Chapter 1
The Saint of Time and the Black Barrenbloom
It was late at night on the seventeenth day after the Evil God’s awakening. In the Cut-Finger Forest, all eight humans sat in a circle as they listened to Dozzu’s story.
“The first fake Crest, the one that Nashetania has now, was originally given to me by Hayuha, Saint of Time,” said Dozzu before pausing to scan all their faces. “Before I tell you the clues you need to defeat the seventh, I must tell you about Hayuha. Do you need me to explain in detail about her?”
“Neow. Even I know Hayuha’s name at least,” said Hans. Fremy shook her head, too, to indicate it wasn’t necessary. For the others, it went without saying. Of course they knew about her—everyone living on this continent, including children, knew Hayuha.
Hayuha Pressio, Saint of Time, had been a Brave from the second generation and a pivotal actor in the defeat of the Evil God. The details of her character and exploits had been recorded in a book left by another survivor of the battle—Marlie, Saint of Blades. The book stated that Hayuha could manipulate the passage of time for any object she touched. When she touched an ally, they could move several times faster than normal for a brief time. When Hayuha touched an enemy, its speed would be slowed to a fraction of what it was. While none of her abilities could kill, she was still immensely powerful—she could disable any foe simply with physical contact. The common opinion was that the second generation of Braves never would have won without her.
She was also rumored to be an eccentric. The pattern on her robe had looked like a child’s scribbles, and she’d worn a large wooden bowl instead of a hat. She had always worn her shoes on the wrong feet, and had just one ripped, shabby glove on her right hand.
Not only was she a very heavy drinker, but she’d had a special love for crude talk and bad puns. She was constantly putting down her allies, and she acted selfishly and capriciously. Marlie, Saint of Blades, had bluntly written that everything about her was disagreeable.
There was also one great mystery surrounding Hayuha. After defeating the Evil God, on the way back to her hometown, she had suddenly vanished. She had been in a village fairly close to the Howling Vilelands when the others lost track of her.
Three exhausted Saints had been in the middle of enjoying the first real meal they’d had in a very long time. Hayuha was dumping booze into her wooden bowl-hat and and pouring it into her mouth like rain. She drank, puked, drank some more, puked some more, and about the time all the booze in town had run dry, she walked out, saying she was going to go relieve herself.
She never returned after that.
Her whereabouts were completely unknown. Some theorized that fiends had captured and killed her, while others said some king had arrested her for fear of her power, and there was even a rumor in circulation that romantic complications involving another Brave had led to her murder.
Some people here and there on the continent occasionally came forward and claimed to have seen someone resembling Hayuha, but none of these claims could be confirmed. But she couldn’t have died. After her disappearance, no new Saint had been chosen at the Temple of Time. No replacement would be born as long as the Saint of Time was alive.
The search for Hayuha went on for five years, but it was in vain. Eventually, a new Saint was chosen at the Temple of Time, and everyone concluded that Hayuha was dead.
“Hayuha couldn’t have…” Mora muttered.
Dozzu gave her a small nod. “You’re quite right. After she defeated the Evil God, she returned to the Howling Vilelands. She sought to find out what the Braves’ enemy really is.” Dozzu suddenly broke eye contact, looking down. In the fiend’s profile, Adlet could sense the desolation of one who had lost something beloved. “Hayuha came about a month after the Evil God’s defeat. She showed up out of nowhere, a large cask of alcohol on her back, to Tgurneu, Cargikk, and me.”
Adlet wondered a little about that. He’d thought the three fiends had an antagonistic relationship. But all three had been together?
Anticipating Adlet’s question, Dozzu changed the subject. “Before I talk about Hayuha, shall I talk a little about us? Before we met her?”
“I’m interested,” said Adlet.
“…Back then, we were friends. All three of us: Tgurneu, Cargikk, and I. At that time, I believed our bond of friendship was eternal.”
Five hundred and fifty years ago, a tiny lump of flesh had been born from the Evil God. It was very small, but it had arms, legs, and the instinct to survive. The fleshy thing crawled along the ground, fleeing the Evil God’s tentacles. Fortunately, it was able to escape from the reach of those appendages. It was the birth of a new fiend. Aside from certain exceptions like Fremy, all fiends arrived in the world this way.
