from the air.

Rex didn’t look impatient. He simply waited, his eyes fixed on the pulsing light of the crystal, his expression one of bored expectation.

He even reached out a finger to casually tap the connection indicator, checking to ensure the transmission hadn’t flickered.

"You are bluffing," Celestina’s voice finally cut through the void.

It was a desperate attempt to reclaim control, a lunge at a reality that was rapidly slipping through her fingers. "You are a single man, Lustful Villain..."

"You are a storm, yes, but even storms run out of rain..."

"You cannot conquer the world in a sequence."

"You are playing a game of gods, but you are still made of flesh."

Rex’s gaze drifted. He looked at Ignivara, broken and bleeding on the dirt.

He looked at Zane, a warrior of legend, now nothing more than a slumped, unconscious weight against the roots of an ancient tree. He looked at the shattered remains of Aethelgard, a city that had stood for centuries and had been brought to its knees in a matter of hours.

Then, he spoke, his voice dropping into a tone of terrifying, intimate malice, directed straight at the woman on the other side of the light.

"Bluffing?" Rex let out a soft, dark chuckle that made the hair on Ignivara’s neck stand up. "Celestina, a bluff is a gamble."

"A bluff is when you hope the other person doesn’t see the weakness in your hand. But there is no weakness here."

"There is only the inevitable."

He leaned closer to the crystal, his eyes burning with a sadistic glee. "Listen to me carefully, you desperate, dying queen."

"If you try to hide Solmordia, if you try to weave a web of lies to delay me, I won’t just march through the kingdoms."

"I will burn them... I will turn the Valdric Sovereignty into a graveyard of ash just to see if the smoke carries the scent of your fear..."

"I will tear the Thornweald Collective apart root by root until the very earth screams your name..."

"I will not just conquer your world; I will dismantle it piece by piece until there is nothing left but the memory of your failure."

His voice rose, vibrating with a godlike arrogance. "Don’t mistake my patience for mercy."

"Every second you spend debating my ’possibility’ is a second you steal from the lives of your people." Rex grinned. "And when I finally arrive at your gates, you won’t be facing a conqueror..."

"You will be facing the end of everything you have ever loved."

He paused, a cruel, triumphant smirk spreading across his face. "And the worst part? You’ll know it was all because you thought you could outsmart the inevitable."

Ignivara watched him, her heart hammering against her bruised ribs. She saw the quality of the pause that followed.

It wasn’t the pause of a man deciding whether to continue a conversation; it was the pause of a predator who had finished playing with its food and was ready to kill. She understood, with soul-crushing clarity, that the answer to Celestina’s doubt was about to be delivered with absolute finality.

CRUNCH.

The sound was deceptively small compared to the thunderous explosions and bone-snapping violence of the morning, but it was devastating. It was the sharp, crystalline scream of a precision instrument being pulverized by raw, unyielding force.

Rex didn’t just drop the crystal; he crushed it in his palm, the magical energy venting in a final, pathetic hiss of light before the communication channel died with the absolute, brutal completeness of a severed limb.

The connection wasn’t just gone; it was dead.

Rex tossed the glittering shards of the broken crystal into the dirt like common trash. He didn’t look back at the ruins or the woman he had just psychologically eviscerated.

His mind was already moving to the next task.

He knelt, his hands pressing into the deep substrate of the agricultural district. Using the earthen authority with terrifying molecular precision, he began to manipulate the very bones of the world.

Clink. Clink. Shhh, tink.

The sound of stone and metallic minerals being forcibly fused and shaped echoed through the clearing. He assembled two heavy, unbreakable lengths of chain, the links forming with a seamless, terrifying efficiency that no blacksmith could ever replicate.

"What are you... doing...?" Ignivara asked.

"Sshh..."