Rokka no Yuusha - Volume 6 - Chapter 5

Chapter 5 
Resistance 

“Eight…möre mïnutes…” Specialist number thirteen didn’t know anything—not what was happening to the Braves or what Tgurneu was doing. It had no interest and didn’t think about it. 
“Sëven…möre mïnutes…” Would its own attack succeed? Would all the Braves die in the end? Number thirteen wasn’t even considering it. It would do what it had been told, precisely as Tgurneu had ordered. It was a tool for that purpose. 
“…Sïx mïnutes,” it muttered quietly underground. 
It was so satisfying. Adlet’s face left Tgurneu perfectly content. 
It was an expression that could only ever be seen once in all of history: the face of the boy who would destroy the world in order to protect one girl. And what’s more, he had done it knowing his love for her was a lie. But even so, he’d been unable to rid himself of his emotions. Tgurneu had supped its fill of that love-born suffering. 
Tgurneu would have liked to go somewhere calm and sip tea while basking in the afterglow, but unfortunately, that wasn’t possible. The Braves of the Six Flowers were still alive. Through number twenty-four, Tgurneu instructed the wolf-fiend not to allow the leopard messenger to ever come near Tgurneu. 
Tgurneu also used Adlet’s information about the Braves’ route of retreat to instruct its fiends to lie in wait and prevent their escape. Now not only would the Braves fail to defeat Tgurneu, they would also be unable to flee. 
Tgurneu was impressed, though. It had believed nothing could have enabled the Braves to discover it. It hadn’t even considered they would turn their attention toward the leopard. Their bit with the fire had also been unexpected. It had believed it impossible to ignite the whole of the woods with Atreau’s chemical. 
Had they been able to carry out their plan, the foolish wolf-fiend would have dispatched the leopard-fiend, just as they’d expected. And since they’d have been approaching Tgurneu with a clear goal, number eleven’s powers would have been unable to keep Tgurneu hidden. Tgurneu had just barely escaped death. 
Tgurneu complimented Adlet’s valiant fight. “You were close. So very close, Adlet.” Tgurneu began addressing the boy on the ground in front of him. 
Adlet was silent on his knees before Tgurneu. He’d already stopped crying. His eyes were open, but there was nothing in them. His spirit was now completely shattered. The sight of him made laughter bubble up once more from Tgurneu’s belly. 
“…You there. Imprison Adlet in your stomach,” Tgurneu ordered the hippo-fiend standing to its side. They couldn’t kill him yet. He still had an important role to play. “You must not injure him, and absolutely do not let him escape. Also, keep his ears plugged so he’s unaware of what’s going on outside. You got that?” 
The hippo-fiend opened its large mouth, and a tentacle slithered out from within to grab Adlet’s body, dragging him into the fiend’s stomach. Adlet didn’t resist, not even slightly. 
“Relax and rest, Adlet. I’ll make Fremy happy.” 
Adlet didn’t even react. 
Tgurneu left the hippo-fiend. “Now then, I do feel satisfied, but…there’s still more fun to be had,” it muttered. It had enjoyed Adlet’s torment, but there was still Fremy. This battle wasn’t over until Tgurneu had seen her love-born suffering. 
Tgurneu hadn’t relinquished its control of Adlet’s love. It had decided it would do that before Fremy’s eyes. I will show you, Fremy, that Adlet never actually loved you. I’ll show you that it was all just a part of my plan. 
What sort of face would she make? 
“I don’t believe it! It’s a lie. You must be lying!” Tgurneu imagined she would yell. It tried saying the words aloud. It couldn’t resist a little smile. It was so looking forward to the moment Fremy accepted reality. She was sure to kill herself. She would despair of it all and end her own life. Tgurneu was unbearably excited for it. 
“…That’s it!” Tgurneu was hit with a flash of inspiration. It would be nice watching her face as she killed herself, but there was another look that would be more appealing. 
Tgurneu would make Adlet kill her. 
When Fremy attempted to kill herself, Tgurneu would revive her using the healing fiend’s powers, and then Tgurneu would tell Adlet, If you kill Fremy with your own hands, I’ll give you one more chance to fight me. 
Once Tgurneu had canceled Adlet’s love for Fremy, he would no longer hesitate to kill her. He would loathe her from the bottom of his heart for being the cause of the world’s destruction. The very man whose love she’d believed in would single-mindedly thirst for her blood. What expression would she make then? 
“All right, I’ve made up my mind. I’ll be sure to have Adlet kill Fremy,” Tgurneu murmured. There was no time for rest now. The next joy awaited. 
Number thirteen would soon be ready. The Braves of the Six Flowers would all die, as would Nashetania. Dozzu and Cargikk would surrender to Tgurneu, and all obstructions would be gone. Now Tgurneu just had to wait for all the Six Braves to die. 
“…Heh-heh.” Tgurneu chuckled in its throat. The Braves, believing their plan had yet to be exposed, were lingering in these ruins. They trusted Adlet, unaware that he was the traitor and that it was all already over. Tgurneu would enjoy seeing their struggle as a prelude to Fremy’s despair. 
“Now then…wolf-fiend. What are the Braves doing?” Tgurneu addressed the wolf-fiend through number twenty-four. The fiend commander was already certain of its victory. The rest was just cleanup. 
Unable to hear or see anything, Adlet lay weakly in the fiend’s stomach. The air was thick and humid, and it was hard to breathe. But he didn’t care about that anymore. 
“Let me…die…,” Adlet moaned. “I’ll do anything, please. I beg you, let me die.” His pleas would reach no one. Not even the fiend that had swallowed him. 
The hippo-fiend had him bound inside its stomach with a tentacle that grew from its mouth. All his limbs were constricted, right up to his neck, and the tips of tentacles were shoved into both his ears. His eardrums ached. He didn’t resist. 
“…Let me die.” 
It wasn’t just the betrayal of his allies that he regretted—he regretted the whole fight this far, his life, everything. 
What had he been fighting for? What if he’d been unable to protect Fremy in the temple and had let her die? What if he’d been killed in the Phantasmal Barrier? None of this would have happened. They would have been able to foil Tgurneu’s plans. 
