His head had been pierced through by the steel pipe and pinned to the wall. He had clearly lost.
But before joy could even rise in Tifa's heart, something warm and wet splashed onto her face, leaving her briefly stunned.
Her pupils contracted. Only then did she notice a broken sword protruding from Mr. Kain's abdomen. It seemed Sephiroth had thrown it at him at the same instant he himself was impaled.
And at that very moment, the narrow stair landing collapsed.
Tifa and Aerith went weightless, falling straight down.
But the insecurity brought by that sudden drop was soon dispelled when someone leapt after them and caught both of them.
Boom!
The combined weight of all three of them crashed through some structure below like a massive boulder, sending them plunging inside.
Splash!
They fell even farther, landing in water. Aerith could not help choking on several mouthfuls.
When she was brought back to the surface, she finally got air and coughed.
"Cough... cough, cough..."
She coughed up the water she had swallowed. Tifa was the same.
At the same time, a series of strange crashes came from not far away. That was the sound of the collapsed stairs smashing down.
The reason those stairs had not fallen directly onto their heads was because Mr. Kain, who had leapt down and grabbed them, had shifted their course with both of them in tow, making them land in another area.
Suddenly, something lunged straight at her face.
"Ah!"
Aerith could not stop herself from crying out. It was genuinely frightening. It was them again—the Whispers. They were still trying to correct the so-called original fate.
One of them reached Aerith's face almost instantly, its twisted open mouth looking as though it meant to devour her.
Just as it was about to bite down, a hand grabbed the Whisper by the head. Its body instantly turned to ash and vanished.
The surrounding Whispers attacked several more times after that, but under Mr. Kain's touch, they all scattered into dust in an instant. Only then did the unwilling creatures gradually disperse and disappear.
It seemed Mr. Kain was this thing's natural enemy.
Only then could Aerith finally breathe a sigh of relief.
After climbing out of the pool, Aerith was wringing the water from her dress when she suddenly felt a few drops of liquid with obvious heat splash onto her face, making her freeze.
She looked up and only then realized that the man who had saved her was pulling the broken sword out of his own body. Part of the blood that sprayed from the wound had splashed onto her.
So he needed healing.
But the small pouch she carried was gone. She had kept supplies inside it in case she ever needed to treat an injury.
Ah. Apparently he did not need her help. This Mr. Kain had brought his own supplies and was already drinking one.
As for the wound, it began healing at a speed visible to the naked eye.
"Take these."
He suddenly tossed several bottles of that healing medicine to her and Tifa, forcing the two of them to catch them in a fluster.
"Um, I—"
"Keep the extras."
Tifa was cut off just like that. It seemed he knew what she had been about to say—that she already had a panacea and did not need him to give her more.
"If you haven't taken a panacea before, it's best to drink one now."
"Huh?"
Aerith blinked. She was not injured or anything.
Could it be that even a tiny scrape on her arm required drinking such an impressive-looking healing potion?
That would be too wasteful.
"To a certain degree, it can strengthen your bodies and improve your natural recovery ability."
At that, Aerith hesitated no longer.
It was not because she was worried about side effects or anything like that. Rather, the potion looked far too valuable, and she wondered whether using it on herself would be a waste.
"Aerith, drink it."
As Tifa said this, she directly drank one of the panaceas herself, setting the example.
Seeing that, Aerith stopped agonizing over it and drank hers as well.
When Mr. Kain received the Materia from Tifa, he had also given her several panaceas.
But Tifa had kept one and given the rest to Barret, telling him that they were special healing medicines she had obtained through certain means. If anyone in Avalanche was injured, fell ill, or got infected by something, they could use them.
As for the one she had kept on herself, it had originally been meant for Aerith in secret.
Since she had shared the video with Aerith, Aerith also knew about panaceas. If Tifa asked her to drink one for the sake of strengthening her body while she was neither injured nor sick, Aerith would probably have been too reluctant to use it. Tifa had planned to trick her into drinking it after bringing her to the hideout.
In the blink of an eye, Tifa and Aerith were flying.
More accurately, the two of them were tightly hugging a man who was jumping. He carried them both back up to a staircase not far from where they had fallen.
As for the figure whose skull had been pierced through and pinned to the wall, he was now gone.
"He's not dead?"
Tifa frowned as she spoke. His head had been pierced through, and he could still survive?
"Mr. Kain, that wasn't his real body, was it?"
Aerith said with unease.
Tifa had already learned a great deal about Sephiroth's exact origins from Mr. Kain and had told Aerith as well.
In order to obtain the bloodline of the Cetra, Shinra had injected Sephiroth with cells from something called Jenova while he was still a fetus. They believed Jenova's cells were actually the cells of the Cetra, but in reality, they belonged to an extraterrestrial life-form.
In ancient times, the meteor that struck this planet was the arrival of that alien life-form. It had invaded this world and caused the extinction of the Cetra.
Several years ago, when Tifa's village still existed, Sephiroth had gone to deal with the Mako reactor near the village. There, he saw the cultivated Jenova and the experimental monsters. Since he himself carried Jenova cells, he sensed something and began to doubt his own identity.
After investigating Shinra's research records, he came to believe that he was actually a descendant of the Cetra. In truth, Shinra itself did not know that Jenova was an extraterrestrial life-form. They had mistaken it for a Cetra, which led Sephiroth to form the wrong understanding.
Because of that, Sephiroth believed the world belonged to the Cetra, not to modern humans, and decided to destroy humanity.
Tifa's village became the first victim and was destroyed.
When Sephiroth destroyed Tifa's village, one of Tifa's friends from the same village, Cloud, tried to stop him. Cloud succeeded in dealing Sephiroth a fatal blow, and Sephiroth was destroyed together with the Mako reactor.
However, that had not truly killed him.
After Sephiroth's death, he dissolved into the Lifestream, but through sheer force of will, he began constructing a new body in the Northern Crater to resurrect himself.
In addition, the Sephiroth copies created through Shinra's research into him could also be controlled by Sephiroth.
That was why Aerith was worried that the body whose head had been pierced might not have been a copy, but Sephiroth after his resurrection.
"No."
Kain gave a firm answer. That definitely had not been the main body.
Although he did not know how powerful the true Sephiroth was, he could sense that the emotions in that body were weak and unstable.
Its actions had been like those of a puppet obeying orders, like a remotely controlled clone that had been activated from afar.
Most likely, it was a copy. A Sephiroth copy.
And if they wanted to kill the real Sephiroth, destroying his physical body would not be enough. His soul and mind would also have to be completely annihilated.
The most troublesome part was still Jenova.
If that thing's consciousness remained inside the planet's Lifestream, it would be difficult to deal with.
(End of Chapter)
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