One advantage of having her sensory in total fritz and going off at all times was that it was the only thing that Jigoku as of yet had not taken away from Mana. It was that uncanny genetic trait of hers, as unfocused and off as it was at the moment, that warned her of the drastic increase in numbers against her and Anika. These prisoners weren't just mad animals, they were cleverer than the stereotype would have suggested.

They hid behind these Agors for once… Given the current battlefield assessment, perhaps any metaphors involving forests one might have drawn were not as ridiculous as initially taken.

The bloodthirsty inmates moved at once. A handful of them swung their hands about attempting to beat the shit out of anything falling into their path. These men did not look nearly as skilled as they were violent but they weren't the real threat here. That dreadful sound of unsheathing… Mana could have identified it anywhere, even woken from her sleep. Not only were some of these inmates armed with whoever knew what, but some of them may also have been hiding all over the place, shuffling in between the Agors, making retreat impossible as Agors seemed to favor activity and this spectacle was turning the dropzone into quite a scene for the faceless moaners.

The enemy swung rapid and often, Anika swung wide and strong. Lariats, smacks from the front and the back of her hand as well as stiff and rounding kicks. It was like this woman lived her entire life handling large crowds of people that did not like her all too much. She was large, that meant she had the necessary range and with her perfect, wide-reaching moves could dispatch of the meaningless fodder without much struggle.

A handful of them fell through the membrane, so much could have been assumed, given the nasty tearing sound that signaled it and the endless screams. While Mana stayed mostly behind her larger and more experienced attempted owner, she had noticed that the screams had come to an abrupt stop but then resumed. The men that have plummeted down have run out of breath before finishing the fall.

Mana's glance moved to target a nearby would-be assassin. She did not cower behind Anika just to have the brutish woman protect her, she did so to focus on the armed enemies while the weaklings and the overly ambitious ones could have been left to the amateur strongwoman.

These inmates knew how to stab. They did not prance around or show any impressive trickery, they were all ruthlessness, all attempting to close their space and then jerk their armed arm around until whatever at the other end was just a messy pulp of swellings, cuts, scratches, and lacerations. That was why the handful found it surprising when Mana's limbs locked around theirs. The magician's wrist had successfully locked around and restrained one of the stabbers without even needing to look at them.

What the young woman failed to take into account was the massive loss of power in her current state. She may have had the skill and training but she was nowhere near a match for a fully grown man who ate the meat of his less fortunate compatriots daily and therefore observed the proper calorie intake for a man engaging in daily active physical activity.

While in a hallway or a dark alley this would have ended up in multiple stab wounds, the struggling killers forgot that they were not standing on the ground nearly as stable as one of an alleyway. While through a good yank and push they managed to leave some red gashes over Mana's body, the intensive physical struggling sent them plummeting down following a bone-chilling tearing sound of the membrane beneath.

This was just another thing Mana had to keep track of – the areas where the ground was not just an abyss covered up with a paper-thin layer of stuck together slime. The magician turned to Anika, just to check if the big lump of muscle and fat was not hurt, she was facing off against the few of the inmates that harassed them earlier.

The apparent leader of the fold had an interesting fighting style, one that made Mana feel unease in her gut as a martial artist in here would have both been troublesome for her and leaps and bounds ahead of what any ordinary strongman could have put out in terms of combat potential. The inmate swung his arms about as if taking a brisk walk but his feet remained firmly planted onto the ground. Then, in a lightning flash, it was all over.

Anika laid down on the ground with her nose busted and a possible concussion to boot. The zealous inmate approached his beaten opponent with an attempt to snap her neck while the lump was down but Mana interrupted him with a dash. She noticed the same knives of hardened, sharpened bone in the hands of his fellows and these guys wielded it with much more knife-fighting training.

Had she not performed them, Mana would have never thought her stiff body still capable of performing backflips and evasive rolls but she slipped out of harm's way. She did it only for the ever progressing combat to force her right back into the fray as once the magician moved out of harm's way, the bastards proceeded to loom over Anika with their sharpened bones in hand.