All this desperate survival and struggle had been in service of Tgurneu’s motives. 
What if he hadn’t apprenticed to Atreau? What if he’d given up on revenge and sought out a normal, happy life? Then what? 
Tgurneu had said Fremy would have died without him, and that was completely right. Who would have managed to protect her in the Temple of Fate but him? If he had given up on his revenge, someone else would have been chosen as the seventh. That person would surely have failed to protect her and let her die. And if that had happened, the Braves would have won. If he’d just never existed, the world would have been saved. 
Who the hell was he? He wasn’t the strongest man in the world. He wasn’t a Brave of the Six Flowers who would save the world. He wasn’t a hero who got revenge for his loved ones, either, or the one person who could make Fremy happy. 
Who was Adlet Mayer? The answer was already clear. 
Tgurneu’s puppet. Tgurneu’s toy. 
Hans had been unable to stop the hippo-fiend from swallowing Adlet. The corner of the square where Tgurneu and its guard stood was walled off by the spider-fiend’s thread. The viscous silk wouldn’t be cut by Hans’s sword. He was powerless. 
But even if the thread wall hadn’t been there, Hans probably wouldn’t have been able to save Adlet since forty of the fiends under Tgurneu’s command were now attacking him. 
“Göt you!” Four swiped out with their claws from all four sides. Ducking so low that his torso skimmed the ground, Hans jumped forward and slipped between the legs of one to escape the trap. He tried striking the fiend from below while he was at it, but no sooner was he underneath than another attacked him. With the strength of his arms alone, Hans switched his trajectory and just barely avoided its claws. 
But he didn’t even have a single moment to rest. Once he’d evaded that, another fiend was waiting for him. 
He’d never faced enemies like this before. On an individual basis, they were all stronger than the ones he’d fought before coming to the ruins. What was really exceptional, though, was their sense of coordination. 
Hans constantly kept moving, trying to create a one-on-one situation, but after well over half an hour of combat, he hadn’t managed it, not even once. It was as if they were reading one another’s minds as they fought. 
Exhaustion was slowing him down. He couldn’t quite block their attacks anymore, and he was so covered in blood that he didn’t have a clean patch of skin on him. He’d still cut down ten of the forty fiends, but his stamina was already gone. He couldn’t relax for so much as a second, and this had been going on for too long. This task of searching for the slightest escape route and surviving each moment trapped in the silk cocoon was beyond even what Hans could take. 
“Sorry for the wait, Hans.” Tgurneu left the hippo-fiend to turn his attention to the Brave. The spider-fiend sucked up its silk, removing the wall that separated them, and Hans’s opponents stopped fighting to surround him at a distance and watch. 
“You were so quiet. You don’t think that was cold? I think you should have encouraged him to overcome the power of love and kill me.” 
Hans didn’t reply. He knew it was pointless. Adlet had put up a fight, but that was just part of Tgurneu’s game. Hans had expected Adlet to give in and leak the plan. 
But when Adlet had lifted his head to the sky and wailed, Hans had uncharacteristically felt for him. Even now that they were enemies, Hans had never hated Adlet. 
Hans was more of a villainous type but not the sort who got pleasure out of torturing his enemies. In his line of work, he saw people like that quite often, but it only ever disgusted him. 
“You were truly foolish,” said Tgurneu. “Had just been done with it and killed Adlet, you would still have had a chance at winning. It was all that stupid scheming that made things turn out like this. Now Adlet’s in my hands, and you’re all alone. Hey, how do you feel right now?” 
Hans wanted to bluff and say Neowt so bad , but he was so tired, the words wouldn’t even come out of his mouth. 
“The world will be destroyed because of you. Your foolish decisions have brought it all to an end. Your family, your closest friends, the woman you love—everyone is going to die, because of you. So come on, tell me: What do you feel now?” 
Hans got the feeling then that he was starting to understand Tgurneu, just a little bit. The fiend was obsessed with love. It found pleasure in making those who felt it suffer. Not like the knowledge was worth anything, though. 
“You’re real meowin’ crazy.” 
“I get that a lot. I’m sick of hearing it,” Tgurneu said with a smile. 
? 

“…There’s neow one in my life close enough to call a real friend. I’ve fergotten all my family’s faces, too. I’ve slept with plenty of women, whenever I’m in the mood, but I’ve neowver fallen in love. Sorry, Tgurneu, but my face ain’t gonna be much fun fer ya,” Hans said, smiling back. 
“…You really are quite boring. Die already. Once I’ve killed you, I’ll go somewhere safe to await the death of the Braves,” Tgurneu said, and the fiends resumed their attack on Hans. 
Hans had gotten enough of a break to catch his breath, but now the fiends assaulted him with even more ferocity. Bounding around, ahead, then back, Hans avoided being encircled. Unfortunately, he couldn’t afford to die yet. There was still a chance of beating Tgurneu. 
Chamo would still be searching for him. She would have unleashed dozens of her slave-fiends over the whole ruins area. At least one would have to come near the square. And if she found him, the situation would turn around immediately. 
It didn’t have to be Chamo, either. There were Fremy and Nashetania, too. Dozzu and Rolonia could be out there. So Hans couldn’t die until they found him. He had to survive and keep Tgurneu here. 
“Unfortunately, Hans, your wish will not come true. Help is not coming.” 
Meanwhile, Chamo was dashing through the southern area of the ruins, still searching for Hans as she fought off the fiends descending on her from all directions. The fiends’ sporadic attacks wouldn’t slow her down. 
“Wh-why? Why can’t Chamo find them?” But she couldn’t find any clues. She couldn’t find Hans. “Damn it! At this rate, Chamo won’t be able to kill him,” she muttered as she continued her search. 
Mora was still with Goldof, contending with the fiends that surrounded her barrier. She was nearing the limits of her stamina, and Goldof couldn’t hide signs of exhaustion, either. At first, they’d figured they just had to hold out until the others could execute the plan. They hadn’t anticipated this skirmish would drag on for so long. 
