Rokka no Yuusha - Volume 1 - Chapter 3

Chapter 3
A Trap and a Rout
 

An hour had passed since the seven Braves had first gathered in the temple, and Adlet was running through the forest. If his mental map was accurate, then the edge of the Phantasmal Barrier was close by.
“So what’s this Phantasmal Barrier thing? I’ll be laughin’ if we can get meowt of this thing, all easy-like.” Hans, whom Adlet had only just met, was running alongside him. Adlet eyed the other man suspiciously. Not that Adlet was in any position to talk, but Hans seemed like a pretty fishy guy.
As they ran, Adlet marked trees they passed. After a while, they found trees ahead of them bearing the marks they had just left. Without even realizing, they had gotten turned around.
“The barrier really is up,” said Adlet.
“Just like we thought,” replied Hans.
The two of them made one more attempt to escape the fog, but the results were the same. They tried drawing a line at their feet as they walked or throwing a string in front of them and then tracing its path, but they still couldn’t get out. There was one thing they did manage to figure out, however. They only lost their sense of direction when they attempted to exit the barrier. As long as they stayed inside the field, they would not get lost.
“So we have no choice but to deactivate the barrier, after all.” Adlet sighed.
The group had agreed to focus on dealing with the barrier for the time being. That problem was more urgent than figuring out which of them was the impostor. Adlet and Hans were testing the barrier’s boundaries while the remaining five searched the temple for a way to take it down.
“I’m gonna go back to the temple,” announced Hans. Adlet nodded, and they set off again. “Hey,” said Hans as they ran. “So are you the fella who went and barged into the Tournament Before the Divine in Piena?”
“Yeah. You knew about that?”
“Everyone’s talkin’ ameowt it. Adlet, the cowardly warrior. Is it true ya took old man Batoal’s granddaughter hostage?”
“Where’d that come from?” Adlet hadn’t taken any hostages. They had no reason to be calling him “the cowardly warrior” in the first place. “By the way, Hans, I’ve never heard your name before. What have you been doing, and where?” he asked. Aside from Hans, the seven people gathered together here were all famous. Nashetania was a well-known personage, of course, and Mora and Chamo, too, and Goldof. Fremy was famous, too, in a way, as the Brave-killer. This Hans guy was the only total unknown.
“Well, tellin’ ya would only cause me problems,” said Hans.
“What do you mean?”
Hans only smirked in reply.
When Adlet and Hans returned to the temple, the other five awaited them inside. Nashetania, Mora, and Chamo were all gathered around the altar. A little ways away were Goldof and Fremy. Fremy was bound by the wrists. Goldof gripped her chains as he guarded her, observing her every move. Mora carried her pack and gun. Fremy was utterly at their mercy.
Of course Fremy was the first to fall under suspicion. Chamo had insisted that they kill her right away. After discussing it among all six of them, they’d decided that, for the time being, they should keep her restrained. In chains, Fremy gazed at the altar vacantly. There was something resigned about her expression.
“So how’d it go, Mora?” asked Hans. Apparently, Mora was the most knowledgeable among them when it came to the hieroglyphs, the language of Saints, and barriers that amplified Saints’ power.
“Well, we have figured out matters, to a certain extent. But before I speak about that, I suggest we introduce ourselves. I still have not matched names to faces.”
“Meow , you’ve got a bad memory,” Hans chided, laughing.
“As you all introduce yourselves, give us a brief personal history and explain how you came to arrive here,” Mora continued.
“Why?” Hans inquired.
“The information may prove useful in exposing the impostor…the seventh,” she explained.
They all gathered around the altar. Goldof shoved Fremy’s shoulders, pushing her into the circle.
“Now then, who will begin?” asked Mora. At some point, she had assumed the role of their leader, and everyone else had accepted it quite naturally. She was a woman endowed with composure and dignity.
“I’ll do it. My name’s Adlet Mayer, and I’m the strongest man in the world.” Adlet started off the introductions, giving them an abridged history of himself and talking about how he had met Nashetania and then Fremy, and then the sequence of events leading up to his arrival at the temple. Of course, he repeated many times over that he was the strongest man in the world.
Once his story was done, Mora was the first to respond. “Er…Adlet, was it? What a strange man to have been chosen.” She shrugged.
“Yer the strongest man in the world? Meow-ha-ha-ha! What an idiot. What a complete moron.” Hans laughed raucously.
Adlet ignored him. “I was the closest when the barrier was activated. Should I talk about that, too?”
“No, you may tell us about that in detail later,” said Mora. “Who’s next?”
Beside Adlet, Nashetania raised her hand.
“Meow , I wanna hear some details from this bunny girl,” said Hans. “And preferably alone…”
“Hans , is that your name?” Goldof cut in. “Know your place. This is the crown princess of the royal family of Piena. Under normal circumstances, you would never be permitted to speak to someone of her stature.”
“Meow? She’s a bunny girl and a princess, too? That just makes me even more interested.”
“May I speak?” groused Nashetania, looking annoyed.
Her description of the events leading up to her arrival at the temple was not so different from Adlet’s. What was news to Adlet was that after the two of them had been separated, she had immediately encountered Goldof. That had been right after Adlet and Fremy left, around the time the two of them had been at the fort speaking with Private Loren about the Phantasmal Barrier.
Next, Goldof told his story. He spoke of tracking the Brave-killer and how, when he had been marked with the Crest of the Six Flowers, he had been alone in the Land of Holy Rivers. Goldof also recounted his reunion with Nashetania. That part Adlet already knew.
Next was Mora. “My name is Mora Chester. I am the Saint of Mountains and the current elder of the All Heavens Temple.”
“The All Heavens Temple?” Adlet interjected. He’d heard that name before but didn’t know anything about it.
Nashetania filled him in. “The All Heavens Temple is the organization that supervises us Saints.”
“Yes,” said Mora. “Though we are not terribly active as an organization. We merely observe the Saints to ensure that their powers are not used for evil. In any case, I have memorized the faces, names, and abilities of all seventy-eight Saints.”
“When people like Chamo get our power as Saints, we have to go see Auntie Mora,” said Chamo.
“However, I knew nothing of Fremy over there,” Mora commented. “The Saint of Gunpowder, you say? I have heard naught of such an individual. I would hazard that she is a new Saint.”
“Is it possible for there to be a new Saint?” asked Adlet.
“It is not unheard of, though it has not occurred this past century. Let us get back to the topic at hand.” Mora continued, “It was about ten years ago that I took over the role of elder of the All Heavens Temple from the previous elder, Leura, Saint of Sun.”
Leura. Adlet had heard that name multiple times throughout the course of his journey. She controlled the light and heat of the sun and had the power to burn down whole castles. They said that, though she was old, her powers over the sun had not waned one bit. But still, her body was frail, and she could not move from her easy chair. And then, about a month earlier, she had disappeared.
“I believe I have fulfilled my duties for the past ten years without serious error,” continued Mora. “Though keeping Chamo from getting out of control has been a trial.”
“I think you’ve been doing a wonderful job,” said Nashetania. “My father said that no Saint could commit evil deeds as long as you’re around.”
“The king of Piena said that? An honor.” Mora nodded in satisfaction. “When the Evil God awoke, I was in the Land of Crimson Peaks. I departed immediately for the Howling Vilelands, and two days ago, I arrived at the place where we would gather. At the fort, Private Loren told me of the Phantasmal Barrier, and on the very same day, I resolved on my course of action. I concealed myself and waited alone, until yesterday, when Hans came wandering by. Not long after that, I saw explosions occurring from the direction of the temple, and I hurried here.”
“You didn’t know about the Phantasmal Barrier until two days ago? Isn’t it your job to govern the Saints?” asked Adlet.
“I knew of its existence, but no more than that,” she said. “I first learned how to activate it and the location of this temple two days ago, from Private Loren. Had I known this would happen, I would have had a proper discussion with Uspa of Fog and Adrea of Illusion.”
The names probably belonged to the Saints who had created the bafflement. So, Mora’s acquainted with the people who made the barrier. I’ll remember that , thought Adlet.
“Now then—next, Chamo,” instructed Mora.
Chamo nodded. “Sooo, Chamo became the Saint of Swamps at around seven years old, which was seven years ago. Chamo’s a little too powerful, so Auntie Mora always gets mad. A long time ago, in the martial tournament in the Land of Golden Fruit, a guy died in the first round, and all the other competitors bailed out of the competition.”
Adlet knew that story, too. It was a well-known anecdote used to describe how powerful she was.
“So anyway, getting here was nothing special, really,” she continued. “When the Evil God woke up, everything was normal at home. Mom and Dad helped pack. Then Chamo got a map and headed out for the Howling Vilelands. Traveling here didn’t take long, but Chamo got lost and ended up coming late. While walking along, killing fiends and stuff, Chamo noticed something was going on and went to the temple and saw Fremy there. It was so surprising! And that’s about it.” Chamo finished her story.
