For an instant, Tgurneu was stunned. Adlet had discovered where it was. But the Braves were already exhausted. Even if they had solved the mystery, that was no reason for it to lose.
“Haaa!” When Adlet lunged out to attack, Tgurneu didn’t block it. Its body was sturdy enough for something so minor. Adlet stabbed into number one’s supervisor unit, but he couldn’t fully penetrate its firm hide.
Tgurneu thrust out with a sharp hand that skimmed Adlet. The boy’s sword was still stuck in Tgurneu’s host body and was pulled out of his grip. In his other hand, Adlet held the Saint’s Spike, his ultimate weapon. Tgurneu knew that weapon wouldn’t work on it but nevertheless dodged the swing and knocked the weapon aside with a knee strike.
Now Adlet was empty-handed. Tgurneu’s third attack was another stab from its pointed hand into Adlet’s stomach. It felt the blow hit Adlet’s organs. “I won’t kill…” I won’t kill you , Tgurneu started to say. But a heartbeat later, still impaled, Adlet grabbed Tgurneu by the face and held its beak open with a finger.
Tgurneu couldn’t understand what he was trying to do. It tried to shake the boy off, to shove him away.
Adlet took a deep breath, and then, in one burst, spat out all the blood pooled in his mouth. The fluid shot into the unit’s mouth, pouring down into its stomach. When Adlet’s blood touched the fig at the bottom, Tgurneu’s real body, utter agony overwhelmed it.
Tgurneu’s frame writhed inside the unit’s stomach, losing control of number one. As one that had never fought with its own body, it was unused to pain.
✦ ✦ ✦
Four years earlier, Atreau had given Adlet the order to find a use for the Saint’s Spike, and Adlet had stabbed himself in the heart. A few hours later, Atreau was treating the injury.
“I ask you: What was the reason for this foolishness?” Atreau asked Adlet as he lay in bed.
“You get why, don’t you? Didn’t you examine my blood?” Adlet replied with a smile. “You told me that a Saint’s Spike is a crystallized version of the poison extracted from a Saint’s blood. So I thought if I melted that crystal into my own blood, maybe I could turn my whole body into poison.”
Atreau was exasperated but surprised at the same time. Judging from his attitude, Adlet was convinced of his success. “I’d bet it’s more effective than you predicted. Your blood’s a poison even more effective than a Saint’s. If a fiend drank that, it’d probably die in a matter of minutes. Just touching it would introduce it to some serious pain.” Atreau turned his back to Adlet. “But it’s a foolish idea. What need is there to turn your own blood into a weapon? There’s no value in recording it in my research. But…I’ll let you stay as my apprentice.”
Adlet made a fist and thrust it up at the ceiling.
✦ ✦ ✦
Fiends’ cries rose up from the square. The bird-fiend that had pierced Adlet’s torso with its hand twisted in anguish. Adlet was relieved his final move had worked. If it hadn’t, it would have been over for him.
Tgurneu hadn’t noticed that, under the veil of smoke, Adlet had broken off the tip of the Saint’s Spike and buried it in the stomach wound Tgurneu itself had given him.
“It’s not yet over, Adlet!” Dozzu yelled, and as it cried, all the fiends turned on Adlet. But they now lacked the breathtaking coordination of just moments ago. They were confused, unable to grasp the situation or make sensible judgments.
Fremy took advantage of that opportunity to blow off the bird-fiend’s head with a bullet. Her second bullet pierced its stomach.
Instantly, all the fiends around it froze and fell to the ground as one.
“Finish it off!” Fremy yelled, about to fire off a third bullet into the corpse of the bird-fiend.
But before she could, a fig jumped out from the bird’s smashed head. “Wahhhhh!” It opened its mouth wide and screeched. “It h-hurts! Ah! Ahh! What is this?! It h-hurts! Save me! Fiends! Save me!” With the vines that grew from its leafy top, Tgurneu rolled along the ground.
So this was Tgurneu. For a moment, Adlet forgot about the fight and just watched. This was the creature that had controlled everything about him—had destroyed everything about him.
Seeing the real Tgurneu for the first time up close, it looked so weak and pitiful.
