The warehouse was overflowing with a massive amount of lumber.
...No, considering the branches and bark were still attached, calling it lumber would be premature.
At any rate, around thirty felled trees were lined up inside the warehouse.
Every single one of them had been cut and transported by a single person's hands—and the time it had taken to accomplish this feat, travel time included, was only about two hours. That even accounted for the time spent buying food to eat on the go. Under normal circumstances, no one would believe it.
But the one performing this feat was Rei.
"Isn't this... a bit too much to bring in?"
Lenora murmured in astonishment as she looked at the pile of trees stacked in the warehouse.
She had left Kenny to handle Rei in the morning, but now that it was close to noon and her hands were free, Lenora was attending to him as usual.
"Is it? The order was for as much as possible, so I just brought this much. If it's not enough, I can always bring more, you know?"
"That's why I'm saying it's too much..."
Lenora muttered with a sigh at Rei's words.
Watching her reaction, Rei nodded in acknowledgment.
In reality, despite accepting the request that morning, felling that many trees, and making the return trip, it was still before noon.
By that logic, it would certainly be possible to fell the same amount—or even more—from the afternoon onward.
However, the Guild's warehouses were not infinite.
In fact, with spring underway, Gilm's adventurers were actively taking on requests to recoup the money they had spent over the winter. Newcomers who had just arrived in Gilm were accepting requests to make a name for themselves—and above all, to acquire the strength needed to survive there.
Naturally, this meant the volume of materials being brought in had surged as well, and the warehouses were packed with materials waiting to be sold.
In other words, even if more trees were added, there was nowhere to put them.
There was still a reasonable amount of space in this particular warehouse for now, but if this same quantity of trees were brought in day after day, it would reach capacity before long.
(Well, according to the Guild Master, these trees will be transported out daily, so maybe I don't need to worry about it that much.)
Lenora had been musing over this while eyeing the pile of trees when Rei suddenly changed the subject.
"By the way, are there any parties that haven't returned since yesterday?"
"Huh? Hmm... even if you ask me, there are a lot of adventurers, and there are always parties that haven't returned from requests..."
"No, they probably haven't accepted a request."
Since they had headed into a forest where no one knew what lurked inside, it was hard to imagine they had taken on a job.
What's more, with the number of adventurers in Gilm having swelled rapidly with the arrival of spring, even a receptionist couldn't possibly have a complete grasp of exactly how many adventurers were currently in the city.
"Unfortunately, I wouldn't know about that. As you're aware, Rei-san, there were already plenty of adventurers in Gilm, but now there are even more... But why do you ask?"
Why was he suddenly asking about something like this?
Given Rei's request for the day, Lenora was half-convinced she already knew the reason, but she still asked, hoping she was wrong.
However... the next moment, the words that left Rei's mouth were exactly what she had feared.
"When I went to the Treant Forest today, I found what looked like the remains of a campsite. The same sort of situation as with Thresha."
"...Is that right."
Lenora sighed regretfully, her worst premonition confirmed.
Adventurers maintained a baseline of discipline, but they were still fundamentally free spirits.
No one would have blamed them for heading into the Treant Forest.
But as a Guild receptionist, she wanted to avoid seeing adventurers lose their lives as much as possible.
Of course, for the members of Third Eye who had gone missing this time, that impatience had likely been the driving factor. Driven by the desire to somehow resolve it, they had ended up losing their lives instead... but neither Rei nor Lenora could truly understand those circumstances.
For one thing, at this point it hadn't even been confirmed that it was Third Eye who had gone missing.
"You mean to say, with that campsite..."
Lenora seemed to understand what she was getting at. Rei pulled the baggage and spear he had stored at the abandoned campsite out of his Misty Ring.
"These were left behind."
"Um, Rei-san. Could you leave this baggage with the Guild? The ownership rightfully belongs to you, but..."
"Yeah, I don't mind."
Rei had never intended to claim the baggage as his own to begin with, so he handed it over to Lenora without hesitation.
He had briefly considered wanting the spear, but his Misty Ring already contained a large number of them—most of them nearly broken. Since he had plenty of throwing spears to spare, there was no need to claim this one here.
(Well, if it were a Magic Item spear, it might have caught my interest... but unfortunately, it's just an ordinary spear.)
The Magic Item spears Rei possessed were the Thorn Spear, which ensnared pierced opponents with thorns, and the Twilight Spear, which boasted various special abilities and served as one of his main weapons alongside Death Scythe.
If it had been a Magic Item spear with effects like those two, Rei would have claimed ownership without hesitation.
But since it wasn't, there was no need to go through the trouble.
"Thank you very much. I'll investigate as thoroughly as I can to determine whose baggage this was."
With that, Lenora bowed deeply.
It was still unknown whose baggage it was, but as a Guild receptionist, she wanted to remain sincere toward the adventurers—that was the thought behind her action.
(She's the hardworking type. They say you should buy your troubles while you're young, but it looks like Lenora is buying even other people's. ...Well, I suppose that's just who she is.)
Watching Lenora's demeanor, Rei spoke up again.
"Alright then, I'll leave the baggage matter to you. And regarding these felled trees, we can settle that together when I calculate the request fee later... right?"
"Yes, that's what I've heard."
"Good. Then I'll leave the trees to you. ...However, this is just a word of advice, but if the Treant Forest situation is left alone, I think it's going to turn into something quite bad. It hasn't become that big of an uproar yet, but..."