Bit by bit, the newborn evolved itself, feeding on the small animals that lived in the Howling Vilelands and the fruit from trees. It took ten years for it to attain a form comparable to a thin dog’s, and fifty years for it to control lightning. About one hundred years after its birth, it acquired the intellect of a human.
All fiends, even sentient ones, were without will. All every fiend wanted was to revive the Evil God and to kill humans. They only ever thought about slaughtering their foes and obeying higher-ranking fiends.
This fiend would eventually be named Dozzu. But at first, it was just a common brute.
About two hundred years after its birth, Dozzu—though it didn’t yet have that name—experienced an inexplicable and unforeseen evolution. Normally, fiends evolved their bodies as they desired. But very rarely, sometimes, fiends would develop in unwanted ways. What Dozzu gained from this evolution was empathy.
The Howling Vilelands was constantly filled with the sounds of wailing fiends. They felt hurt when they couldn’t kill humans, frustration about their loss to the Braves of the Six Flowers, and sadness at the cruel imprisonment of their overlord in all things, the Evil God. The name of the Howling Vilelands came from these laments.
Dozzu had been hearing these cries nonstop ever since its birth. Dozzu itself had wailed in a similar way before. But one day, when it heard those familiar cries, Dozzu had sensed a strange pain in its chest. It spent every day for ten years trying to understand what the discomfort was.
It was sadness, and not the sadness of being unable to kill humans or sorrow over the Evil God’s defeat. Dozzu was sad that the other fiends were sad.
Fiends never mourned the death of their fellows, nor would they ever sympathize with another’s pain. All they could think of was obeying the Evil God’s will. Only humans possessed a sense of fellowship.
But Dozzu felt grief at the fiends’ pain and came to long for their happiness. This was a fundamentally unbelievable evolution for a fiend to take. They were born only to take the lives of humans.
After that, terrible loneliness tormented Dozzu. No other fiend could understand the pain in its heart. The others scolded it, called it foolish, and cast it out from the group as if it were an incomprehensible foreign object. Dozzu strayed from its former cohort and wandered the Howling Vilelands. Alone, Dozzu roosted on top of a boulder in the Ravine of Spitten Blood. It would gaze out at the continent where the humans lived as it listened to the fiends wailing behind it.
For a long time, Dozzu kept on wishing that someday a time would come when the fiends would no longer weep and the Howling Vilelands would no longer be named for the sound. Dozzu swore that it would defeat the Braves of the Six Flowers, revive the Evil God, and create a world where its race could live with smiles. It was always trying to devise a way to accomplish that.
Unexpectedly, one day, a fiend approached Dozzu. It walked on two legs, had a silver mane, and wore silver armor. Dozzu had seen this creature many times before. It was peculiar, possessed of rare powers but unaffiliated with any pack. Like Dozzu, the fiend stood atop the boulder, gazing out at the human realms. After some time, the newcomer said quietly, “You as well?” Dozzu lifted its head to look at the other fiend. “As am I.” It showed Dozzu the fig in its hand. A tiny mouth appeared in the center of the fruit, and Dozzu realized the fig was a fiend, too.
“Me, too,” it replied.
Dozzu nodded, and said to the two fiends, “Yes. Me, too.”
And that was enough. Their mutual understanding and friendship bound them together. They shared the same desires and the same pain in their hearts. The lion-fiend trained itself day by day in order to protect its kind from the hands of man. The fig-fiend offered its flesh to give strength to weaker comrades. The dog-fiend continuously contemplated how fiends might attain happiness. They became friends and gave each other names. The lion was Cargikk. The fig was Tgurneu. And the dog was named Dozzu.
They were the only three creatures in the world who felt love for fiendkind.
Then, three hundred years ago, the second war with the Braves of the Six Flowers occurred. It ended in disaster. The Evil God was sealed away once more, and many eminent fiends had been lost.
The cause of their defeat was clear. The fiends had had no commander to lead all the forces. They had divided into various small factions of dozens apiece, each fighting and losing to the Braves separately. Immense power would be necessary to subordinate all the fiends and give them orders. At no point did a fiend appear with real influence, the kind that could lead it in the footsteps of Archfiend Zophrair.
