“This forest is big, but there weren’t many places they could hide that body. Only one, in fact,” he said.
“Meow, I found it,” Hans said as he pointed at one of the fiends. It looked like a crocodile and was about five meters in length. You couldn’t tell unless you looked closely, but its stomach was just a bit swollen.
“Cut it open, Hans.” Adlet swallowed. This was the moment of truth: The only piece of evidence that could prove Adlet’s innocence was right there. Were his deductions correct? Once this fiend was sliced open, they would know. “The only place they could hide the body was inside a fiend.”
Hans drew his sword and sliced open the crocodile’s stomach. The body of an old woman rolled out, soaked in the acid of the demon’s stomach.
“You check, Mora. This granny is definitely Leura, the Saint of Sun, ain’t she?” said Hans.
Mora timidly approached the body and then sank to the ground. “It’s Lady Leura. This woman is Lady Leura.”
Adlet heaved a sigh of relief. Hans took over for him. “Meow then, anybody here still thinkin’ Adlet’s the fake? If ya do, I’d like ya to explain why we’ve got this dead granny here.”
Adlet didn’t think anyone would still have doubts. But Mora stood up and said, “This, too, is a trap! Adlet prepared this body beforehand to convince us that he is one of us!” She continued insisting that Adlet was the impostor…but no one was listening to her opinion anymore.
“If that were the case, Adlet would have divulged his deductions long ago,” said Fremy. “Just how many times do you think he almost died in order to get to this point?”
“I…I…” Mora looked down and kept trying to think of another way she might rebut Adlet. She was the only one who still doubted his authenticity. The situation had reversed. Now Adlet was the one backing the seventh into a corner. At that point, Mora groaned and admitted, “I was wrong. Adlet is not the impostor.”
Still fighting the pain, Adlet sighed. The strength left his body, and his back slid down the trunk of the tree. He thought about pumping a fist, but he just didn’t feel like it. “It’s like I’ve been saying all along. I’m not the seventh.”
His victory had been on thin ice. Adlet had not been entirely certain that this was where Leura’s body had been hidden. The impostor could have decided to be less clever and simply buried it, or they could have killed her outside the barrier. That last part had been sheer luck.
But still, he’d won. He’d exposed the seventh’s plot. How about that? thought Adlet. Who else could make it this far?
“Hey, so who killed Granny?” asked Chamo.
“Probably that crocodile-fiend. It killed her and ate her, and then it died here,” said Adlet.
“Wait. More importantly, which of us is the seventh?!” cried Mora. The rest of them replied to her with silence.
Adlet still didn’t know the identity of their infiltrator. He’d exposed the entirety of the scheme itself but hadn’t managed to acquire any evidence as to who was actually responsible—though he felt there was nothing to discuss at this point.
“Mora, do you understand your position right now?” asked Nashetania. Her words held quiet anger. She picked up the sword she had dropped and pointed it at her fellow Saint. “Fremy, please stay close to Adlet. Goldof, do not let Mora get away.”
Backing up, Mora protested. “Wait, Princess. It isn’t me. What proof do you have?”
“You’re right, there is no proof,” she replied. “But who else could it be? You cannot intend to suggest that the impostor is Fremy?”
I should probably stop her, thought Adlet. There was no evidence. But who else could it be besides Mora? Adlet was convinced that Fremy wasn’t the impostor, and neither was Nashetania. Hans had cooperated with him in revealing the plot, and Adlet had never even suspected Chamo. And Goldof? It didn’t seem likely that such a loyal man would be a traitor. It has to be Mora, he thought.
But as he did, Chamo said, “It’s not Auntie.” All eyes were drawn to her. “Chamo’s got this,” she said, rolling up her shirt to show her stomach. There was a slate tucked under her belt. Adlet had no idea what it was. “After Auntie left, Chamo punched through the temple floor and dug down under it. There was a big box under there with a sword and slate inside.”
Hans took over from Chamo and explained. “The person who made this barrier was damn well prepared. They made a spare altar for activatin’ it and buried it right deep. We had a real rough time diggin’ it up. Didn’t you go into the temple, Adlet? There was a big hole in the floor, wasn’t there?” Adlet shrugged. Nashetania had been chasing him, and it had not been the time for exploring.
“Tee-hee. Chamo’s the one who found it,” boasted the young Saint.
“Well, I was the one who got the idea there might be somethin’ underground,” said Hans.
“But Chamo found it.”
“But I thought of it. Meow.”
“You can argue over who gets credit later. What’s written on the slate?” asked Adlet.
Hans and Chamo smirked in unison. “There were two,” explained Hans. “One was the same as the one on the altar, and the other one has this written on it. It ain’t in hieroglyphs. It’s somethin’ even I can read.” All present turned their attention to Hans—which was why nobody noticed that the expression of one among them had changed.
“‘In order to activate the barrier once more, after the decorative sword and the broken slate have been removed, the procedure for activation must be repeated. In other words, grasp the sword, drip blood upon it, and then break the slate while reciting the prescribed words,’” Hans read.
“Huh?” Goldof emitted a sound. It made him sound foolish and wasn’t the kind of noise one might imagine
