My eyes trembled when I saw them there. Three lifeless bodies. One with blond- and blue-tipped hair,
Please tell Ophelia to message me back… Okay, see ya!
…
One day… I'll make that girl my wife. Count on it!
…
You don't even need to forgive yourself, or keep saying thanks because you think it's what you have to do or what we want to hear! After all, some things are beyond any of our control. If it were up to me, I'd have you all under me in the Silver Sharks… even this moron!
His turquoise eyes were losing their vibrant tint.
Next to him, there was another with medium black hair, a worn-out bandana with that infamous yellow pattern trailing around it,
PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE!
…
YES, MY LADY, YOUR WISH IS MY COMMAND. I WILL DO ANYTHING FOR YOU, ANYTHING!
…
If anyone is gonna marry Ophelia, it's gonna be me! Not this stupid fish-breath-mouth-breathing-edgelord!
…
The Yellow Jacket Knights will always, always, always have your back! Count on it!!!
…
Despite the dangers and the possibility of failure, there is also the possibility of success. The success of us overcoming the odds together. It doesn't matter what comes after, that's not the point! What matters is the path and the moment of achieving. To me, that's a goal worth pursuing together, no matter the risks.
Those yellow hue and black star-shaped pupils, which always carried happiness in them, finally matched the tint of monochrome.
And lastly, the one next to him, with his reddish-purple hair,
Hey, Greed. Good to see you, old friend.
…
Dare I say, confessed my love to her… while my eyes were on her the whole time… her eyes were always on you.
…
And when I found out that she finally got her wish, it was sweet and bitter news to swallow. Sweet because I was happy for you both, bitter because I wanted it to be me.
…
Promise me this. Promise me that when we get back, you will just love on Belle like she is the only girl in the world.
…
As weak as my body is, I will stand in the way between you and death if it means you can walk back to the Valley and have a life. Love. A family… so please do not pass up my devotion to that… It's all I have… For I am forever destined to be second.
…
Aye, Captain.
His red and blue multicolored eyes that never seemed to become one, became a single color finally, but not the one he had hoped…
All with blood puddling the ground from where they all lay, and with gunshots at the sides of their heads.
I had said nothing after my cry of agony. The look on my face was one of horror as I started to lose my mind.
"Greed!" Ryo shouted, but it sounded so far away, even though he was next to me.
And in front of those who lay there—Snow. Rex. Zeno.—was the man who pulled the trigger.
"You…" I said, less like hesitancy, more like shaking anger. "You!"
He glared at me with those blank, expressionless orange eyes.
"You killed them!!!" I yelled.
And he just looked at me, like it was nothing.
At this time, his silver pistol was silent. We did not hear its eerie voice speak for now; instead, it was the man who spoke: "Is that what you saw?" like he was mocking me, but I couldn't tell. I was too enraged.
When Ryo looked back to their bodies, he did not know what to think—how to feel. His eyes shook as well when he witnessed the pool of blood from their heads expanding outward from them. The black bullets we saw and heard were gone…
I had released myself from Ryo, and my black coating shrouded my body intensely. It layered over me. Those white jagged teeth formed, and the vantablack coating trailed over my face and under my fluttering, messy hair, leaving no trace of my original skin. Only a black void with an evil face that was not my own.
The man looked at this form, intrigued even though his face did not seem to show it. And I heard his thoughts so prominently, Just like the Shadowsteel guy, but this looks more… completed, he thought.
I placed a heavy foot forward as steam left my jagged mouth. My eyes had become black, with a small red glow at their centers, and I stepped forth.
I leaped and crashed down where the man had been, but he dodged backward. And fired rounds from his silver pistol.
They hit me, but both shots bounced off my side and my shoulder as I straightened myself. Again, no trace of bullets…
The silver gun then morphed into a spear and he shot it toward me. When it did, I let it graze past as I bolted toward him.
He rushed in as well, and we engaged in a series of close combat from our meeting.
Punch after punch, kick after kick had been thrown, all countered from me to him and vice versa.
As I landed a combo of strikes onto him, he remained with his hands intricately locked to block them. He then whistled, and his silver spear shot back, grazing my side sharper than before, actually slashing through my proud black coating.
I staggered a bit as he pushed me off with a frontal kick with him and his silver weapon flying backward, simply floating there to his side, morphing into a sphere now.
He did it! it said to him. Speaking just like it had before.
I didn't know what it meant.
He didn't lose his focus on me as it said this, and he didn't respond. It spoke again, Closer. See closer.
It said to him, and he dashed forward, listening to it.
We clashed again, but this time he morphed the silver orb into a knife as his movements became more precise and he held it to the side, extended out from his pinky.
Clash after clash, we met, and all the while I just kept hearing the words, He did it… He did it… from his silver knife.
I threw a left haymaker, and he caught it. Then I threw my right fist directly at him, and he stabbed it with the silver knife. It pierced through my vantablack palm, and it bled.