Goldof added some supplemental details for Mora and Hans. He told them that in the past, Chamo had fought with Fremy, and that Fremy was the Brave-killer.
“Meow. So she’s the Brave-killer. I can’t believe it.” Hans sounded doubtful.
“She admitted it herself. It’s the truth,” replied Goldof.
It seemed as though Hans was preoccupied with some thoughts on the matter, but he wasn’t sharing.
“We shall ask Fremy to tell her story later. Next, Hans,” Mora prompted.
“All righty,” Hans began.
Adlet figured he should pay close attention. Hans’s entire image—his appearance, his mannerisms, his nonchalant demeanor—made him the most suspicious of all, though Adlet didn’t want to judge too quickly.
“My name is Hans Humpty. I’m from…well, it don’t meowter. I’m an assassin.”
“Assassin?” Nashetania cocked her head.
“Your Highness, an assassin is someone who kills for money. Someone whose occupation is to murder people.”
Goldof’s explanation surprised Nashetania. It seemed she had never heard of assassins before. “A man like that is one of the Braves of the Six Flowers?” she exclaimed.
“Meow? Somethin’ wrong with an assassin bein’ a Brave?” Hans scoffed at Nashetania’s naïveté. “My job history has got nothin’ to do with bein’ chosen as a Brave. If you can defeat the Evil God, then yer chosen to be a Brave, assassin or not. Ain’t that right?”
“Y-yes, but…”
“Princess, the world ain’t as righteous as ya think. A lot of notable people from yer kingdom come to meow with requests.”
“That can’t be!” Nashetania sounded scandalized.
“Well, none of this goin’ on about assassins meowters. I’m continuin’ my story. Meow? ”
Adlet nodded. He felt bad for Nashetania, but this assassin business was a separate issue.
“When I was chosen, I was pretty close to the Howlin’ Vilelands,” Hans continued. “First, I got meowself an audience with the king of this country and negotiated pay for killin’ the Evil God. The king’s a pretty generous fellow. He offered a big chunka cash in advance. So then I hid the money and came out here to the Howlin’ Vilelands, and that’s when I ran into Mora.”
“You negotiated pay? Before fighting?” asked Adlet.
“I don’t kill nothin’ unless I’m gettin’ paid for it. You folks ain’t doin’ this for free, are ya?”
Adlet had never even considered getting paid for defeating the Evil God.
“So you didn’t know about the barrier?” asked Goldof.
“Meow? The king said somethin’ about the fort, I guess. Well, I figured that stuff had nothin’ to do with me, so I ignored it. I first heard about the barrier from Mora.”
That’s a little weird , thought Adlet. It’d be important to know about the barrier, wouldn’t it? He didn’t find Hans’s explanation for meeting up with Mora without going to the fort convincing. For the time being, though, he decided to keep his doubts to himself and hear Hans out.
“I got nothin’ to say about what happened after that. I saw there was an explosion, so I came to the temple,” he finished.
Then Chamo asked what Adlet had been wondering this whole time. “Hey, why do you talk like that?”
“Ma-meow! So you’ve been payin’ attention,” Hans said, stroking his head with a fist just like a cat. Then he did an aerial somersault and said, “My style o’ combat is based on cats. I came up with my techniques by imitatin’ how they move. I guess you could say that cats were my meowsters. As a sign o’ respect, I make a habit of imitatin’ them in how I talk, too.”
“This set of Braves is a strange lot,” Mora grumbled.
“No kidding.” Adlet nodded.
“Look who’s talkin’, Mr. Dumbest-in-the-world,” said Hans, laughing.
Now that Hans’s story was over, eyes gathered on their final member. Having been chained up by Goldof, Fremy had been listening in silence as the others talked.
“So then…Fremy, is it?” asked Mora. “You won’t get away with saying you don’t want to speak. If you hold back, know that it will worsen your position.”
“How could it get any worse than this?” Fremy spat, and then she fell silent. The silence persisted for short while, but eventually, she slowly began speaking. “I’m the child of a fiend and a human.”
All present, aside from Chamo and Goldof, gasped.
“Goldof, remove my eye patch and the cloth from my head,” she said.
Goldof complied, exposing Fremy’s bright-pink right eye. In the center of her forehead, there was a mark left by the horn that was proof she was a fiend. It had been broken off at the root, though, and all that remained was a scar.
“Oh yeah, your horn’s gone. Did you break it off yourself?” asked Chamo.
Fremy did not reply, relating her history instead. “About twenty years ago, a band of fiends left the Howling Vilelands to infiltrate the human realm. They decided to create a pawn to oppose the Braves of the Six Flowers in preparation for the revival of the Evil God. That was me.”
“…”
“My father was human. I never knew his face. Once my mother conceived, she killed him. I was born from a fiend mother and raised as one of them. My mother and the other fiends abducted large numbers of humans and forced them to construct a new temple for the worship of the Spirit of Gunpowder. That was where I got my power as the Saint of Gunpowder.”
“So…,” commented Mora.
“I lived up to my mother’s expectations and became a powerful warrior,” Fremy continued. “And then I went around killing powerful humans on my mother’s orders. It was for the sake of the revival of the Evil God. I felt no remorse. Though half human, I thought of myself as a full-fledged fiend. I believed the Evil God was a great being that would protect and guide us.”
“So then, why are you here? Why have you decided to defeat the Evil God?” asked Mora. The answer to that question was the crux of her story.
“Even if I were to tell you, I doubt you’d believe me.”
“If you don’t speak, we can neither believe nor disbelieve.”
Mora and Fremy glared at each other, and then Chamo cut in. “She doesn’t have to say anything. Chamo’s gonna kill her anyway. It’s all true, right? We know the impostor is Fremy.”
“Don’t, Chamo. We don’t know that,” said Adlet.
Chamo gave Adlet an innocent look, but there was muted anger behind her eyes. “What’s your name again? You’re a pain in the butt. Didn’t your mom ever tell you that you don’t tell Chamo what to do?”
“Whatever, who cares?” said Adlet.
“You should. You can’t talk back to Chamo,” she snapped.
“Chamo! Listen to Fremy’s story now!” Mora scolded the girl, and Chamo obeyed. Adlet was grateful for Mora’s presence. He didn’t even want to consider what would be happening if she weren’t around.
“Please tell us, Fremy. Why did you end up opposing the Evil God?” asked Nashetania.
But Fremy just gave them all a cold stare. “You heard Chamo. She said I don’t have to tell you anything. I don’t want to talk about it, either.” With that, Fremy shut her mouth entirely. Even when Adlet asked her to speak, she wouldn’t meet his eyes.
Ultimately, Mora seemingly grew impatient and changed the subject. “Wasting our time any further on self-introductions is meaningless. The more important matter at hand is how are we to escape from here?”
Adlet wanted to protest and insist that the conversation wasn’t over, but he dropped it. Mora’s plan was more constructive.
“I have already spoken of this with Goldof and Fremy, but Chamo, Nashetania, and I have investigated the construction of this barrier,” Mora explained. Adlet and Hans nodded. While the two of them had been checking out the borders of the barrier, Mora and the others had been deciphering the book on the altar written in hieroglyphs. “Getting to the crux of the matter: There were no methods of deactivating this barrier recorded in the text. There is a possibility that a method exists, but at this point in time, we know it not.”
“Meow , what a disaster,” Hans muttered.
“However, there are still two ways to do it,” said Mora. “First, the one who activated the barrier should also be capable of deactivating it. Alternately, if the one who activated it were to die, the fog would be lifted.”
“And you’re certain of that?” asked Adlet.
“Ninety-nine percent sure. Theoretically speaking, a barrier that can’t be deactivated even by the person who initiated it simply cannot exist. A barrier that remains operational even after the activator is dead would also be impossible.”
“I see.” Adlet remembered what had happened when the barrier had first been activated. The moment the doors opened, the armored soldiers had attacked him, and then the fiend behind him had let loose that shrill laugh. Someone had activated the barrier during that interval and then run away. But who on earth had done it, and how? Grasping desperately for clues or ideas, Adlet threw questions at Mora. “Is the person who activated the barrier still here inside it?”
“Yes,” she answered. “Whether human or fiend, we are all completely unable to escape the fog. That holds true even for the one who activated it.”
“Would it be possible to activate the barrier from outside the temple?”
“No.”
“Can the barrier be activated only by a human?”
Mora reflected for a moment before replying. “Yes. A fiend should not be able to operate a barrier created by a Saint.”
“In other words…this means there’s a human allied with the Evil God,” reasoned Adlet.
