Second Genesis

Chapter 570: Cut Scenes [850 GT Bonus]

"Fucking cut scenes," Grey cursed, looking down at Xerchen with deep annoyance.

The bastard had picked his timing all too well, appearing from Grey’s blind spot at precisely the moment The Virtueless was descending toward his master’s head. Of course, a blind spot by itself hadn’t meant much to Grey in a long time, his Resonant Sense covered far more than his eyes ever could, but Xerchen had done something more troublesome than simply sneaking behind him.

He had warped Grey’s Resonant Sense and vanished inside it, using some strange application of his devouring ability to swallow every trace of his own presence until Grey had quite literally had nothing to sense.

That made Xerchen the second person in less than an hour to pull that bullshit off, and Grey had to admit that the annoying little gnome genius had done it even better than Veyrath. That was probably because Xerchen had spent the entire battle watching Grey slowly figure out how Veyrath disappeared, then adjusted his own method accordingly.

Grey might have appreciated the talent if Xerchen hadn’t used it to put himself in the perfect position to make Grey’s already shitty day even worse.

"I hope you’re fucking happy," Grey grumbled as Xerchen collapsed with a wet wheeze, his body folding onto the stone while blood poured from the enormous wound through his torso.

The bastard was somehow still alive, but his breaths were so shallow and broken that Grey doubted that would remain true for much longer.

Grey sighed and scratched the side of his head before finally looking toward The Immovable. The old woman had already risen to her feet, but calling her an old woman was becoming less accurate by the second.

Wrinkles tightened and vanished across her face, loose skin filled out, and her hunched back gradually straightened as years seemed to peel away from her body in real time.

"Oh?" Grey’s eyes brightened slightly. He had largely ignored her looks before because she had been an old wrinkled shrew, but this was something he could get behind.

Her silver hair remained unchanged, and straightening her spine only gave her another inch or so, leaving her surprisingly short, but her features had settled into a delicate, regal sort of beauty that immediately caught Grey’s attention. Then the front of her robes began expanding as well, and Grey’s eyebrows slowly climbed.

"Goddamn, you were hiding those kinds of airbags in there? My apologies, I wasn’t familiar with your game."

The Immovable’s eyes sharpened, but Grey was already glancing down toward The Virtueless in his hand.

"You’ve got some competition." The angel lady didn’t respond, though Grey supposed this was one of the few times where he couldn’t really blame her for refusing to entertain him.

Unfortunately, by the time he looked back up, The Immovable had already crossed the distance between them, the tip of her ink-black spear gliding toward his throat. Grey slipped his head aside, letting the weapon pass close enough to his collarbone that he felt the displaced wind, then popped his shoulder upward and slammed it into the spear’s shaft.

The impact jolted the weapon off course, and Grey stepped inside her reach in the same smooth motion, planted one foot firmly between hers, then whipped a hook directly across her face.

Time seemed to slow around him as his fist landed, The Immovable’s cheek visibly distorting beneath the impact.

’What a shame.’

BOOM.

Grey expected her to pinwheel through the Church like before, but instead her head merely snapped to the side and her feet slid several inches across the stone.

His eyes flickered in surprise, and that brief realization was all the time she needed to recover control of her spear. The butt of the weapon swept toward Grey’s stomach while she leaned away from his reach, and Grey immediately understood he wasn’t fast enough to avoid it normally.

His Black Forces triggered, shadows bursting beneath his feet as he flashed backward barely a foot beyond the strike, then he planted himself again and swung The Virtueless downward with both hands.

BOOM.

The Immovable seamlessly converted her missed blow into another attack, rotating the spear around to meet Grey’s rod.

White-gold energy and black shadows exploded outward in surging arcs, the space between them visibly twisting beneath the collision while cracks spiderwebbed across the floor.

Grey felt the difference immediately. The Immovable’s devouring Resonant Dominion was eating away at the power behind his strike before it ever fully reached her, then she was using small adjustments in the spear’s angle to redirect whatever remained.

She wasn’t overpowering Grey, she was shaving away his advantages piece by piece, swallowing force, twisting momentum, and shifting attacks that should have ended her.

Grey clicked his tongue inwardly. He hadn’t activated any of his Frames yet, not because he was underestimating her, but because his body and Neural Frame were already exhausted and he had been trying to give them as much time to recover as possible.

Unfortunately, if things continued like this, The Immovable could probably drag the battle out for hundreds of exchanges, maybe thousands, and the other Guardians were almost certainly already on their way after the Pope’s death.

If they arrived before Grey ended this, he would eventually be ground down by sheer attrition, and once that happened it wouldn’t matter how unwilling he was to cooperate. They would take Elowen straight back to the Palace, straight into the center of that formation, and probably straight toward whatever sacrificial bullshit her mother had prepared for her.

Grey’s jaw clenched as The Immovable’s pressure rolled against him again. Not being Dominion Class was really fucking troublesome. If Grey had possessed a true Dominion of his own, he could simply crush hers beneath something stronger, but right now his Quasi Dominion required him to activate the Frames supporting it, and doing that meant burning through reserves he desperately needed.

His gaze drifted down toward Xerchen, who was still barely clinging to consciousness in a growing pool of blood.

"Fuck you," Grey said, irritation curling across his face. "This is what happens when people are kind and fucking stupid."

Xerchen’s eyes shifted faintly toward him, but he didn’t have enough strength left to reply.

Grey exhaled slowly and tightened his grip around The Virtueless. He didn’t have the luxury of conserving himself anymore, because if he let this battle become a marathon, he would lose Elowen long before he lost his own life.

There was only one reasonable decision left, even if his exhausted Neural Frame was probably going to hate him for making it. Grey gritted his teeth, power surging through the pathways in his mind as white-gold light began leaking from his body, then he threw his head back and roared as the Last Paladin Frame activated.