A pair of kicks in the backs of the neck and the head with a single fluid leap and the pair of armed inmates fell down before Mana even landed from her overly showy maneuver. When she did land, however, she landed straight into a donkey-like kick from the main inmate ringleader. Mana moved out of instinct. The taste of blood was prevalent in her mouth, blood reigned supreme all over her face, making the handy ability to breathe yet another thing that Jigoku robbed Mana of.

"Fucking bitch! In Jigoku, a man's worth is measured in who he owns. People are currency and the merchandise here and you've cost me a whole lot! I intend on making you pay me back!" the inmate grumbled while he proceeded to throw hammer strikes at Mana's direction. Mana cried out as one caught her straight in the back and pounded her to the ground. Before she could move or counter the attempt to exploit the accurate move, a crushing stomp shoved her head further into whatever bio-gunk the entire prison was made of.

Mana had no breaths left in her chest even before her mouth, her nose and her rapidly swelling eyes let themselves be filled by someone's remains littering the place. The taste and rot of somebody's carcass made Mana move past reasonable thought to push herself through this. Only someone with a blank mind could have processed this new level of low she's found herself in. All the disgusting remains filling her mouth and forcing themselves through her nostrils and into her airways made Mana's gag reflex declare it wanted nothing to have with any of that.

Before the young woman could throw up something she ate while she was still free, a crunchy sound made her thoughts scurry back into her consciousness. Soon enough no more weight pressed against the back of Mana's head which felt confusing. It was only when the magician pulled her head out of the bloody gunk and looked at her assailant that she noticed that the man was a head short and Anika's massive hands had leftover brain noodles all over them with a splatter of red that suggested a pretty inventive surprise kill from the female inmate's part.

"Oh… You're fucking useful alright. You're worth twelve thousand serial killers that have only killed defenseless women and children their whole lives. You're worth more than rogues willing to slit their own throats just to show how willing to betray just about anyone and anything they are. You're a fucking goldmine and you're all mine." Anika declared.

While Anika was ready to go back to wherever she came from, Mana turned back to look at the torn holes that lead down into the abyss from which faraway screams could have still been heard. The magician sat down and clutched her chest, feeling the warm breath rushing from her mouth acquire a bloody aftertaste. As expected, a fight for her life did not sit well with her already compromised heart. One that only was capable of getting Mana through Jigoku because it was fooled about how troubled it really was.

"Hey! Why are you sitting around? I don't plan on feeding you so that you can sit around!" Anika turned back and approached Mana but then stopped talking as the massive inmate observed the magician struggle over her physical difficulties. "You've got a weak heart, huh? I'm tempted to milk you out of all the fight you have as you're bloody good at it but… Who knows, maybe I can find a better use for you. Now come back to the cell."

Despite Jigoku being all the same, Anika could navigate the place just fine. Jigoku… All mist, rot and unstable ground that shifted from being made of what seemed like brittle cartilage wrapped in the goopy skin membrane, fleshy biological materials that Mana almost choked herself to death with earlier or just flat out nothingness of thick air that led to the first fall that induced death with the falling process rather than hitting the end of the road.

What appeared like a bunker made of living tissue soon made the magician jump back and press her hand to her own chest in an attempt to calm her racing heart down. The last thing she wanted now was to escalate her impending doom. It was a gamble just trying to last six months on the strength her beating core had at the moment, it was inevitable that she would have to seek for another solution somewhere down the line.

"Heh, scary fuckers, aren't they?" Anika took a moment to admire something she had been taking for granted ever since she got used to it – the cells that opened themselves like the mouths of a skinned canine, all the mandatory barking, howling and drooling included. The fleshy bunkers were just the snout, none of the upper forms of a dog's head, a detail that made the particular feature of this level all the more ominous. "You think they're scary now, just wait 'till it starts growling and barking in the middle of the night… Sometimes you think it's someone coming here to shank you but it's just Agors. You'd think that with both of these freakshows being a part of the prison they'd at least not get triggered by one another…"

Mana stared in surprise as Anika observed the timing between the chomping mouth of canines slamming shut every once in a blink, attempting to catch an unprepared prey in between its teeth. It must have been more instinctual given how it did not possess anything resembling a stomach that could process what it had eaten or even a brain to demand food, to begin with.

