The lone angel ran as fast as he could through the dark hallway. At first he ran to avoid getting questioned by Throne, but upon hearing his lone cries for help, the reason became more out of shame than anything else. Gale had potentially just killed another friend, albeit indirectly. Regardless, he could only move forward—and to keep his mind away from the horrifying screeches from behind—he chose to daydream about his past life.
"Did I have a wife? Friends?" He thought to himself, "Heh, yeah right. Prylos told me I died young, if I recall. Well, a wife is probably out of the question, but friends are a possibility. I just hope the friends down there are better than the ones up here..."
Hastily, as if afraid that someone might have heard him, he retracted that statement. Talking about Sab, Throne and the others like that is not only plain rude, but also painfully untrue. He's not blind and self-centered enough to be ignorant of the fact he himself caused all these problems thus far. From the very start, it was he and he alone who made everyone's investigation a living nightmare.
"Was I a kinder person in the Living World, I wonder." He looked sullen, "Probably not. Knowing the current me, I probably just pushed everyone I loved away the same way I'm doing now, and for what? What could I have wanted in exchange for my friendships? Money, fame, power? For what it's worth, I vow to focus solely on my loved ones once I return from the grave."
He was ashamed of himself, and rightfully so. Gale stole Sab's wings, used them to fly himself to the Shrine, only to leave Throne for dead in its depths. His pace slowed down as his conscience got the better of him—Gale wanted to turn around and save him after all. But in a cruel twist of fate—as if the devil himself appeared before him to tempt Gale—from the shadows at that very moment emerged the doorway to the next floor down. It was sealed by a large boulder, presumably the same one that destroyed the hallway before it. Suddenly, the choice was made a thousand times more difficult.
"Tch, what now?" He questioned, turning his head back and forth between Throne's direction and the doorway's, "Throne might not even be alive. If I risk getting myself killed here—screw not reviving—I won't even be alive in Heaven anymore! It's the humane thing to do, but I'll be wasting the perfect shot like this...!"
After craning his head back and forth until his neck got sore, he finally made up his mind. He convinced himself that reviving wouldn't taste as good if it meant losing his humanity. After all, it was he who scolded Maggie when she left Sheep for dead back against the rampaging angel. He decided this, he made the executive decision...
"So why...?" He started tearing up as his body moved towards the boulder, "Why am I abandoning him? Throne... He did nothing wrong, dammit! If anyone deserves to get revived, it's him! Not me, that's for sure! Why, dammit!? Why is he the one that's gonna get his soul destroyed for good, and I'm still here, pushing on this damned boulder!?"
The raw emotions, as well as the adrenaline that came with them, were the deciding factor that ended up helping him prevail against the large rock. He didn't move it by much—in fact he hadn't moved it a millimeter—but his strength managed to cause a crack down the middle of it, eventually making it split in two. He was too caught up in his own emotions to even acknowledge this mighty feat, so he squeezed through the tiny gap he had made and made his way down his third spiral staircase. This was the third floor now, meaning there's a very high chance he'd find the group in there. Without any more issues to slow him down, he practically sprinted through the vast jungle layer without so much as even checking for danger. This carefree approach was extremely short lived, however.
"Mngh!" He hid immediately behind a rock once he saw something large, black and gorey, "T-This is...?"
The body of a bat, but the head resembled a cockroach more than anything. Then again, it could just look like that because its head is crushed into a billion bloody bits, but that fact doesn't make it any less gross. Vastoria mentioned something about beasts down in the final layers of the Shrine, but to think this was what she and that Energy were dealing with...
"Guess they dealt with this one, but that doesn't mean I won't encounter one myself." He glanced around before grabbing hold of the mandible, "I'm gonna need a weapon, regardless of its strength."
Something the group before him wouldn't even think to consider was to loot the corpses of the bat roaches and use the materials to their advantage. Yanking the bloody mandible from the squished head made a mushy, disgusting sound, but the result that came out of this gruesome endeavor was a pretty lightweight, yet extremely sharp sword to swing. Granted, the curved shape made for a rather lopsided and unnatural blade...
"But, if I dual wielded both mandibles, the counter force could help balance that out..." Gale thought, slowly grabbing the other mandible still on the thing's head, when all of a sudden...!
"Gagagagagagaga-" The bat roach, still somehow alive, started quickly oscillating its mandible to chew Gale's hand off.
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"S-Shit!" Gale rushed to take a step back, swinging his new blade with the force of a thousand winds to slice the entire head in two lengthwise, "...F-Fine, just one sword it is. Sheesh, I don't feel all that comfortable dual-wielding anyways!"
One beast, one sword, and an afterlifelong fear of bugs later, Gale had pressed on to the rest of the jungle layer, this time making sure to watch out for each and every corner.
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"Man, how the hell did those guys even deal with that one?" Gale asked himself, "They crushed the head with a rock, and probably couldn't handle double checking if it was still alive. Tch, idiots, if I hadn't killed it just now, it might've come to attack them from behind!"