“Did you…find…anything, Mora?” Goldof asked after slaying an enemy. Under his protection, Mora was focusing on combing the area with her clairvoyance. 
Mora’s suspicion that Tgurneu was plotting something that would kill her and Goldof—or even all six Braves—had become a certainty. But none of the three hundred fiends she observed around them seemed to be preparing anything. 
There were just too few clues. Even so, Mora kept her clairvoyant eye vigilant. 
“Please, Fremy! Open your eyes!” Rolonia’s whip danced. Fremy dodged it with a roll to the side, taking on the advancing Braves alongside the fiends of the fake command center. 
The wolf-fiend was smirking in the rear, behind Fremy’s protection. It seemed convinced of her betrayal. Most likely, Tgurneu, listening in on things from afar, believed as much, too. 
“Please give it up already! Fremy’s our enemy now! We must kill her!” Nashetania yelled. 
Rolonia shook her head. “I can’t! I couldn’t kill her!” The two maintained their charade to hide their intentions. Thanks to them, the enemies believed in Fremy’s betrayal. 
“Ngh!” Fremy deliberately let Nashetania’s blade slice her, and blood spurted from her side. The fiends immediately hurried in front of her to drive back Nashetania. Then the healing fiend panicked and rushed to Fremy’s side to heal her wound. 
Its healing powers were as incredible as ever. It took not even a few seconds for her wound to disappear. Fremy was certain—this would work. Even if her heart was carved out, the fiend would heal her right away. She could survive. She didn’t know if the healing fiend’s power could cure the red mark, but still, she had no choice. 
Fremy thought, Adlet, wait just a little longer. We’ll execute the plan and come save you. 
Hans believed Tgurneu’s confidence was no act. Everything it said was probably true, and help would not come. Its plan to kill all the Braves of the Six Flowers would likely soon be complete. 
“Meearow!” But Hans blocked an attack with his sword. Crawling like a cat, he wove around the fiends’ legs. 
“…You’re stubborn, Hans,” commented Tgurneu. 
Hans had never really wished for a long life, but he wasn’t exactly enthusiastic about dying right now. He recalled a certain idiot who’d said As long as you’re alive, we’re sure to find a way out of this , or something similar. 
“This ain’t meowch like me to say, but…” 
“What?” 
“We ain’t that easy,” Hans declared with a swipe at a fiend. 
Then it happened. Hans suddenly smelled something strange. Something was rising from the earth, and it didn’t take long for him to realize it was poison. 
Immediately, he jumped away, defending himself from the fiends within the narrow confines of the silk cocoon as he moved. But even over here, the same strange smell wafted around him. 
“No? I doubt that.” 
“Öne…möre mïnute.” 
Meanwhile, specialist number thirteen was hidden underground, in the deepest part of a waterway used by the humans of this land in ancient times. 
Number thirteen’s power was to generate a vast quantity of very small units from itself. These units, smaller than insects, had already spread through the water veins and waterways under the ruins. 
The units had two abilities: The first was to produce poison that affected the nerves, paralyzing the body until ultimately stopping its victim’s heart and ending their life. The poison had no effect on fiends. The water underground was already teeming with so much poison that a drop into a human’s mouth would kill them instantly. 
The other power these units had was to heat up water. The moment number thirteen gave the order, the units would emit heat—enough to boil the subterranean pools. It would turn into steam and waft aboveground. 
The place where the Braves squared off against the fiends would instantly be transformed into hell. 
“…Zëro.” 
Number thirteen ordered the units filling the passages to bring the water to a boil. 
Meanwhile, Fremy also smelled something strange. Rolonia, Nashetania, and Dozzu all went pale, too. 
“Poison… It’s poison!” Rolonia yelled. Behind Fremy, the wolf-fiend roared in victory. 
Tgurneu had not simply been waiting. It had been arranging to kill them all. 
The moment after Fremy realized they had lost, something strange happened. The whole of the ruins shook with a great rumble. The earth moaned. Is this part of Tgurneu’s plan, too? Fremy wondered. 
But the wolf-fiend was also looking down in confusion. Fremy turned her head toward the soaring mountains. It couldn’t be , she thought. 
Mora’s hair stood on end as a steam-like mist rose from her gauntlets. Her eyes flashed like fire. 
She had poured all her power as a Saint, honed over many years, into the single focus of her fist. 
She had used her power of clairvoyance to search and search all over the mountain but hadn’t found anything aboveground. There was nothing unusual in the sky, either. So then, it had to be underground. 
In the waterways, Mora found the cadaver of a mouse. Fish corpses floated in the water veins. That was when Mora finally realized what the enemy was going to do—unleash poison from underground. 
With her clairvoyance, Mora dove into the water and found just one surviving water snake clinging to the deepest pit of the water vein, spouting bubbles from its mouth. There was a very small protrusion on its forehead. 
Anyone who found it would be helpless to stop it—except Mora. 
“This will consume all my power, Goldof. I entrust the rest to you!” Mora cried, slamming her gauntlet into the ground. That one strike made the mountains rattle. She was the Saint of Mountains, the master of the stone. 
The water snake–fiend’s underground hiding place rocked. The ceiling crumbled, and boulders fell into the water. The water snake fled, but the whole network collapsed: rocks, earth, everything. It all sank to the depths to flatten the water snake–fiend. With no means of escape, number thirteen was helplessly crushed. 
The heated water failed to boil and quietly cooled. 
Nevertheless, some of the poison vapor still puffed up toward the surface through wells, waterways, and the slightest cracks in the earth’s surface. 
Having exhausted her strength, every muscle in Mora’s body went limp. Unable to support herself, she fell to the ground. The gauntlets normally looked so light on her hands, but she could now hardly lift them. 
Still, she couldn’t afford to pass out yet. Mora clung to consciousness, even as it felt like she would fall into darkness. She used her power of mountain echo to shout to the heavens: “Everyone! Flee from this place! Poison spews up from underground! I managed to stop it, but we must not linger!” 
Her mountain echo spread through the whole ruins, where the battle continued. 
