There’s no way she’d leave after last night right? Seiren thinks. He exits the cave and catches a glimpse of something interesting. He finds Mera running back and forth in the area. She dashes to and fro, whilst taking shots at a nearby tree. Seconds later she came to a halt and stopped to catch her breath.

“Hey.” Seiren says.

“Oh you’re up.” She says. “How did you sleep?”

Seiren sighs and shakes his head.

“Yeah, I’ve had better sleep too.” She says as she begins to stretch her arms out. “I was getting in some early practice before we set out.”

He looks over at the tree and notices a hole going straight through its entire trunk.

Yikes. Her power is something else, on top of that she also has good accuracy. I can’t let myself fall behind. Seiren thinks.

“Well, let's get going, we only have but so much daylight.” She says. “Which way to choose…?”

“Then… let's just go this way.” Seiren says as he points in a random direction.

“Did you just pick at random?” She questions.

He nods. 

“What if there’s some kind of high-ranking demon that way?” She questions.

He shrugs.

“You’re kidding me.” She says with an exasperated sigh.

“No need to go looking for a ‘high ranking demon.’ Because I’m right here.” A voice interjects. “Although, ‘Greater Demon’ just keeps it simple.” 

Seiren and Mera instantly go on high alert, quickly gaining some distance from the person. They look up to see a demonic woman sitting on a tree branch. She has dark blue skin with a single horn on her head.

She drops down from the branch and smirks.

“That’s a pretty bold fashion statement you’re making.” Mera says.

The demonic woman is clad in nothing more than an abundance of chains, which barely cover that which should be.

“This isn’t about fashion.” She says as her chains begin moving at her behest, and clanging off of one another.

“So that was the sound I heard last night.” Seiren says.

“Indeed! I could’ve taken both of you out in your sleep. But that’d be no fun.” She says. “There’s nothing that gets me excited more than trading blows!” She exclaims.

“Before we fight, why are you even here? What would a greater demon be doing here on the 2nd layer?” Mera questions.

“You humans aren’t the only ones here to hunt. We also work on this layer, to procure food for the rest of hell. Humans are considered a delicacy, so naturally, I’ll stand to make quite a profit. Not that I’m in it for the money of course. An opponent that can injure me is quite the treat.” She explains while licking her lips. 

“One more thing, shouldn’t someone like you be on the layer of lust?” Mera asks.

“Why should I be? When I’m a glutton for punishment?” She questions. “I almost forgot to introduce myself. I’m Renee. Renee the unpunishable.”

“Tell you what, I’ll let you two make the first move…” Renee mutters.

Seiren and Mera look at one another and split up, giving themselves some room.

I can’t even believe this is happening, she was tracking us that whole time and we had no clue. Now we have to fight her without even knowing her level of power. This is not good. Seiren thinks.

Mera readies her water pistol and Seiren’s spear materializes. Seiren takes a deep breath and dashes forward at Renee. Seemingly unphased by his charge, Renee maintains the smile on her face. He reaches Renee within seconds, thrusting his spear at her stomach, the force behind the blow causes her to slide back a bit. Then right after, her head jerks violently as she’s assaulted from the side by water bullets. Renee remains still for a few moments as Seiren and Mera wait, then watch as a smile washes over her face. 

“Good… Good! This is what I’m looking for!” She shouts in jubilation as blood trickles down from her temple. She quickly wraps her chain around Seiren’s waist and holds him in the air.

The moment Mera sees it she fire 3 shots at Renee. The three landed directly in her back, causing her to tremble, with pleasure.

“Please, by all means, fire more!” She said with bliss.

Mera looks on with a somewhat disgusted expression.

This woman is a real handful. It seems like she’s only taken superficial damage at best. Is this what it’s like to fight a greater demon? She thinks.

Using the shadows under the chains, Seiren expands them, freeing himself in the process. While she waits for his next attack, he slips behind her with his spear. By altering its composition, it became loose and more like a rope. Wrapping some around both of his arms, he slip it around her neck and pulled with all of his might. 

“This feeling is… sublime. The pain in my throat… The emptiness in my lungs… Ahhh so refreshing. But not enough.” Renee thinks.

“Is that all you’ve got!” She shouts

Power begins to well up in her body as she smiles, causing a blast of wind to blow the both of them back, making them land on the ground. 

“What the hell was that?” Mera questions.

Renee dashes over to Mera at a blinding speed and raises her foot. Mera’s eyes widen in surprise. She rolls to the left, narrowly avoiding it. After the roll, she fires six more water bullets at Renee. Renee reels from the damage and Seiren quickly rises to rush over there. The moment he gets up, Renee’s chains start attacking him. Parrying each of the chains with his spear, he hurriedly tries to make his way over. The next chain comes flying at him and as he goes to parry it, it appears as if Renee switched places with it, coming face to face with him. The suddenness of her appearance throws him off, leaving him swinging at a bad angle. 