It could be said that Dozzu and its allies, with Cargikk as their leader, had put up the best fight. Dozzu had plotted their moves and done the scouting, Cargikk had contended with the Six Braves head-to-head, while Tgurneu had given their underlings power and advised the other two.
The three of them had explored far afield into the human continent to set a trap in a certain village and lured the Braves of the Six Flowers into it. Far away from the Howling Vilelands, Lowie, Saint of Wind, was careless and paid for it with her life.
In the Cut-Finger Forest, they launched a two-pronged ambush from underground and above the trees, gravely wounding Swordmaster Bodor. When Hayuha and Marlie, Saint of Blades, staged a diversion, the trio saw through the ploy, and they even successfully defended the Weeping Hearth the first time.
But their efforts were in vain. The neverending battle exhausted them, and they couldn’t hold back the Braves’ second attack on the Weeping Hearth. The Evil God was defeated.
“Aw, meow . So all this blabbin’ was just to brag about yer exploits?” Hans cut off Dozzu’s dispassionate narration with a shrug. “Sorry, but we ain’t got the time fer yer boring story.”
“I beg your pardon. I’ll soon reach the relevant details, so if I may ask for your patience…” Unruffled by Hans’s quip, Dozzu continued its story.
Dozzu’s account deeply intrigued Adlet. Even his master, Atreau, had been in the dark about the process of fiends’ birth and evolution. Had they time, Adlet would have liked to ask for more detail. It was fascinating to hear about the second Battle of the Six Flowers from the fiends’ side, too, and he was also curious about the former friendship shared by the three fiends currently at war—but right now, hearing about Hayuha was a priority.
Dozzu, Cargikk, and Tgurneu wept and wept for a whole month following the Evil God’s defeat. Dozzu didn’t know how to convey to humans what a torment the Evil God’s death was to their kind. Perhaps it could be compared to the agony of inescapable death, the misery of losing one’s beloved, or the despair of witnessing the world on the brink of destruction. But Dozzu doubted any of these would come close. Humans were utterly incapable of understanding the magnitutde of the Evil God’s presence in fiends’ lives.
The agony of the three was then entrenched even deeper. The ones they loved were grieving, and yet they could do nothing to help. This reality was torture of a different form.
The three blamed themselves, condemned one another, did harm to themselves, and from time to time even made plans to die together. At one point, Dozzu could stand no more of its comrades’ wailing and fled from Cargikk and Tgurneu. It climbed mountains, ran through forests, and crossed valleys, but no matter where it went, it could still hear the sobbing.
Dozzu smashed its head into a boulder. Bleeding, it rammed the stone over and over, but that wasn’t enough, so it scorched itself with lightning, too. It continued for a whole day before exhausting itself and passing out. Lying prostrate on the ground, Dozzu wondered, Why must they always cry? Why do they all have to suffer? Why do they have to fight? Still without answers, it lost consciousness.
How much time has passed? When Dozzu opened its eyes, it found a shadow hovering over its body. Someone was standing over it, watching. Thinking it was Cargikk, Dozzu looked up and was struck dumb.
“Hey there, cute little fiendie,” she said, smiling. “Would you be at all interested in a world where no one, human or fiend, has to cry?”
That was how Dozzu met Hayuha.
“Meow , was she pretty?” Hans interrupted the story again.
“Are you incapable of listening in silence?” Mora snapped.
Hans shrunk back. “Mrow . I’ve been nettlin’ people since I was a kid.” Then he pulled some rags out of his packs and began cutting them into the shape of clothes with a sword. It seemed as if, while he listened, he would sew himself something new to replace his tattered garments.
He just can’t sit still , Adlet thought with a sigh.
“…By human measure, Hayuha wouldn’t have been considered beautiful. Her features were ordinary—though everything else about her was anything but.” Dozzu continued its story.
For a while, Hayuha just smiled, watching Dozzu. It remembered her as the enemy they had fought a month before, but it had no idea what it should do. Why was she there? What did she mean? Why was she smiling? Dozzu was utterly nonplussed.
Eventually, Cargikk came running, Tgurneu in hand. As soon as Tgurneu saw Hayuha, it let out a scream. After a momentary shock, Cargikk jetted poison flames from its body and readied itself for battle.