“Meow-hee , it’s just like she said, huh?” 
Mora’s mountain echo had reached Hans and Tgurneu’s battle. The stench rising from the ground made Hans cough reflexively. But the foul scent grew no stronger, and Hans could still move. Had the poison succeeded, the Braves would all mostly likely have died. 
“Hmph. Mora is better than I thought.” Tgurneu seemed somewhat embarrassed. 
But Hans could tell the poison was definitely working. Slowly, his body was being paralyzed. 
“This is very much like her, though, I must say. If she’d only been a bit faster, she may have been able to avert the Braves’ deaths. Foolish, right where it counts.” 
“Naw. She bought me the time to kill ya, at least.” Hans kept running, darting through the spaces between the dozen or so fiends surrounding him. The situation hadn’t changed one bit. His struggle to survive continued. 
Mora’s mountain echo reached Fremy’s ears, too. That was close , she thought with sincere gratitude toward Mora. That had been an amazing feat, considering she’d been encircled by enemies and in mortal danger. 
“…The Braves are so stubborn. And I wanted to put them out of their misery quickly,” Fremy said to the wolf-fiend. She was betraying the Braves right now, so she couldn’t appear pleased that they’d been saved. 
“Relax, Fremy. This poison has no effect on fiends. And we’ve already made sure it doesn’t work on you, either,” the wolf-fiend confided. 
“Then Dozzu will be a problem. Leave that one to me,” Fremy said, firing at Dozzu—making sure the fiends wouldn’t be able to tell she was shifting her aim off slightly. 
“I misjudged you, Fremy! We fought with you as allies! Just what do you take us for?!” Dozzu cried, while also sending her a flicker of an eye signal. It, too, realized she wasn’t attacking seriously. There had been no time to explain the situation, but it seemed to understand Fremy had pretended to surrender for some purpose. 
“Please don’t worry! It will take a while for the poison to circulate fully through our bodies! We still have enough time to stop Fremy and save Addy!” Rolonia glanced at Fremy with a look that said It’s okay . They wouldn’t waste the time Mora had bought for them. They were going to save Adlet. 
Fremy fired at Rolonia, and her bullet skimmed Rolonia’s pauldron. Fremy deliberately gave Rolonia an opening as she loaded a second shot. 
With a look of resolve, Rolonia’s whip snapped, aiming for Fremy’s heart. Fremy pretended not to notice and closed her eyes. 
The tip of Rolonia’s sharp, pointed whip pierced Fremy’s chest and writhed around inside her, ripping out the flesh of her heart. With a spray of blood, Fremy collapsed backward, and the wolf-fiend yelled, “Number seventeen! Don’t let Fremy die!” 
Gotcha , Fremy thought. 
Specialist number seventeen, who had been observing the battle from safety, went as pale as it could get. The one mission assigned to it was to prevent Fremy’s death. It immediately rushed to the fallen woman’s side. Nearly all the other fiends, including the wolf-fiend, defended number seventeen from Nashetania, Rolonia, and Dozzu’s assault. 
With her heart carved out, Fremy very nearly died on the spot, but number seventeen glued its body to her to plug the open hole in her chest. 
Its ability was more like repair of the body than healing. Fluid spewed from its body could transform into flesh for the target fiend. It dammed the gushing blood from the gaping hole in Fremy’s chest in a heartbeat, then went to repairing her shredded heart. 
That was when number seventeen’s eyes lit on the red mark on Fremy’s chest. It knew that mark. 
Number seventeen was not in Tgurneu’s confidence; it didn’t know who the seventh was or for what purpose Fremy had been created, either. 
But it did know about the chain death. 
It had been about fifty years earlier, long before Fremy was born, when Tgurneu had summoned number seventeen. At that time, Tgurneu had still been using the body of the three-winged fiend. It told number seventeen then about a fiend with a strange power. It was a chain-death fiend with the ability to kill another fiend instantly the moment a different, designated fiend died. It had seemed impossible to understand how such an ability might be used, no matter how you twisted your brain. 
Tgurneu had said it was currently researching the chain-death ability in depth. Could the ability be undone with the power of a Saint? Could it be undone with a fiend’s ability? If so, how could that be prevented? 
“This chain-death ability will be an important element in our coming battle with the Braves of the Six Flowers,” Tgurneu had said. “I must eliminate even the slightest possibility of it being undone. I must use all means at my disposal to perfect it. And I need your help in this research.” 
Number seventeen had had no choice. It had accepted the order. 
The chain-death fiend would extract a very small part of the designated fiend’s body; then, after modifying the flesh, it would transplant it into the body of a different fiend. This extracted flesh would assimilate into the recipient, becoming part of it. 
Then, when the donor died, a parasite implanted in its body would sense the death and emit a unique signal to turn the donated flesh into a powerful pathogen that would kill the recipient. 
Number seventeen had used its ability to seek out a way to heal the red mark. But the transplant assimilated with its recipient completely. It also changed the nature of the body. Even when the focus of the disease was removed, it quickly regenerated into its previous state. Number seventeen had declared that if it couldn’t remove the mark with its power, no other fiend would be able to do so, either. 
Tgurneu had been very satisfied by those research results. 
“<Number seventeen! Do not allow Fremy to die!>” The wolf-fiend yelled at number seventeen. 
Number seventeen was aware that the wolf-fiend wasn’t Tgurneu. I don’t need you to tell me that , it thought. 
As it healed Fremy, it realized that the place where Fremy had been wounded was the very focal point of the chain-death ability. Was this just a coincidence? 
When Rolonia had attacked Fremy, her whip had struck in an unnatural way. It had gone straight for her heart. It couldn’t have been deliberate, could it? Could they have wanted Fremy to pretend to betray the Braves and have number seventeen undo the chain-death ability? 
I don’t care, though , number seventeen thought as it continued healing her. The disease couldn’t be cured. No matter what Fremy’s intentions were, it wouldn’t change seventeen’s course of action. 
But then, number seventeen saw—just as it restored Fremy’s heart, the mark on her chest disappeared, too. Fremy leaped up and called to the Braves, “It worked!” 
