Fremy was still flinging bombs at the fiends around her in search of an escape route. Rolonia and Nashetania appeared to be in pain. Only Fremy and Dozzu were doing all right.
“Watch out!” Dozzu cried as it protected Fremy with a lightning bolt. The enemy was going for Fremy’s limbs, still with no apparent intention of killing her. But it was only a matter of time before they captured her.
Fremy listened hard. Was Adlet calling for help? Had anything strange happened? She heard nothing.
✦ ✦ ✦
Goldof was fighting to escape, too. All he could hear were the cries of the burning fiends and the wailing of more in the distance.
✦ ✦ ✦
Staring at that knife blade, Chamo was certain: Hans was not the seventh. When he’d attacked her and called himself the seventh, it was all an act. Had he really been the seventh, he would never have let her get away, and he wouldn’t have demanded proof from Adlet that he was the seventh, either.
Chamo didn’t understand what Hans was trying to do or what he was thinking, but it was clear that the real prisoner here wasn’t Adlet—it was Hans.
“…Hng!” The poison was spreading inside her, but she didn’t order her scattered slave-fiends to gather to her. She couldn’t abandon Hans when he was all alone.
That was when Chamo thought she heard a metallic sound far away. But she didn’t even know from which direction it had come.
✦ ✦ ✦
“…Grek.”
However, something else did react to the sound of the bell: two of the slave-fiends Chamo had dispatched into the ruins. They had attempted to enter the square once before, but specialist number eleven’s power had diverted their attention away from it, ultimately sending them headed in the opposite direction.
But at the sudden sound of the bell, the slave-fiends stopped and turned. One remained in place while the other immediately ran off to Chamo.
✦ ✦ ✦
Specialist number eleven was at the edge of the thread cocoon, still using its power as it hid in the shadow of a ruined building. When that bell had fallen to the ground, it had panicked, but the sound wasn’t loud enough to reach the Braves. Eleven was certain they wouldn’t be able to overcome its ability.
Tgurneu had ordered number eleven to kill itself, but it hadn’t abandoned its loyalty to Tgurneu. I was wrong , it told itself, devoting all its being to Tgurneu’s purpose—and to the Evil God’s.
Continuously pouring all its energy into its ability, number eleven never noticed the slave-fiend approaching the silk cocoon, ready to spit acid at it.
Or Chamo, charging it from behind.
✦ ✦ ✦
Having lost his sword, Adlet borrowed one of Hans’s to engage the fiends, but with just one blade, Hans’s attack power was halved. A fiend’s arm skimmed Hans’s head, taking advantage of a brief opening.
“Meow!” Hans fell, but Adlet saved him with his throwing needles and Hans’s own sword.
Hold on , Adlet told himself.
Then, all the fiends—including Tgurneu’s dog-like form—descended on them as a horde. Just as Adlet thought I can’t dodge them all , there was a call nearby.
“Catboy!”
Every fiend turned toward the voice, and Adlet took the opportunity to scoop up Hans and escape the center of the horde.
One after another, slave-fiends were ripping through the thread cocoon and bursting into the square. Tgurneu and the fiends all seemed shocked.
They were saved. But a moment later, Adlet remembered—Chamo believed Hans was the enemy. She’d been so enraged, she’d lost her head and gone after him. “Chamo! Hans isn’t the enemy!”
The slave-fiends were charging for Adlet when from his arms Hans yelled, “Kill Tgurneu! Adlet’s on our side now!” That order stopped the slave-fiends in their tracks. Adlet was shocked. Chamo shouldn’t have known he was the seventh.
“…Chamo knew it. You weren’t the enemy, catboy. So what about Adlet? Has he betrayed Tgurneu?” Adlet worried about how to explain the situation, but Chamo ignored him as she scanned the battlefield. “Well, whatever. We’ll think about it after Tgurneu’s dead. Which one is it?”
In response to Chamo’s question, the dog-fiend stepped forward. “Me.”
“Huh. So you’re announcing yourself? You’re not gonna sneak around and hide anymore?”
“Indeed not. Because I don’t need to run.” Tgurneu seemed quite unruffled.