Hayuha was not in the least perturbed. She smiled, spread her arms, and walked up to them. “Hey there, lion buddy, figgy, good timing. I’m Hayuha, and I’m joining up with you now. So be nice, okay?”
“…What?”
“Hmm, guess I’m getting ahead of myself here. Huh, I wonder where I should start?” Hayuha put a finger to her forehead and considered. “Oh yeah, so I want you guys to help with something. Would you mind listening to what I have to say?”
The next instant, Cargikk’s greatsword roared toward Hayuha’s face with full force. When it stopped short of her, it wasn’t because of Hayuha. In fact, she neither dodged nor blocked it. She just calmly watched the sword hesitating above her head. “Whoa there, lion buddy. Is something wrong?” she asked. By all appearances, it wasn’t that she believed they were too weak to possibly kill her. Nothing in her expression indicated such a thought. She had calmly accepted the death that loomed before her.
“Why do you not avoid it, Brave of the Six Flowers?” asked Cargikk.
“Hmm. Well, ’cause it wouldn’t bother anyone if I died.”
Cargikk raised its sword once more, and Dozzu charged up a lightning strike, too. But Hayuha was so unguarded, they just couldn’t seize the moment to attack.
“Well, let’s not stand and talk. Why don’t we take a seat?” Hayuha lowered the cask of alcohol she carried on her back and sat on the ground. Her manner communicated to the fiends that she quite sincerely wouldn’t mind if she died. And because the three believed they could kill her any time, they figured they’d hear her out. If she acted even the slightest bit defensive, they would instantly begin to fight.
“So, like I said before,” she continued, “there’s something I’d like your help with. I think you’re probably the only ones I can ask.”
The three fiends didn’t so much as nod in response. They would listen to what she had to say, but they had zero intention of assisting her. They were still overwhelmed with rage toward her for her part in defeating the Evil God.
“I’ve been thinking—I’d like to find out what the Evil God really is,” she said, and a thrill of tension raced through the three fiends. “When you get right down to it, what is it? How did it end up being born? I’d like to know. And I need your help for that.”
The three of them did not reply. Why had the Evil God been born? Dozzu, Cargikk, and Tgurneu had never even considered that subject, nor had any other fiend. The Evil God was simply the Evil God, and they had never questioned its existence.
“I bet you guys don’t know the truth, either, huh? That’s just my intuition talking. I don’t have any basis for saying that.”
The three fiends didn’t reply. Instead, Cargikk answered her question with another question. “So what would you do after discovering its true nature? Are you unsatisfied with simply sealing it away? Are you saying you would kill it?!”
“Kill the Evil God? What for?” Hayuha tilted her head in puzzlement.
The fiends were taken aback. “To protect humanity…perhaps?” said Cargikk.
“Oh, I get what you mean. Protecting humanity. I never thought of that.”
Dozzu was momentarily stunned. Wasn’t she one of the Braves of the Six Flowers? Just one month ago, she’d fought with them for that very purpose.
“Well, I’m not gonna kill the Evil God. I think it’d be more fun if it was alive.”
“…F-fun?”
“If the Evil God is alive, we can hang out, right? Can’t do that if it’s dead. It would be so dull.”
The three fiends were simply flabbergasted.
“Personally speaking, it’s all about the fun. Nothing else matters. It’s all just an illusion. I don’t get people who get so hung up on love and justice and all that pointless bull. Don’t you agree, my fine fiendy friends?” Hayuha pulled the bowl off her head, tilted her cask of alcohol, and began pouring the contents into the bowl. She took one satisfied swig and offered the bowl to Cargikk. “Anyway, you want a bowl? I bet I’d enjoy drinking with fiends, too.”
Cargikk looked at the bowl of alcohol for a while. Then it took the drink and guzzled it down all at once, alcohol dripping from the corners of its mouth.
“Aww, what a waste,” Hayuha lamented. “Don’t spill it. That’s the good stuff.”
“It’s so foul, I could vomit,” Cargikk said, shoving the vessel back at Hayuha. Sorrowfully, Hayuha licked up the remaining alcohol. “We live to defend the Evil God. We live to fulfill its desires. Do you think we would take part in any act that would pose it danger?”
