Misty Labyrinth in Suicide Forest

"Suicide Forest? Aokigahara!?"

Keshita once again recalled his suicide attempt.

"Wait a minute. How did I end up in Aokigahara at that time?"

"Are you daydreaming again?"

A girl in a black, blurry, smoke-like robe jumped up on her bare paws and legs to Keshita and took her hand.

"Warm… are you real?"

"Of course!" I smiled brightly, girl, but suddenly quickly faded. "Ah! He's here!"

Seeing the panic on her face, Keshita turned around and saw several scary hounds, and in the middle of them, the Minotaur, swinging a huge axe. The stranger pulled the guy along with her and they managed to disappear into the haze before the blade cut through the air. The couple ran through the tall grass wet from the fog, looking around. Keshita began to notice strange blurry visions around him.

"These buildings again!" Keshita remembered the foreign architecture he’d encountered earlier. " But had I seen them somewhere before the Shibuya shopping mall? They look more familiar… "

"Hurry! We need to get to the River Styx!" The stranger hurried. “He won’t be able to follow us there.”

"What are you talking about and who are you anyway?" Keshita said sharply, continuing to run from the pursuit.

"Mihail! Now is not the time for idle chatter! Do you want the Minotaur to cut off your head and take it to Minos for judgment!?"

Keshita looked around again, trying to find Miku or at least Ami, but instead he found people hanging from nooses in the trees. he’d seen a similar scene in Aokigahara. Keshita grabbed his head, feeling a new wave of pain.

"Agh! Another nightmare? But a completely different one… she called me Mikhail?.."

Tamiya tried to analyze, continuing to run and dodge the oncoming branches, which were reaching out to him as if they were alive.

"…I'm starting to remember… right, I moved from Russia with my parents when I was a child… It was so long ago that I forgot. But this short white hair of this strange girl is just… like lily petals - I recognize them, but…"

"Ah, Ami!" A friend noticed her Keshita. “But…”

"What the hell is Ami?" The stranger was surprised, pulling Keshita, who obediently followed her. “Some kind of demon?”

Little Ami was also running through the forest from someone, and the little Yomi was running after her, trying to catch up. Keshita was staring at them, and at the same moment Ami fell off the cliff, Tamiya also felt the ground slipping away from under his feet. Black Rabbit tried to stop the guy and grab him, but he didn't have time. Keshita fell into the lower reaches of the bloody waterfall, and the stranger rushed after him.

Thick splashes of blood flew out as Keshita sank into the "water". He felt intense heat, and then a cold hand pulled him to shore. Tamiya quickly tried to clean himself of the blood, snorting.

"Ugh, where did all this blood come from!?"

"What are you talking about!?" A cold, but already warmer female voice sounded clearly. “What did you see that made you run away again?”

"Huh? Miku, is that you?"

"Yeah? You ran off with some nonsense about a black rabbit and a minotaur! If you hadn't screamed every now and then, I’d never have found you in this fog."

"Phew, I'm back… So, the cloaks don't even track each other?"

"Yes, all for the sake of "complete" invisibility in every sense… You almost died!"

"T-thank you."

He thanked Keshita, feeling guilty, and then suddenly came to his senses.

"Where is Ami!?"

"We lost her, of course! What do we do now?"

The couple used the heating function in their raincoats to dry out quickly and didn't notice how dark it had become. Thick fog hid the sky in the mountain forest, but now even the refracted rays of the sun weren’t visible from the twilight. Thunder rumbled along with a flash of lightning, illuminating the peak.

“Agrgh! A-a-a-a-a!”

Keshita suddenly fell to his knees, clutching his head with both hands. The boy felt like his brain was cracking at the seams and was about to burst his skull from the inside.

"What, what happened!?"

Miku quickly ran to Keshita, trying to help with something. But the classic symptom analysis within the experiment was never enough.

"Bell! The size of a multi-story building! TOO LOUD!"

Keshita screamed in pain and tried to shout over the sudden ringing of the bell in order to hear himself.

"I… I can't hear you! What's that noise!?"

The signal was so powerful that Keshita transmitted it to Miku's brain without realizing it, which is how he eventually got his thoughts across to her.

"Why doesn't the cloak block it? I thought I was picking up an electromagnetic signal when I heard that ringing!"

"Let's try setting the signal suppression to maximum!"

It was as if the couple had dived into a vacuum, although the noise was still audible, it had become much quieter.

"T-tolerable… but why did he suddenly come back and be so powerful?"

"How should I know? I heard it for the first time… and why even!?"

"I think Ami is there."

Keshita pointed towards the mountain peak where the lightning had flashed earlier. As the couple quickly made their way to the top, they could hear a voice loudly coming from the sky. The branches of the trees made it hard to see what exactly was being said in the thick clouds, but it only made them even more confused.

"Finally, you're here after several decades!" A furious voice thundered, more reminiscent of a predatory beast than a man. "But Susanoo is not here! Only his servant…"

The voice died down and continued at the same time as the sound of thunder.

"Yamata no Orochi!"

A hail of lightning rained down on the ground. The couple ran through the darkness of the fog, following the flashes.

"Is it just me or is this voice coming straight from the sky?" Miku breathed restlessly as she climbed the mountain.

“Yes, apparently, this is the “ god ” or “evil” with which she was going to fight… for her husband’s soul. ”

The guys reached the top, where there was a cemetery and a small temple, surrounded by a dense forest, which gradually thinned out from constant lightning strikes. They also illuminated the entire battlefield - so the couple could see among the clouds eight giant snake or dragon heads, which emitted hot plasma.

" D-d-dragon! " M iku shouted, pointing her finger up. " P-p-professor, do you see this!? A-a-a-ah, there's no connection! "

"We got rid of her. And would there have been a connection? Look what's happening to the cloaks!"

The image displayed on the inside of the cloak was distorted by interference.

"So this dragon is real? I can guess a lot, but this is total madness! I-I need an antidote! I-I think I'm about to snap again…"

"Calm down, Miku!" Keshita took the girl by the shoulders and looked into her eyes. " Even if you were given the drug… What does it matter now? Adapt! You were going to make a great discovery… and also… find out the truth."

"I've already made one discovery... But you're right, I'm more worried about not knowing why they did it than about a dragon fighting a girl with an umbrella! Although my brain refuses to accept it. Isn't this a hallucination because of you? But what's the point?"

"I… I don't think it's because of me. The world is on the brink of the end of the world… shouldn't it look something like this? Hahaha. "

"Y-you're crazy… " Tears began to flow from Miku's eyes and his lips began to tremble.

"Sorry." Keshita turned away, watching Orochi's actions. "If you're afraid, you can leave, remember? But I feel like the solution to this madness is somewhere nearby…"

“I can’t imagine how this is all connected… but I’m your guide and without knowing this secret there is no point in moving forward!”

The hail of lightning grew stronger, and huge ball lightning was added to it, creating a powerful explosion when it landed, illuminating the peak even more.

"Now that's a good mood!" Keshita looked at Miku again with a smile. "No matter how chaotic it all looks, the two of us will definitely put everything in order. That's the job of scientists, isn't it?"

Miku also smiled at such a pompous speech and raised her head.

"Okay, hero… The cloaks should protect us, but I don't think they can withstand a direct lightning strike."

The couple followed the trail of lightning blasts to get closer to Ami. Keshita focused, trying to read her thoughts, and now he saw them more clearly.

"It seems she let her guard down, concentrating on the battle. She…"

The night that ends Obon has begun. The dead must return to the land of the dead.