“Humans use such strange devices.”
While they were talking, the yeti-fiend approached the bottom of the small rock hill where the three of them stood. About ten meters away, it stopped. The three of them kept their hands on their weapons, watching it.
“Hello,” the yeti-fiend said. It was not a voice they recognized, but its inflection was familiar. The pronunciation was smooth and refined, unlike the somewhat strange pronunciation typical of regular fiends. “Thank you for not shooting. Privately, I was quite nervous when Fremy drew her gun.”
“…Who are you?” asked Adlet.
The yeti-fiend shrugged. “I think if you see this, you might know,” it said, and reached under its waistcloth. From within, it pulled out a large fig.
“!” Adlet and Fremy both moved at once. He aimed for the fiend’s hand with a poison needle, while she shot the fig. The bullet pulverized it in a spray of fruity fragments.
“Unfortunately for you, this is just a fig. My main body’s location is a secret.”
“…Tgurneu,” Adlet called the yeti-fiend’s name. No—the name of the one controlling it.
“It looks like you folks have figured out what I really am, after all,” it replied. “That’s quite the accomplishment. What gave me away? Fremy was with me for eighteen years, and she never realized.”
“What do you want?”
Fremy loaded the next bullet and aimed for Tgurneu’s head. Her finger was already on the trigger, and she appeared ready to shoot the fiend dead.
“Wait, wait, wait, Fremy. I’m not here to fight. I want to talk.”
“I don’t,” she retorted.
“Wait! Adlet, please stop Fremy,” Tgurneu said.
Adlet didn’t. Just like his ally, he was looking for the chance to kill Tgurneu. He had no reason to let the fiend live.
“I have a proposal, Adlet,” it said.
Rolonia, too, was readying her whip, inching closer to Tgurneu. The commander had both arms up as it retreated backward, truly a pathetic sight.
But they all froze at its next words. “Why don’t we work together to defeat Nashetania?”
“…What?” Adlet asked without thinking.
Seemingly surprised, Tgurneu said, “Huh? You haven’t figured it out? I thought with a little effort, you’d be able to put it together. Nashetania and I are not on the same side.”
“What do you mean?” Fremy demanded.
When Tgurneu saw her lower her gun, its beak trembled. It was hard to tell, but it seemed the fiend was laughing. “Nashetania is not my assassin. Dozzu is the one behind her—the disgraceful traitor to fiends. She is both yours and my enemy.”
“…No way,” Adlet muttered. He couldn’t manage any other reaction.
“By the way, you three. What happened to your greetings?” Tgurneu said, beak shuddering in laughter.
Chapter 3The Braves Stray from the Course
“…Blah…bleaaaagh!”
Chamo vomited blood again. One hand on her back, Mora sent her power streaming into her. The energy of the mountain was a force of healing, capable of restoring Chamo’s vitality. But that couldn’t suppress the blade gem itself.
About an hour and a half had passed since Nashetania had first activated it. In the pit, with fiends’ corpses scattered around them, Mora waited impatiently for Adlet and the others to return with good news. The youngest Brave was withering before her eyes, her face pale and her eyes hollow. She clung to Mora like a trembling infant. All the older Saint could do was embrace the young girl and keep pouring life into her.
“Mya-mreow!”
The circular crater sloped down to where Mora and Chamo were in its center. Above them, Hans was fighting fiends.
Once he’d finished off all three of them, he returned to the pit. “I basically cleaned up the area, meow.” He’d already killed nearly twenty, but there wasn’t so much as a scratch on him, nor did he seem at all tired.
“Hans, you should go, too, after all. Join up with Adlet and defeat Nashetania,” Mora said to him.
Not long earlier, Rolonia had returned alone. According to her, they now knew for sure Goldof was the enemy, and they had lost sight of Nashetania. Then she’d immediately left again to continue the search.
“The situation is unfavorable,” said Mora. “Adlet’s party alone will have difficulty defeating Nashetania. They need your strength.”
But Hans shook his head. “Meow. If I coulda gone, I woulda gone a long time ago,” he said, and pointed toward the Cut-Finger Forest. “We’re bein’ watched. If Chamo ain’t defended, they’ll come kill her straightaway. Can you fight ’em and keep Chamo alive at the same time, Mora?”
She couldn’t. It would be impossible for her to fight while doling out life force. “…Curse them.” Mora ground her teeth. The wait felt long—and even longer when an ally’s death was nigh. Hans’s expression was grim, too.
Then, in Mora’s arms, Chamo moaned, “…Catboy…Auntie…sorry.”
“Don’t speak, Chamo. You’ll exhaust your energy,” said Mora.
Blood bubbles frothing from her mouth, the girl continued. “Chamo got careless… It was Chamo’s fault… At this rate…Chamo’s gonna be totally useless…”
Hans approached her as tears fell from her eyes. Hands wet with fiends’ blood, he tousled her hair. “Don’t talk big to me. Just shut up and sleep, kid.”
“Chamo…is not a kid.”
“Looks to me like mew’ve still got some kick in ya. Don’t ya get weak, now,” Hans said, smiling so kindly it surprised Mora. “You leave it to us. We’re not gonna let that stupid woman beat us.”
Chamo nodded obediently and closed her eyes. But Mora could tell that Hans was uneasy. Could Adlet and the others really defeat Nashetania on their own?
Adlet, Fremy, and Rolonia had no choice but to comply with Tgurneu’s demand for polite greetings. Adlet gave the fiend a casual bow, which only angered it (“You call that a greeting?”).
Why was this fiend so fixated on greetings? Adlet couldn’t make heads or tails of it.
“…It seems now you’re willing to hear what I have to say,” Tgurneu said, nodding in satisfaction.
Adlet tried to calm his pounding heart. His throat was dry, his blood seethed, and his breathing was labored.
Once, long, long ago, Tgurneu had showed up in his village in just this way. It had
