I have to run. It took Fremy three minutes after she’d found out the plan had failed to realize it. But she was rooted there by the feeling that, if she fled now, Adlet would die.
“We’re going to be completely surrounded! We really will lose anywhere to run!” Dozzu shouted, spurring Fremy to finally make a dash for their escape route. If they all died here, Adlet would never be saved.
A mere three minutes—but it was a fatal delay.
The four raced for the opening Dozzu had cleared for them, but a unit of fiends was blocking the way. Fremy tried routing them with her bombs and pushing forward, but enemies streamed in from both sides. When she drove back the fiends coming from the sides, next, they attacked from the rear. When she blocked that wave, more came from the front.
“This is bad! They likely knew our escape route beforehand!” Dozzu yelled. “I suspect the enemy will have been deployed at our meeting point, too. We have no choice but to head somewhere else!”
“We have to tell Chamo and Mora!” said Rolonia.
“We’ll have our hands full just surviving,” Nashetania replied.
As they battled the fiends, Fremy blamed herself. If she’d made the decision to run just a little earlier, they might have been able to survive this, at least.
Rolonia’s whip and Nashetania’s blades were slowing down. Fremy was all right, but the poison was slowly getting to the others. With her mind entirely occupied with thoughts of Adlet, she’d failed to notice they were in trouble.
That was when Rolonia approached her during a pause in her whip flailing and curses. “Don’t give up, Fremy,” she whispered.
Fremy shook off the crushing despair. They would get away, survive, and keep fighting. As long as they were alive, they were sure to find a way out.
✦ ✦ ✦
It’s no use —so Rolonia might normally have said, slumping to the ground. But instead, she was flailing and yelling.
It was all a disaster. The poison was spreading through her body, and she was so preoccupied with fighting, she couldn’t spare the energy to fend it off.
But still, her allies were with her now. She felt helpless, but they would all surely find a way out of this. What she was capable of doing now was believing and powering through it. That was all. As long as the others weren’t giving up, she could keep from losing heart, too.
✦ ✦ ✦
Goldof continued driving his spear into the fiends that blocked his path. He was headed for the center of the ruins, to the southeast. Nashetania and the others had to be there.
Why was I born this strong? Goldof wondered. Once, he had cursed his excessive strength, but he knew now it was what enabled him to protect people.
The plan had failed, so he had to get all his allies out. He was the only one who could.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Adlet! Flee! The plan has failed!” On Goldof’s back, Mora shouted in her mountain echo. She tried communicating the situation to Adlet as she clung to her dimming consciousness.
She wasn’t yet helpless. Dying could come after she’d done everything she could.
✦ ✦ ✦
Hans felt numbness in his fingertips. He was slowly losing his sense of balance. Not only was his whole body exhausted, he was still inhaling the poison torture. His fight in the thread cocoon had gone on for so long. At this point, he was baffled that he was still alive.
Tgurneu put a hand to its ear to listen to the battles in the distance. “It seems they’re still clinging to life. They don’t know when to give up—not the Braves, and not you, either. But I don’t mind your kind.” Tgurneu smiled. “It’s just like Adlet.”
Meow, makes me feel sick to be compared to that idiot , Hans thought.
✦ ✦ ✦
Inside the fiend’s stomach, Adlet considered—If Fremy would never surrender, then what should he do?
As long as the chain-death ability existed, he couldn’t kill Tgurneu, and he’d never find a way to undo it on this battlefield. Tgurneu had declared using the Book of Truth that even it didn’t know a way to undo it.
The Black Barrenbloom couldn’t be stopped. The only way would be to kill Tgurneu or Fremy herself. He couldn’t protect the other Braves, either. But if he escaped from here, he and Fremy could survive alone. Tgurneu had said that the power of the Black Barrenbloom wouldn’t make the seventh crest disappear.
But then what? Would they fight to the bitter end, just him and Fremy on their own? Would they keep fleeing from Tgurneu and try to slay the Evil God together? No way. Fremy was strong, but they’d never be able to kill all the fiends that were left.
And he wasn’t the strongest in the world or anything close… He was just Tgurneu’s toy.
“I can’t beat Tgurneu…,” Adlet moaned. He had accepted this as an incontrovertible fact. No matter what schemes he came up with, no matter what secret tools he used, they would never work on the fiend commander. There was no way he could overcome the one who’d created him.
He wailed and sobbed like a child. At this rate, Fremy would continue struggling until her demise. Twisting his body, Adlet tried prying off the tentacles. But they held him tight, and he couldn’t move at all. “Please…please let me protect Fremy. No one…can save the world…anymore. So just let me save her…”
Nobody heard him, and he cried until he had no more tears left.
“What are you fighting for, Fremy?” Adlet asked. At that moment, his finger happened to slide on the gunpowder board, and he realized that, a little farther down, there was a third line carved on it.
I WILL MAKE YOU HAPPY .
“…You idiot,” Adlet muttered.
Why was she fighting? That one line gave him his answer. He had protected her and loved her, and she couldn’t abandon him. And because she’d never opened her heart, he understood how much emotion this one line carried.
But there was no point in protecting him. He didn’t deserve to be happy. Manipulated by Tgurneu, he had betrayed his allies and chosen to doom the world. If her wish was for his happiness, it would never come true. If her joy was contingent on his, then it was a gift he would never, ever be able to give her.
The road to her happiness had long since been cut off.
“Gwagh!” The tentacle squeezed around his body, cracking bones and trying to keep him immobile. I’d rather it just finish me off all at once , Adlet thought. Every bone in his body creaked. Is this really the end now? he wondered.
Countless memories rose up and disappeared again in his head—all of her.
Their first meeting. Back in the Phantasmal Barrier, when he’d taken her as his hostage and ran. Embracing her in the Fainting Mountains. In the Temple of Fate, when she’d asked him to save her.
His last recollection was of the words he’d exchanged with her just a few hours ago. It felt like the distant past now.
“Smile, no matter what happens. That’s enough for me.”
A smile appeared through Adlet’s tears.
There was no way he could show his face to Fremy at the moment, but right now, smiling was the one thing he could do for her.
“!”
Something mysterious happened. His body began resisting the strangulation all on its own. His arm, close to breaking, grabbed the tentacle and twisted it away.
I’m an idiot , Adlet derided himself. You’re still gonna resist? Even though you’re nothing more than Tgurneu’s toy. Even though you’re just a fake hero. Despite understanding that all that stood before him was despair, strength welled up in him once more when he smiled.
“…Damn it.”
All he had left was his desire for Fremy’s happiness. The fake love planted by Tgurneu. Nothing else.
But Fremy had sworn with that gunpowder board that she would make him happy. If that was what she wanted, if that would make her content, then he had to oblige. And to find his own happiness, he had to keep fighting.
It was impossible. Adlet understood that painfully well.
But even if it was impossible, he kept pushing. He kept resisting the pressure of the tentacle.
He’d never become the strongest man in the world. He hadn’t managed to be its savior, either. He’d never get revenge for his sister and his friend or make Fremy happy, either.
But he kept struggling anyway.