The Ethereal in front of him stopped attacking. Instead, it began to dance ballet — at least, that was how it looked to Geno.
"Wooo... wooo... wooo...~"
The strange Ethereal twirled gracefully before him. Just as Geno tensed, watching its every move, its figure suddenly vanished from sight.
"Where'd it go?!"
The room wasn't that big. A full-grown person — er, a full-grown Ethereal — had just vanished into thin air. Where could it possibly have gone?
While Geno stood there puzzled, looking all around, the female ghost who had rushed to block the door earlier drifted back into view.
Geno just watched as she gestured frantically in front of him, her face full of urgency, leaving him utterly lost.
"Calm down first — you're only making this harder to follow!"
Hearing this, the ghost seemed to reach some major decision, then rushed straight at Geno.
Geno, never expecting her to do something like that, had no time to react at all. He just stood there dumbstruck as the ghost slammed into him.
The instant the two of them made contact, the ghost's figure vanished from sight, replaced by less than a second of mental blankness.
"Ugh... my head. It hurts a little."
Geno shook his head, then rubbed his forehead. Nothing seemed off.
Just as that thought crossed his mind, a light, airy voice suddenly sounded in his head.
'Move — now! It's behind you!'
Hearing the voice, Geno didn't dare question whether it was real, because his own senses were screaming danger too.
Screech!
A grating sound tore through the air as the Ethereal's sharp, spiked feet scraped across the marble floor, leaving long gouges behind and a sound as shrill as it was jarring.
"That was close! This thing's way too uncanny."
This was the first time Geno had ever run into an Ethereal that could hide itself this well. Even with Ether Sight switched on, he still couldn't find a trace of it.
The moment its strike missed, the Ethereal slipped back into hiding, and once again, Geno couldn't pin down its location.
"Damn it! Why can't I see anything? Don't tell me my eyes come with some kind of bloodline limit too?!"
Ether Sight worked perfectly well on every other Ethereal he'd faced, yet against this one it did nothing at all — and that left Geno completely baffled.
Both times so far, he'd only sensed the attacks coming thanks to his own elusive sixth sense. But as everyone knows, a sixth sense can't work every single time. If it worked every time, it wouldn't be a sixth sense — it'd be Spider-Sense.
And Geno, quite obviously, didn't fall into the category of small crawling arthropods.
Facing an attack that could come at any unknown moment, Geno was under enormous pressure, his nerves strung as taut as a bowstring.
'Front-left — it's coming!'
That light voice again. This time Geno heard it clearly, and his body reacted on instinct, snapping his longsword up to guard his front-left.
With a ringing clang, the longsword collided with the spiked foot once more. But this time, Geno wasn't about to let the chance slip by.
"Backhand grab!"
While one hand held the sword up to block the attack, the other shot out, aiming straight for the core at the Ethereal's waist.
Every Ethereal shared that one weakness — its core — and there was no escaping it. Not to mention this one had left its core sitting right out in the open. Clearly it was trying to lure him in!
"I'll crush you to pieces!"
Geno's left hand held nothing back — every ounce of it aimed at crushing the thing outright.
Unfortunately, the enemy was simply too fast. Just as Geno's fingers were about to close on it, it slipped away again.
"Damn it! So close!"
Geno cursed his luck — that had been his best shot yet. Already outpaced in raw speed, and now lugging a dead weight (Twiggy) besides, beating this thing was only getting harder.
Next time — where would it come from next?
'Don't worry, she's gone for now.'
Geno was still scanning his surroundings when that voice echoed in his head once more.
After being helped twice already, Geno chose to trust the voice, though he still kept his guard up. He closed his eyes and began linking into the world of consciousness.
When he opened his eyes again, the scene was the same familiar one, but the figure in front of him was something new.
"You're that female ghost? What's Little Geno up to right now?"
The graceful woman before him was indeed the ghost who had run into him earlier, and now she had appeared inside Geno's Mind Space.
"That's true enough, but please stop calling me 'the female ghost.' My name is Odile Nymph. Just call me Odile."
The ghost — no, Odile — looked at Geno with a face full of exasperation as she introduced herself. Sure, she really was a ghost, but being called that over and over would put anyone in a mood.
"...Odile. Got it. So what exactly are you? And what's your connection to that Ethereal?"
Given how things had unfolded, Geno had already worked out that the woman before him and the mysterious Ethereal were bound together by some strange connection.
Thinking it over, it occurred to him that the Ethereal might well have been chasing after her.
"Actually, that Ethereal is my younger sister."
"Your sister?"
Geno's eyebrow shot up at that.
A ghost and an Ethereal? What kind of pairing was that?
"Yes. My sister and I used to be a pair of ballet dancers. It was an accident that left us both like this."
"Wait — ballet dancers? Why does this story sound so familiar?"
Geno cut Odile off mid-sentence. He'd just remembered — wasn't this the exact rumor about the Ballet Twins Building that Twiggy had told him right when they walked in?
"The dancer sisters who were famous back in the day? I can't believe it's actually you two."
"You've heard our story?"
"Er, not exactly — but you look like you're carrying a whole story of your own."
As he said this, Geno looked at Odile, who was still floating even here in the Mind Space, and found he couldn't begin to imagine what she'd been through.
Odile cleared her throat and began her story anew.
"Since you've heard the rumor about the Ballet Twins Building, then you already know — no one survived that disaster."
Geno nodded. Twiggy had told him as much once before.
"In truth, they did all die. But some of them didn't die in the disaster itself."
Odile's expression turned complicated, as if the memory of it all was surfacing again.
"They were killed by my younger sister — the very Ethereal from before. Odette Nymph."
____
🔥 HELP UNLOCK THE NEXT EXTRA RELEASE!
Drop a Review: Every 5 reviews on the story unlocks 1 bonus chapter!
Power Stones: Reach 100 Power Stones and the next bonus chapter drops instantly!
Early Access: Can't stand the cliffhangers? Head over to P@treon: Walnut-chan to read 40 chapters ahead and unlock access to a library of 60+ novels!
🔥 New history: Re:Zero: Starting with a Confession to Pandora — posted on The_Mikudayo