"Koleda!" "President!"
Just as it seemed the Sacrificial Wraith was about to cut Koleda down, a dark figure came hurtling forward.
That figure was none other than Grace.
She slammed into Koleda and knocked her clear — but had no time to escape herself. The Wraith's massive hand found her with brutal precision.
"!!!"
The hand went in white. It came out red. The Sacrificial Wraith slowly withdrew its arm from Grace's body, pulling with it a cascade of vivid crimson. Grace crumpled where she stood, hitting the ground with a dull thud — and did not move again.
"Sis!!!"
Koleda stared at the scene in disbelief, her pupils contracting to pinpoints. A full-body tremor seized her. A crushing, suffocating nausea radiated outward from her skull to the very tips of her fingers and toes.
The image before her eyes began to blur — her own mind, in its depths, desperately refusing to accept what she was seeing.
But the danger wasn't over. The Sacrificial Wraith, having just finished with Grace, turned and charged straight at Koleda again. The arm still dripping with Grace's blood was poised to punch through yet another woman connected to Hols.
Clang!
A longsword came up between them. Geno's gaze was cold as iron, sharp as a blade's edge.
In that moment, Geno was consumed by regret. How had he made such a catastrophic mistake? How had he failed to realize that this creature had been targeting Koleda — targeting them — from the very beginning?
Because yes — the Sacrificial Wraith's target had always been Koleda. Or more precisely, it had always been Hols's daughter.
Ten years ago, it had been sealed inside this Pioneer's Monument, intended to be unleashed the moment the plaza was completed. But then Hols — that insufferable meddler — had gotten in the way, and the fall of the Old Capital had thrown everything into chaos. And so it had remained, entombed and immobile, all these years.
A Sacrificial Wraith was a being of mixed genetics — blended with human genes, human souls, human memory. It possessed a degree of conscious awareness. It had been interred within the monument with a specific mission to carry out.
Hols had destroyed all of that.
In the decade it spent sealed here, its thoughts, its consciousness, its very soul had eroded — ground down, piece by piece, until almost nothing remained. By now, it had next to no cognition left. What remained was monster instinct alone.
And hatred for Hols.
That hatred drove the mindless creature forward. Through some faint trace of Ether signature, it had sensed a connection between Koleda and Hols — and had thrown itself at her without a moment's hesitation.
What happened in between didn't even register in its mind. There was only one thing it existed to do: take revenge on Hols.
Geno had only understood this when he saw the creature abandon everything — flee the cockpit, discard the powerful new body it had just claimed — just to do this one thing.
"All of this is my fault. So the only thing left for me to do," Geno said, "is grind you into dust, you bastard — and go down there to apologize to Grace myself."
Geno channeled every thread of Ether in his body. The surge of force and energy was so intense that his very clothes began to stir without any wind.
His black hair, already somewhat disheveled, shifted color with each pulse of Ether — strand by strand turning to the pale, ashen white of cold embers.
And the greatsword he had shaped from Ether crystals trembled violently, cracks racing across its entire surface.
Torrents of Ether energy poured from those fractures, then erupted outward like a gas burner igniting — flames of raw Ether energy wreathed the blade.
The sight sent instinctive fear through the Sacrificial Wraith. It took an involuntary half-step back — then caught itself and held its ground.
The hatred burning in it was too powerful. It drove the creature forward. It would kill this man in its way, then tear Hols's daughter apart behind him.
The Wraith dropped low and lunged at Geno like a wild beast.
Geno met it with a horizontal slash, aiming to cut it clean in two.
But to everyone's astonishment, the Wraith deliberately thrust its own arm in front of the blade — taking the hit willingly.
The arm sheared off the instant sword met flesh. But the severed limb didn't go limp — it flew straight at Geno of its own accord.
Caught completely off guard by the sudden move, Geno found the Wraith's hand clamped around his throat once again.
"Geno!"
The others, who had recovered their footing, rushed forward to help — but the Wraith completely ignored Geno and lunged past him toward Koleda, indifferent to his state entirely.
And Koleda herself was still lost in her grief over Grace, oblivious to everything around her.
In that desperate instant, Geno — hand still clamped around his throat — hurled his longsword. The blade screamed through the air and flew straight at the Wraith.
If the blade connected, Geno would detonate the Ether energy inside it and blow the Wraith apart. If it missed, the Wraith would flinch away from it — and Koleda would still have a chance to get clear. Either way, something would be gained.
Sure enough — mindless as it was, the Wraith still had the animal instinct to dodge the flying blade.
And that was enough for Ben and the others to pull Koleda to safety.
With room to breathe, Geno ripped the severed arm from his throat and flung it away, then pressed his attack toward the Wraith once more.
The thrown arm sailed back toward the Wraith, which caught it and jammed it against its stump — and it reattached.
The Wraith now understood: as long as Geno remained standing, it had no chance of getting to Koleda. So it turned and bolted for the prototype, intent on reclaiming that steel body.
Geno wasn't about to let it have what it wanted. He flickered forward in a burst of speed, racing to cut off its path back to the machine.
Bang!
Just as Geno was about to close the gap, a bullet struck the ground at his feet. He knew instantly — there was a sniper nearby.
He snapped his Ether Vision open in an instant, locking onto the sniper's position — but whoever it was had been cautious. One shot, then immediate withdrawal. They vanished from his Ether senses before he could act.
Of course. This creature appearing here was no accident.
He now knew there was a larger conspiracy at work behind all of this. But right now, the most immediate consequence was the one that single bullet had already caused.
The Sacrificial Wraith had made it back to the prototype's cockpit. It gathered every last thread of Ether energy, and the three wrecked machines nearby were drawn in and fused onto the prototype's frame.
Then an enormous quantity of inert crystals erupted into existence, walling off the entire surrounding area — forming a vast colosseum.
And the sole combatant trapped inside that arena was Geno.
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