“Huh. I guess it’s no use after all.”
“However,” Cargikk added, “knowledge of the Evil God’s true nature could lead us to victory in the upcoming battle.”
Shocked, Dozzu looked up at Cargikk.
“By cooperating with you, we may learn of means to strengthen the fiends, increase our numbers further, or undo the seal on the Evil God.”
“Cargikk!” Dozzu cried. “What are you thinking?!”
“Dozzu, the third war has already begun. And I will do anything if it means the defeat of the Braves of the Six Flowers.”
“But she’s a human! And one of the Braves! How could we collude with her?!”
“Are you crazy, Cargikk?” Tgurneu was appalled, too.
“If you believe me mad, then abandon me here and leave. I will not stop you,” said Cargikk.
“But…”
Hayuha carelessly interrupted the bewildered party of fiends. “You shouldn’t argue.”
Whose fault do you think this is? thought Dozzu.
“Hayuha,” said Cargikk, “we will use you to destroy humanity. If you have no quarrel with that, we shall cooperate.”
“Of course I’m thrilled to have you with me, my lion buddy. Can I just call you Cargikk, then?” Smiling, Hayuha served some more alcohol. “Oh! Yeah, I’ll answer your question from before. About what I’ll do once I find out the truth of the Evil God.”
“Tell us.”
“If I do find out what it is—or, well, if it’s what I think it is, then…” Hayuha knocked back the alcohol all at once. “Then I think I’ll make friends with it. I’d like us to have a drink together. Me and the Evil God.”
“Friends, you say?”
“Doesn’t that sound like a blast? It’d be the best party of all time! It’d be kinda lonely with just me and the Evil God, though. So I’d invite everyone in the world to my party, human and fiend. That sounds the most fun.” Hayuha laughed. “Maybe humanity’ll get wiped out after that. If that happens…eh, oh well.”
Cargikk’s shoulders trembled a bit. For a second, Dozzu thought it was angry, but then it burst into raucous laughter. “Hayuha. You’re truly not bothered if your kind is destroyed?” Cargikk asked.
Hayuha responded cheerfully. “I mean, I’ve already saved the world once. Might be interesting to take a shot at destroying it next.”
Dozzu utterly failed to comprehend Hayuha’s logic, but it understood now that they would be forced to cooperate with her. Cargikk was their leader, so come what may, Dozzu and Tgurneu had to follow.
As Adlet listened to Dozzu’s story, he mused, Hayuha wasn’t right in the head. He’d known from the stories that she was eccentric, but he’d had no idea she was this bad.
“Hayuha did not identify with the human race in the slightest,” said Dozzu. “She was indifferent to notions of responsibility, duty, or justice. Personal enjoyment was all she needed. She didn’t care about the fate of humanity or even her own life. In her mind, fighting the Evil God as a Brave was nothing more than an amusing pastime.”
“…”
“After the Evil God’s defeat, she became bored, so she invented a new game to play and gave it a try. I think that was the only reason she came to the Howling Vilelands. She hit upon an outrageous way to entertain herself: a great drinking game with all humans and fiends invited.”
The Braves were speechless.
“And so, Hayuha and we joined forces for the next five years.” Dozzu finished the first part of its story there and took a brief break.
Before listening to the rest of the tale, the group scouted around nearby since Tgurneu might discover them and launch an attack here. But there was no sign of any fiends, so they went back to their camp and sat down around Dozzu.
“But how did you investigate the Evil God?” asked Mora.
Adlet had wondered about that, too. Humanity had been trying to unearth those answers for the past millennium. He doubted it would be an easy task even with the fiends’ cooperation. Plus, judging from Dozzu’s story, the fiends were in the dark, too.
“It was possible for her,” said Dozzu. “She was the only person in all of history who could have done it.”
“What powers did she use?” asked Mora.
“She could manipulate the flow of time to see the events of the past with her own eyes.”
Mora was shocked, and Chamo and Rolonia, too.
“Is that so ameowzin’?” asked Hans. “Sounds to me like that’d be a cinch for a Saint of Time.” He’d pulled out a needle and thread as Dozzu spoke and was skillfully sewing away.
