The fiend in command of the unit chasing Hans and Chamo resembled a praying mantis. It had not been given a specialist number, but it bragged that it was the greatest fiend among Tgurneu’s forces. The specialists were really just a bunch of one-trick ponies. What would bring down the Braves was intellect, skill, and the ability to unify a group; this fiend was the only one in Tgurneu’s army that possessed all these. And the praying mantis–fiend had indeed used its hundred subordinates to corner the two strongest of the Braves. The pair’s attacks had already whittled down their number by fifteen, but that wasn’t a problem.
“Catboy, over there! Run that way!”
The two Braves gave up on trying to kill fiends via straightforward assault and just ran instead. The slave-fiends spread out to investigate the area. They must have intended to use the complex terrain to secure an escape route.
This was an opportunity but also a danger. This area held ancient ruins from the time before the Evil God. To the west were the ruins of a town, and Hans and Chamo were headed in the direction of a watchtower and a charcoal-burning hut. There would also be underground waterways dotting the area. The praying mantis–fiend wasn’t fully informed on the nearby topography. There were a wealth of places the pair could hide—and escape routes, too. If they used those, the mantis’s forces could lose sight of them.
On the other hand, this was also an opportunity. Since Chamo had dispersed her slave-fiends, her defenses were thinner. Just five remained with her and Hans. Hans himself was running with Chamo in his arms, so he was pressed, too.
The praying mantis–fiend decided that before the two Braves found an escape route, it would kill one of them, and it gave the order to its subordinates to surround them in a surprise attack. It readied its troops to engage all together at one signal.
“Over there!”
Hans ran in the direction Chamo pointed. The praying mantis–fiend spotted the well and inferred that they meant to escape via the underground waterway.
“Gët thëm!” the mantis yelled, and its forces leaped on Hans just before he could jump into the well. Hans couldn’t block all the sickles, tentacles, and acid, so Chamo slipped off his shoulder.
One of the fiends swung at Chamo where she lay fallen on the ground. A slave-fiend shielded her but couldn’t block the attack entirely, and the fiend’s second strike sent her rolling back.
That instant, all the slave-fiends nearby were sucked into Chamo’s mouth. She passed out, losing control over them all, and the mantis was certain of its victory. Hans tried to shield Chamo with his body, and the mantis-fiend was ready to signal the attack. “It’s över!” it yelled.
But that very moment, the ground crumbled away to reveal a large hole. The fiends clustered around Hans and Chamo all slid down into it to prevent Hans from escaping. Then, the mantis-fiend realized—there was a big underground cave beneath their feet, and Hans had lured them there.
Most of the fiends, including the mantis-fiend, fell to the bottom of the hole and into a massive reservoir filled with dirty water.
“Bahh!” In the reservoir, Chamo pushed her face up out of the water as dozens of slave-fiends burst up from the surface. Chamo hadn’t been knocked unconscious. She had been sending the bulk of her slave-fiends to lie in wait inside the reservoir.
She was the Saint of Swamp. All the slave-fiends under her command were aquatic, and water was where they fought best.
✦ ✦ ✦
The moth-fiend watching over the tides of battle from the sky could hardly believe its eyes. Suddenly, a large hole had opened in the ground, and Hans and Chamo had fallen in together with a majority of the fiends.
What’s more, all the slave-fiends surrounding them had rushed in to attack, and the ten or so fiends that remained aboveground also plunged down into the great hole. All the moth-fiend could hear from the dark pit was the shrieking of fiends.
The moth-fiend judged that their attempt to stop Hans and Chamo had failed, and it turned around back toward Tgurneu. Its only job was to immediately report if anything unusual happened.
But the dismayed moth-fiend failed to notice that the moment the large hole had opened in the earth, Hans had escaped the fall, stepping up fiend to fiend and launching himself into the trees, where he was now crouched right below.
And he had readied throwing knives in his fingertips.
The two blades pierced its wings at the base, and the moth-fiend lost its balance and fell. It righted itself again and started flapping away when Hans leaped from the treetops to slice it to pieces.