Watching the sword-energy come flying toward his eyes, the Sacrifice meant to pull the same trick again.
But then something happened that left the man—no, the Sacrifice—dumbstruck. Those incoming blades of sword-energy actually slipped right past the tentacles that had gone up to block them, appeared abruptly before his eyes, and struck home with perfect precision.
The next instant he found himself staring into Geno's gaze—calm as still water, yet brimming with killing intent. Geno had already dropped back down to the ground.
"This time, it's my flawless win."
With a sharp crack the blade drove into the Sacrifice's core, snuffing out its life. Geno had just set his fastest kill record against a Sacrifice.
He sheathed his weapon and turned to catch up with Lycaon—only to feel a subtle prickle at his back the moment he pivoted.
Whsst! The sound of air being sliced open reached Geno's ears. A single slender feather had buried itself deep in a wall not far off—a feather from the Sacrifice's wing.
Then a storm of feathers came blasting at Geno like a hail of gunfire.
Formed of Ether energy, each feather was keen as a knife and quick as lightning.
The sheer density of the barrage had Geno throwing his longsword across his body on instinct, then flickering forward in a blur to reappear beside the Sacrifice, which had already hauled itself upright again. He meant to finish it a second time.
With a wet squelch, one blade plunged into the Sacrifice's body while the other took its head clean off, sending it rolling and bouncing to one side. Only then did the Sacrifice's movements finally stop.
But to Geno's surprise, the thing he'd thought dead once more dragged itself to its feet—and this time it expelled from within its body a withered human corpse.
"What is this?!"
The corpse was shriveled all over, nothing but skin and bone, its abdomen sunken in an unnaturally deep hollow—clearly gutted of its organs.
Geno remembered then. Hartman had said it before: these Half-Sacrifices were made from wretched people whose organs he had harvested. This, surely, was one of them.
"So every time I kill this thing, it just spends a Half-Sacrifice's life to die in its place?"
Geno had assumed the creature devoured the Half-Sacrifices only to absorb their Ether. He'd never guessed it had a power like this.
"Disgusting, aggravating monster."
Geno fixed his stare on the creature once more.
This wasn't a piece of garbage. This was a super, invincible, colossal piece of garbage.
Strong? Not particularly. Killable? Not for good. It didn't even try to beat you—it just stalled and ground you down, wasting your time, and there was nothing you could do about it.
Geno's temper flared. The moment he pictured every innocent life Hartman had slaughtered being fed into this monster before him, his fury only burned hotter.
"Fine, then. I'll kill you ten times, a hundred times—let's see how many lives you've got!"
After that Geno swung his twin blades harder and faster, and even his wild, formless assault kept the Chimera unable to defend, left with no choice but to keep spending lives in its stead.
Elsewhere, Lycaon, chasing after the fleeing Hartman, finally caught sight of that white suit.
"Don't even think about running!"
The instant Lycaon spotted Hartman, his stride quickened another notch. His precise, high-tech prosthetics roared to full power, and a single kick landed square on Hartman's back, slamming him to the ground.
"Surrender!"
Seeing the Hartman beneath his foot give not the slightest reaction, Lycaon frowned and flipped him over—only to find an unfamiliar face staring back.
"Hm?! Who is this? Where's Hartman?"
The man under Lycaon's foot was not Hartman at all, but a face he had never seen before.
The man's eyes were vacant, and his mouth kept muttering words Lycaon couldn't make out, as though he were lost in a dream.
"A body double. Cunning bastard."
Lycaon knit his brow. He hadn't expected Hartman to slip away after all.
There was nothing for it but to haul this pitiful stand-in along and head back to find Geno.
Meanwhile, having escaped Lycaon's pursuit, Hartman was now dressed like some back-alley thug, making his way with the utmost caution toward the nearest Hollow exit.
"Damn it. That running dog of the Mayflowers—looks like the corporations inside the city won't hold either. Since Geno's unharmed, and the Mayflower family has stepped in personally, they must have already begun purging the Ravenlock family within the city."
With that, Hartman's aboveboard foothold in New Eridu was gone for good. There was no going back to New Eridu now.
"Good thing I prepared a backup plan."
A self-satisfied look crossed Hartman's face; he was endlessly grateful for his own foresight.
"We'll see about this, New Eridu. As long as I'm still breathing, I will make my comeback."
Imagining himself one day back atop New Eridu, Hartman let a wicked smile curl at the corner of his mouth without meaning to.
"And you—that Timefield brat—we'll be seeing each other again very soon…"
Hartman would never let Geno go. It had nothing to do with their old grudges; it was simply that he knew Geno was an essential piece on his road to immortality, and so, in the end, he would come for him.
But before that, he needed to lie low for a while. As for this stretch of time—let Geno and the others enjoy their last few peaceful moments.
---------
Back on Geno's side, he had already hacked the misshapen Sacrifice to death who knew how many times.
Yet he showed not a trace of fatigue—if anything, the more he cut, the more fired up he got.
He even started trying to slay it with a different move every single time.
In the midst of it, Geno slipped without warning into a wondrous condition, like the Flow State spoken of in the martial arts.
In this state, Geno could sense the reaction his opponent might make to each stroke and each move of his blade. Every motion, every thought let him see the arc and force of the technique to come.
It was as if a supercomputer had been installed inside his mind, calculating every frame of his own movement.
So his strikes grew faster and faster, his motions more and more precise, and the efficiency with which he killed the Sacrifice climbed at a dizzying rate.
Time and again, the Sacrifice had barely recovered before the next blade was already piercing its body, and it dropped dead on the spot—each kill flowing seamlessly into the next.
It was like being pinned at the enemy's fountain in a game and deleted the instant you spawned—killed the moment your face appeared, the whole thing one long black-and-white screen.
Feeling the energy draining ever lower inside it, the Sacrifice—for all its scant reason—still felt fear on pure instinct.
It no longer had the courage to face Geno, and it fought desperately to flee.
Yet it could never escape the palm of Geno's hand.
"Where do you think you're going? Eat my blade!"
Eat another! And another!
On and on it went, an endless loop of being killed, revived, killed, and revived again.
Gradually, before the Sacrifice's body reached its limit, its mind arrived there first. And so—
The Sacrifice gave up on thinking.
____
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