Mora shook her head firmly. “I cannot imagine someone like that could exist. If the Evil God were to be completely revived, it could well signal the extinction of the human race. No human would do that, whatever their reasons might be.”
“There’s one here among us, at the very least,” said Adlet.
“That’s why Chamo’s been saying it’s Fremy. Why can’t you guys get that?” Chamo whined, exasperated.
“We don’t know that for sure. I believe Fremy is one of us,” said Adlet.
“But I cannot imagine any other human would ally with the Evil God.” Mora tilted her head.
“They exist,” Adlet insisted. “Fiends abduct groups of people and threaten them into cooperating. Not everyone can refuse them under threat of force. Make no mistake, there are humans who will follow fiends’ orders.”
“I understand, Adlet. Then this means we cannot let our guard down,” said Mora.
That was when Fremy spoke. “You know…,” she began. All present turned to her in surprise. “You’ve explained a lot so far. But is what you say really correct?”
Mora glared at her. “I do not speak based on speculation. All of this is most certainly accurate.”
“That’s not what I mean. Sorry, but you have no proof that you’re actually one of us.”
“…”
“I’m not the impostor,” said Fremy. “I’m not the seventh. The seventh is one of you. From my perspective, you’re just another suspect, Mora. You said if you kill the person who activated the barrier, the barrier will be lifted, and that a fiend can’t trigger the barrier…but I have no guarantee that what you say is true.”
Mora faltered. Adlet was taken by surprise. Mora’s background was so solid, he hadn’t suspected her. But Fremy was right—there was no guarantee that Mora’s assertions held up.
“Fremy, I think Mora is telling the truth,” said Nashetania.
“Yeah, Chamo thinks so, too,” agreed the young Saint.
“Oh? But you can’t forget that one among us is the enemy,” countered Fremy. “One of us is lying.”
“You’re the most suspicious among us right now, Fremy,” said Nashetania.
“I’m not the seventh. That’s all I can say right now.”
“Then who do you believe is the seventh?” Goldof asked. Fremy didn’t reply.
Gradually, the terrifying fact that an impostor stood among them began sinking in. One of them was an enemy; one of them was lying. They had to suspect everything, even the slightest remark. Conversely, if Adlet said something careless, he could become suspect as well. He had to be careful in order not to be deceived, not to be suspected, and not to mistake the truth for a lie.
That was when Chamo cut into the conversation. “Come on, this is getting to be way too much trouble. We just need to kill Fremy and get it over with, right?”
“That again?” Adlet was starting to get seriously pissed at Chamo, even if she was just a kid.
“It’s like Chamo keeps saying over and over,” she stressed, “there’s no one it could be but Fremy. She was obviously the one who turned on the barrier, too. Could you break her neck for us, big guy?”
Goldof shook his head. “Chamo, when the barrier was activated, Fremy was right there beside the princess and me. Even if she is the impostor, she couldn’t have triggered the barrier.”
“Oh. Then let’s torture the answers out of her. It’ll be new territory, but Chamo will try hard,” said the girl, and she put her foxtail to her lips.
Chills instantly shot down Adlet’s spine. He didn’t know what she would use that foxtail for, but he knew it would be absolutely terrifying. “Wait! Stop!” Adlet yelled, putting his hand on the sword at his waist.
“T-torture? You can’t do that! Goldof, stop Chamo!” Nashetania ordered.
Goldof seemed hesitant. “Your Highness, I believe that we have no other choice. It is for your protection. Adlet, escort Her Highness outside.”
“Goldof! How can you say that?!” Nashetania sounded extremely distressed.
Chamo slowly closed on Fremy. Mora seemed torn on the matter as well, but she made no move to stop the younger Saint. Nashetania could do nothing but panic.
The moment Adlet thought he would have no choice but to fight, an unexpected voice called for restraint.
“Don’t bother. I don’t reckon Fremy’s the seventh.” It was Hans.
Chamo, surprised, moved the foxtail away from her lips. “What’re you talking about, catboy?”
“I’m just sayin’, Fremy is too suspicious.”
“That’s not a reason,” said Chamo.
“Meow. Then I’ll explain it proper. If Fremy’s the seventh, then why is Adlet alive?”
“?” Chamo looked doubtful.
“If Fremy’s our impostor, it’s weird for her not to have killed Adlet by now. And the princess was with ’em, too—Fremy coulda killed ’em both at the same time. From what we’ve heard, I think she woulda had any number of meowportunities.”
“Well…” Chamo hesitated.
“All seven of us gatherin’ here would be the worst possible situation Fremy could be in,” continued Hans. “Once all the Braves come together in one spot, it’s clear that there’s a fake. And hearin’ her name and seein’ her face, we already know she’s the Brave-killer. She would expect to be tortured and killed, ya know?”
“Yeah,” agreed Chamo.
“She’d want to avoid all of us gettin’ together, whatever it took. But she just casually followed along with you folks, just like Adlet wanted her to. If Fremy were the seventh, what’d be the point in that?”
“You have a point,” said Mora. “That’s rather too many inconsistencies in her behavior for her to be our enemy.”
“Yes…maybe you’re right.” Nashetania concurred.
Adlet was relieved to have received such unexpected aid.
“But that does not change the fact that Fremy is the most suspicious among us,” said Mora.
“Well, that’s true,” agreed Hans. “But if she was plannin’ to trick us, I think she woulda done somethin’ of a better job.”
Chamo gazed sadly at her foxtail. “Hey, so is Chamo not allowed to torture her?”
“Meow. Not yet.”
“This is the first time ever that so many people have talked back to Chamo.” Chamo sank into despondency. They had, for the time being, avoided the immediate crisis.
“So then, what should we do now?” asked Mora, sounding weary now that the fuss over possible torture had died down. This discussion had been going on for quite some time, but they had largely made no progress.
Suddenly, Nashetania hunched over, pressing her forehead.
“Your Highness!” Goldof released Fremy and ran toward Nashetania. Hans immediately grabbed Fremy’s chains instead.
“I’m okay… I just felt a little dizzy,” said Nashetania as she tried to stand.
“Sit down. Don’t push yourself,” advised Adlet.
“All right.” Still pressing her forehead, Nashetania knelt. Goldof drew close to her, propping her up. She looked pale. She must have been terribly exhausted. She had not displayed such fragility before, not even the first time she’d engaged with fiends. She was an excellent warrior. But she had been raised without wanting for anything, after all, so she was mentally weak. One of her comrades was the enemy, and the situation was too much to bear.
“Well, there’s no helping it. We will take a brief break,” Mora said, shoulders sagging. Though this was no time to be taking a breather, each of them got some rest.
Adlet decided to leave Nashetania to Goldof. When he stood, Mora beckoned him over. Adlet and Mora moved to a corner of the temple. “What is it, Mora?” he asked.
“Nothing terribly important,” she said. “I merely felt that you seemed like the easiest person with whom to speak.”
“Of course. ’Cause I’m the strongest man in the world.”
“The fact that you’re the easiest person to talk to here points to a difficult future.” Mora let out a small sigh. “Why are you so sure that Fremy is not the seventh?”
“I’ve got nothing to back it up,” he admitted. “It’s just, when we were together, her feelings got through to me.”
“It’s been half a day at most.”
“Yeah, but when something gets through, it gets through.”
“Your rationale is quite vague.”
“When we first met, I made up my mind to trust her,” Adlet said.
Mora gave him a deeply troubled look. “You’re too young. There is danger in youth that knows no suspicion.”
“Thanks for the advice. But my opinion isn’t gonna change.”
“I feel a little uneasy about this. You and the other Braves gathered here now are all so young. Chamo and Goldof are still at an age most would call children. Maybe the Spirit of Fate has made an error in judgment.”
It was true. Adlet and Nashetania were still eighteen. Fremy and Hans were of unknown age, but they didn’t look to be much older or younger than Adlet. “Strength isn’t measured in years alone,” said Adlet. “Young people have the strength of youth.”
“I hope so.”
“It’ll make you feel better to think like I do. If you’re pessimistic, you’ll make even winnable battles impossible.”
“I see. I suppose being able to think that way is another privilege of youth.” Mora smiled.
But Adlet figured that Mora still counted as pretty young by most standards. Setting aside her slightly weird, old-fashioned manner of speech, just how old was she?
“Do not speculate on a woman’s age, foolish boy,” she said.
Sharp. Adlet smiled wryly.
Then Nashetania stood. The energy had returned to her face, and fighting spirit burned in her eyes. “I’ve calmed down. I apologize for being such a burden, everyone.”
The seven of them, having scattered about in various directions, now gathered once more around the altar. Goldof took over guard duty from Hans and watched Fremy.
“Let us go outside,” said Mora. “We must pursue the person who activated the barrier. First, we will search for clues. Adlet, explain the situation when the barrier was activated, in as much detail as possible,” she prompted, and the group left the temple.
