Erica, Emi, and I had been walking through the tunnels, taking turns as we tried to find a way to either someone else, or out of here.

On our journey we came across multiple Arachius, however we quickly wiped them out with Emi's help.

She was quite strong.

However, the low amount that we came across was still bugging me. I couldn't help but think that we should have encountered more.

Erica and I had our arcana's ready, while Emi held Avalon. When we'd encounter a monster she would drop it and summon her arcana.

Her arcana was a ragged black sword with a red gem in the center of the handle. I wasn't sure who it was, but it contained a fire element.

Her other arm had halfway healed, which meant it had probably been about half an hour that we have been wandering through these tunnels.

We're running out of time quick to find the others and get out of here to save Brandon. How did they do it in the anime? It didn't seem like they had done anything specific. Was it just luck?

We reached another split. As we were about to go down the sound of running footsteps reached our ears.

It was coming to the tunnel from our left.

"Shh..." Emi hushed. "Hear that?"

"Yeah..." Erica whispered.

We focused down the hallway as some people started to come into our vision. Irene and Bianca were running towards us, completely emotionless.

Until their eyes met with ours. I could see their eyes light up as they seemed to rush even quicker towards us.

Irene wrapped me in a strong hug, lifting me off of my feet. Bianca started to pat my head while Irene attempted to squeeze out my life.

"I-it's good to see you two as well..." I gasped.

Irene let me go, letting air back into my arms. I gave them both a quick hug. As I backed away from them I saw Emi looking at Bianca.

"Hey Bianca." Emi smiled.

"Emi." Bianca said, surprised. She gave her a quick hug. "Where is Brandon?"

"Some bastard took him." Cursed Emi. "We need to find the rest of your group then get out of here."

"You know her?" Irene asked, curious.

"Emi Yamamoto, my brother's girlfriend." Bianca stated.

"Nice to meet you." Emi nodded.

I saw Bianca finally notice the absence of Emi's arm. She stared at it, not saying a word.

Her fists tightened.

"Let's go." She decided.

"Let's go down that tunnel." I stated. "You guys came from that one, and we came from this other one. That tunnel is the only one we haven't touched."

"So it might lead us to the others." Irene stated my thoughts.

"Exactly." I nodded.

"It's worth a shot." Emi agreed.

We started to walk down the tunnel.

"This place keeps shifting. Almost like it wants to keep us inside." Irene thought aloud.

"Then what should we do to get out?" Erica asked. "We can't do the string method like Theseus."

"No." Irene shook her head. "But while the walls move, the tunnels stay the same. We just need to wait for the right ones to open."

"But when do we know when the right ones will open, and where to be?" I questioned. "There hasn't been any big riddle to solve."

"We don't have many options, but our best solution is to keep going forwards. We don't want to take any passages that will make us backtrack." Irene stated.

"So no U-turns." Erica nodded. "Got it."

We continued moving forwards. As we hit intersections, we would take the ones that would head in the direction deemed as forwards .

It wasn't a good solution. All of us knew that. We were stuck here without any idea of how to get out except for pure luck.

But as we continued forwards it seemed we might have been getting lucky. We entered a room different from the other tunnels, this one being a much larger, rounded room.

We had reached something new, by pure luck.

The room had multiple different holes in it, all of them being where different tunnels would connect to this room. And across the walls were tons of Arachius. Had to be at least fifty of them.

We had found where they all were. And the reason to them being here was because of the two people in the middle of the room.

One of them was sat down on his knees on top of some sort of satanic-looking magic circle drawn from blood. Chains kept him held down, wrapped around his wrists, ankles, and neck.

We immediately recognized him.

"Brandon?!" Emi gasped.

Bianca's eyes widened as her fights tightened even more, her knuckles turning a blinding white.

A man stood in front of the strange ritual thing. He had short, dark brown hair and wore a black trench coat. He turned around to look at us, his cold, piercing red eyes feeling inhuman.

"Oh, would you look at that." He grinned. "Even more lambs for the slaughter."

"What the hell are you doing to him?!" Emi dangerously growled.

"Oh, I'm just going to be taking his power. He won't be needing it once he's dead, so might as well put it to use!"

This man, no doubt Kurebai, had an insane smile on his face. Every word he said sent chills down my spine.

Brandon looked up at us, eyes weary and barely recognizing. "...Emi? Bianca? What? Why...are you...?"

"Oh, seems you know them. Well, other than Ms. One-Arm, I met her already." He said.

"Damn it." Emi growled. "What is this? Is he some sort of intelligent monster? He's so...human-like."

No, that's Aoi.

"I'm completely human." Replied Kurebai. "For now."

"And what do you mean by that?" Emi asked, narrowing her eyes at him.

"Why would I tell you? Well, I guess I can since ya'll be dead anyways." He shrugged. "The next step to evolution is to become something greater than human."

"And I will be granted that wish once my king becomes the ruler of the world." He grinned.

"Shit." Irene realized. "He's with Lupercio."

"Ding ding ding! You get an award!" He laughed. "I'm just harvesting some power for him so he can finally break through that damned seal. And I get to take out some annoying pests, so I'm getting two birds with one stone!"

I didn't like these odds. We were up against a man with an unknown amount of power with a bunch of Arachius backing him up. Ones that he could control.

We had one S Rank, but obviously two weren't enough since Brandon got taken and Emi was almost killed.

Goku and Aoi need to get here soon or else we're dead. If they get here, we might have a chance. Until then, we somehow need to hold him off.

It's be best if he didn't sick those Arachius on us.

"With two S Ranks drained, that will be plenty for him! Maybe even three if I'm lucky!" He manically laughed.

