“So is Shenira okay?”
“You just saw her. She’s the picture of health.”
“Yeah, the maid was teaching her to read. She’s a good kid. Does she know?”
“I’ve told her nothing. She believes her ailment has been cured.” The pair sighed miserably.
“Isn’t there something we can do for her? You can ask me anything, boss,” Willone said emphatically. This was what Mora liked about her.
“From this point forward, I’ll be focusing on training. I cannot kill Tgurneu as I am now. While I train, you will protect All Heavens Temple in my stead.”
“You leave it to me. If that’s all you want, you didn’t even have to ask.” She flexed an arm and slapped it with the other hand.
“Tgurneu may have also blackmailed other Saints. Tighten perimeter security and get Marmanna to help you investigate to see if any others had hostages taken as well. There is much to do.”
“It’ll be okay. Don’t worry about it—just focus on your training.”
Mora had also asked Ganna to advise Willone for her. Now there should be nothing else to concern herself over. But just as she began to relax, Willone spoke again, her tone dark. “Hey, boss. Can I just ask one thing?”
“What is it?”
“This isn’t something I really wanna say, but…” Willone was being uncharacteristically evasive, choosing her words carefully, as though it was difficult for her to form the question. “If you can’t kill Tgurneu by the deadline, and you have to kill a Brave of the Six Flowers, what’ll you do then?”
“Don’t think about that. I will kill Tgurneu.”
“O-of course. Sorry for asking such a weird question.”
“Don’t try to back out of it. Ask what you want to ask. Nothing you might say would anger me,” said Mora.
Willone summoned her resolve, and then she spoke. “Boss…if you can’t finish it off in time…will you kill one of the Braves to protect Shenira?” She fixed Mora with a razor-sharp glare. “Because if that’s your plan, then I have to take you down. To protect the world. I care about Shenira, too, but I can’t give the world for her.”
“Don’t worry. That’s not my intention,” said Mora.
Willone breathed a sigh of relief. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.”
“It’s no trouble. That’s an obvious question to ask.”
“Please, boss. You’re the only one we can count on. You’ve got to kill Tgurneu and save Shenira,” Willone said, smiling. “I care about her—and you, too, Boss.”
The Temple Elder smiled and gave her a small nod.
Mora figured it had been about three hours since Hans and Goldof had set out to battle. The night was deepening, and the moon was high in the sky. “Hans, return to the barrier for now. You may not have realized it yourself, but you’re showing signs of exhaustion. You’re slowing down.” So the fiends wouldn’t hear, Mora sent her directions echoing to Hans with the power of mountains.
“Meow, I s’pose so. I reckoned it was ’bout time, too.”
Hans and Goldof were a fair distance away from the Bud of Eternity. Mora called on her clairvoyance to find a path for the two of them to follow back to the barrier. “Climb to the summit, and then rush straight down. There are fiends coming, but I’ll have Chamo support you.”
“Mea-meow. Roger. Goldof, c’mon.” The pair began to make their way back.
To Chamo, intent on stuffing wild game into her mouth, Mora said, “Can you rouse your slave-fiends? If you can, dispose of the enemies above us.”
“Sure,” said Chamo, and she coughed up several slave-fiends to send up to the top of the mountain. Mora noticed their bodies gleamed with an uncanny luster—they looked a little different from before.
Bones of wild animals were strewn around Chamo. She had tucked nearly every creature on the mountain into her stomach. “Ergh. This is kinda making Chamo sick, though,” she said with a great burp.
“What on earth have you been doing?”
“Gathering animal fat.”
“Fat?” Mora questioned.
“That weird powder seems to get hot when it touches water, so if all Chamo’s pets are covered in fat, the powder’ll probably not work as good.”
I see. It seemed the younger Saint was working things out in her own way.
“Who knows if it’ll work all that great. There’s not enough fat. But we’ll probably manage somehow.”
“Will you go fight Tgurneu?”
“No, we’ll wait. Chamo’s not a kid. Chamo can wait.”
Mora smiled. She was slowly growing, after all. “Indeed. You’re a good girl by nature. You just sometimes go astray.”
“Chamo is not a kid.” When Mora patted her head, Chamo brushed her hand off grumpily.
Even as she conversed, Mora surveyed the whole mountain vigilantly. Hans and Goldof were heading to the Bud of Eternity, the slave-fiends backing them up as they went. Though their foes were fewer now, there was no sign of coming reinforcements, or even any apparent intent to summon them.
Mora scanned the area to make sure nothing else was happening—and that’s when she found an anomaly. Her entire body stiffened reflexively.
“What’s wrong, Auntie?”
Tgurneu was strolling along the western side of the mountain at a leisurely pace, as if simply out for a stroll. Four other fiends accompanied it, two of them large-sized creatures over ten meters in length. One was shaped like a reptile with a gigantic mouth, and the other resembled a large, monstrous jellyfish. There were also a monkey-fiend with rainbow hair and another that looked like a human made of stone.
“Chamo Rosso sure was amazing, don’t you think? Hearing about it and seeing it for yourself are entirely different things,” came Tgurneu’s voice.
“Índeed! I wonder just how that stömach of hers is structured!”
“A single look at that is enough to make one burst out laughing. Good grief, is that actually human?” Tgurneu chatted pleasantly with the monkey-fiend. Nothing about its manner suggested it was concerned about the situation at the Bud of Eternity or its