Number seventeen couldn’t believe its eyes. Not because Fremy had switched sides again—but because the chain-death ability was now undone. Seventeen’s research should have been flawless. What had just happened should not have had any effect. 
Rolonia and Nashetania laid into the fiends around them while Fremy fired a round through number seventeen. Without any combat capabilities, it was unable to defend itself or run. 
The last word that came to number seventeen’s mind was Why? 
Fiends mutated—they evolved their bodies by force of will. The stronger the will, the faster the rate of change and the stronger the ability to be gained. Sometimes, fiends even evolved unconsciously. 
Once, a fiend had evolved without ever realizing it. 
It was called specialist number six, Fremy’s mother. She had no abilities other than spawning Fremy. She had sacrificed all her other abilities to accomplish the one thing that was fundamentally impossible for a fiend: giving birth to a human child. 
On Tgurneu’s orders, number six had raised Fremy. She couldn’t do anything else and had been given no other role. She simply devoted everything she had to caring for Fremy and wishing for her healthy growth. 
She was the only fiend that had wholeheartedly loved Fremy. 
When Fremy was bullied and tormented, number six frantically tried to protect her. When Fremy was hurt, she desperately healed her. 
She knew Fremy was the Black Barrenbloom, and she also knew about the chain-death ability that had been cast on her. But she couldn’t tell Fremy about that. She wasn’t allowed to oppose Tgurneu. 
Eventually, number six noticed the chain-death disease was slowly gnawing into Fremy’s body. Having been implanted into her heart when she was very small and fragile, the condition had become a burden on her. 
Tgurneu had told number six to leave it be. If it didn’t threaten Fremy’s life and didn’t hinder her in combat, then it didn’t care. It wouldn’t allow number six to tell Fremy the truth, either, and she couldn’t fight her instincts of absolute submission to her commander. 
So she would stroke Fremy’s heart with her antenna as she lamented her own helplessness to save her. She wanted to ignore Tgurneu’s orders and help Fremy. But she didn’t give in to that impulse. 
Over time, this mutated number six’s body—and she never noticed. Neither did Tgurneu, the white lizard-fiend, or anybody else. 

Number six acquired the ability to heal Fremy’s body and protect her. 
Even with this power, she still couldn’t remove the effects of the powerful chain-death ability completely. But by stroking Fremy’s chest day after day, she slowly weakened the disease. 
Between the unusual speed of this mutation and the unique nature of the ability, it was close to a miracle that she acquired it. 
The chain-death fiend had died about two years earlier—at Tgurneu’s hands. 
Tgurneu had found a spy from Dozzu’s faction investigating the abilities of its subordinates and feared the chain-death ability would be discovered. And so, Tgurneu made the first move and killed the chain-death fiend. 
Then it didn’t have the worry about information leaking to Dozzu. Neither did it need to worry anymore about the chain-death fiend itself betraying Tgurneu and undoing the work it had done on Fremy. To Tgurneu, this was killing two birds with one stone. 
But had the chain-death fiend lived, it would have noticed the weakened effects on Fremy. Its work never would have been undone. 
“It worked!” Fremy left the wolf-fiend and its unit to meet up with Rolonia, Fremy, and Dozzu. Seeing that the mark on Fremy’s chest had vanished, Rolonia’s face brightened. Nashetania made a triumphant little fist. Dozzu seemed to finally grasp the situation. 
“Dozzu! Run into Mora’s clairvoyance range! Tell her that the hostage situation is solved!” Fremy cried. 
Dozzu nodded, left the line of battle, and headed northwest to the mountain. With its legs, it would take not even a few minutes. 
“Tell her to tell Adlet, too!” Fremy yelled after Dozzu to remind it. 
Still lying facedown, Mora clenched the barrier stake. Goldof was barely staving off the onslaught of fiends. Her power was exhausted. The poison from the ground was slowly circulating through her body. She could hardly maintain the barrier for another minute. 
That was when Dozzu came sprinting into the range of her clairvoyance. To Mora, this was like salvation from the heavens; she hadn’t known what the others were doing all this time. 
Dozzu said quietly that they wanted her to inform Adlet that Fremy was freed from the hostage situation through her mountain echo—that she wouldn’t die if Tgurneu did. Dozzu also told her to carry out the plan immediately. 
So Mora used her power of mountain echo and yelled one more time into the sky, “Adlet! Can you hear me? Fremy has been released! ” 
Though the poison was circulating through his body and his vision was blurring, Hans’s eyes didn’t leave Tgurneu for an instant. He believed there would be a chance to turn things around, and he wasn’t going to miss it. 
“…Is that true?” Tgurneu discussed this with one of the fiends nearby. And then, it began to laugh loudly. “Ha-ha-ha! That’s amazing! Just great! What on earth has happened?” Tgurneu laughed for a while, then turned to Hans. “I’ll tell you something good. Listen: Fremy undid her curse. If I die now, she won’t die with me!” 
“Meow , what did ya say?” It was difficult for Hans to believe this out of the blue. Then he heard Mora’s mountain echo from the distance. It told him that Tgurneu was speaking the truth. 
“I can’t believe it. I worked so hard to come up with countermeasures to prevent them from undoing it. To think it would be broken, ha-ha-ha. It’s like a miracle.” Tgurneu was laughing at its own plans being foiled—and Hans understood the reason why. 
It was too late. All of it. 
If Adlet had held on for just a little longer, he could have killed Tgurneu. If Fremy had been a little faster, she could have saved Adlet. But neither had been in time. 
Even knowing that the others wouldn’t hear it, Hans yelled, “Guys! Don’t go through with the plan! It got leaked a long time ago!” 
Hans’s reaction made Tgurneu laugh again. “It’s no use. They’re still fixated on saving their friend. Had they run, they’d have had a sliver of hope.” 
Hans yelled again—at Adlet, swallowed by the hippo-fiend. “Adlet! Fight! If ya kill Tgurneu neow, Fremy ain’t gonna die!” 
