Chapter 60: Stapan: I am not inferior to the Taixu Sovereign of the past! Musachi: Excuse me. (Patreon)

It wasn't until Musachi flashed an OK sign from his formation node far off in the distance that Yixuan snapped back to herself. She flashed one back.

"Bind!" Yixuan intoned softly.

The next instant, five golden pillars of light shot skyward across the area, and within moments they knit together into a killing array, enveloping the Ethereals ahead.

In that instant, the countless motes of Ether drifting through the Hollow were bound by the array and reshaped into blades, each one sharp enough to pierce an Ethereal, and they drove down into the Ethereals below.

Squelch...

Squelch...

The sound of blades tearing into Ethereals rang on without pause. The Ethereals didn't even know what had happened before the array took their lives!

"Yunkui Summit's arts really are something else." Asaba Harumasa watched the scene with wide eyes.

"They certainly are. With the array, today's mission just got a lot easier — the Ethereals inside have been weakened enormously." Tsukishiro Yanagi studied the readings intently, unable to hide her own astonishment.

Faced with this many Ethereals, the array naturally couldn't wipe them all out — it was only an ordinary Five Elements killing array, and not much casting material had been prepared — but even so, the results were already gratifying.

Every Ethereal below Tier 3 had lost the ability to fight. Even the Tier 3s were badly hurt. Only the Tier 4s came through without serious injury, and even then, a few Dead End Butchers had their Ether activate on the spot and were promptly cut down by the array's follow-up strikes.

Thanks to Yixuan's flash of inspiration, this cleanup was going who knew how much faster!

"Chief Miyabi, get ready." Seeing this, Yixuan reminded Hoshimi Miyabi beside her.

"Understood." Hoshimi Miyabi nodded. Without waiting for a second reminder, she took position at the edge of the array, and the instant it ended she kicked hard off the ground and shot forward like an arrow. Her demon blade Tailless left its sheath in a flash, blue frostfire clinging to the steel.

Now Hoshimi Miyabi moved like a streak of light, threading precisely through the Ethereals below, like a butterfly flitting through a flower bed. And every beat of those wings was a stroke of the blade — and the fall of another Ethereal.

Her first targets were the few Tier 4 Ethereals that the array had badly wounded, then the Tier 3s that still had fight in them. Her reasoning was simple: clear out the small fry that could disrupt the battle first, and deal with the powerful Notorious Ethereals last.

After all, at this speed, if a Notorious Ethereal survived a single stroke, the time would simply be wasted — better to clear the others first.

Hoshimi Miyabi was like the Reaper himself, harvesting the Ethereals below. They barely had time to register anything before the array crippled them, and then she finished them with a single cut. They died without ever understanding what had happened.

And even the lucky few that didn't die on the spot found the biting frost on her blade steadily eating away at their lives.

"I'd heard about Hoshimi Miyabi's Lena Subjugation — how she defeated a powerful anomalous Ethereal symbiote in almost no time. But seeing her fight with my own eyes is still astonishing." Yixuan kept the array running as she watched Hoshimi Miyabi on the field, a flicker of surprise crossing her eyes.

At Miyabi's age, Yixuan had been nowhere near this strong. Their circumstances growing up had been different, which had put Yixuan a little behind at the start, but that alone said plenty about how prodigious Hoshimi Miyabi's talent was.

Musachi watched Hoshimi Miyabi fight, a flash of surprise in his own eyes. This was the first time he'd seen her fight in earnest, and she was even stronger than he'd imagined.

Back when he'd saved her, he never would have guessed that the stone-faced little bean could grow to this point in just ten years.

Then again, that being said, his own strength had actually grown faster. From transmigrating to speedrunning Hollow Zero took two years at most — but their situations weren't comparable. He'd had a cheat; there was no point measuring against that.

Click...

Just then, Hoshimi Miyabi sheathed her blade, and the sound of Ethereals hitting the ground followed one after another.

In under thirty seconds, Hoshimi Miyabi had wiped out the vast majority of the Ethereals on the field. Dozens of Tier 4 Ethereals among them.

It should have been a brutal fight, but with two Void Hunters working together, it had become a fairly easy extermination.

Ye Shunguang watched Hoshimi Miyabi's display and couldn't help feeling a stir of admiration.

