Rokka no Yuusha - Volume 6 - Chapter 6

Chapter 6 
Love’s Conclusion 

Something’s funny. Chamo couldn’t stop thinking it—even when she’d been furious over Hans’s betrayal of her, when she’d furiously dumped Fremy and Nashetania for being dumb and told them to go do whatever, and when she’d been driving off fiends’ attacks during her search for Hans. 
She was using a third of her slave-fiends to protect herself. These enemies were way weaker than the ones she’d fought with Hans, and they couldn’t even get close to her. She’d instructed the rest of her slave-fiends to disperse across the whole of the ruins. The enemy was interfering with some of them, but still, they should have been able to find something in the ruins. 
Chamo had told them to return immediately if they found any clue, no matter how small. But none had come back. Was Hans not in the ruins anymore? Chamo still couldn’t tell. 
“…Yeah, something’s funny,” she muttered. She remembered back when they’d fought with the fiend elites, before they’d come here. Those fiends had been strong. If Hans had betrayed her then, he could have killed her easily. But he’d even saved her after she fell and fiends attacked her. 
So Hans’s goal hadn’t been to kill her. But she was clueless as to what he or Tgurneu was really after. 
That was when a single slave-fiend returned. Ignoring the nearby enemies, it came to Chamo’s side with a weapon in its mouth—one of Hans’s throwing knives. 
“Huh? …What’s this?” 
There were words written on it, as well as signs that someone had tried to wipe them off, but the letters hadn’t been totally erased. If she looked closely, she could still read them. It was definitely Hans’s handwriting. 
REVEAL TO EVERYONE THAT YOU’RE THE SEVENTH. OR GIVE ME PROOF IT’S YOU. THEN, I’LL TELL YOU HOW TO SAVE FREMY. 
Chamo was confused. Based on the message, it seemed Hans had given instructions to someone. 
Then Chamo remembered—Hans had tossed those throwing knives at Adlet more than once. “…What the heck?” 
Examining the writing on the knife, Chamo kept thinking. 
A stench wafted around her, and Mora’s mountain echo warned of a poison in the air. Still, Chamo didn’t stop thinking. She could leave this place later. Flames rose up suddenly on the distant mountain. But Chamo ignored that, too. She heard Mora’s mountain echo informing them that Fremy had been saved and that the plan had failed. 
But Chamo didn’t move, still studying the knife. 
“I can kill Tgurneu, right?” Adlet asked, picking up his fallen sword. 
Watching him, Tgurneu was almost touched. So its seventh, the one it had had such high hopes for, was indeed this great a man? Even now, he still hadn’t considered accepting his fate? 
Adlet was on his feet again, but that changed nothing about the situation. He was just an extra body beside Hans, who had outlived his time. They couldn’t call their allies. They couldn’t take down the commander, and they couldn’t prevent the others from dying, either. This just meant Tgurneu would be able to taste the joy of crushing his love once again. To Tgurneu, Adlet’s comeback was actually a happy miscalculation—or so it should have been. 
The fiend was confused. What was this trembling welling up from the center of its fig? 
Why was it afraid? 
Still confused, Tgurneu considered how to direct its subordinates. First, it would take down the silk cocoon. It would summon all its minions from around the ruins and order them to keep Adlet and Hans from escaping. Then, Tgurneu would flee. 
But the moment it arrived at that decision, Hans said, “If yer scared, why don’cha run, Tgurneu?” 
Of course I’ll run , Tgurneu thought. But Hans’s next remark stabbed it through the heart. 
“At this rate, you’ll end up losin’ cuz of the miracles of love.” Hans was smiling. He was clearly provoking Tgurneu to keep it here. 
But though aware of the tactic, Tgurneu swallowed its order to retreat. “There’s nothing for me to be concerned about. I’ll kill you and capture Adlet again.” 
“Meow-hee-hee-hee! Well, thank ya! But yer the one who’s gonna die here!” 
Despite Hans’s scorn, Tgurneu couldn’t bring itself to run. 
If it fled now, that would mean acknowledging it feared the power of love. It would be accepting defeat at the hands of the love that so drove Adlet. And Tgurneu couldn’t do that. 
The power of love existed for Tgurneu. Never something to fear. Tgurneu was the one who used it. Who destroyed it. This fiend would never be the one scampering off in confusion. 
If Tgurneu was to flee in fear of love even once, that experience would scar its heart with a sense of inferiority, a feeling that would leave it unable to find joy in love’s demise ever again. 
It may have been an illogical choice, but it was inescapable. This was who Tgurneu was. 
Tgurneu bared its fangs. Claws shot from its fingers, and its tail snapped like a whip. It approached Hans and Adlet slowly, wordlessly. The ten fiends of its guard, who had not participated in this battle thus far, also stepped away from its defense and moved to attack. Tgurneu was finally leaving its leisurely, cloistered position to join the battle. Hans’s provocation had worked. Had it escaped them, their chance of victory would have been nil. 
“Haa!” With a shout, Tgurneu dashed toward the Braves. The speed of its steps was neither faster nor slower than Hans’s. As its body, Tgurneu employed a fiend with the head of a mouse. It seemed to have great agility. 
Using the claws on both its hands, it made to kill Hans and Adlet simultaneously. The two leaned back and barely avoided the strikes. Tgurneu’s second attack flowed toward Hans, but Hans’s sword blocked it while Adlet threw a needle to stop the third. 
“Stay close!” Hans yelled. They had to protect each other, or they wouldn’t be able to fend off Tgurneu’s strikes. As they defended themselves from the continuous onslaught from Tgurneu’s claws, the other nearby fiends joined in. 
“Adlet! Ya don’t have no meowr tools?!” Hans cried. 
Adlet replied, “I destroyed them! The flash grenades, the flute, the firecrackers—everything!” 
They guarded each other’s backs as they weathered attack after attack. If Tgurneu had escaped, the Braves would have been done for. But the fiend’s refusal to run still didn’t mean they had a shot at winning. 
Adlet was desperately trying to think of a way out. All he had left in the way of tools, though, were one Saint’s Spike and various types of needles. The rest he had used in combat or destroyed on Tgurneu’s orders. Even if he wanted to call for their allies, he had no means of doing so. 
“Meaowr!” Hans’s sword crossed with Tgurneu’s claws, which shot out at a frightening speed. Hans was clearly moving slower than usual. 
Adlet protected his companion, keeping the fiends at bay with paralysis needles. He didn’t have that many. He had to summon the other Braves somehow. At this rate, the two wouldn’t last ten minutes. 
The bird-faced fiend attacked Adlet from behind. As he kicked it away, Adlet racked his brain. 
He could tell that one of Tgurneu’s minions was using some kind of fiend ability. It had to be something that would conceal their presence, making it hard for others to find them. 
That was when Adlet noticed a cluster of fiends in one corner of the square: the spider-fiend and the ape-fiend that had been by Tgurneu’s side before. They were the only ones just watching from the sidelines without participating in the battle. One had to have the ability to conceal their presence. 
“Go for them!” Adlet pointed at the corner of the square. But before Hans could even make a move, the spider spat out thread to create a defensive wall. Adlet threw needles at them, but they weren’t enough to kill the two fiends. 
“No go, meow … Think up somethin’, Adlet,” said Hans. They had no choice but to break through the concealing ability, after all. 
The ability seemed incredibly powerful, but it couldn’t be perfect. If it were, Tgurneu would have needed to make Adlet break his tools. Tgurneu had ordered him to throw away his flash grenades, and that meant bright light could communicate their location to their allies. But Adlet had nothing left in his arsenal that emitted light. 
That wasn’t all—Tgurneu had also told him to destroy his bombs and his fiend-calling flute. And when Hans had yelled out, Tgurneu had ordered the fiends throughout the ruins to wail and drown out his voice. The ruins still resounded with the noise. 
Sound. Adlet was certain that if he could just make a noise that would reach the whole of the ruins—enough to drown out all the fiends’ cries—he could inform their allies of their location. 
It was a simple solution. But Tgurneu had made sure that door was closed to him. Adlet had no more implements to make any loud noises. 
“Meow! Do somethin’! Yer the only one we can count on now!” Hans shouted miserably. The fiends were descending on them from all sides, focusing their attacks on Adlet to prevent him from calling reinforcements. He blocked their strikes with his sword and armor. 
Tgurneu kicked Hans back. As Hans tumbled clumsily along the ground, Tgurneu looked away. Hans had to have been waiting for that moment. The pathetic cry was also a sham, to make Tgurneu overconfident. 
“Hrmeow!” Hans came out of the roll and instantly switched directions, leaping with the strength of his arms alone now that Tgurneu was distracted and switching targets to Adlet. 
