“I was able to fight more calmly than I had imagined. If this is how it’s going to be, I think I can be useful.”
“I’ll be counting on you.”
Nashetania smiled.
After that, the two of them assisted in treating the farmers’ wounds. The villagers piled the bodies of their fellows into the carts. It was difficult, seeing these deaths, especially those of parents who left children alone in the world.
“Is everyone here? Was anyone too late getting away?” Adlet asked as he treated one of the villagers.
They all looked down as if struggling to respond, exchanging looks with one another.
“What’s wrong?” he prompted.
“Well…” The villagers seemed hesitant to speak.
Adlet quickly picked up on what was going on. “Someone got left behind, huh.”
“Th-there was a traveling girl all alone in the village,” one of the villagers said, and Adlet immediately mounted his horse.
He was about to hit his horse’s flank when Nashetania, looking panicked, asked him, “Adlet, where are you going?”
“They said a girl’s still there. I’m gonna go get her.”
As he tried to slap his horse, Nashetania grabbed his wrist. “Wait, please. Do you plan to go alone?”
“Yeah. You handle things here.” He snapped the reins to signal his mount to move, but this time, Nashetania grabbed its tail. “Why are you stopping me?” he demanded.
“It’s too late, Adlet. You won’t make it in time.”
“…”
“There are only two of us. We cannot save everyone.”
He was a little taken aback. Nashetania’s attitude struck him as surprisingly cold. “You’re right,” he said.
“It’s a shame, but we should give up on that girl and move on.” Nashetania looked down sadly. She likely wanted to help out as much as he did, but she was right to prioritize defeating the Evil God.
“Defeating the Evil God, saving people… It’s hard to manage both,” said Adlet.
“This is difficult for me, too. But right now, let’s think first about joining the other Braves.” The princess, having secured her partner’s agreement, released his horse’s tail.
The instant she did, Adlet whipped the reins. The horse whinnied and broke into a gallop. “Sorry, but I’m going. ’Cause I’m the strongest man in the world!”
“Just what is that supposed to mean?!” she yelled after him.
I’ll defeat the Evil God, and I’ll save people, too. Being able to pull off both is what makes me the strongest man in the world, Adlet silently answered to himself.
After about half an hour of galloping, the fence that encircled the village came into view. The streets were quiet. Adlet saw no one, be it human, fiend, or animal. The village was completely desolate. Maybe the fiends had yet to come, maybe they had already finished the job and left, or maybe it was a trap.
Adlet dismounted, drew his sword, and proceeded with caution. There was something strange lying by the entrance to the village—the corpse of a fiend that resembled a giant snake. It was big—a far more powerful specimen than the fiends he and Nashetania had killed. Adlet approached the corpse to get a better look. Some extraordinary power had smashed its head in. Closer investigation revealed an iron ball about two centimeters in diameter buried inside the wound.
“A slingshot? No. It couldn’t be…a gun?” Adlet tilted his head.
The gun was a weapon that had been developed about thirty years earlier—a miniaturized version of a cannon. While these devices were gradually becoming more common, they couldn’t really be called powerful. At most, they could enable a person with no armor to bring down a boar. Adlet had never heard of any gun capable of killing a fiend.
The Brave entered the village. The bodies of fiends were strewn everywhere. Every last one had been brought down by a single shot to either the heart or the head. That was when Adlet finally realized that the female traveler who had been forsaken in the village…hadn’t been forsaken at all. She’d stayed behind to battle the fiends here. And a lone warrior on a journey at a time like this, with the Evil God freshly awakened from its slumber, could have only one purpose. Adlet searched for the girl in houses and the center square, finally approaching a charcoal maker’s hut near the fringes of the town.
“Oh.” He spotted someone. Raising his hand, Adlet was about to call out, but he stopped midmotion, his voice catching somewhere in his throat. The moment he saw the girl, he froze.
She was alone, walking toward the delapidated hut. She was probably about seventeen or eighteen. Her hair was white, and she wore a cloak with a frayed hem. In her arms, she cradled a puppy, affectionately stroking its neck as she walked. Adlet realized at a glance that this was the girl who had defeated the fiends, thanks to the gun peeking out from underneath a gap in her cloak. But Adlet didn’t care about that. The girl was carrying a puppy. The mundane sight left Adlet completely unable to move.
“There you are,” she said.
A lone dog was chained to a post in front of the hut. It was probably the mother of the one in the girl’s arms. She lowered the puppy at her breast to the ground. It leaped toward the other dog, wagging its tail and frolicking about.
The girl pulled a knife from beneath her cloak, severing the mother’s collar and freeing her. “Fiends only attack humans. You can be at ease and live here.”
The two dogs romped about the girl’s knees and then ran off to disappear into the forest. Adlet stood stock-still as he watched the scene.
The girl was striking. Her face looked rather young. Her right eye was covered with a patch, and her left was a clear blue, heavy lidded, and cold. Her leather cloak obscured the leather clothes underneath that clung tightly to her body. A black cloth wound around her head.
This girl was powerful—Adlet could tell that with a glance. She moved with precision, her bearing reminiscent of a honed blade. It told him she was a near-flawless warrior.
