Slowly, she pointed her blade at Adlet’s heart.
Can I block it? Adlet wondered. If he was lucky, he could probably survive. But Adlet’s arms were leaden. If he were to block this attack, then what? It would be the next attack that would kill him, then, or the one after that. Pain and exhaustion robbed him of his willpower.
I’m cold , he thought. I wonder why I’m so cold? Yesterday when I was traveling with Fremy, it was so hot.
“I’ve told you, you shan’t fool me anymore,” said Nashetania. The tip of her sword was level with his heart. Adlet wasn’t listening. He was just thinking about how cold he was. “You are the seventh,” she said. The blade extended.
Instantly, Adlet’s arms moved. He crossed them both in front of his body, thrusting them out between himself and the oncoming blade. He heard the sound of his flesh parting. His bones had blocked the blade. His left arm was broken, and the right had just barely stopped the attack. “…Cold?” he muttered.
“Don’t bother,” said Nashetania, piercing him deeper.
But Adlet pushed back. He shoved her sword back and to the side. Nashetania lost her balance, staggering. His left arm still impaled, Adlet stood and broke off the sword. Nashetania seemed bewildered by his sudden resistance.
“Sorry!” he yelled. He kicked off on Nashetania’s face with the sole of his boot. She released her sword, pressing her hands where the blow had landed. He took a second step on her face, thwacking her jaw with his heel, and then he turned and dashed away from her. Life had returned to his eyes. Why did I never notice? he wondered.
The answer had been right there in front of him. It had been so close, he felt pathetic for having failed to recognize it. The Phantasmal Barrier was cold.
“Ngh! I won’t let you get away!” she yelled after him.
Adlet used his mouth to extract the blade stuck in his arm. Nashetania was pursuing him, but Adlet ignored her and barreled forward. Blades came at him from the earth and the air, but he just plowed straight ahead, praying he wouldn’t be hit. He couldn’t prove his innocence here. If he wanted to do that, he had to run.
“Princess! Are you safe?” Distantly, Adlet heard Goldof’s voice. He could faintly see the silhouettes of Goldof and Mora within the fog. He could also see that Fremy was slung over Mora’s shoulder. She was struggling, trying to break free of Mora’s restraints.
Adlet was glad to see that Fremy was safe. She had fought well and had managed to survive. Now all Adlet had to do was solve the mystery of the seventh.
“Don’t worry about me! Follow Adlet!” Nashetania called back.
Goldof commenced his attack. He mowed down trees as he lunged with his spear. Adlet turned the thrust aside with his sword. Though he had avoided the strike, Goldof’s huge frame threw Adlet backward. Adlet was grateful for that. Goldof had propelled him in the direction he’d been heading anyway. At this point, sprinting was painful.
“Run!” Fremy yelled from where she lay slung on Mora’s back. She twisted her body, loosening her bonds just a bit so she could turn toward Goldof and Nashetania to fling a bomb. It slowed them down just a bit.
Adlet ran and ran. Finally, Goldof caught up to him and forced him to the ground. “This is as far as you go, Adlet,” he said.
Adlet had collapsed about ten minutes from the temple. The bodies of a few dozen fiends were lying in the area. The day before, when Adlet, Nashetania, Goldof, and Fremy had seen the fiends bombing the temple, the four of them had encountered and battled fiends on their way toward the building. Adlet had broken through their lines and gone ahead while Nashetania finished off the demons. This was where that battle had transpired.
“I’m sorry, Goldof. I was unable to finish him.” Nashetania jogged up to them.
“What are you talking about, Your Highness? You did a fine job running him down.” Goldof gripped Adlet even tighter, and the young warrior had no strength left to resist.
“You did well, Goldof. Kill him,” said Mora as she caught up to them, still holding Fremy.
“No! Stop! Please, Adlet! Get away!” On Mora’s shoulder, Fremy struggled.
“Your Highness, Lady Mora, rather than killing him, we should extract information. If we kill him, we will not know who the mastermind behind this is,” suggested Goldof.
“It won’t work, Goldof,” said Mora. “He will not speak. He is a frighteningly stubborn man.”