As Adlet began walking out, Nashetania grabbed his hand. “What’s wrong, Nashetania?” he asked.
“Um, please don’t think of me as an unreliable person,” she said. “I was just a little startled.”
“I get it. It’s not like you to be timid—it’s more like you to get up to some mischief.”
Nashetania pumped a fist. “I’ll do my best.”
“At mischief?”
“To lift the barrier and find the seventh.”
The seven of them walked out of the temple. While they stood in front of the door, Adlet told them everything he could remember. First, there was the transforming fiend that had been lying outside the pillars of salt that encircled the temple. It had disguised itself as a woman and urged him to go into the temple, and then it had revealed its true form and run away.
“That fiend must know something. If we can catch it and get it to talk…,” mused Goldof.
Chamo scratched her head, looking embarrassed. “Sorry. It’s dead. It just happened to run in Chamo’s direction.”
“Why did you have to do that?” Goldof sounded exasperated.
Mora came to Chamo’s rescue. “Even if we had caught it, it would have been impossible to wrest information from it. Fiends are loyal creatures. If ordered not to speak, they never will, even on threat of death.”
Adlet continued. He told them how the door had been locked and how he’d blown the lock with explosives.
“That’s weird. It was locked? Wouldn’t they normally give you the key?” Chamo cocked her head.
Mora pulled the key from her chest pocket. “I have it. I’d wager Private Loren never conceived a scenario such as this.”
Adlet continued. He recounted the pair of armored soldiers who’d attacked after he’d blasted the doors. This was the most baffling part. They had attacked Adlet, but he didn’t think they had been pawns of the fiends.
“You mean this armor? I’ve been curious about it…” Nashetania picked up the fallen armor and peered inside. There was no body within—it was empty. “The inner face of this armor is packed with hieroglyphs. It’s so difficult, I can’t read it,” she admitted.
“These are sentries built by the Saint of Seals. They indiscriminately attack anyone who opens the door via illegitimate means,” explained Mora.
“This place was pretty heavily protected, huh?” Adlet commented.
“The one who created this barrier, the king of the Land of Iron Mountains, was highly secretive. He forbade not only fiends, but also humans from entering this place. It must have been to prevent it from being used for evil,” she replied.
“It’s sure being used for evil right now, though,” Adlet remarked. Though made with good intentions, had this barrier never been constructed, they wouldn’t be trapped within it like this. It made Adlet want to track down the one responsible. He was about to continue when he noticed something odd. Hans was peering into the armor and then scrupulously examining the broken door. His expression was serious. But before Adlet could ask him what was up, Mora prodded him to go on.
“And after that?” she asked.
“Yeah. When I opened the door, the barrier was already activated. I think the fog was generated immediately after the doors were destroyed. When I went inside, the sword was already in the pedestal.”
“So the barrier activated the moment before you opened the doors?” asked Mora.
“Yeah, and there was absolutely no sign of anyone inside. Frankly, I was pretty shocked,” Adlet finished.
Mora folded her arms and considered the situation. “It does not appear that this was the work of a normal human. Undoubtedly, a Saint is involved.”
“A Saint…,” repeated Nashetania. “Why would a Saint cooperate with the Evil God?”
“They were probably threatened. Fiends do that sort of thing a lot.” Adlet looked at Mora. “You’d know, wouldn’t you? You’d know which Saints would be capable of something like this.”
“Illusion, perhaps?” she suggested. “No, impossible. To conceal their presence from you entirely and then escape… I cannot think of any so easily.”
“Meow. Adlet.” Suddenly, Hans called out to him loudly. “Are ya sure yer not rememberin’ somethin’ wrong?”
“What’s wrong?” Adlet asked. “I don’t think so.”
“I see. I’ll ask one more time. Are ya sure yer not rememberin’ somethin’ wrong?”
Adlet was confused.
“If yer gonna make any corrections, do it now,” Hans continued. “If ya try to take it back afterward, things ain’t gonna go easy.”
“All right. What’s your point?” Adlet demanded.
“When ya went in there, the sword was ‘already in the pedestal.’ You sure o’ that?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll ask ya one last time. Yer absolutely sure?”
“You just don’t let go. I’m sure! Why won’t you believe me?”
Then Hans quietly put a hand to the sword at his waist. Adlet thought he might draw it, but he only rested his hand there. “I’m an assassin. Sneakin’ in and runnin’ out is somethin’ of a specialty of mine.”
“Oh? It seems you’ll be quite useful,” said Mora.
“In my line o’ work, there’s no one we fear more than the great Saint of Seals,” Hans continued. “Ya see, the Saint of Seals has made these meowsterious doors all over the place. She’s made doors with locks that won’t open, doors that won’t close once opened, and doors that drop down iron bars once ya open ’em. How many times have those things given me trouble? Anyways, I know quite a bit about her doors.”
“…And?” Adlet demanded again.
“This door’s pretty well-made.” Hans elaborated. “Instead of bein’ extra sturdy, it’s made so that once ya open it, it can never be closed again.”
“Wait, what does that mean?”
“I’m the one askin’ questions, Adlet. It sounds funny, don’t it? The door was closed when ya came, and the barrier activated the moment ya broke the door. So then, how did the one who turned on the barrier get inside?”
“What do you mean?” Adlet was confused. There should have been any number of ways to get inside.
“Listen, Adlet. There’s no way someone coulda entered the temple before ya broke that door. Nobody coulda done it!”
“Wait! That couldn’t be!” Adlet went into the temple. He looked for a ventilation window, but there was none. The windows letting in light were iron barred and covered in thick glass. He searched the stone walls, but there was no trace anywhere that they had been broken and then repaired. Dumbfounded, he looked around the temple. He’d considered how the culprit might have escaped after activating the barrier—but he couldn’t understand how they’d gotten in in the first place.
“Adlet, if ya don’t start thinkin’ hard, yer gonna die,” said Hans. “How could the person who activated the barrier have gotten into an impenetrable temple? Meow? ”
“I…”
“Once the door is opened, it won’t close again, and that door is the only way in. How could anyone get inside like that? Even if there was a fiend with special meowers, fiends can’t come close. Ya’d hafta get into it with human skill alone.”
“…”
“I’ll tell ya somethin’ else while I’m at it,” Hans continued. “We call this sorta situation, where no one can get in or out, a ‘locked-room meowstery.’”

A locked-room mystery. The unfamiliar term spun around in Adlet’s head. He couldn’t think of a single solution to this riddle. “Maybe they dug a hole,” he suggested. “Removed the flagstones and dug a hole into the temple, and then activated the barrier. And then when I blew up the door, they escaped and immediately refilled it.”
“Meow? In an instant? How?”
“There might be a Saint with powers that could do that. Like the Saint of Earth or something.” Adlet searched for any sign that there might have been a hole dug inside.
But then Chamo said, “That’s not right.”
“Why not?” asked Adlet.
“When you and Hans went off to the border of the barrier, Auntie Mora said someone might be hidden around here. So Chamo searched all over the ground and the forest with the power of the swamp. There wasn’t any trace of a hole. Chamo has the power to find things in the ground, too.”
The power of swamp and the ability to probe underground. What on earth is she? Adlet wondered.
“Adlet, I saw Chamo searching through the earth, too. They could not have dug a hole,” testified Goldof, and Nashetania nodded. Adlet had to believe them.
“There is one more thing I should add. The Saint of Earth has no such ability. Even with Chamo’s power, digging a hole and escaping in a single instant would be impossible,” Mora said.
Now that everyone had shot down his suggestion, Adlet was forced to discard the possibility that someone had tunneled their way out. “Then it doesn’t have to be a hole. They could have used some kind of Saint’s power,” he said, turning to Mora. “Mora, there must be someone. There must be a Saint with the power to open the door and get into the temple.”
“Sorry, but there is not,” Mora replied. “The Saint of Seals’s power is unbreakable. This door can be opened by force, but once opened, it’s most certainly impossible to close.”
“That couldn’t be. If there’s no Saint with the power, then…nobody could get inside.” Adlet thought about it. “Then there’s a Saint we don’t know about yet. A Saint raised by fiends, like Fremy.”
“No. My mother told me that I was the only child of a fiend and a human,” Fremy said dispassionately.
When Adlet looked over, he saw that Hans had quietly drawn his sword and Chamo was putting her foxtail to her lips.
“Stop it, Hans, Chamo. Let’s talk for a little while longer. It’s much too early to cast judgment.” Mora restrained the pair, but she, too, regarded Adlet suspiciously.
“Huh? Um…I don’t quite understand what you all mean.” Nashetania sounded confused. “Everyone…what are you talking about? Goldof? Hans? Mora? Adlet?” Nashetania was the only one in the dark as the tension among the Braves slowly mounted.
