Inch by inch, the spears slid through his barrier with decreasing velocity. They'd almost passed to the halfway point when the force behind them had finally been entirely sapped away. The momentum was absorbed by the wind wall and dispersed within its churning currents.
Once the sound of flying spikes piercing anything and everything ceased, the man sighed and released his arms, ending the barrier in the process.
The quills fell flat to the floor, creating large imprints on the dirt below when they'd landed.
His hands and muscles now relaxed, the hammer-wielder stepped toward the beast and took up his weapon, but that sight wasn't the one I'd been intrigued by. With the wind barrier gone, I had a full view of the cloaked woman.
Though the man blocked numerous quills from reaching us, the amount was nowhere near what the woman had redirected. There were dozens of embedded needles forming a perfect curve around her.
Despite having just survived what could've been a gruesome death, her demeanor was still calm and collected. No fear, no panic, no despair, she brushed off what would've killed anyone else here as if it came to her as naturally as breathing.
Twirling her swords in her hands, she began a cautious but confident stride up to the exhausted beast.
The grizzly's energy was wholly spent, so it collapsed to the floor while raspily breathing. The eyes, the blank expression on its face, I could tell it had been too worn out to panic or struggle anymore.
Despite the injuries it received from the two, nothing had been as morbid as what the beasts had done to itself.
Its back was utterly torn apart and bloody after ejecting the quills. Like a bee's stinger, each needle must've taken a chunk of flesh from the beast after being fired.
'A last resort...' I thought, noticing how terrified the bear must've been to opt into using such a self-harming attack.
The woman and man met up once more; this time, they towered over the dying predator as it glared back up at them.
The woman raised her swords above the beast's head, preparing to deliver her last respect before ending its life.
A mournful howl echoed throughout the woods.
Those were the "final words" of the beast as the woman dropped the anvil on its neck. After that...silence filled the forests. As if the trees themselves were shocked by who the victor had been.
Realizing I'd still been spectating from the ground, I began to stand up. I guess I had been too captivated by the battle to notice before.
Likewise, a series of grunting and sighs could be heard as Agawa, Takagi, and Hikari stood up too.
Though Takagi winced and had to support his gashed leg with his arm, he, like the rest of us, must've been too shocked at the beast's death to notice his pain.
"Is it over?" I asked, unsure if what happened could really be true.
Luckily and unbelievably, it was! The fact that the two victors began their trip back toward us was proof of that.
While they approached, our cheers grew louder and louder. We'd all been ecstatic to have officially survived the day!
We laughed, we shouted, we praised, we celebrated... We did everything our aching bones and throbbing muscles would allow to show how joyous we'd been at surviving.
Even Hikari, though not as outspoken as the rest of us, celebrated in her own small way. She'd been heaving sighs of relief and smiling at the fact that we were no longer in danger of becoming a grizzly's meal.
Though we still had no clue who these three were, we couldn't care. We were too busy celebrating life to worry about anything else!
Our happiness was overflowing! Which is why we all overlooked a crucial detail about the woman's expressions once she had gotten to be just outside our shelter's entrance.
Though she'd just won against an apex predator, though she was stoic, the woman's face showed a tinge of regret and sorrow when she'd made eye contact with the archer.
I followed their gazes, still wearing a buffoonish smile, only to realize Ayame hadn't been cheering with us. Opposite to cheering, she was silently and lightly bawling to herself while clutching her eyes with blood-covered hands.
I'd been about to ask what was wrong when I noticed she had turned Nakamura over and cradled his head on her lap.
Ayame removed her hands from her eyes, revealing that she'd stained her cheeks red with bloody palm prints. Then she took a clean strip of gauze and gently wiped at Nakamura's dirt and crimson-covered face.
His chest was still, without even a twitch of movement. His complexion was pale white with blackened bags underneath his latched-shut eyes, and his fingers were slightly constricted with rigidity.
"I-Is he?" I asked, though I knew the answer.
When the archer silently nodded at me, I knew for sure. I knew that, sometime during the fight, Nakamura had passed away.
We were all stuck in sorrow at the realization: Agawa grimaced and turned away, Hikari looked on in shock, and I bit my lip in frustration. However, Takagi was the one out of us who had acted the most concerning.
I expected him to shout out angrily, punch something, and do anything you'd expect from an anger-ridden punk. Only he did none of those things.
Takagi had gone limp with shock as he stared at Nakamura's body from afar. He stood there silently, unmovingly, with eyes as vacant as the voids of space.
I had no idea what the kid was thinking, but he was clearly reflecting deeply. Or maybe he just hadn't accepted the reality of the situation yet.
It was a cold, hard truth that we faced that day. A day where we were confronted by many of them. We were in a new world. A world where magic existed. A world where demons roamed to devour us.
pαпdα Йᴏνê|,сòМ But, of all those truths, one stood as the most disturbing, frightening, and morbid. Unlike the guaranteed safety we'd enjoyed in our old world, this one afforded no such luxury.
Despite living through so many precarious situations over these last 24 hours, only now did I realize the kind of place we'd been brought to. Only after experiencing the death of one I'd become acquainted with, did I see our new world for what it was.
That here, wherever "here" was, was a place where any single one of us could die at a moment's notice.
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