Mordecai looked at him with the flat expression of someone who had decided this was not the moment to push the point.
Below, the chaos had spread.
Rex could feel it in the air as much as see it: the Underlayer vibrating with a hundred simultaneous engagements, the sound of stone impacts and elemental discharge, and the specific percussion of close-range combat echoing through the underground architecture in a layered acoustic tapestry that his earthen authority passive awareness could read like a geological survey.
Two hundred distinct engagement zones. Maybe three hundred.
The purge was no longer limited to the marked individuals. It had transformed into the type of purge that occurs when initial targeting fades away, revealing the underlying pressure of a population that has been allowed to express its suppressed feelings.
Rex looked at it and thought, 'This is what the Underlayer needed to become.'