“Allow me to explain, Princess,” said Goldof. “Right now, Adlet is suspect.”
“That’s right. And these suspicions are soundin’ pretty decisive,” added Hans.
“Why? That’s not possible! Adlet could never be the one!” Nashetania cried angrily. As she did, her voice sounded distant.
“Well, ya know—nobody coulda gotten into the temple before Adlet opened the door. If he was the only one to go in, then who turned on the barrier?”
“It wasn’t Adlet. That’s a lie!” insisted Nashetania.
Hans’s shoulders shook in laughter. “Yer a wicked man, Adlet. Ya need to work hard to clear your name, ya know?”
“I’m shocked. Suddenly, our positions are reversed,” said Fremy.
Goldof, still restraining her, also glared at Adlet cautiously.
“Not so long ago he was coming to your defense, Fremy. You’re not going to offer similar support?” Mora attempted to incite her to action.
“I can’t save him,” Fremy replied coldly. “Nor do I have any intention to.”
“…The door,” Adlet squeezed out. “The culprit opened the door and then went inside. And then they removed the door by the hinges, since it could no longer close, made a new door, and sealed the temple, hiding inside. When I got here, they activated the barrier and then, when the doors opened, sneaked away without me noticing! That would make it possible!”
The explanation was a reach at best. When Hans heard it, he started laughing. It was a mocking chuckle, as if he were saying, That’s all you got? “This door was made by the old Saint of Seals,” he said. “The current Saint doesn’t have much experience. She wouldn’t be capable of makin’ such a fine door.”
“So what? So then, the previous Saint made it.” Adlet’s voice was shrill. He couldn’t hide his agitation.
“The old Saint of Seals died four years ago. No one else but her would’ve been able to install that door.” Hans rejected even his most desperate answer.
Without thinking, Adlet shrieked, “You’re the seventh, Hans!” That was the only possibility now. The story about the door and the Saint was all a lie. It couldn’t be anything else.
“Unfortunately, Adlet,” said Mora, “everything Hans says is true.”
Adlet couldn’t think of a response.
Trembling, Nashetania said, “It—it’s not true, right, Adlet? This is…this is just absurd.” She was the only one left who believed in his innocence.
Why is this happening to me? Adlet wondered. It was a trap. He’d fallen into a trap. The seventh hadn’t just imprisoned them all within the barrier. This was a setup to make the Braves kill one another.
“Now then, what should we do?” asked Mora. “For starters, everyone, tell us your thoughts.”
“Thoughts about what?!” Adlet wailed, but Mora offered no reply. She didn’t have to. She was asking whether Adlet was the impostor or not…and whether he should live or die.
“Of course, I think Adlet did it. We should kill him now,” said Hans.
“I’m against it! Kill Adlet? That’s absolutely out of the question!” Nashetania cried.
“Hmm , Chamo still isn’t sure about Fremy,” said Chamo. “That whole explanation just didn’t click. Well, for now, why don’t we just try torturing Adlet?” She giggled. Was she serious, or was that supposed to be a joke?
“I believe Hans’s logic is correct. But we should wait and see just a bit longer before we kill him,” said Mora.
Then five sets of eyes turned toward Goldof and Fremy, whom the former held in chains. Fremy spoke first. “I have no opinion. You all just do what you want.”
“Fremy.” Adlet ground his teeth. Couldn’t she have helped him out just a little bit—just a tiny, little bit?
“I see. Then, Goldof?” asked Mora.
Goldof closed his eyes and pondered for a while. His grip on Fremy’s bonds slackened.
“Goldof,” said Nashetania. “You understand, don’t you? There’s no way Adlet is our enemy.”
Goldof opened his eyes and said quietly, “This is what I think.” As he spoke, he pulled out the spear slung over his back and instantly closed the distance between himself and Adlet.
“Goldof!” Nashetania yelled.
Adlet jumped to one side in an attempt to escape. He was just a moment too late and barely dodged the spear while Goldof’s large frame still knocked him backward. He slammed into the wall of the temple. While this was going on, Hans was drawing his sword, preparing to leap at Adlet.
In that moment, Adlet’s mind was blank. So what was it that made him act? Was it his warrior instincts? A subconscious reflex? Or was it fate? Adlet’s hand simply moved. The item he pulled from his pouch was one of the finest among his many secret tools. It looked like nothing but a bit of metal wrapped in paper. But when he squeezed it, a special chemical came in contact with the fragment of rare metal within the paper, causing a chemical reaction.
“Wha—!”
An intense light burst forth, many times brighter than staring straight at the sun. Hans and Goldof were powerful opponents—a smoke bomb probably wouldn’t have worked on them. But they wouldn’t be able to respond right away to a new kind of attack. Everyone covered their eyes, cringing.
In that moment, Adlet’s brain whirled furiously, searching for a way to escape this crowd of six. Was the plan he hit upon the correct choice or not? He didn’t have the option of stopping to consider it. Adlet ran to Fremy, whose wrists were still bound by chains, even now that Goldof had moved away from her.
Adlet would do whatever it took to win, use everything available to him. He could never be choosy about his methods. Adlet had declared himself to be the strongest man in the world, and that was what he believed. Whether those convictions were correct or not was another matter—they only underpinned his actions.
By the time the others’ vision had cleared, Adlet had Fremy slung over his shoulder. There was a needle dipped in sleeping serum poking out of her shoulder. Adlet’s sword was pressed against Fremy’s neck. “Nobody move. If you move, I’ll cut her,” he said. The tip of his sword cut a few millimeters deep into the skin of her neck. The five surrounding Adlet all froze.
This was the only way.
Adlet had only two sleeping needles, and none of his other tools could have created such a certain opening for him.
“It can’t be… This is just…” Nashetania’s sword slipped from her hand, and she slumped to the floor.
“The secret is out now, I see,” said Mora.
“M-meow. I didn’t really expect this,” gasped Hans.
Adlet glared at the five Braves around him. The immediate problem was Hans, who blocked the temple entrance. “Get out of the way.”
“Tellin’ me to move is not gonna make me move. I might if you tell me not to, though.”
“Then don’t. Stay right there,” said Adlet.
“What should I do, I wonder?” Hans was quietly looking for an opportunity to separate Adlet’s head from his shoulders. But the world’s strongest man would not give him the opening.
“Let Chamo do it,” said Chamo, twitching her foxtail.
But Mora stopped her. “Wait. Your power would swallow up Fremy as well. We cannot have that.”
“Then what do we do?” Chamo asked.
Growing impatient, Adlet yelled, “Who said you could chat?! Make a decision, Hans! Are you gonna move or not?!”
“M-meow! I get it. I’ll move, so don’t yell at me!” Hans snapped, taking one step away from the door.
Adlet immediately set off his second flash grenade. Everyone else was blinded again. But of course, it wouldn’t be as effective the second time around. Still carrying Fremy, Adlet ran out the door. That was when he felt something slam into him from behind. Hans had thrown his sword, burying it in Adlet’s back. “Ngh! ” This time he threw a smoke bomb to slow down Hans and the others as they chased him. Making use of every single secret tool in his arsenal, Adlet fled. He passed through the pillars of salt and into the forest. He ran and ran from the sound of his pursuers’ footsteps, close on his trail. The pain in his back was intense, but he couldn’t pull out the sword. If he did, blood would spurt from the wound, and he would very quickly be unable to move. Adlet had no choice but to get away with the sword still in his back.
“Damn it…” He’d thought it would be enough to just get out of there. But of course, it wasn’t. After that , none of them would believe he was innocent. But there had been no other way to survive.
How long have I been running? The fog was dyed a thin red that was eventually supplanted by dusk. The sun was setting. Suddenly, Adlet realized he couldn’t hear the footsteps behind him anymore. He stopped where he was, slung Fremy off his back, and sank to the ground. Once he was down, he couldn’t move another step. Oxygen wasn’t reaching his brain, and his thoughts wouldn’t settle. He had to remove the sword and stop the bleeding before Fremy woke, prick her with another sleeping needle, and ready himself for his pursuers to catch up with him. But his body wouldn’t move anymore. He collapsed on the ground. His consciousness grew dim.
“…Hey.” Adlet’s lips barely moved. He was calling out to himself—trying to tell himself that if he passed out, it would all be over. But his consciousness was sinking into darkness as if it were dragging him down. What are you doing, Adlet Mayer? You’re the strongest man in the world, aren’t you? There’s no way you can die here , he silently muttered to himself, and he reached around to his back. His hand tried to extract the blade and then fell limp.
Then he stopped moving.
Hans was sweeping the dark forest, searching for Adlet.
“Hans! We have searched enough for now! The sun has set!” Mora’s voice echoed through the darkness that had enveloped the Phantasmal Barrier.
Hans stopped and replied, “Meow? How can you be so calm about this?”
