Second Genesis

Chapter 572: A True Genius [950 GT Bonus]

Grey’s gaze flashed and he roared, ignoring the pain ripping through his Neural Frame as he forced his Resonant Sense outward again.

The expansion felt like dragging broken glass through his nervous system, but Grey pushed through it anyway, spreading his awareness farther through the Church before pouring Center of Balance into that expanded field.

Veyrath had already shown him the principle, because Elementals didn’t just control their elements from the outside, they melded those elements directly into their Neural Frames until the two became almost indistinguishable.

If Grey took a step back and really considered what that meant, then by extension they were also threading their Neural Frames into every Ability built from those elements.

When Veyrath formed a whip of fire and kept it condensed, flexible, and solid enough to behave like a weapon, he wasn’t simply creating flames and letting them exist naturally. Nothing about fire wanted to stay in a neat, whip-like shape, so Veyrath had to constantly send signals through it, overriding its nature with his own control and forcing it to behave according to his intent.

In that case, if Grey couldn’t naturally look into another person’s body and see how their energy was moving, there was no reason he had to accept that limitation. Why couldn’t he extend Center of Balance through his Resonant Sense and make it function outside his own body, using the information gathered by his Neural Frame instead of relying only on what his eyes could observe?

The idea clicked into place almost instantly, and the pathways inside The Immovable’s body began reflecting themselves through Grey’s mind. Unfortunately, Crimson Cognition was still out of reach while he maintained his Quasi Dominion in this state, and although Grey might normally have tried forcing two Frames active at once anyway, doing that while his Neural Frame was already covered in micro-fissures would have been stupid even by his standards.

He would have to settle for this, but as the flow of The Immovable’s energy became clearer, Grey quickly realized that it would be more than enough.

The split diversions feeding her invisible spear attacks appeared in Grey’s mind before the strikes fully manifested, and his body immediately began moving with a smoothness that made even the rebirth waters seem clumsy by comparison.

He leaned backward as one attack crossed where his throat had been, lifted a leg and kicked outward to alter the path of her physical spear, then smoothly arched his back and switched legs to protect his planted foot from another invisible thrust.

The unseen attack passed beneath the crook of his knee, and when his second kick missed just as deliberately as the first had, Grey let the momentum carry his hips around until he was spinning parallel to the ground, three more invisible spear tips cutting through the spaces around him before he landed without losing his balance.

There was something strange about Grey’s eyes now. They had gone dull and almost lifeless, not because he had stopped thinking, but because Center of Balance had stripped away every unnecessary reaction until his movements looked mechanical in their precision.

His body swam through another sea of thrusts, slipping between attacks that seemed to arrive from every direction, and when The Immovable finally committed too much weight to one side, Grey swatted The Virtueless outward a single time and caught her at exactly the right angle, sending her stumbling back.

Grey vanished into a burst of shadows and appeared behind her, already kicking a heel toward the crook of her knee. The Immovable was facing away from him, but she slammed her spear down toward the ground, and Grey’s Resonant Sense immediately caught the invisible spear forming to protect her leg along with a second unseen thrust that shot upward toward his crotch.

It was a sinister counter, but Grey hardly cared because the first kick had never been meant to land. He pulled his leg back, pivoted, and turned the motion into a whipping roundhouse that smashed toward the side of her head before she could fully redirect her energy.

The Immovable was a fraction too slow. Grey’s foot connected with her face, but instead of allowing the strike to send her flying, he changed the angle at the last moment and arched the roundhouse downward, driving the opposite side of her head straight into the stone.

Blood sprayed from her mouth as the floor cracked beneath her, and before she could recover, The Virtueless swept low like Grey was brooming trash from the ground, catching the shaft of her spear at exactly the right point and ripping it from her grip before sending it spiraling across the catacombs.

"STOP!" a booming voice thundered from the distance, and Grey didn’t even need to look to know who it belonged to.

The Boundless was finally arriving, the very same fat fuck who had kidnapped him and dragged him back to the Holy City in the first place, but Grey had no intention of listening to a cuck who probably couldn’t even see his own meat without a mirror and several assistants.

The Virtueless spun once through Grey’s hands as The Immovable tried to push herself up, her expression finally showing something close to panic.

Grey stepped forward and thrust the rod downward with enough force to make the surrounding air warp, and the bronze weapon punched through her chest before burying itself deep into the stone beneath her, killing her much the same way he had killed the Dormaji.

Blood burst upward and splattered across Grey’s already filthy clothes. Contrasted against his crimson eyes, they truly looked right at home. At a certain point, it had already become difficult to tell the difference between the sweat that matted his hair and the blood.

The Immovable’s eyes opened wide in horror, her body jerking once as though it still couldn’t quite believe the battle had ended this way, but Grey only looked down at her with a cold expression before slowly turning his head toward the approaching presence of The Boundless.