Reunion

Yotsuya was breathing heavily. He had ran without break at top speed for several tens of minutes, yet he thought that he was still too late. When he arrived in the giant crater, it was made clear that this was the exact same as the one from only a few days earlier, the one that was shown to the whole world. Yotsuya's eyes widened, his brows tilting and his face changing expression. He wasn't shocked by what he saw, but instead, a surge of rage almost took over him. He instantly drew his two swords before instantly rushing towards the enemy. What he saw when he arrived was a monster and one he could never forget, even if he only saw a single glimpse of it. He swung his swords, both aimed at the same place on its neck. The strike shook the surrounding air as it cut through nothing, Yotsuya stopping the swords just before they hit the ground.

The monster stood quietly behind him, observing Yotsuya as if he was his prey. Yotsuya turned around, sensing the powerful monster behind him. "You... You're that monster, aren't you?!" Yotsuya screamed, his rage taking over, his eyes full of fury and resentment. He rushed in once again, swinging his sword aimed at precise spots, but the wounds of the monster healed instantly. "Oh, I remember you now! You're that worthless little brat that abandoned your friends to save yourself!" The monster stood there with a wide grin, observing the human infront of him. The truth was that the monster would never have been able to recognize Yotsuya solely off that. He cared too little about humans to do something like that after all. "Shut up!" Yotsuya screamed louder, barely missing the monster's head but cutting off its arm instead, poison spreading through its body from the open wound. 

"Poison, huh?" The monster momentarily laughed as if it took Yotsuya's magic as a joke. "Your poison is third-tier at best, human. Don't worry, he would have said the same thing. I guess most humans are just that worthless or am I wrong, Mr. I ran because I was gonna pee myself?" The monster continued making a mockery out of Yotsuya's magic, almost instantly having neutralized the poison. "You damn monster! I'll kill you!" Yotsuya swung with both of his swords again, fast enough to hit him but not fast enough to completely slice through, the monster's neck only having been partially sliced through before it almost instantaneously healed itself. "At least get your facts right, you dumb, insignificant human. I'm an intelligent monster, and I actually do have a name." As soon as the monster finished its sentence, Yotsuya sliced it again but to his surprise, the swords got stuck.

The monster punched Yotsuya in the stomach powerfully, making small bits of blood exit his mouth but Yotsuya was way too angry to simply tank it, grabbing his swords tighter before succesfully slicing through the monster. Yotsuya breathed heavily, layers of mana now surrounding and healing him. Vine and root looking things came out of one of the monster's open wound, connecting the body back again without giving Yotsuya a chance to attack. The monster stood there, fully healed before releasing its mana, a green shade in color that wrapped around himself fully. "You damn monster! You killed them! All of them! I'll kill you if it's the last thing I do!" Yotsuya was yet again blinded by rage, releasing even more mana to the point it would do more harm than good. "I'll kill you!"

Yotsuya appeared behind the monster, cleanly slicing both of its legs. Before the monster could even fully healed, Yotsuya had ran infront of it, slicing at its stomach and chest before redirecting his swords to hit both of its arms, slicing both of them cleanly. Despite all that, the monster had no problem healing, the poison from Yotsuya's mana getting neutralized. If it was any other monster, the powerful and deadly poison would have spread throughout its body and killed it within a few seconds. He was merely unlucky in the fact that his opponent possessed even greater poisonous abilities. The monster stood there, turning its eyes towards Yotsuya and without saying it, told him that it could see his movements. 

Yotsuya changed the properties of his poison, aiming all of it at precisely one point instead of trying to spread it before slicing across its back, a deep wound remaining, the poison sitting there, slowly spreading. The monster looked up at Yotsuya, looking him deep in the eyes with wide open eyes and a grin befitting a psychopath. Pillars and walls of acid began emerging all over the battlefield, Yotsuya barely able to dodge them. The acid came soaring towards Yotsuya from all different directions, basically leaving him no chance to escape. But despite that, Yotsuya released even more mana, ocmpletely covering himself and his sword in it before jumping directly into the acid, slicing through it with as much force as he could muster, cutting through the slimy substance before landing on the ground, only momentarily touching the poisonous ground before leaping towards the monster with even more force, resulting in even faster speeds than before. Yotsuya wrapped his arms around his own body, similar to when you give yourself a hug but with swords by the side of his body, slicing as powerfully as he could, not leaving a single bit off mana outside of the attack to spare.

A giant clashing sound was heard, following up by an exlosion caused by the collisions of mana. The force in the strike alone caused the ground under them to shatter and break, causing in a huge scene of dust and smoke. In the intersection where Yotsuya's swords met, the spot where the most amount of force was concentrated in laid a single finger blocking the strike, no matter the amount of force he continued pushing with, it wasn't enough. But that's not what shocked him the most. The finger which was blocking his swords were not that off the monster, but from another person. When the smoke eventually cleared, a figure of a man a couple of inches taller than Yotsuya stood, turned away from him and holding the monster by the hand, the palm of his hand wrapping around and covering the monster's face, tightly squeezing it, almost crushing it. "Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow! Ve- M-master! Please stop, my head... My head's gonna explode!"

Yotsuya simply starred, his mouth opened wide in disbelief as he watched the figure infront of him become more and more clear as the smoke and dust dissipated. The mana oversurging from them was overpowering, the swords which Yotsuya were holding shattered under its immense pressure. "A-ah! My swords!" Yotsuya snapped out of his trance-like state, Yotsuya falling down to his knees to try and pick up the broken pieces of his swords. "Ah, I'm sor-" The figure turned around to apologize, having accidentaly broken Yotsuya's swords without meaning to as it was a result of his anger towards the monster. "Yotsuya...? Is that you?" His voice was low, almost incoherent yet full of different emotions. Yotsuya quickly turned his head upwards at the sound of the person's voice. But as he flicked his head upwards, his head came in contact with the person's chin, the sound of their collision remaining in the air. 

Yotsuya was rubbing his head in pain before opening his eyes again, looking up into the eyes off the person. He couldn't believe it either. "V-velios...? Is that really you? You're alive?!" Yotsuya acted on impulsive, quickly grabbing Velios and pulling him inwards, hugging him tightly. "You damn idiot!" It sounded like Yotsuya was crying, but he also sounded relieved. "I thought you died that day! I'm so glad... I'm so glad!" Yotsuya hugged him even tighter than before. A smile appeared on Yotsuya's face, growing wider and wider despite the tears that were running down the sides of his face. In contrast, Velios was speechless. He didn't know how to react, he didn't know what to say. Even he thought that Yotsuya had died, that his attempt on that day had been in vain but out of nowhere, Yotsuya was here, right in front of him and alive.

"I'm feeling... I'm..." Velios passed out of nowhere, still in Yotsuya's arm. "Ah! He passed out!" Yotsuya shouted in panic, holding him infront of him before shaking him, trying to wake him up. Yotsuya looked around them, to find that the monster had disappeared. Yotsuya looked around in confusion before realising how tired he himself was. Yotsuya stod up before picking up Velios' body. His body moved on its own, the forest big and wide and now with a massive hole in the middle of it.Yotsuya's body kept on moving towards the city with a single goal in mind. To get both of them to safety no matter what.