“’Twould be dangerous to continue any farther. We have no idea what kind of tricks Adlet has up his sleeve. The darkness is his domain.”
“You think I’d let a guy like that beat me? Besides, he’s gonna kill Fremy.”
“Hans, show me your crest. My own is on my back, so I cannot see it myself,” said Mora.
“Why?” Hans pulled up his shirt to show her the crest on his chest.
“Fremy is not dead. If she has not yet perished, that means that Adlet has judged her to be of value as a hostage.”
“Meow can you tell that?”
“Look at your own crest.”
Hans looked down at his chest. It was just as it had been before, faintly glowing.
“I did not have the time to explain earlier,” said Mora, “but there are six petals, are there not? When one of the six Braves falls, one of those petals disappears. This signals to you whether your comrades are alive or dead.”
“I didn’t know that,” remarked Hans.
“Goldof, Chamo, and the princess have returned to the temple. Let us return as well.”
“…” Though Hans’s expression said he wasn’t convinced, he followed Mora back.
When they returned to the temple, the other three were waiting.
“No go,” said Chamo. “We totally lost sight of him. He’s super fast.”
“To move with such speed, even when stabbed in the back… We cannot underestimate him.” Mora sighed. “We have little choice. We will begin our search anew on the morrow. Let’s pray that Fremy remains alive until then,” she said, and she leaned against the wall and closed her eyes. The others, too, each rested in their preferred ways.
Nashetania was the only one among the group who was curled up, holding her head. “Adlet, why? Why would you do something like that?”
The seventh had been surprised by Adlet’s speed, quick wit, and luck. Escape had seemed impossible, surrounded like that. Perhaps it had been a mistake to judge Adlet as one rung below the rest.
But that would not pose too much of a problem. Whatever the case, Adlet was cornered. The impostor would just have to wait until Adlet fell at the hands of his own allies. The seventh would simply watch him struggle in vain for a while. There was no need to rush things.
Around the time the other five gave up pursuit and headed back to the temple, Adlet was lying on the ground, unconscious. In the darkness, he dreamed—an old, wistful dream of his youth.
Adlet raised a stick over his head with a yell. He was trying to hit the boy who stood before him with a little wooden stick wrapped in cotton. But the boy easily dodged his playmate’s attack, striking Adlet’s shoulder with his own stick instead. Adlet let out a cry and dropped his childish weapon.
“Ah-ha-ha! I kicked your butt again!” The boy laughed. His name was Rainer, and he was Adlet’s friend, three years his elder.
They lived in a tiny, ordinary village deep in the mountains of the Land of White Lakes, Warlow. There were about fifty people there who made their living by herding sheep, farming grain, and picking mountain mushrooms. The name of the village was Hasna.
In a corner of a pasture where sheep grazed, Adlet and Rainer practiced sword fighting. They were the only two boys in the village. Whenever they could get a spare moment, they would swing sticks wrapped in cotton at each other. The rumors that the Evil God would soon be revived had spread as far as this remote area. Warlow, Land of White Lakes, was not that far from the Howling Vilelands. The fiends of the Howling Vilelands might well invade this far inland. Such thoughts prompted the boys to organize a defense corps of two.
“Adlet, you’ve gotta get better at this. At this rate, forget fiends. You can’t even beat my mom.” Rainer pulled his utterly bruised friend up off the ground.
“Then maybe your mom should join the defense corps,” Adlet muttered as he rubbed his battered body.
“What’re you talking about? The defense corps is you and me,” said Rainer.
The truth was, Adlet was not enthusiastic about playing defense corps. The fiends weren’t going to come this far anyway, and the Braves of the Six Flowers would defeat the Evil God. Even if fiends did come, the people should just turn tail and run. That was what Adlet thought. But Rainer was his only friend in the world, so Adlet couldn’t turn him down.
“Rainer! Where are you? I know you’re just playing with Addy!” a voice called from far away. Rainer had been skipping out on his work in the fields, so his mom was coming to get him. The boy stuck out his tongue and ran off in the opposite direction.
It had been quite the rough day for Adlet. Not only had he been dragged into playing defense corps, but then he had to pacify his friend’s livid mother.
“Oh, welcome home. Rainer really beat you good, didn’t he?” When Adlet returned to his stone cottage, he was welcomed by the smell of mushroom stew and a woman in her midtwenties. Her name was Schetra, and she was Adlet’s guardian.
“Schetra, tell Rainer to give me a break from all the practice fights,” said Adlet.
“Tell him that yourself. Besides, he’s not trying to be mean.”
“I’m sick of it. I don’t have to be a fighter. I hate fighting,” complained Adlet, depositing a cloth bundle on the table. A pleasant smell wafted from within it.
“Those are meadowcap mushrooms, aren’t they?” asked Schetra. “Perfect. I was just looking for some ingredients to add flavor.”
After Rainer ran away, Adlet had gone into the forest to look for mushrooms. He’d acquired a number of rare specimens that day. Finding delicious mushrooms was Adlet’s hobby, and it was what he was best at. Schetra cut up the meadow morsels and put them in the stew, producing a fragrant smell reminiscent of chargrilled meat.
Three years earlier, Adlet had lost his parents to the plague, and Schetra had lost her shepherd husband the same way. Schetra had taken Adlet in, and the two of them had been living together ever since. Adlet’s guardian tended to the sheep and cut their wool, while the boy used their milk to make cheese. The pair sold both to the other villagers to support themselves.
That was Adlet Mayer’s memory of being ten years old. He had been content then. After he’d lost his parents, Schetra had kindly embraced him. She’d brought the smiles back to his face. Adlet loved the smell of earth and sheep steeped into Schetra’s body. Rainer was a pain in the butt, but he was a good friend. Adlet was sick of playing defense corps, but he understood quite well that Rainer felt strongly for Adlet and the rest of the village, in his own way. And the other villagers were good people. They bought Adlet’s clumsily made cheese and told him it was good, despite the fact that it would have tasted better if Schetra had made it.
Adlet had been a truly ordinary boy then. He had never considered that he could become one of the Braves of the Six Flowers. He’d never even wanted to, not once. What he’d been good at was finding mushrooms. His goal for the future had been learning to make better cheese.
Young Adlet had believed that those days would go on forever.
It was a dream. A dream of things past.
“……Why have you come here?”
The setting of the dream had changed. There was a house in a forest, a modified cave in the thickly overgrown trees—not very homey. An old man sat cross-legged within.
“Atreau Spiker. I heard you could teach me to become a warrior.” Adlet looked like death. His clothes were tattered, and his body was rail-thin. Both his hands were covered in blood, and his eyes were those of a man who’d died with lingering resentment.
“Leave this mountain. If you wish to be strong, join the knights. If you be a commoner, join a mercenary band.” The old man—Atreau—refused in a quiet but resonant voice.
“That wouldn’t be enough. That would make me strong. But it wouldn’t make me the strongest in the world.”
“The strongest in the world?” Atreau’s eyebrows wavered, their long hair obscuring his expression.
“I can’t become the strongest in the world through normal training,” continued Adlet. “I need to walk a different path. I will become the strongest man in the world. I’ll become the strongest and destroy the fiends.”
“Why do you want to be a warrior?” the old man asked.
“To take back what was stolen from me,” Adlet replied. “I can’t get it back unless I become stronger than anyone. Stronger than everyone.”
“Give up,” said Atreau coldly. “What is gone cannot be retrieved. Give it up and live on.”
“I can’t!” Adlet yelled. “I have to get it back! If I don’t, then what have I survived for?! If I can’t defeat the Evil God, if I can’t fight fiends, my life isn’t worth living at all!”
Atreau looked into Adlet’s eyes for a while, thinking.
“Do you think I’m stupid?” asked Adlet. “You think there’s no way I can become the strongest in the world, don’t you?” There were tears in his eyes. “I don’t care if you think I’m stupid. I don’t care if you laugh at me. I’ll keep on believing I can become the strongest man in the world. I’ll keep on yelling that I’ll be the strongest man in the world. How could I become stronger if I didn’t?!”
Atreau gazed up at the heavens contemplatively. Then he slowly stood and kicked Adlet hard in the gut. It knocked the wind out of him, acid welling up from his empty stomach. Atreau kicked Adlet’s sides and his back over and over. He stepped on the boy’s face and ground it into the cavern floor. And then Atreau said, “Smile.”
“…Huh? Sm…ile?” Though he tried to reply, the words wouldn’t come out. He hurt so much he felt he would die.
“If you want to be a warrior, then smile.” Atreau kicked Adlet’s back. “When sorrow inspires the urge to die. When agony makes it necessary to throw everything away and flee. When you drown in despair and can see no light. One who can smile even then will become strong.”
Adlet’s trembling lips twisted. His cheeks spasmed, and though his expression didn’t look much like he was smiling, he was.
