During the following training sessions, Ethel gradually returned to his usual calm and composed self.
That meant Captain Oenone no longer needed to remove him from future expedition rosters.
So when Ethel was called away again during training two days later, she was able to send him off without concern.
"Good luck!"
Carrying Oenone's blessing with him, Ethel left the training room.
When he arrived at the underground garage, Quent's trio was already waiting. They had taken over Caesar's team's duty rotation the day before. For the next seven days, Ethel would once again fight alongside the first three people he had ever met in the First Squad.
"Ready? Let's move!"
At Cypher's command, everyone boarded the vehicles.
This time, the Demon had appeared in the southern region—the very same direction as Ethel's first battlefield. The destination, however, was much farther away. After leaving Sunblaze City, they drove for nearly another thirty minutes before approaching the target.
The same formation.
The same steady advance.
The First Squad slowly approached the Demon.
Waiting for them was a grotesque creature covered in tentacles.
Its squat body crawled forward on several clawed limbs beneath an enormous, gaping maw. Yet everyone's attention was drawn to its head.
More than thirty tentacles writhed above it, constantly collecting anything they could find—stones, branches, dirt, and discarded man-made debris. Everything they gathered was piled onto the flat top of its head, as though it were crowning itself with a mountain of garbage.
Then, while they were still observing it—
Something changed.
"Are there... more tentacles now?"
The original thirty-some tentacles had nearly doubled in number.
They watched as one of the tentacles twisted unnaturally before splitting cleanly into two.
The tentacles were reproducing.
"Concept: Dual."
Cypher read the result displayed by the scanner.
Once again, this would be a battle that skipped the testing phase.
As always, Tia ordered the squad to stay back while she prepared to charge into battle as a streak of sunlight.
"Cap—...Tia."
She stopped just before taking off.
"Speak."
"Let us—"
"Denied."
She rejected Cypher before he could even finish.
"There are too many tentacles. Let us divide their attention while you focus on the main assault."
"Unnecessary. I'll cut down every single one."
"But—"
Cypher never got to finish.
Tia had already vanished.
"...I have a very bad feeling about this."
That was what he had wanted to say.
Throughout his long career, Cypher had fought countless Demons. Only a handful had ever given him such an ominous feeling.
The one he remembered most vividly was the Demon from five years ago...
The one that had claimed Leon's life.
They gave him the exact same feeling.
He couldn't tell Tia that.
A baseless premonition wasn't enough to convince her.
She would only dismiss it as an excuse.
"Ethel. Keep your Concept active."
Cypher gave the order.
The four of them stood ready, fully prepared to rush into battle at a moment's notice.
He only hoped he was wrong.
He hoped today would end as just another ordinary expedition.
Tia rushed onto the battlefield.
She stopped atop a high ledge beyond the reach of the Demon's tentacles and looked down upon it.
The Demon sensed her arrival immediately.
Several tentacles lashed toward her—
Every attack missed.
Realizing direct attacks were ineffective, it quickly changed tactics.
Its tentacles reached toward the mountain of collected junk piled atop its head.
In an instant, nearly a hundred tentacles each wrapped themselves around a separate object.
Then, after a brief wind-up—
They hurled everything at Tia.
To everyone else, it looked like an ordinary volley.
To Ethel—
It was something entirely different.
"Those things... split."
The Concept: Dual Demon didn't merely duplicate its own tentacles.
Anything its tentacles touched could also be duplicated.
The already overwhelming barrage multiplied again.
The sky disappeared beneath an airtight net of projectiles racing toward Tia.
Facing the incoming storm, her expression never changed.
She slowly opened her palm.
A miniature sun formed above it.
The moment it left her hand, it rapidly expanded, devouring every object in its path.
"Red Giant."
The ever-expanding star incinerated everything nearby, consuming even the tentacles that had ventured too close.
But her assault wasn't over.
She spread her hand once more, converting Force into countless golden rays that condensed into thin, razor-like discs.
"Solar Halo."
Under Tia's control, the discs swept toward the Demon.
Some were intercepted.
Most were not.
They sliced cleanly through the bases of the tentacles.
In the blink of an eye, half the creature's tentacles were gone.
"Solar Halo."
Without pausing, a second wave followed.
More discs.
More severed tentacles.
Tia continued bombarding it from afar—
Until she noticed something was wrong.
"Solar Halo."
After several more volleys, the number of tentacles stopped decreasing.
As more tentacles were destroyed, the burden placed upon Concept: Dual lessened.
Freed from that strain, the Demon accelerated the rate at which it duplicated new tentacles.
Eventually—
It was regenerating them as quickly as Tia could cut them down.
Although only around twenty tentacles remained now, they had become faster...
More precise...
Far more dangerous.
Seeing this, Tia abandoned her strategy of eliminating every tentacle.
She decided to end the battle by attacking the Demon's body directly.
"Sun Pillar."
"Solar Prominence."
"Solar Arc."
One attack after another crashed toward the Demon.
Every single one was blocked.
Even Cypher's surprise attack with a Sphere was intercepted.
The Demon could sacrifice a handful of tentacles at any moment to neutralize any incoming attack.
Losing a few tentacles meant nothing.
The instant one was destroyed, another immediately took its place.
"Red Giant."
Realizing the situation was steadily worsening, Tia attempted to use the same technique that had destroyed the projectiles to burn away the tentacles as well.
Even half a second of an opening would be enough.
Half a second was all she needed to kill the body.
But the attack lacked sufficient power.
The Demon casually swung a tentacle and shattered the miniature star before it could accomplish anything.
"Requesting permission to engage."
Cypher asked once more.
Once again—
Denied.
The Demon no longer had any spare capacity to deal with additional attackers.
Diverting even a single tentacle to block Cypher's Sphere was already pushing its limits.
The other three squad members didn't remain idle either.
From a distance, they continuously fired at the Demon.
Unfortunately, against a body capable of producing massive numbers of tentacles almost instantly, the tiny Force bullets accomplished virtually nothing.
This was the perfect opportunity to press the attack.
Yet Tia still worried about her squad.
Even though she was keeping most of the tentacles occupied...
Even though Ethel's Concept was supporting them...
She refused to take the risk.
Not even if the chance of failure was only one in ten thousand.
Even so, the battle was slowly turning against her.
She and the Demon remained deadlocked—
But her own strength continued to drain away.
Concept: Sun was extraordinarily powerful.
It possessed overwhelming offensive power and unrivaled speed.
Its weakness...
Was its enormous consumption of Force.
Now, both Tia's stamina and the Force circulating through her body were rapidly dwindling.
"I can't drag this out any longer."
She made her decision.
The fastest...
And most reliable...
Way to end everything.
"Concept Release: Radiance Unbound. Supernova."
This was on an entirely different level from the miniature suns she had created before.
Blinding light and unimaginable heat engulfed every tentacle before surging straight toward the Demon's body.
The Demon desperately tried to regenerate more tentacles.
It couldn't keep up.
The rate of destruction vastly exceeded the rate of regeneration.
After one final, futile struggle—
The Demon's body vanished beneath the blazing sun.
ns216.73.217.139da2
and then Add to home screen.