“Of all the many Saints’ powers, command of time is known to be the most challenging to use,” explained Mora. “Most past Saints of Time could muster only enough power to slow an object’s decay. Hayuha’s ability to use the power of time in battle made it clear her mastery of it was exceptional. But to see the past…”
Chamo said, “It’s like she’s the cream of the cream of the crop. Even I might be a tiny bit surprised.”
“Well, comin’ from you, that must mean she was as ameowzin’ as they come,” commented Hans.
Dozzu continued its story. “However, there were restrictions to her ability to view the past. In order to look back, she had to go to the location where the event had occurred, inscribe hieroglyphs there to strengthen her powers of time, and then activate her ability. So the three of us gathered information from fiends that had survived since olden times and guided Hayuha to places where we might find clues. Then we ensured that other fiends would stay away. Hayuha would use her ability to discover what had occurred there in the past, and thus we investigated the Evil God. We traversed the Howling Vilelands, uncovering the events of the past. Occasionally, we would even borrow the powers of a transforming fiend to change shape and visit the human realms together with Hayuha. Finally, we found our answer.”
“Which is?” Adlet asked.
But right when Dozzu was about to reply, a tiny blade sprouted out of the ground before Dozzu.
“!” They all looked at Nashetania. She was still in Goldof’s arms, watching Dozzu. She silently shook her head.
“You’re right, Nashetania.” Dozzu returned its attention to the Braves. “My apologies, but I still cannot tell you about the Evil God. Eventually, when the time comes, we will reveal it to you.”
“I thought you were gonna tell us everything,” said Adlet.
“What I promised was to share our clues regarding the seventh. I never said I’d tell you everything.” Adlet and Dozzu glared at each other.
“Talkin’ it up until it gets good and then leavin’ us on a cliffhanger, huh? Ya hear the minstrels at the bars use that one, meow .” But Hans’s quip didn’t bother Dozzu.
“Why won’t you talk?”
“In order to defeat you all, we cannot disclose to you everything that we know,” reasoned Dozzu.
“…I see.”
Dozzu had said that it and Nashetania planned to replace the Evil God, but they had yet to reveal their means of doing so. If Dozzu divulged the true nature of the Evil God, that information would most likely also reveal how it could be supplanted.
But what the hell does “when the time comes” mean? thought Adlet. Did that mean that they wouldn’t talk until everything was over?
“Chamo’s pretty curious about the Evil God, though. If you don’t tell us, Chamo’s gonna kill you both.” Chamo’s foxtail swayed as a vein bulged on her forehead. Not long ago, she’d been near death. She was listening calmly for the time being, but she was not in a good mood.
“I believe it would be better if you refrained. If you kill us, you will never find out what we have to say.”
“You’re right. So…torture.” Chamo was right about to gleefully stuff her foxtail down her throat when Rolonia leaped on her from behind.
“Wait, please, Chamo!”
“Let me go, moo-head!” The two of them began grappling with each other. Adlet and Mora sighed as Nashetania watched, giggling.
“Well, it’s a shame, but it doesn’t look like we can make them talk,” said Adlet.
“I apologize. There is our situation to consider as well. If we were to tell you everything, then you would have no more use for us and thus no reason to let us live. We cannot tell you everything, for the sake of our survival.”
Right now, the most important intelligence Dozzu held was the clues that could lead them to the seventh. It was best for now to drop the question of the Evil God’s secrets.
“Ugh, torture is too much trouble! Chamo’s just gonna kill you!”
“Please, calm down!” Rolonia cried as Chamo tried to peel her off. Mora punched the younger Saint in the head.
Once Chamo had reluctantly settled down, Fremy asked, “So how are the story of Hayuha and this clue regarding the seventh connected?”
“Yes, let me get to that,” replied Dozzu. “Even once we had uncovered the Evil God’s past, we continued our investigation in search of further knowledge. We researched the Saint of the Single Flower.”
“So what did you discover?”
“I cannot answer that,” Dozzu said curtly. “However, our search didn’t go on very long. Just a month after we began seeking the truth behind the Saint of the Single Flower, Hayuha died suddenly, and our investigation of the past died with her.”
“How did she die?” asked Adlet.
