Mihara Kuri was on the verge of a breakdown. The jagged edges of his feelings poked Iashkawa's soul no matter how it tried to get away from them, and distracted it from keeping them both alive.
'Calm down!' the demon hissed at its Contractor and looked around the hallway. Which way led to safety?
Behind them, a wall shook and cracked from a blow at its other side.
At first, Iashkawa thought it would easily phase through a wall and escape, but those red things just broke through the brickwork. If a single hit of their fists left cracks in the plaster, a dozen kicks from two or three of them made quick work of the wall. The monsters weren't smart, but they were persistent and ran fast. Going through walls gave Iashkawa time, but it didn't want to be buried under the entire building.
It couldn't use intangibility for a long time. Its limit was two seconds at a time, and the longer the demon stretched it, the more energy it took.
So now Iashkawa was frantically searching for a way out, while carrying around the useless bag of meat called Mihara Kuri.
Literally—if Iashkawa wasn't bodily pulling him around, Mihara would've probably stayed on his spot, just screaming.
"Calm down?!" Mihara shouted. "Kugutsu betrayed us! He planned it from the start, I know it! He didn't tell us all he knew. I should have never trusted him… trusted anyone! How can YOU be so calm, Iashkawa?!"
'Each demon for itself. That's just how it is. Focus on our own survival instead!' Iashkawa snapped. It was more angry at Mihara than at Tetsu and Kugutsu at the moment.
The feathered snake demon kept slithering forward, looking for a way up, when another enemy appeared from behind a corner ahead. Just a human cultist this time.
Iashkawa swept him out of the way with a single swipe of a free hand. The dead body with its neck turned in an unnatural angle fell to the side. Mihara stumbled over it with a gasp, but caught himself by grabbing Iashkawa's shoulder.
"D-damn," he muttered. "This was all a mistake from the start."
Then, to Iashkawa's relief, Mihara finally pulled his head out of his ass and ran next to the demon. The spiky panic the human felt turned into something solid and sharp, like a gemstone.
'I know what to do,' Mihara said inwardly. 'After Kugutsu spoke about those stories, I remembered them as well. This one, too. A horror novel from the long series called 'The World of Words'… And I remember how it ended. This is what we need to do. I know it! This is what THEY want. This was the hint from the start! They want to see us bringing things to the way they should've been!'
Iashkawa didn't even ask who 'they' were, or what the hell Mihara spoke about. Instead, it phased through another wall together with him, and—
The stairway up was right ahead! Iashkawa grinned, happy to remember the layout of the floor correctly, until he saw a red monster on the top of those stairs.
'The Shinkushio Art Gallery burns,' Mihara muttered. 'There are lots of flammable oil paints in one of the storage rooms on this floor, and there's a lighter in my pocket—was there from the very start. It will all burn so easily. That's how it was—that was how those terrible paintings were destroyed, together with all the monsters inside.'
Iashkawa barely paid attention to Mihara's insane rambling, fully focused on the threat ahead. When the red monster lunged forward, Iashkawa turned itself and Mihara intangible to pass through it.
Feeling Mihara's hand slip from Iashkawa was not something the demon expected.
The red monster slammed its fist in the ground only a few centimeters away from Mihara's leg. From its new position behind the creature, Iashkawa turned to glare at Mihara with exasperation and confusion.
"For fuck sssake, human! If you can't run on your own, hold tight—"
Mihara wasn't listening—he was running in the direction opposite from Iashkawa, right through the demolished art storage. The red monsters that swarmed the place earlier weren't there anymore, and the road ahead was clear for the man.
"HUMAN! MIHARA!" Iashkawa shouted, feeling its strength being sapped away with each meter of distance between itself and its contractor. "GET BACK! KURI!"
All that its shouts did was to alert the red monster, which turned its head at the demon. Iashkawa slithered back and clutched at the railing.
The demon was so fucked. Soon, he would become weak as a child, and after a while longer, weak as a baby and just as helpless.
Same would happen with Mihara, but much good it did to Iashkawa now!
Cursing the human to hell and back, the feathered demon used the last dregs of his rapidly diminishing magic to phase through the attacking red monster one more time.
Then, Iashkawa slithered down the room after Mihara, hoping to catch him before the red monsters got any of them.