Why us?

The air was dense as everybody was preparing to launch their fireball at the behemoth at Meld's command. Somehow Hajime, their weakest member, was still holding the massive monster down for them. While it was still slowly sinking into the bridge it didn't look like the bridge could hold for much longer as the whole thing let out an ominous cracking sound every time the beast tried to get free.

And then it happened. Hajime suddenly turned around and bolted towards his classmates. Not even five seconds later the behemoth nearly broke the entire bridge as it broke free and gave chase.

"FIRE" yelled Meld at the top of his lungs as all the knights and students released their spells simultaneously.

As the spells flew towards the raging bull many began to notice one of them going forward at a much lower speed and arc. It was going to hit Hajime.

Yuka Sonobe was one of them, but she, similarly to Kaori, changed her focus from the bright red and yellow orb to their classmate who was running as fast as he can, which sadly wasn't that fast to begin with.

Yuka could see the moment where Hajime's relief filled grin changed to one of surprise and after that to another of terror.

He was just barely able to stop his momentum by digging his legs into the hard surface of the now cracking bridge. Not a moment later the spell exploded right in front of him. Out of context Hajime had gotten off rather lighty, with only a few scratches and a bit of burnt clothing. The problem was the behemoth, who had never stopped giving chase.

All the other fireballs had hit it and the barrage had slowed it down considerably, but it had already started to pick up speed it had just lost. To make things only worse it jumped completely destroying the bridge and moving even faster towards Hajime.

Of course Hajime didn't just stand by to get crushed. He was already on his feet again.

The Behemoth didn't so much as land, as it plowed through the bridge as it landed. The force of its crushing landing sent Hajime flying.

The bridge couldn't take any more and started to crumble all together.

Thankfully the first to fall was the behemoth, but it didn't just stop with it and kept on falling apart.

Hajime who was still in shock had still enough clearance of mind or adrenaline to keep moving. Unluckily for him the crack had made it long past him and the part of the bridge that he was on had already started tilting downwards.

As the boy kept running for his life the rest of his class were all screaming or yelling all at the same time and just making an overall inaudible mess.

The only ones that were silent were Hiyama, who was doing his best not to grin like an idiot, and Yuka, who was doing her best to think up something useful to do.

Thanks to Hajime she was alive and she had already made use of it by trying to rally the rest of the classmates together.

Dammit the whole class had made it this far, she wasn't planning to lose one of them now.

For a second she considered running for Hajime and hauling him back herself. But sadly that idea was simply to idiotic for her liking. Not to mention she, even with her overpowered speed, couldn't run when there is nothing to run on.

They needed something long and decently strong, but what? It's not like they could find some random branch and at the same time none of them had brought any rope.

Looking around she saw Kondous' weapon, a spear, on his back.

Wait, a weapon? She turned to her side and looked down at Taeko the whipmaster. She had an excellent weapon for the current situation.

Yuka didn't even hesitate as she took the whip and charged past Meld and the other knights, who of course tried to stop her the second she made it past them.

When she and Hajime were separated by only about 12 meters when he completely lost his footing thanks to the bridge outrunning him.

'Now or never' Yuka thought as she swung the whip.

By some miracle, the whip latched onto hajime' right arm, who in turn latched onto the whip with his left arm.

Yuka tried to stop her momentum before flying off the still cracking bridge. Unfortunately the weight that the other end of the whip had suddenly gained made her trip over a crack and fall on her stomach.

As Yuka was being dragged closer to the edge of the abyss below by Hajime' weight she did her best to dig herself into the bridge with her other arm and legs.

Finally she came to a total halt with her left arm, that was holding the whip that was a literal lifeline to Hajime, and head poking over the edge.

She looked at his face that was now filled with pure despair instead of terror and urgency what was there before.

"CLIMB UP" Yuka shouted, but Hajime didn't budge an inch. Of Course he was still gripping the improvised rope. She started to awkwardly pull Hajime towards herself with only one hand.

Hajime was light, too light. Thanks to her status she had become a lot stronger after being given a status, but not this strong. Something wasn't right.

"Aah"

It took Yuka surprisingly long to realize that they were falling. In fact the whole piece of the bridge she had anchored herself was falling.

Similarly to Hajime she froze up.

There was nothing she could do. It was simply too late.

"NOOOOOO"

Kaori screamed at the top of her lungs as Kouki and Shizuku did everything they could to stop her from taking a leap of faith after them. Her attempts finally ended when Meld gave her a quick dose of cold reality with the blunt end of his sword.

