Copyright
Rokka: Braves of the Six Flowers, Vol. 3
Ishio Yamagata
Translation by Jennifer Ward
Cover art by Miyagi
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
ROKKA NO YUSHA
© 2011 by Ishio Yamagata, Miyagi
All rights reserved. First published in Japan in 2011 by SHUEISHA, Inc.
English translation rights arranged with SHUEISHA, Inc. through Tuttle-Mori Agency, Inc., Tokyo.
English translation © 2017 by Yen Press, LLC
Yen Press, LLC supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.
The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact the publisher. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
Yen On
150 West 30th Street, 19th Floor
New York, NY 10001
Visit us at yenpress.com
facebook.com/yenpress
twitter.com/yenpress
yenpress.tumblr.com
instagram.com/yenpress
First Yen On eBook Edition: January 2020
Originally published in paperback in December 2017 by Yen On.
Yen On is an imprint of Yen Press, LLC.
The Yen On name and logo are trademarks of Yen Press, LLC.
The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.
ISBN: 978-1-9753-1163-6
E3-20200108-JV-NF-ORI
PrologueThe Evil God and the Flower
From the putrid muck sprouted a single flower—and that was all.
The Weeping Hearth, where the Saint of the Single Flower once defeated the Evil God, was nothing but mud and the lone blossom.
Massive walls encompassed the westernmost point of the Howling Vilelands—location of the Evil God’s resting place known as the Weeping Hearth. Erected by one of the fiend commanders, Cargikk, the bulwarks of unhewn rock formed two concentric circles. The radius of the outer ring was about three kilometers, while that of the inner stretched some five hundred meters. Despite their crude construction, they were larger and more solid than any defensive fortification that could be found in the human realms.
The area commonly called the Weeping Hearth actually referred to the small, solid red-black zone within the inner wall. Toxins oozing from the Evil God’s body had seeped deep into the ground there. Without so much as a single blade of grass or any animal life, the dead land sprinkled with rocks made for a barren vista.
In that place, there was only sludge and a single flower.
“Aaadlet…”
An unsettling mass of sediment about the size of a horse’s stable lay atop the lifeless earth. It squelched and writhed as if in terrible pain, black as coal, tinged with bloody crimson. Red tentacle-like limbs protruded from within. The five-meter-long appendages reached out, seemingly searching for something, but then, as if resigned, returned to the mud.
“Freeemy…Rolooonia…”
Near the center of the fetid mound was a pair of large lips that would rise to the surface, disappear, then emerge again, only to withdraw once more. The red, full, womanly lips wailed in a hoarse, feminine voice. The uncanny timbre, laced with hatred and bloodlust, called out the names of the Braves.
“Goldooof…Chaaaamo…Aaadlet…Haaans…Mooora…Chaaamo…Freeemy…Nashetaaania…” The mud writhed and droned on and on in that hate-filled voice.
This was the Evil God—the worst calamity ever to befall the human race, and progenitor of fiends.
Every few minutes, the muck would give birth to a strange creature. Each was about the size of a kitten, and no two looked exactly the same. One was a snake with innumerable eyes scattered across its body; another had the appearance of a monkey in the upper half, and that of a winged insect in the lower. Then came a dog with no legs or tail—just a head and a torso. After, a praying mantis with a head and nothing else. Some of them, like the seven monkeys’ arms fused together, didn’t even seem to be living creatures. The eerie organisms emerged from the corruption to wriggle, flounder, and squirm as if in existential despair for having been born so repulsive.
Following these births, the red tentacles would immediately snatch the eerie creatures, throttle them, and then return the deceased to their squalid beginnings. Birthing only to kill, murdering only to give life. The Evil God continued its meaningless cycle without end.
The thing imparted no sense of dignity, none of the beauty that wicked things possess, and none of the nobility begotten by a prolonged existence. Its form was ugly and foul and pitifully small. Barnah, the Brave of the Six Flowers who had fought the Evil God seven hundred years in the past, had described it as “so wretched it inspires despair.”
Beside the Evil God bloomed a single flower—so small it could comfortably fit in a child’s palm. Its six petals, pale purple, were not steeped in the Evil God’s toxin. Softly, gently, as if nestling close to the abomination, the blossom sprouted from the ground. It was said the Saint of the Single Flower had planted it here a thousand years ago. But the true nature of this flower was not recorded in any documents or records. None aside from the Saint of the Single Flower knew if it had any power at all.
Three times humanity had fought the Evil God and defeated it. The first battle had been one thousand years ago, when the Saint of the Single Flower had sealed the deadly being in the Weeping Hearth.
The second battle had been seven hundred years ago. The Braves of the Six Flowers had kept Archfiend Zophrair in check while Heroic King Folmar and Bowmaster Barnah fought the Evil God. Their enemy had retaliated with its tentacles and toxins. Amid the suffocating stench, Folmar’s sword sliced the sordid lump into pieces while Barnah’s fiery arrow burned it. After an hour-long battle, the Evil God raised a hair-raising shriek and fell still.
The