“I suppose it should be assumed that someone killed her.”
That’s a weird way to put it , thought Adlet. If she’d been murdered, then why didn’t Dozzu come out and say so? “What do you mean?”
“Given the circumstances, it couldn’t have been anything else. But at the time, no one could have managed it—not the three of us, and certainly not any other fiends or humans.”
“Hrmeow-meow. So it wasn’t you guys that killed her?” Hans asked, smiling. In the course of the conversation, he’d finished sewing himself a new jacket.
“No. But I can’t prove that.” The cause of Hayuha’s death wasn’t important. Dozzu continued. “After that, we started quarrelling. I began dreaming of a world ruled by a new god, one where humans and fiends could live in harmony. Cargikk was fiercely opposed to this and confronted me. Even now that he knew the true nature of the Evil God, Cargikk was no less loyal to it. Tgurneu did his best to mediate between Cargikk and myself, but after a hundred years our alliance broke down, and I ended up leaving the Howling Vilelands and taking my meager forces with me.”
“Pretty fragile friendship, then,” said Fremy.
Dozzu raised its hackles slightly and glared at her. It seemed about to retort, but then quickly looked away and suppressed its anger as it continued. “However, Tgurneu had deceived both Cargikk and myself. He had been investigating the Saint of the Single Flower while keeping it secret from us.”
“Tgurneu, huh?”
“Hayuha had left behind a hieroform for learning about the past. I had thought it was lost with her death. But Tgurneu had surreptitiously acquired it and began investigating the Saint of the Single Flower—not long after Hayuha’s demise, most likely. I’m quite ashamed to say this, but it wasn’t until two hundred years after she died that I figured it out.”
Adlet considered. “So in other words, Tgurneu sniffed out some secret about the Saint of the Single Flower, killed Hayuha to silence her, and then hid everything from you and Cargikk. Is that it?”
“…I can’t say that for certain.”
“Sounds like the only possible answer, circumstantially,” Adlet said.
Dozzu began to ponder, eyes still downcast. “No, Tgurneu could never have killed Hayuha then…” The fiend was lost in thought for a while, until it seemed to realize that there was no point in worrying and resumed the conversation. “Let’s leave Hayuha’s story for now. It’s time to get to the real issue at hand. I’ll tell you what clues I have regarding the seventh.”
Finally , thought Adlet.
“As I just said, Tgurneu was researching the Saint of the Single Flower in secret. What’s more, he was also studying the very power of Saints. Tgurneu and his fiends abducted humans from all over and brought them to the Howling Vilelands—acolytes from All Heavens Temple or the regional temples, theologians who studied the power of Saints—occasionally even Saints themselves.”
They had already been aware of this. Tgurneu had created Fremy, Saint of Gunpowder, clear evidence that Tgurneu possessed a wealth of knowledge regarding the Spirits’ power and their chosen ones.
“His goal was, of course, to kill the Braves of the Six Flowers. To create the ultimate weapon for such a purpose.”
“I heard the reason Tgurneu was learning so much about the Saints was to create me,” said Fremy.
Dozzu shook its head. “No. I doubt you were anything more than a by-product of his research—a cover project to distract from his true goal.”
Fremy’s expression betrayed her mixed feelings.
“I’ve also considered that perhaps you were Tgurneu’s secret weapon. But although you’re powerful in combat, you’re still just a single Saint. And besides, if you were the trump card, he wouldn’t have made you fight Chamo. Certainly wouldn’t have let you go.”
“…True.” Fremy looked away.
“My comrades infiltrated Tgurneu’s forces to attempt to discover what his secret weapon was. They made contact with core members of his faction, sometimes tailing them, listening closely for any intelligence. But Tgurneu is so adept at keeping secrets, I could only manage to learn bits and pieces of what was really going on. Cargikk was also trying to investigate the plot, but I believe he failed to get any results.”
“So what did you get?” asked Adlet.
“The first thing we figured out is that Tgurneu’s secret weapon is a hieroform. It’s not a human Saint or a fiend with the power of a Spirit, meaning it has to be a hieroform. A fiend from the inner circle of Tgurneu’s faction told us this explicitly.”