Quickly after the immediate danger of losing a third student was over and the adrenaline that had prevented them from truly processing what had happened. Meld knew that and suppressing his own feelings of grief and sadness at failing to protect two kids, told everybody to start moving.

Things were not going to be easy as some of Yuka's friends were already breaking down. All that he could really do was to act emphatic to their distress, tell them to get to their feet before the adrenaline in their blood runs out and take the lead.

Through whatever mercy, the labyrinth didn't really impede on their return to the surface. Hell, they actually found a shortcut to the upper floors. If it wasn't for the losses they had just suffered it would've been worth celebrating.

Thankfully though they made it to the surface without another incident.

"Cough cough"

The first thing Yuka realized when she woke up was that she was cold and wet. She quickly pulled herself out of the cold river in what she had just woken up in.

Now that she could catch her breath and her thoughts returned to her. She couldn't help but to shiver. She had woken up like this a few times already the past few days: thinking that this is nothing more than a dream. This time the cold clothes clinging to her told her instantly that this is in fact, not a dream.

Before the fear truly took hold of her she saw somebody else a little further down the river. It was Hajime.

Yuka pulled him out of the water, but he wasn't waking up. She sure as hell wasn't going to give him CPR so she just had to slap the boy until he woke up.

After also letting out a few coughs, he looked at her in confusion before his memories seemed to have returned to him.

He gave their surroundings a better look as Yuka finally said something.

"So what now?"

"I don't know."

Honestly having such a pointless conversation in what should have been a terrifying situation would better be skipped, but honestly it made her feel alot better.

"we should at least dry ourselves off. Doing anything would be so much harder if we catch a cold."

"Might as well"

With that simple plan in mind they took off their coats and Yuka quickly cast a fireball to dry them. It was a little more difficult than normally because she found it kinda hard to focus, but after a few seconds the cave lit up and both felt instantly better.

"You are a godsend, literally. I don't even want to know how long that would have taken me."

"I cannot be that bad."

"My best is like five minutes."

"You can't be serious."

Hajime just smiled sadly at her, making Yuka look away in shame.

It was clear that Hajime was just trying to lighten the mood at his own expense, with the jokes but Yuka couldn't help but wonder. That it cannot be that hard to cast a simple fireball, even for him, right.

If you were to compare casting to literature. At this point casting a fireball was like writing a sentence for her. She wasn't the fastest but it wasn't hard at all. The truly powerful spells were like essays for her and she wasn't a caster nor had an affinity for any one magic type in a jack-of-all-trades style.

For a dedicated mage a fireball is nothing more than any scribble and and a power spell a simple sentence.

That thought process made her realize something. Fireball was the first spell they were taught to cast and that lesson didn't stop until every last student hit their target. And that probably includes Hajime, long cast time or not.

"Who threw that fireball that hit you?"

"...I'm not 100% sure but I think it was Daisuke."

A bit hesitant, Yuka questions him.

"...I get that you probably don't really like him, but are you sure that it isn't your dislike for him speaking?"

"I wouldn't lie about something like this, plus it did come from his general direction and…"

"And?"

"I don't really want to doubt my own eyes but I think I saw him smiling when I was knocked on my ass."

"..."

With that the pair's conversation died down and they were left to their thoughts. It was no secret that Hyiama didn't like Hajime but at the same time going from bullying to straight up murder attempt was a pit of a leap. Simply put, Daisuke wasn't a great suspect, but putting the blame on the other classmates made even less sense. And while unlikely it could have been an accident.

By that time their coats had gotten dry.

If they really wanted to be safe the correct thing to do would have been to strip to at least their underwear. But neither of them were really okay with that so the only fully dried article of clothing they had were their light battle coats. Everything else was still a bit damp. But their own body heat will take care of that soon enough.

Normally the right thing to do in a situation where you are lost is to stay put. Monsters weren't even in consideration when that fact was popularised so the two of them had to at least put forward some effort of getting out themselves.

So they slowly made their way around the unknown as Yuka decided to ask in a whisper.

"Do you have any idea how deep we are?"

"Not really, I did read up on this place in the royal liberty and it said that most places looked like caves mined out by people, but these caves look entirely natural and too big from what I got from the books."

"So we are so deep down where nobody has ever been here!"

Yuka almost whimpered that last part out. Her bluntness that pordered on the edge of rude was doing herself no favors.

"...Supposedly this dungeon goes down about 100 floors and the deepest that anybody has gone is the 65th floor. I also don't think that getting down to the 100th is that simple, so we probably aren't that deep down. Let's not jump to conclusions just yet."