Anika grabbed the young woman by the collar and dragged her in before the chompers could bite her lower half off. Her timing was off this time. It was nothing to sneeze at even, to begin with, but could Mana really have been blamed for messing it up? Her vision was getting hazy, sweat was breaking through her skin at an alarming rate as even the touch of a fellow human felt refreshing in the coolness of the room temperature.

"Yeah… Definitely a last resort fighter…" Anika sighed after shaking her own hand off of the sweat that stayed in it after the inmate came in contact with the magician's skin.

"Is… This prison… Alive?" Mana finally managed to husk out some semblance of speech. Something that seemed to please Anika a great deal.

"Who knows. Don't think so. If you want to get to the deeper philosophical shit, you might wanna check out the lower levels. That's where all the philosophers in search of answers go. Not that I'll let my property off easy." Anika warned the magician by extending his index finger so close that an inch closer would have placed it right inside Mana's right nostril. Even then, it was so large that it was unlikely to fit inside…

Mana sighed. She was still undecided as to how long she was about to keep up the whole being owned act. It was not like she ever signed up for it, in fact, she'd been denying that suggestion ever since it first came up and yet Anika did not seem to care about no as a viable answer.

"I'm back! And I've brought someone new! She's worth more than most of you so make sure she's well taken care of." Anika placed her hand over Mana's back and shoved the magician forward as softly as she could without making the young woman tumble over but also strong enough to move her from her spot.

"Really? What's so special about her?" a ginger-headed young man of a slim build, short stature, and curly, orange hair squinted his blue eyes in suspicion.

"Well, she helped me plow through Yamajin's crew on our first meeting. She can kick all kinds of ass but her heart's not too good so don't make her fight all the time." Anika grinned and dropped on something that looked like a plastic chair covered with needles still sticking out of it. It was like a container full of syringes was molten into a single mass but somehow the scary, pointy ends did not suffer any damage.

"Seriously? As if in…" the ginger dropped his jaw.

"As if in I crushed the bastard's head myself. That leaves just four gangs on this level to worry about!" Anika seemed overjoyed for someone sitting atop of exposed syringes.

"Do you even know how lucky you are to be this valuable?" a girl in her early teens with half-dirty and half-burnt face looked up at Mana. "Why isn't she happier?"

"Yeah… She's kind of a sour face. I hope it's just difficulty adjusting but… Who knows, we'll see. With a little nugget like that, it kind of makes the butterflies wriggle in my stomach that somebody's gonna barge in here and try to nab you from me!" Anika wriggled in her needle chair. This was the point at which Mana's curiosity overcame her penchant for self-reflection and self-loathing.

"Doesn't that hurt?" Mana wondered.

"What, this?" Anika pointed at her chair. "Yeah, but it's the only furniture we have. Seriously, any attempts to build anything with just make it grow metal needles. It's weird but nowhere near the weirdest thing in this joint."

"Just wait until you realize that flying in an endless void with thunder and lightning crackling around you are the only things you can dream…" the ginger man rubbed his hands.

Mana sighed and sat down on the floor. A bald man moved to a molten plastic chest with needles sticking out of it and forced it open through pain and physical effort. The more he tried, the more he struggled, the deeper the needles went in and the more they wriggled about in his body like insect stingers. Within moments the man withdrew the object of his search and threw it across the room at Mana. It was a dusty and old jumpsuit, similar to the one Anika wore.

Anika shook her head. She stood up while wincing and then moved behind her little throne to dig around the mess lying there. The woman hurled a collar over to Mana. One made of black leather, donning silver spikes at the sides.

"I picked this off of one of the dogs of Nereigen. That's just one reason why he'd very much like us all slaughtered… If you plan to sleep on the ground, like a dog, may as well dress like one." Anika grinned with an apish smile that reminded the magician of Meiko.