“That’s right. We should kill him immediately,” agreed Nashetania.
“Let go! Let me go, Mora!” Fremy struggled as hard as she could, but she couldn’t shake free.
It appeared that Adlet was cornered…but he was smiling. Why?
Because he saw the silhouette approaching Mora from behind.
“…Huh?” The moment Nashetania spotted that shape, the sword slipped from her hand.
“You took way too long. Just where the hell were you?!” Adlet chided Hans, who’d finally decided to show up, and Chamo, who trailed behind him.
“Sorry. I was lookin’ for ya.” Hans awkwardly scratched his head. It sounded as though he knew that he shouldn’t have left the temple. Well, there was no point blaming him. It had been a close call, but they’d made it in time.
“…Huh? Huh?” Nashetania was momentarily stunned. Goldof was also speechless. Nashetania forgot her sword on the ground and ran up to Adlet. “It can’t be…it can’t be…then…” Tears fell from her eyes.
Adlet smiled wryly and said, “Nashetania, you really are powerful. That fight was actually kinda tough. Kinda.”
“What? How can this…” Nashetania covered her face with her hands and began to cry.
Goldof glared at Mora, who still carried Fremy. “Lady Mora. Explain yourself.” He was gripping his spear.
Feigning composure, Mora said, “I apologize. That was a lie. But had I not done this, we would have been unable to hunt down Adlet.”
“Mora, you…” Nashetania regarded her with rage-filled eyes. “Why did you lie to us?!”
“Adlet is the impostor,” she answered. “That fact has not changed. Any and all means were acceptable, if they would gain us victory!”
“You’re wrong! You lied! You tricked us!” Tears in her eyes, Nashetania made a grab for Mora. Goldof moved away from Adlet and cut between the two of them while Fremy escaped Mora’s grasp and ran up to Adlet.
Leaning on Fremy’s shoulder, Adlet slowly stood. “Hey,” he said, using Fremy as a crutch and staggering forward. He spoke quietly, but the others paid close attention. “What do you think makes someone the strongest in the world?” He leaned against a tree trunk and sat himself down on the ground. Fremy pulled a needle and thread from beneath her cloak and began sewing up his wounds. “You need power, technique, knowledge, heart, and luck. All those things,” he said as he gazed at the others and smiled. “The answer’s simple. I am the strongest man in the world. Could anyone else make it this far?”
“Wh-what are you talking about?” Mora sounded confused and panicky.
“It’s about time, isn’t it? Time for me to defeat the seventh,” he said.
Mora seemed stunned. Nashetania and Goldof both looked as if they had been struck by lightning. Chamo was mildly surprised. Fremy’s eyes were filled with expectation as she watched Adlet, and Hans just smirked.
“I’ll give you the answers. I’m going to expose the seventh’s entire plan.”
Then Adlet revealed his deductions. First, he told them what he had told Hans and Fremy—that Private Loren’s instructions for activating the barrier had been lies and that the seventh had activated the barrier after Adlet opened the door. He faltered more than a few times during the explanation—Fremy was treating him without any painkillers.
The only ones who listened intently were Nashetania and Goldof. Mora and Chamo had both apparently already heard his theory up to this point. Most likely, Hans had told them. When Adlet finished the first half of the explanation, he breathed a sigh of pain.
“Hey, you can do this after yer done get
tin’ all sewed up. Or I can take over,” said Hans.
“Please. Are you trying to steal my spotlight here?” Adlet said, a casual smile on his face.
“Mora. Will you be okay if he keeps going?” inquired Fremy.
A cold sweat dotted Mora’s forehead and neck. “Wh-what are you talking about?”
“If you’re the seventh, I think it’s about time for you to surrender.”
“Don’t utter such nonsense.” Mora turned to Adlet. “Adlet, your deductions do not hold. There is no way anyone could generate fog. It would take a powerful barrier to generate it—”
Mora rattled on, and Adlet lifted a hand to cut her off. He already knew what she was going to say. “There is. There is just one Saint in the world who could have generated that fog.”
“This is absurd!” Mora groaned.
