Chapter 398: It Still Has to Be Eous
Looking at the hideous Parasitic Ethereals swarming from all directions like a suffocating tide, even the battle-hardened elites of Hollow Special Operations Section 6 felt a distinct chill crawl across their skin. The sheer volume of the horde was staggering. Worse still, these grotesque monsters were greedily absorbing the abnormally high concentration of ambient Aether energy triggered by the ongoing Forging process. With every passing second, their corrupted auras swelled, mutating and strengthening their jagged carapaces right before the squad's eyes.
Asaba Harumasa's fingers nocking an arrow remained as steady as a carved stone monument. Despite his flawless physical composure, the archer couldn't help but click his tongue in sheer exasperation. He shot a sidelong glare toward Eous's direction, firing off complaints at a rapid-fire pace.
"Hey, hey, Proxy! Isn't your little news report a billion bits too late? How come you only decided to tell us we had guests when they're already breathing right in our faces?"
Despite his casual griping, his sharp, predatory gaze had already locked onto a Thanatos. The agile Ethereal was quietly leaping from the top of a rusted shipping container on their right flank, attempting a lethal ambush.
The very moment his voice trailed off, the taut bowstring thrummed with a heavy, resonant vibration.
A brilliant flash of azure lightning tore through the stagnant air with an ear-splitting crackle. The electrified shaft pierced the pale, glowing core of the Thanatos with peerless, surgical precision. The volatile lightning energy detonated directly inside the creature's chest cavity. Before the Thanatos could even let out a death shriek, its lanky body twitched violently, stiffening into a rigid husk as it plummeted to the ground. The sickly light of its core rapidly dimmed, sputtering out into dead ash.
However, that single, flawless arrow acted like a lit match dropped into a powder keg.
"Roar—!!!"
The hundred-plus Parasitic Ethereals that had been slowly, methodically closing in to form an inescapable encirclement seemed to have their primal ferocity completely ignited. They threw their misshapen heads back, letting out a synchronized wave of deafening roars and ear-piercing shrieks that rattled the surrounding debris.
The tense standoff shattered. The battle erupted in full, chaotic force in the blink of an eye.
"Lumine, March, clear the perimeter! Tsukishiro Yanagi, Soukaku, lock down the flanks! Stelle, Hoshimi Miyabi, those two Giant-Handed Demon Blades are yours!"
Dan Heng barked out tactical orders at high speed, his voice cutting clearly through the cacophony of monster shrieks. His spear, Cloud-Piercer, had already transformed into a blur of lethal motion. The weapon moved like a phantom green dragon—dotting, stabbing, sweeping, and picking with terrifying grace. Every thrust precisely dismantled the lunging Parasitic Ethereals, turning their aggressive charges into fatal mistakes.
Lumine's nimble figure flickered across the battlefield, her movements weightless and erratic under the blessing of the Anemo element. Her blade, Prototype Rancour, shifted its elemental resonance on the fly. One moment, it conjured the heavy, unyielding presence of Geo to form a solid rock wall, absorbing the brutal charges of the horde. The next, it slashed out razor-sharp wind blades that effortlessly carved through the thick, calcified shells of the incoming Ethereals. She did not waste energy seeking flashy one-hit kills. Instead, she played the field with calculated efficiency—weakening, staggering, and violently repelling the vanguard, effectively sealing off the defensive line from the endless swarm.
March 7th provided flawless covering fire from the rear. Her crystalline ice arrows served as the perfect crowd control mechanism. Shafts imbued with potent freezing power rained down and exploded amidst the swarming horde. Blooming lotuses of jagged ice erupted upon impact, flash-freezing limbs and greatly slowing the monsters' relentless offensive momentum.
The skirmish reached a boiling point of sheer intensity from the very first second.