With a smile, Tgurneu said, “It’s no use. He can’t hear anything anymore.” 
In the stomach of the fiend, Adlet blamed himself over and over. 
He’d felt suffocated for some time now, and it seemed the sensation wasn’t just because he was trapped inside the stomach of the fiend. He could tell he’d absorbed poison. Was it just him, or had Hans and the other Braves been hit by it, too? 
Then a tentacle reached out to him. A needle in it pierced his flesh, and his difficulty breathing eased. Apparently, he’d been injected with an antitoxin—he didn’t understand what for, though. 
But he didn’t care anymore. In fact, it hurt that he’d survived at all. 
All the Braves but Fremy were going to die, and there was nothing he could do about it. He was powerless. Even if he did resist Tgurneu, there was no point. He was just that thing’s toy, and there was nothing he could do… 
He thought of Fremy. Had the fiends welcomed her, now that she’d betrayed the Braves? Would they forgive her after she’d killed so many of their kind? Tgurneu had said Adlet was the only one she wanted to save. Had that not made the fiends resent her? 
Adlet prayed with all his heart that she would be forgiven. 
For some reason, Tgurneu was maintaining its control over him. He still loved Fremy just as much as he had before his capture. “…Please, Fremy. Be happy,” he murmured. The world was ending, but he’d managed to make her happy. It was a small saving grace to him, even if he knew it was because of false love. 
His ears plugged, he could hear nothing of what was going on outside. 
He wasn’t interested—because even if he did know, a toy of Tgurneu’s wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. 
It all happened at once. The very moment Dozzu returned from communicating with Mora, Fremy sent the signal out to all the Braves. Rolonia dashed the firecracker ignition device on the ground, and instantly, countless lights flared up throughout the forest. As they watched, the lights grew, and in a heartbeat, the forest was enveloped in flame. There had to have been about three hundred fiends still in there. The trees were swallowed in the fire, and from a distance, they could hear the screams. 
Fremy watched the messenger-fiends fall to the ground, their wing roots scorched by Fremy’s gunpowder and unable to fly. Fremy also shot specialist number twenty-four beside the wolf-fiend, while Rolonia and Nashetania placed themselves to the east and west to kill all messengers except the leopard. 
All that remained was to wait for the leopard-fiend to run a message. Dozzu concentrated on the creature, waiting for it to move. 
But it never did. And there was no sign the wolf-fiend would speak to it. 
“…It can’t be,” Fremy murmured. 
As soon as the forest went up in flames, Goldof raced off. With the exhausted Mora slung over his shoulder, he covered them both with the flame-resistant cloths Adlet had given them. 
Fiends writhed in agony among the blazing trees. Many tried escaping the forest, but they were prevented by the fires rising up every which way and ended up swallowed by the flames instead. They tried weaving between the gaps, but they crashed into one another and couldn’t get away. 
Only Goldof, protected by the flame-retardant cloth, was able to leap into the fire. It burned his armor and charred his skin, but it wasn’t enough to kill him. 
But right when he was about to escape— 
“Ngh!” 
The attack came from the shadows under the canopy and from between the trees. Goldof was shocked. The only explanation was that the enemy had known about their escape route and was lying in wait for him. 
Normally, he would have zigzagged past the enemies to evade them, but thanks to the poison ravaging his body, he was clearly slowing down. 
When would the leopard-fiend move? Fremy waited. They had to kill Tgurneu now, or they couldn’t save Adlet. 
“Fremy! Retreat! The plan has failed!” Dozzu yelled. 
But Fremy still couldn’t leave the spot and kept fighting the attacking fiends. 
The wolf-fiend was chuckling. So it had seen through their plan, after all. Had Adlet leaked the information during his capture? Or had Tgurneu just figured out what they would do? 
“…Dozzu, Rolonia, Nashetania—run!” Fremy yelled. She still couldn’t give up on Adlet. 
“What purpose is there in you staying alone?!” Dozzu demanded. 
Rolonia threw the firecracker that was their signal for retreat at the ground to tell their distant allies to flee. “Fremy, run, please!” she yelled. 
But Fremy was still thinking—was there some other way to find Adlet? Was there a way to save him? 
The scattered fiends gradually gathered around the wolf-fiend. With every passing moment, the wall of enemies around them closed in. 
Inside the stomach of the fiend, Adlet continued praying for Fremy’s happiness when, suddenly, his expression clouded. 
Something was strange. He tried thinking back on everything that had happened, but his head wouldn’t work right. He was exhausted, and he had given up on everything. But his mind wouldn’t stop. The one feeling that remained in him, his wish for Fremy’s happiness, drove him forward. 
Even just remembering his conversation with Tgurneu was painful. But he examined every single thing the fiend had said. 
“…!” Adlet realized what was really behind his sense that something didn’t quite add up. It had come after Tgurneu had told him of Fremy’s surrender. 
If Fremy had betrayed them, she would have told them about the plan herself. But Tgurneu had fixated on getting that information out of him. It was possible Tgurneu had known about the plan and still wanted the information from Adlet anyway. But after Adlet’s confession, the goat-fiend beside Tgurneu had murmured You finally got it out of him . 
“…Damn it.” 
Adlet realized what that meant. 
Fremy hadn’t actually surrendered. Had Tgurneu been lying? Or was her betrayal a pretense on her part? Either way, Fremy was still fighting the fiends. 
“What a disaster,” Adlet muttered. He was furious at how stubborn she was. The only way for her to be happy was to give up and return to the fiends, but she was still carrying on with this pointless fight. 
Adlet had prevented them from ever winning. No—beating Tgurneu had been impossible all along because everything about this fight had followed its predictions to the letter. 
“Stop it, Fremy. Give it up.” If she dragged this out any longer, she might be cut off from the fiends forever. They might never forgive her. 
The only thing Adlet wanted was for Fremy to be happy. The thought that he’d succeeded at that had been his one solace in the face of the world’s destruction. 