Honesty that made her just feel a little worse on the inside. Hajime was the weakest among all the summoned, but here he was informing her of stuff she knew nothing about and consoling her while at it.

Hell if something, she should be the one reassuring him. At this moment she made a promise to herself that when they get out of here she would apologise for everything. Her ignoring his bullying and her back talking she has taken part in.

She kinda started to understand that maybe this was the true reason Kaori hung around him. He was just a genuinely nice guy even though he was a self admitted otaku and a shut in.

But before she could put any more thought into it she saw something white moving in the distance.

Quickly grabbing Hajime and signaling him to keep quiet. Even slower than before, they sneaked their way to a big rock and peeked around it. What the two saw was best described as some kind of a white rabbit amalgamation.

It had almost comically large hind legs and red veins all over its body, that almost looked like they were lightly glowing in the dark.

The pair hid behind the rock again and Yuka whispered.

"Should I attack it?"

"Absolutely not! We don't have a single glue on how powerful that thing is!"

Hajime frantically whisper scolded Yuka as she had instinctively grabbed one of her artifact knives.

Some of her knives had gone missing by the time she woke up. Luckily for her as long as she had any of the twelve with her the other ones could be called back. Sadly the same couldn't be done with Hajime's sword. So she had given him one so that he wouldn't be empty handed.

Just then they heard some noises and peeked around the rock again. A small pack of rather large white wolves with two tails had attempted to jump the so-called rabbit.

Before they could make sense of what was happening, one of the wolves had its head crushed. The second one attempted to capitalize on it just having attacked and lunged at it while the third shot lightning from its tail to support the second.

The rabbit jumped away from both attacks like it was nothing while sending the lunging one flying and finally finishing off the third with another head stomp.

Yeah no, she was not fighting it even if it was now busy munching down on the fresh wolf meat. Suddenly she felt a small tug at her sleeve and made eye contact with a pale faced Hajime who was starting to slowly back away. She decided to follow suit without any resistance.

While backtracking one of them hit a small pebble. Both froze up immediately. It was so loud.

BOOM

The next moment the stone they used as cover exploded sending them flying.

As Yuka was a bit closer to the rock she also flew further. After landing and scrambling to get up, she saw Hajime on his back pointing the one knife he had at the rabbit that had gotten right in front of him. Sadly the thing wasn't at all intimidated by the feeble defence as it did a simple kick that sent the shattered artifact flying along with some of the boy's fingers.

Before he could even scream there came another one to his stomach. Thankfully this one was lighter and didn't blow him in two, but it did send him barreling towards Yuka who was just about to throw a few daggers at the beast.

As the two hit the wall together they couldn't do anything other than to cough and gasp for the air that had been forced out of them.

All the while the kicker just kept hopping towards them.

suddenly it came to a halt. It looked scared. And it was looking behind them.

The students looked behind them and saw a massive bear with equally large claws.

The next instant there was a boom as the smaller beast attempted to flee and the bigger one swiped at it. The claws never made contact, but somehow the rabbit was cut into several clean chunks of meat.

Before they could even digest everything that had happened the bear started eating his kill. The rabbit was powerful but rather small so the meal ended quickly. So the monster turned to look at the next ones.

The simple indifferent look from it made Hajime forget his missing fingers and run, but Yuka didn't follow him.

'It's just like on the bridge.'

In reality, it was much worse. It was bigger, scarier and the death was going to be worse. She froze up and didn't know what to do.

"SONOBE!"

This time all that Hajime could do was to get her away from the monster. He grabbed her and pulled her as strong as he could away from the coming giant claws.

He was successful at getting Yuka out of the bear's range, but that only made it target him.

He attempted to leap out of the way, but the claws were faster as they pierced his legs but didn't cut entirely through, leaving his foot stuck on them. All that he could do was to scream in both the pain and terror.

And as both kids saw it from their own eyes, Hajime was lifted above the bear's open mouth filled with rows of sharp bloodied teeth.

In desperation Hajime was using his nearly fingerless arm to push himself away from its jaws. Only for the bloodied hand to slip into its mouth.

Realizing this the claw bear chomped down on it. They both heard the wet crunch of Hajime's bones getting crushed. This time Yuka and Hajime both screamed, the former in even worse pain and the latter in terror, as she threw three of her dager at it.

Realizing this, the bear stopped focusing on what was in its mouth and looked at the flying weapons. It judged them to be of no threat to itself, so they were ignored. As expected they bounced off its thick skin.

