Fremy stood there, frozen. Now that the mimicry expert was dead, it was silent around them. All they could hear were the cries of distant fiends and the wind. She could tell they had been lured quite far away from Adlet.
The three sprinted back the way they had come, and Chamo sent her slave-fiends out in all four directions.
“Please respond, Adlet! Where are you?!” Nashetania cried. Fremy inclined her ears, straining for the sound of Adlet’s voice or a battle.
The moment she did, though, the group’s collective hearing was bombarded by the cries of every fiend in the ruins. Some yelled gibberish, others called out to Fremy, while others sang. Their voices drowned out everything, including any potential leads to Adlet.
“Adlet! Where are you?!” Fremy screamed so hard she thought her throat might bleed. But she could hear no reply.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Hrmeeeeow! Fremy! Chamo! At this rate, Adlet’s gonna die!” Hans bellowed for a while. No response. Adlet was relieved. It seemed Fremy and Chamo were quite far away. There was no risk that they would do anything to Tgurneu.
Adlet was going to kill Hans now and subsequently the rest of the Braves. Then, he would make Fremy surrender to the fiends. After that, she would be safe.
“Watch out, Adlet,” Tgurneu said, and just then, about ten fiends rushed at Hans. Another ten stood between him and Adlet.
“Mreah!” Hans repelled all their attacks with his sword, then kicked one into a stagger. He leaped onto and off its shoulder as he ran, his gaze locked on Adlet the whole time.
“Stay calm, Adlet, and get away from Hans!” Tgurneu called. That remark clued Adlet in to Hans’s goal. Among his various paraphrenalia, he had a whole panoply of items ideal for calling their allies: flash grenades, smoke bombs, regular bombs, and his fiend-calling flute. Hans intended to steal them.
“Don’t let him close! Destroy all your tools, Adlet!” Tgurneu yelled. Adlet jumped back, ripping the tools from his pouches.
“Meow!”
“Not just the flash grenades! Break them all, including the bombs and your flute!” Tgurneu called again.
Hans glided past the attacks in an attempt to snatch Adlet’s tools, but the fiends nearby just barely stopped him. Meanwhile, Adlet had thrown everything on the ground and was smashing them with his sword.
“Hand ’em meowver!” Skittering across the dirt like a cat, Hans reached for one of the discarded items. Before he could reach it, though, Adlet crushed his final flash grenade.
✦ ✦ ✦
Specialist number eleven was among the fifty fiends in that square, lurking inconspicuously in Tgurneu’s shadow. Now this is checkmate , number eleven thought, seeing Adlet’s tools broken. It had been unlikely that Chamo or Fremy would discover them in the first place, and now, the chances were nil.
Hans must have been shocked that he, a seasoned warrior, would have failed to notice the approach of fifty foes. But that was number eleven’s ability—a sort of hypnosis. It emitted a unique sound wave that prevented others from seeing it. It was a more developed version of the stealth ability.
The regular stealth ability’s area of effect was about five hundred yards, more or less, and fiends that possessed it could only conceal themselves. But number eleven’s ability had a range of dozens of miles, and it could hide more than just itself.
However, its ability was far less potent than the regular stealth ability. Anyone affected would have their attention diverted from number eleven’s presence. They would be unable to focus on it or look right at it; they would unconsciously turn elsewhere. That was all. Number eleven couldn’t make itself invisible, but the ability was still incredibly powerful.
Fremy and Chamo had to be desperately searching for Adlet and Hans right about now, but they wouldn’t even begin to get close. Their feet would automatically take them in a different direction.
But number eleven’s ability wasn’t flawless. First off, the fiend couldn’t disappear, so if you were distinctly aware that something was there and determined to head toward it, you could break the illusion easily. It was ultimately just a supplementary ability to use in concealing oneself.
But it had prevented Hans from summoning allies—so the Braves would never discover them.