Deep in the dead of night, Geno kept his silent vigil over the group — same as always.
It wasn't the first time he'd found himself marveling at just how convenient it was to have an Ethereal body.
'The only thing I wish is that this ability didn't have to be spent entirely on work.
He thought back to the days before Weifeidi — the all-nighters he'd pulled alongside the Overtime Bangboos, grinding through deadline after deadline without a wink of sleep.
Those were genuinely miserable memories.
'Come to think of it... those little guys have probably wrapped up the follow-up tasks by now, right? I mean, once I gave Fairy the day off, the whole load landed squarely on them.'
(Somewhere far away, the Overtime Bangboos were silently shedding tears.)
[!@#!@#￥!@%]
"Ngh—?!"
[!@#!!@%@#￥]
'There it is again. What in the world is that thing?'
The cryptic murmuring surfaced in Geno's mind once more. The last time he'd entered the Lemnian Hollow, he'd written it off as an auditory hallucination triggered by absorbing too much Filth.
He'd assumed it was just his imagination — but this time, he hadn't been anywhere near Filth, and the voice came anyway. That was impossible to dismiss.
[!#%#@#%@#￥￥%!@]
Grinding his teeth against the pain tearing through his skull, Geno strained to pick out fragments of meaning from the wall of noise — and caught just a few broken words.
Whatever was speaking seemed to be reaching out through the static, pleading with him to come and free it.
Geno had absolutely zero interest in that.
'If you want a favor, act like it! You can't just barge into someone's head uninvited, rattle around in there however you please, and then expect me to come rescue you — are you serious?!'
And the worst of it was: even if he'd wanted to help, he had no idea where to go or what to do. All he had was this voice droning endlessly in his ear.
Like the whisper of some ancient god — the kind that didn't enlighten, it just drove you mad.
[@#￥找@＆￥%￥瑟%＆#￥!%!!@%!#%做]
'Shut up. Shut up. Shut UP!'
Sweat was pouring off Geno now. The Ether energy cycling through his body flickered and lurched into disarray.
Afraid of what might happen next, he moved immediately toward the door, terrified that if he stayed inside he might lose control and hurt someone.
"Urgh — AAGH! Damn it all!"
The moment he crossed the threshold, his body surged — swelling outward in an instant as he reverted to his full Ethereal form.
And yet even that brought no relief. The agony inside his skull didn't ease; it intensified.
The murmuring dragged at him. He could feel his reason eroding, bit by bit — and beneath it, the Ethereal's primal instinct rose to fill the void: a savage, irresistible drive to attack anything living.
To keep anyone from getting hurt, Geno did the only thing he could — he ran. As fast as he could, as far as he could, putting every last scrap of distance between himself and the safehouse.
He just ran. And kept running. Clinging to the last thin thread of his sanity until the ruins swallowed him up.
BOOM!
He drove his fist into the wall of a crumbling apartment block — one of the old residential towers that must have housed the citizens of Aerospace City back in its day.
The impact was muffled but devastating. A ragged hole opened in the concrete.
Eyes blazing red, Geno poured everything — every shred of pain, every howl trapped inside him — into the buildings around him, tearing them apart.
[@#￥找@＆￥%￥瑟%＆#￥!%!!@#%!#%做]
'Quiet. QUIET. I SAID QUIET!'
The whisper surged again. Geno slammed his fists against his own skull, trying to hammer the noise out of his head by sheer force.
His mind felt like someone had cranked up a massive EDM rave inside it — except his brain was the one getting electrocuted.
Then, through the haze, he saw it — Carrot, who he'd been chatting with so pleasantly just that evening, now sprinting toward him with something clamped in its jaws.
'Carrot? Wait — stay back! Get away from me!'
The moment he laid eyes on Carrot, a brief flash of clarity cut through the fog in his mind.
Realizing he might hurt it, Geno instinctively thrust out a hand to stop it from coming any closer.
"Awoo!"
Carrot sniffed at Geno for a moment — then dropped whatever it was carrying from its mouth and threw its head back in a howl, as though it had spotted something deeply wrong with him.
"Awroo! Awroo!"
Strange as it was — after those few barks, the voice inside his head fell silent.
The sudden absence of pain was so complete that Geno's legs gave out, and he collapsed forward onto the ground.
Then Carrot crept toward him, one cautious step at a time.
Once it was sure he was truly calm, it relaxed — and nudged its snout gently against his open palm.
"Ugh... was that you? Did you help me, Carrot? Don't tell me — last time too?"
As the fog cleared and his thoughts reassembled, Geno recalled what had happened back in town. The same noise, the same intrusion into his mind — and at the time, he'd assumed he'd pushed through it by willpower alone. Now that he thought about it, Carrot must have been there then too.
"Awroo?"
Carrot tilted its head, tail swinging lazily from side to side — every inch the picture of an ordinary little dog.
But Geno would never make that mistake again.
The abnormal behavior, the ability to drive away whatever had been assaulting his mind — none of that belonged to an ordinary Ethereal.
"I don't know where you came from or what you really are. But you chose to help me — and that makes you a friend. Thank you, little one."
As he said it, Geno reached up and scratched Carrot under the chin. He remembered reading somewhere that dogs loved that.
Sure enough, the moment his fingers made contact, Carrot's tail went into overdrive — wagging furiously, the picture of absolute bliss.
'You really are just a big puppy, aren't you.'
He sat there, one hand absently stroking Carrot, while his mind turned over what had just happened.
Comparing the two incidents, Geno realized: both times, the voice had only appeared inside the Lemnian Hollow — and it grew stronger and more frequent the closer he got to Xiqiu. The signal was clearly intensifying the nearer he was to that place.
'Is there something out there — near Xiqiu — that's affecting me? And this time the voice was clearer than before... like it was trying to tell me to go somewhere?'
While Geno was still turning that over in his head, Carrot seemed to remember something. It pulled free of his hand, turned around, and picked up whatever it had dropped earlier — lifting it back into its jaws.
"Hm? Is that for me?"
"Awroo!"
Carrot gave a nod — then shook its head.
Then, as though thoroughly confused by its own answer, it turned a few circles in place, barked twice at Geno, and bounded off into the depths of the Hollow.
"Uh... there it goes again."
Carrot had vanished without a moment's hesitation, leaving no room for questions.
Geno wanted to follow, but his body hadn't finished recovering — it simply wouldn't cooperate.
So he stayed put, slowly rebuilding his strength, and turned his palm over to look at what Carrot had left him.
It was a crystal — small and round, clear as glass, and inside it, a radiant double-helix coiled in every color of the spectrum.
'What even is this thing? I can feel Ether signatures coming off it, but I have no idea what it does. Do I... eat it?'
Geno tilted his head. Where had Carrot even found something like this?
About an hour passed before Carrot returned — and this time, it was carrying another crystal in its mouth, identical to the one already sitting in Geno's palm.
____
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