In the stomach of the fiend, Adlet blamed himself over and over.
He’d felt suffocated for some time now, and it seemed the sensation wasn’t just because he was trapped inside the stomach of the fiend. He could tell he’d absorbed poison. Was it just him, or had Hans and the other Braves been hit by it, too?
Then a tentacle reached out to him. A needle in it pierced his flesh, and his difficulty breathing eased. Apparently, he’d been injected with an antitoxin—he didn’t understand what for, though.
But he didn’t care anymore. In fact, it hurt that he’d survived at all.
All the Braves but Fremy were going to die, and there was nothing he could do about it. He was powerless. Even if he did resist Tgurneu, there was no point. He was just that thing’s toy, and there was nothing he could do…
He thought of Fremy. Had the fiends welcomed her, now that she’d betrayed the Braves? Would they forgive her after she’d killed so many of their kind? Tgurneu had said Adlet was the only one she wanted to save. Had that not made the fiends resent her?
Adlet prayed with all his heart that she would be forgiven.
For some reason, Tgurneu was maintaining its control over him. He still loved Fremy just as much as he had before his capture. “…Please, Fremy. Be happy,” he murmured. The world was ending, but he’d managed to make her happy. It was a small saving grace to him, even if he knew it was because of false love.
His ears plugged, he could hear nothing of what was going on outside.
He wasn’t interested—because even if he did know, a toy of Tgurneu’s wouldn’t be able to do anything about it.
✦ ✦ ✦
It all happened at once. The very moment Dozzu returned from communicating with Mora, Fremy sent the signal out to all the Braves. Rolonia dashed the firecracker ignition device on the ground, and instantly, countless lights flared up throughout the forest. As they watched, the lights grew, and in a heartbeat, the forest was enveloped in flame. There had to have been about three hundred fiends still in there. The trees were swallowed in the fire, and from a distance, they could hear the screams.
Fremy watched the messenger-fiends fall to the ground, their wing roots scorched by Fremy’s gunpowder and unable to fly. Fremy also shot specialist number twenty-four beside the wolf-fiend, while Rolonia and Nashetania placed themselves to the east and west to kill all messengers except the leopard.
All that remained was to wait for the leopard-fiend to run a message. Dozzu concentrated on the creature, waiting for it to move.
But it never did. And there was no sign the wolf-fiend would speak to it.
“…It can’t be,” Fremy murmured.
✦ ✦ ✦
As soon as the forest went up in flames, Goldof raced off. With the exhausted Mora slung over his shoulder, he covered them both with the flame-resistant cloths Adlet had given them.
Fiends writhed in agony among the blazing trees. Many tried escaping the forest, but they were prevented by the fires rising up every which way and ended up swallowed by the flames instead. They tried weaving between the gaps, but they crashed into one another and couldn’t get away.
Only Goldof, protected by the flame-retardant cloth, was able to leap into the fire. It burned his armor and charred his skin, but it wasn’t enough to kill him.
But right when he was about to escape—
“Ngh!”
The attack came from the shadows under the canopy and from between the trees. Goldof was shocked. The only explanation was that the enemy had known about their escape route and was lying in wait for him.
Normally, he would have zigzagged past the enemies to evade them, but thanks to the poison ravaging his body, he was clearly slowing down.
✦ ✦ ✦
When would the leopard-fiend move? Fremy waited. They had to kill Tgurneu now, or they couldn’t save Adlet.
“Fremy! Retreat! The plan has failed!” Dozzu yelled.
But Fremy still couldn’t leave the spot and kept fighting the attacking fiends.
The wolf-fiend was chuckling. So it had seen through their plan, after all. Had Adlet leaked the information during his capture? Or had Tgurneu just figured out what they would do?
“…Dozzu, Rolonia, Nashetania—run!” Fremy yelled. She still couldn’t give up on Adlet.
“What purpose is there in you staying alone?!” Dozzu demanded.
Rolonia threw the firecracker that was their signal for retreat at the ground to tell their distant allies to flee. “Fremy, run, please!” she yelled.
But Fremy was still thinking—was there some other way to find Adlet? Was there a way to save him?
The scattered fiends gradually gathered around the wolf-fiend. With every passing moment, the wall of enemies around them closed in.
✦ ✦ ✦
Inside the stomach of the fiend, Adlet continued praying for Fremy’s happiness when, suddenly, his expression clouded.
Something was strange. He tried thinking back on everything that had happened, but his head wouldn’t work right. He was exhausted, and he had given up on everything. But his mind wouldn’t stop. The one feeling that remained in him, his wish for Fremy’s happiness, drove him forward.
Even just remembering his conversation with Tgurneu was painful. But he examined every single thing the fiend had said.
“…!” Adlet realized what was really behind his sense that something didn’t quite add up. It had come after Tgurneu had told him of Fremy’s surrender.
If Fremy had betrayed them, she would have told them about the plan herself. But Tgurneu had fixated on getting that information out of him. It was possible Tgurneu had known about the plan and still wanted the information from Adlet anyway. But after Adlet’s confession, the goat-fiend beside Tgurneu had murmured You finally got it out of him .
“…Damn it.”
Adlet realized what that meant.
Fremy hadn’t actually surrendered. Had Tgurneu been lying? Or was her betrayal a pretense on her part? Either way, Fremy was still fighting the fiends.
“What a disaster,” Adlet muttered. He was furious at how stubborn she was. The only way for her to be happy was to give up and return to the fiends, but she was still carrying on with this pointless fight.
Adlet had prevented them from ever winning. No—beating Tgurneu had been impossible all along because everything about this fight had followed its predictions to the letter.
“Stop it, Fremy. Give it up.” If she dragged this out any longer, she might be cut off from the fiends forever. They might never forgive her.
The only thing Adlet wanted was for Fremy to be happy. The thought that he’d succeeded at that had been his one solace in the face of the world’s destruction.
Then Adlet remembered. The gunpowder board Fremy had made for him before he’d gone chasing after Hans—the one that would tell her to surrender when there was no more hope—it was still in his belt pouch. He moved his restrained arm, and the tentacle binding it tightened. The hippo-fiend had been ordered not to let him escape.
“Stop it. I’m gonna make her surrender. This is gonna help you guys.”
The tentacle’s grip did not loosen. Could the hippo-fiend not hear him, or was it just refusing to listen?
“…Ngh!” Yanking against the restraint as hard as he could, he stuffed his hand into the belt pouch, grabbed the gunpowder board, and scratched its surface with his nails. Fremy would know it had exploded. If she got the message, she would surrender.
But no explosion came. Did it get wet? Adlet wondered. But then, he noticed something was wrong.
Instead of detonating, the surface of the gunpowder board had just broken a little. Adlet was confused, but he kept feeling the board. His fingers slid across an irregularity in the surface. It seemed to be fine writing.
Fremy could manifest solid chunks of gunpowder in her hands, and she also had control over what shape those chunks would take. She could create a board with words carved into it. Stroking the letters, Adlet read the message.
The first line read:
FORGET IT . I’M NOT SURRENDERING.
Adlet shifted his finger, tracing the letters on the second line.
I’M GOING TO FIGHT AND DIE—TO THE END.
“…You idiot. Why are you fighting?”
Adlet despaired. Someone kill me , he thought again. He could no longer bear the weight of his choice to destroy the world with his own hands, and he couldn’t even protect the one person he loved. “No more! Let me die! Please! Kill me! I beg of you!” he screamed. His voice reached no one.
She had to still be fighting. She was still struggling to save Adlet and beat Tgurneu.
“Fremy…stop it. What are you fighting for?”