Getting slammed away by the Dead-End Butcher had been within Geno's calculations all along.
What surprised him was simply how much aggro the Dead-End Butcher had built up against him.
Not that he was complaining — it suited him perfectly.
As long as the battlefield stayed near Grace, she would inevitably get dragged into it. So the solution was simple: change the battlefield. And what more natural way to relocate than to let the enemy's attack send you flying there?
(Somewhere, a certain golden-haired vampire gave this a thumbs-up.)
Airborne, Geno watched Grace grow smaller and smaller in the distance behind him. His gaze hardened. He thrust out his palm and caught the Dead-End Butcher's assault head-on, blocking it blow by blow.
Who did it think it was dealing with? Say what you will, Geno was a genuine Tier-Four Ethereal now — same rank as the Dead-End Butcher itself. Going toe-to-toe with it was well within his capabilities.
Thud. Geno finally crashed into the wall and came to a stop. He immediately shook it off, readjusted his stance, hoisted his sword, and charged back in.
This time, he wouldn't fumble it.
Clang. Clang. Clatter. The clash between greatsword and spiked fists was ferocious. Far away, Grace was running for her life on her own stretch of battlefield.
"Just a little more — just a little more!"
The Dead-End Butcher, the biggest obstacle, had been drawn away by Geno — but the remaining Ethereals still swarmed Grace on all sides. She had no choice but to manually crank up the pile driver's decryption speed with one hand while firing her nail gun with the other to hold the Ethereals at bay.
"The Ethereals keep coming, but the decryption's almost done — just the last little bit left."
Grace's nerves were fraying. It was that specific, miserable feeling of a loading bar stuck on the final one percent, refusing to budge no matter what.
And she had no idea how Geno was holding up on his end. She had to finish this fast and get to him.
"Move! Come on, move!"
Bang bang bang! Three more shots — three Ethereals dropped with pinpoint accuracy. Grace followed it up with two grenades, buying herself a moment's breathing room as the encirclement briefly scattered.
"Not good — I'm almost out of ammo."
She checked her pack. Her weapons were nearly spent. And yet the Ethereals just kept flooding in from every direction.
She stole one last glance at the tablet — and her eyes lit up.
The prototype's coordinate signal had finally finished decoding.
"Yes! Friday — time to fight back!"
"Leave it to me!"
Freed at last from its signal-broadcasting duty, the pile driver could finally move. The massive pile beneath it drove down hard into the ground. The shockwave rippled outward, sending every Ethereal in the vicinity stumbling and crashing down in a heap.
Grace scrambled up onto the pile driver's back, clearing herself from the blast radius, then carved a bloody path straight through the surrounding ring of Ethereals.
"Friday — that way! We're going to rescue Geno!"
Grace hadn't forgotten: Geno had drawn the Dead-End Butcher away to buy her time. She wasn't about to let that go unpaid.
Back on Geno's side of things — while Grace and Friday were busy running circles around their share of the horde, Geno himself was in far better shape than Grace could have imagined.
Now well out of Grace's line of sight, Geno stared down the Dead-End Butcher with a long-simmering grievance finally bubbling to the surface.
"You really did me a solid last time, didn't you? Allow me to return the favor!"
With that, Geno activated his Ethereal form.
There was one more reason he'd needed to get away from Grace — to keep his Ethereal identity hidden, and at the same time to reduce interference with the pile driver's signal frequency.
"Have a taste of my blade!"
In Ethereal form, Geno swung his longsword in a sweeping arc. Tremendous Ether energy surged off the edge and launched outward as a razor-sharp wave of sword qi, screaming through the air straight toward the thoroughly baffled Dead-End Butcher.
What the — since when did this little punk get this strong?
But before it could make sense of anything, Geno's attack was already in its face.
Under pressure, the Dead-End Butcher could only cross its arms in front of it and brace.
And then the dazzling, multicolored wave of Ether sword qi arrived — and passed clean through its guard as if it weren't there, smashing squarely into the Dead-End Butcher's face.
"ROOAAR?!"
What just happened?! How did that hit me?!
The Dead-End Butcher couldn't wrap its head around it. Its brain — sizable in appearance but not quite as impressive in practice — simply could not work out why an attack that had been right there, right in front of it, practically point-blank and already being blocked, had somehow ended up connecting with its face.
Seeing that, Geno couldn't help the corner of his mouth curling upward. If circumstances had allowed, he'd have broken into a little victory song right then and there.
Exquisite. Absolutely exquisite.
He hadn't expected a technique he'd only theorized about to actually work!
The sword qi just now was Geno releasing his Ether energy outward as a projected wave — think of it as an energy pulse. But a pulse like that carried no penetrating power in itself. Reality wasn't a video game; you couldn't just ignore an opponent's block like you were running a code exploit.
...And that was exactly when a bold idea struck him.
He had Thanatos Flash as a skill — the ability to teleport. What if, instead of teleporting himself, he teleported the attack?
Geno thought it. Geno did it. And the result was exactly what he was now looking at.
"That settles it — I'm calling this one the Dimensional Slash."
A slash that travels through another dimension to reach you. Dimensional Slash. The name fit perfectly.
The only downside was the Ether cost — it was on the steep side. Without Ethereal form, it probably wouldn't pack much of a punch.
But Geno wasn't popping champagne just yet. The Dead-End Butcher had taken the hit, but it wasn't down for the count. At the end of the day, Geno was only the same tier as the Dead-End Butcher — he wasn't going to steamroll it.
The good news, though, was that Geno only needed to keep pressing the attack. Victory was only a matter of time.
What followed was a relentless barrage of Dimensional Slashes, Geno hammering the Dead-End Butcher over and over while it was forced into pure defense. And on the rare occasions it managed to find an opening and swing back, Geno's own Flash ability meant every single strike phased through thin air — it simply couldn't land a hit.
This drove the Ethereal absolutely up the wall.
Playing the pig to eat the tiger! A complete setup! Ref! I demand a rematch!
That was the one and only thought left in the Dead-End Butcher's mind.
Staggered from yet another blow, the Dead-End Butcher's core shuddered deep within. It was running out of steam. Even something called a Butcher wasn't invincible — and in the end, it too would end up as someone else's meat on the chopping block.
The fish before the knife. Nothing more, nothing less.
Geno could see the exhaustion written all over the Dead-End Butcher. Victory was close — so close he could already feel it sitting in the palm of his hand.
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