"Wow... so that's the forest where the Dark Elves live? It's far larger than I imagined."
Inside the carriage, Vihera let out a voice of admiration.
Though she didn't voice it, Elena felt the same—and Byune too. Despite the forest still being far in the distance, they were speechless, their eyes captivated by its overwhelming grandeur.
It was true that Rei was also surprised as he gazed at the forest through the window, but even so, not nearly as much as the other three.
The biggest reason was, after all, that he had seen the Forest of Magic with his own eyes—an even vaster expanse—and not only that, he had passed directly through it.
The Dark Elf forest visible ahead was magnificent. That much was certain.
But even so, compared to the Forest of Magic, it was a rank below... no, perhaps two or three ranks below.
The same held true for the sheer presence emanating from the trees.
"Hehe, I'm glad to hear you say that. Even after being away for so long, one's homeland holds all sorts of special meaning, it seems."
Marina directed a delighted gaze toward the three of them... then suddenly noticed that Rei wasn't nearly as surprised.
"Oh my, Rei. You don't seem very impressed."
She shot him a sidelong glance brimming with the kind of feminine allure that would make any ordinary man pounce without a second thought. Asked in such a manner, Rei nonetheless recalled his fabricated backstory for the first time in a while and spoke.
"The place where I grew up was also in the mountains, after all. It was nothing but forest and mountain as far as the eye could see, so I'm used to this to a certain extent."
At Rei's words, Elena's lips curved into a brief smile.
Because she knew exactly what Rei truly was, those words must have amused her.
"Come to think of it, I heard something like that before. That place you mentioned—was it really that deep in the mountains?"
As if intrigued by Rei's words, Marina leaned forward.
It wasn't as pronounced as when she was at the Guild, but she was wearing a party dress with a deeply plunging neckline. Leaning forward like that inevitably brought the deep valley of her cleavage right into Rei's line of sight.
"Ahem. Marina. Are you not leaning forward a bit too much?"
"Oh my, I'm sorry. So, about the mountains where you lived, Rei..."
"Rather than Rei's stories, shouldn't we focus on what needs to be done first?"
After Elena, the next to interrupt Marina was Vihera, who had finally torn her gaze from the window.
Both Elena and Vihera regarded Marina as a formidable romantic rival.
That was something they had felt intensely during the journey from Gilm to this point.
Whether consciously or not, Marina wielded a body that even they, as fellow women, could only describe as bewitching.
No—in terms of physique alone, Elena and Vihera were by no means inferior to Marina.
But as pure women, they had to admit they were a step behind her.
That was precisely why they kept her in check.
Whether Marina understood their inner feelings or not, she turned her gaze back to the carriage window—toward the forest of her birthplace, visible in the distance.
"Setting aside Rei's origins, looking at it like this, I feel the forest's vitality has declined considerably compared to before."
"...Is that so? From what I can see here, it's a magnificent forest... one that could even be called a great forest."
As Elena said, the forest visible from the carriage appeared to be brimming with vitality.
It was a sight that made it hard to believe the World Tree was losing its power.
"It might look that way to someone seeing it for the first time, but to me—this is my home—the entire forest seems to have lost much of its liveliness."
At Marina's words, Odoban and Jusura nodded in agreement...
"Lady Elena, may I have a moment?"
Suddenly, that voice came through the door connecting to the driver's seat.
It was Ara, who was serving as the driver.
"Hm? What is it? Has something happened?"
In response to Elena's questioning tone, Ara continued, sounding somewhat hesitant.
"I wouldn't say there's a problem, exactly... or rather, someone is approaching from over there... At any rate, there's a group heading this way. Seeing them approach so openly, they probably don't have hostile intent, but... well..."
At her trailing words, Elena, Vihera, Byune, and Rei tilted their heads in puzzlement.
In fact, Rei, who possessed the sharpest instincts among them, sensed no hint of hostility directed their way.
That meant the approaching group was likely not an enemy, but that only made it harder to understand why Ara had been so evasive.
Growing impatient, Vihera opened the door to the driver's seat.
And then she understood—all too well—why Ara had trailed off.
What was coming toward them was a group of three carriages.
The problem was that those carriages were fitted with iron bars.
Fortunately, there was no one inside the iron-barred carriages, but what kind of people this group consisted of was obvious at a glance.
"Slave merchants, huh. And what's worse, they're probably traveling together as a group."
At Vihera's words, Odoban and Jusura each tensed up, but Marina stroked their heads and calmed them down.
There was no need to worry—as long as they were inside this carriage, they couldn't be seen from outside.
"Rei, could I ask you to handle this, just in case? If it's only Vihera and Ara, there's a high chance some kind of commotion will break out."
"...I don't think my being there makes much difference."
Rei understood full well how others perceived his face, but he judged it better than causing an unnecessary scene and wasting time. He followed Vihera out to the driver's seat.
Just then, one of the approaching slave merchants opened his mouth.
"Hey, where are you folks headed? I'll tell you right now—if you value your lives, you'd best not go to the Dark Elf forest."
Setting aside his rough manner of speech, the fact that he didn't immediately try to attack them raised the slave merchant's favorability in Rei's estimation, if only slightly.
Of course, for Rei, who was acquainted with Marina and the other Dark Elves, even a slight bump in favorability meant practically nothing.
"Is that so? Why?" Vihera asked.
In response, the man began to speak, his gaze drifting with obvious interest...
