Right about when Adlet was making up his mind to kill the Braves, Mora was at the north side of the ruins yelling, “I’m sorry, Goldof! Please bear it a little longer!”
Goldof and Mora were together inside the fifty-five-yard-wide barrier. The corpses of about twenty fiends that had fallen to Goldof’s sword were piled inside it. Mora’s hands clenched the stake tight as she sent her power pouring into it.
The fiends pressed against the barrier, violently battering it over and over with a unified effort. Even this barrier couldn’t hold out for long. When it ripped, Mora quickly repaired it while Goldof fought off the fiends that burst inside. They had done this several times.
As Mora powered the barrier, she also scanned the area attentively with her clairvoyance. Nashetania and Rolonia were running around about half a mile away from where Mora and Goldof were.
Nashetania covertly scattered dry leaves soaked in chemical in her wake, watching cautiously for any fiends that may have noticed or might be picking up leaves. Her work was admirably perfect. Not a single fiend had caught on.
From Mora’s position, she couldn’t really tell how things were going with Adlet, Fremy, and Dozzu. The fake command center was outside her range. She couldn’t see the party fighting there, either.
But the number of aerial fiends in the sky was steadily decreasing. It seemed Fremy was handling her role. Once the fire was set in the forest, Mora and Goldof planned to wrap themselves in fireproof cloths that Adlet had handed them earlier and break out of the circle of fiends surrounding them. Just a little longer. A little longer, and the plan would begin.
✦ ✦ ✦
Meanwhile, Rolonia was guarding Nashetania’s back as she kept an eye on their surroundings.
At first, it had been terrifying. Even Rolonia had thought Adlet’s plan was dangerous, wondering if Nashetania and Dozzu would actually do what they’d been told. What she was most anxious about was her own acting ability, that she might ruin Adlet’s plan. But that anxiety was gradually fading. She was fooling the fiends.
Nashetania came to her side, brought her lips close to Rolonia’s ear and said, “You’re deceiving them so well. It’s perfect.” Though Nashetania was an enemy, her compliment made Rolonia sincerely glad.
“By the way, you heard those cries earlier, didn’t you?” Nashetania added. By that, she must have meant all the fiends calling for Fremy’s surrender. As they had been running around the ruins, the voices of the fliers had reached their ears. “They might attempt something. If Fremy betrays us…”
“N-no, please don’t say that.” Rolonia gave Nashetania her best glare. “She’ll never betray us. You don’t need to worry at all.”
“…All right. If someone as timid as you insists so strongly, then I’ll believe it, too.” Nashetania backed down surprisingly easily.
✦ ✦ ✦
Together with Fremy and Dozzu, Adlet charged the fake command center again. His goal now was the exact opposite from before. He wasn’t trying to defeat Tgurneu but the Braves of the Six Flowers.
The Braves trusted him; they were putting their all into setting up this ploy, so he had to make the most of it. They would continue preparations for the fire as they had been, and they would ignite it, just as planned. Before that happened, though, Adlet would secretly tell Tgurneu everything.
What would Tgurneu do, once it learned of their scheme? It would turn their strategy against them and kill them all. It would plant a trap, send the leopard-fiend somewhere Tgurneu wasn’t, lure the Braves there, and kill them all. That’s about what Adlet would have come up with. All the Braves, including Fremy, would be caught unawares, assuming the plan was going well. With Tgurneu’s forces, killing all of them but Fremy wouldn’t be that difficult.
They couldn’t take too long. He would do the deed in one fell swoop. And in order to accomplish that, he had to take advantage of this situation.
For now, he had to finish setting up the operation. Adlet was fighting the fiends of the fake command center with Dozzu, looking for a chance to stick the light gem onto the leopard-fiend.
During the many charges so far, Adlet had sown the seeds of their trap. He’d thrown a number of his tools at the enemy horde: smoke bombs, paralysis needles, weighted strings that would tangle around legs, mucus that impeded movement. With these, he’d injured and dirtied the fiends’ bodies.