Then Adlet remembered. The gunpowder board Fremy had made for him before he’d gone chasing after Hans—the one that would tell her to surrender when there was no more hope—it was still in his belt pouch. He moved his restrained arm, and the tentacle binding it tightened. The hippo-fiend had been ordered not to let him escape. 
“Stop it. I’m gonna make her surrender. This is gonna help you guys.” 
The tentacle’s grip did not loosen. Could the hippo-fiend not hear him, or was it just refusing to listen? 
“…Ngh!” Yanking against the restraint as hard as he could, he stuffed his hand into the belt pouch, grabbed the gunpowder board, and scratched its surface with his nails. Fremy would know it had exploded. If she got the message, she would surrender. 
But no explosion came. Did it get wet? Adlet wondered. But then, he noticed something was wrong. 
Instead of detonating, the surface of the gunpowder board had just broken a little. Adlet was confused, but he kept feeling the board. His fingers slid across an irregularity in the surface. It seemed to be fine writing. 
Fremy could manifest solid chunks of gunpowder in her hands, and she also had control over what shape those chunks would take. She could create a board with words carved into it. Stroking the letters, Adlet read the message. 
The first line read: 
FORGET IT . I’M NOT SURRENDERING. 
Adlet shifted his finger, tracing the letters on the second line. 
I’M GOING TO FIGHT AND DIE—TO THE END. 
“…You idiot. Why are you fighting?” 
Adlet despaired. Someone kill me , he thought again. He could no longer bear the weight of his choice to destroy the world with his own hands, and he couldn’t even protect the one person he loved. “No more! Let me die! Please! Kill me! I beg of you!” he screamed. His voice reached no one. 
She had to still be fighting. She was still struggling to save Adlet and beat Tgurneu. 
“Fremy…stop it. What are you fighting for?” 
I have to run. It took Fremy three minutes after she’d found out the plan had failed to realize it. But she was rooted there by the feeling that, if she fled now, Adlet would die. 
“We’re going to be completely surrounded! We really will lose anywhere to run!” Dozzu shouted, spurring Fremy to finally make a dash for their escape route. If they all died here, Adlet would never be saved. 
A mere three minutes—but it was a fatal delay. 
The four raced for the opening Dozzu had cleared for them, but a unit of fiends was blocking the way. Fremy tried routing them with her bombs and pushing forward, but enemies streamed in from both sides. When she drove back the fiends coming from the sides, next, they attacked from the rear. When she blocked that wave, more came from the front. 
“This is bad! They likely knew our escape route beforehand!” Dozzu yelled. “I suspect the enemy will have been deployed at our meeting point, too. We have no choice but to head somewhere else!” 
“We have to tell Chamo and Mora!” said Rolonia. 
“We’ll have our hands full just surviving,” Nashetania replied. 
As they battled the fiends, Fremy blamed herself. If she’d made the decision to run just a little earlier, they might have been able to survive this, at least. 
Rolonia’s whip and Nashetania’s blades were slowing down. Fremy was all right, but the poison was slowly getting to the others. With her mind entirely occupied with thoughts of Adlet, she’d failed to notice they were in trouble. 
That was when Rolonia approached her during a pause in her whip flailing and curses. “Don’t give up, Fremy,” she whispered. 
Fremy shook off the crushing despair. They would get away, survive, and keep fighting. As long as they were alive, they were sure to find a way out. 
It’s no use —so Rolonia might normally have said, slumping to the ground. But instead, she was flailing and yelling. 
It was all a disaster. The poison was spreading through her body, and she was so preoccupied with fighting, she couldn’t spare the energy to fend it off. 
But still, her allies were with her now. She felt helpless, but they would all surely find a way out of this. What she was capable of doing now was believing and powering through it. That was all. As long as the others weren’t giving up, she could keep from losing heart, too. 
Goldof continued driving his spear into the fiends that blocked his path. He was headed for the center of the ruins, to the southeast. Nashetania and the others had to be there. 
Why was I born this strong? Goldof wondered. Once, he had cursed his excessive strength, but he knew now it was what enabled him to protect people. 
The plan had failed, so he had to get all his allies out. He was the only one who could. 
“Adlet! Flee! The plan has failed!” On Goldof’s back, Mora shouted in her mountain echo. She tried communicating the situation to Adlet as she clung to her dimming consciousness. 
She wasn’t yet helpless. Dying could come after she’d done everything she could. 
Hans felt numbness in his fingertips. He was slowly losing his sense of balance. Not only was his whole body exhausted, he was still inhaling the poison torture. His fight in the thread cocoon had gone on for so long. At this point, he was baffled that he was still alive. 
Tgurneu put a hand to its ear to listen to the battles in the distance. “It seems they’re still clinging to life. They don’t know when to give up—not the Braves, and not you, either. But I don’t mind your kind.” Tgurneu smiled. “It’s just like Adlet.” 
Meow, makes me feel sick to be compared to that idiot , Hans thought. 
Inside the fiend’s stomach, Adlet considered—If Fremy would never surrender, then what should he do? 
As long as the chain-death ability existed, he couldn’t kill Tgurneu, and he’d never find a way to undo it on this battlefield. Tgurneu had declared using the Book of Truth that even it didn’t know a way to undo it. 
The Black Barrenbloom couldn’t be stopped. The only way would be to kill Tgurneu or Fremy herself. He couldn’t protect the other Braves, either. But if he escaped from here, he and Fremy could survive alone. Tgurneu had said that the power of the Black Barrenbloom wouldn’t make the seventh crest disappear. 
But then what? Would they fight to the bitter end, just him and Fremy on their own? Would they keep fleeing from Tgurneu and try to slay the Evil God together? No way. Fremy was strong, but they’d never be able to kill all the fiends that were left. 
And he wasn’t the strongest in the world or anything close… He was just Tgurneu’s toy. 
“I can’t beat Tgurneu…,” Adlet moaned. He had accepted this as an incontrovertible fact. No matter what schemes he came up with, no matter what secret tools he used, they would never work on the fiend commander. There was no way he could overcome the one who’d created him. 