Despite this, however, he still had to wonder what tactic they used to overpower it. Just from the mandible's movements, Gale could ascertain that this beast was a speedy one. Bats tend to zoom towards you if they feel threatened, but cockroaches don't usually have wings. They also only eat bugs smaller than them, but that checks out, given its size. In comparison, a Heavenly Being is like a house centipede—The perfectly sized snack.
"I don't even wanna think about the possibility of it having eaten one of them..." Gale shivered, "One thing's for certain, though, they were smart enough to stick together... Unlike me."
He did find it odd how he hadn't met up with any of them yet, but it was very possible that they were still just up ahead. Maybe, as Throne said, they were already at the bedroom layer, in which case Gale had to hurry. The Gods specifically ordered him to bring them back up to the surface awake, meaning if he's too late and they're already asleep, this entire plan would crumble.
"...Gah, what am I gonna do when we reach Throne's area?!" He suddenly realized something obvious, "If they see him lying there dead, or even worse, mortally wounded... They'll definitely consider me an enemy!"
Right, to bring them back to the surface, he'll have to take them through the second layer as well. In his mind, he was practically wishing that Throne has long since died up there, no matter how horrible that may sound. This was because, if he did die, then Gale can just lie and say Throne came after him and died by himself. However, if he's alive, he'll immediately tattle on Gale, meaning there's no saving him.
"I-I could walk ahead of them, maybe?" He panickedly weighed his options, "Ohhh, but that'll be suspicious...! Maybe, no... Tch, dammit! Why didn't I turn back!? Stupid, stupid Gale!"
"...Huh...?" A female voice echoed in the distance, "Gale?"
"Eh? Where?" Another female voice could be heard replying.
"I think I just heard his name get called out."
"Mn, you're hearing things." A male voice denied the possibility, "Gale left to go find Sab. Even if he ran with all his might there, it would take him hours before he got to him."
"Hmm, fair point..." The original female voice agreed.
"W-Wait..." Gale felt his legs give in to relief as he practically stumbled towards the voices' source, "I-I'm here! It's me, Gale...!"
Turning the corner desperately, the smile on his face was brimming with happiness unmatched. Quite literally a grin from ear to ear as he fell to his knees, using his mandible sword as a cane to lift himself up. One corner, two corners, three! Just how many corners did this tree have? And why is there even such a weirdly shaped tree in a jungle themed layer? These questions were irrelevant to Gale in the moment, as he only focused on the voices of his dear friends again. He risked a lot, sacrificed a lot, but all of that was leading up to this very moment. He turned one more corner, saw three beings staring back at him, and the smile on his face drooped to the floor.
"Oh, you gotta be kidding m-!" He cussed the three bat roaches as they unanimously lunged at him at lightning speeds, "Gah! Hooh! Crap, did they not kill these three?! What the hell!"
Dodging the nasty beasts as best as he could, Gale's agility really did shine the most during this fierce battle. Waiting patiently for the right moment to strike back, he eventually found it in the slowest of the three roach bats. Mind you, it was still exceedingly fast, but it was comparatively the slowest. This made it the perfect first blood. Instead of dodging the attack, he extended his mandible sword towards its head, skewering it just like Sheep did with the fork before. The mandible was lodged so deeply into the head that Gale could no longer retrieve it, so he had to yank the two ones that belonged to the ugly bug and use those instead.
"Hup!" He jumped over the next one, slicing the head off on the way down during his flip, "W-Whoa!?"
As fast as his reflexes were, there were in fact three opponents he had to deal with. It was a simple numbers game, and 3 was obviously bigger than 1. The final roach bat lunged directly at him, trapping him under itself as the mandibles clackered together at his face menacingly. His arms were trapped to his sides, and he could do nothing to evade getting his face munched clean off, but that's when it stopped.
"Huh?" He watched it try to readjust itself before moving down to his forearms, "Heheh! No way, you trying to go for the gold!?"
This one single piece of info was all he needed to best the final beast. The tiny movements it made to try and go for his hands were just enough to free his arm from under it. Reaching for the mandible blade to his side, he stabbed the roaches underbelly, moving up until all its intestines fell out. The warmth covered Gale's body completely, and as the disgusting monster panicked above him, he used the moment to lift the bat roach aside on its back. Quickly, mercilessly, he stabbed its head with the mandible... then again... then once more...
"Woah, phew!" He shook off all the bloody guts on him, "The crap I gotta go through. Literally! Ha-ha... Eh?"
From the roach bat's stomach, however, emerged a living, breathing body. It was that of Maggie, thankfully in one piece and without any injuries. Somehow, it appears the beast had eaten her while Gale was running towards them.
"...Eh, Gale?" She weakly looked up at him, "We got attacked. Sheep... didn't make it..."
"What...?!" His heart sank once he heard the news, "Oh no..."