With a shrill scream from Nether Nymph, the entire room filled with a swarm of Ethereals.
Geno and Twiggy weren't rattled in the slightest — they weren't the greenhorns they'd once been, and a mere bump in numbers wasn't going to change that.
What good would that do her, anyway?
Trash mobs were still trash mobs, no matter how many of them there were.
"Forget them for now — let's take down Nether Nymph first."
Geno said it, and Twiggy nodded back. The two of them prepared to rush Nether Nymph down and finish her off quickly.
But had Nether Nymph really summoned the Ethereals just to stall Geno and Twiggy?
The answer was no.
In a flash, Nether Nymph's silhouette vanished from where she'd been standing. Twiggy instinctively asked Odile where the target had gone —
only to be told that Nether Nymph had already left the room.
"Is she trying to run?"
Geno guessed, reverting back to his normal form as he said it — the Dead End Butcher's frame was simply too massive to fit through the door.
Twiggy saw it differently. If Nether Nymph had wanted to leave, she'd have done it ages ago — there was no reason to wait until now, especially since neither of them could catch her anyway.
Just as the two of them burst out the door to give chase, they froze.
Nether Nymph's figure was dancing through the swarm of Ethereals, cutting down the weaker ones one after another and draining every last drop of Ether energy from their bodies to heal her own wounds.
"She's healing herself by draining her own underlings? That's cold-blooded even for her!"
"Don't judge an Ethereal by ordinary human logic."
Twiggy replied coolly, already working out a countermeasure.
"Let's do the same."
"Do... do what? Don't tell me you mean fight her for scraps?"
Geno blinked, not expecting those words out of Twiggy.
It was true — whatever Nether Nymph could do, he and Twiggy could do too. But in all this time, Geno had never once done anything like it.
Not because he couldn't. Because he wouldn't.
Doing it would prove, once and for all, that he really was an Ethereal — and his fastidious pride wouldn't let him accept that.
"We can't catch her anyway. Better to grab a share for ourselves and recover some strength than let her heal up and drag this into a war of attrition."
With that, Twiggy dove straight into the swarm. Two quick slashes, left and right, and she cut down a pair of weak Tyrfing, drawing in their Ether.
Watching her work so cleanly and without hesitation left Geno a little stunned — he hadn't expected Twiggy to settle into her Ethereal side so fast.
Shaking his head, Geno wasted no more time and joined the strange little feast himself.
With three powerful Ethereals feeding, the swarm was picked clean in short order, and the standoff between the two sides resumed.
"Urp— so full. The energy's still too mixed, though."
Every Ethereal's Ether energy was different. Even once absorbed, the disparate energies would clash and tangle, needing time to digest.
"She's in the same boat. We're still ahead for now."
Twiggy couldn't help rubbing her own stomach. She hadn't been an Ethereal for nearly as long — powerful as she was, her control over Ether was still lacking, and she needed more time to digest and refine it, which meant she'd absorbed less energy overall.
"Then what are we waiting for? Let's just go all-out on her!"
"Calm down. I've got a better plan."
Twiggy stopped Geno before he could charge in recklessly. Their enemy was a mechanic-based boss — stats alone wouldn't cut it.
She then held out her right hand, palm open, turning the back of it toward Nether Nymph.
Nether Nymph's gaze snapped to it instantly — because the thing on Twiggy's hand was her true target all along: that radiant-ceramic ring.
"Want it? Then come and try to take it!"
With that, Twiggy drew her saber with her left hand and, in one clean stroke, sliced off her own right hand at the wrist. Watching the ring and the severed hand fly into the air, both Geno and Nether Nymph froze.
'What are you doing?!'
Geno screamed inwardly. In that instant, he'd completely forgotten that Twiggy — as an Ethereal — could regrow a severed limb; all that remained was pure, visceral panic.
Nether Nymph reacted much the same way. She hadn't expected Twiggy to go so far as to maim herself, and froze for a moment before snapping out of it and lunging forward to snatch the hand for herself.
But would she really get what she wanted?
"Dimensional Slash!"
Geno's blade-qi shot out and closed on Nether Nymph in an instant. Fixated on the ring, she never expected an attack so fast, but reflex kicked in and she triggered Dephase to dodge it.
But dodging the strike meant she couldn't reach the ring anymore.
"Odile!"
Another sharp cry rang out, and the familiar name flooded her ears. Nether Nymph simply hung there in midair, falling toward the ground in a daze, without the slightest response.
Odile — that was her sister's name. She'd fought so desperately to reclaim the ring for one reason alone: to see her sister again.
She knew her sister's soul lived on inside that ring — the voice within it had told her so.
That voice had long since fallen silent, but she'd never once forgotten what it told her.
But that was the nature of battle — the smallest slip could cost everything. Locked in place by old memories, Nether Nymph had already missed her chance, and Geno and Twiggy's combined attack was already upon her.
This time, she couldn't dodge — and didn't want to, either.
Dephase was still on cooldown from her last use. Her body, off-balance in midair, couldn't maneuver, and her Flash Step had a wind-up delay — even starting it now wouldn't be fast enough.
So Nether Nymph accepted her fate calmly, meeting her final curtain call without a shred of resistance.
Clang!
Like the final note fading out in a concert hall, Nether Nymph's head flew high into the air, while the core at her waist was run clean through by Twiggy's saber.
There was no coming back from that.
"It's over. Not exactly a clean win, but a win's a win."
"Yeah, yeah, you don't have to keep hinting at it. I know exactly what I did."
Twiggy answered half-heartedly while picking her severed hand up off the ground, then jammed it straight back against the stump and reattached it.
Using the enemy's most treasured memory to lock her down and strike while she was helpless — a little dirty, sure, but undeniably effective.
Especially against someone as deeply obsessed as Nether Nymph.
"Then again, I wasn't exactly lying to her, either."
Twiggy walked over to where Nether Nymph's severed head had fallen, crouched down, and laid her right hand over it.
"At least this counts as a family reunion, of sorts."
As she spoke, Twiggy's right hand suddenly began to glow, and a moment later, Odile's voice rang out clearly before all three of them.
____
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