"This woman is far too clever. If she works out what I'm after, she'll have countermeasures ready long before I move,
and then this stops being easy to manage."
It was precisely because it had grasped that fact that Thousand Faces had booted Tsukishiro Yanagi clean out of the game, perfectly content to lose her body in the process.
Who could have guessed the woman would come strolling back?
Thousand Faces had originally planned to take the bodies of Hoshimi Miyabi and the rest first, then find a way to dispose of Tsukishiro Yanagi out in the real world. After all, by then the whole of Anti-Air Section Six would be under its control. So what if Tsukishiro Yanagi noticed something? What could she possibly do about it?
"And now she's charged back in all by herself. Fine. Then you're the one I deal with first."
That thought sparked another nasty idea. Thousand Faces glanced back at the three clusters of virtual data behind it, almost fully assembled by now. They had been meant to take over the data stream of the real world - but it seemed they had a better use.
"I have unraveled the power of the Void Hunter! This very moment is the day of a god's birth! Hahahahaha!"
Small arms flung wide, Thousand Faces' wicked laughter rolled through the whole space, heard by no one.
But was it truly heard by no one?
In a spot Thousand Faces never thought to check, a tiny red eye blinked and glimmered without pause - and beside it, a tiny blue one.
"Looks like it thinks the win's already in the bag. How about we spice things up a little?"
[Agreed. An evil genius this brimming with nasty ideas requires a sprinkling of righteous salt and pepper.]
You mean a lesson, surely.
Neither the voices nor the substance of that exchange reached anyone else. Thousand Faces, at the very least, heard nothing.
Which was fitting, because without its knowledge, control of the system it commanded was being pried away piece by piece by two of the sneakiest schemers alive, while it went on happily daydreaming of glory.
Back with Geno, the group had been chased upstairs by the Ethereals, only for the Ethereals themselves to jam the narrow corridors and stairwells like a blocked-up toilet - unable to climb, unwilling to retreat.
"Real talk, once these Ethereals pile up in numbers like that, it's brutal for anyone with a fear of tight clusters."
"Plus one. The feeling is awful."
In that instant, the two young men achieved perfect spiritual harmony.
Even so, they still had to face the endless stream of Ethereals. And as the minutes dragged on, they were forced higher and higher up the building.
The crush of bodies kept the Ethereals from surging up for now, but if this dragged on, sooner or later the group would be pushed onto the roof - and there would be nowhere left to fall back to.
"Hm. How about another Leap of Faith?"
Say what you liked, Geno probably wouldn't splatter to death this time, and Hoshimi Miyabi and the others should manage well enough too.
"Oh? That actually sounds like a decent idea," Harumasa said, not sounding especially serious about it. Hoshimi Miyabi, on the other hand, seemed to be genuinely weighing how reliable such a move would be.
"I could do it. But even if we jump, breaking out won't be that simple, will it?"
The ground outside the building was carpeted with Ethereals too, and their numbers kept climbing.
Holding the stairwell and keeping the Ethereals penned within a delicate margin was already an achievement.
While the others argued back and forth, Tsukishiro Yanagi seemed to have noticed something again. Her gaze stayed locked on the stairwell window without wavering.
"Sis Yanagi? What's wrong?"
Soukaku was the first to catch the change in her. Tsukishiro Yanagi only gave a small shake of her head and said nothing at first. "I'm fine. Thank you, Soukaku."
"Hm?"
Little Soukaku had no idea what any of it was about, but if Sis Yanagi said she was fine, then presumably she was fine.
A while later, the Ethereals downstairs seemed to pick up a little technique, mounting an orderly push toward the upper floors - and at the same time, Ethereals began pouring in through another stairwell on the far side of the building.
"Looks like this floor isn't safe either. Do we keep falling back?" Harumasa broke his compound bow back down into the twin blades Slumbering Blossom and Dark Water, ready to fight at a moment's notice.
"No. This time, we go down."
"Huh? Down?"
Tsukishiro Yanagi's words left Geno baffled. Down? Down how? The stairwells were still choked solid.
Before he could work it out, though, Hoshimi Miyabi had already grasped her meaning. She drew the Ethereal-Slaying Blade, Tailless, and cold light began to gather along her body as she wound up her strength.
"Half in light, half in shadow, within half a foot!"
Just as the haiku she chanted promised, sword light scattered like a field of stars across the cramped space, sweeping past Geno and the others with perfect precision and carving into the Ethereals' position.
With a crash, a whole swarm of Ethereals was blasted away and reduced to drifting scraps. But a handful of Ethereals was a drop in the bucket against their situation - hardly enough to change anything.
And just as Geno was thinking exactly that, he felt a tremor come up through his feet, and then he watched the walls rise.
No, that wasn't it.
The walls weren't rising. The floor was dropping!
Hoshimi Miyabi's strike had never been aimed at the Ethereals at all. It had been aimed at the ground, cutting the storey's floor free in one clean slab so that gravity could take it the rest of the way.
The falling floors stacked one atop another as they plunged, crushing the Ethereals packed below into a mille-feuille of Ethereal scraps.
Hoshimi Miyabi's hands never stopped moving; she kept slashing at the surrounding walls.
Geno caught on as well, and together with Harumasa, Soukaku and the rest he began tearing into the building's walls.
Under the relentless assault, the walls finally gave out under the weight of the stairs, and with a long, grinding roar the whole structure began to collapse.
From the outside, the entire tower came down like a toppled stack of blocks, flattening every last Ethereal inside and out.
By rights, Geno and the others should have met the same fate. Instead, at some point a barrier had appeared above their heads, turning aside the raining debris.
Only when the whole area had fallen quiet again did Geno dismiss the barrier, fan the dust away from his face, and step out.
"Cough, cough. That was a bit louder than I'd have liked. Still, at least the cleanup was thorough."
The Ethereals, once as uncountable as a swarm of insects, had been wiped out to the last one by that single demolition.
There were still a few things Geno hadn't figured out, though.
"So, how come the floor suddenly became something we could attack? And how did you two know?"
Hoshimi Miyabi said nothing. She simply turned her gaze toward Tsukishiro Yanagi.
Tsukishiro Yanagi gave the frame of her glasses a light push and answered...
____
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