Careful with Eventide now. Higher consumption. Every second active is forty-five OXI I can't get back.
After the Gargolite, I close the distance to the Coral Ripper at a dead sprint, scanning the ground around it for Oliver. He's not standing. He's not behind the beast. He's not anywhere I can see.
The Ripper senses me before it sees me. Its mandibles click—that mechanical, metal-on-metal rhythm—and the massive body begins to pivot.
I don't give it the chance.
I swing Eventide in a lateral arc aimed at the thickest plate on its left flank. The same carapace that stopped my blade cold during Phase One. The same material I compared to bedrock.
Eventide bites through it like shears through sheet metal.
The shadow-edge punches into the coral plating, cracks it along a fault line, and keeps going—three inches into the tissue beneath before the Ripper's own mass rips the blade free as it recoils.
