Having stowed all the felled trees from the Treant Forest into his Misty Ring, Rei mounted Set and headed back to Gilm as planned.
The flight took only a few minutes. For Rei, it felt as though the instant he left the Treant Forest, he was already standing before Gilm's main gate.
As he landed, he found several knights stationed at the entrance—and, for some reason, Marina, Vihera, and Byune were there too.
(Knights?)
Why were knights here?
The question crossed Rei's mind for only a moment before he realized that the knight order—or perhaps its upper echelon, or even the lord Daskar himself—was involved in this Treant Forest affair.
More perplexing to Rei than the knights' presence, though, was why Marina and the others were here.
They had probably already noticed Set flying overhead.
The moment Set touched down, the knights approached.
Previously, Rei and Set had been asked not to land directly beside the main gate, but over time that restriction had been relaxed.
Set's presence was now widely known enough to make it a non-issue.
Ranga, the Captain of the Guard Force, had approved of it as well.
...Though lately, Ranga seemed too busy with various matters to handle gate procedures himself.
"Been waiting for you, Rei. How are the trees?"
Rei recognized the knight who called out to him.
Rei had plenty of reasons to interact with the knight order, so more than a few knights were comfortable speaking with him casually.
This particular knight had fought alongside him in the war against the Bestia Empire, and regarded him more as a comrade-in-arms than anything else.
His tone was light, befitting that relationship.
Rei found it far easier to deal with than stiff deference.
With a faint smile at the thought, he replied.
"Yeah, no problem. I've got all the felled trees. Where should I put them?"
"Right over there, please. We'll handle the rest."
The knight pointed to a spot just beside the main gate.
Several carriages were stationed there—specifically, the specialized wagons that loggers used to haul lumber.
People going through the entry procedures were eyeing them with curiosity.
Many were merchants, adventurers, or travelers, and even for them, a logger's wagon was an uncommon sight.
The merchants in particular had caught snippets of the exchange between Rei and the knights, and were sizing it up as a potential business opportunity.
They weren't entirely wrong. Setting Rei aside, the mere fact that the knight order had come out here in person was enough to suggest something was afoot.
...Though whether any of them could actually muscle in on it was another matter entirely.
Daskar had already decided which merchant firms to approach regarding Gilm's expansion.
Naturally, the firms he commissioned might pass work on to others—either because they couldn't handle it all or to strengthen their leverage over rivals—but that was beside the point.
Whether the merchants watching Rei and the knights could break into those select firms was, at best, uncertain.
"Got it. ...That aside, why are Marina and the others here?"
Rei asked, glancing toward the logger wagons. Marina, who'd been addressed as the trio's representative, spoke up.
"It's not like anything happened, so don't worry. The three of us just had some free time and were walking through town when..."
Marina trailed off, her gaze drifting toward the knights.
"Ah... yeah, I think I get the gist."
Rei nodded at Marina's explanation while watching Byune, who was petting Set and radiating a faintly contented air despite her usual expressionless demeanor.
Marina and the others showing up here didn't pose any problem.
If anything, running into them like this was a welcome surprise.
"What were you three up to today?"
"I was asked to look into something. ...Regarding the Treant Forest."
"...I see."
Rei could broadly guess what she'd been doing.
When he'd brought Marina to the Treant Forest before, she'd been visibly unsettled by the place.
That reaction had been precisely because she was a highly capable Spirit Mage, and the plan this time was presumably to have her examine the felled trees in that capacity.
In reality, her skill as a Spirit Mage was only part of it; the real emphasis was on her knowledge as a Dark Elf, a people who lived in tune with nature.
Daskar, after all, had known Marina for a long time, and Worker was also fairly close to her as her designated successor.
"Ah... Rei. Anyway, we're counting on you for the trees. Things are busy on our end too, so we'd like to get them moved as quickly as possible. You're making several more trips, right?"
Rei had been chatting with Marina, but the knight's words snapped him back to the task at hand.
"Sorry, I'll start loading them right away. How many can each wagon take?"
"I'm told that since we have plenty of horses and these are specialized wagons, about ten logs shouldn't be an issue, but..."
His lack of confidence was understandable—a knight wouldn't normally be well-versed in a logger's trade.
"B-but, well, we went to the trouble of preparing this many wagons, so even if the count is a little off, we should manage somehow."
Rei felt mildly uncertain about the knight's hasty add-on, but decided his first priority was getting the trees out of the Misty Ring. He walked over to the wagons.
A normal carriage would be pulled by one or two horses.
These, however, had cargo beds built long and wide to hold lumber, and the wagons themselves were proportionally large—which meant more horses were needed to pull them.
"So this is a logger's wagon... quite different from an ordinary one."
Muttering to himself, Rei began selecting trees from his Misty Ring and loading them onto the cargo bed.
