"Gyaaaaaaaaaaaaah!"
That scream echoed through the night forest, and Dagza and the others, who had been sleeping, quickly woke.
With winter over and spring settling in, the fact that they hadn't bothered pitching tents worked in their favor. The moment they woke, everyone grabbed their weapons in an instant—not a conscious decision, but something ingrained in their bodies. In that regard, despite their overconfidence, it was likely proof that they possessed a certain degree of skill as adventurers.
At any rate, each of them took up their weapons and sprang into action.
"That scream just now was Rocra's, right!? He was the one on lookout!"
"Yeah. But in a forest like this where not even monsters appear, what on earth could have—"
"Don't say stupid things! This is the frontier!? Anything could happen here, it wouldn't be strange at all!"
At her companions' thoughtless remarks, Thresha shouted. She was right—operating by the customs of the areas they had previously worked in meant nothing here in the frontier. More than that, it was downright dangerous.
"Save the arguing for later! Right now, helping Rocra comes first!"
Dagza shouted, and at those words, Thresha—who had been on the verge of losing her temper—calmed down slightly and began moving to rescue their companion.
They were originally a five-person party, and with Rocra gone, that left four of them to act. As those four headed in the direction the scream had come from...
"He's gone?"
Soknan looked around, but Rocra was nowhere to be seen.
"First of all, why did he go into the forest like that? I told everyone beforehand that we shouldn't go into the forest."
The other three nodded at Dagza's words. Indeed, since this was the frontier, there was no telling what might be lurking in the trees. That was exactly why, before making camp, he had made sure to tell everyone not to go into the forest... and yet, the scream had come from inside the forest, not from outside it where they had been sleeping.
"This isn't the time to be talking about that. We need to find Rocra first."
At Thresha's words, Dagza apparently decided she was right. He nodded and shouted into the forest.
"Rocra! Where are you! Answer me!"
Normally, shouting like that in a night forest was extremely dangerous. But it was likely a judgment call—he had no choice if he wanted to find their companion. The others also shouted into the darkness alongside Dagza, but there was no response whatsoever from Rocra.
They searched for about thirty minutes... and eventually, everyone gathered back at Dagza's location. The grave expressions on everyone's faces told the story: the fact that there was no response at all, even after shouting like this, meant the likelihood of Rocra being alive was extremely low.
"What do we do?"
What that meant was obvious. Even after searching this loudly with no sign of him appearing, Rocra was most likely already dead. Rocra was unquestionably a skilled warrior within Dagza's party. For someone like Rocra to be killed so swiftly, almost without being able to do anything... If the enemy came for them, would they stand a chance? It was only natural to think that.
"What do we do? It's decided. We either find Rocra or avenge him!"
Dagza's voice echoed through the forest. He had an overconfident and pushy personality, but being entrusted with the role of party leader, he also had a deeply caring side when it came to his comrades. In the first place, a rough man who didn't care about his companions would never have anyone following him as a party leader. That was exactly why it was natural for him to want to find Rocra, or to avenge him if he had been killed.
But Soknan put a stop to Dagza's train of thought.
"Wait, Dagza. Considering how easily Rocra was taken out, we should assume the enemy is a considerably powerful opponent. I don't know if it's a monster or bandits, but against something like that—"
"Uwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!"
"!?"
In the middle of their conversation, a scream suddenly rang out. From right nearby, at that.
Dagza, Thresha, and Soknan reflexively turned their gazes toward the source of the voice—toward the place where their companion should have been just seconds ago—each of them readying their weapons.
But there was no one there. ...Yes, even though their companion had definitely been there just seconds ago, now they had vanished completely, as if their very presence had been a trick of the eyes.
"Above!"
In that moment, the first to shout was Thresha. At her words, Dagza and Soknan reflexively looked up.
And there, illuminated by moonlight pouring through gaps in the canopy, was the figure of their companion—bound by vines at the neck, at every limb, and across their entire body, completely immobilized. No, considering the angle at which the neck was bent, the life itself had likely already faded from them.
"Vines!? Why would vines..."
"!"
At Dagza's words, Thresha recalled her earlier observations of the forest. A quiet forest... one where it seemed nothing but small birds existed. She had thought of it as a place where a powerful monster might be, or might have been... but was that assumption completely wrong? That's right—they had never encountered one themselves, but they still knew of such beings, didn't they? Monsters that mimicked trees... Treants.
Treants themselves were D-Rank monsters and not all that powerful. But that was only assuming the enemy was a single one. What if the place they were standing... no, what if this entire forest was made of Treants? Wouldn't that mean they were right in the middle of the enemy?
Thresha herself didn't know exactly how large this forest was. Even so, it was obvious that the number of trees growing here was not a mere ten or a hundred.
"Look out, Thresha!"
As she was thinking about how dire their situation was, Dagza shouted and shoved Thresha's body. No, "shoved" was too gentle a description—it would be more accurate to say he knocked her away with all his strength.
Thrown from that spot by a powerful impact, Thresha instinctively caught her balance to avoid falling while looking behind her.
"Gugaaaah!"
What Thresha saw when she turned around was the sight of tree roots, creeping along the ground, piercing Dagza's body from below. And it wasn't just one or two roots. There were easily more than ten. That many roots pierced through Dagza's body... and then spread throughout it. As if blood vessels were pulsing, she could see the roots spreading throughout his entire body beneath his skin.
