Chapter 396: 396. His Primordial Magic Can Make Him Immune To Any Attacks From Reincarnators

The first thing Apollo did was start the first move.

There was no preamble, no additional exchange of words, no moment of tactical consideration. The light that had been building around him since he stepped forward simply reached a threshold and translated directly into forward motion.

Apollo crossed the thirty meters between himself and Kregg Valtor in the time it took Rex to lower his own hands and think, ’Let’s see what this actually is.’

’I’ll let the bum main character do his job before I step in just to get what I want...’

Apollo’s first strike was a straight right hand, life behind it, the kind of impact that had caved in monster skulls, the kind Rex had catalogued as capable of shattering reinforced stone at close range.

And it connected with Kregg’s jaw.

BAAAMMMMM!!!

Kregg’s head moved slightly to the left.

Apollo blinked. Rex blinked, which was less common.

"W-What...?" Apollo was shocked, seeing his attack did not damage at all.

Kregg turned his head back to where it had been originally and looked at Apollo with the patience of one who had expected the outcome and was not surprised by any part of it. "Is that all...?"

"Why did the Goddess of Life choose you out of all people in this world?!"

He did not put his hands up. He didn’t alter his position.

He merely stood there as Apollo threw a second strike, this one at the sternum, hard enough that the sound of the impact bounced off the chamber walls.

BAAAMMMMM!

Kregg took a half-step back. And that was all.

"Apollo," Rex said, and his voice carried the calm of someone who has just recategorized a situation. "He’s absorbing it."

’You fucking stupid ass.’

Apollo didn’t stop. A disciplined fighter doesn’t stop because someone tells them their attack isn’t working, but they keep the pressure on while they reassess.

’No wonder it’s easy to fight him when I was the Undead Bringer.’

Apollo changed from just using physical attacks to a mix of techniques, channeling light-affinity energy through his fists with each hit, while the life designation added an extra layer of power to the physical strike, aiming to break through defenses by hitting them in two ways at once.

Kregg absorbed every single one of them.

He did not do it effortlessly; Rex could see the physical effects accumulating—the slight forward displacement of Kregg’s weight and the way his boots were grinding fractionally into the chamber floor with each sustained impact.

The force was landing. It was being received, processed, and absorbed without any visible return to Kregg’s structure in the way that injuries compound over time.

It was as though Kregg’s body was transforming the incoming energy into something entirely different, something that vanished without a trace.

"He’s no joke at all, it seems," Rex thought as he observed Kregg. "What kind of power do these Legions possess...?"

Mireya advanced from the right flank, which was a smart tactical choice. She considered, "If a target is absorbing direct-impact force, it’s essential to change the attack vector and the type of attack."

She drew and lit her ice affinity sword, the frost field of the blade stretched to its maximum reach, and she closed the distance at the sprint she kept for real engagements, her footwork tight and controlled on the uneven chamber floor.

She swept low at Kregg’s right side, the frost edge angled to bite through the joint at his knee rather than testing the flat-surface absorption.

Kregg moved.

It was the first time he’d moved, and the precision of his actions caused Rex to immediately elevate his assessment of the man by several categories. He pivoted on his left foot, allowing Mireya’s sword to pass through the space where his knee had been.

He then brought his right forearm down to intercept the follow-through of her swing at the wrist, redirecting the blade’s momentum into the chamber floor, where it carved a clean groove in the mineral-deposited stone. All of this occurred in approximately one and a half seconds.

’He reacted to an attack that was weaker than that fucking bum...’ Rex crossed his arms. ’I can see the puzzle starts connecting now...’

Kregg caught her second strike with an open palm, his hand closing around the flat of the blade, the frost spreading across his fingers and stopping. The ice simply did not propagate past the point of contact with his skin.

"He has ice resistance," Mireya said, more to herself than to anyone else, and pivoted into a new angle.

Kregg let the blade go and stepped back to give himself room, and Rex could see the first indication of actual engagement in his posture that he was no longer standing entirely still, which meant he’d assessed Mireya as a different category of threat from Apollo’s frontal approach.