As was often the case with despairing thoughts, once the gloom hit, it poured. The nostalgic callbacks to her friends and family and everything she's abandoned for this gig here inevitably turned back to a handful of moments ago and how she failed to do anything about a whole handful of people getting subjected to the most terrible fate she's failed to pull people from.

She wasn't as fast as she once was, that's a given. Nowhere near as strong and if she got hurt just one-tenth the severity of what she could take normally she'd die on the spot. If she kept on fighting for more than a handful of minutes – her heart would stop and Mana would likely not even feel it. In an instant, she'd just feel something off and then drop dead. That was not even the worst thing…

Just how many more people she will fail to save in her weakened state, minding just her own survival? How many could be dying in various levels of Jigoku right now? A sizzling sound up above broke Mana out of the peaceful concentration, the first attempt at getting the hang on her thoughts and maybe returning to her Ego state and finishing the mental patch job.

"Germs!" the ginger yelled out, jumping onto his feet with his sharpened bone still in hand, his eyes gleamed with excitement as if it was porridge dripping from the sky and he had been fasting for months.

"Move it!" Anika groaned in frustration, grabbing a couple of children hanging around her crew and instructing the rest to do the same. "Don't look back, just run. These are like actual supersized germs, they'll suck you up inside and then digest you inside their goop. Grab Kawaji while you're at it…"

Had Anika not gestured toward the overly excited ginger looking up at the sky at how supersized green germs melted their bunker into dripping, acidic goo, Mana would not have known what her task was. She did not intend on following what Anika said, it just so happened that right now the interests of the two aligned. Mana felt desperate to save somebody just this once, just a proof that she still had a modicum of control over this insane place.

"Piss off! I want to feel the germs embrace me and just melt away!" the ginger swung his hips around while he caressed his puffy cheeks with his hands. Given that Mana did not back down, the stickman swung his favored tool for murder at Mana. That was just what Mana needed – a wide crimson gash at her chest and a soiled with blood shirt to force her to wear what Anika gave her.

That was how it started – the feeling of being indebted, that was how she'd sell her freedom away for six whole months.

The ginger was handy with a shank, Mana locked up his wrist only to have the youth drop it. Mana's eyes were too busy following the drop of the tool to notice another one getting pulled on her from behind. One that she locked as well but that was not to be the end of it – the kid functioned like some sort of stabbing automaton and he only had one free hand to leave a mashed mess of Mana.

The magician yelled out in pain and pushed her body in closer, the shank got stuck deeper than the suicidal murderer could pull it out from her immediately. He did a false, pointless yank and that wasted time was enough for Mana to reach in and throw the youth over her shoulder… That would have happened too, had a warm sensation not ran through the magician's entire body, followed by a breach of cold sweat. A splitting pain in her chest that made Mana collapse on the ground, clutching at her chest.

"I killed her! I killed her!" Kawaji jumped in joy before turning his attention back at the imposing legions of green germs devouring the lair of Anika's crew.

"Don't get too excited, she's just having a heart attack again…" Anika sighed before instructing a pair of kids that likely were only useful in nabbing stuff from other gangs that she liked to grab the living asset slowly dying on the floor and drag her away from imminent death.

"Kawaji…" one of the kids turned at Anika, questioning if they were to leave the suicidal shanklord to certain death by dissolving.

"He's valuable but not that valuable." Anika shrugged. She may have had some admirable traits but as soon as people stopped being useful to her she let go of them. That was all that her crew was to her – assets. Had she known yet what exactly Mana was worth, she may have chosen to leave the magician behind too.

"No…" Mana struggled. She wasn't strong enough to even break out of the hands of a bunch of children dragging her feverish body away. Was that what Jigoku would be like? Constant lack of control?

"You're lucky that the germs are as sluggish as they are big, if they weren't we'd leave you behind too…" a girl with pigtails showed Mana her tongue, not looking too happy by how difficult the feverish magician was making their retreat.

The remaining six months in Jigoku were not to be quick and painless ones…