As he watched her, Adlet let out a grand sigh. He had put on a tough front for Hans, but just talking was difficult. “Mora, you said before that I don’t understand the Saints’ power. But let me tell you this—you Saints don’t understand science. Your powers surpass the powers of science, so perhaps you might not think much of it, but science is an amazing thing.”
“Science?” Mora tilted her head. It seemed she didn’t even quite understand the meaning of the word.
“Do you know what fog actually is?” said Adlet. “Water vapor condenses and turns into fine particles suspended in the air—that is fog. It’s the same principle that makes your breath visible in winter and makes clouds float in the sky.” As he explained, he remembered his master, Atreau Spiker.
Adlet had learned cutting-edge science from Atreau in order to forge his tools—the principles of what made fire burn, the principles of the effects of poison, and even the laws governing the behavior of gases and liquids. If Adlet hadn’t learned those things, he probably wouldn’t have figured out the answer. Though at the time, he’d thought, What’s the use of learning all this junk?
“The warmer the temperature of the air, the more water vapor it can contain,” he continued. “If the air temperature cools suddenly, then water vapor turns back into liquid, becoming little particles that waft through the air. You get that much?”
“Nope,” said Chamo.
Adlet smiled wryly. “Anyway, when the air is damp, if the weather suddenly turns cold, you get fog. That’s all you need to understand.”
“Roger.” Chamo nodded, surprisingly obedient.
“The humidity in this forest is always fairly high,” Adlet explained. “It’s right by the sea, so the sea wind carries the moisture over here. If you can suddenly lower the air temperature within the forest, you could create fog instantaneously.”
“Wait,” said Mora.
She just keeps interrupting over and over , thought Adlet.
“Then how would you lower the temperature so quickly?” she asked. “That would also be impossible without a large barrier created by the Saint of Ice or the Saint of Snow.”
“You’re a hardheaded woman, Mora,” he said. “They didn’t lower the temperature. They raised it.”
Mora was silent for a while. And then she lifted her head as if having realized something.
“It really was a magnificent plan,” said Adlet. “The scale of the idea was extraordinary. To think that they would control nature itself in order to ensnare me.”
“The Saint of Sun…Leura,” murmured Fremy.
Exactly right , thought Adlet.
Immediately after departing on his journey, he’d heard rumors of the Brave-killer. Famous warriors had been assassinated one after another: Matra, the master archer; Houdelka, the swordsman; Athlay, the Saint of Ice; and Leura, the Saint of Sun. When Adlet had first heard that story, one of those had felt out of place: Leura, the Saint of Sun. Though she had wielded incredible power as a Saint, she was so old, she’d have been incapable of fighting. He’d wondered why the killer would have targeted her. And then Adlet had met Fremy. When he found out she was the killer, he’d asked her, Did you kill Leura, the Saint of Sun, too?
Fremy had replied, I don’t know anything about that. Of course she didn’t. It had been six months prior that Fremy’s fiend comrades had betrayed her. She hadn’t killed any potential Braves after that. Leura had gone missing just over a month before all this began. Fremy had not been involved in the assassination of the Saint of Sun.
So then, who had done it?
“Let me ask you one thing, Mora,” said Adlet. “Would it have been possible for Leura, the Saint of Sun, to raise the temperature of this whole area? I bet it would. As we all know, she is famous for being powerful enough to roast an entire castle, if she pushes herself to the limit.”
“I-it would be…possible,” replied Mora.
“Would she still be able to do that now, even at her age?”
“Leura’s lower body has wasted away, and she can’t move from her chair,” said Fremy, in place of the faltering Mora. “But her power over the Spirit of Sun has not been affected by her physical decline.”
Adlet nodded and then entered the crux of his deductions. “Let me explain the seventh’s plan. First, the seventh and their allies abducted Leura, the Saint of Sun, and forced her to cooperate. They probably took her family hostage or something to that effect. Leura raised the temperature of the whole area, as she had been instructed. Most likely, over the course of nearly a month.” Adlet looked over the faces of all present. “You should all remember that when we arrived here, you thought it was unusually hot, right? That was Leura’s power.” Everyone present remembered the previous day’s events and nodded.