The two of them weren't that far apart in age — Miyabi was only a few years older — yet the gap in strength was like heaven and earth. Ye Shunguang herself was no weakling: at Yunkui Summit, setting aside the Grandmaster and the Sect Leader, and excepting Ju Fufu and her own older brother, nobody could beat her with certainty, and even out in the wider world she'd count as a top-tier Proxy. But next to a Void Hunter, she still fell a little short.

"Fufu, hold the rear. Don't let Ethereals from elsewhere come and disturb us," Yixuan said, waving the array away, then walked down to stand side by side with Hoshimi Miyabi.

With the small fry gone, the real fight was only now beginning.

What they'd just cleared were mostly the weaker Ethereals. But then again, anything that could stand unaffected inside the array had to be Tier 4 at the very least, closer to Tier 5. And the special one in the center — a Dead End Butcher with six arms — was clearly close to Tier 6.

That was already a level at which only a Void Hunter could act.

The strange thing about Dead End Butchers as a species was the enormous gap between their weakest and strongest specimens. The weak ones were barely Tier 4, with little to show for it — provoke one and it would panic like an ostrich, trigger Ether activation, and turn itself into a target.

But the strong ones?

Musachi had once seen one deep in Hollow Zero as tall as a small hill — a Gundam, yes, exactly that — which turned out to be a Dead End Butcher too, just one that had evolved down an entirely different path.

The species was practically a Digimon, evolving differently depending on its environment. There was really no other word for it than bizarre.

"Mm... one, two, three, four, five, six, seven..." Standing beside Hoshimi Miyabi, Yixuan counted the Ethereals around them, then turned to her. "You're faster than I am. Take the ordinary Notorious Ethereals, and leave that specialized Dead End Butcher to me — sound good?" she proposed.

Hoshimi Miyabi's strikes were fast and her blade sharp, so the lightly armored enemies would be relatively easy for her. As for the Dead End Butcher that looked genuinely troublesome, Yixuan was the better match.

The Dead End Butcher was covered in various Ether Crystal growths, and the armor those crystals formed was brutally tough — cutting through it with a blade would take Hoshimi Miyabi a good while. Yixuan's Auric Ink was different.

These bulky, heavily-armored Ethereals were exactly the type she liked dealing with most. Her Auric Ink could seep through anything, after all. Couldn't cut through the armor? Fine, then don't bother — just let the Auric Ink burrow in and corrode the core directly.

"Sounds good." Hoshimi Miyabi nodded.

Without further discussion, the two of them split off toward their respective targets.

"Looks like we'll make it back in time for lunch after all." Musachi watched the battle with a pleasant smile, figuring that barring any surprises, it would all be over within the half hour.

"Let's keep watch on the surroundings. All this commotion might draw in Ethereals from elsewhere — we shouldn't let them interfere with the two Lords' fight," Tsukishiro Yanagi suggested.

Asaba Harumasa, already yawning, had found a high vantage point and set up his bow. Any Ethereals drawn in by the noise, he picked off one by one from up there.

"Come to think of it, Proxy, weren't you holding one of the formation nodes just now? I can't believe you learned this array — it took me forever back in the day!" Ju Fufu walked up beside Musachi, curiosity plain on her face. Then, as if it had suddenly clicked, she said:

"I knew it — our Grandmaster's really taken a shine to you, Proxy! She must've been giving you private tutoring!" Ju Fufu pointed at Musachi, looking thoroughly pleased with her own deduction.

"Ahem..." Beside them, Ye Shiyuan nearly choked on his own breath at her words.

What did she mean, the Grandmaster liked him? Senior Sister, could your choice of words possibly be any more reckless?

"I'm self-taught, thank you very much. It's called talent — you know, talent." Musachi grinned at Ju Fufu. He was rather fond of this orange tabby-kin girl.

Something about Ju Fufu always reminded him of a certain vampire young lady, self-important as could be. The same short stature, the same conviction that she radiated dignity. Too bad no amount of tough posturing could change the fact that she was, at heart, adorable.

"The Manager really is... impressive. So many Yunkui Summit disciples groan about how they can't master this array, and yet you picked it up in just a few days..." Ye Shunguang added, admiration in her voice.

Musachi just smiled at that.

For most people these arts really were difficult, but given how Musachi commanded Ether, mastering them was almost trivial. When it came down to it, every superhuman ability in this world was tangled up with Ether in some way, and Musachi was the classic case of mastering one thing and mastering them all. With his overwhelming Ether control on top of Fantasy Manifestation, there was almost nothing that could really challenge him.

