Arc 1 - Chapter 5: There Is Not a Wonderful World Behind the Door (2/2)

"It's me..."

As Rie took her last breath, two orbs of light came out of her chest. The killer didn't notice the orbs at all, and after they hovered in the air for a while, they aimed at Yu. The killer also kept his eyes on Neko and Yu.

He couldn't feel his legs, but he picked up Neko, who was having a nervous breakdown and screaming at the top of her lungs, and leaving Rie's lifeless body behind, he went through the first door on his floor and into a warehouse. Behind him were the killer and two orbs of light.

On the crackling floor, in the smoke that burned his lungs, Neko punched and kicked him while he looking for an exit from the warehouse he had entered to escape. The fires were all around them and if they stayed here they would either burn to death or the clown would trap them.

He didn't know where to go, the only way to escape from the tower was to jump through the windows in the tower walls, but he couldn't see any windows in the warehouse. Seeing a second door inside the warehouse, he ran and grabbed the doorknob to open it, but the heated metal burned Yu's hand and he screamed and fell to the floor.

The lights from Rie's chest were still following him. Yu was caught by the lights while on the ground. Two orbs of light entered Yu's chest.

Neko could neither speak nor calm down. She was crying, screaming, digging her nails into her face and tearing her own flesh. Yu wanted to stop her from hurting herself, but he couldn't, because as soon as he was caught by the lights, his chest burned more fiercely than his hand burned by the heat.

His chest was burning, there was a weight in his heart, a burden he could hardly bear. He had difficulty breathing with a sharp pain in his lungs.

Yu's eyes were burning as he watched Rie die. His ears rang, his hands trembled and the pain tortured him, taking his mind in its poisonous claws.

The agonizing moment was nothing like the crisis he had just experienced. Nor was it like any crisis he had ever experienced. A completely fantastic, supernatural pain was playing cruelly with Yu's body.

"Neko..."

Neko had been able to cure his epilepsy attack, and if she could cure him now, they would still have a chance to escape from here. He opened his mouth to beg Neko, but he couldn't speak when he saw how the crazed girl had scarred his face.

"That's it..."

A huge man, walking like he was going to pierce the ground, a mechanical voice devoid of warmth and compassion, was walking towards them as if the fire didn't frighten him. The scythe Sorrow was holding was soaked in Rie's blood.

"DIE!"

Neko, in a fit of rage, pointed her palms at her mother's killer, and the storm from those small palms cut through the flames and reached Sorrow.

The wind magic that hit Sorrow picked him up and dragged him inside the tower with breaking the walls. A normal person like Yu would have been found with broken bones after this attack.

The enraged Neko didn't want to stop there, she moved into the flames to tear Sorrow completely apart.

"Hands off, you disgusting creature!"

Yu continued to hold onto Neko's foot, even though she swung her free foot into Yu's face to move on.

He didn't know why he was doing it; was it to protect Neko or to stay alive?

Probably the answer was both.

"Don't go."

His body was burning, not from the flames but from the orbs of light passing through him from Rie, and he could no longer bear the pain. He was about to lose his mind, and he was trying to choose his words to convince Neko before he lost his mind.

"Let's run away."

Neko looked at him with hateful, bloodshot eyes. Naturally she blamed Yu for her mother's death. She clenched her fists and bit her lip until it bled, then pointed her hands at Yu.

When the light from Neko's palms reached Yu's body, it meant that the healing mana had been transferred to Yu to ease his pain. Since they didn't have much time, Yu couldn't wait to be completely healed. The pain had not yet subsided, but when it was bearable, he stood up and they went outside the warehouse to find a window to jump out of the tower.

And there was a window on the stairs of the tower, Yu ran to it, but he had to stop because Sorrow was in the way of the window.

"Why don't you fucking die?"

The giant looked down at Yu, and without answering the question, he started to attack. He was faster than when he fought Rie. Yu waited for Neko to cast a spell again, but when he realized she wasn't going to do anything, he picked her up before it was too late and jumped aside to avoid the attack.