Meanwhile, Renee places her hand on Seiren’s cheek and caresses it. When next he blinks, the only thing before his eyes is the vast sky. He was thrown into the air above the forest line, he could even see the other layers in the distance. Chains constrict around his legs and Seiren is pulled from the sky at a breakneck pace. The chains slam him into the ground covering the area in a cloud of dirt, causing the sound to erupt throughout the forest.

Mera looks up in surprise as she gets up.

There’s no way he could survive that. But, why do I feel so angry though? I barely knew him, we weren’t really friends or anything, we were more like coworkers. If we were partners for longer, could we have been friends? No use thinking this way right now. I’ve gotta focus or I’ll end up like him. Mera thinks as she and Renee eye one another.

“I think I can understand how your power works. The first time we saw you, you seemed like you were quite sluggish and slow to react, but you could shrug off attacks like they were nothing.” Mera begins. “Then you flipped on us, and became a lot faster and aggressive, but I suspect you can’t really take hits like that. Which is why you become so offensive, so as not to give your opponent any breathing room or time to attack. Those water bullets that hit you, look like they did some damage.”

Mera looks at Renee’s hip which is bleeding and damaged.

“You’re quite observative. But will knowing how my power works, let you defeat me?” She questions.

“That depends.” Mera says.

Mera takes a deep breath before firing a barrage of water bullets at Renee with a multitude of shots. When the shots connected this time, they did the damage, just as Mera theorized. Renee quickly swung a chain at Mera.  Mera ducks under it and begins to run toward her. Renee responds by sending more chains at her. Which are quickly stopped by Mera accurately shooting each chain to parry them. Mera, running at top speed, tackles Renee to the floor

Mera quickly mounts Renee and holds her water pistol to her face.

“Checkmate!” Mera said.

“I’m not that easy you know. Do you even have the strength to shoot?” Renee says tauntingly.

Mera prepares to fire when her past memories begin to overlap with the current moment, memories of a smaller Mera holding a gun in her hand to a man’s head.

She starts breathing heavily before letting out a shrill scream. She fires six shots into Renee’s head. Mera stands, finding herself struggling to catch her breath as she stood over Renee’s body. 

She walks over to where Seiren fell and her eyes widen. Renee’s chains come flying toward Mera and wrap themselves around her neck. They begin strangling her as Renee rises from the dirt.

“You didn’t think it was over, did you?” Renee says as she brings Mera closer. 

“How…?” Mera barely manages to get out.

“The thing is I can change between the two as much as I want, as long as I wait 3 minutes between the switch.” Renee says as she switches back to her offense mode, preparing to finish off Mera. 

“Then that’s good to know.” A voice says from above.

Looking toward the sun, Renee can’t see anything, except two long tendrils of shadow appearing on both sides of her. They rise all the way into the air to Seiren and pull him down toward Renee at high speed. He begins to spin with the spear like a dervish of death. Renee uses as many chains as possible to defend against the attack. While Mera watches her look of desperation and excitement at the same time. 

With a thundering crash, Seiren slices through her chains like butter and then through Renee, bisecting her at a diagonal angle. Her body falls to the ground and Mera is released from the chains, causing her to hit the ground and cough. 

“I’ve never experienced pain like this.” Renee spoke while spitting out pints of blood. Her body was leaking many more. “This is the best day of my life.”

Seiren simply stood over her in silence, while Mera glared daggers at her.

When Renee finally breathed her last, Seiren helps Mera to her feet. 

“Are you okay?” He asks.

“I should be asking you that! How the hell did you survive that fall!” Mera exclaims while getting in Seiren’s face.

“I got out of the chains, and used the shadows from under my clothes to take my place.” He says.

“You thought of that in such a short time. Pretty clever.” She admits. “Although it was getting pretty dicey on my end.”

“Yeah, sorry about that.” He says as he rubs the back of his neck.

From what I’ve seen so far, Seiren just has these moments of cleverness or brilliance like when he blocked the bear’s strike and used its momentum to strengthen his attack, or more recently the fight with Renee. If our roles were switched, I’m not sure I could’ve done something like that on the fly. Honestly, Seiren’s amazing. She thinks. 

“Well, never mind that. We’re burning daylight so we need to get back on track.” Mera says.

Seiren nods.

“Let's just go this way for now. At the very least, we’re not going the way we came.” She suggests.

What Renee said has me a little bothered though. There are others like her on this layer we need to look out for. If they’re as skilled a hunter as she was, then we’ll have a hard time just trying to evade them. If they don’t run into other people first.  Seiren thinks. 

They continue their journey throughout gluttony, passing through the forests, for what seems like an eternity, they made it to an area made up mostly of plains. Trees were interspersed throughout the terrain, meaning there was a lack of natural cover.

“Hmm…” Mera lets out. “I’m not a big fan of this terrain.”

We are pretty exposed, but nothing ventured, nothing gained, right? Seiren thinks.

“Well, at the very least we’ll have trees for cover, so we’ll just have to be aware of our surroundings.” She says. “Let’s go.”