We held the position for mere seconds, and that's when the silver knife said…
Ari…
That name…
When it said this, the man flinched like the name also meant something to him as well.
I knew that name… Why had it said that name—
Ari, again, it said, and added, Dead… He did it!
When I saw his orange eyes flicker to what it had said, I finally understood.
I was taken back in memory of that time when I landed on that building in the Valley, and I held the little girl's arm with the rest of her body nowhere to be found. I recalled her mother when I spoke to her days after the incident. Her red, faded hair, her orange eyes… and when I asked, You know of Tantra?
Yes. Because my son uses it.
We both struggled, locked in our deadly close stance as I continued to recall…
If it's okay with you, may I know his name?
She smiled faintly as she said, His name is…
Again, those orange eyes glowed back to me as I said out loud, "You… You're—"
"Let me ask you one thing," he said, interrupting my train of thought. "Were you responsible for Ari's death?"
The question struck me to my core, and my eyes trembled. So much was happening in this moment. From my friends' deaths, now to this, as I thought back when I spoke to that woman… Ariella. I never did get to see her before we left on this mission…
The thought came out in the form of an answer to him, "Leon…"
When he heard me utter his name, he released himself and struck my core. I staggered and grunted, eyes almost turning white as I flew a far distance afterward. I felt that strike more than all the others he had unleashed up until now.
"Answer me!" he commanded. "Are you responsible for Ari's death!?"
Again, the memory of that girl on the roof and her mere hand and arm… and myself as I was in the form of a monster.
"Yes," was all I said from a cratered wall, blood pooling from my mouth.
Then, like nothing I've felt before, the pressure in the air thickened, and he finally held another expression upon his face than the solemn, empty one he had all this time—it was utter bitterness.
I did not know how to feel as shadows formed over his eyes, and his aura turned pitch black. I knew this pressure… it was exactly like my own.
"This is why I've always despised you Kingdom Knights. You strut around in your fame and power while the weak crumble at your feet. So I became this way… so that I may show you what it's like to be utterly powerless against a foe you believed with all your soul you could beat."
He stepped forward, and I felt like I was looking in the mirror—despite not having that vantablack coating all over his body. He was me…
"What did she ever do to deserve an early death? More importantly, how did you deserve to be labeled a hero while she is forgotten!?"
It was like he was reaching into my soul and reading all my doubts to me. I was completely speechless as his power levels continued to skyrocket.
"I will crush you, and at least then, you will be reunited with your friends."
I snarled through my jagged teeth as tears formed in my eyes. I no longer knew how to perceive what was happening. With the loss of my friends, with the promise of that woman from the Valley to bring her son back, and here he was. My chance to make things right for someone who lost everything, but it had also been the same person who took Snow, Rex, and Zeno away.
What was right? What was wrong? I knew not the answer. And I knew not what to do.
It was then that he morphed the silver knife in his hands into a kusarigama, holding the chain with the weight at the end in his other hand.
He twirled the heavy weight of it and shot it at me, and when I tried to strike it away, it did not budge—staying true to its course and remaining suspended thereafter.
He then appeared behind it and kicked it onto me, shooting me backward. As quickly as he did, he disappeared in a flash, and I noticed the chain wrapping around me, stopping my fly backward.
The chain wrapped unforgivingly as I slammed back into the weighted end of it. And then I felt a tug as he reeled back the rest of the chain along with me back to him.
There he was, with the other sickle in hand, as he slashed down onto me from my arrival. The slash shattered my black coating and jagged teeth, revealing my shuddering eye behind it. He let out a loose grunt from his strike as I smashed into the ground, cratering it greatly.
Jumping in the air, he unraveled the wrap of chains around me, and I spun in place for a moment. And as the side with the weighted end flew back to him, he threw the end with the sickle at me, wrapping me once again within it, abruptly stopping my relentless spin. I spat blood from the sudden stop, but he was not done yet.
Still in the air, he rotated himself, pulling me up with one spin, sending me upward back toward him using the chain. When I met him there, he struck me face-first with a heavy fist. I shot back down and crashed into the ground. Then again, he spun, sending me upward, repeating the motion—multiple times.
Slam after slam occurred as he sent me up, struck me, and sent me back down, crashing into the ground endlessly while wrapping the weighted end of the chain around himself with each spin, allowing him to strike me with his right fist constantly.
He roared upon me as he continued to gift me with his endless wrath.
Strike after strike, slam after slam, I had begun to lose consciousness, and by then, I had also lost my will to fight.
Ryo watched in horror as I, his last remaining friend, received this unending beat down. He could not bear to watch, so with one desperate attempt, he took off the bag with the Zion Orb and began running in our direction.
It all felt like slow motion as I received what I had now come to believe I deserved.
A hollow expression shrouded my face. I might as well have been dead. But still I remained conscious through the assault.
I smashed onto rock and smashed onto his fist so many times that all I could do now was just think of her… Belle.
