“<Number seventeen! Do not allow Fremy to die!>” The wolf-fiend yelled at number seventeen.
Number seventeen was aware that the wolf-fiend wasn’t Tgurneu. I don’t need you to tell me that , it thought.
As it healed Fremy, it realized that the place where Fremy had been wounded was the very focal point of the chain-death ability. Was this just a coincidence?
When Rolonia had attacked Fremy, her whip had struck in an unnatural way. It had gone straight for her heart. It couldn’t have been deliberate, could it? Could they have wanted Fremy to pretend to betray the Braves and have number seventeen undo the chain-death ability?
I don’t care, though , number seventeen thought as it continued healing her. The disease couldn’t be cured. No matter what Fremy’s intentions were, it wouldn’t change seventeen’s course of action.
But then, number seventeen saw—just as it restored Fremy’s heart, the mark on her chest disappeared, too. Fremy leaped up and called to the Braves, “It worked!”
Number seventeen couldn’t believe its eyes. Not because Fremy had switched sides again—but because the chain-death ability was now undone. Seventeen’s research should have been flawless. What had just happened should not have had any effect.
Rolonia and Nashetania laid into the fiends around them while Fremy fired a round through number seventeen. Without any combat capabilities, it was unable to defend itself or run.
The last word that came to number seventeen’s mind was Why?
✦ ✦ ✦
Fiends mutated—they evolved their bodies by force of will. The stronger the will, the faster the rate of change and the stronger the ability to be gained. Sometimes, fiends even evolved unconsciously.
Once, a fiend had evolved without ever realizing it.
It was called specialist number six, Fremy’s mother. She had no abilities other than spawning Fremy. She had sacrificed all her other abilities to accomplish the one thing that was fundamentally impossible for a fiend: giving birth to a human child.
On Tgurneu’s orders, number six had raised Fremy. She couldn’t do anything else and had been given no other role. She simply devoted everything she had to caring for Fremy and wishing for her healthy growth.
She was the only fiend that had wholeheartedly loved Fremy.
When Fremy was bullied and tormented, number six frantically tried to protect her. When Fremy was hurt, she desperately healed her.
She knew Fremy was the Black Barrenbloom, and she also knew about the chain-death ability that had been cast on her. But she couldn’t tell Fremy about that. She wasn’t allowed to oppose Tgurneu.
Eventually, number six noticed the chain-death disease was slowly gnawing into Fremy’s body. Having been implanted into her heart when she was very small and fragile, the condition had become a burden on her.
Tgurneu had told number six to leave it be. If it didn’t threaten Fremy’s life and didn’t hinder her in combat, then it didn’t care. It wouldn’t allow number six to tell Fremy the truth, either, and she couldn’t fight her instincts of absolute submission to her commander.
So she would stroke Fremy’s heart with her antenna as she lamented her own helplessness to save her. She wanted to ignore Tgurneu’s orders and help Fremy. But she didn’t give in to that impulse.
Over time, this mutated number six’s body—and she never noticed. Neither did Tgurneu, the white lizard-fiend, or anybody else.
Number six acquired the ability to heal Fremy’s body and protect her.
Even with this power, she still couldn’t remove the effects of the powerful chain-death ability completely. But by stroking Fremy’s chest day after day, she slowly weakened the disease.
Between the unusual speed of this mutation and the unique nature of the ability, it was close to a miracle that she acquired it.
✦ ✦ ✦
The chain-death fiend had died about two years earlier—at Tgurneu’s hands.
Tgurneu had found a spy from Dozzu’s faction investigating the abilities of its subordinates and feared the chain-death ability would be discovered. And so, Tgurneu made the first move and killed the chain-death fiend.
Then it didn’t have the worry about information leaking to Dozzu. Neither did it need to worry anymore about the chain-death fiend itself betraying Tgurneu and undoing the work it had done on Fremy. To Tgurneu, this was killing two birds with one stone.
But had the chain-death fiend lived, it would have noticed the weakened effects on Fremy. Its work never would have been undone.
✦ ✦ ✦
“It worked!” Fremy left the wolf-fiend and its unit to meet up with Rolonia, Fremy, and Dozzu. Seeing that the mark on Fremy’s chest had vanished, Rolonia’s face brightened. Nashetania made a triumphant little fist. Dozzu seemed to finally grasp the situation.
“Dozzu! Run into Mora’s clairvoyance range! Tell her that the hostage situation is solved!” Fremy cried.
Dozzu nodded, left the line of battle, and headed northwest to the mountain. With its legs, it would take not even a few minutes.
“Tell her to tell Adlet, too!” Fremy yelled after Dozzu to remind it.
✦ ✦ ✦
Still lying facedown, Mora clenched the barrier stake. Goldof was barely staving off the onslaught of fiends. Her power was exhausted. The poison from the ground was slowly circulating through her body. She could hardly maintain the barrier for another minute.
That was when Dozzu came sprinting into the range of her clairvoyance. To Mora, this was like salvation from the heavens; she hadn’t known what the others were doing all this time.
Dozzu said quietly that they wanted her to inform Adlet that Fremy was freed from the hostage situation through her mountain echo—that she wouldn’t die if Tgurneu did. Dozzu also told her to carry out the plan immediately.
So Mora used her power of mountain echo and yelled one more time into the sky, “Adlet! Can you hear me? Fremy has been released! ”
✦ ✦ ✦
Though the poison was circulating through his body and his vision was blurring, Hans’s eyes didn’t leave Tgurneu for an instant. He believed there would be a chance to turn things around, and he wasn’t going to miss it.
“…Is that true?” Tgurneu discussed this with one of the fiends nearby. And then, it began to laugh loudly. “Ha-ha-ha! That’s amazing! Just great! What on earth has happened?” Tgurneu laughed for a while, then turned to Hans. “I’ll tell you something good. Listen: Fremy undid her curse. If I die now, she won’t die with me!”
“Meow , what did ya say?” It was difficult for Hans to believe this out of the blue. Then he heard Mora’s mountain echo from the distance. It told him that Tgurneu was speaking the truth.
“I can’t believe it. I worked so hard to come up with countermeasures to prevent them from undoing it. To think it would be broken, ha-ha-ha. It’s like a miracle.” Tgurneu was laughing at its own plans being foiled—and Hans understood the reason why.
It was too late. All of it.
If Adlet had held on for just a little longer, he could have killed Tgurneu. If Fremy had been a little faster, she could have saved Adlet. But neither had been in time.
Even knowing that the others wouldn’t hear it, Hans yelled, “Guys! Don’t go through with the plan! It got leaked a long time ago!”
Hans’s reaction made Tgurneu laugh again. “It’s no use. They’re still fixated on saving their friend. Had they run, they’d have had a sliver of hope.”
Hans yelled again—at Adlet, swallowed by the hippo-fiend. “Adlet! Fight! If ya kill Tgurneu neow, Fremy ain’t gonna die!”
With a smile, Tgurneu said, “It’s no use. He can’t hear anything anymore.”