The one disappointment was that none of the other arts he'd learned worked as well for him as divination did — they mostly came out exactly as the original technique intended, at best slightly more powerful.

"The Grandmaster's fight is almost done, too!" Ju Fufu, meanwhile, lay grinning atop the crater rim, watching the battle below.

In the two minutes the group had spent talking, the fight below had raged on at full intensity. But how could a mere handful of Ethereals ever match two Void Hunters? In just two minutes, the Ethereals' collapse was already plain to see.

The Notorious Ethereals facing Hoshimi Miyabi were covered in blade wounds; two of them, cores already severed, lay collapsed on the ground, and the rest were on their last legs.

The near-Tier-6 Dead End Butcher fighting Yixuan wasn't faring much better. Beyond the core atop its head, secondary cores had already formed in each of its limbs. All of them were sealed tight beneath a shell of Ether Crystal armor — if Hoshimi Miyabi had been the one cutting through it with a blade, it would've taken some real effort.

But Yixuan was different.

Black shot through with a thread of gold, her Auric Ink flowed around her like a living cloud, seeping into every crevice like nanomachines. Under her control it wrapped around the Ethereal's entire body, black-gold filaments winding tight and trickling slowly into every seam in the armor.

For all its impenetrable armor, the Dead End Butcher couldn't get anything going against Yixuan. It was completely outmatched. Even as it struggled and swung its Ether-Crystal greatsword, it couldn't so much as graze the hem of her robe.

"ROOAAR!!!"

Amid one last defiant thrash, Yixuan willed the Auric Ink to crush the core hidden beneath its armor completely, and the massive figure slowly slumped to the ground.

On the other side, Hoshimi Miyabi's fight had likewise ended. As she sheathed her blade one last time, the Notorious Ethereal before her crumpled to the ground. The two of them finished within moments of each other.

"Mission complete. We should head back." Hoshimi Miyabi stood tall and elegant atop the ruins; beside her, Yixuan nodded.

But just as the two of them started to tidy up the scene before leaving, both Yixuan and Hoshimi Miyabi frowned sharply.

Then—

BOOM!!!

A tremendous explosion erupted at their flank, and an unending torrent of destructive force poured toward them.

"What?" Ju Fufu, Tsukishiro Yanagi, and the others all wore looks of shock.

Only Musachi's eyes filled with something closer to angry surprise. Because he knew that power intimately.

It was Nirvana's destructive force.

It took him only a moment to piece together what was going on, and he let out a short, incredulous laugh. So TOPS had gone and stolen his Nirvana power after all — though clearly they weren't up to the task, having only ripped off a fraction of its properties and cobbled together this crude, destruction-tinged Ether power from it. Compared to the pure destruction of his actual Nirvana, this was, without question, a patchy imitation.

Still, Musachi didn't act rashly. He wanted to see what these people were actually up to.

The sudden ambush left everyone stunned. But if an attack of this caliber could actually take them down, Yixuan and Hoshimi Miyabi wouldn't deserve the name Void Hunter.

As the dust cleared, Hoshimi Miyabi reappeared some distance away — her reaction had been fast enough that the strike never touched her. Yixuan, closer to the blast and unable to dodge, likewise came away unharmed. Once her Auric Ink dispersed, she stood there completely unscathed.

But in her phoenix eyes — normally so composed, so free of negative emotion — a flicker of anger now showed. Clearly, being ambushed had put her in a rather sour mood.

"What lowlife's hiding out there? Show yourself." Yixuan brushed the ash off her shoulder and looked toward where the attack had come from.

"As expected of Grandmaster Yixuan and Hoshimi Miyabi. A Void Hunter really is a Void Hunter — I knew an attack of this level wouldn't be enough to touch you."

A figure stepped slowly out of the shadows. To everyone's shock, the figure wasn't human at all. It was an Ethereal.

Its body was covered in Ether Crystal growths and warped away from anything human; where its head should have been, a single enormous eye had taken its place instead. But what drew the eye most was the greatsword in its hand, radiating destructive power. Its shape wasn't far off from Nirvana itself — clearly an imitation infused with a fraction of Nirvana's power.

"A Sacrificial Beast?" Yixuan frowned at the sight.

"I didn't expect to see a Sacrificial Beast again after all these years. Still, something like that isn't easy to develop. Aren't you afraid of being consumed by the power?" Yixuan said flatly.