Now the bear focused its attention on Yuka again. It freed its claws from Hajime's leg with another simple swipe taking his foot along with them.

Hajime let out a new blood curdling scream as he was now dangling from the bear's mouth with his broken hand.

Yuka who was feeling truly hopeless, her first real attack had done absolutely nothing. So she had frozen up again. She didn't know what to do. What could she do? Should she run and abandon him? After all the times he had saved her in the last few hours. She couldn't even scream anymore.

It was then that Hajime's eyes made contact with her's and he reached for her with his only good hand. As if begging for her help. His mouth opened, but she didn't hear anything.

Yuka Knew that attacking the monster was pointless. So she did the only thing that had a chance of working. She prepared just one of her artifact knives and threw it as accurately as possible.

The knife was flying towards the bear's Jaws, but instead it hit Hajime's arm, going cleanly through it and freeing him.

As he hit the ground he could feel the adrenaline in him as he tried to scramble away from the monster. He was met halfway by Yuka who grabbed him and then they did their best to get as far from it as possible.

The bear was surprised by the sudan friendly fire but it also didn't really care. While chewing on the piece that was left in its mouth it gave chase in a fast stride like the targets weren't running for their lives.

Their escape was clumsy at the best, but still fast as possible. Thankfully Yukas new inhuman strength and agility helped to cover for Hajime's lack of a foot and balance.

The chase didn't last long as they came to a deadend. Yuka turned around only to see the bear still closing in on them.

"STAY AWAY!"

She shouted and threw another knife in an attempt to appear more dangerous, only for it to ignore it all. Then she hears a whisper from her side.

"Transmute."

"Aaah"

She gasped as the wall she had been backed against fell away.

"TRANSMUTE, TRANSMUTE, TRANSMUTE, TRANSMUTE, TRANSMUTE, TRANSMUTE, TRANSMUTE,TRANSMUTE,TRANSMUTE,TRANSMUTE–"

After the first one he kept on chanting like a madman as yuka desperately dragged both of them deeper into the freshly created tunnel.

Realizing that its meal was actually escaping, the bear charged them.

"NOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

Seeing the claw bear suddenly move so fast that it became a blur, made Yuka scream out in panic.

"TRANSMUTE, TRANSMUTE,TRANSMUTETRANSMUTE–"

Hajime quickly turned around to the best of his current ability and closed the tunnel. Because they could still hear the monster trying to get to them so they didn't stop and only went deeper.

"Transmute, transmute, transmu- tra-"

Hajime seemed to have run out of mana. While Yuka had a hard time breathing. All the terror, screaming, running, adrenaline and her still sky high pulse made her small world spin like never before. Everything had her go over the edge and she threw up her breakfast.

It actually helped to clear her mind a bit. She could at least breathe now and her pulse was lovering quickly. Realizing that some of her vomit had hit him, she instinctively started to apologize before she remembered.

"I'm sor-!NAGUMO!"

Both her and he were covered in his blood and so was everything around them.

Quickly turning him to his back, she attempted to give him any first aid that she could remember while trembling. Ripping a big piece of the rather sturdy battle coat she was wearing and tied it shut around the wound. His wrist and everything that came after that was entirely gone. His right leg was in a similar state.

After both wounds were tied shut to the best of her ability. Then she set them up in a way that they were both at a higher elevation compared to the rest of his body.

It was like trying to stop a running tap with a single sheet of paper. She kept ripping and cutting her coat up to reinforce the bandage but it was simply a never ending amount of blood.

Taking a look at his concerningly pale face she saw his eyes slowly going shut.

"Nonononononono Nagumo you can't. Don't close your eyes, something bad is going to happen if you do."

Saying that she shook him in panic.

"...i'n tire…"

It was so quiet that Yuka had almost missed it entirely. 'I'm tired' he was still conscious enough to answer.

"I'm sorry but you can't sleep yet. If you do, you are not going to wake up. You must keep them open"

She grabbed his only hand with both of her's. It was cold and it didn't so much as twitch.

"Nagumo?"

"..."

"Nagumo, please say something."

She shook him harder than before.

"NONONONONONONO, Nagumo stay with me, you can't die here!"

Still nothing.

"Please don't die, I'm scared, …I don't …I don't wanna be alone."

In grief she started to sob and wail like the world was truly ending in the cruelest way possible. Thinking that her cowardice had forced somebody else to make the sacrifice in her place and now having to also pay the biggest price of them all.

All the while some kind of almost impossibly clear liquid started to gather above them and then drip down on them.