“!” 
One of Hans’s swords pierced Tgurneu’s stomach. The fiend tried to pull it out, but Hans’s other blade sliced off its mouse head, which rolled onto the ground. 
“Meow!” 
But the headless fiend was still moving. It stabbed its own stomach with a hand, plunging it all the way in to grab the fig and toss it backward—all so fast even Hans couldn’t respond. The gigantic dog-fiend behind it instantly dashed for the fig. Adlet threw a needle to keep it back, but the dog-fiend swept the needle aside with its tail and caught its tiny commander in its mouth. 
“Whoops, that was close. How careless of me… It seems I have to be a little more cautious,” the dog-fiend said in Tgurneu’s voice. Its tone was not as sedate as it had been, but that lack of composure meant that Adlet and Hans were now even deeper in danger. 
Tgurneu would no longer be careless. 
“I’ll focus on support, after all. I’ll leave offense to you,” it ordered, and the other fiends attacked. 
I really have to call for help somehow , Adlet thought. But no matter how he thought about it, he still didn’t have any tools that could make a lot of noise. 
Are we stuck? Just as the question entered his mind, he recalled what Atreau had once told him, and all his training began trickling back. 
What Atreau regarded as important above all else was the training of the eye. He had said that when under attack, even when you were certain of your victory, you should always be observing the world around you. Atreau had taught him that his secret weapons were not only what was tucked into his pouches. Think of everything in the world as your weapon. 
Adlet’s eyes roved. The faint light of the sun told him things that had been obscured before—about the thread cocoon, the situation in the square, and the many crumbling buildings surrounding it. 
“Hans, get back,” Adlet ordered. “And guard me!” 
Hans was trying to go for Tgurneu, in the dog-fiend’s body. At Adlet’s instruction, he shifted back and defended the young man from the fiends’ attacks instead. At the same time, Adlet clenched the grip of his sword and fired the blade. 
He wasn’t aiming it at Tgurneu or for its guards. His target was outside the silk cocoon—one of the delapidated buildings. It was the tallest tower in the ruins, probably once the center of the people’s lives. Adlet knew the center of every town and village had a system to inform the residents of unusual events. 
The blade of Adlet’s sword landed a clean hit on the chain supporting the bell hanging from the top of that tower. The bell swayed wide, and when the chain failed to bear its weight, it fell to the ground. The crashing gong rang out into the forest. 
“It’s no use.” Tgurneu smiled. “That’s not going to be loud enough to reach the Braves. They’re far away now.” 
Fremy was still flinging bombs at the fiends around her in search of an escape route. Rolonia and Nashetania appeared to be in pain. Only Fremy and Dozzu were doing all right. 
“Watch out!” Dozzu cried as it protected Fremy with a lightning bolt. The enemy was going for Fremy’s limbs, still with no apparent intention of killing her. But it was only a matter of time before they captured her. 
Fremy listened hard. Was Adlet calling for help? Had anything strange happened? She heard nothing. 
Goldof was fighting to escape, too. All he could hear were the cries of the burning fiends and the wailing of more in the distance. 
Staring at that knife blade, Chamo was certain: Hans was not the seventh. When he’d attacked her and called himself the seventh, it was all an act. Had he really been the seventh, he would never have let her get away, and he wouldn’t have demanded proof from Adlet that he was the seventh, either. 
Chamo didn’t understand what Hans was trying to do or what he was thinking, but it was clear that the real prisoner here wasn’t Adlet—it was Hans. 
“…Hng!” The poison was spreading inside her, but she didn’t order her scattered slave-fiends to gather to her. She couldn’t abandon Hans when he was all alone. 
That was when Chamo thought she heard a metallic sound far away. But she didn’t even know from which direction it had come. 
“…Grek.” 
However, something else did react to the sound of the bell: two of the slave-fiends Chamo had dispatched into the ruins. They had attempted to enter the square once before, but specialist number eleven’s power had diverted their attention away from it, ultimately sending them headed in the opposite direction. 
But at the sudden sound of the bell, the slave-fiends stopped and turned. One remained in place while the other immediately ran off to Chamo. 
Specialist number eleven was at the edge of the thread cocoon, still using its power as it hid in the shadow of a ruined building. When that bell had fallen to the ground, it had panicked, but the sound wasn’t loud enough to reach the Braves. Eleven was certain they wouldn’t be able to overcome its ability. 
Tgurneu had ordered number eleven to kill itself, but it hadn’t abandoned its loyalty to Tgurneu. I was wrong , it told itself, devoting all its being to Tgurneu’s purpose—and to the Evil God’s. 
Continuously pouring all its energy into its ability, number eleven never noticed the slave-fiend approaching the silk cocoon, ready to spit acid at it. 
Or Chamo, charging it from behind. 
Having lost his sword, Adlet borrowed one of Hans’s to engage the fiends, but with just one blade, Hans’s attack power was halved. A fiend’s arm skimmed Hans’s head, taking advantage of a brief opening. 
“Meow!” Hans fell, but Adlet saved him with his throwing needles and Hans’s own sword. 
Hold on , Adlet told himself. 
Then, all the fiends—including Tgurneu’s dog-like form—descended on them as a horde. Just as Adlet thought I can’t dodge them all , there was a call nearby. 
“Catboy!” 
Every fiend turned toward the voice, and Adlet took the opportunity to scoop up Hans and escape the center of the horde. 
One after another, slave-fiends were ripping through the thread cocoon and bursting into the square. Tgurneu and the fiends all seemed shocked. 
They were saved. But a moment later, Adlet remembered—Chamo believed Hans was the enemy. She’d been so enraged, she’d lost her head and gone after him. “Chamo! Hans isn’t the enemy!” 
The slave-fiends were charging for Adlet when from his arms Hans yelled, “Kill Tgurneu! Adlet’s on our side now!” That order stopped the slave-fiends in their tracks. Adlet was shocked. Chamo shouldn’t have known he was the seventh. 
“…Chamo knew it. You weren’t the enemy, catboy. So what about Adlet? Has he betrayed Tgurneu?” Adlet worried about how to explain the situation, but Chamo ignored him as she scanned the battlefield. “Well, whatever. We’ll think about it after Tgurneu’s dead. Which one is it?” 
In response to Chamo’s question, the dog-fiend stepped forward. “Me.” 
“Huh. So you’re announcing yourself? You’re not gonna sneak around and hide anymore?” 
“Indeed not. Because I don’t need to run.” Tgurneu seemed quite unruffled. 
That was when Adlet realized—Chamo was panting hard, and her movements seemed a little twitchy. She wasn’t okay, either. She’d inhaled the poison in the air around the ruins. 
“With you in that state, I can win easily.” 
The two fiends and slave-fiends moved at the same time, crashing together in the center of the square. Adlet and Hans quickly jumped to the side to avoid becoming embroiled themselves. 
At Tgurneu’s direction, one fiend vomited up something that looked like a conch shell, and another fiend blew it. Adlet could tell it was like his own fiend-calling flute. Tgurneu was summoning all its allies in the ruins. 
Chamo pulled a flash grenade out of her pocket and threw it into the air. For just an instant, the whole area was enveloped in intense light. That was the signal they’d decided would mean they had discovered Tgurneu. 
In the dog-fiend’s body, Tgurneu charged Chamo, but her slave-fiends stood in front of her, blocking its path. Both sides had called for support, but neither had any intention of relying on it. They meant to finish this personally. 
Fremy, Nashetania, Rolonia, and Dozzu were on the northwest side of the ruins, surrounded by fiends. 
The sudden light made Fremy doubt her eyes. The flash grenade was the signal they’d discovered Tgurneu. Had Adlet thrown it? Or Chamo? 
At roughly the same moment, Fremy’s ears caught a sound like a conch flute being blown. Only fiends could hear it, and it was coming from the very direction where she’d seen that flash of light. 
The four had been trying to escape, but now they instantly changed course. This battle to flee was already nearly hopeless anyway. The only way out now was to kill Tgurneu. 
The wolf-fiend was occupied with preventing the party’s retreat when it heard the sound of the conch flute. That was Tgurneu’s emergency signal—the order to cancel all operations and join their commander in battle. 
I have to rush to Tgurneu’s side immediately , it thought. But then, it realized it had a more important role—to keep the four here from getting close. 
“Everyone, listen! I’m nöt Tgurneu! I was only prétending to be, on the Cómmander’s örders!” There was no longer any reason for it to keep up the charade, although the fiends that weren’t aware of the situation were shocked. “All fiends of this förce, stop these four fröm leaving—or die here! But dön’t kill Fremy! These are Cómmander Tgurneu’s orders!” 
