“F-Fremy…” Rolonia was upset.
“You’re naive!” said Fremy. “Goldof is either the seventh, a traitor, or a lunatic! It’s one of those three! Why do we have to throw ourselves into danger in order to save him?!”
“Meow. Yer yellin’, Fremy.” But she didn’t even hear Hans’s attempt to calm her down.
“I won’t abandon an ally. I’ve made my decision, and I’m not changing it,” Adlet said, and he pried off Fremy’s hands.
“Then I can’t go with you,” she said.
Then Rolonia said, “Fremy, I think Addy is right.”
“Why?”
“I’m hopelessly anxious right now,” Rolonia explained. “I have no idea what kind of traps are waiting for us, and I could fall under suspicion of being the seventh at any time. And even so, we have to fight.”
“So?”
“But Addy will never abandon me. He’ll trust me to the very end. That peace of mind is what helps me fight, even if I can just barely manage it. I can join this battle because I believe Addy won’t betray me. And it’s not just me—I think all of us feel that way.” The group fell silent.
“Fremy, you should yield this once,” said Mora. “I understand your feelings, but…let’s trust in Adlet.”
“We made the decision to let him lead. Say what ya want, but there’s no helping it neow.” Hans smiled and started walking.
Fremy looked down, shoulders slumped. “Adlet, I…” She started to say something but then held her tongue. Adlet could tell she’d been terribly hurt, but he couldn’t find any words to comfort her.
One hour later, the six stepped into the lava zone, watchful of their surroundings. The ground was covered in craggy, dark gray rocks. Some of them were red hot, and Adlet could feel the heat through the soles of his shoes. Occasionally, steam would spew out from cracks between the rocks. The stench of the sulfur was strong enough to bring a grimace to Adlet’s face. The land was utterly lifeless, without a single insect or plant to be seen.
Adlet didn’t know anything about the area. Neither the Saint of the Single Flower nor past Braves had visited this place. Even Fremy said that she’d only passed close by here a handful of times.
“…Not a fan of this terrain,” Adlet muttered. Rows of steep, rocky mounds between five and twenty meters high rose before them. Almost nothing was level. The hills were irregular, making visibility especially poor. Even from a higher vantage point, he couldn’t make a proper mental map of the topography. It was the perfect place to launch an ambush.
“This doesn’t appear to be naturally occurring,” said Adlet.
Fremy replied, “I heard it was originally a big volcano. When Cargikk made that ravine, it diverted the lava from here to there.”
At the top of a nearby rock hill, Hans pointed off in the distance. “Hrmeow. There’s fiend corpses over there, too. Guess Goldof made it pretty far into the lava zone.” They all headed in the direction he had indicated.
The bodies were in a similar state to ones they had found in the forest. They had been impaled, killed instantly, and then their stomachs had been sliced open.
“What is Goldof doing?” Mora grumbled. They continued on.
After about thirty minutes of walking, they crossed a string of small but steep hills. Between the hills, they discovered yet more corpses. Adlet had expected an ambush in the lava zone, but all they had encountered were dead bodies and no living fiends at all. There was no indication they would be attacked, either.
“No one’s here. Maybe it is a trap,” Chamo suggested.
Goldof couldn’t have killed them all, Adlet thought.
When they walked even farther, a large, trapezoidal hill, about thirty meters high, came into view. When they climbed to the top, they found it was hollowed out in the center, forming a flat pit with a radius of about seventy meters.
When Adlet peered down into the cavity, he gulped. “What on earth…?” Inside were piles of bodies—more than two hundred. The group rushed down the slope into the pit.
“Goldof couldn’t have done this all alone, could he?” said Rolonia.
“Of course not,” Adlet answered. “If he could kill this many on his own, he wouldn’t be human.” He surveyed the bodies. Most had met their end from teeth and claws, but some had died by fire or acid. The wounds were still fresh, as if they had died only a few hours ago. “Were the fiends killing each other?” he murmured. The ground had been dug up in spots, and shards of shattered rock were strewn about. It told the story of a fierce struggle.
Fremy examined the faces of some of the fiends and said, “The majority were of Tgurneu’s faction, but quite a few of Cargikk’s faction are here, too. We should definitely interpret this to be a falling-out among fiends.” Fremy had told them before that their enemies had a complex and antagonistic relationship. According to her, the fiends were divided into three factions: the largest, Cargikk’s; the second biggest power, Tgurneu’s; and hidden within both those groups, the servants of the traitor fiend, Dozzu, or so it was said.
“Did Cargikk and Tgurneu fight?” asked Adlet.
“…I don’t know,” Fremy replied. “It’s true that Cargikk and Tgurneu do clash, but I can’t imagine they’d be so stupid as to fight right in the middle of the battle with the Braves of the Six Flowers.”
“So then it’s that Dozzu critter?” said Hans. “Not like I neow anythin’ about that one, though.”
“Did Dozzu have enough followers to cause an insurrection like this? It’s hard for me to imagine that.” Fremy seemed to be contemplating the possibilities.
Adlet could tell that something they knew nothing about was going on somewhere. But would these events work to their advantage or not? And how was Goldof involved? “Anyway, if fiends are killing one another, that’s good news for us. But let’s leave this for now and find Goldof,” he said, and that was when a voice came from behind them.
“Oh, my. Have you come