"Consumed? Blessed as I am by the Creator, how could I ever be consumed by my Lord's own power? I'm the Creator's favored one, his devoted follower — and this power is nothing less than his gift to me!" The Sacrificial Beast cackled with laughter.

Musachi couldn't help feeling a twinge of disgust. Another one brainwashed by the Creator, mind gone completely off the rails.

Stapan looked at the two Void Hunters before him.

"And you two... you're my touchstone! Today I'll kill you both right here, and then a new story will spread through New Eridu — that the hero of ten years past, the Taixu Sovereign, has returned, and the very first thing he did was slay two Void Hunters as a sacrifice to the Creator, a declaration of loyalty to Him!"

"You can't." Hoshimi Miyabi frowned at his words, a flash of displeasure crossing her eyes, but she didn't do anything drastic — she just said it flatly.

And it was true. He couldn't.

Even with Nirvana's stolen power. Even as a Sacrificial Beast. Because what he was up against, after all, were two Void Hunters — even if they'd already burned through some stamina in the earlier fight.

But a Void Hunter was still a Void Hunter. Not something any bit of rotten fish could go around picking fights with.

The last time Yixuan had stumbled here, it was because that particular Ethereal had simply been too strong — but a mere Sacrificial Beast? Neither she nor Hoshimi Miyabi thought much of it at all.

"Heh. Who said... I was alone?" Stapan smiled thinly. The next instant, Asaba Harumasa, keeping watch from the high ground, shouted out.

"Watch out, we're surrounded!"

Figures were emerging from every direction now, closing in slowly. All of them... were Sacrificial Beasts!

Unlike Stapan, though, these were ordinary people who couldn't fully withstand the Sacrificial Beast experiment — at best, they counted as a special variety of Ethereal. But there was one thing notable about them: each of them, to some degree, gave off ripples of destructive power. Clearly, the Sacrificial Beast serum injected into them carried a trace of Nirvana's power as well.

By a conservative count, there were close to a hundred of these Sacrificial Beasts!

Every single one gave off Ether readings on par with a Tier 3, nearly Tier 4 Ethereal. Combined with the destructive power running through them, their offensive strength far exceeded what their tier should allow. When it came to raw offense, Nirvana's destructive power was simply in a class of its own.

"Careful, Musachi — get somewhere safe." Ju Fufu's expression darkened as she took in the monsters that had surrounded them without anyone noticing. She, Ye Shunguang, and Tsukishiro Yanagi stepped in front of Musachi, watching their enemies warily.

Musachi just nodded. His own expression wasn't much better, though — these people were getting far too out of hand.

Producing this many half-finished Sacrificial Beasts must have cost several times as many lives to begin with. After all, even these half-finished results couldn't be guaranteed every time. Most of the test subjects never even made it to becoming an Ethereal before dying on the spot.

Faced with so many enemies, even Yixuan and Hoshimi Miyabi frowned.

The two of them would be fine — small fry were small fry, no matter the number, and they posed no real threat to beings on the level of a Void Hunter. But the others were a different matter. Whether Yunkui Summit disciples or Hollow Special Operations Section 6 members, any of them could end up seriously wounded against enemies in these numbers if they weren't careful. Their own strength simply wasn't yet at the point where they could ignore Ethereals like these.

"You two, no need to panic — death is over in an instant. Don't worry, I'll bring you back to New Eridu... though only your heads, of course. Two Void Hunter heads — I imagine that ought to prove I really am the Taixu Sovereign, wouldn't it? Hmm... or perhaps: facing a mighty foe, the once-heroic Taixu Sovereign fought to the death and could only recover the two Void Hunters' broken remains. Let me think... compared to just telling people I killed you outright, that version does sound better, doesn't it?"

"He's starting to babble nonsense." Hoshimi Miyabi murmured to Yixuan beside her. She was watching, gauging whether a one-strike kill was possible.

But arrogant as his words were, Stapan hadn't lost his mind entirely — he kept the distance between them wide enough that Hoshimi Miyabi couldn't close it in a single burst.

"Nonsense? No, no. Mayflower made one mistake over the years — a fatal one. In order to steady people's hearts back when New Eridu was first founded, she elevated the Taixu Sovereign into a hero in everyone's mind. After all... a dead man is the easiest thing in the world to manipulate."

"She's not dead." Hoshimi Miyabi said flatly.

