Time rewound. Several hours had passed since Rei stored the tree he felled in the Treant Forest into his Misty Ring and left the area with Marina and the others. It was now close to evening.
Near the Treant Forest, four adventurers could be seen.
"Hey, are you really sure this is okay? The Guild sent out a notice telling people not to get too close to this forest, didn't they?" the Tournament Swordswoman asked.
"It's fine. Besides, if we just take the Guild's word at face value, we'll never rank any higher. That means we need to accomplish something, even if it's a little dangerous," the Spearman Leader replied.
The other two, armed with a battle axe and a club respectively, nodded in agreement.
This was Third Eye, a D-Rank party that had arrived in Gilm the previous spring, right around this same season.
But even after roughly a year of operating in Gilm, they were nowhere near achieving the kind of success they had initially envisioned.
Of course, parties that produced results within a single year were not particularly common. Even so, for a man who had believed they could do it, this past year's results were far from satisfactory.
What further fueled his impatience was the rapid influx of adventurers arriving in Gilm this spring.
In truth, that was strictly his own perception; the numbers grew at the same rate every year. After all, Third Eye themselves had arrived in Gilm the previous spring alongside other parties.
But for these men, this was their first true spring in Gilm. Technically, they had been in Gilm the previous spring as well, but they had arrived well past mid-spring at that time. This was their first experience of a full-blown spring in the city.
And among the newcomers were those clearly more skilled than they were.
It was only natural for the members of Third Eye to grow anxious under such circumstances. It was around then that they heard a certain rumor in the Guild tavern—the story of a party of adventurers who had been attacked and wiped out by a forest that should not have existed.
As if to confirm the rumor, a notice had been posted on the Request Board stating there was nothing in this forest and advising people to stay away.
Given all this, it was only natural to think there might be something there. Perhaps something someone didn't want others to see—something significant enough to warrant such secrecy. If they could get their hands on it, their rank might rise, and their names might spread.
Driven by those thoughts, Third Eye had come to the Treant Forest.
If someone truly wanted to keep something secret, the Guild wouldn't have publicized the Treant Forest matter in the first place. But this line of reasoning never occurred to the members of Third Eye.
Even when it came to verifying information, Third Eye was a party of four warriors. They were inevitably inferior to thieves when it came to handling intelligence.
Of course, thieves were not a common class to begin with, though not as rare as mages. A party composed entirely of warriors was not particularly unusual. In this case, however, that composition had led to the worst possible outcome.
Until now, they had managed to gather a reasonable amount of information on their own, even without a thief. But at the crucial moment, their fatal shortcoming—ignorance of how to properly evaluate intelligence—had reared its head.
"...Still, there really are no signs of monsters or animals in this forest. For a place called the Treant Forest, the trees here are just ordinary trees," the Tournament Swordswoman muttered, touching a tree dyed red by the setting sun.
If the tree she was touching were truly a Treant, as the name suggested, it wouldn't be strange for her to be attacked at any moment. But the tree beneath her hand was nothing more than an ordinary tree, showing no signs of movement whatsoever.
In reality, the very tree she was touching was being eyed as construction material for Gilm's expansion, but no one in Third Eye knew this. Nor, for that matter, did more than a handful of people in all of Gilm.
That was precisely why Third Eye did nothing, even when faced with trees that could fetch an extremely high price. Even if they had known the trees were valuable, they would have had no way to do anything about it. They had someone with a battle axe who could fell a tree, but they had no means of carrying it back.
A lumberjack might manage, but for ordinary adventurers—and D-Rank ones at that—a felled tree was useless. They had walked here, so naturally they had no carriage or cart. If they wanted to bring anything back, they would have had to cut it down to a size they could carry by hand. But bringing back logs cut to arm-held proportions when they were meant to be used as construction materials would be of questionable usefulness.
Not entirely useless, of course, but still.
"Yeah... But right now, time is of the essence. I want to grasp at least some of this forest's secrets before nightfall. It can't really be just Treants here like the name suggests, can it?"
The others nodded in agreement with the words of their party leader. Only the Tournament Swordswoman showed visible unease, but she likely understood that anything she said now wouldn't change her companions' minds. She quietly followed them deeper into the forest.
"Looking at it like this, it really doesn't seem like there's anything here," she said.
It was evening—a time when both animals and monsters would normally be fairly active—yet not a single sound of disturbance could be heard. The woman found this strange, but her observations only served to relax her companions' guard.
"Yeah, which means we don't have to worry about being attacked by anything, right?" the Battle-axe User said.
Even hearing that, the woman couldn't bring herself to lower her guard.
"Come on. It's evening, and there's nothing in this forest? There's no way you should feel reassured by that. There's probably something deeper in. Stay on your toes."
"But from what we can see, there's nothing to worry about, right?"
"In a forest like this, the fact that there's no Abnormality is itself the Abnormality. Think about it that way," she muttered in exasperation.
But since there was genuinely no immediate danger, they all continued through the forest while talking.