"...You're right. I think so too. However, regarding the Treant Forest situation, it seems the upper management is already making moves behind the scenes. I'm sure there's a lot going on up there."
The matter of Gilm's expansion had not yet spread widely.
No—more than that, it hadn't even been definitively decided to proceed yet.
What was happening now was, strictly speaking, only a feasibility assessment.
Of course, it was a fact that Gilm was currently nearing its limits, and at this rate, it was only a matter of time before the only city in the frontier reached saturation.
That was exactly why they needed to somehow expand Gilm in the near future, but even so, this matter had come too suddenly.
Since they needed to drastically accelerate preparations that were already underway, it was natural for the upper management to be in a state of some confusion.
And those below, unaware of this, had ended up in the current situation.
"Shouldn't you make it explicitly clear that people shouldn't approach the Treant Forest?"
"...But if you do that, the adventurers who suspect something is there will head into the forest even more than before."
That was something she had heard before.
But even so, Rei couldn't help thinking it would be better than the current situation.
Of course, that was really just sentimentality on his part.
If they actually prohibited entry to the Treant Forest, as Lenora said, there would unquestionably be even more missing persons than there were now.
And in this case, "missing persons" meant being eaten by the forest—in other words, it was synonymous with death.
"I see. ...Well, I'd appreciate it if you'd at least consider it."
In the end, Rei couldn't push any further than that, and left it at that.
Lenora surely understood his feelings as well.
That was exactly why she decided she would try raising the matter with her superiors.
"Hmm... looking at it like this, it really is spring, huh."
"Gururu."
Having finished handing over the felled trees, Rei was walking through the city streets with Set.
There had been a few things on his mind back in the warehouse, but for now he was shaking off that gloomy mood.
At the end of the day, it was an adventurer's own responsibility to go to dangerous places—or so he had reminded himself.
"When you say spring, that means cherry blossom viewing, doesn't it..."
When Rei was in Japan, it was common for relatives and friends to gather under the pretense of cherry blossom viewing and hold banquets.
Since Rei's family home was in the mountains, cherry trees were everywhere.
...Of course, whether those cherry trees had been planted by the locals or were wild, he had no idea.
(It's called the Treant Forest and all, so you'd think there could at least be cherry blossoms or something.)
From what Rei had seen, many types of trees were growing in the Treant Forest.
But there were no cherry trees among them.
If there were a tree as conspicuous as a cherry tree, he would have spotted it immediately while flying through the sky on Set.
Since he still couldn't find any even then, Rei's conclusion was that the Treant Forest had no cherry trees.
(Well, since the forest is encroaching day by day like that, there's a chance cherry trees and the like could start growing eventually.)
If cherry trees were to sprout on their own, he'd want to somehow manage them and create a cherry blossom-lined path.
He found himself thinking that fleetingly, but he also knew it was probably impossible.
(Cherry trees would be good for smoking things, too... well, I've never actually done it myself, so it's just knowledge from manga and stuff.)
Smoking with cherry wood chips was such a common practice that it was frequently featured on TV programs and often came up in manga.
He briefly entertained the idea of smoking Goblin meat with cherry chips, but considering how awful Goblin meat tasted, he quickly reconsidered—something like cherry chips wouldn't be nearly enough to fix that.
"Give me five servings of those sandwiches with the Orc stew in them."
"You got it. Thanks as always."
Rei bought sandwiches from a shop where he had previously bought bread that tasted good, and walked along the main road eating them with Set.
Several people had looked like they wanted to play with Set, but they probably had to prioritize their own work. They walked away looking disappointed.
However...
"Ah, it's Set, it's Set! Hey, let's play!"
"I wanna play with Set-chan too!"
For the children who had no work—or more accurately, were still small and had no jobs beyond helping around the house—wanting to play the moment they spotted Set was only natural, and acting on it immediately was equally so.
If the other party were someone intimidating—an adventurer who responded violently to anyone and everyone—the children wouldn't have dared call out to them.
But with Rei, there were children he had known for several years, and many of them were well acquainted with his personality.
"Ah... right. What do you think, Set? Want to play with these guys? Or do you want to meet up with Marina and the others?"
"Gururu."
At Rei's words, Set purred while eating a sandwich... and once he'd swallowed it, he rubbed his face against the children.
"Ahahahaha! Come on, that tickles, Set!"
As Set rubbed against them, the child burst into laughter, squirming at the tickling sensation.
Watching Set's behavior, Rei let a small smile cross his face.
There had been many things to think about regarding the Treant Forest, but in this moment alone, he felt glad to be able to spend such a peaceful time.
"Hey, Rei. What's wrong?"
"Hm? Oh, nothing. Come on, go play with Set too."
Perhaps finding Rei's demeanor strange, one of the children gathered around Set had asked, but Rei shook his head, brushing it off as nothing.
(The Treant Forest, huh... I think it's about time to seriously make a move. Left alone, the forest will eventually encroach on Gilm as well.)
The Treant Forest was spreading day by day.
The rate of expansion was roughly ten to fifteen meters per day.
But that was only the situation so far, and there was no guarantee it would remain the same forever.
Before that happened, it might be better to deal with it all at once—or so Rei thought.
Whether it was fortunate or not, Rei's specialty was Flame Magic, and if he used Fire Whirlwind, he could wipe out the entire forest... or so it should be.
Watching the children play with Set, Rei sensed a bad premonition creeping over him.