Transcendent Gene-Chapter 287: The Old Duke [3]

Crack!

Gio heard his left arm snapping backwards. The searing pain shot up his shoulder and burned his collarbone like he had submerged it in freezing cold water.

The virtual net followed his momentum. With the sacrifice of an arm, he repelled the Old Duke’s force directly back at him.

The winds whipped wildly. The Old Duke raised his arms over his face with widened, his clothes flapping and tearing apart.

He saw what happened to Gio, but that didn’t make him any less surprised.

A random grunt was able to redirect his energy?

What kind of nonsense was that?

Indirectly, Gio caused a minor mental impact that bought him several seconds of time.

His steps weren’t as grounded as they used to be. He had to stumble to a start if he wanted to move any real amount.

However, he forced himself to move.

"Kuagh...!"

He grunted strangely and summoned his energy, blasting forward.

Voom!

His arm pressed forth. Blue light flew into the air and coalesced into a sky of stars that plummeted down to the ground.

Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!

The Old Duke’s body was still strong enough to avoid being heavily damaged, but he couldn’t pretend to be unscathed anymore. Despite not causing harm, Gio caused plenty of pain.

The large man gritted his teeth harder and pushed the virtual comets away with his telekinesis. Scrapes and scratches cut into his arms and legs, cutting his suit into pieces in the process.

His eyes were forced shut by the blinding lights that arrived after the comets, and in the same moment, Gio finally arrived in front of him.

His suit jacket was flapping in the wind. The nameplates pinned to the interior lining glistened in the sunlight.

Gio’s eyes narrowed.

Even now, the Old Duke thought Gio was challenging him for revenge. To this moment, he had no idea that Gio even knew about the clue cards. How was he supposed to guess the boy’s true goal?

[Siege Armament]

Gio piled on another distraction.

[Bladestorm]

Bladestorm was not a combination of ranged attacks, but a collection of close combat weapons instead. Hammers, knives, maces, and glaives flew through the sky with minds of their own to surround and barrage the enemy.

Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!

The impacts continued, but the Old Duke wasn’t too preoccupied to sense Gio’s presence. He swung an arm out with a wave of rampant energy contained within.

VOOOOM!

Gio barely ducked in time to avoid it. Its impact meant nothing to him.

After all, such a sweeping motion opened the Old Duke up even more. His arms were splayed and unable to return to the front of his body in time, and he had no control over his clothing whatsoever.

’Now!’

Gio didn’t hesitate.

[Surge]

Sparkling electricity surrounded his legs and threw him forward at impossible speeds. His eyes, enhanced with Hekat’s energy, caught the glistening glow of his targets as he reached his arm out to grab them.

Whoosh!

It all happened in a flash of a second. Gio passed the Old Duke like another rush of wind. The man turned around with his eyes following his path and pushed his arm out once more.

OOOOOOH!

The sound of steel beams being bent echoed through the world as the buildings around Gio were forced out of the ground.

"Shit!"

Gio was in the process of fleeing. He didn’t wait to see the Old Duke’s reaction at all. He felt the presence of two treasures in his hand and confirmed their existence as he placed them in his pocket.

It seemed his desire to run was enough to make the Old Duke mad.

’He thinks I’m afraid. He thinks this is because I think I’m going to lose.’

The Old Duke was yet to realize the few grams of weight missing from his suit.

Gio grinned.

’Good.’

It would have been a different story if he was aiming for the kill, but that was beside the point.

His current situation was still favorable.

Voom!

The ground around Gio’s body lifted up and engaged him. It was a temporary measure to keep him still until the surrounding buildings had been fully uprooted.

He heard the creaking and hollering of the structures that would soon become weapons to crush him, but he still believed the situation was favorable.

He got what he wanted. He had made some distance. The Old Duke didn’t know he’d been stolen from.

He slammed into the back wall of the rock and shattered it.

[Surge]

Virtual lightning filled his veins and covered his body once more. The foot he used to step into the ground felt as light as a feather.

And when he looked up, he saw the beautiful sight of skyscrapers floating in the sky.

That was his cue to run.

A blue flash of light replaced Gio’s body as he blurred into the atmosphere.

BOOOOOOOM!

Two buildings slammed into the rock prison he’d only just escaped, sending debris flying in every direction.

Xiu! Xiu! Xiu!

Various chunks of concrete and shards of glass shot through the air around Gio. A steel beam flew across the sky like a javelin and embedded itself into the street.

"You’re running?"

The words didn’t sound like they’d been spoken with a lot of effort, but they reverberated in Gio’s ears like the hum of an ancient bell.

"This is the problem with weaklings."

RUMBLE!

The Old Duke took several seconds to unearth skyscrapers, but the various two and three-story buildings in the vicinity were ripped out of the ground in an instant.

’Shit!’

Gio barely had time to look back before they were coming at him.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

It felt like a tsunami of concrete.

Knowing he didn’t have the freedom to look back at what was targeting him, Gio kept his eyes forward and his senses spread. From behind, he could only feel a massive wave approaching without knowing its contents until they slammed into the ground around him.

He didn’t realize buildings could become as fluid as water before today, but it truly felt like what came crashing down was a massive wave.

"Escape this, and I’ll acknowledge you. If I don’t see you again, you can keep your life."

It really felt like it was impossible for those words to be louder than the chaos, but they still cut through.

"Good luck doing that, though."

The Old Duke was cocky. He was so arrogant that even his own underlings got tired of it, but there wasn’t a single thing they could say against him. Most of them weren’t loyal by choice, after all.

The words he spoke to Gio were meant to instill a false sense of hope that could be shattered. When that hope was shattered and he accepted death, the Old Duke would offer him another way.

That way was subservience.

It was a foolproof strategy that only required his opponent to be weaker than him. In normal cases and even now, this applied to Gio, but there was a very clear difference between the two situations.

Whoosh!

Gio ran along with the tsunami. His back was cut several times by pieces of glass as he had to focus his senses on larger objects that came flying towards him.

BOOM!

He dodged to the side, barely avoiding a steel beam that almost impaled him. In the next moment, he was forced to take to the skies.

A hand of telekinetic energy swept across the ground and grabbed all of the debris in its path, compacting it into a ball that was thrown at the airborne Gio.

WHOOOOOOOSH!

It was massive. Gio knew his speed, and he knew that even if he used all of his energy for a single burst of momentum, he wouldn’t be able to clear the ball before getting hit.

’But that’s not the only solution.’

He had to fight a lot of massive beings in the Tower of Babel, and a lot of them liked to charge at him with brute strength.

There was a time when he couldn’t dodge those beings yet didn’t have the time to patiently grow until he could.

He had to find other solutions.

’Virtual energy is perfect in this case.’

[Virtual Manifestation] was a great trait for mimicry. The projections he created could never become real, tangible objects for anyone else, but that didn’t matter.

Many of the Sequences he used in the past could be replicated through the single Sequence he chose from his family’s vault.

Gio covered his entire body in virtual energy. He only had a few seconds before the meteor reached him, but his perception dialed in to the point where every second felt like an eternity.

His energy changed. The blue light hardened and took a clearer shape, abandoning its ordinary rectangular form.

And as the meteor swallowed him into its shadow, he took his final form and prepared himself for impact.

’Three...two...o–’

Before the final number could fully be realized as a thought, Gio’s mind went blank.

The meteor struck true, and for a second, his consciousness faded into oblivion,

It was only a matter of if he could return in time to facilitate his survival.