After that, Atreau continued beating him. He kicked Adlet’s face until blood spurted from his nose. He punched Adlet’s stomach until blood mixed with vomit. But even then, Atreau did not stop. To smile, even when spewing red-tinted bile, with his nose dripping blood, and tears streaking down his face. That was the first technique of battle that Atreau taught Adlet.
Adlet opened his eyes. It had been a vague, incoherent dream. “Ugh. ”
He was in the forest, surprised to be still alive. “…?” He thought he’d collapsed facedown, but now he was lying faceup with a tree root as his pillow. When he touched his back, the sword that should have been there was not. His wound had been treated, sewn up, and wrapped in bandages. Who had treated him? Had Nashetania found him?
Then he heard a voice.
“You’re awake.” He could just barely see Fremy’s blurry shape within the dark fog. “They missed your vitals. If you rest, you should be able to move around again soon.”
“You treated my wound?” Adlet asked, sitting up.
“Yes.”
“Why?” Fremy should also have believed that Adlet was the seventh. They had gotten off to a rocky start when they first met, too. He couldn’t understand why she would save him.
“I’m ninety-nine percent certain that you’re the seventh,” said Fremy. “But not completely. This is for the sake of that one percent chance.”
“Well, you’re right. I am a real Brave. I came here to fight the Evil God.”
“Oh? I don’t believe you,” Fremy said, looking away.
Silence fell upon them. The nighttime forest was quiet. Adlet figured the other five would have given up searching now that it was dark. There was no sign that they were still chasing him. So what should he do at this point? He had to prove his innocence, no matter what. But how? “This is gonna sound pathetic,” said Adlet, “but I have no idea how the impostor got into the temple.”
“Of course. Because you’re the impostor.”
“Was it really true, what Hans said? Was there really no way to open that door?”
“I’m not as informed as he is, but I do know a bit about the doors created by the Saint of Seals. I don’t think what Hans said was wrong,” she said.
“…”
“Besides, Mora shot down your ideas, too. There’s no way anyone could have gotten into that temple.”
If that was the case, then Adlet really was stuck. If it was, in fact, possible to get in the temple, that would mean that Hans, Mora, and Fremy were all lying. But only one among the seven of them was the enemy. Six really were Braves. It would be unthinkable for any of the real Braves to be conspiring with the enemy of their own free will. That meant that if multiple Braves were telling the same story, it had to be the truth.
“The impostor might be Mora,” suggested Adlet. She’d said there was no one who could have broken into that locked temple. But if her testimony had been a lie, then what? What if she was an accomplice to the Saint who’d broken in?
“That may be possible,” Fremy conceded. “But you can’t prove it. You would have to capture the person who broke into the temple and demonstrate their powers to all of us.”
“Well, maybe there’s some unknown Saint, one that even she doesn’t know about. She didn’t know about you, so you can’t say for sure that there aren’t any as-yet-unknown Saints.”
“That amounts to the same thing. You can’t prove this Saint did it unless you catch her.”
Anyway, that just meant he had to catch the person who’d activated the barrier. “Let me sort this out,” he said. “First, we have two or more enemies. One of these two is among the seven Braves who have gathered here. The other is the one who broke into the temple and activated the barrier.” That much was certain. It wasn’t possible for any of them other than Adlet to have activated the barrier. When it had been turned on, Fremy, Nashetania, and Goldof had been fighting fiends. Mora and Hans had been on their way to the temple. The only one whose position at the time was unknown was Chamo, but Mora had testified that Chamo could not break into the temple with her powers.
“We’ve been calling the one who infiltrated our group, the one who bears a crest, the seventh,” Adlet continued. “Let’s call the one who activated the barrier the eighth. Of course, they’re working with the fiends. The fiends dropped bombs on the temple in order to lure the Braves of the Six Flowers to the temple and attacked us to separate me from the rest of you. This was most likely a carefully prepared plan.”
“That still leaves us with a question,” said Fremy. “What is the seventh here for? If the plan was to lock us in, it could have been accomplished without the seventh’s presence.”
“Don’t be stupid,” said Adlet. “If the seventh wasn’t among us, framing me as the seventh wouldn’t be possible. The plan wasn’t to lock us up. The plan was to set me up and get me killed.”
“I didn’t think of that. Because I thought you were the seventh.” Fremy was going along with the conversation, but she didn’t seem to trust him at all. Adlet had thought he could persuade Fremy to side with him, but it seemed that would be impossible.
“Anyway, we can put off dealing with the seventh,” he said. “Our number one priority is finding the eighth.”
“Can you? On your own, I mean.”
Adlet was forced into silence. He’d be looking for an unknown enemy with unknown powers, all while shaking the other five Braves. Of course, this eighth person wouldn’t just be strolling the woods. They’d be desperately hiding to avoid capture. Could it even be done? It seemed completely impossible to him. But the more convinced he became that it was impossible, the bigger the smile on his face grew. His lips relaxed, and his spirit was invigorated.
“You’re a strange man. What are you smiling about?” asked Fremy.
“I’m smiling because, as usual, I’m the strongest man in the world.” Adlet clenched a fist. “I’m in a lousy situation, but it doesn’t even come close to breaking my spirit.” To smile at despair: That was the first thing Adlet’s master, Atreau, had taught him. “I’m looking forward to tomorrow. Tomorrow’s the day I ruin my enemy’s plot. I’ll prove both my innocence and the fact that I’m the strongest man in the world at the same time. I can’t wait for sunrise.”
Adlet kept smiling. He had no idea who the eighth really was. It didn’t seem likely that he could continue to evade the other Braves, either. But if he stopped smiling, it would all be over.
“You’re deluded.”
“No. I’m determined.” As Adlet smiled, he thought about the eighth: who it might be and what kind of powers they might have. He searched his memories to see if, perhaps, he had overlooked some clue, anything out of the ordinary. After he’d been thinking for a while, Fremy suddenly spoke.
“Why did you want to be one of the Braves of the Six Flowers?”
For some reason, this was new and surprising to him. Fremy had seemed uninterested in the other Braves all this time. This was the first time she’d shown interest in another person. “Why are you asking me that?” asked Adlet.
“Because you’re ordinary.”
“…”
“Hans is a genius. Goldof, too. But you’re not. You’re just an ordinary person with a lot of strange weapons.”
“You’re saying I’m weak? Me, the strongest man in the world?”
“That’s not what I’m saying. I’m asking how an unremarkable person like yourself could become such a powerful fighter. That’s what I want to know.”
Adlet didn’t reply. Hans and Goldof were geniuses, and Adlet was ordinary. He couldn’t deny that. He couldn’t touch either of them when it came to pure swordplay or martial arts. “It’s thanks to my master,” said Adlet. “I hesitate to say this, but he was a little crazy. He was obsessed with killing fiends. He spent all his time by himself, deep in the mountains, devising new weapons and then coming up with ways to use them. He didn’t do anything else. You wouldn’t even think he was human.”
“…”
“He hammered the skills into me. I trained every day until I puked and couldn’t move anymore, and when that was over, I was confined to my desk to study. I learned about making his tools and poisons, refining gunpowder, and even cutting-edge science.”
“Science? Even that?” asked Fremy.
“I’m grateful to him. He made me the warrior I am. Learning a normal style of combat wouldn’t have made me the strongest man in the world.”
“I know that man,” she said, and Adlet looked at her. “Atreau Spiker,” Fremy continued. “He was one of my targets. He was quite old, so he was low on my priority list, though.”
“Yeah, that’s the guy,” said Adlet.
“I heard all his disciples ran away. They couldn’t handle his severe training.”
“Your information was wrong. There was one who didn’t run away: me.”
“How were you able to put up with it?”
Adlet didn’t reply.
“Something happened, didn’t it?” pressed Fremy. “There was a reason you wanted to be one of the Braves of the Six Flowers.”
Adlet suddenly remembered his conversation with Nashetania in the prison. She’d asked him all sorts of things, but Adlet hadn’t told her everything. The subject was heavy for him and not something he could talk about easily. Some things were like that. “When I was a kid, a fiend came to my village.” And yet, why did it feel so natural to talk about his past now? “I couldn’t believe it. I’d thought that fiends were creatures from some faraway land. My best friend tried to hit it with a stick. I was crying when I stopped him.”
“What was this fiend like?” asked Fremy.
“It was shaped like a human. Its body was patterned with green- and skin-colored mottles. At the time, it seemed like it towered to the heavens, but I think it probably wasn’t actually that big. About the same size as Goldof.”
“It had three wings, didn’t it? Three crow-like wings on its back.”
That was exactly right. “You know it?” he asked.
“Continue your story.”