The two Braves, Nashetania, and Dozzu took advantage of the wolf-fiend’s distraction as it set about giving orders to escape the encirclement and attempt to make their way to the southwest, but the wolf-fiend shot after them, blocking their path with its own body. Ignoring Fremy’s bullets thudding into its flesh, it attacked. 
Less than forty fiends protected Tgurneu. Hans had already whittled down ten, and a few of those remaining weren’t combat-oriented. Opposite them, Chamo had about fifty slave-fiends. Numerically, hers was the superior position. 
The fiends blocked the slave-fiends’ attacks as they charged for Chamo, Tgurneu’s canine form at their center. The commander was no longer on the defensive; it had turned the tide. 
The dog-fiend wasn’t that strong. It could hardly compare to the three-winged fiend Tgurneu had controlled when the Braves first met it and the yeti-fiend it inhabited during their second encounter. But despite that, this battle was not going in the heroes’ favor. The slave-fiends were being pushed back. 
“Watch out! Chamo!” Adlet cut down an enemy that had circled around to the side. But the slave-fiends were immediately suspicious, baring their fangs at him. 
“Meow , Chamo, Adlet’s on our side. Focus on Tgurneu.” 
“Chamo’s got no idea what happened.” She shot Adlet a cold look. Adlet kept on analyzing the combat situation. 
The enemy’s strength was in their skilled coordination. They were good at dealing with small numbers of foes as a unit, but even against a large force, they still moved in a controlled manner. Meanwhile, the slave-fiends were sluggish. Some momentarily crumbled into their mud form. This was the first time Adlet had ever seen that happen. Chamo was gradually losing her capacity to command the slave-fiends. 
“Cómmander Tgurneu!” And then, to top it off, there was a cry from outside the square. The fiends spread throughout the ruins were uniting together here. Chamo dispatched about twenty of her slave-fiends around the square to block the reinforcements. 
“…Ngh.” 
They really couldn’t let this go on long. Hans gave Adlet a look, and Adlet returned it. He was thinking the same thing. 
Having dropped its performance as Tgurneu, the wolf-fiend charged after Fremy again and again, and she blocked the attacks with the grip of her gun as she rolled backward to avoid her assailant. 
The wolf-fiend was strong. Even after being shot multiple times, it still wouldn’t go down, and there was no time for her to create any bombs. 
She had to go to the source of that flash grenade—and quickly. She had to drive back the fiends around them and buy her allies time to get away. This was Fremy’s job, as the one whose attacks covered the widest range. 
“Ngh!” But the wolf-fiend could tell what she was trying to do and was attacking fast and hard to keep her from doing it. 
“It’s so säd, Fremy. If you’d obediently súrrendered, we would have fórgiven everything,” it taunted. 
“Please, Fremy, find a way to push the enemy back!” pleaded Nashetania. 
“We can’t carve a way through on our own!” cried Dozzu. With fiend after fiend piling on, it wasn’t able to fire its most powerful lightning blasts. Nashetania’s steel wasn’t enough to clear a path, either. 
Suddenly, Rolonia briefly stopped fighting with her whip and ran toward Dozzu, grabbed its small body, and flung the fiend eastward. 
“!” 
As Dozzu bounced and rolled away from the enemies that had encircled it, Rolonia’s whip wrapped around Fremy and threw her in the same direction. 
The fiends took that as their chance to descend upon Rolonia. She defended herself with her armor, but it couldn’t absorb all the impact. 
“This isn’t good! Nashetania! Help her!” Dozzu yelled. 
But Rolonia said, “I don’t need it!” 
For just an instant, her whole body turned red, and crimson mist spewed out through the gaps in her armor. Her Saint’s blood was a fatal poison to every kind of fiend. The fiends around her screamed within the fog. She had thrown Fremy and Dozzu away because her attack would have felled them, too. 
“Rolonia!” Fremy yelled. 
But within the cloud of blood, Rolonia raised her hand to Fremy, telling her not to come help. Fremy realized what she wanted. She meant to ensure their escape alone. 
Fremy wanted to help her but desperately resisted the urge. Revealing no hesitation, she turned away and raced toward where the light had been. Dozzu and Nashetania had slipped out from the cloud of blood and the crowd of fiends, and they joined her. 
“Ngh!” 
After escaping the mass of fiends, the trio was only able to run for about a minute. The enemy had responded to the wolf-fiend’s call and was moving to surround them, pressing close from both sides to catch them in a pincer attack. 
Nashetania kept them back with blades shooting up from the ground. “I’ll handle this.” She stopped and turned away from Fremy and Dozzu. The fiend seemed upset at this, but Nashetania smiled and said, “Don’t worry, Dozzu. I won’t be dying yet.” Then, with a swipe of her slim sword, she faced the fiends close on their tail. “Because I have Goldof on my side.” 
Fremy kept sprinting toward her goal, and Dozzu, with more than a few backward glances, followed after her. 
The fiends tightened their formation around Tgurneu to charge Chamo. Chamo’s slave-fiends were dispersed over a wide area, so the unit made a beeline for Chamo through the center of the line. The moment Adlet and Hans saw it happening, they sprang into action, running straight at Tgurneu and splitting up to either side in perfect coordination—Adlet to the right, Hans to the left. The few fiends on the flanks switched targets to the two men. 
Adlet smiled. Just what he’d been hoping for. 
Adlet ignored the attackers and ran backward. Grabbing onto a building to his side, he used the stakes hidden in his boots to run up the wall. The fiends crashed into it, and the building shuddered. Next, he threw the needles in both his hands at Hans’s opponents. Now that the attacking fiends were distracted by the needles from behind, Hans instantly slipped past them and went for Tgurneu at the center of the formation. 
Tgurneu had been focusing on Chamo and was helpless to stop him. The slave-fiends were blocking the rest, so they couldn’t shift to protect Tgurneu. 
“…Oh de—” 
“Meow!” 
Adlet’s goal had been to feign a pincer attack as he analyzed the fiends, then back up Hans’s attempt to kill Tgurneu. Hans had picked up on it without so much as a word exchanged between them. 
Hans sliced off the dog-fiend’s head with his sword. Headless, the creature thrust one forepaw into its stomach, ripped out the fig, and flung it into the air. 
All the nearby fiends reached out for it. The slave-fiends launched an all-out assault then, holding back the underlings that tried to catch the fig and ripping up the body of the fallen dog-fiend. 
Only one fiend escaped them, but Adlet threw his needles at it. The last-ditch effort was brought to a halt by a pain needle. 
The fig hung in midair with no allies to catch it. Instantly, Hans’s blade sliced the fruit to pieces. 
“…Äh.” One fiend cried witlessly. A heartbeat later, the rest began wailing and clutching their heads. 
“Gyaaaaaaah!” 
“Cóm…mander…Tgurneu… Cómmander Tgurneeeeeu!” 
When they had all first entered the Howling Vilelands, Fremy had told her companions that fiends were connected with their commanders by a special bond. The moment Tgurneu died, the fact would be communicated to its whole army—and with such intensity that the confusion should turn them into a disorderly mob. 
“…We won,” said Hans. 
Still clinging to the wall, Adlet watched—as Hans and Chamo let down their guards, certain of victory. “Dodge!” he yelled an instant too late. Some of the fiends had ceased their grief-stricken writhing and were coming up on Hans and Chamo from behind. 
Hans reacted to the warning and flipped around, and Chamo’s slave-fiends leaped out to protect her. Adlet threw every needle he had in an attempt to protect them. 
“Meargh!” 
But it all needed to happen a moment sooner. A fiend’s horn pierced Hans’s side, and another’s claw ripped open Chamo’s back. The wounds were deep—possibly fatal. 
Adlet leaped from the wall, and the fiends attacked en masse to finish off Hans and Chamo. Adlet had no more tools left. There was no way for him to save them. 
“Watch out!” 
Then he noticed two figures rushing in. Lightning brought the fiends targeting Chamo to a halt while bullets tore through the one blocking Adlet. Adlet used that moment to scoop up Hans and escape the crowd of foes. 
Fremy and Dozzu burst into the square, both covered in blood. 
“Hans isn’t our enemy! Don’t attack him! You can’t let him die!” Adlet yelled. 
Fremy and Dozzu seemed confused. But seeing Hans a mess of wounds inflicted by fiends, they seemed to understand he’d been fighting with Adlet and Chamo against Tgurneu. 
The arrival of reinforcements made the fiends pause to pull close together and strengthen their defenses. 
Fremy raised her gun while sparks crackled off every hair of Dozzu’s body. Cradling the motionless Hans, Adlet shifted behind them. 
