After about half an hour of galloping, the fence that encircled the village came into view. The streets were quiet. Adlet saw no one, be it human, fiend, or animal. The village was completely desolate. Maybe the fiends had yet to come, maybe they had already finished the job and left, or maybe it was a trap.
Adlet dismounted, drew his sword, and proceeded with caution. There was something strange lying by the entrance to the village—the corpse of a fiend that resembled a giant snake. It was big—a far more powerful specimen than the fiends he and Nashetania had killed. Adlet approached the corpse to get a better look. Some extraordinary power had smashed its head in. Closer investigation revealed an iron ball about two centimeters in diameter buried inside the wound.
“A slingshot? No. It couldn’t be…a gun?” Adlet tilted his head.
The gun was a weapon that had been developed about thirty years earlier—a miniaturized version of a cannon. While these devices were gradually becoming more common, they couldn’t really be called powerful. At most, they could enable a person with no armor to bring down a boar. Adlet had never heard of any gun capable of killing a fiend.
The Brave entered the village. The bodies of fiends were strewn everywhere. Every last one had been brought down by a single shot to either the heart or the head. That was when Adlet finally realized that the female traveler who had been forsaken in the village…hadn’t been forsaken at all. She’d stayed behind to battle the fiends here. And a lone warrior on a journey at a time like this, with the Evil God freshly awakened from its slumber, could have only one purpose. Adlet searched for the girl in houses and the center square, finally approaching a charcoal maker’s hut near the fringes of the town.
“Oh.” He spotted someone. Raising his hand, Adlet was about to call out, but he stopped midmotion, his voice catching somewhere in his throat. The moment he saw the girl, he froze.
She was alone, walking toward the delapidated hut. She was probably about seventeen or eighteen. Her hair was white, and she wore a cloak with a frayed hem. In her arms, she cradled a puppy, affectionately stroking its neck as she walked. Adlet realized at a glance that this was the girl who had defeated the fiends, thanks to the gun peeking out from underneath a gap in her cloak. But Adlet didn’t care about that. The girl was carrying a puppy. The mundane sight left Adlet completely unable to move.
“There you are,” she said.
A lone dog was chained to a post in front of the hut. It was probably the mother of the one in the girl’s arms. She lowered the puppy at her breast to the ground. It leaped toward the other dog, wagging its tail and frolicking about.
The girl pulled a knife from beneath her cloak, severing the mother’s collar and freeing her. “Fiends only attack humans. You can be at ease and live here.”
The two dogs romped about the girl’s knees and then ran off to disappear into the forest. Adlet stood stock-still as he watched the scene.
The girl was striking. Her face looked rather young. Her right eye was covered with a patch, and her left was a clear blue, heavy lidded, and cold. Her leather cloak obscured the leather clothes underneath that clung tightly to her body. A black cloth wound around her head.
This girl was powerful—Adlet could tell that with a glance. She moved with precision, her bearing reminiscent of a honed blade. It told him she was a near-flawless warrior. Just approaching her would be enough to make him feel as if his heart might stop.
But the way she’d petted that puppy confused him. Her hands had cradled the dog, comforting it. They were kind hands. It was as if she’d been teaching it what affection was. The girl stared in silence at the forest into which the two dogs had disappeared. To Adlet, the light in her eyes, her expression, seemed terribly ephemeral. She looked like a flower on the verge of wilting, a star about to sink at any moment. Like something fragile. Adlet didn’t get her. She was cold but also warm. Terrifyingly strong yet simultaneously frail. This contradictory first impression was confusing.
“Who’s there?” The girl turned toward Adlet.
His heart jumped. His mind went blank, and he had no idea what to say. He could hear his pulse pounding in his ears. It wasn’t that he was shocked by her beauty. He wasn’t moved by emotion and probably wasn’t in love. He just didn’t know what to do. All he could manage was panic. “Do you like dogs?” Adlet finally squeezed out the wrong thing to say.
Her mouth agape, the girl stared at Adlet in astonishment. “I like dogs. I hate people, though.”
“…Oh. I like both.”
“Who are you?” the girl demanded as she pulled her gun from beneath her cloak, pointing it between Adlet’s eyes. He felt absolutely no sense of danger. “Have you come to kill me, too?” On the back of her left hand was the Crest of the Six Flowers. Adlet gazed vacantly at the girl’s face and her crest. “You don’t care if I shoot?” she inquired.
Those words brought Adlet to his senses. Panicking, he raised both hands, showing her he wasn’t hostile. “Wait, don’t shoot. I’m Adlet Mayer. I’m one of the Braves of the Six Flowers, just like you.” When he displayed the symbol on the back of his hand to the girl, she eyed him suspiciously.
“I’ve heard of you. You’re the cowardly warrior from the martial tournament in Piena. They say you’re a genuine sleazebag.”
Adlet was flustered. “W-wait. Who said that? I’m the strongest man in the world. I am absolutely not a ‘cowardly warrior,’” Adlet stammered, attempting to calm his pounding heart.
“You’re one of the Braves of the Six Flowers? There’s no way I’d believe that,” she scoffed.
He could sense no kindness or transient fragility in the way she leveled the muzzle of her gun at him. The girl who stood there was a cold, cautious, natural-born warrior. Her attitude immediately dispersed Adlet’s confusion. “The rumors are wrong,” he said. “I’ll do whatever it takes to win, but I’m not a coward.”
“…”
“I’m Adlet, the strongest man in the world. A coward wouldn’t be capable of calling himself the strongest in the world. So don’t point your gun at me,” he said confidently.
But the girl’s expression only showed disgust, and she gave no indication that she would lower her weapon. “Where are your allies?”
“Nashetania is nearby. You know her, don’t you? She’s the princess of Piena and the Saint of Blades.”
“Nashetania…I see. So she was chosen as well.” She still made no move to lower her weapon—though she should have known that Adlet wasn’t her enemy. She stared at him with jaded eyes. At the very least, it wasn’t how most people would regard a future comrade-in-arms. “Tell Nashetania and the others you are about to meet…”
“…Tell them what?”
“My name is Fremy Speeddraw. Saint of Gunpowder.”
The Saint of Gunpowder. Adlet hadn’t heard the title before. It was said that the Spirits dwelled in all things, governing over the providence of all existence. But he had never heard of a Spirit or Saint of Gunpowder. What bothered him more than that, though… Why should there be any need for him to tell the others?
“I will not be accompanying you,” she explained. “I will be fighting the Evil God on my own. I won’t interfere with your business, so don’t get involved with mine.”
“What are you talking about?” asked Adlet.
“Is there something wrong with your hearing? I’m saying that I’ll be operating separately from your group. Do not get involved with me in the future.”
Adlet was dumbfounded. Wasn’t working together what made them the Braves of the Six Flowers? What could one warrior hope to accomplish alone?
“Tell them exactly that. You can manage a basic errand, can’t you?” Fremy asked, lowering her gun, then turning and sprinting off. She was quite fast.
“Hey, wait!” Of course, mere words had no effect. Fremy disappeared in a blink. “Damn it!” Adlet scanned the area. His horse was approaching. He drew his knife from the scabbard on his chest and carved into the horse’s saddle: Nashetania. Met another Brave. I’m following her. Don’t worry about me—head for our goal. Then he turned the horse around toward the village entrance and sent it galloping back. “Wait! Where’d you go, Fremy?!” he shouted, but there was no reply. Adlet dashed into the trees.