“It didn’t attack us or eat us. It just approached us with a smile and patted my head. It was kind. Unbelievably kind. The fiend called the adults of the village to convene together and told us kids to go to sleep. Of course, there was no way I could fall asleep. I trembled all night in my guardian’s arms.”
“And then?” prompted Fremy.
“The next morning, the fiend was gone. No one had been killed. No one was even injured. I was relieved. And then the village elder told us that the entire village would move to the Howling Vilelands and that from that point on we would be ruled by the Evil God.”
“…”
“Every single adult in the village said the human world was going to end and there was no way the Braves of the Six Flowers could win. But they all believed that if we joined the Evil God right away, our lives would be spared. After speaking with that fiend for just one night, it was like they were all completely different people. I didn’t know what to do. All I could do was quiver in my boots. The only ones who opposed this plan were my guardian and my best friend. But the fiend had also said one more thing—to prove our loyalty to the Evil God, the villagers should go carve out the hearts of anyone who objected and bring those hearts to it.”
“That seems like something it’d say,” Fremy remarked.
So Fremy did know the creature, after all. “What was that fiend?” asked Adlet.
“It’s one of the three commanders that govern all fiends. It was also the one that came up with the idea of making a human/fiend child and ordered my mother to bear me.”
“…”
“Continue,” she said.
“Neither my guardian nor my best friend hated the villagers for it, no matter what. The fault lay with that fiend, not the people of the village. My best friend told me not to hate them. My guardian told me that things would surely go back to how they’d been before, that one day we could live together peacefully. Pick us some mushrooms again. Let’s make the defense corps again , they said.”
“What happened to them?” asked Fremy.
“My best friend died defending me. My guardian died so I could escape. I was the only one who survived,” Adlet said, and his story ended there. “What was I talking about again? Oh yeah, the reason I became a warrior.” He closed his eyes, and as he imagined their faces in his mind, he said, “When I told my master about this, he said that it was because of my guardian and my friend that I was able to become strong. That I became so capable because I believed in what they said; that one day, things would be sure to go back to how they were before and we could live together peacefully. He said people can’t become strong for the sake of revenge. They get stronger when they have something to believe in.”
“…”
“Is that enough for you?” asked Adlet. The story had ended up longer than he’d expected. But the night was long. They had plenty of time to talk.
“I envy you,” said Fremy.
Adlet doubted his ears. “What did you just say?”
“I said I envy you.”
Forgetting the pain in his back, Adlet stood. His hand reached for the sword at his waist. “What did you say? You couldn’t have said that you envy me, right?”
“I do envy you. I don’t even have anything to believe in.”
“…” Adlet’s hand moved away from his sword. He sat down again.
“I was abandoned by those closest to me,” said Fremy.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean the fiend who gave birth to me and raised me. The fiend who gave me my gun, gave me my powers as the Saint of Gunpowder, gave me happiness. It abandoned me.”
Adlet didn’t urge her to continue. He just let her talk.
“As I told you before, I was raised among fiends,” she said. “Not peons like those we killed today. Proper fiends with intelligence, courage, and loyalty to the Evil God. I loved them all. I believed they all loved me.”
“…”
“I killed a lot of people on my mother’s orders. I had no doubts. On the contrary, I felt like I had to work harder, kill even more. I wasn’t a full demon, and I had dirty human blood. But I believed that even a half demon could be recognized as a full fiend if I could kill lots of humans,” said Fremy, and her expression looked younger than it ever had. “But I also understood that merely killing weaklings would not count as service toward the Evil God. I had to kill one of the strongest six warriors in the world, break one of the links in the chain. Nashetania and Mora were very heavily guarded. I was unable to approach them. So I decided to challenge Chamo. I believed that if I could defeat Chamo, I would be recognized as a full-fledged fiend.”
“Then you lost,” said Adlet.
“I regret it. I should have gone for Nashetania or Mora instead of challenging that . It was all I could do to escape. And I made another mistake… When she provoked me, I told her my name.”
Adlet couldn’t imagine what the battle had been like.
“I barely survived,” she continued, “and when I came back…my mother tried to kill me, as did the other fiends I had thought of as family. They were done with me. Maybe I should have died then. But I managed to get away.” Fremy stroked her forehead. There was the proof she was a fiend, the scar left by her horn. “What I cannot forgive is not that they tried to kill me. It’s that they pretended to love me. If they had just treated me as their puppet, then the betrayal would not have hurt. If they had always intended to betray me, then they should have raised me as a slave born to fight humans. My mother…my mother…” Fremy was clenching her fists. “My mother pretended to love me.”
“Revenge, huh?”
“It’s not enough to just kill her. I have to destroy what my mother has devoted her life to. I won’t be satisfied until I destroy the Evil God. Once I do, I’ll tell her… Regret what you’ve done. This is what it’s wrought. ”
When Adlet had first met Fremy, something in him had resisted the idea of leaving her alone. Now he finally understood why. She was just like him. Her pain was the same as his—the pain of being betrayed by the people she trusted, of losing her place in life. Pain that made her burn with hatred. Revenge is meaningless. Revenge is a mistake. Revenge gives birth to nothing. There were a lot of people who said things like that, but they didn’t understand. Revenge was not something you did because it was meaningful or right or because you could get something out of it. You sought revenge because it was all you had.
“Back then, I was content,” Fremy continued, as if talking to herself. “I had my mother and my friends. We played together, and we fought together. I had a dog. I wonder what’s happened to it now. Are they still feeding it? Or have they already gotten rid of it, maybe?”
“Hey, Fremy,” he said.
“What?”
“Well, um…hang in there.” Adlet sincerely wanted to support her. He thought she might appreciate a little encouragement.
But what he got in return was an even colder gaze, one heavy with suspicion. “Adlet—why don’t you suspect me?” she asked.
“Huh?”
“How can you believe that story was true? You can’t imagine that I just made it up?”
“What are you talking about, Fremy?”
“If you’re really a Brave, I should be your number one suspect. From your point of view, I have to be the most suspicious.”
“Yeah, maybe so, but…” Adlet trailed off.
“If you were a real Brave, the first thing you would do is try to look for proof that I am the seventh. But you don’t. That alone is enough reason to suspect you.”
Adlet thought her logic was strange. But from her perspective, it wasn’t an irrational argument. “I…” He searched for the answer. Several came to mind, but none quite fit. He had a hard time putting his feelings into words. He remembered when he first met Fremy. It felt like a very long time ago, but in actuality, it had been just that morning. He made a desperate attempt to express how he’d felt at that moment. “I don’t want to believe that you’re my enemy.”
“I can’t understand that,” said Fremy. “Whether you’re a real Brave or the seventh.”
“D-don’t get me wrong, Fremy. It’s not like I like you or anything.”
“I wasn’t talking about that. Don’t be gross,” Fremy spat. “I can’t understand it. I just can’t understand you at all,” she said, and then she abruptly stood. “I’m going back to the temple. The other five will probably be there.”
“You’re going?” he asked.
“Of course.” Fremy’s outline disappeared into the darkness.
Adlet had thought that by talking about their pasts, they had come to understand each other a little. But maybe that, too, had only been momentary delusion. Adlet called into the darkness, “Won’t you come with me?”
Fremy stopped and thought for a moment. “We may have talked a lot, but ultimately, that still doesn’t change the fact that you’re the most suspicious of all of us.”
“I see.”
“But I would be willing to hear you out, just once.” From the darkness, Fremy threw something at him. It was a tiny firecracker of rounded gunpowder. “That was made with my power…the power of the Spirit of Gunpowder. When you strike it on the ground, it explodes. If you set it off, I will know where it happened.”
“So you’re saying I can use this to summon you?” asked Adlet.
“Don’t get the wrong idea. I don’t trust you. The next time we meet might be when I kill you.”
“…”
“To use it or not is up to you,” said Fremy, and she disappeared into the darkness.
Adlet stared into the night as he thought. After having spoken with Fremy, he was certain of one thing: She was absolutely not his enemy. It wasn’t logic that inspired this certainty, but his heart. He wanted to protect her—from the Evil God, and also from the seventh. “I’ll protect you, Fremy. And not just you—I’ll protect Nashetania and the others. I’ll protect everyone.” He got no reply.
Adlet lay down and gazed at the dark, fog-covered sky. As he did, his thoughts returned to the past. Five years ago, during his time training with Atreau, slowly edging closer and closer to becoming the strongest man in the world, Adlet had, just once, returned to his home village. The entire area had been nothing but a burned field. Nothing remained. Not the places he’d played with his friend or the house where he’d lived with Schetra—nothing. The scorched remnants of his village told him that what was gone would not return.
Adlet believed that he’d grown stronger not for the sake of revenge. He didn’t fight out of hatred. He had become a warrior because he didn’t want to lose everything again.
But despite those feelings, the ones he wanted to protect weren’t cooperating.