✔ | At Least We Have Forever

Chapter 9 - His Battle And The Fifth Weapon

Inside the building...

Rubbles and debris caused by the explosion began to fall one by one. The fire had slowly but steadily continued to spread as thick smoke covered the area's visibility. But it was when another explosion took place in the laboratory that Riya managed to regain consciousness shortly after she ran and avoided the explosion.

She remembered the moment when the explosion happened. She immediately figured out that the floating dark orb a while back came from a demon shinobi and out of instinct, she grabbed Ayako's hand. But before they could escape away from there further, the orb exploded in an intense magnitude. And she was thrown away by that intensity along with Ayako, with both of them hitting the ground hard and losing consciousness shortly after.

When she looked beside her, she saw Ayako starting to regain consciousness as the brown-haired girl was slowly opening her eyes. Riya tried to sit but immediately held her head when she felt pain. It was most likely caused by the impact that she took when she hit the ground. She also saw Ayako slowly sit and looked around, only to see her get shocked by what the girl saw around.

"What happened? Was it caused by that dark orb?" Ayako immediately asked after looking around. Riya was surprised to know that Ayako could see that dark orb when she knew very well that a person without spiritual ability would never be able to see that.

Not unless... Ayako was not just an ordinary human living in the Human World.

"You can see that orb?" Riya still asked just in case. Besides, she needed to know.

Ayako looked at her confusingly because of the seriousness on her face. Nevertheless, she nodded as an answer to that.

She sighed and then smiled when she looked at Ayako. "I guess you're not as ordinary as I thought."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

But before Riya could answer, she managed to sense something dangerous that made her turn around and narrow her eyes as she looked in a certain direction. It went even narrower when a figure emerged from the thick smoke and the fire that kept on spreading.

"Stay behind me, Kirisawa-san," Riya said without looking at her. Though still confused and now scared, Ayako complied with that.

The figure became clearer the moment it stepped out of the smoke. A human-like demon with wings of an eagle behind him emerged, holding a scythe with a black handle.

"I'm surprised you made it alive from that explosion, humans," the demon said while smirking.

But it didn't make Riya scared at all. All she did was smirk at the demon's statement. "It surprised me more that you demon shinobi showed up in this world. I can't believe you still have the guts to show your ugly face to us humans."

That surprised the said being and angered him in the process. "What did you say?" Then he pointed his scythe to Riya but she did not even flinch. "Let's just see if you could still say those words after this."

To Riya's surprise, the scythe began to generate a dark purple orb and aimed it not at her but at the ceiling above her and Ayako. The orb flew fast towards the ceiling and it exploded at the point of impact. Then Riya tried not to let her guard down.

However, the intensity of the impact caused a large part of the ceiling to collapse completely. A large part of that ceiling was about to hit Ayako who was just standing there frozen because of shock.

"Watch out!" Riya yelled and pushed Ayako as hard as she could before the large chunk and she dropped to the ground at the same time.

"Miyuzaki!" Ayako screamed the moment that the ceiling dropped and crushed her to the ground. All Ayako could do was stare with wide eyes while waiting for the cloud of dust and smoke to clear out. She was surprised to see a familiar figure whose half of the body lay under that chunk of the ceiling. She could not move because of that since the one under that large chunk was Riya.