"Not dead? Ha! That line might fool an eight-year-old. Both our sides know precious little about the Taixu Sovereign, but there's one thing everyone agrees on: ten years ago, that person went alone into the depths of Hollow Zero. A massive Ether disturbance followed, and once it settled, the Hollow stopped expanding. The Taixu Sovereign's fate was left unknown — and remains unknown to this day. Ten years, and still nothing. Doesn't that tell you exactly one thing? Unknown fate? That means dead! So from here on out, I am the Taixu Sovereign!"

"Sorry, coming through."

Stapan's rant wasn't even finished when a voice suddenly sounded right behind him. At the same instant, a hand landed on his shoulder.

"Wait... when did—"

Shock rippled through Stapan — he hadn't even noticed the figure appear behind him.

"Die!"

Stapan reacted fast, gripping his greatsword tight and swinging back over his shoulder — but in that same instant, he felt his hands go suddenly, strangely light. Before he could even trigger the destructive power coursing through him, the figure behind him had already torn both his arms clean off.

"...Who the hell are you?"

Only then did Stapan get a proper look at the figure behind him.

A thick layer of Ether armor covered him, hiding his face entirely. But what drew the eye most was his chest. There, a hollow cavity opened, and within it sat a core. A core belonging to an Ethereal.

But unlike a normal, round core, this one behaved like a black hole, dragging the surrounding Ether into a gravitational field all its own. It looked as though something of tremendous mass had been forcibly compressed down to that size.

Just standing next to him, Stapan felt a weight pressing down like an entire mountain. Under that pressure, he barely even registered the agony of having his arms torn off.

But compared to Stapan—

Yixuan and Hoshimi Miyabi were even more stunned.

They had seen the whole thing — every moment of Musachi's move. It had been simple. Unmistakably simple. In a single instant, he'd opened a door through an Ether Singularity and appeared right behind Stapan. And the moment Stapan turned to strike, he'd twisted off both arms as effortlessly as plucking an apple from a tree.

It was as if this weren't a Sacrificial Beast at all, but a puppet being toyed with in his hands.

"It's you!" Yixuan eyed the figure with something like curiosity, unable to place who — or what — he actually was. Was he an Ethereal, or was he human?

Beside her, Hoshimi Miyabi frowned deeply, her grip tightening around Tailless. For a moment, the blade nearly slipped from her control, straining to leave its sheath on its own. She could only tighten her hold, refusing to let it act on its own.

She, too, was startled. Who was this man, that he could shake her own blade loose from her control? And there was something oddly familiar about him — as if she'd seen him somewhere before.

"Attack! Get him now!" Stapan had recovered his wits by then and screamed the order in a frenzy. He had no idea who this stranger was, but it didn't matter — with this many Sacrificial Beasts surrounding them, sheer numbers could decide a great deal.

The next instant, nearly fifty Sacrificial Beasts clustered near Stapan let out a roar in unison, channeling the Ether force within them into powerful attacks. Others simply charged straight at Musachi.

"Careful!" Yixuan called out a warning at once.

Even someone strong could find themselves in real trouble surrounded by this many Ethereals.

But Musachi didn't show a trace of alarm. He simply raised a hand slowly, fingers spread toward the beasts.

Whump!!!

In an instant, something inside every one of them seemed to explode, the Ether within surging violently all at once. The friction generated searing heat. All fifty Ethereals became walking balls of fire. They stumbled just a few steps before collapsing, unmoving.

"What kind of ability is that? Impossible!" Stapan's eyes went wide at the sight.

It defied all human comprehension. Even Nirvana's mighty destructive power needed physical contact to kill. What Musachi had just displayed was strong to the point of near-impossibility. This wasn't a power any human should be able to wield!

A god — in the depths of Stapan's mind, only a god, only the Creator himself, could command Authority at that level.

Beyond Stapan, everyone else — Yixuan and Hoshimi Miyabi, Ju Fufu and Tsukishiro Yanagi — stood frozen in shock at what they'd just witnessed. That power was terrifying.

Fifty of anything — forget Ethereals, even fifty pigs would take several minutes to butcher one by one with a knife. And this figure had just... waved his hand once, and every last monster burst into flame?

"Impossible! This can't be happening! Die!" Unable to accept what he was seeing, Stapan roared and charged straight at Musachi. The Ether inside him swelled rapidly — even without arms, he could still unleash destructive power from elsewhere on his body.

But before he could even strike, Musachi simply turned and, with one clean kick, sent him flying. The kick came blindingly fast, one fluid motion — Stapan had almost no time to react at all.

