Episode 12

Momoi's POV

(Come on Momoi, think. What does it mean to save a trapped spirit? Free... Hmm... How could I free her?)

That's when what the spirit told us flashed through my head.

(" I just... Panicked that you were going to kill me...like my... my... Mom... *sob* *sob*")

... Like... my mom...

... Kill... My mom... ... Panicked...

... Kill me...

"KILL ME LIKE MY MOM"

(That's it!)

"I understand how to free the trapped spirit!"

"What, how?!" Haruka asked from the other side of the room.

"We need to kill her."

"What, are you crazy? We have to free her, not make her suffer any further!" Tokiya shouted, denying my idea.

"No, this is it. If we kill her, she would get reunited with her mom. She's a spirit, so she's afraid of dying once again because she's already experienced death before. But what she doesn't realize is that if she dies for good, she'll meet her mom again. Come on, just believe in me!"

Although everyone still seemed like they thought this was a dangerous idea, they obeyed my instructions.

"10 seconds... 9... 8..."

"Hey, they're in there!" A man's voice was heard from a close distance.

The clock kept ticking down and the men were right in the hallway.

Haruka immediately formed a mass of ice crystals which she aimed directly at the spirit and yelled, "You better be right about this!"

And then all at once, the crystals sped toward the spirit, stabbing her brutally.

"Aaaahhhh!!!"

While she cried in agony, a blinding light suddenly appeared, causing me to reflexively shut my eyes. I tried opening them slightly and noticed that spirit was slowly fading away. A woman then came floating down from the ceiling, stretching her arms out as hovered in the air.

"Oh, Yukari. You can come back to me at last." She spoke as her gentle voice resounded throughout the room.

"Mom... Are you really my mom...?" The spirit, or should I say, Yukari muttered while brushing away the tears from her puffy eyes.

"Yes, my dear. It's really me, your mother."

Yukari scrambled to get up from the ground and instantly leaped into her arms, a smile appearing on her face for the first time, and gradually, they completely faded away.

"Thank... you..."

Those were the last words Yukari spoke to me before disappearing entirely.

"We did it, alright!" Nagi yelled as he threw a pumped fist into the air.

"We can't celebrate too soon, we've still got more important problems to take care of first." I stated as I looked towards all the men standing a few spaces ahead of us.

"Won't you guys ever get tired...?" Tokiya grumbled in an annoyed tone.

"You kids have no clue of who you're messing with. Do you really think you can actually defeat us, the followers of Echo Order?! Well, give it your best shot, you're only going to regret what you've done later!" One of the men shouted, pointing his pistol at us.

"Oh c' mon! We've killed people from the Crescent Guards and escaped their mansion without a scratch. We can obviously handle you people!" Nagi shot back, looking quite confident.

"Wha- The Crescent Guards of Lunalia...?! Okay, you're just bluffing now, kid! Everyone, get them!" The man yelled as he pulled the trigger but fortunately, his aim was slightly off causing the bullet to simply pass by us and hit the wall behind.

"Oh well, guess we have to play along now..." Haruka mumbled as she hung her head.

The fight was surprisingly quite easy and to be frank, the men were weaker than I had imagined they'd be. But what was bothering me the whole time was that if they were truly that vulnerable, why were they working in such a great facility? How did they manage to capture all those vast amounts of spirits we saw before and torture them successfully? What if someone else was truly behind this disturbing project and these men were merely some decoys? That was something I wasn't able to answer.

Back to Haruka's POV

"Phew! That was a breeze!" I stretched my arms in the air and let out a sigh of relief.

"I know right! They were much easier to defeat than the Crescent Guards. I mean, I hardly even got a scar!" Nagi agreed as his archer equipment vanished out of his hands.

"But guys, don't you find it a little strange that men so weak could own a facility as big as this and obtain all those spirits and abuse them? I mean, it's a little odd if you think about it, isn't it?" Momoi mentioned, a worried expression on her face.

"I know, I was thinking about that while we were fighting. I feel like there are more people other than these men who really control this place..." Tokiya continued.

"That is true..."

That second, everyone's phone buzzed.

"You have successfully carried out the mission. Congratulations on not dying. But this means that things are going to get tougher and tougher.

Good luck."

The same message which we got last time appeared on the phone's screen. I then remembered what had happened earlier and decided to ask Momoi, "Oh yeah, by the way, how did you figure out how to free the spirit?"

"Oh, about that. I just remembered all the information the spirit told us when we first met her and I thought if we killed her, she would reunite with her mom again resulting in her feeling happy, and maybe that's what freeing her actually meant." She explained, her usual smile on her face.

"Wow, that's really smart!"

"Thanks, but we really need to get out of this place before any further problems occur."

And with that, we left the empty room.

.

.

.

After some time of roaming around the underground passageways, we finally spotted the area where we dropped down from in the first place. Fortunately, we didn't bump into any obstacles on our way, which was a little bit unexpected.

"So, how're we going to go up there? I mean seriously, any ideas?" I looked up at the far away hole in the ceiling.

"That... is a good question..." Nagi mumbled, looking pretty annoyed.

We stood there for a while, just staring at the opening and thinking of ways to get up there. Just then, a voice called out to us from above which sounded like a young girl.

"Umm... Hello...?!"

"Huh? Who's there?! We need help to get out of this place! Can you lend us a rope or something?!" I screamed.

"What, someone's actually down there?! Ah, hold on, umm... Sure, here!"

She then threw a rope down and one by one, we all climbed up.

"Thanks a lot! We wouldn't have ma- You...? What're you doing here?!" Nagi blurted out as he got a glimpse of the young girl's face.

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