LIGHTNOVELONLINE 166 – Something Wrong Pt. 3
As he ripped himself free, he caught a glimpse of the source of that second attack. Just a flash, but it was unmistakable. A damascened membrane in the palm of Tsetse's hand. That was the reason for the weird fist, to cover it up. His thoughts ran rampage; had Tsetse devised that specifically to counter the Second Eye?
Tsetse, however, seemed amused, remarking: "Impressive. Very well. I am certain the question has been gnawing at you: Am I a war morph? An overgrafter? A simple freak of nature?"
He stepped towards Casus, lunging at him with an absurdly long kick. It looked like a straight side kick, then like a hook kick, only to become a question-mark kick instead, all in the span of moments. The sonic blast sent stones and dust flying as it tore into the wall; Casus had ducked and rushed in, the obvious answer to all three of the possible kicks. He also anticipated a mixup afterwards, but Tsetse just engaged him in an exchange of punches and kicks. Each of them checked or blocked the other, and both of them threw in a few truly lethal surprises; Casus with his blade, and Tsetse with his sonic emitters. He wasn't using the one on his left arm at all, but the limb itself was monstrously strong. It didn't match up to the Right Arm of Silberblut in its current state, but it didn't need to. At this moment, Casus was painfully aware of the fact Tsetse was simply stronger than him. His only chance to tip the scales was to push himself as far as he could, to use and abuse the Second Eye, and to steal Tsetse's own strength to use it against him. Tsetse also knew this, given how he took care to not use his sonic blasts when Casus was likely to devour them.
It was obvious he was just playing, just using this fight as the stage to his continued monologue: "The answer is neither of those three above, yet also all of them. I am something new. This form... It is my body, yet I can shed it and survive. In this manner and beyond, we are alike. Think on that, pretender Mamon Knight."
Out of nowhere, with no apparent breath in, Tsetse exhaled... And he kept exhaling. In one immense exhalation, he flooded the whole room with mist. At first Casus thought it to be a poorly-conceived smoke screen, but then he felt it gnawing at him. It wasn't mist. It was omniphage, the same ruinous substance that made the Omniphage Dregsteam cartridge so potent. This single breath contained as much omniphage as two or perhaps three cartridges, and it was of a higher order than the breed used in those. Rather than clumping together like living mercury, it seemed to be the opposite.
Casus stood strong, continuing to fight and weathering the onslaught as the silver of his armour tarnished and soon turned black. He wasn't under threat here - Cornelius was. His barrier would hold, but everything around it wouldn't. Even if Cornelius had the nerve to banish and reform his barrier anew without the hemomantic catalyst, his barrier didn't have full-dome coverage. He had to get him out of the room.
So, he burned what power he had stocked up on empowering a coupler charge. Not an attack, but movement. The Silberblut armor wasn't suited to it, but desperate times called for desperate measures. He timed it to the moment he noticed Cornelius' barrier faltering due to the destruction of its catalyst.
At first, it seemed to work. With flame erupting from his back and propelling him, Casus dropped to the ground, sliding between Tsetse's legs. There there was a burst high-pitched noise, pain, and the realization that Cornelius had a chunk missing out of his side all of a sudden. It wasn't much, just surface tissue, but it meant his Wards had been breached. The grafter, perhaps thanks to shock, immediately drew a circle around the wound using his suddenly abundant blood and formed a temporary plug of metal over it, then layered a barrier over that.
At first, Casus didn't even realize that the force of the blast had embedded his outstretched limbs into the walls and floor. His attention was wholly fixed on Cornelius. He had to get him out of the omniphage mist. There was no time. Casus shook off the pain and swiftly freed himself, spinning on his heel to face down the flyman. Unsteady, a hair's breadth from detransforming, and bleeding internally, his resolve was no less ironclad than at the beginning of this fight.
"The arm, Silberblut. Give me the arm and you may go," Tsetse said, already approaching. Casus, without a moment's hesitation, grabbed a brick and pulled it out of place. Behind it was a handle, a pull on which opened the masterfully disguised panel. Behind that panel was a yawning recess and a keyboard He punched in the code and waited as the mechanism stirred into motion.
"Why? Why the mercy, I mean," came a hushed, strained voice from below.
"Not mercy," Tsetse scoffed, approaching yet closer, looming over them with amused apathy. "I want my arm back. I do not want a fight with whomever your deaths would alert."
His eyed shifted to Casus, and he added: "Not yet. I can't beat a real Mamon Knight yet."
At that moment, the container popped up in the recess, and Tsetse grabbed it right away. Not only did he not try to stop them, he simply walked away with the container in hand. It seemed at first as though he would leave them in peace, but he met them outside. Casus had to drag an inconsolable Cornelius out of his own laboratory as the most delicate of his equipment was rendered into scrap. There, well outside the lab, he found Tsetse. The flyman was just sitting there, legs crossed, pulling the cables out of his right arm. Casus stopped some distance short of passing him, because he was simply exhausted. At some point between the lab and here, he had fallen out of his transformation without even noticing it.
