Mora hesitated for a moment, then took a seat on one of the chairs. Though confused, Marmanna sat down as well. “If you have other demands, I shall comply,” said Mora. “If it’s my life you want, I can offer it to you this instant. But under no circumstances will I take the Braves’ lives.”
“Is that so? But I don’t want your life.” Tgurneu smiled an uncanny smile. “I can say this with certainty, Mora: I will make you kill the Braves of the Six Flowers.”
With Tgurneu rushing at him, Adlet realized that it hadn’t even occurred to him that this might happen. The attack from underground had taken them all by surprise. But most shocking of all was that he hadn’t even imagined that an enemy would ambush them alone.
“Whoops, I forgot.” Tgurneu suddenly stopped.
After it had escaped their team attack, Adlet’s allies had surrounded the fiend, readying their weapons. Not perturbed in the slightest, Tgurneu smiled and said, “Come now, don’t be so impatient, Braves. There’s something that must be done before we fight, now, isn’t there?”
“What did you say?”
“We must greet one another. When you meet someone, you say hello. When you part ways, you say good-bye. Greetings are the first step toward living a bright life, right?”
Adlet didn’t understand what Tgurneu was talking about. He got what the words meant, but he couldn’t grasp the intentions behind them.
Beside him, Hans bobbed his head in a bow. “Hello, meow.”
“That’s it, Hans. Hello to you, too. All right, then, let’s start this fight.” Tgurneu opened its mouth and raised its face to the heavens. Adlet couldn’t hear the sound, but it was yelling something. It had sent a message at a special frequency only fiends could hear.
“It’s called for reinforcements,” said Fremy. From just beyond the hill to the northwest sounded the faint voices of fiends. A tiny tremor rippled through the ground toward them. Adlet now realized that the reason there had been no sign of any fiends in the Ravine of Spitten Blood was because they had been gathering their forces for this surprise attack.
“This is bad, Adlet. What do we do?” Fremy asked him.
“Need you even ask?! We destroy this monster here and now! Attack, all at once!” Mora yelled and charged Tgurneu, who stood there with an obvious lack of concern. But none of the others followed. “Why do you hesitate?!” In a panic, she stopped and hopped back.
“Come here, Adlet. What’s wrong? Let’s enjoy a nice battle to the death.” With a broad smirk, Tgurneu took one step toward him.
The boy hesitated. The hill would soon be surrounded, and Tgurneu might have engineered a trap. Furthermore, they had no idea what the seventh might do. Normally, he would not hesitate to flee from this sort of situation. You can’t fight on the enemy’s playing field—Atreau had taught him that.
But at this point, Adlet was not thinking calmly. “Chamo! Hans! Goldof! You hold back the reinforcements coming from the northwest!” he yelled, grasping his sword in his right hand. “You back us up from a distance, Fremy! Mora and Rolonia, stick with me!” He pulled a smoke bomb from the belt at his waist and threw it at the commander’s feet, dashing into the smoke as he did. “We’re taking Tgurneu down!”
They all moved simultaneously. Chamo stuffed her foxtail down her throat and vomited up the monsters known as slave-fiends from her stomach. Hans and Goldof ran together with them, heading northwest.
Fremy jumped backward, raised her gun, and aimed at Tgurneu. Her role was to hold the fiend still and cover the others. Mora circled around from behind and charged, joining Adlet in a pincer attack.
“That’s it,” said Tgurneu. “I thought you might do that.” From the smoke, a single arm reached out to the redhead, who ducked to the ground to avoid it. Though Adlet had blocked the counterattack with his sword before, the impact had made his arms go numb. Tgurneu was far stronger and much faster. The smoke bomb hadn’t worked, either.
Mora swung her iron gauntlet toward her foe’s shoulder, but it dodged her without moving its lower body at all. The fiend’s supple and efficient movements indicated clearly it had studied martial arts. Right, left, right, left—Mora fired off punch after punch, but she didn’t even graze Tgurneu. “Get back, Adlet! You cannot match its power!” she yelled.
But Adlet knew that already. He could not hope to match Tgurneu in a head-on fight, no matter how much he struggled, but he had come this far with the intent of fighting such powerful enemies. He took the second strike with his pauldron, making sure to decrease the force of impact. It knocked the wind out of him, and his bones groaned—but in that moment he took the secret tool hidden in his left hand and slapped it onto Tgurneu’s arm.
It was a cuff attached to a long chain. As the spike, fitted into the metal piece on the end of the chain, bit into the fiend’s flesh, sturdy wire instantly wrapped itself around Tgurneu’s arm.
“Hmm.” Tgurneu’s voice seemed to rumble.
Adlet sheathed his sword and grabbed the chain with both hands, pulling the fiend’s restrained left arm as hard as he could. When it lost its balance, Mora hit it in the face.
“I see. So you’re trying to hold me still,” observed Tgurneu, jerking the chain with tremendous strength. Adlet judged he would not be able to stand his ground and quickly hopped forward. When Tgurneu raised its arm, the boy was flung into the air like a fish on a line.
“Watch out!” Fremy yelled. The fiend struck back at its airborne opponent, and Adlet just barely managed to block the attack with an iron plate in the heel of his boot. Agony shot through his ankle