What neither Rei nor the knights had accounted for was that the felled trees hadn't been trimmed or shaped.
Normally, after felling a tree, a logger would leave it to dry for a while—sometimes over half a year, depending on the species. During that period, the leaves would wither and excess branches would be pruned. This time, however, they'd been told to haul the trees as they were.
So the trees were still in their raw, freshly cut state, leaves and all.
As a result, the branches and foliage kept getting in the way, making it difficult to load them cleanly onto the cargo bed.
"Ah... Rei, sorry, but could you pull a few trees back out? Then try stacking them in an alternating pattern?"
"Right. Hang on."
He stashed a few trees from the bed back into the Misty Ring, then rearranged them in an alternating crisscross.
With the branches and leaves still attached, he couldn't stack them as neatly as a logger would, but he still fit far more than his first attempt.
"Alright, this wagon's good to go. Get moving!"
"Understood."
The driver nodded at the knight's instruction and turned the wagon toward the main gate.
The entry paperwork must have been handled in advance.
The long-bed wagon rolled slowly forward, careful not to jostle the trees loose, and passed through into Gilm.
After seeing it off, Rei moved to the next wagon and loaded the trees the same way.
Compared to a logger's haul, the number of trees per wagon was notably small.
That was because they hadn't been dried after cutting, and still held plenty of moisture.
In fact, sap and water were seeping from the cut surfaces of some of the trunks Rei placed on the bed.
Moisture content varied by species, but since he'd stashed them into the Misty Ring almost immediately after felling, every tree was weeping heavily.
...To be precise, an hour or two had passed since cutting, but next to a half-year drying period, that was well within the margin of error.
The weight of that moisture was no trivial matter, and ruled out the kind of loading loggers normally practiced.
Somehow, they managed to get all the trees loaded. Then the knight who'd been talking with Rei spoke up again.
"That handles this batch for now. ...But don't come straight back for the next one. Give it a little time. From the look of it, these wagons won't be returning quickly."
"...I figured."
The wagons already had larger cargo beds than ordinary ones, and hauling that much lumber meant even the horses were moving at a crawl.
And these were logger wagons—using at least some Magic Items—which was the only reason they could manage with this many horses. An ordinary wagon would have needed twice, maybe three times as many.
Even in the current setup they were moving at a crawl, so given Set's flight speed, flying back now would only mean standing around waiting.
"You could take a breather inside the city if you want. What do you think?"
"No, I'll pass. I want to look around the forest a bit more."
"...Right."
The knight murmured briefly and said nothing further.
Entrusted with this operation, he understood the danger the Treant Forest posed.
That was exactly why he wanted to leave it in Rei's hands—if Rei could resolve it, so much the better.
If even Rei couldn't manage it after investigating, there were virtually no other options left.
But he'd also been told by Daskar that the more trees hauled out of the Treant Forest, the better.
At the very least, as long as there was room at the storage site—no, he'd been told to gather them even if it meant pushing things a little.
...Behind the scenes, Daskar's subordinate alchemists were working around the clock, but the knight wasn't privy to that.
And so, after his exchange with the knight and a brief word with Marina and the others, Rei took to the sky with Set, heading back toward the Treant Forest.
After watching him go, the knights and the others who'd been waiting filed into Gilm.
The entry procedures didn't take long—there weren't many people in line at this hour—but the tedium of presenting a Guild Card for the guards to check was as bothersome as ever.
Byune gave off a faint air of displeasure at the hassle, but resigned herself to enduring it quietly to get inside.
"Knowing Rei, I don't think we need to worry, but... he'll be fine, right?"
Marina murmured. Vihera nodded without hesitation.
"If someone wanted to take Rei down, a mere forest wouldn't cut it. I haven't been to that forest myself, but do you honestly think it could do anything to him?"
Put that way, Marina could only shake her head.
The forest she'd seen was certainly an unsettling place.
But even so, she couldn't possibly believe something of that caliber could threaten Rei.
If anything, if the forest tried to harm him, she found herself thinking the forest itself would be the one wiped off the map.
It wasn't convenient optimism. It was a genuine conviction, born of experience.
From the time she'd known Rei until now, she'd been surprised by his strength on countless occasions—but never once disappointed by any shortfall in it.
"Right. Maybe I'm overthinking it. ...No—if anything, I should be worried about Rei going too far and wiping out the Treant Forest entirely."
"That's a very real possibility."
Vihera couldn't picture the Treant Forest somehow besting Rei, but picturing Rei doing something to the Treant Forest came all too easily.
One might argue that was because she hadn't actually seen it—but even if she had, she wouldn't have been particularly worried about him in a situation like this.
It spoke to just how well she understood his abilities, but more than that, she simply couldn't imagine any scenario in which Rei would die.