The gap between them was that vast — vast enough that Musachi didn't even need his special ability to kick him to death like a stray dog by the roadside.

"Impossible... how is this happening..." Stapan still couldn't believe it. "My Sacrificial Beast serum is this powerful — even if the original Taixu came back from the dead, he shouldn't be able to beat me this easily!"

"What is this guy even saying, going on and on." Musachi watched him ramble in disbelief, a little baffled.

What was wrong with this guy — had the drugs fried his brain? By rights, TOPS people weren't exactly geniuses, but they should still be reasonably normal. But this one? His head seemed to be working on a whole different level...

Then again, once Musachi remembered the man had turned into a Sacrificial Beast, he had a rough idea of what was going on. The Sacrificial Beast serum wasn't easy to develop, after all — especially not while keeping the subject's will perfectly intact. Cases like his own, an Ethereal who fully recovered his memory, were vanishingly rare.

No — actually, if Musachi hadn't awakened Fantasy Manifestation, he probably would have ended up as one of the Creator's puppets too...

Fantasy Manifestation was simply too far beyond the pale. Back when he was just an Ethereal with a spark of nascent intelligence, he'd only wondered for a moment about where he'd come from — and Fantasy Manifestation had gone and forcibly restored his original memories.

It felt a bit like some alien insect swarm that, having slain a legendary blade, ended up assimilated by that blade's memories instead. Except the blade really had died in that story, whereas Musachi had simply reclaimed memories that were rightfully his own.

At the same time, Musachi felt a bit impatient.

Why hasn't that Geppetto shown up yet? There's no way he can resist a scene like this without making a move! Musachi grumbled internally.

That's right — Musachi's real target had never been Stapan, of all people. As far as he was concerned, Stapan was just a nobody who'd stolen a scrap of his power — and now had his brain fried by the serum on top of it.

And sure enough, Geppetto didn't disappoint him.

Just then, a rift tore open in the sky. At the same instant, a massive arm and dozens of threads dropped from above, plunging straight into the bodies of the Ethereals below. Even the Sacrificial Beast Stapan wasn't spared.

Musachi couldn't help but feel a little pleased at the sight.

There he was, finally. This time's real target! Geppetto, who had made trouble for him time and again!

Musachi had known that after losing so much in their last two encounters, Geppetto wouldn't be able to resist grabbing more puppet material when the opportunity presented itself. Even failed specimens, he wouldn't pass up — after all, every one of these Ethereals carried a trace of Nirvana's destructive power inside.

That earlier scheme of his had probably been an attempt to seize the dragon Ethereal's body and its Nirvana karma-core once it died. Too bad Musachi was simply too strong, and had wrecked the whole plan outright.

As for today's turn of events, Musachi genuinely hadn't seen it coming. He'd figured this would just be an ordinary commission. But once Stapan showed up, he'd realized things were different.

Knowing Geppetto's greed, he was probably watching this whole situation unfold from somewhere. And given that Musachi hadn't managed to catch him the last few times, that same greedy streak meant he'd almost certainly show up again this time too.

And that was exactly what Musachi had been waiting for.

Normally, Geppetto kept his body hidden away somewhere beyond this Hollow, reaching in only with extended threads — which made him genuinely hard to catch. But there was an exception to everything.

Don't forget, Musachi had picked up a special ability while learning divination. As long as an outcome he divined had any chance of happening at all, the act of divination itself could anchor that outcome into reality.

At that moment, Geppetto's threads were already hauling the remaining few dozen Ethereals, along with Stapan's body, up into the sky. Clearly, he meant to retreat.

But right then, Musachi let out a cold laugh.

Cross the abbot and think you can just walk away?

Musachi did a quick mental calculation on his fingers, and sure enough—

Great fortune!

In other words, the odds of this happening were one in a thousand!!!

What he'd actually divined was simple: whether the space behind Geppetto would ripple and spit him back out.

The next instant!

The rift above began to expand violently, and a long, gaunt, enormous body came crashing down from the sky.

CRASH!!!

Geppetto's true body tumbled out and slammed into the ground. Even sprawled there, it looked down at Musachi with a dazed, uncomprehending look in its eyes.

Wait, what — why did I just fall out? What does this mean?

Then it stiffly turned its head to look over at Musachi. For all its far greater bulk, it looked at Musachi with an expression of outright pleading.

"...Can we settle this peacefully?"

Musachi read that flicker of emotion in its eyes with perfect clarity.

"Nope." Musachi flashed a grin.