Adlet was desperately trying to think of a way out. All he had left in the way of tools, though, were one Saint’s Spike and various types of needles. The rest he had used in combat or destroyed on Tgurneu’s orders. Even if he wanted to call for their allies, he had no means of doing so.
“Meaowr!” Hans’s sword crossed with Tgurneu’s claws, which shot out at a frightening speed. Hans was clearly moving slower than usual.
Adlet protected his companion, keeping the fiends at bay with paralysis needles. He didn’t have that many. He had to summon the other Braves somehow. At this rate, the two wouldn’t last ten minutes.
The bird-faced fiend attacked Adlet from behind. As he kicked it away, Adlet racked his brain.
He could tell that one of Tgurneu’s minions was using some kind of fiend ability. It had to be something that would conceal their presence, making it hard for others to find them.
That was when Adlet noticed a cluster of fiends in one corner of the square: the spider-fiend and the ape-fiend that had been by Tgurneu’s side before. They were the only ones just watching from the sidelines without participating in the battle. One had to have the ability to conceal their presence.
“Go for them!” Adlet pointed at the corner of the square. But before Hans could even make a move, the spider spat out thread to create a defensive wall. Adlet threw needles at them, but they weren’t enough to kill the two fiends.
“No go, meow … Think up somethin’, Adlet,” said Hans. They had no choice but to break through the concealing ability, after all.
The ability seemed incredibly powerful, but it couldn’t be perfect. If it were, Tgurneu would have needed to make Adlet break his tools. Tgurneu had ordered him to throw away his flash grenades, and that meant bright light could communicate their location to their allies. But Adlet had nothing left in his arsenal that emitted light.
That wasn’t all—Tgurneu had also told him to destroy his bombs and his fiend-calling flute. And when Hans had yelled out, Tgurneu had ordered the fiends throughout the ruins to wail and drown out his voice. The ruins still resounded with the noise.
Sound. Adlet was certain that if he could just make a noise that would reach the whole of the ruins—enough to drown out all the fiends’ cries—he could inform their allies of their location.
It was a simple solution. But Tgurneu had made sure that door was closed to him. Adlet had no more implements to make any loud noises.
“Meow! Do somethin’! Yer the only one we can count on now!” Hans shouted miserably. The fiends were descending on them from all sides, focusing their attacks on Adlet to prevent him from calling reinforcements. He blocked their strikes with his sword and armor.
Tgurneu kicked Hans back. As Hans tumbled clumsily along the ground, Tgurneu looked away. Hans had to have been waiting for that moment. The pathetic cry was also a sham, to make Tgurneu overconfident.
“Hrmeow!” Hans came out of the roll and instantly switched directions, leaping with the strength of his arms alone now that Tgurneu was distracted and switching targets to Adlet.
“!”
One of Hans’s swords pierced Tgurneu’s stomach. The fiend tried to pull it out, but Hans’s other blade sliced off its mouse head, which rolled onto the ground.
“Meow!”
But the headless fiend was still moving. It stabbed its own stomach with a hand, plunging it all the way in to grab the fig and toss it backward—all so fast even Hans couldn’t respond. The gigantic dog-fiend behind it instantly dashed for the fig. Adlet threw a needle to keep it back, but the dog-fiend swept the needle aside with its tail and caught its tiny commander in its mouth.
“Whoops, that was close. How careless of me… It seems I have to be a little more cautious,” the dog-fiend said in Tgurneu’s voice. Its tone was not as sedate as it had been, but that lack of composure meant that Adlet and Hans were now even deeper in danger.
Tgurneu would no longer be careless.
“I’ll focus on support, after all. I’ll leave offense to you,” it ordered, and the other fiends attacked.
I really have to call for help somehow , Adlet thought. But no matter how he thought about it, he still didn’t have any tools that could make a lot of noise.
Are we stuck? Just as the question entered his mind, he recalled what Atreau had once told him, and all his training began trickling back.
What Atreau regarded as important above all else was the training of the eye. He had said that when under attack, even when you were certain of your victory, you should always be observing the world around you. Atreau had taught him that his secret weapons were not only what was tucked into his pouches. Think of everything in the world as your weapon.
Adlet’s eyes roved. The faint light of the sun told him things that had been obscured before—about the thread cocoon, the situation in the square, and the many crumbling buildings surrounding it.
“Hans, get back,” Adlet ordered. “And guard me!”
Hans was trying to go for Tgurneu, in the dog-fiend’s body. At Adlet’s instruction, he shifted back and defended the young man from the fiends’ attacks instead. At the same time, Adlet clenched the grip of his sword and fired the blade.
He wasn’t aiming it at Tgurneu or for its guards. His target was outside the silk cocoon—one of the delapidated buildings. It was the tallest tower in the ruins, probably once the center of the people’s lives. Adlet knew the center of every town and village had a system to inform the residents of unusual events.
The blade of Adlet’s sword landed a clean hit on the chain supporting the bell hanging from the top of that tower. The bell swayed wide, and when the chain failed to bear its weight, it fell to the ground. The crashing gong rang out into the forest.
“It’s no use.” Tgurneu smiled. “That’s not going to be loud enough to reach the Braves. They’re far away now.”