Dan Heng, Lumine, and the rest of the multiversal crew pushed their most proficient weapons and elemental powers to the absolute limit. Dealing with a single high-level Parasitic Ethereal, or even a small, isolated cluster of them, was never a difficult task for this caliber of fighters. Such minor threats were routinely neutralized within three to five swift moves.
But the grim reality of their situation lay in their environment. This was a Hollow. They were fighting on the corrupted home turf of the Ethereals, a twisted dimension where the enemy's numbers were practically infinite.
Just as one screeching batch of monsters was slaughtered or violently repelled, another wave immediately surged from the suffocating shadows of the ruins. Drawn by the ultra-high concentration of Aether radiating from the Forging process, the creatures swarmed incessantly, throwing themselves forward like mindless moths drawn to a raging bonfire.
The team felt as though they were wading through a viscous, suffocating swamp. The high efficiency of their lethal strikes was rapidly offset by the sheer volume of reinforcements pouring out of the woodwork. Despite their best efforts, the defensive front line was slowly but steadily being compressed inward. They were being dragged down into a grueling, lung-burning war of attrition.
Just as the pressure threatened to break their formation, Wise's voice crackled from within Eous's built-in speakers. His tone was slightly hurried, yet it retained its characteristic clear and organized calm.
"There are simply too many Parasitic Ethereals pouring in. We absolutely cannot afford to get bogged down in a head-on battle of attrition! I am already urgently contacting Hu Tao and the rest of the reserve team. Welt and I are also moving out and heading your way right now! Eous, I am leaving the frontline support to you for now!"
The communication feed cut off with an abrupt click. It was entirely clear that the Proxy had exited his direct remote-control synchronization to focus entirely on coordinating their multiversal reinforcements.
Eous's round, expressive electronic eyes flickered twice in rapid succession as the Bangboo's autonomous AI regained full control of its small, pill-shaped body.
The little machine swiveled its head, processing the chaotic battlefield. It analyzed its companions struggling through the bitter, exhausting fight surrounding it. Its visual sensors specifically tracked Stelle and Miyabi. The chaotic Trailblazer and the stoic Section 6 operative were currently pinned down in a brutal melee against two massive Giant-Handed Demon Blades, all while having to constantly dodge sneaky, low-angle attacks from lesser Parasitic Ethereals. Eous then shifted its optical focus toward Bringer, the towering anomaly wrapped in pale, grotesque giant hands, which was continuously pulsing with deeply ominous Aether fluctuations.
"Ehn-na!" (Protect everyone!)
An unmatched, almost heroic level of determination synthesized into the Bangboo's electronic voice. Its memory banks perfectly recalled Wise's final tactical arrangement.
In the very next moment, Eous's small, unassuming body erupted with an utterly astonishing aura of concentrated energy.
"Ehn-na—!! (Explode With You!!!)"
Five distinct, glowing phantoms of Eous, heavily wreathed in crackling blue-white lightning, condensed into reality in an instant. Acting like fearless, mechanized soldiers receiving a final death order, the holographic clones charged forward without a single microsecond of hesitation. They hurled themselves directly into the densest, most heavily congested cluster of Parasitic Ethereals on the field.
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
A deafening chain of concussive explosions ripped through the air, shaking the very foundations of the Hollow.
Although the raw explosive power of the clones needed to be dynamically recalculated and stacked from scratch due to the previous interruption—meaning it was far from the apocalyptic peak output it had achieved when fighting Bringer earlier—it was still more than enough to handle this mob of grunts. These lesser Parasitic Ethereals had not yet undergone enough Aether enhancements to withstand such a blast.
The two heavily armored Dullahans and the single, agile Thanatos leading the vanguard were violently torn to absolute pieces in the epicenter of the blast. Their pale, shattered shells and corrupted limbs were sent flying in every conceivable direction like gruesome shrapnel.
But this spectacular display of destruction was only the beginning.
"Ehn-na! Ehn-na! (Go Boom! Go Boom!)"