The sight of the trees dyed crimson by the setting sun would have been mesmerizing if this had been an ordinary forest. It carried a certain nostalgia—like memories of playing outside as a child and heading home as dusk fell. It was a scene that tugged at the heartstrings, but precisely because of that, there was much that warranted careful thought.
"...There are nuts and fruits, so it seems we don't need to worry about food," the Spearman Leader said, a hint of relief in his voice.
As a D-Rank party, Third Eye's finances were far from comfortable. They had enough to live on without trouble, but saving where possible was only natural. In that sense, this forest with its nuts and fruits was ideal.
"Putting aside the lack of meat, I'm also bothered that there are no mountain vegetables," the Club Wielder muttered, surveying the surroundings.
The absence of animals and monsters was something they had known from beforehand. They hadn't been able to believe it until they saw it themselves, but having confirmed it with their own eyes, there was no mistaking it.
But despite it being spring—the season for mountain vegetables—the complete absence of anything edible was unexpected, even for the Club Wielder. Many mountain vegetables required the extra step of removing their astringency, but plenty could be eaten as they were. Being in the frontier didn't mean no mountain vegetables grew; he knew that from foraging for them in a different forest.
"I wanted to eat something in season, but it can't be helped."
"Well, if it comes down to it, we can head back to Gilm and eat there. We've pretty much looked around everywhere now, so let's camp here tonight and do a proper investigation first thing in the morning," the Spearman Leader suggested.
Following their party leader's words, the members of Third Eye exited the forest.
Only the Tournament Swordswoman felt something was wrong—wrong about a forest where neither animals nor monsters existed, where not even insects were present despite it being spring. But since no one would listen to her here, and more importantly, they were leaving the forest anyway, she said nothing more and stepped out.
They immediately set up camp. Though spring had brought warmer weather, the nights were still fairly chilly. They layered the sheets of cloth they had brought with them, and finished their meal with the nuts and fruits they had gathered, along with dried meat and hardtack.
The sun, which had still been hanging in the sky mere moments ago, fully sank below the horizon, and darkness swallowed the surroundings.
"Hey, I'll ask just in case, but you don't plan on going back to Gilm tonight, do you?" the woman asked, expecting it to be futile.
Fortunately, with the forest nearby, there was no shortage of firewood. The members of Third Eye sat around a campfire, chatting amongst themselves. But the words that left the woman's mouth were, naturally, shot down by everyone.
"What do you think we came all the way out here for? There's definitely something in this forest. It's essential if we want to rise in the ranks."
"...You're right. I'm sorry. I guess I was being a little faint-hearted."
When the woman apologized, the party leader's stern expression shifted to a magnanimous nod.
"Well, there's no denying this forest is creepy. Considering that, it's understandable to feel uneasy."
"Right. At the very least, we should keep a strict watch tonight."
The party leader nodded at that as well. The fact that this forest was an unsettling place remained unchanged, and there was no such thing as being too cautious.
They talked for a while longer, and eventually, as the night grew late, each of them drifted off to sleep.
Normally, the rule for Third Eye's camps was that one of the four would stay awake at all times. But this time, as an extra precaution, they would keep watch in pairs.
The two carrying the battle axe and the club took the first watch, while the party leader and the Tournament Swordswoman went to sleep.
"...Nn..."
How many hours had she slept? Sleeping outdoors should have left her in a light slumber, but for whatever reason, today she had slept deeply.
She turned her gaze toward the campfire, and upon seeing that the fire had gone out, her still-groggy mind snapped sharply awake.
"!?"
She reached for the weapon beside her almost by reflex.
"Huh?"
Her hand wouldn't move as she intended. She tried to voice her confusion, but even her words came out slurred and incoherent.
She had also tried to brace her hand against the ground while reaching for her weapon, but that wouldn't move either. Her body, frozen as if paralyzed, probably looked like nothing more than a worm wriggling on the ground to an onlooker.
The woman understood that something abnormal was happening to her, but she had no idea what. Desperately, she used her still-functioning eyes to survey her surroundings—and in the next instant, her mind went blank at the scene that filled her vision.
Two of her party members—the two who had been on watch before her—were there.
If that had been all, there would have been nothing particularly surprising. But the fact that she could even recognize them as her companions, as having once been human, was itself the shock.
The two men, who should have been larger than her, were now emaciated—reduced to nothing but skin and bones. Their weight, which should have been two, three, no, close to five times hers, was now likely less than a third of it.
The most horrifying thing was that they were still alive. That is, if one could call it living—every drop of body fluid forcibly drained from them while they were kept alive, their flesh and organs dissolved and absorbed as nutrients by vines growing from the ground.
Agony, terror, confusion, despair—those emotions had already snuffed out all life from their eyes.
Seeing them like that, she searched for the remaining companion, the party leader. There she found him—or rather, what was left of him. A giant carnivorous plant had taken his upper body entirely.
And then, despite her paralysis, the sensation of something piercing her body—tsupuri—was the last thing she felt before the woman's consciousness faded into nothing.