That was when Adlet realized—Chamo was panting hard, and her movements seemed a little twitchy. She wasn’t okay, either. She’d inhaled the poison in the air around the ruins.
“With you in that state, I can win easily.”
The two fiends and slave-fiends moved at the same time, crashing together in the center of the square. Adlet and Hans quickly jumped to the side to avoid becoming embroiled themselves.
At Tgurneu’s direction, one fiend vomited up something that looked like a conch shell, and another fiend blew it. Adlet could tell it was like his own fiend-calling flute. Tgurneu was summoning all its allies in the ruins.
Chamo pulled a flash grenade out of her pocket and threw it into the air. For just an instant, the whole area was enveloped in intense light. That was the signal they’d decided would mean they had discovered Tgurneu.
In the dog-fiend’s body, Tgurneu charged Chamo, but her slave-fiends stood in front of her, blocking its path. Both sides had called for support, but neither had any intention of relying on it. They meant to finish this personally.
✦ ✦ ✦
Fremy, Nashetania, Rolonia, and Dozzu were on the northwest side of the ruins, surrounded by fiends.
The sudden light made Fremy doubt her eyes. The flash grenade was the signal they’d discovered Tgurneu. Had Adlet thrown it? Or Chamo?
At roughly the same moment, Fremy’s ears caught a sound like a conch flute being blown. Only fiends could hear it, and it was coming from the very direction where she’d seen that flash of light.
The four had been trying to escape, but now they instantly changed course. This battle to flee was already nearly hopeless anyway. The only way out now was to kill Tgurneu.
✦ ✦ ✦
The wolf-fiend was occupied with preventing the party’s retreat when it heard the sound of the conch flute. That was Tgurneu’s emergency signal—the order to cancel all operations and join their commander in battle.
I have to rush to Tgurneu’s side immediately , it thought. But then, it realized it had a more important role—to keep the four here from getting close.
“Everyone, listen! I’m nöt Tgurneu! I was only prétending to be, on the Cómmander’s örders!” There was no longer any reason for it to keep up the charade, although the fiends that weren’t aware of the situation were shocked. “All fiends of this förce, stop these four fröm leaving—or die here! But dön’t kill Fremy! These are Cómmander Tgurneu’s orders!”
The two Braves, Nashetania, and Dozzu took advantage of the wolf-fiend’s distraction as it set about giving orders to escape the encirclement and attempt to make their way to the southwest, but the wolf-fiend shot after them, blocking their path with its own body. Ignoring Fremy’s bullets thudding into its flesh, it attacked.
✦ ✦ ✦
Less than forty fiends protected Tgurneu. Hans had already whittled down ten, and a few of those remaining weren’t combat-oriented. Opposite them, Chamo had about fifty slave-fiends. Numerically, hers was the superior position.
The fiends blocked the slave-fiends’ attacks as they charged for Chamo, Tgurneu’s canine form at their center. The commander was no longer on the defensive; it had turned the tide.
The dog-fiend wasn’t that strong. It could hardly compare to the three-winged fiend Tgurneu had controlled when the Braves first met it and the yeti-fiend it inhabited during their second encounter. But despite that, this battle was not going in the heroes’ favor. The slave-fiends were being pushed back.
“Watch out! Chamo!” Adlet cut down an enemy that had circled around to the side. But the slave-fiends were immediately suspicious, baring their fangs at him.
“Meow , Chamo, Adlet’s on our side. Focus on Tgurneu.”
“Chamo’s got no idea what happened.” She shot Adlet a cold look. Adlet kept on analyzing the combat situation.
The enemy’s strength was in their skilled coordination. They were good at dealing with small numbers of foes as a unit, but even against a large force, they still moved in a controlled manner. Meanwhile, the slave-fiends were sluggish. Some momentarily crumbled into their mud form. This was the first time Adlet had ever seen that happen. Chamo was gradually losing her capacity to command the slave-fiends.
“Cómmander Tgurneu!” And then, to top it off, there was a cry from outside the square. The fiends spread throughout the ruins were uniting together here. Chamo dispatched about twenty of her slave-fiends around the square to block the reinforcements.
“…Ngh.”
They really couldn’t let this go on long. Hans gave Adlet a look, and Adlet returned it. He was thinking the same thing.