“…We will ask what happened later. Our priority is Tgurneu’s defeat,” said Dozzu. 
“Which one of them is it, Adlet?” 
Adlet couldn’t reply to Fremy’s question. He couldn’t believe what he’d just seen. 
Just a moment ago, Tgurneu had been using the dog-fiend as its body. So the dog-fiend was either carrying Tgurneu’s fig or hiding it within itself. Dozzu had said Tgurneu could only control one fiend at once, and its power was nullified at a distance greater than seven feet. The dog had to have been holding Tgurneu’s fig, no question. 
But the fig Hans had sliced up had been a dummy. Just a fig. 
And the body of the dog-fiend had been trampled and savagely crushed by the slave-fiends. If Tgurneu’s fig had been inside it, it would have been long dead, and no fiend had taken a fig from the host corpse. Adlet had made sure of that. So where was Tgurneu’s real body? 
When Adlet didn’t reply, Fremy gave him a questioning look. Then a fiend called out to them with a smile—a rhinoceros-fiend that stood on two legs. “I’m over here! Fremy! Dozzu!” Adlet couldn’t read the expression on the rhino’s face, but the way it spread its forelegs was clearly happy. 
“I’m glad you’ve come. My heart leaps to know that two such longtime acquaintances will be my opponents in the final battle. A grand last fight calls for an appropriate foe.” 
Fremy pointed her gun at the rhinoceros-fiend, but Adlet put his hand on the muzzle to stop her. “…That’s not Tgurneu.” 
Fremy and Dozzu looked at Adlet. 
“We got the wrong one. We still haven’t found it.” 
So they figured me out , Tgurneu thought, but it couldn’t compliment Adlet for being as sharp as ever. After this many clues, anyone should have been able to figure it out. Just as the boy had surmised, the rhino-fiend did not carry Tgurneu’s real body. 
Had Adlet and Hans not found it strange that Tgurneu hadn’t run when Chamo arrived and threw that flash grenade? Obviously, this was because Tgurneu was certain it would never lose. 
The moment Adlet saw Fremy, he wanted to thoughtlessly drop everything and embrace her. But they were in the middle of a deadly fight. He could hug her after Tgurneu was gone. 
“Chamo…can you still fight?” Adlet asked. She nodded. A slug slave-fiend was doing some first aid on the gashes in her back with a tentacle, but most of her slave-fiends were starting to ooze back into mud form. She was only barely able to keep going. 
“Protect Hans. And hold back the fiends coming from the outside.” 
“…Okay.” 
Breathing and replying seemed painful for her. She just lay on the back of the slug-fiend, gasping. One slave-fiend swallowed the unconscious Hans while the rest spread outside the square in unison. Even wounded and exhausted, Chamo was still trying to fight. 
“What do you mean? The rhino has to have Tgurneu’s real body. It’s not acting, like the wolf-fiend was. That’s the real one.” Dozzu sounded genuinely confused. 
“I don’t have a perfect understanding of this either,” said Adlet. “But Tgurneu isn’t in there.” 
With the rhino in their center, the fiends pressed toward them as a tight unit. The party was inching backward. 
“We killed a different fiend before. It looked like Tgurneu was controlling it, but it wasn’t inside. I think the one that’s talking now might be the same. Tgurneu isn’t there.” 
“That’s ridiculous. There’s no way Tgurneu’s ability could…” could do that , Dozzu must have been about to say before it shut its mouth. It must have realized it wasn’t aware of everything Tgurneu was capable of. “Then…where is Tgurneu?” 
Adlet searched for the answer, but his head wouldn’t work right. Exhaustion and blood loss were wearing him down. 
“What are you talking about, Adlet? I’m right here. This fiend has swallowed me,” Tgurneu taunted, and the fiends launched themselves forward. Fremy and Dozzu frantically kept them at bay, but with no tools left, Adlet couldn’t even defend himself properly. 
“Adlet!” 
“Watch out!” 
Fremy and Dozzu both protected him. With their help, Adlet evaded the attacks, running this way and that. It didn’t seem Dozzu would use the stake Mora had given it—because there was no point. They were the ones who were cornered now. 
Think. Remember , Adlet told himself. He had been here with Tgurneu longest, so he was the only one capable of seeing the truth behind this ploy. There had to be a clue among everything Tgurneu had said and done—all the words and deeds of the other fiends in the battle. If they were trying to hide something, they were sure to let something slip somewhere. 
“Ngh!” A cluster of fiends rushed at Adlet, and though he attempted to dash back to escape, he couldn’t shake them off. Dozzu tried covering him with a lightning strike, but one enemy shielded the others with its own body as they hounded Adlet. 
“Pull yourself together!” Fremy threw a bomb with one hand as she fired with the other, and, finally, Adlet got away. 
A number of strange things had happened, and Adlet hit on the greatest of the questions they raised: How could these fiends be so amazingly coordinated at all? 
When they’d been fighting Hans and when the mouse-fiend had taken the fig from the dog-fiend, the majority of their comrades had moved as one. There had been no indication that they were taking orders from somewhere. They’d given no signs, exchanged no eye signals. 
It was strange. While they were pretending to be in chaos after Tgurneu’s “death,” they’d circled around behind Hans and Chamo. Was it even possible for all the fiends to come up with such a complicated strategy together and carry it out at the same time? 
But not all the fiends had been a part of that perfect coordination. The goat-fiend beside Tgurneu and the spider-fiend that had created the silk cocoon had acted based on their commander’s verbal orders, just like normal fiends. 
What was different about the ones that could coordinate perfectly and the ones that didn’t? 
“We haven’t…found Tgurneu? That’s impossible…it couldn’t be…,” Dozzu muttered. Its tiny body nimbly slipped among the fiends’ legs, but what it was doing was dangerous—practically a suicide attack. 
“Stop it, Dozzu! That’s too risky!” Adlet yelled. 
Dozzu didn’t listen. It made contact with the rhino-fiend and fried it with a point-blank, full-power lightning blast. It fell, but another fiend attacked Dozzu from the rear. “Wahh!” 
It was a beetle-fiend with spikes all over its body. One pierced Dozzu. For such a tiny fiend, even one spike would do grave damage. 
“Unfortunately, I’m over here. But you’re as weak as ever, Dozzu. You haven’t changed at all in the last two hundred years.” The beetle-fiend began speaking in Tgurneu’s tone. 
“…It can’t be.” 
Then Adlet arrived at a frightening possibility—one he didn’t want to think about. But it was the only possibility. 
Tgurneu was controlling the majority of the fiends here. 
Adlet had to have figured out the final secret that Tgurneu had been guarding. There was no need to hide it now. It could even tell them itself. 
Of the fifty fiends Tgurneu commanded, forty were under its direct control. The only ones who weren’t were specialist number eleven, number seventeen (which had the healing ability), and the aerial messenger fiends—only the ones with special abilities necessary to carrying out Tgurneu’s plans. 
Tgurneu had been preparing for the day of the final battle for a long time, and it had cultivated a fiend that would serve as its body for this fight—one that existed purely to be controlled by Tgurneu. 
Specialist number one: Tgurneu’s ultimate weapon. It was a mixed-type fiend, multiple fiends fused into one to create something powerful. It was the same type as Tgurneu’s three-winged body, but what made it unique was that these forty fiends, fused together, moved as independent units. 
Specialist number one was composed of a unit Tgurneu had designated as the supervisor and thirty-nine other dependent units. The dependent units moved according to the supervisor unit’s thoughts, and everything the supervisor saw and heard was transmitted to the dependent units. This enabled the forty fiends to act as one. 
The most important point was this: When the dependent units were not receiving any orders from the supervisor unit, they could make their own decisions. Units who couldn’t move without being ordered to were useless, no matter how many there were. But specialist number one could act in perfect coordination or let units make their own choices. Tgurneu had made the perfect combat squad a reality. 
Each individual unit was below average in strength, but Tgurneu made up for their weaknesses by lending them its own power. Tgurneu’s main body was inside the stomach of the supervisor unit. 
Tgurneu hadn’t made specialist number one its ultimate weapon because it was convenient for hiding. 
It was simply because it was strong. 
“Fremy! Dozzu! Scatter!” Adlet yelled. While evading the fiends’ attacks, he ran across the town square, away from the others. “Fremy! Put up a smoke screen! Dozzu, just keep moving! Shake them up!” 
Having realized that the majority of the fiends in this square were being controlled by Tgurneu, there was just one thing Adlet could do: find the brain. And to do that, he had to figure out the nature of their enemy. 
