“I’ve found a possibility—but no positive proof.”
“Are we headin’ back? I’m worried about Mora,” said Hans.
Adlet shook his head, looked out over the dark hill and said, “No, we’re gonna look for proof. If memory serves me, we should find some on this hill.”
“Proof?”
Adlet told them what they were going to search for, and Rolonia and Hans’s jaws dropped. Understandable—this idea was pretty damn out there. But if he was right, then this would resolve every one of the mysteries.
The reptile-fiend finally fell, and Tgurneu had still not fled. Just fifty meters more. Mora would get right close to Tgurneu and trigger the eruption gem, and then it would all be over.
“You guys just can’t hack it, can you?” Tgurneu said to its minions as it watched Mora draw nearer. “I gave you one order: Don’t let Mora come near me. You can’t even manage that much?”
About fifteen underlings charged recklessly toward Mora. She drove her fist into one, trying to mow a path through, but it clung to her with its face smashed in, pinning her arm.
“Good, good! You can do it if you try!”
The fiends grabbed at Mora one after the other, slowing her down for a few seconds each at the cost of their own lives. Tgurneu observed with satisfaction.
“Auntie! Chamo can’t watch this anymore! Your arms better be ready for this!” Chamo’s slave-fiends began to attack both the fiends and Mora.
The Saint of Mountains roared and thrust the slave-fiends aside. Tgurneu’s fiends surged toward Mora, and Chamo’s tried to restrain her while also killing the enemy. She shoved them aside as she desperately struggled forward. Fremy had her gun trained on Tgurneu as she readied her bombs.
The situation was now completely out of control, Tgurneu alone laughing among the chaos. “Ah-ha-ha-ha! This is so much fun! Quite the spectacle.”
No matter how many slave-fiends Mora shoved aside and hurled away, they quickly swarmed upon her once more. A gigantic slug curved around Mora and caught her feet in its sticky mucus, pulling her backward. “Let me go! Release me, Chamo!” Mora tried to shake the slug off, but the slave-fiend could not be peeled off with strength alone. She fell to the ground and frantically struggled to drag herself forward with her arms, but another slave-fiend pressed her back to hold her down. Still glaring at Tgurneu where it sat just a little farther away, Mora could move no more.
That was when she wondered—why had her target not tried to flee yet? It had said that it had a plan to break through the barrier, so why had it not yet done so?
“That’s for the best, Chamo. Hold Mora down for me,” Tgurneu said as it stood. Instantly, everything fell silent. The surviving fiends stopped fighting and gathered around their master.
That’s when Mora figured out Tgurneu’s plan and just how terribly she had fallen for its deception. Tgurneu didn’t have any way to destroy the barrier—not aside from its plan of exhausting its creator, to drain her of the strength she needed to maintain it. Tgurneu had toyed with her and made her come charging in to try to kill it.
How much power remained in her now? Did she have enough to uphold the wall?
“Mora, it was only two hundred years ago that I acquired the seventh crest,” said Tgurneu. “The seventh crest is, in a way, not a fake. The Saint of the Single Flower herself created it—for a different purpose than the crests the Six Braves bear.”
“Why…are you suddenly talking about this?” Fremy’s weapon was raised as she listened.
“I searched for a long time for a creature worthy of bearing the seventh crest. I kept thinking about this for a long time—what sort of person would be appropriate to bear it? When the time came, the crest would be given to the one who was worthy, on the body of the seventh that I chose.” Mora crawled along desperately, listening to Tgurneu.
“Auntie! You’re supposed to stay still!” Chamo yelled, but Tgurneu disregarded her and continued.
“You’re truly magnificent, Mora. A true villain. You’re so good at pretending to be virtuous, and yet you still believe that you’re not evil. No one knows the truth in your heart. No one but me. I’m thankful it was my fate to have encountered a human like you. Your love will surely destroy the world for me.” A moment later, the surviving hundred-odd fiends dashed at the barrier, and as they did, the fifty other fiends on the other side body-slammed it. When the horde crashed into the barrier, their bodies burned up, turning into filthy mud. But they didn’t care—one after another they charged to their deaths. They were all ready to give up their lives.
When Mora had created the barrier, she had not anticipated this—that a hundred and fifty fiends would choose death in order to break the barrier. The veil of light flickered wildly. Mora sent her remaining power to it, but the wavering only grew worse, and it wouldn’t stop. “Wait… Wait, Tgurneu!” she cried.
At last, there remained the gigantic, jellyfish-like fiend. Tgurneu gave its body to the fiend, and the jellyfish swallowed the leader up inside itself. “I’ll tell you one last thing, Mora. The seventh…is you!” Tgurneu’s body was sucked all the way into the jellyfish, completely out of sight. The fiend leaped at the barrier, and the sound of it roasting rang out together with an agonizing scream. But as scorched as it was, it passed through the barrier. Leaking fluids, dragging along its burned body, it ran off westward.
“Tgurneu! Wait! Wait, you!” Mora screamed. She screamed and screamed and screamed. But Tgurneu gave her no further reply. Inside the jellyfish-fiend, it disappeared into the darkness.
The few subordinates that remained followed Tgurneu into the west. In a heartbeat, the mountain was quiet. Mora, having expended all her powers, slowly faded from consciousness.
“…Auntie! Come on, Auntie!”
How much time had passed? Mora was in Chamo’s arms, and the small girl