Seeing that, Thresha and Soknan froze in shock. They of course knew what Treants were. They didn't know everything about Treants perfectly, but they thought they understood the general idea. But nothing like this existed within the knowledge that Thresha and Soknan possessed.
"R...u...n..."
Likely due to the influence of the Treant roots invading his body, his words were already broken and extremely difficult to hear. But even so, understanding what feelings their leader held as he spoke those words, Thresha and Soknan kicked off the ground in an almost reflexive motion. At any cost, they had to escape this forest—this forest that was likely made of Treants.
"Dagza... hang on, I'll definitely bring help back!"
All Thresha could do was shout those words. Right now, she just had to escape from this forest—from a forest worthy of being called the Forest of Death. With that thought in mind, she kept running through the trees.
Fortunately... or perhaps that too was according to the enemy's design, there was no sign of the Treants making up the forest starting to move. Then they could escape from the forest as they were. Thinking that, she kept running... but what came into view ahead of them plunged Thresha and Soknan into despair.
It was the place where they had made camp. No, if it were just that, there wouldn't be a problem. But the fact that their campsite had been completely swallowed by the forest meant one of two things: either the forest was rapidly growing... or the trees were moving. And given that Treants were involved, it was almost certainly the latter.
"Uwaaaah!"
"Soknan!?"
Surprised by the fact that their campsite had been swallowed by the forest, Soknan stopped moving for just a few seconds... but those few seconds were more than enough time for the two of them, who were inside the forest—in other words, surrounded by Treants—to be attacked.
"Run, Thresha! Get this information to Gilm, quickly!"
Vines were wrapped around his torso, legs, arms—all over his body—trying to drag Soknan into the depths of the forest. Soknan drove his dagger into the ground and tried desperately to resist, but the pulling force of the vines was apparently stronger than he had imagined. He could only hold out against the vines with the dagger plunged into the ground for a mere few seconds.
Thresha instinctively reached out to Soknan, trying somehow to pull his body free from the vines... but the moment she extended her hand, Soknan was dragged into the depths of the forest.
"Soknan! Soknan!"
"To Gilm... please!"
As he shouted those words, Soknan's figure disappeared from Thresha's field of vision.
"Damn it!"
She had lost another companion. She allowed herself a single moment to grieve, but Thresha immediately broke into a run. In that instant, vines extending from the depths of the forest lashed down like a whip on the very spot where Thresha's body had been a moment before.
"I'm sorry!"
How much feeling was packed into that single phrase, only Thresha would ever know. Unable to retrieve any of their baggage from the campsite that was being swallowed by the forest, she set off running with only her bow and arrows in hand.
What was fortunate for Thresha was that the speed of the forest's encroachment wasn't all that high. Thanks to that, the area slightly away from the campsite hadn't yet been consumed by the forest.
To think there would be this many Treants gathered here... and based on what happened to Dagza, there's no way these are just ordinary Treants!
Tears overflowed from the eyes of the running Thresha. Having gotten away from the forest, her tension had loosened slightly, if only a little. They had been a party with their share of issues, but to Thresha, Dagza and the others had never been bad companions. Having chosen the profession of adventurer, it wasn't as if she had never considered the possibility of something like this happening. But even so... She had never truly imagined that something like this could happen to them.
If only I had stopped him harder when Dagza said we'd leave the road... no, if only I had stopped them when they said we were going to Gilm. Why... why...
Even while running, tears spilled from Thresha's eyes. Normally, to reflect Thresha's strong will, her eyes had a slight upward slant... but the Thresha of right now could not possibly be seen as someone with a strong spirit.
Running, she looked back over her shoulder again and again, checking whether the forest—whether the entities that were likely Treants—were coming after her, as she ran desperately onward. Naturally, even for an adventurer, running continuously consumed stamina. But driven by the compulsion that if she stopped even for a moment, vines might reach out from somewhere again, she kept running frantically.
There was also the thought that she had to get word of this incident to Gilm as quickly as possible. Though, more than a sense of duty, there was perhaps also the calculation that, just maybe—really just maybe—she might still be able to save Dagza and the others. To Thresha, they had their problems, but they were people she could let her guard down around. Having survived life-threatening crises together time and again, their bond was deep and strong.
Panting heavily, Thresha kept running toward Gilm.
How much time had passed as she kept running? Before she knew it, the moon, that symbol of night, had sunk, and in its place, the sun had risen into the sky. How long she had been running, even Thresha herself didn't know. The ground beneath her feet had, at some point, changed from grassland to cobblestone. That's right—she had made it back to the road they had deviated from when they went along with Dagza's words.
"H-hey. What's wrong? Are you alright!?"
It must have been because Thresha's appearance as she ran along the road was clearly abnormal. An adventurer who happened to be passing by—an adventurer based in Gilm who had taken a request to gather special medicinal herbs imbued with magical power used for making potions—called out to Thresha.
And Thresha as well, only upon being spoken to, noticed the person in front of her... and opened her mouth.
"Please... my comrades... please save my comrades. The forest... they were eaten... by the forest..."
She couldn't say any more than that. Thresha exceeded her physical limits and lost consciousness right there, collapsing toward the Adventurer Man.