When Hajime opened his eyes he saw only darkness. His entire body felt unbelievably heavy and sore while his mouth was as dry as a desert.

'Where am i?'

As his other senses started to make sense he heard what sounded like whimpering. He looked in the direction it was coming from.

In the other end of their little hideout he saw a bloodied Yuka curled into a ball and quietly sobbing.

"Sonobe?"

Her whole body twitched as her head shot up and turned to him.

"Nagomo!"

Next She closed the small distance between the two and grabbed his right arm. Her eyes were red and her face was covered in snot.

"You survived, you are alive."

For a moment she looked so happy. Almost like a true miracle had happened. Before it turned into that of deep sadness and regret.

"How… how are you feeling?"

Not really understanding the question, he tried to get up to a sitting position. He felt off, but something was definitely wrong.

After struggling to get up with only his left arm, he looked it over to understand what was wrong and froze.

About 25% of his arm was gone. The only sign it had even existed was a crude looking bloody bandage.

After realizing what he was looking at, he almost felt the memories of everything that had happened wash over him.

Along with all the pain.

"..."

Hajime let out a scream that was so loud that Yuka's ears, that had gotten used to the eerie silence, started ringing.

He yanked his other hand free to grip the wounded on in a feeble attempt to stop the agonizing pain.

Yuka got scared that his wounds would open once again and did her best to stop him from tearing the bandages off. Even though she was a lot stronger than him it was difficult to stop a person who was flailing around like that, while also not hurting them further.

So she ended the struggle by hugging him from his lower back to keep his hands put and wrapped her legs around his to do the same with those.

Eventually he stopped struggling and was just weeping silently. She also stopped squeezing him so tight but didn't let go.

"It hurts so much"

Was all he could mumble through gritted teeth. Yuka didn't know how to answer so she stayed silent.

After a while both realized that something was dripping from their hideout's ceiling. With Hajime's mouth already dry and Yuka also being rather low on liquid they decided to investigate. With some support from her, he cast transmute to make a hole in the ceiling.

Much to their surprise, what they found wasn't more water, but a blue glowing cristal about the size of a basketball.

"Is it a glanz crystal?"

"It doesn't look like it."

Those crystals were apparently one of the most sought after ones in existence. Compared to that, this one had to be the most popular one.

But then again what was it? On a closer look it was also the source of the water?

It was definitely a liquid, but when they drank they still felt thirsty. It also made their mind clearer. Unluckily for Hajime it also made him feel the pain from nonexistent hand and foot more vivid.

I felt like an eternity had gone by in absolute silence.

Before they constantly drank the liquid in an attempt to quell their thirst. It didn't work and after a while it just felt like torture. Even more so for Hajime than Yuka.

Hajime had enlarged their space a bit to get away from the literal bloodbath and everything else mixed in with it.

They had also removed the bandages from his wounds, because Yuka had grown afraid that they might get infected. But after carefully removing them there was not a single sign of a wound left. if they didn't know any better, they might have thought that he never had anything there in the first place. That's how well the opening had closed.

That had all but confirmed that the liquid had something special about it. Not that they cared at this point.

Currently they were laying on their backs next to each other holding the other's hand. There was no deep meaning behind the act.

It had become more of a wordless agreement, that if one squeezed their hand the other would squeeze back to confirm that the other one was still there.

They remained like that for what felt like eternity. The thirst made it hard to even breathe. While the hunger was starting to eat them alive.

They hadn't spoken a word since they realized that the crystal couldn't solve all of their problems. So they just kept laying on their backs, literally dying.

Suddenly Hajime gripped her hand tighter than ever before to a point that her hand started to hurt.

Then She also heard a raspy but almost growling voice.

"Why has no one come to save us?"

Right, they hadn't come to this place of their free will. They had been brought here against their will. Told and then forced to fight. If that fucker hadn't gotten so greedy they wouldn't have gotten into that trap. If the one who shot that fireball wasn't such a bad shot they wouldn't have fallen. If the humans of this had taken care of their own problems they wouldn't need to fight at all. If that damn god hadn't summoned them they would still be home with their parents.

They had been left to die here for no reason.

Finally, through gritted teeth and angry tears in her eyes she responded.

"I want to go home!"

Afterword:

This is my first fanfic, so I hope you liked it. If you notice any mistakes, have questions or got ideas for what I should add in the future, then please leave it in the comments.

I am planning to write at least a few more chapters. IDK how long that's gonna take tho.

I don't own Arifureta nor any of the characters used in this story.