The reptile-fiend she had flung away stood up again and sprang upon her. Mora caught the blow and in the instant before she would be crushed, she just barely turned the creature away to the side. The fiend immediately rose again to attack her.
Then Tgurneu shouted out. Mora didn’t have to use her powers—she could hear it directly. “You can leave Fremy and Chamo alone! Don’t let Mora get close to me!”
Instantly, Mora understood. Tgurneu had figured out what she was trying to do. It probably didn’t know about the eruption gem, but it had realized that Mora was on a suicide mission. “Tgurneu! Have you lost your nerve?! Come at me!” she yelled as she fought the reptile.
“No, I can’t do that. I can tell quite clearly what you’re going to do.”
“I’m telling you to come at me!”
But Tgurneu did not move, and Adlet did not return.
As the red-haired boy ran through the tunnel, he heard a queer sound, like someone far away was screaming. It echoed manifold within the broad tunnel, and Adlet couldn’t tell which direction the scream was coming from. “What’s that idiot doing?” He sprinted like mad through the complex web of tunnels, though he also stopped along the way to carve signs in the wall so he wouldn’t forget where he had come from. It would be no joke if one of the Braves of the Six Flowers ended up lost. “Goldof is just nothing but damn trouble.” He muttered his frank opinion.
There was no guarantee Mora could keep Tgurneu trapped indefinitely. Their foe might have done something, and Fremy and the rest of them could be in danger. There was no time to waste. It had probably been around two hours. At this rate, they’d be forced to go back with no results to show for it.
“But what is that screaming?” The noise from the depths of the tunnel was a cry of agony. It wasn’t Goldof, but a fiend’s voice. Soon, the cries became weaker, and then they were gone. After that, the sound of something snapping echoed faintly through the tunnel. “Over there, huh?”
The sounds were finally getting closer. As Adlet reached a corner, he raised his sword. He had no idea what might come leaping out at him.
“What…?” When Adlet turned the corner, there was Goldof—and the corpse of a steel-skinned human-type fiend. His stomach roiled. He had seen the bodies of many fiends, but this sight was particularly cruel. “What are you doing?”
Both of the fiend’s arms had been broken, both legs wrenched off at the knee, and the part Adlet assumed was the face was smeared in rust-colored blood. Goldof had his hand on the dead fiend’s neck, constricting it as tight as he could. When he saw Adlet, he responded quietly, “I’m…fighting a fiend.”
“I can tell that much.” The other boy’s spear was still slung on his back, and there was not a single drop of blood on it. No way. Did he demolish that fiend with his bare hands?
“I tried…torturing it, but…it didn’t…go well. It was my first time…so I…didn’t really know how.”
“Look, Goldof—”
“Oh yeah…someone said before…torture…doesn’t work…on fiends,” Goldof muttered as he crushed the fiend’s face. Seeing the power of his grip, Adlet gulped. He was every bit as superhuman as Hans.
“How dumb are you? Did you think a fiend would talk? We’ve got to head back now.” Adlet set off the way he had come, and Goldof obediently trailed behind him.
“Fiends…are…chattier…than I thought they were.”
“Yeah.”
“They have no problem…sacrificing themselves…under orders…but…they also…want to keep living. That one kept saying…I’m not gonna die here…I’m gonna kill you…over and over. It was strange.”
“Oh? I’m glad it was a learning experience for you. Run faster.” Perhaps it was Adlet’s annoyance that turned his tone rude.
“Apparently…it was…one of Tgurneu’s. It didn’t say…what it was…here for. It didn’t say anything about…who the seventh is…or where Her Highness went, either.”
Adlet could think of nothing but the mystery at hand. Who was that tiny fiend? And why hadn’t the Saint’s poison worked on Tgurneu?
“That fiend was so…frustrated…that it couldn’t kill me. It said…over and over…it wanted to kill me.” Adlet was just about to tell Goldof that he was allowed to shut up. “It said… If I had Commander Tgurneu’s power…you trash would be nothing.”
When Adlet heard that, he stopped in his tracks, and Goldof bumped into him from behind, knocking him forward. Adlet collided with the ground face-first.
“Are you okay?”
Goldof tried to help him up, but Adlet didn’t take the hand he offered. He just lay facedown. His intuition was speaking to him, telling him that what Goldof had said was important. Sprawled on the ground, Adlet chewed over the oddness of that statement. “Say that one more time—that exact thing.”
“If I had Commander Tgurneu’s power…you trash would be nothing.”
“Was that exactly what it said? You’re sure?”
“Yeah…that’s just what it said. If I had…Commander Tgurneu’s…power. Come on, get up.”
That remark led to one single deduction—that Tgurneu had the ability to bestow power upon other fiends. But Rolonia had said that Tgurneu didn’t have any special powers. All that had happened spun around in Adlet’s head—their first fight with Tgurneu, Rolonia’s analysis, what they’d discussed with Fremy, Archfiend Zophrair, the fact that Tgurneu had once been Zophrair’s minion, the odd fiend traces in the cellar, that fiend’s seemingly ordinary remark. And finally, that the Saint’s poison had not worked on Tgurneu. Adlet arrived at one conclusion. All the facts were pointing to it.
“Goldof, you may have just accomplished more than any of us have managed so far,” Adlet said, getting to his feet. They urgently raced back to the cellar, grabbed hold of Rolonia’s dangling whip and clambered up to the surface.
“Yer finally back. I was gettin’ pretty sick of waitin’ for ya, meow.”
“Did you find anything?” asked Rolonia. “What