“Adlet! Capture it!” Fremy yelled.
✦ ✦ ✦
Tgurneu didn’t know what had happened. It could have sworn victory was right in front of it just ten seconds earlier. And now, its defenseless real body had been exposed as it twisted in agony. “Hyaaaaa!” it screamed, panicked. It had never once had its powerless fig form exposed before an enemy.
Its vines carried it out of Adlet’s grasp, and its fruit dodged Fremy’s bullets. Tgurneu dashed out of the square at full speed.
Number one may have been defeated, but Tgurneu still had plenty of other minions. If it could jump into one of their mouths to control them, it would be saved. All that filled its head now were thoughts of survival.
Number twenty-four and the spider-fiend ran toward Tgurneu in an attempt to save their commander, but slave-fiends reached them from behind and slayed them in the blink of an eye.
“Cómmander Tgurneu! Thïs way!” One fiend slipped through the slave-fiend’s defenses and came running toward Tgurneu. But the moment the fig was in its grasp, Dozzu fired off a lightning bolt, and it fell before the commander could seize control. Tgurneu continued its flight, dragging along its burnt and charred body.
“Tch!” One of Fremy’s bombs rolled close by. Tgurneu used its vines to leap wide and avoid the blast, but the force of it pushed it away from freedom and back into the center of the square.
“Save me! Save me! Save me!” Tgurneu screeched, again and again. But no fiends could reply. None broke through the slave-fiend’s defenses.
Staggering, Tgurneu’s gaze turned toward Dozzu’s glare. “Save me…Dozzu… We’re…friends…”
“I’ll say this once more: I consider it the greatest shame of my life that I ever called you a friend.” Dozzu unleashed a lightning strike. Tgurneu was certain it would die. But Dozzu, wounded and exhausted, missed. It merely fried most of Tgurneu’s vines, leaving only one.
I’m going to lose? Tgurneu thought. But what on earth had been the cause of its defeat?
It should have won this fight. There was no reason for it to lose. But it had. Tgurneu was forced to admit it was a miracle.
And Tgurneu knew that love, only love, could cause miracles.
It was going to lose. Tgurneu. To Adlet. To Fremy—and to the power of love that supported them.
“…Ah…ahhhhh!” Tgurneu screamed, swinging its lone vine around. It was going to be defeated by the power of love. That was the one thing it could never allow to happen. This was more difficult to bear than death.
More than anyone, Tgurneu believed in the power of love—and hated it in kind.
“No! No, no!” Tgurneu lived to crush love. To use love. It had to. If it was to be defeated by that power, all meaning would evaporate from the life it had lived so far. Flailing its vine in the pointlessness of it all, Tgurneu screamed and screamed.
Then, a hand reached out to it. “…Got you.” Adlet grabbed Tgurneu the fig.
✦ ✦ ✦
Panting hard, Adlet held Tgurneu in his hands. Once I crush this fruit, it’ll all be over , he thought, but for some reason, his fingers didn’t move.
His vision was clouding, and his legs felt weak—so weak, it was strange he was still standing.
“What are you doing, Adlet?! Hurry up and kill it! Rolonia and Mora are in danger!” Fremy had her hands full dealing with the fiends charging into the square, while Dozzu’s legs were also trembling as it held its ground, firing bolt after bolt.
Tgurneu still in his grasp, Adlet stood frozen. He wondered if maybe the fiend was still plotting something. Maybe it had some other trick up its sleeve.
But Tgurneu just kept flailing its vine in vain. It really was out of options.
For some reason, Adlet was sad to see that this creature, who had destroyed his whole life, was so insubstantial.
Years ago, he had made up his mind that when he got his revenge, he would get it over with at once. He didn’t need Tgurneu begging for its life or repenting. He’d decided he would just end it. But that determination had been shattered. There was something he just had to say to it, no matter what. “Tgurneu, you called me your toy. You said I existed for your sake. But actually, it was the other way around.”
“…What are you talking about?”
“You were there for mine. You were there to bring Fremy and me together.”
For a while, Tgurneu was silent. Suddenly, its one remaining vine shot out over thirty feet, and its tip pierced the body of a fiend.