Hieroform was a general term that referred to a tool that a Saint had imbued with a Spirit’s power. The Braves’ Crests of the Six Flowers were also a type of hieroform.
“The second thing we learned was its name. This we found out by intercepting some of Tgurneu’s correspondence. He called this hieroform the Black Barrenbloom.”
A barrenbloom was a flower that died without bearing fruit. Adlet muttered the words quietly under his breath. Somehow, this felt terribly foreboding.
“The third bit of intel I have is my own conjecture. Most likely, this hieroform that he calls the Black Barrenbloom holds the power of the Spirit of Fate, the very same as the Saint of the Single Flower. Tgurneu researched the Saint of the Single Flower quite deeply and concealed his findings for hundreds of years, so this is the obvious conclusion.
“The fourth thing I have to tell you is… Adlet. Could you bring out a map?”
Adlet pulled a map out of his iron box and spread it before Dozzu. This diagram had been drawn based on information passed down from the Saint of the Single Flower and Braves of past generations. Adlet had also added some details himself about the locations their party had passed through.
“Right here.” Dozzu placed a plump foreleg on the map, right in the central-northern region of the Howling Vilelands, known as the Fainting Mountains. Its front paw pointed to a place a little north of the mountains’ center. “Right here is where Tgurneu built a temple for the worship of the Spirit of Fate.”
All the Braves, except for Goldof, fixed their eyes on the spot Dozzu indicated. In the past, the Saint of the Single Flower had constructed temples all over the world for the worship of the Spirit of Fate. The tournament Adlet had interrupted had been held in one of them.
“A Temple of Fate can only be constructed by the Saint of the Single Flower. If someone else were to attempt it, they would fail to summon the Spirit,” said Mora.
“But Tgurneu has, in fact, successfully constructed one,” refuted Dozzu. “And in this temple, he created the Black Barrenbloom. A comrade risked life and limb to gain this information, and I’m certain it’s true.”
“The Black Barrenbloom… So you’re saying that this is the seventh’s fake Crest?” asked Adlet.
“I believe it’s extremely likely. Furthermore, even if it’s not, I believe it would be worthwhile to visit this place—since that would mean Tgurneu’s ultimate weapon, the Black Barrenbloom, is something other than the seventh.
“And one last thing. Even now, it seems that Tgurneu has deployed fiends around here, and what’s more, they’re the most elite of his specialists. Even now that you’re here in the Howling Vilelands, Tgurneu has yet to deploy them.” Dozzu removed its paw from the map, but even then, Adlet remained fixated on that point.
“These are all the clues I have regarding the seventh. I leave it to you whether to trust this information and act on it or not,” Dozzu said, backing away and drawing close to where Nashetania lay in Goldof’s embrace. Smiling, the princess lifted her hand to gently stroke Dozzu’s cheek.
“What will we do, Adlet?” Mora asked.
Still staring at the map, Adlet continued to think. The place Dozzu had indicated as the Temple of Fate wasn’t too far away. They could make it there in a day, if there were no interruptions. It would be a detour on their way to the Weeping Hearth, but it wouldn’t waste that much time. The question was if it was really worth going there—and if they could be sure it wasn’t a trap.
“I wish we had more information.” Adlet looked at Dozzu again. “You said that your followers had infiltrated Tgurneu’s faction. You didn’t learn anything else?”
“To be frank, I don’t have much to go on at all.” Dozzu considered for a bit, and then spoke again. “Well, then I can tell you this: the majority of Tgurneu’s troops still don’t know who the seventh is.”
Adlet was shocked. That was a pretty crucial detail, wasn’t it?
“Like Fremy, my comrades who infiltrated Tgurneu’s forces didn’t know a thing about the plan to send you an impostor Brave. I’m sure this was also the case for the majority of his subordinates. The fiends were informed about the seventh only after your group approached the Howling Vilelands—specifically, ten days after the Evil God’s awakening.” Adlet thought back. The tenth day would have been just before their fight in the Phantasmal Barrier.
“On the afternoon of the tenth day,” Dozzu continued, “messengers ran all over the Howling Vilelands, letting my fiends know about the seventh. They were told that Tgurneu had infiltrated the Braves of the Six Flowers with an impostor—one who would bring them victory, according to him.”
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