"Yeah, that's not happening bud." A familiar voice entered my ears.

Glancing back, they had arrived.

"Goku. Aoi." I grinned.

"Hey kiddo." Goku replied. "Looks like we found the source of this problem. And you found Emi. Good."

"Aoi." Kurebai narrowed his eyes at her. "What are you doing over there? I thought it was strange when you didn't report back earlier. What are you doing? Kill them."

"No." Aoi refused.

"What the hell? What did you do to her?! What kind of annoying cliche protagonist talk did you do?!" He yelled at us.

Uhh, I didn't even do that.

"Damn it, how annoying." He sighed. He fished out a remote from his pocket. "Kneel." He said, pointing it at Aoi and clicking one of the multiple buttons.

Nothing happened.

"...eh?" He gasped. "It's not working? How the hell? No one should be able to break that enchantment!"

Expect the unexpected, fucker.

"Now I'm getting pissed." He growled. "Aoi, you have one chance. Get. Over. Here."

"Over my dead body." Aoi hissed.

"We can do that." He darkly replied. He waved his arm. "Get them, while I complete the ritual. Incapacitate, don't kill. I'll drain them next."

He turned back towards Brandon, summoning a book in his hand and starting to chant.

The Arachius dropped down from the wall, heading towards us. To give you a scale of how this looked, remember that there is about fifty of them.

And that each one is about the size of a car.

Goku cracked his knuckles. "Let's do this." He summoned his shotgun, getting ready to set thing ablaze.

"Couldn't agree more." Emi smirked, summoning her demonic sword as two ram horns grew on her head.

Aoi got her scythe ready and summoned her dead minion. Bianca got her spear out as a thin layer of ice covered her body. Irene held her hammer with both hands while Erica got into her stance with Excalibur.

As the Arachius neared they engaged in battle. It was incredible seeing this team of six destroy the Arachius. One after one they died, but more kept coming.

I'd help them in a moment. But right now, since they were fine, I was focusing on getting Brandon.

I rushed past the Arachius, taking the limbs offf of any that dared to get in my way. I blasted through them, fire coming from my armored feet as I quickly moved towards Kurebai.

He whirled around in surprise, using the back of his book to block my axe which was set straight to his head.

"Damn, no wonder you're his main worry." Grunted Kurebai.

I didn't give him the satisfaction of answering, morphing my axe into a sword for a quick swipe. He sidestepped it, extending one of his hands out.

A purple beam shot out of his hands. I morphed Loki into a shield, blocking it before running forwards and attempting to bash him with it.

He jumped over me in an aerobatic flip, launching another beam at me from behind. I ducked under, morphing Loki into a gun. Twisting around, I shot a couple fire bullets at him.

He spun around them, dodging each and every single one. I morphed Loki back into an axe, going straight for the head.

He gripped my wrist with his free hand, stopping the axe from reaching. He flipped his book into the air before aiming his hand straight to my head.

"Man, he's going to be happy when he heard you're dead." He said, letting out a psychotic smile. "Any last words?"

"One. Checkmate." I grinned.

Loki morphed once more, the sword's blade stretching out and wrapping around his arm. It descended in a second and stabbed at his pocket. It took him by surprise, not expecting what I just did.

I jumped backwards as he froze in shock, realizing what I had just done. He took out the broken remains of the remote from his pocket.

The chains that held Brandon released. Brandon started to glow as his complexion turned better. Whatever that strange magical device was doing, it was now being fixed.

Looks my guess was right. It was risky, but he only had one remote with way too many buttons for it to just be for Aoi's collar.

It was for much more.

"No! No no NO!" Kurebai screamed.

In a second severe pain struck my body as Kurobei's fist was in my stomach. He pulled it out, making me release vomited blood into the ground.

It hurt. It hurt so much. It was too much to describe. How could I even describe it? It was almost as if my stomach had been set on fire, but a thousand times worse.

"Ken?!" Loki worriedly gasped.

I stumbled backwards, collapsing to the ground. I stared up at Kurebai, who was now completely livid and furious. Even more so than Aoi's "betrayal."

And this is when I realized his true power. He was strong enough to punch straight through my armor.

Unlike my actual arcana, my armor wasn't indestructible. But it had to be extremely strong to break it.

"You fucker." He growled. "I'm not playing around anymore. Do you know how much work that was to do?! All of the things that remote worked for?!"

"Maybe you shouldn't have had all of them on one remote like an idiot." I coughed out.

"Damn you." His cold inhuman eyes stared down at me. "I'm going to make your death painful. Lucky this is just a setback."

He grabbed me, hoisting me up. He pushed my head, making it look towards my allies.

"You see that? My Arachius are overrunning them. There's too many of them, and more keep coming from the tunnels." He coldly stated. "It's over. You all are going to be harvested once I fix my machine."

"...Fuck you." I spat blood in his face.

"Oh, that's it! You're dead!" He screamed, throwing me onto the ground. "You've messed with someone far stronger than you, boy."

Rage filled my body. And just as I was about to do one more desperate move to stay alive, the whole place started to rumble.

"...what the hell?" He asked no one in particular, narrowing his eyes.

And then the ceiling exploded as something fell through it, slamming into the middle of the room.

A huge amount of dust littered the middle of the room as everything stopped, even the Arachius. As the dust faded, a singular girl could be seen standing.

Her long, black hair and piercing red eyes reminded me of Kurebai, yet at the same time they were completely different.

A strange aura hung around her, one that seemed to darken the room. One that made the Arachius, which are unintelligent monsters, to stop and whimper.

She scanned the room, before her eyes connected with mine and a chaotic smile grew on her face.

"Father!"