Fremy manifested a bomb in her hand, forming it in the shape of a stake. She tossed it at the ground, and it stabbed into the earth and exploded in a great cloud of dust. Dozzu ran into the smoke, slipping around the fiends’ legs to fire off many small lightning bolts to disturb their formation. And as Adlet evaded the fiends, he observed them. 
They were moving independently, after all, just like when he’d fought with Chamo’s slave-fiends. They weren’t just puppets following orders. 
And though the fiends stuck in the smoke screen were losing sight of Dozzu, the fiends outside the dust cloud still had a lock on it. So the fiends couldn’t share visual information with one another, it seemed. Even if one saw something, that information wasn’t communicated to the others. 

So then… , Adlet thought, scanning the horde. One would be acting as their brain. That fiend would be watching over the whole battlefield to understand the combat situation and give instructions. 
“…Keep going! Run all around, Dozzu! Blind them, Fremy!” Adlet yelled as he searched for a fiend that was acting unnaturally, one trying to observe everything and keep out of Fremy’s and Dozzu’s range of attack. That fiend would be the brain, and Tgurneu would most likely be inside it. 
Jumping into the cloud of dust Fremy had provided, Adlet ran, avoiding the enemy’s eyes. If not for the blind, he wouldn’t have been able to evade them anymore. His whole body hurt. The nostrum from Piena he’d used to force his wounded body to keep moving had worn off. But still, he jumped into the smoke screen and evaded enemy detection. 
Even if he did manage to find Tgurneu, what then? Could they defeat it with just Fremy and Dozzu? With all his tools gone, Adlet couldn’t even help. 
I expected you’d do as well, Adlet. You’re making the correct move , Tgurneu said to itself. Adlet had accurately discerned specialist number one’s ability, and what’s more, he was taking logical steps to find out which was the supervisor unit. 
But this was nothing Tgurneu hadn’t already anticipated. 
Tgurneu had been practicing with specialist number one for the past hundred years. It had selected the most intelligent of its subordinates and made them fight it as it controlled number one. It had disclosed the absolute secret of number one’s ability and ordered them to try to figure out which fiend was the supervisor unit. 
At first, Tgurneu’s opponents had been able to discover it immediately. Tgurneu would wind up revealing its identity in its behavior, whether it was being passive about attacking or surveying the area unnaturally. 
But Tgurneu had practiced this way over and over—and it had been harsh. It had even sometimes ordered its subordinates to try with all their might to kill it. And at the end of all that long training, Tgurneu had learned how to fight using number one. It was able to make the supervisor unit under its control move exactly as the others did while still avoiding any fatal attacks from the enemy. 
Tgurneu was proud. Now, no matter how long any battle went on, it would never give a single clue to its opponent—and its foe’s attacks would never hit the supervisor unit, either. Tgurneu believed all its years of effort would never let it down. It was nothing if not a hard worker. 
If the Braves of the Six Flowers had all come to Tgurneu fully prepared and all the dependent units were killed, then—even with number one’s abilities—it would have been helpless. But number thirteen’s poison had worn down their stamina, and with the help of its subordinates, Tgurneu had fended off half the Braves and prevented any concentrated assaults. So there was no way it could lose. 
It was looking forward to this. Even though the Braves had come within inches of defeating Tgurneu, they would fail and retreat. The fiend was fighting for the opportunity to see Fremy’s and Adlet’s faces when it happened. 
In Adlet’s right hand was the sword he’d borrowed from Hans, and in his left was the Saint’s Spike. With these in his grip, he watched the fiends carefully. 
Why couldn’t he find it? Not a single fiend betrayed any unusual behavior. None seemed likely to be the brain. 
Fremy and Dozzu continued carrying out Adlet’s instructions as the fiends focused their attacks on them. Chamo fought to prevent the stream of approaching enemies from getting into the square, believing that Adlet would find Tgurneu. 
Right then—Dozzu was momentarily caught off guard among the fiends’ legs, and a spike extended from one of the enemies to pierce its front leg. 
“Dozzu!” Adlet regretted his instructions. He’d asked too much of Dozzu. No matter how fast the dog-fiend scampered around, it couldn’t endure in the middle of the enemy’s formation. 
“Ugh…ngh…” Dozzu staggered along, unable to run anymore or charge the enemy. The most it could do was survive, keeping their foes in check with its lightning. “I-I’m…sorry…” 
A cluster of fiends attacked Dozzu in its retreat while the rest went for Adlet and Fremy. Fremy was wounded all over, and Adlet—his condition went without saying. 
“Hey, Fremy. What are you fighting for?” One of the fiends attacking her asked. “For the world? For your allies? No. I know why. You’re fighting for Adlet.” 
Next, another spoke in Tgurneu’s tone. “What a fool you are. There’s no meaning in believing in him and continuing to fight—because he doesn’t actually love you one bit.” 
Yet another opened its mouth. “No, that’s not quite right. In his heart of hearts, he despises you.” They were all talking to Fremy. Biting her lip, she soldiered on. 
“I’ll tell you the truth: Adlet is the seventh.” 
“…Nonsense,” Fremy muttered with irritation, no longer ignoring them entirely. Adlet felt a chill run down his spine. 
“Hans is a real Brave. He was trying to entrap Adlet, the seventh. Hans’s plan forced him to pretend to be a traitor. That’s all. 
“I made the seventh to protect you, the Black Barrenbloom. And Adlet fulfilled that task for me wonderfully.” 
Fremy looked at Adlet’s face—and her expression froze. From his reaction, she could tell Tgurneu wasn’t lying. 
“I have the ability to control human love. And I used that ability to make Adlet love you. That’s why he’s been protecting you all this time.” 
A swipe grazed Fremy’s shoulder—a blow she normally would have managed to block. She was rattled. Adlet tried telling her That’s a lie to quell her distress. But he was short of breath, and it hurt to stand. He couldn’t even yell anymore. 
“Didn’t you think it was strange? Why would Adlet, who hates fiends, fall in love with you and you alone? Why would he forgive you so easily when you were an ally to me, the enemy of his village?” 
“…You’re lying,” Fremy muttered. 
“Surrender to me, Fremy. If you give in now, you’ll be welcomed back to the fold. This is the last time I will make this offer. If you refuse now, fiendkind will never accept you again. What you’re trying to protect here is an illusion. You’re staking your life on a lie. What could possibly be a more foolish way to die?” 
“Shut up! It’s a lie! You must be lying!” Fremy screamed. 
“In just a few minutes, you’ll be yelling that you should have listened to what I said.” 
It was then that Adlet wondered Why would Tgurneu say something like this? But he already knew the reason. Tgurneu loved to see suffering. It had shown up two days ago to watch Goldof suffer, and earlier, it had deliberately weakened its power over Adlet’s love so it could witness his torment. And now, it was telling Fremy the truth to see her suffering, too. 
Then Adlet was struck with a flash of insight—he realized where Tgurneu was. 
“Fine, believe for now that Adlet loves you. The stronger your faith, the more fun it will be for me. Your face when you realize the truth will be all the more wonderful.” 
“No. Adlet…Adlet really does—” 
“Stop it, Tgurneu!” Adlet shouted. He gave his all to pretending he was still clueless. He couldn’t have Tgurneu realizing that he knew where it was. 
Tgurneu wasn’t attacking Fremy and Adlet anymore. The area quieted a little, though he could still hear the assault of the fiends surrounding Dozzu and Chamo’s dogged fight to keep the rest of the army at bay. 
Am I positive I’m right? Adlet wondered. But they had no more time left for hesitation. 
“Stop what? You mean telling her the truth? Or controlling your love?” 
“…Don’t…hurt her…anymore.” As Adlet spoke, he examined the fiends. Their tight formation showed no weaknesses, no opening for Adlet to cut through. Even knowing where Tgurneu was, he had no weapons that would reach it. 
Even if he told his allies which one was Tgurneu, they still couldn’t win. Exhausted as they were, they couldn’t make it beyond the defensive line that protected the fiend commander. 
In order to win, they had to catch it off guard. They had to make Tgurneu careless, then get close enough during that brief opportunity to kill it. 
“Fremy…Tgurneu is…controlling me. It’s making me love you,” Adlet confessed. 
Fremy’s face froze. The fiends facing them all smiled in unison. 
“…All this time, everything I’ve said has been a lie. I said I’m a hero who would save the world. I said I loved you from the bottom of my heart. I said I was the strongest man in the world. All of it…all of it was lies.” 
“Adlet…” 
The fiends were grinning gleefully. I’ve got this , Adlet thought. But he knew his best chance would come when Tgurneu was certain of its victory. “But…Fremy, I…” Staggering, he approached her. “I’ve always turned lies into truth!” 
