Chapter 46 - Never Ignore A Desperate Woman

"Alright, now that everything has been done, we need to get out of here," Genta said. "This place is giving me the creeps."

"I agree," complemented Orihime, "we need to get out of here." "Can we move Kazuya?"

"Of course, he's fine," Shizu said. "He's just recuperating, that's all."

"Okay then," Orihime said as she knelt to carry Kazuya's body.

"That won't be necessary," Shizu said, casting a spell that made Kazuya's body levitate and float over two feet above the ground.

"Do you even need to do anything with your hands, old woman?" Orihime said, "You seem to have a spell for everything." "I mean, why didn't you just cast a spell that would have instantly killed the giant or something?"

"Yes, that is a valid question," Shizu replied. "I could have also cast a spell to end all badness and poverty in the world today." That way, nobody in this world would ever have to suffer again, and this mission would have been deemed unnecessary by all counts, wouldn't you agree?"

Orihime arched a brow, looking at the old woman with her head slanted to the side.

"You know how stupid that sounds, right?" Shizu said to her. "If I had such power, I would have done so." But magical spells require magical energy, and it all comes from within. "All the magical energy I could muster was barely enough to carve out a few rocks while fighting the giant, so that should tell you that just like every other mage, I too have my limits."

"Good point," Orihime said, understanding Shizu.

"Let's move then," Shizu said as she joined both hands together, ready to cast another spell.

"What are you doing?" asked Orihime.

"I want to see if I can open a portal from here to where we were before," she said before casting the spell.

Then a small wind began to circumvent the area before them as a portal began to form.

"Gee, if you have this ability, why didn't you use it so we could escape from here during the fight?" asked Orihime.

"You talk like the giant would have given us enough time to do so," Shizu replied, and Genta sighed, hoping her Master wouldn't get into another pointless argument with one of them over something irrelevant. 

While the portal was forming, they heard a voice coming from behind them.

"What! "What have you done?" said the male voice from within the darkness. 

"Who is there?" Orihime turned around, unsheathing her sword. 

In the darkness, she found a faint human-looking figure holding a fiery torch in his hand, about to turn away and run, "You scoundrels have slaughtered Beelzebub! You all will pay the price for this! "The gods will make sure of it, you imbeciles!" he said as he ran away. 

"I got this," Orihime said to them. "Wait for me; I'll be right back with him."

"Try not to kill him," Shizu said to her. "It seems he has relevant information we might be interested in."

"I'll try not to," Orihime said as she snatched a fiery torch from the nearby wall, "but it's not a promise."

"Don't worry. Knowing you, I wouldn't be counting on it," Shizu replied before Orihime went chasing after the male stranger. 

-

Orihime ran into the darkness, where it was so dark that the only thing her fiery torch could illuminate were the things that were within a five-foot radius of her. 

The darkness was so thick that she felt like, without her torch and the faint sign of the person running ahead of her, she would lose her sanity within minutes of being alone there. 

As they ran, Orihime also noticed that water was beginning to splash around whenever she took a step. She looked down and saw that the ground was now covered with puddles of water in different places. 

This made her wonder where the man was running to—or, more importantly, where he was leading her. 

The man looked back and was surprised to see her chasing after him. "You made a mistake by trying to follow me!" he said to her. 

"What can I say?" "I'm a persistent woman in need of a man." She said to him, "Why not keep me company for a while?" "I have a sweet itch I think you can scratch."

"Nice try, woman," the man said as he ran forward before doing the unexpected: To Orihime's surprise, he dropped his torch, and it fell right into a large puddle of water, quenching the fire immediately. It plunged everything ahead of her into complete darkness, and she became frustrated. 

"Damn it," Orihime swore, feeling like the only person in the world at that moment. 

Then, all of a sudden, the whole area was brightened by a large fireplace set ablaze, followed by the rattling sound of metal. Orihime stepped into the light, looked around, and finally spotted the man she was after; he was standing behind a metal protector fashioned as a door. 

She was surprised to find out that he was just an ordinary person, with no distinct features at all. She wondered what a human being was doing in a place like this, showing such familiarity with it that it wouldn't be far-fetched to say that he ran the place. 

She was about to rush after him to get some answers when she got disturbed by a loud rattling sound behind her. She looked and saw that a large metal protector had just slammed against the floor behind her. 

With all passages now blocked by metal bars, she was now trapped within the area without a way out. There were metal protectors in all four cardinal directions, with the man she was after standing behind the bars of the one protector before her. 

Then the two doorways beside her opened, and she looked sideways, wondering what this was all about. Then out of those doorways, ghouls came forth from both sides, growling and shrieking with their bloodthirsty mouths wide open. 

Unlike the ghouls she encountered outside the cave, these looked less intimidating, as their mouths weren't stained with blood and they weren't as fierce-looking as she remembered, perhaps showing that it had been a long time since they tasted blood. 

Altogether, they summed up to about fifty, all out for her blood. 

"Thank you for volunteering as food for the ghouls," the man said, "They have been starving for weeks!" 

"Sweetheart? "All this for me?" Orihime asked. "You shouldn't have!"

"I would love to watch all the dirty humor leave your mouth as those creatures rip you into shreds," he said to her. 

"You could stay to watch if you want; I think I'll be done in less than a minute or so," Orihime said to him as she brought forth her sword and unhinged her shield from her back. 

"Keep deceiving yourself, vile woman," he said to her. 

The ghouls attacked her all at once, and Orihime used this as the chance to test out the shield Tano had made for her. She threw the shield at them, and it spun around her, decapitating the ghouls that were closest to her before spinning back to her arm. 

She smiled as she caught it. The blacksmith was right; it worked like a boomerang!

Then, with her sword, she cut down several of them. One of the ghouls opened its mouth wide and came down for her. She blocked its attack with the tip of her shield before running her sword into its head and then drawing it out along with the ghoul's brains. 

The final ghoul was about to attack from behind, but she slammed her shield against it before stabbing it in the gut. Then she drew the sword up, slicing the top half of the creature into two bloody halves, from its belly up to its head. 

That was the final one of them, as all the other ghouls were now lying lifeless on the ground, dead. 

The man behind the bars of the front protector took several steps backward, not believing what he was seeing. 

"What on earth are you?!" he yelled at her as he went backwards in fear, knowing even the metal bars wouldn't be enough to stop her from getting to him. "What are you?" he asked again. 

"The woman of your dreams, cute boy!" she said, and he ran away without saying another word. 

Orihime sighed. "Come on, man! I just want to have a talk! Trust me, I can get very aggressive and persistent when I want to talk to a guy. "So the last thing you want is to make me more desperate than I already am!" she yelled back at him as she put her sword back in its place. 

"Stay away from me, you crazy woman!" he yelled back from afar while running further away. 

Orihime looked down and saw some gears, and realizing they were directly connected to the door in front of her, she slammed her shield against it, shattering the chains connected to it. 

This caused the whole door to be without support, and with a single kick from her boot, it fell to the ground like a card among a falling set of dominoes. 

With an open passage now in front of her, she hung her now-bloodstained shield on her back and ran straight in with a sadistic smile on her face.