He wailed and sobbed like a child. At this rate, Fremy would continue struggling until her demise. Twisting his body, Adlet tried prying off the tentacles. But they held him tight, and he couldn’t move at all. “Please…please let me protect Fremy. No one…can save the world…anymore. So just let me save her…” 
Nobody heard him, and he cried until he had no more tears left. 
“What are you fighting for, Fremy?” Adlet asked. At that moment, his finger happened to slide on the gunpowder board, and he realized that, a little farther down, there was a third line carved on it. 
I WILL MAKE YOU HAPPY . 
“…You idiot,” Adlet muttered. 
Why was she fighting? That one line gave him his answer. He had protected her and loved her, and she couldn’t abandon him. And because she’d never opened her heart, he understood how much emotion this one line carried. 
But there was no point in protecting him. He didn’t deserve to be happy. Manipulated by Tgurneu, he had betrayed his allies and chosen to doom the world. If her wish was for his happiness, it would never come true. If her joy was contingent on his, then it was a gift he would never, ever be able to give her. 
The road to her happiness had long since been cut off. 
“Gwagh!” The tentacle squeezed around his body, cracking bones and trying to keep him immobile. I’d rather it just finish me off all at once , Adlet thought. Every bone in his body creaked. Is this really the end now? he wondered. 
Countless memories rose up and disappeared again in his head—all of her. 
Their first meeting. Back in the Phantasmal Barrier, when he’d taken her as his hostage and ran. Embracing her in the Fainting Mountains. In the Temple of Fate, when she’d asked him to save her. 
His last recollection was of the words he’d exchanged with her just a few hours ago. It felt like the distant past now. 
“Smile, no matter what happens. That’s enough for me.” 
A smile appeared through Adlet’s tears. 
There was no way he could show his face to Fremy at the moment, but right now, smiling was the one thing he could do for her. 
“!” 
Something mysterious happened. His body began resisting the strangulation all on its own. His arm, close to breaking, grabbed the tentacle and twisted it away. 
I’m an idiot , Adlet derided himself. You’re still gonna resist? Even though you’re nothing more than Tgurneu’s toy. Even though you’re just a fake hero. Despite understanding that all that stood before him was despair, strength welled up in him once more when he smiled. 
“…Damn it.” 
All he had left was his desire for Fremy’s happiness. The fake love planted by Tgurneu. Nothing else. 
But Fremy had sworn with that gunpowder board that she would make him happy. If that was what she wanted, if that would make her content, then he had to oblige. And to find his own happiness, he had to keep fighting. 
It was impossible. Adlet understood that painfully well. 
But even if it was impossible, he kept pushing. He kept resisting the pressure of the tentacle. 
He’d never become the strongest man in the world. He hadn’t managed to be its savior, either. He’d never get revenge for his sister and his friend or make Fremy happy, either. 
But he kept struggling anyway. 
Four years ago, Tgurneu had spoken with its confidant, the three-winged fiend. It was then that it had decided to make Adlet the seventh. But the three-winged fiend just hadn’t been able to accept that decision, stubbornly pressing Tgurneu to explain its reasoning. 
“Fine. I’ll explain it to you. It’s because Adlet has no talents at all.” 
The three-winged fiend seemed to doubt its ears. 
“And he’s aware of it. It’s painfully clear to him that he lacks aptitude for anything. But he still doesn’t give up. That’s the reason I chose him.” 
The three-winged fiend was completely perplexed. 
“Before aspiring to a grand goal, all humans think to themselves I’m sure I can do this . That’s why they do it at all. But such a human can’t overcome the impossible. 
“The one who can is someone who takes up a challenge even knowing that it cannot be done. They may have no aptitudes, no chances of winning, but they still can’t give up the challenge. Only one with such determination can make the impossible possible.” 
“You mean to säy Adlet is such a përson?” 
Tgurneu nodded. “He won’t give up. Even knowing it’s a goal that is beyond him, he will keep trying. There is no other human like that. I believe the determination he possesses surpasses any talent or aptitude. 
“That is why I have chosen Adlet Mayer.” 
“Fremy!” Adlet yelled. The tentacle around him twisted and tore off. His arm freed, the binding on his legs loosened. 
He wasn’t thinking about how Tgurneu was controlling him anymore. He didn’t even care if his feelings were fake. Right now, in this moment, he loved Fremy. 
He crawled for the fiend’s mouth, but its tentacles tried to drag him back. His bones ground uncomfortably, and his hair was tearing out as he pulled his upper body out of the fiend’s stomach. “I swear I’ll make you happy!” 
Adlet crushed the hippo-fiend’s eye with his fist, and it screamed and writhed. He slid out of its mouth and rolled onto the ground. The scene that greeted him was unchanged from before he’d been swallowed. 
But Adlet saw that Tgurneu was stunned—and that Hans was yelling something. He couldn’t hear what he was saying. 
A fiend set on him from behind, trying to capture him again, but Adlet rolled forward to evade it. When he shook out the mucus the tentacles had poured into his ears, his hearing began to return. 
“…Failed…em…ed.” 
Adlet hadn’t realized Mora was yelling with her mountain echo. He couldn’t quite hear what she was saying. 
“…re…saved, meow !” 
Adlet focused on listening. He couldn’t understand Hans, either, but eventually, his hearing returned to normal. 
“Adlet! Flee! Fremy has been released, but the plan has failed!” 
Even now that Adlet could hear Mora, he couldn’t believe his ears. Overcome with surprise, he forgot everything. 
Just then, Hans darted up to him to block an attack coming at him from behind. Adlet asked, “Has Fremy been saved?” 
“Ya heard? It sounds like she meownaged somethin’ herself.” 
“Then…” Adlet’s eyes turned to Tgurneu farther away, who looked ready to fight. “Fremy isn’t gonna die anymore? We can kill Tgurneu?” 
Hans gave a definite nod. Adlet’s shoulders started shaking. He couldn’t hold back the laughter welling within him. “Looks like it wasn’t impossible this time.” 
The eastern sky was beginning to turn pale. Dawn was close. 
Adlet had a feeling. Either he or Tgurneu would see the coming sunset—but only one of them.