"Phew~ Looks like we're finally safe now."
Cradling Jane in his arms, Geno leaned against the wall and slowly slid down to sit. At long last, he could let himself relax.
He really hadn't expected this form to be so exhausting.
Geno's original idea had been to take on the Dead-End Butcher's shape so he could better handle a melee against a crowd. After all, he genuinely lacked moves and abilities suited for group combat, and the Dead-End Butcher's four arms made up for that perfectly.
But transforming into an Ethereal that was utterly different from himself consumed Ether on a scale that simply wasn't in the same league as maintaining his own native form.
From the very moment he'd turned into the Dead-End Butcher, Geno's Ether energy had been draining away at a rate far beyond anything he'd imagined. And by the time he'd landed that one kick, he no longer had any energy left to keep fighting that Beast Fiend soldier.
"Phew~ How strange. Why didn't I gain any skills related to the Dead-End Butcher after beating it?"
In the past, after defeating some powerful Ethereal, Geno would more or less acquire the opponent's abilities. Yet this time, after defeating the Dead-End Butcher, he'd gained absolutely nothing connected to it.
Had that not been the case, Geno wouldn't have needed to rely on the Doppelganger ability to take on the Dead-End Butcher's appearance in the first place.
"Ngh..."
Feeling the injured woman in his arms stir, Geno suddenly remembered that her wound still hadn't been treated.
So he found a cleaner spot and laid Jane down.
But looking at the wound that dug deep into her shoulder, a stretch of crimson, along with her collar that had already been hacked to shreds, he found himself at a loss for a moment.
"This... isn't this a bit of an impropriety between a man and a woman?"
Geno had originally thought to wait until Trigger and the others arrived before dealing with it, but watching Jane's face grow ever paler and her body temperature steadily climb, he realized that if he didn't handle it now, there might soon be nothing left to handle at all.
"Forget it! Saving her comes first! Worst case, I'll just kneel on the keyboard a few more times later!"
With that thought, Geno reached out and tore away the tattered clothing on Jane's body, then took out the emergency medical supplies he'd grabbed earlier from the pharmacy.
Faced with the expanse of pale white before him and that bottomless ravine, Geno kept taking deep breaths to keep his mind clear.
Form is emptiness, emptiness is form... Form is emptiness, emptiness is form.
But this stirring of biological instinct lasted only a very short while.
The moment he saw that the entire wound was already deep enough to expose bone, those messy little emotions of Geno's settled right back down.
In their place came his ceaselessly working hands, and eyes brimming with pity.
Now or in the past, Geno had never been able to get used to scenes like this.
Someone is wounded, someone is sacrificed.
There are those who lay down their lives for others, yet there are also demons who, for nothing more than their own selfish desires, would casually rob another person of everything they have. This world had never been a beautiful place.
It was precisely because there were people like Jane bearing heavy burdens forward in the shadows that ordinary folk like them could go on living safely and peacefully in this world.
Geno admitted that he could never be like Jane — casting aside everything she had, concealing all of herself, only to light a single lamp of mortal peace in this dark world.
But he, too, wanted to do everything within his power to do something for these people, for this world.
Just as he'd once said, he wanted to put a happy smile on the face of everyone in this world.
That was also the reason he'd chosen to become a game designer.
"There we go, that should do it."
Looking at the practically flawless dressing on Jane's arm, Geno couldn't help but praise himself.
But what followed right after was the strange sensation coming from his own back.
"Next, I suppose it's time to deal with myself."
In the earlier battle — or rather, in being battered through it — Geno's back had also been slashed into a bloody mess by that Beast Fiend soldier. Had it not been for an Ethereal's superhuman physique, he'd have been minced into stuffing by now...
Maybe not quite such big chunks.
And because his own Ether energy was nearly spent, Geno could not only barely muster any strength now, but even his self-healing ability had been restricted.
Though he tried his hardest to wring Ether out of the air, it was still little more than a drop in the bucket.
With no other choice, Geno could only resort to bandaging to help himself recover a little faster.
"Ugh, how come patching up Jane was so easy, but doing it to myself is this hard?"
First he peeled off his shirt, baring his clean, smooth upper body.
There wasn't much muscle on Geno's frame — just a very well-proportioned build with a few abs.
The kind that wasn't eye-catching, but easy to look at for a long while.
The wound on his back was hard enough to treat to begin with, and on top of that Geno now had hardly any strength, leaving his movements severely limited.
After fumbling for a good while, Geno still hadn't managed to bandage himself up properly.
"This is such a pain!" What a hassle!
Having grumbled a couple more times, Geno was still wrestling with the bandage in his hands when an icy little hand suddenly pressed against his back.
"Whoa~~ So cold! Who's that? Jane? You're already awake?"
Geno instinctively flinched, then turned his head to look — and it really was Jane. He hadn't expected her to wake up so soon.
"Mm, I recover fast. Let me bandage you."
Jane's voice was very hoarse, completely lacking the seductive charm she'd had earlier when teasing Geno. But this sickly state now stirred a man's protective instincts all the more.
Especially when her hand touched Geno's wound, Geno felt his once-stinging back become utterly soothed at that moment.
Because of the ointment, of course...
Soon, Geno's wound was bandaged up as well. He then shifted his body and found it didn't hinder his movements in the slightest. He couldn't help but marvel that for this kind of work, you really did need a girl's nimble, clever hands.
"All right, don't let it touch water for a while, and it'll heal up soon."
Getting hurt was practically routine for Jane, so she understood well enough when wounds would heal and what to avoid. Long illness makes the patient a good doctor, after all.
After that, the two of them simply sat there quietly, waiting for Trigger and the others to arrive.
But Geno felt that, for two people who could already be called comrades bound by life and death, sitting here without a word was perhaps a little awkward.
Geno's mind raced as he tried to come up with a topic, but before he could, Jane was the one to speak first.
"You — why didn't you just leave me behind back then?"
Jane's tone was utterly calm, asking after Geno's thoughts as naturally as if she were asking what to have for dinner tonight. Caught off guard by the sudden question, Geno froze for a moment, but quickly came back to himself, then closed his eyes as though recalling something.
When he opened them again, Geno wore a smile and frankly spoke the thoughts of his heart.
"Because... I don't want anyone to die in front of me ever again."
____
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