That remark stunned the group of fiends a bit. Adlet had been waiting for that opportunity. Mustering all his remaining strength, he charged at them. They leaped for him all at once, but their moment of surprise had given Adlet the time he needed to avoid them. 
He ran into the crowd as they attacked him from every side. It was a reckless charge, but Adlet believed in Fremy. Even if he didn’t say a word, even if he gave no signal, she was sure to back him up. 
Her bullets and bombs blew the fiends backward, and the wind of the blast pushed him forward. 
“I’m gonna make you happy!” Adlet dashed in—toward one fiend at the center of the group, one with a beautiful bird face and a two-legged body. 
Adlet remembered that fiend. Less than an hour ago, when he had given up on everything and crumbled before Tgurneu, it had been among the ten forming the circle around him. And the moment he had yielded, it had been with the mouse-fiend speaking to him. The bird-fiend had moved from behind it, squarely in front of Adlet. 
The few dozen fiends Tgurneu controlled couldn’t share visual information; Tgurneu couldn’t know what the other fiends saw. In order to see the moment when Adlet gave in, Tgurneu had been forced to personally circle around in front of him. 
It had been just one step—but that one step would invite Tgurneu’s downfall. 
“Forget it!” Some of the fiends had withstood Fremy’s blast and set on Adlet. He couldn’t dodge, but if he backed away now, he would let Tgurneu escape. Adlet bore the hits on his armor and took another step forward. 
“Adlet!” Though still under fire, Dozzu fired off a lightning strike to assist him. Chamo’s slave-fiends rushed into the square as well, spitting acid at the enemy formation. The final fiend in front of the bird, Fremy shot through with a bullet. 
“…Ridiculous.” The bird-fiend’s eyes widened. 
With a roar, Adlet thrust the spike forward with all his might. 
For an instant, Tgurneu was stunned. Adlet had discovered where it was. But the Braves were already exhausted. Even if they had solved the mystery, that was no reason for it to lose. 
“Haaa!” When Adlet lunged out to attack, Tgurneu didn’t block it. Its body was sturdy enough for something so minor. Adlet stabbed into number one’s supervisor unit, but he couldn’t fully penetrate its firm hide. 
Tgurneu thrust out with a sharp hand that skimmed Adlet. The boy’s sword was still stuck in Tgurneu’s host body and was pulled out of his grip. In his other hand, Adlet held the Saint’s Spike, his ultimate weapon. Tgurneu knew that weapon wouldn’t work on it but nevertheless dodged the swing and knocked the weapon aside with a knee strike. 
Now Adlet was empty-handed. Tgurneu’s third attack was another stab from its pointed hand into Adlet’s stomach. It felt the blow hit Adlet’s organs. “I won’t kill…” I won’t kill you , Tgurneu started to say. But a heartbeat later, still impaled, Adlet grabbed Tgurneu by the face and held its beak open with a finger. 
Tgurneu couldn’t understand what he was trying to do. It tried to shake the boy off, to shove him away. 
Adlet took a deep breath, and then, in one burst, spat out all the blood pooled in his mouth. The fluid shot into the unit’s mouth, pouring down into its stomach. When Adlet’s blood touched the fig at the bottom, Tgurneu’s real body, utter agony overwhelmed it. 
Tgurneu’s frame writhed inside the unit’s stomach, losing control of number one. As one that had never fought with its own body, it was unused to pain. 
Four years earlier, Atreau had given Adlet the order to find a use for the Saint’s Spike, and Adlet had stabbed himself in the heart. A few hours later, Atreau was treating the injury. 
“I ask you: What was the reason for this foolishness?” Atreau asked Adlet as he lay in bed. 
“You get why, don’t you? Didn’t you examine my blood?” Adlet replied with a smile. “You told me that a Saint’s Spike is a crystallized version of the poison extracted from a Saint’s blood. So I thought if I melted that crystal into my own blood, maybe I could turn my whole body into poison.” 
Atreau was exasperated but surprised at the same time. Judging from his attitude, Adlet was convinced of his success. “I’d bet it’s more effective than you predicted. Your blood’s a poison even more effective than a Saint’s. If a fiend drank that, it’d probably die in a matter of minutes. Just touching it would introduce it to some serious pain.” Atreau turned his back to Adlet. “But it’s a foolish idea. What need is there to turn your own blood into a weapon? There’s no value in recording it in my research. But…I’ll let you stay as my apprentice.” 
Adlet made a fist and thrust it up at the ceiling. 
Fiends’ cries rose up from the square. The bird-fiend that had pierced Adlet’s torso with its hand twisted in anguish. Adlet was relieved his final move had worked. If it hadn’t, it would have been over for him. 
Tgurneu hadn’t noticed that, under the veil of smoke, Adlet had broken off the tip of the Saint’s Spike and buried it in the stomach wound Tgurneu itself had given him. 
“It’s not yet over, Adlet!” Dozzu yelled, and as it cried, all the fiends turned on Adlet. But they now lacked the breathtaking coordination of just moments ago. They were confused, unable to grasp the situation or make sensible judgments. 
Fremy took advantage of that opportunity to blow off the bird-fiend’s head with a bullet. Her second bullet pierced its stomach. 
Instantly, all the fiends around it froze and fell to the ground as one. 
“Finish it off!” Fremy yelled, about to fire off a third bullet into the corpse of the bird-fiend. 
But before she could, a fig jumped out from the bird’s smashed head. “Wahhhhh!” It opened its mouth wide and screeched. “It h-hurts! Ah! Ahh! What is this?! It h-hurts! Save me! Fiends! Save me!” With the vines that grew from its leafy top, Tgurneu rolled along the ground. 
So this was Tgurneu. For a moment, Adlet forgot about the fight and just watched. This was the creature that had controlled everything about him—had destroyed everything about him. 
Seeing the real Tgurneu for the first time up close, it looked so weak and pitiful. 
“Adlet! Capture it!” Fremy yelled. 
Tgurneu didn’t know what had happened. It could have sworn victory was right in front of it just ten seconds earlier. And now, its defenseless real body had been exposed as it twisted in agony. “Hyaaaaa!” it screamed, panicked. It had never once had its powerless fig form exposed before an enemy. 
Its vines carried it out of Adlet’s grasp, and its fruit dodged Fremy’s bullets. Tgurneu dashed out of the square at full speed. 
Number one may have been defeated, but Tgurneu still had plenty of other minions. If it could jump into one of their mouths to control them, it would be saved. All that filled its head now were thoughts of survival. 
Number twenty-four and the spider-fiend ran toward Tgurneu in an attempt to save their commander, but slave-fiends reached them from behind and slayed them in the blink of an eye. 
“Cómmander Tgurneu! Thïs way!” One fiend slipped through the slave-fiend’s defenses and came running toward Tgurneu. But the moment the fig was in its grasp, Dozzu fired off a lightning bolt, and it fell before the commander could seize control. Tgurneu continued its flight, dragging along its burnt and charred body. 
“Tch!” One of Fremy’s bombs rolled close by. Tgurneu used its vines to leap wide and avoid the blast, but the force of it pushed it away from freedom and back into the center of the square. 
“Save me! Save me! Save me!” Tgurneu screeched, again and again. But no fiends could reply. None broke through the slave-fiend’s defenses. 
Staggering, Tgurneu’s gaze turned toward Dozzu’s glare. “Save me…Dozzu… We’re…friends…” 
“I’ll say this once more: I consider it the greatest shame of my life that I ever called you a friend.” Dozzu unleashed a lightning strike. Tgurneu was certain it would die. But Dozzu, wounded and exhausted, missed. It merely fried most of Tgurneu’s vines, leaving only one. 
I’m going to lose? Tgurneu thought. But what on earth had been the cause of its defeat? 
It should have won this fight. There was no reason for it to lose. But it had. Tgurneu was forced to admit it was a miracle. 
And Tgurneu knew that love, only love, could cause miracles. 
It was going to lose. Tgurneu. To Adlet. To Fremy—and to the power of love that supported them. 
“…Ah…ahhhhh!” Tgurneu screamed, swinging its lone vine around. It was going to be defeated by the power of love. That was the one thing it could never allow to happen. This was more difficult to bear than death. 
More than anyone, Tgurneu believed in the power of love—and hated it in kind. 
“No! No, no!” Tgurneu lived to crush love. To use love. It had to. If it was to be defeated by that power, all meaning would evaporate from the life it had lived so far. Flailing its vine in the pointlessness of it all, Tgurneu screamed and screamed. 
Then, a hand reached out to it. “…Got you.” Adlet grabbed Tgurneu the fig. 