“Next, the impostor’s allies attacked the fort and killed all the soldiers in it, and one of them pretended to be a soldier there. Or perhaps some of the soldiers at the fort were allies of the seventh to begin with; we don’t know which. Then the mole told the Braves of the Six Flowers about the Phantasmal Barrier and gave them fake instructions.”
“What if one among us knew how the barrier was really activated?” asked Mora.
“Then the plan would have failed,” said Adlet. “But the chances of that were low, because the king who built it was secretive and told only a limited number of people that the barrier even existed.”
“And then?” asked Mora.
“The seventh used these fiends to lure us to the temple, and when I opened the temple door, they sent a signal. At that signal, a nearby fiend and ally of the seventh killed Leura.” The one who’d sent the signal was the transforming fiend that had been near the temple. Adlet figured that strange laugh had meant it was time to kill Leura. “Once Leura was dead, her power of sun terminated. The temperature suddenly dropped and the fog appeared. We were completely fooled into believing that the barrier had been activated.” At the time, Adlet had felt a shiver run down his spine. But that had not been his mind playing tricks—the air temperature really had been dropping. At the time, he hadn’t even considered that the change in temperature had been part of the enemy’s trap.
“After that, the seventh approached the altar nonchalantly,” Adlet continued, “using our confusion as cover to activate the barrier for real at that point. The rest requires no explanation. All that was left was to wait patiently until I became suspect and everyone decided I was the seventh.”
“Wait! What proof do you have?” demanded Mora. “This is all nothing more than supposition!”
“I’m still not done yet,” said Adlet. Fremy had finished treating him. He tried to stand, but Hans stopped him.
“You leave this part to meow,” said Hans. “You just need to do the explainin’.” Adlet squatted down with the tree trunk at his back. One by one, Hans searched the bodies of the fiends scattered about the area.
Adlet continued. “Now then, the final problem: Where did the seventh hide Leura’s body? She couldn’t have been killed far from the temple, because she had to be close enough for the killer to hear the fiend’s screech that was their signal. The seventh couldn’t be loitering around with Leura’s body, eithe
r. There was the possibility that they would run into Mora or Hans or Chamo. They could bury it, but it still might be discovered that way—because we have Chamo.” Chamo’s power was the ability to control the fiends that lived in her stomach. If she had sent earthworm- and lizard-fiends to investigate the ground, she may have been able to find a body.
“This forest is big, but there weren’t many places they could hide that body. Only one, in fact,” he said.
“Meow , I found it,” Hans said as he pointed at one of the fiends. It looked like a crocodile and was about five meters in length. You couldn’t tell unless you looked closely, but its stomach was just a bit swollen.
“Cut it open, Hans.” Adlet swallowed. This was the moment of truth: The only piece of evidence that could prove Adlet’s innocence was right there. Were his deductions correct? Once this fiend was sliced open, they would know. “The only place they could hide the body was inside a fiend.”
Hans drew his sword and sliced open the crocodile’s stomach. The body of an old woman rolled out, soaked in the acid of the demon’s stomach.
“You check, Mora. This granny is definitely Leura, the Saint of Sun, ain’t she?” said Hans.
Mora timidly approached the body and then sank to the ground. “It’s Lady Leura. This woman is Lady Leura.”
Adlet heaved a sigh of relief. Hans took over for him. “Meow then, anybody here still thinkin’ Adlet’s the fake? If ya do, I’d like ya to explain why we’ve got this dead granny here.”
Adlet didn’t think anyone would still have doubts. But Mora stood up and said, “This, too, is a trap! Adlet prepared this body beforehand to convince us that he is one of us!” She continued insisting that Adlet was the impostor…but no one was listening to her opinion anymore.
“If that were the case, Adlet would have divulged his deductions long ago,” said Fremy. “Just how many times do you think he almost died in order to get to this point?”
“I…I…” Mora looked down and kept trying to think of another way she might rebut Adlet. She was the only one who still doubted his authenticity. The situation had reversed. Now Adlet was the one backing the seventh into a corner. At that point, Mora groaned and admitted, “I was wrong. Adlet is not the impostor.”
Rokka: Braves of the Six Flowers, Vol. 1 Page 20