I'm sorry, I thought, I don't know what I'm doing… I don't know what to do…
On the verge of giving up, Leon finally shot one last punch onto me, letting out a distraught and rage-filled roar, that unraveled me from his chain, and I smashed into the ground at an angle, knocking out at last.
***
Leon landed, retracting his silver kusarigama, and began slowly walking over to the man who killed his little sister. The silver kusarigama spoke once again as he sauntered in his rough and physique form, Pain… He understands…
Leon stopped his pace as it said this and looked at his silver weapon with confusion. Just in time, Ryo threw the bag with the Zion Orb over to him and stood in the path between Leon and Greed as he remained unconscious on the ground.
He looked at Leon with a tempest of fear, sadness, and defiance as he held his arms out to the sides like a wall so as to protect, and at the same time… surrender.
"No more… we give up. You can have the Zion Orb, just please let us leave with whatever of ourselves we have left."
Leon's expression changed back to solemn as he looked down to the bag Ryo threw, remembering his mission.
"If you really must beat down on someone, let it be me in his place. Greed is not perfect, but he does not deserve this brutality. Kill me instead if you have to, but please let him go. I beg of you!" Ryo pleaded.
His words cut deep with Leon as he witnessed Ryo's conviction. Though he was shaking, he didn't waver as he remained standing in the way between his dying friend and the person who could very well end him with one swing. Leon saw himself in his eyes.
He did not show it in his face, but Ryo, the Heart of the Valley, had gotten to him with his words alone.
It was at this time that Leon morphed his silver kusarigama back into its original silver orb shape, merely floating there as he grabbed the bag and turned his back to Ryo, signifying to him that he had accepted the exchange; and, at the same time, that he was not a threat to him whatsoever.
Ryo bowed, his face to the floor, tears welling up as he said, "Thank you very much!"
He then grabbed Greed off the ground, still wary of Leon, and then began sprinting to his other friends.
Leon remained still as Ryo mustered up some unknown strength to lift them all and carry each one out. The only sounds of the place were Ryo's panting and his struggling grapples as he desperately lifted each of his friends off the ground.
With a mere glance from the side, Leon watched Ryo until he disappeared into the dark of one of the tunnels.
***
Ryo:
I ran through the tunnels as fast as I could—if one would consider my pace 'running'…
With our fallen comrades: Rex, Snow, and Zeno, I carried them and Greed, who was once again unconscious, in my arms.
I had no idea where I mustered the strength—tired was an understatement.
We had used many spells and used so much of our mana during our time here in Lys Anima. It was normal for any mage, even S ranks and SS ranks alike, to be drained by this time. If I had to gauge my mana levels from one to ten, I'd suspect my mana levels were at a two. Which were dangerously low this deep, still in Lys Anima.
I could only hope that, once I exited these tunnels, we could find some safety first before heading back.
This was going to be one long trip, with Greed out, and three dead bodies…
I still couldn't believe they were gone.
Even with their cold skin touching mine, and blood trailing and staining my silver armor a crimson color, there was a part of me that did not want to accept it.
Greed… I know when you wake up, whenever that may be, you will blame yourself for their deaths.
I promise… when we make it out of here, I will be there when you wake. I will be your rock when we are back in the Valley.
We lost our friends. We lost the Zion Orb. And you… you still fought. And against an unknown enemy who bested us in every way—even you. To be honest… I didn't think that was possible.
Something about that man struck a chord with you. I saw it.
And though I didn't understand, I know that if all these factors hadn't lorded over you, you would have found a way to beat that man.
But for now…
We are far too weak.
We do not deserve to be called S rank mages. We do not deserve the praise. I understand that now. I understand why you always turned those things down.
It's because of moments like this. Moments we had hoped would never happen.
How cruel the Keeper is for letting this happen to you. Just when you had finally accepted that your praise and all your blessings were okay. That we would be by your side till the end. You don't deserve this ending.
So, I will be there with you… Please, my friend… do not give up hope…
There was a light at the end of the tunnel at last as I trudged tirelessly through from within the darkness. I had no idea how long I'd been running. My thoughts went on as my feet touched the silent snow. Thicker and thicker the trudge became until I lost my balance and tripped, dropping all my friends; but finally, outside in this snow clearing with a white forest in the not-too-far distance.
Staggering, I forced myself up, "Come on, legs… not now," I said to myself, "Not now… do not give in, until we are safe."
I struggled. Operating on sheer second wind. I had no idea how tired I really was until I fell into the thick snow and dropped them all. I couldn't move my legs at all. If I had allowed it, I probably could pass out right now if I shut my eyes for too long. But I refuse… I refuse to let that happen.
We must go; we must—
Right then, as I had managed to lift my head forward, I saw two figures.
They were wearing black cloaks and black wide-brimmed hats that dangled crosses on the edges, wrapping all the way around. Their faces veiled in black, and that infamous white, glowing cross on it…
"No… please… Not now of all times…" I said, trembling under my breath.
The two of them stood yards away from me as the larger one of them said,
"Now, would you look at this, Slayer… a lost sheep from the Valley."