Panting hard, Adlet held Tgurneu in his hands. Once I crush this fruit, it’ll all be over , he thought, but for some reason, his fingers didn’t move. 
His vision was clouding, and his legs felt weak—so weak, it was strange he was still standing. 
“What are you doing, Adlet?! Hurry up and kill it! Rolonia and Mora are in danger!” Fremy had her hands full dealing with the fiends charging into the square, while Dozzu’s legs were also trembling as it held its ground, firing bolt after bolt. 
Tgurneu still in his grasp, Adlet stood frozen. He wondered if maybe the fiend was still plotting something. Maybe it had some other trick up its sleeve. 
But Tgurneu just kept flailing its vine in vain. It really was out of options. 
For some reason, Adlet was sad to see that this creature, who had destroyed his whole life, was so insubstantial. 
Years ago, he had made up his mind that when he got his revenge, he would get it over with at once. He didn’t need Tgurneu begging for its life or repenting. He’d decided he would just end it. But that determination had been shattered. There was something he just had to say to it, no matter what. “Tgurneu, you called me your toy. You said I existed for your sake. But actually, it was the other way around.” 
“…What are you talking about?” 
“You were there for mine. You were there to bring Fremy and me together.” 
For a while, Tgurneu was silent. Suddenly, its one remaining vine shot out over thirty feet, and its tip pierced the body of a fiend. 
You’re wrong, Adlet. My life has not been lived for your sake , Tgurneu thought. The power of love hasn’t defeated me. Even if I die, I’ll keep destroying love and making those who feel it suffer. 
And as long as I’m still fighting, I’ll never be the loser. 
Adlet. Fremy. I will be crushing your love until the end. 
“[I’ll tell you one last thing, Fremy!]” Tgurneu cried. Adlet looked at the tip of its vine, stuck into the chest of the mouse-fiend. He recalled that the mouse had been carrying the Book of Truth, which meant Tgurneu was using its spell on itself. The limited number of uses had been a lie. 
“[Your mother really did love you!]” it yelled. 
The moment Fremy heard that, she froze stiff. 
Something told Adlet that he couldn’t let Tgurneu keep talking. His fingers dug into Tgurneu’s soft body. 
“[And Adlet…]” As Tgurneu started to continue, Adlet crushed it. 
He felt two lumps in his fingers. One was the tiniest fiend core he had ever seen. And the other was a red gem. 
It was in that instant that Adlet’s vision began to spin, though not because of his wounds. It was an uncanny sensation, one he’d never felt before—the feeling that he wasn’t going to be himself anymore. Something was falling out from inside his head. There was no time for him to bask in the joy of fulfilling his revenge. It was all he could do to withstand the surreal experience. He felt ready to collapse, but he still didn’t let go of Tgurneu’s body. He had to destroy the core in his grasp, or he wouldn’t have truly killed it. 
The moment Adlet was about to shatter the core, Tgurneu’s half-crushed mouth moved. In a quiet voice only Adlet could hear, it said something. 
As the words reached Adlet’s ears, he broke Tgurneu’s core. Then he collapsed, unconscious. 
The very instant Tgurneu died, the crest on Fremy’s left hand shone, and the brightness split into six bullets of light that flew away. 
One went to Chamo’s thigh, and one jumped into the body of the slave-fiend that had swallowed Hans. Three of the rest flew off to the northwest to hit Goldof, Mora, and Rolonia’s crests before disappearing. A light bullet also went to strike Nashetania’s crest. The power of the Black Barrenbloom, the hieroform stealing power from the Crests of the Six Flowers, had been nullified by Tgurneu’s death. 
A scream echoed throughout the whole ruins. The fiends lost their minds, wailing over the unthinkable that had happened. All command structure evaporated, and the fiends immediately fell into confusion. Their reactions varied. Some tried to save their dead commander. Some tried to escape from the blazing forest. Some tried to kill the Braves. Some stopped where they were and wailed. And many simply stood there, not knowing what to do. 
“…Rolonia.” 
She was awoken by a voice. 
After Rolonia had helped the others escape, she’d kept on fighting. Her memory was blank after a certain point. She didn’t even know how long she’d kept going. 
She’d thought she was dead. That move where she sprayed blood from her entire body was practically a suicide attack. She shouldn’t have been able to fight anymore after using it. Though she was the Saint of Blood, losing so much of it would disable anyone, including her. There had been over a hundred fiends against one exhausted Rolonia. Even a child could understand what should have happened then. And Rolonia had felt at peace with that. 
“…We…won,” someone said, and Rolonia opened her eyes. 
She was lying on the same battlefield she’d been on when she’d lost consciousness. But there was one big difference: The fiends had all forgotten to attack her and were just standing there. 
Beside her was Goldof. He was carrying both Mora and Nashetania and holding his spear in one hand. He knelt over the fallen Rolonia, protecting her from any attacks. “That was…close. You…managed to…survive,” he said, smiling. 
“Adlet!” 
Tgurneu was dead, but Fremy couldn’t waste time processing emotions about it just then. 
Too many things had happened. Tgurneu had told her Adlet was the seventh—and that Hans was a real Brave. According to Tgurneu, it had been making Adlet love her and had also used the power of the Saint of Words to talk about her mother. 
In her confusion, the first place she rushed was to the fallen Adlet’s side. 
“…Ah!” She touched his body to treat him, but when her fingers brushed against Adlet’s blood, they stung with pain. She couldn’t heal him like this. 
Dozzu came limping up to them, dragging one leg. “Fremy, Chamo, let’s leave this place as soon as possible. Please hurry.” 
Fremy was confused, not understanding the reason for Dozzu’s haste. 
“Cargikk will be moving into action. Tgurneu has been keeping him in check so far, but now that he is free to act, we will be targeted. We have to find somewhere safe, or we’ll all die.” Dozzu spoke with urgency. It was more afraid now than it had been during the fight with Tgurneu, when all had seemed lost. 
Fremy took off her cloak and wrapped it around Adlet, lifted him over her shoulders, and shot a glance at Chamo. “First, we’ll meet up with Rolonia and Nashetania, then with Mora and Goldof. Follow me, Chamo.” 

? 

When Fremy started off, Dozzu called after her. “Um…could you please carry me, too? I can’t run.” 
One of Chamo’s slave-fiends bit Dozzu on the scruff of its neck and lifted it up. Following Fremy, they all headed northwest. 
On Fremy’s back, Adlet regained consciousness for just a moment. 
The world was spinning. Something was churning around in his head. Everything he’d ever experienced was whirling around inside it, his memories were confused, and it felt like his brain was being shredded. He was suffering from a fear he’d never experienced before. 
Unable to bear it, he passed out again. 
“…Urk,” Adlet moaned quietly. Something was calling him awake. 
“How many times does Chamo hafta tell you?!” 
It seemed her rebuke had awoken him. He didn’t know how much time had passed since he’d collapsed. 
“Chamo, please…a little quieter.” The next voice Adlet heard was Dozzu’s. 
When Adlet opened his eyes, he saw the ceiling of a dark cave. Looking toward its entrance, the light of high noon hit his eyes. He squinted at the brightness. 
“The proof is all there! Chamo is telling you, Adlet framed the catboy. We read all the hieroglyphs written on that gem. The Barrenbloom didn’t have any transfer power. He was lying about that.” Chamo stood in the center of the cave as she shouted to Rolonia, Mora, Nashetania, and Goldof, who were all sitting together. 
“B-but Hans almost killed you…,” Rolonia said, confused. The other Braves and Nashetania also appeared perplexed. 
“Chamo’s told you guys over and over. The catboy isn’t the seventh. He was just pretending to be to lure Adlet out and trap Tgurneu.” 
Dozzu was curled up behind Chamo. Hans was lying in the back of the cave, apparently still asleep. Fremy was beside Adlet, holding her knees. 
“But, Chamo,” said Mora. “Didn’t you say yourself that Adlet was the one who killed Tgurneu in the end? Why would the seventh do that?” 
“Chamo doesn’t know, either. But then lemme ask you: Why was the catboy fighting Tgurneu?” 
“Well…uh…” Mora faltered. 
Then Fremy quietly asked, “Adlet…are you awake?” Her voice sounded frail. 
Still lying down, Adlet gave a small nod. 
“It’s noon now,” she told him. “It’s been about five hours since Tgurneu’s death. We’re on the eastern side of the Fainting Mountains—quite far from the original meet-up point we arranged. 
“Cargikk’s subordinates were lying in wait at the Bud of Eternity, and given our wounds, we had no choice but to run. It took us hours, but we finally found a safe place.” 
“…I…see.” 