"Guruu?"
"Whoa—!?"
He shrieked at the sight of Set, who had just emerged from behind the carriage.
A gryphon suddenly appearing would naturally provoke that kind of reaction.
Wasn't Set alone enough to handle this without me even stepping outside?
Rei felt this was an unusual reaction from Set outside of Gilm, but the slave merchants who had just seen a gryphon up close were in no state to appreciate such nuances.
The merchant who had been speaking with Vihera, along with the slave merchants in the other carriages, all froze at the sight of Set.
Not only that—even the horses pulling the carriages had stopped dead in their tracks.
In the worst case, the horses might have bolted to put as much distance as possible between themselves and Set, so in that sense, the slave merchants could count themselves lucky.
Watching the horses, frozen as if turned to stone by Medusa's gaze under Set's stare, Rei spoke.
"So, what do you mean the forest is dangerous?"
"...Huh? Oh, uh, well... ah, yeah. No, um..."
The slave merchant was completely disoriented by Set's sudden appearance, but as someone in the slave trade—and an illegal one at that—he must have had nerves of steel.
Once he realized that Set wasn't going to harm them, he spoke while making sure not to let his agitation show, whatever he felt inside.
"If that's a gryphon, then... you're... could it be..."
The gaze directed at Rei was filled with awe.
When he first saw Rei, he had thought him oddly small. But knowing what the man was, there was no way he could afford to look down on him.
"Well now. Isn't it better not to know who I am? So let me ask again—what do you mean the forest is dangerous? If you wouldn't mind telling me?"
He phrased it as a request, but his tone was unmistakably that of an order.
For one thing, Rei's gaze toward the group before him was cold, precisely because they were illegal slave merchants.
Even if his favorability rose slightly, starting from below zero meant it hadn't even reached zero.
Even so, the reason he didn't lay a hand on them here was that, while he knew they were illegal slave merchants, there was no sign they had captured even a single Dark Elf.
"Ah, yeah. Actually, lately all kinds of monsters have started appearing in the Dark Elf forest. There are many showing up that never appeared before—ones we've never even seen. And what's more, most of those monsters are... how should I put it..."
The slave merchant thought for a moment, but apparently couldn't find the right words.
Still, he continued, albeit hesitantly.
"Enraged? Excited? Frenzied? Something like that. They attack anyone and everyone indiscriminately. Even other monsters—they don't care."
"Hm? Monsters fighting each other isn't that unusual, is it? You hear plenty of stories about strong monsters killing weaker ones for food."
"No, that's not it... even monsters of the same type are killing each other. Also, I can't say this for certain since we fled the forest right away, but they didn't eat the monsters they killed... It was as if killing each other itself was the purpose."
"...Monsters of the same type killing each other?"
Those words were unexpected even to Rei.
He wouldn't go so far as to say monsters of the same type never killed each other, but most monsters generally didn't fight to the death within their own species.
Thinking about it like that, humans killing each other might be lower than monsters.
Rei briefly entertained that thought, but immediately shook it off.
Now was not the time for idle musings. What mattered was gathering even a little more information about the abnormalities in the forest.
"Specifically, what kind of monsters were killing their own kind? If it's Ogres or Goblins, them fighting among themselves is fairly common."
Vihera's appearance and attire were, to the man, nothing short of bewitching. But with Rei present, he couldn't very well ogle his companion. He hurriedly turned his gaze toward Rei and continued.
"I heard Ogres and Goblins were among them too, but what I actually saw were Harpies."
"Harpies, huh... Given that they're monsters that act in groups, it's not necessarily true that they'd never fight among themselves."
Rei recalled the Harpies he had battled before.
They hadn't shown any signs of infighting whatsoever, but that could be attributed to the fact that Rei had launched a surprise attack.
Since he had no experience fighting them head-on in a fair and proper battle, he couldn't rule out the possibility of Harpies turning on each other.
Seeing Rei deep in thought, the slave merchant apparently decided he had provided enough information.
His stronger instinct told him that nothing good would come from further involvement with Rei, Bearer of the Crimson Moniker.
If these were legitimate merchants with nothing to hide, it might have been a different story. But in this case, they were illegal slave merchants.
Since they weren't currently transporting any slaves, they could still extricate themselves from the situation—but they strongly wanted to avoid digging their own grave by saying too much.
Besides, they say he's so merciless toward bandits they call him Bandit Eater. If that's the case, he might... no, wait. Bandit Eater? Could it be...
The faces of the bandits they traded with flashed through the slave merchant's mind.
They were slave merchants who bought humans captured by bandits at low prices. Thinking about Rei—the man called Bandit Eater—it was possible that...
That thought was correct. On their way back, when they stopped by the bandit hideout they had dealings with, they would find every last bandit wiped out. As a matter of course, the treasures and weapons stockpiled in the hideout would be completely gone, and the prison cell where the bandits kept their captives—though the iron bars hadn't been broken—would be empty, with no one inside.
Above all, what would hit the slave merchants hardest was the fact that the Gold Coins and Platinum Coins they had entrusted to the bandits to avoid drawing attention had vanished without a trace.
But the slave merchants, completely unaware of the future that awaited them, put as much distance between themselves and Rei as they could and departed.
Having seen off the group of carriages, Rei returned inside and told Odoban and Jusra that there was no particular problem. Then, they set off once more toward the Dark Elf forest, visible in the distance.