Chapter 296: Evil, Then Cut. (Patreon)

"Consultant Demoulin, I believe I made myself perfectly clear earlier. We will not endorse your methods."

Yanagi Tsukishiro's voice was stern and icy, a sharp contrast to the woman she'd just addressed as Demoulin.

"Deputy Section Chief Tsukishiro, I think you've misunderstood something. I'm notifying you. I'm not asking for your opinion."

Demoulin's perpetually narrowed eyes finally opened. She swept her arm out, and the soldiers behind her, armed to the teeth, began marching in unison onto the ice. Clearly, she didn't think much of Yanagi Tsukishiro.

Swish!

A blade sang out, and a Fissure split open across the ground. The TOPS soldiers flinched and shuffled back a couple of steps.

Yanagi Tsukishiro still held her naginata aloft, her head tilted slightly down. The moonlight bleached her glasses white, hiding whatever expression lay behind them.

"I've already stated my position on TOPS's plan to detonate the small Hollow out on the sea to clear the monster. There's no way that's happening."

Ten minutes earlier, this woman, Demoulin, had surrounded the harbor with a horde of TOPS soldiers and declared that they'd come to help solve the problem.

But this wasn't the first time Yanagi Tsukishiro had met her. Back when she'd first become acquainted with Hoshimi Miyabi, during the battle that got Miyabi named a Void Hunter, Yanagi Tsukishiro had already crossed paths with this woman.

"Detonating the small Hollow would certainly destroy that monster. But at the same time, the harbor and the residents living near the Hollow's edge would be caught in the blast of released Ether, and the casualties would be enormous. Consultant Demoulin should know all this perfectly well."

Because the small Hollow out at sea was stable, its resources meager and hard to harvest, New Eridu had never developed it into a minable zone.

As a result, the Ether energy inside wasn't plentiful, but it certainly wasn't scarce either.

Demoulin's plan was to turn this small Hollow into a giant bomb: release a massive quantity of active Ether bombs inside it and force the Hollow to expand.

In an instant, the expansion would swallow the calamity beast and everything on the surface of the sea along with it. Such unnatural swelling would quickly shatter the once-stable balance of the space, triggering a massive energy fluctuation, enough to obliterate everything within it in spatial chaos.

But the price was steep. The Hollow's expansion would reach the residents living along the coast, and it might swallow the town whole. The people inside could be sacrificed along with it.

Yanagi Tsukishiro spelled out the consequences word by word. Demoulin listened without so much as a ripple.

"So what?"

Her eyes, which had been narrowed, snapped open. She stared straight into Yanagi Tsukishiro's face with unconcealed coldness, and if you looked closely you could even see a hint of contempt.

"At the very least, my method is guaranteed to wipe that beast off the face of the earth. As for those unlucky residents, what do they have to do with me? If they want someone to blame, they can blame their bad luck for living in a backwater like this."

Demoulin's words were sharp and grating, like some man-eating beast that spits out no bones, indifferent to the lives of its own kind. All it cared about was whether the threat in front of it was gone and where its next meal would come from.

A person like that would never spare a shred of sympathy for anyone else. The only thing she cared about was getting what she wanted.

"Cold-blooded monster."

"Monster? The thing raising hell out on the ice is the monster. I'm the hero who deals with monsters. Instead of standing here blocking me, you might want to think about what happens when those hunks of scrap iron finally die and the monster runs off."

Demoulin's tone turned ugly. After all, her plan had to be carried out before the calamity beast left these waters, and if the thing got away, it would all go up in smoke.

"I won't let that happen."

"Give me a break. Look at what you've done. The monster is still strutting around on the ice, and that alone proves your efforts are meaningless. Why don't you let me handle it myself…"

As she spoke, Demoulin grew more aggressive. She stepped forward and pressed her body against Yanagi Tsukishiro, trying to use her height and stance to intimidate her. But Yanagi Tsukishiro showed not a flicker of fear. She just stared right back at Demoulin.

The TOPS soldiers began to stir restlessly. But when they saw Asaba Harumasa standing behind the Fissure, along with the pack of bears from Belobog Heavy Industries, they thought better of it and stayed put.

The standoff stiffened, and then, right at that moment, the battlefield out on the sea erupted once more.

BOOM!!!!!!!!!!!

A brilliant pale-blue light flared up, drawing everyone in the harbor to look.

"What is that?!"

"So bright! I can't keep my eyes open!"

Everyone instinctively shielded their eyes. Fortunately, the light didn't last long. Once it had dimmed again, Yanagi Tsukishiro and the others turned as one to look out over the sea.

"Is that… Geno?"

"I-I think so…"

All the composure Yanagi Tsukishiro had held during the standoff with Demoulin was gone. Her mouth hung wide open, showing exactly how stunned she was.

Demoulin, by contrast, had a face so dark it looked ready to drip water.

"Hoshimi Miyabi…"

She had seen this light before. She'd seen it back during the Argos Hollow incident.

That had been Hoshimi Miyabi's breakout battle. Wielding her family's heirloom blade, she had cut down the huge swarm of pseudo-cores created by Lerna, an Ethereal and an abnormal symbiote, and then Lerna itself. Back then, the same blue light had surrounded Miyabi.

And the time it had taken her was no more than…

Three minutes.

Out on the sea, Geroy, completely immobile, lay collapsed on the ice, sparking. Only the red glow still flickering on the screens inside its cockpit proved that it could still be called alive.

Behind it, three square objects, not big, not small, were being shielded tightly by its shattered body. They were Greta and the others' logic cores.

This was Geroy's final effort.

On the other side, the calamity beast had long since thrown off the restraints of Greta's three fused machines. Its face wary, it watched Geno, whom it had once regarded as a little dessert, standing on the ice before it and bearing down on it with immense pressure.

Geno had shed his earlier wretched look. Now he was draped in a broad suit of armor, and the rustling of its plates shifting against one another gave off an intangible, oppressive weight.

In his hand he gripped a blade radiating a murderous aura. What else could it be but Tailless?

His heart was still as water. Watching the calamity beast a short distance away with calm eyes, he announced its final fate in an almost casual tone.

"Swift death to evil!!"