Adlet checked on the leopard’s status. Since it was protected by its allies, it hardly had a scratch. But the mucus he’d thrown at it earlier clung to its back and rear, picking up tree leaves, pebbles, and bomb fragments.
Adlet judged that this was his chance. With Dozzu’s and Fremy’s backup, he rushed into the center of the enemy’s formation. The fiends easily prevented his reckless charge, but when Adlet was surrounded, Dozzu fired off a lightning bolt to help him. The moment the enemy was distracted, Adlet threw the light stone at the same time as a handful of needles. Lost among the action of the lightning strike and the needles, the little gem completely escaped the enemy’s notice. It clung to the leopard-fiend’s rump, and the mucus firmly fixed it there.
Dodging attacks, Adlet splashed more mucus on all the fiends. Some of it stuck to the leopard-fiend’s hind quarters, too, and the light gem was no longer visible.
Neither the leopard-fiend, the wolf-fiend, nor any of the others seemed to notice what Adlet had done. To them, Adlet’s attacks would have looked wild and indiscriminate.
Adlet continued the melee for a while after until, eventually, he ordered a retreat. The three left the wolf-fiend’s formation to hide somewhere away from their pursuers.
Fremy had shot down the majority of the aerial fiends and explained that the rest could be killed at any time. She handed Adlet the explosive device to use when they carried out the plan. “And on your end?” she asked him.
Adlet nodded. He told her he’d finished his preparations, too.
“At first, I really wasn’t sure how this would go…but it’s working, isn’t it?” asked Fremy. She showed no sign that she’d picked up on his intentions.
“We’re almost there,” said Dozzu. From the fiend’s attitude, it didn’t seem suspicious, either.
“I’m worried about Mora and Goldof,” Fremy admitted. “I wonder if they’re safe.”
“I doubt it will be a problem. Goldof is the sort who becomes stronger the greater the crisis. He’s sure to take care of Mora,” Dozzu replied. Neither knew anything.
“I’m more worried about him betraying us than anything else,” Adlet said, cutting into their exchange.
“When we meet up with Nashetania and Rolonia, we won’t be carrying out the plan right away. We’ll check for any missteps or traps from Tgurneu first. We’ll watch to see what the fiends do for a while, and then we’ll execute. Got that?”
Dozzu and Fremy nodded.
“…I think there’s something here,” Adlet said, standing up. He wanted to tell Tgurneu about their plan as soon as possible, but if his other allies found out, it was over. He had to act cautiously.
Fortunately, they were well out of the range of Mora’s clairvoyance. It would take some time for Nashetania and Rolonia to reach them. He just had to keep out of Fremy’s and Dozzu’s sight.
“Fremy, Dozzu, search the area. I’ll do the north, Fremy—the southwest, and Dozzu, you handle the southeast,” Adlet ordered, leaving the ruined building where they’d been hiding. Just as they’d been told, Fremy and Dozzu kept watch.
First, Adlet would put some distance between himself and the other two, then he’d quietly make contact with a fiend. It couldn’t be just any fiend. It had to have a certain degree of intelligence and be able to understand that Adlet was the seventh.
✦ ✦ ✦
Right around then, a fiend was crawling around the ruin where Adlet, Fremy, and Dozzu had hidden. Tgurneu had deployed it from the true command center, and its mission was to make contact with Adlet and learn the Braves’ plan. The tiny centipede, about twenty inches long, was skilled at covert operations and had sharp senses, though not as sharp as specialist number thirty’s. If Adlet was alone, making contact would be easy.
The centipede-fiend saw Fremy and Dozzu leave the ruin, then immediately found Adlet. He was alone, looking around the area. He wasn’t acting like a scout. He was looking for a fiend to make contact with.
But then, just as the centipede-fiend was about to raise its voice—
“Adlet! Dozzu! This is bad!” Fremy’s voice rang out, cutting through the darkness. “Chamo’s coming!”
Moments before Adlet would have discovered the centipede-fiend, he turned the other way and ran back toward the ruin.