Eous seemed entirely tireless, its AI completely unconcerned about the concept of energy depletion. Standing securely in a safe, elevated position relatively far back from the chaotic front line, the little Bangboo effectively transformed itself into the squad's most stable and terrifying artillery position.
The frequency at which it condensed and launched its explosive phantoms was startlingly, terrifyingly fast. Wave after relentless wave deployed. Five clones. Then another five. Then five more. The self-destructing Bangboo phantoms rained down like precision-guided cluster bombs, plunging directly into the most densely packed, surging tides of the Parasitic Ethereals.
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
The blinding fire and crackling lightning of the continuous detonations almost never stopped, rapidly merging into a single, continuous, deafening roar of mechanical death. The desperate, agonizing shrieks of the Ethereals were completely drowned out by the relentless shockwaves. Shattered monster limbs, jagged carapace fragments, and corrosive Aether blood rained down upon the battlefield in a grotesque downpour.
Every single explosion was guaranteed to take down at least one Parasitic Ethereal., as the sheer number of consecutive detonations rapidly accumulated, the underlying multiplier of the [Explode With You!!!] skill began to climb at a highly visible, exponential rate.
By the time Eous unleashed the seventh and eighth waves, the damage output had reached terrifying heights. Each synchronized wave of phantom explosions could instantly vaporize a small sector of the battlefield, while heavily crippling and staggering dozens of surrounding monsters caught in the outer blast radius.
"This..." Yanagi muttered, her voice tinged with rare disbelief. She smoothly stepped forward, bringing her naginata down in a flawless, sweeping slash to split a Farbauti completely in half after it had been knocked off balance by the rolling shockwaves. The Section 6 operative took a brief fraction of a second to glance back at the little Bangboo. Watching the tiny machine, which seemingly possessed an infinite reservoir of energy, casually carpet-bombing an entire army of Ethereals, a distinct hint of deep shock broke through her usually calm, professional facade.
She had previously deduced that the Proxy's Bangboo had been heavily modified to be strong. However, only now, witnessing this apocalyptic barrage firsthand, did she truly comprehend just how utterly ridiculous this strength was in terms of sustained, large-scale combat capability. This specific kind of high-frequency, high-yield energy projection would be nothing more than pure, unattainable fantasy for standard machinery. It required a nearly infinite energy supply and an impossibly stable internal core structure to prevent the unit from melting itself down into a puddle of slag.
Under Eous's arguably luxurious and entirely excessive blanket of fire coverage, the crushing pressure on the squad's front line decreased sharply.
The suffocating tide of Parasitic Ethereals, which had been methodically pressing them inward step by bloody step, was violently forced to a complete standstill. In the specific kill-box where Eous focused its relentless bombing runs, a temporarily safe vacuum zone was carved out, consisting of nothing but smoldering wreckage, glowing scorch marks, and pulverized ash.
Lumine, finally having her hands freed from the endless parrying, did not allow her muscles to relax in the slightest.
She spun on her heel, slashing outward to completely shatter the skull of a stray, heavily damaged monster that had slipped through the net. She quickly dashed over to Dan Heng's side, raising her voice to be heard over the continuous, thundering roar of the Bangboo's explosions.
"Dan Heng! Keep your guard up! The biggest one hasn't shown its ugly face yet!" Her sharp, golden gaze continuously scanned the thick, boiling Aether mist and the chaotic, shifting shadows of the battlefield. She remained highly vigilant, her senses straining to detect any sign of the Secondary Mutated Spine-King Worm that Wise had explicitly warned them about.
That massive, unseen entity was the true, looming threat—the one variable that could instantly shatter the fragile balance they had just fought so hard to reclaim.
"Understood," Dan Heng replied with his usual brief, stoic calm. The lethal, sweeping momentum of Cloud-Piercer did not slacken for a single heartbeat, but the archivist smoothly diverted a significant portion of his sharp combat awareness outward, silently sensing the subtle, dangerous vibrations moving beneath the chaotic battlefield around them.
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