He dodged the scythe that came down vertically. In the next attack the scythe swung horizontally.

Yu dodged it by jumping backwards, but his foot was caught in the flames. Screaming, he pulled his foot out and started running.

Sorrow was following them, he was like a demon as he passed through the flames unharmed and Yu had nowhere to run as his path was blocked by the flames.

He had only one option now, to walk over to the Sorrow and get past him to the window behind him. Then they could jump out and, if Neko slowed their fall with magic, they could escape.

When Sorrow and Yu came face to face, Yu set Neko down to cast a spell to get Sorrow out of the way.

"Now is the time to use your magic."

"I have little mana left, if I finish we will burn to death." Neko answered the question in a lifeless voice, as if accepting death.

"I don't want to die." The thought made him feel like dirt.

The scythe swung horizontally. Instead of running backwards, Yu went forward as Rie had done before. He got beyond the range of the scythe's steel and grabbed the wooden handle.

After grabbing the scythe, he hold Sorrow's balls.

He pulled the balls he held with the miraculous strength that his passion for life gave him.

For some reason Sorrow now looked like a man who had no advantage.

With an unstoppable scream, Sorrow fell to his knees. Yu, still holding his scythe, kicked the collapsed killer in the face. His kick broke Sorrow's mask, revealing his black face covered in scars. Sorrow's eyes also resembled the shape of a monster's and were golden like his sister's.

"What should I do now?"

Sorrow had fallen to the ground and his scythe remained in Yu's hand. He felt no strength in his fingers, no strength in his wrists, no strength in his elbows and no strength in his shoulders. Yu didn't even know how to carry the weapon.

But he knew what he had to do. He took a leap of faith, using a wild power he had never known he had, a power that felt like it didn't belong to him, he raised the scythe high and plunged it into the murderers stomach.

The scythe passed through the fat layer of his opponent's abdomen and pierced his stomach. Blood splattered all over Yu's face.

Yu pulled the scythe back and stabbed his opponent in the stomach again, screaming.

Sorrow moaned like an animal on the ground. Yu raised the scythe and kept stabbing.

Stabbed.

Stabbed.

Stabbed.

Stabbed.

Stabbed.

He stabbed again and again.

Sorrow was not a human, so he kept stabbing like he was killing an animal.

He forgot his humanity, he forgot he was tired. He kept stabbing without mercy until Sorrow's body was riddled with holes. There was no need to show him mercy anyway.

Sometimes the scythe would hit bone, and when it did, it was hard to pull it back out, but Yu would not let go of the scythe, he would somehow pull it back and keep stabbing.

"DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE!"

Yu riddled Sorrow's stomach, chest, neck and face.

Even though his opponent was dead, he kept stabbing the scythe into his lifeless body. Finally Neko intervened and made Yu drop the scythe.

Taking deep breaths, Yu picked up Neko and reached the stairs without even a last glance at the clown lying on the pool of blood on the floor. He jumped from the window to the ground without a second thought.

There was no other way to go anyway. Upstairs was on fire, downstairs was on fire, the floor they were on was on fire. If they didn't leave the tower they would burn to death and of course Yu didn't want to burn to death.

He didn't want to fall to his death, he didn't want to die in any way.

But if he had to choose, he would rather fall to his death than burn to death. Fire was one of the things he had been afraid of for as long as he could remember. So even if Neko wasn't going to slow their fall with her magic, he would jump down and hope the fall would kill him instead of fire.

They fell down the tower and Neko used her wind magic to slow their fall before they reached the ground. The ground was also in flames, but Neko created a wind field around them, preventing the flames from reaching them.

When Yu emerged from the flame-covered Sigma tower, carrying Neko in his arms, the little girl, using all her remaining energy for magic, could no longer stay awake and fainted in Yu's arms.

Unaware that she had fainted, Yu kept running. He ran as far as he could, as far as he could get away from the inferno called the Sigma Tower, and when the first rays of the sun appeared, he passed out on top of a hill.