“Let’s go. Hurry,” Fremy urged him, and he set off running.
As he forged ahead, he thought about Goldof.
What was his role in this fight? He’d drawn the party to this place, and then he’d shown up again to stop them from killing Nashetania. And if Goldof was the one with the hieroform, then he’d used it once for some yet unknown reason.
But that was all he’d done. If his goal was to kill the Six Braves, he could have accomplished that several other ways. He could have hindered their search or gone straight for Chamo. Adlet didn’t get the man. Who was he?
They had multiple enemies converging here in the lava zone: Tgurneu, Dozzu, Nashetania, Goldof… What was going on behind the scenes?
“…Damn it!” Adlet barked, in spite of himself. There wasn’t the time to be wondering about the truth behind it all. For now, searching for Goldof came first. That was all Adlet could do. They had forty-five minutes left. If they couldn’t find Goldof, then this might be the end.
Mora swallowed as she watched the battle raging just fifty meters away. Hans and Dozzu’s fight was a desperate mortal struggle.
“Hrmeow!” Hans spun wildly every which way to evade Dozzu’s lightning strikes. Dozzu, on the other hand, was constantly moving out of Hans’s range as its thunderbolts fell. Not a single strike hit Hans, though the attacks seemed to be completely unavoidable. It wasn’t reflexes that enabled him to do this—it was his unique skill of foresight. If Hans misread a single move and messed up the timing of a dodge, Dozzu would burn him to a crisp.
Meanwhile, Dozzu was also frantic. If Hans got too close, Dozzu would be instantly sliced in two. As they fought, it darted all over the place to keep Hans at a distance.
Mora realized that it had been the right choice to let Hans handle this alone. She wouldn’t have been able to keep up. One wrong move from her, and she would have surely made things more difficult for Hans.
“…”
Mora hugged Chamo hard. She wanted to get her out of there as soon as possible. She wanted to go with Adlet to search for Nashetania. But all she could do was send Chamo a small amount of energy that, at this point, was more a gesture than anything.
“Catboy’s…fighting hard…huh?” The dying girl spoke for the first time in a long while.
“Don’t speak. You’ll only tire yourself,” said Mora.
But Chamo didn’t listen. “Listen…Auntie. This may be weird…for Chamo to say…but…this is kinda…nice.”
“?”
She smiled. “You know…’cause of who Chamo is…no one’s ever…worried.”
“…Oh…”
“Who’da thought…everyone would…fight so hard…for Chamo. Especially Fremy… And catboy didn’t say…You’re such a drag…I don’t need you…and just kill Chamo…after all.”
“Really? You thought that?” Hans was still fighting Dozzu with everything he had.
“…Catboy’s…a good guy, isn’t he?” Chamo said, and closed her eyes. Mora could tell she was very near her limits.
“Move yer ass, ya stupid mutt!” Hans yelled as he slashed at Dozzu.
“I’m not a dog. How rude.” Dozzu shot out a bolt of lightning, but Hans leaped sideways to dodge it. There was no end in sight to their battle.
Rock mounds still covered the space outside the gem’s area of effect. All Goldof had to do to give his pursuers a hard time was stay low. Adlet, Rolonia, and Fremy split up and spread out to search for him. Fremy and Adlet stayed near the area of effect, while Rolonia headed farther out.
They must have been running for about fifteen minutes when Adlet found something unusual. The ground was glowing faintly. Someone had used a hieroform here, and it couldn’t have been Nashetania. It was Goldof.
“…What the hell?” Adlet murmured. Now he was even more confused about the true nature of Goldof’s enchanted object. Did it really have nothing to do with keeping Nashetania hidden, after all? If so, how on earth was she staying hidden?
Then suddenly, something small exploded in the distant sky. They had agreed that if any one of them found Goldof, that person would immediately throw a signal flare into the air to call the others. Adlet ran off as fast as he could. On the way to the explosion, he found Rolonia, and they continued together. They were headed back into the gem’s area of effect.
“Why would he be there?” Adlet muttered. Once they had reached the circle, they immediately found Fremy running toward Goldof, who was about three hundred meters away.
Then Adlet noticed the knight’s helmet. It was glowing faintly. That was the hieroform. The power behind the dim light couldn’t be too strong, either. If Adlet could just figure out what that helmet really was, he could solve the mystery.
“…He’s not gonna run?” Adlet muttered to himself, observing Goldof closely as they all closed in on him.
Fremy held him at gunpoint when she reached him, but he didn’t fight back or even raise his spear.
“Be careful, Fremy!” Adlet yelled as he approached, and that’s when he realized Goldof was standing where the three Braves had been just fifteen minutes earlier.
“You came…Adlet,” said Goldof quietly, once Adlet was standing in front of Fremy with his sword drawn.
He wasn’t looking at them. His head was turned to the side as he stared intently at the shattered fragments of a boulder. But he revealed no weaknesses to them. Attacking him would not be easy.
“What’re you looking at?” Adlet asked him. Goldof didn’t reply. He just watched the rock in silence.
His eyes were tranquil, his expression calm. Adlet knew it was the bearing of a man expecting to fight with everything in his life on the line.
“What’s over there?” he asked again, but he received no reply.
Then finally, Goldof turned his gaze toward the three of them for just a few seconds and spoke. “Have you…found