Chamo approached where Adlet lay and glared down at him hostilely. “You’re gonna confess everything.” 
He had no intention of hiding anything. There was no reason for him to. So he told them everything—how he’d ordered the white lizard to protect Fremy back at the temple, how he’d heard a voice that sounded like the Saint of the Single Flower coming from his crest, how Tgurneu had informed him that it had taken Fremy hostage, how Hans had trapped him, and how Tgurneu had surrounded them. 
And how he had exposed their plan to protect Fremy. 
The allies were all speechless as they listened to his tale. Even after he finished explaining everything, they didn’t open their mouths for a long time. 
“…Is that…true?” Chamo finally asked. 
“The hieroform Tgurneu had…the Book of Truth. Use that. Then…you’ll know everything.” 
“We brought it with us, but it’s a no go. Only Tgurneu can use it.” 
“Oh…but trust me. It’s all true.” 
Again, they were all struck dumb. 
That was no surprise. Mora and Rolonia had firmly believed all this time that Adlet wasn’t the seventh. 
“So I gambled on the wrong man,” said Nashetania. “I’d made up my mind to bet everything on the hope that you were a real Brave.” She was pale. Dozzu looked at her with some reproach. Goldof also seemed confused by this revelation. 
“I…” Adlet’s gaze turned to Fremy. She was staring at his face without saying a word. On the surface, she didn’t seem upset, but beside her, Adlet could tell—she was trembling slightly. 
“I…” 
He couldn’t believe it. 
Fremy had been his every reason for living. Every reason for him to fight. He’d betrayed the Braves for her, stood up for her, killed Tgurneu for her. He’d sworn he was going to make her happy, just five hours ago. And it felt like moments ago. 
But despite it, he felt no love for her at all. 
“…Fremy,” he muttered. He thought that maybe saying something would change his frozen heart. But nothing changed. 
To Adlet, the one who sat beside him now was nothing. Nothing more than a girl. 
“Fremy.” He said her name one more time and looked at her face. But nothing stirred in his heart. 
He didn’t understand it. Why had he wanted to destroy the world for this girl? Why had he ever felt the desire to defeat this enemy for her? He tried recapturing the feelings he’d had before. He fought to remember loving Fremy. But he just couldn’t. He felt empty, as if a dry wind were blowing through him. There was a sense of loss, as if something important was gone forever. It was a sadness he’d never experienced—not of losing someone important, but of losing the importance of her. 
“…So what do we do with him? Kill him? Or cripple him so he can’t fight?” Chamo suggested. Adlet looked at her face with surprise. 
“Adlet should no longer be any harm. Tgurneu was controlling him, and it’s dead. Adlet himself had no desire to fight the Braves. So we should treat him as an ally, as we have thus far,” said Mora. 
“I believe we have yet to acquire proof that he was never Tgurneu’s ally in the first place. We don’t know he was forced to love Fremy,” Nashetania countered. Her voice was terribly cold. 
“It would be…a bad idea to kill him. But I’m not sure…if we can trust him…from now on…” Goldof was also cautious about Adlet. 
“…Hrmeow . Adlet’s harmless neow . No need to kill him,” Hans said, now awake. 
“You’re too nice, catboy. He just about killed all of us,” Chamo snapped. 
Rolonia argued, “N-no, we can’t. I mean, Addy saved the world, didn’t he?!” 
“…What?” Chamo shot back. 
“I mean, he defeated Tgurneu! Without him, we all would have died! We can’t kill the one who just saved us!” 
“No!” Adlet yelled. Rolonia jumped a little. “If I hadn’t been there, you all coulda killed the Black Barrenbloom at the Temple of Fate. Getting rid of Tgurneu would’ve been way easier. None of you would have been in so much danger.” 
“B-but…” 
“Tgurneu said no other seventh could’ve kept Fremy safe. And I think that’s true. If I hadn’t been there, or if I had been weaker, the Braves would have been able to…kill her.” 
Fremy’s eyes widened. Would have been able to kill her. She must have been surprised to hear the phrase from Adlet’s mouth. 
“You should’ve let her die. That would’ve ruined all Tgurneu’s plans.” 
Fremy’s lips trembled as she looked at Adlet. She must have realized how he felt now. She lowered her eyes sadly. 
“It’s… It’s not your fault, Addy,” Rolonia said, her expression heartbroken. 
Why did it end up like this? Adlet wondered as he looked at the ceiling of the cave. He wanted to love Fremy. He wanted to fight for her. But he was positive; he couldn’t anymore. “…Why?” 
Fremy was an ally he’d fought together with for some time. She’d saved him in the Phantasmal Barrier. She’d always been concerned about him. In the Temple of Fate, she’d asked him to save her. Wounded and in pain, she had clung to him. She’d kept fighting for him. 
So why couldn’t he love her, even a little? He didn’t understand it. 
“There’s no meaning in believing in him and continuing to fight—because he doesn’t actually love you one bit.” Tgurneu’s words passed through Adlet’s mind, but he rejected them. He believed he had to love Fremy, even if Tgurneu wasn’t controlling him. He didn’t want to acknowledge the fiend had been right. He didn’t want to believe he could be so heartless. 
But he couldn’t love her. As he spent more time awake, he even began gradually forgetting what it had felt like to love someone. He could tell without a shadow of a doubt that he wasn’t the same person he’d been before. 
Lying here was someone completely different. 
Who am I? Just who is the man I am now? 
“…Fremy,” he muttered. 
Something was gradually blazing up in his heart—the revenge that had once been a raging fire within him. The flames of his desire for revenge had burned and burned within him since the destruction of his village eight years earlier, and even after Tgurneu’s death, they were still ablaze. 
Once, Adlet had sworn to abandon everything for the sake of his revenge—he’d sworn he didn’t need a human heart. He would abandon love, joy, and everything else and fill his heart with hate alone. He had sworn to become a tool that lived just to fight and avenge. He had sworn he would never, ever stop fighting—not until he had killed all the fiends that had destroyed his village and any of their accomplices. 
Have I done that? Have I fulfilled my revenge? Adlet asked himself. 
No. And he could say that for certain. The fires of his desire for vengeance had not abated in the slightest. 
Fremy. There was still her. If only she had never existed, this wouldn’t have happened. 
Adlet’s village had been destroyed to make him the seventh—to make him protect Fremy. If she had never existed, his village wouldn’t have been destroyed. Rainer wouldn’t have died. His life wouldn’t have been shattered. 
Tgurneu had made Fremy suffer, too. Just like Adlet, she was a victim, robbed of everything by that fiend. But Adlet kicked those thoughts away. So she hadn’t known—so what? It didn’t change the fact that if Fremy had never existed, Adlet wouldn’t have had to lose it all. 
He also considered her feelings for him, but he discarded those thoughts, too. Even if she did care for him, so what? Would that change that his village was gone or that everyone was dead? 
Worst of all, there were Tgurneu’s final words. Right before Adlet had crushed Tgurneu in his palm, Tgurneu had used the Book of Truth to say: 
“[Fremy killed your sister, Schetra.]” 
Rolonia was still addressing the group. “We don’t have to kill him. We can’t lay the blame on his shoulders. Everything was Tgurneu’s fault, and it’s dead now. Can’t we just let it end there?” The others still acted wary of Adlet, but Rolonia continued pushing back. “Right, Addy? We’re going to protect the world together, right? You’re one of us now. We’ll work together to fight the Evil God and Cargikk. Right?” 
Adlet was unable to reply. 
Rolonia turned around to look at him. “Say something, Addy… Addy?” She seemed puzzled. She peered into his face for a long time. And then, so quietly it could hardly be heard, she murmured, “…Are you really Addy?” 
Tgurneu had known everything: what would happen to Adlet after he was released from the manipulation of his love—and just how his heart would change. Tgurneu knew who Adlet had once been. His heart had been closed, his soul obsessed with the past, burning with the dark lust for revenge. 
He’d loved no one, befriended no one, and only hate had filled his heart. 
Tgurneu had changed him, given him the ability to love again. It had made him slowly remember kindness—the desire to protect. When Tgurneu died, Adlet would go back to the boy who’d lost all love in his heart and everything other than hate. 
Before its final breath, Tgurneu had thought, I’m not the loser here, Fremy, Adlet. I’m going to crush your love. I will continue to bring you suffering—forever. 
Fremy, Adlet is sure to try to kill you eventually. The person who loved you with all his heart will now loathe you. The person who swore to protect you will be the one to kill you. 
I’ve decided to imagine your expression as I die. 
I’m very satisfied, Fremy. I feel truly glad I was able to send you out into the world—because simply imagining your faces as you suffer in love, I am overjoyed.