’I’ll fucking do it myself at this point..."

Rex raised both hands and sent three separate workings toward Kregg across the chamber’s open floor. These were not elemental workings backed by full Elemental Mastery; instead, they were calibrated mid-level outputs designed to appear as genuine effort while costing him only a fraction of what they seemed to represent.

The workings included quick-growing vines from the minerals in the floor, a manipulation of the stone walls, and a controlled wind vortex aimed at Kregg’s feet.

He structured them to arrive in an offset sequence, one after another rather than all at once, to test how the absorption mechanic would handle multiple input types within a compressed timeframe.

The vines dissolved the moment they made contact with Kregg’s leg. 𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶

The stone pressure didn’t engage at all, but it deflected off an invisible boundary approximately a meter from his body.

The wind vortex passed through him without apparent effect and continued through the chamber wall behind him.

Rex stood completely still for a moment and thought.

’The absorption was not a blanket defense...’

’The vine working was nature-based, which operated on a biochemical register.’

’The stone pressure was earth-affinity, which operated on a geological register.’

’The wind had air affinity.’

’Three entirely different energy types, all deflected or nullified before they could produce structural damage.’

What’s shocking is that he had not used Elemental Mastery on any of them. And he had not used his original elemental workings, the frequencies he’d created himself that had no existing resonance profile in any known taxonomy.

He had been building a picture, which was what the first phase of an engagement against an unknown opponent was for.

"I see now... this guy is the one I need to be cautious of," Rex thought. ’The picture was becoming clear in my mind, and I think I already have a counter for it since I fought with that slime motherfucker.’

’The Legion’s primordial energy base was creating a broad-spectrum immunity to any power that originated from a reincarnator’s system-granted abilities...’

’Apollo’s divine designation came from the Goddess of Life’s Apostle framework.’

’Mireya’s ice affinity was native, which is why that guy could easily dodge or reflect it, whereas my own elemental and nature abilities were fundamentally produced through powers granted or enhanced by the Mark of Lust Authority.’

’However, my original elemental frequencies... the ones I created myself using Elemental Magic Creation, which lack any existing resonance profile were not system-granted in the conventional sense, even though I received them from the system.’

’They were genuinely original, which meant they had no precedent in any power taxonomy the primordial energy base could have been calibrated against.’

He hadn’t tested this yet. He filed it for approximately thirty seconds from now and redirected his attention to the rest of the chamber.

’I’ll test it later... maybe after this group starts losing the fight.’

...

Iris had disengaged from the stone trap as soon as Elizabeth’s spell freed her, returning to the fight against Virella Thorn before her back wound had fully stopped bleeding. Rex observed this and noted Iris’s condition with physical pain and tactical priority, intending to revisit it in a less urgent context.

Virella had drawn her sword, a straight single-edged blade of medium length that she held in a grip Rex recognized as a modified dueling form with a dominant hand close to the guard, off-hand free for casting, and weight distributed forward on the balls of her feet.

She moved with the efficiency of someone who had trained for years rather than someone who was born with natural skill, and her movements were very effective.

Iris’s style was not conventional dueling. It was the kind of close-range technique taught in assassination training grounds where there’s no wasted motion, unconventional angles of approach that a typical swordfighter wouldn’t naturally defend against, and the use of a second blade not merely as a backup weapon but as a control tool, redirecting an opponent’s weapon and creating openings in their defense.

She entered Virella’s guard from the outside, slipping smoothly beneath the first horizontal swing, redirecting the return stroke with her left blade toward the chamber ceiling, and thrusting her right blade at Virella’s exposed flank.

Virella stepped back and turned, and the right blade passed through the space where her ribs had been by approximately six centimeters.

"You’re actually a good assassin," Virella said, which was not a compliment in the conventional sense but rather the flat assessment of someone recalibrating their defensive approach. "If only you were one of the Legion, then you probably could kill a lot of reincarnators."

"Talk later," Iris said, and came back in.

"You said that because you can’t do it, huh? Your boyfriend is one of those reincarnators, hahaha!"