The sun had already fully set. Under normal circumstances, the gates would be closed at this hour.
Thanks to the documents Kenny had brought, however, the guards opened the Main Gate without hesitation.
Of course, it helped that the paperwork bore not only Worker's signature but Daskar's as well. Add to that the presence of Marina, the former Guild Master, along with Rei and Set—both famous in their own right—and it was no surprise the guards complied so readily.
"Set, let's go."
"Grrroooarr!"
At Rei's words from atop its back, Set let out its signature cry, took a few running strides, and launched itself into the air with a powerful beat of its wings.
Once airborne, it banked and descended again to pick up Marina and Vihera, who were waiting on the ground below.
Normally, they would have taken the time to secure lifelines. But every second counted if they wanted to reach the Treant Forest sooner, and more importantly, the flight would only take a few minutes—so they had foregone lifelines altogether.
Slowing down and skimming close to the ground, Set extended its front legs. Marina and Vihera leapt at precisely the right moment and caught hold.
Set's balance wavered for a heartbeat, but it recovered instantly and beat its wings once more.
Soaring high into the night sky, Set set its course toward the Treant Forest.
The sun had fully set, yet not much time had passed since dusk. Perhaps because of that, faint traces of the evening glow still lingered on the horizon.
The night sky was cloudless, and gentle moonlight spilled across the ground below.
"What a lovely view. If nothing were to come of this... I'd have nothing to complain about," Marina murmured, clinging to Set's leg with one hand.
She had changed into clothes stored in Vihera's room—trousers instead of her usual party dress.
Without a lifeline, she was holding on to Set's front leg with nothing but her grip. One slip would mean certain death. Yet Marina showed not the slightest trace of tension.
"True. Ideally, a moonlit date while taking in the night view... now that would be nice," Vihera replied, equally composed.
Neither woman betrayed any hint of unease.
...If anything, perhaps because a battle lay ahead, Vihera's eyes even glimmered with lust.
Lately, Vihera hadn't been able to savor a truly satisfying fight.
She had been sparring with Marina, running combat drills with Byune, and above all, crossing blades with Rei in mock battles.
But those were only mock battles.
Unlike real combat, where lives hung in the balance, she could never truly go all out—could never experience the raw exhilaration and ecstasy that only genuine battle could bring.
In Byune's case, it hadn't even been a mock battle—merely training.
Not that she disliked the time she spent with Rei. Even so, Vihera carried within her an overpowering craving for combat.
She understood that this mission would be primarily an escort, not a fight. But a life-or-death battle was more than enough to excite—no, to arouse—Vihera.
Riding on Set's back, Rei was naturally well aware of what one might charitably call Vihera's proclivities.
He said nothing, though, because he understood that this, too, was simply part of who Vihera was.
Having lived a long life, Marina had crossed paths with more than a few people who shared that same disposition.
(Well, whatever's waiting for us this time is a complete unknown. It certainly won't just be Treants. ...Though if it is, that's fine too—we can harvest Magic Stones from them.)
Even as she pondered this, Set pressed onward, and eventually the forest came into view below.
Bathed in moonlight, it was the Treant Forest.
The night flight had lasted only a few minutes, but the moment the forest appeared, all eyes—Rei's, Set's, Marina's, and Vihera's—locked onto it.
They spotted the abnormality immediately.
Several figures were locked in combat near the outer edge of the forest.
A group of people had stopped in their tracks, Treants looming before them.
That they were the woodcutters led by Fekts was obvious—every one of them carried an axe.
Naturally, Set had spotted them even before Rei did. It was already beating its wings, descending toward the forest.
"Marina, Vihera! I've found what looks like the woodcutters—they're under attack, just as we expected!"
At Rei's shout, Marina and Vihera turned their gazes toward the forest, each wearing a different expression.
Time rewound slightly.
Around the moment Rei and his party took flight from Gilm, Fekts and his woodcutters were fighting for their lives against the monsters.
"God damn it! What the hell are these things?!"
Fekts bellowed in frustration as he swung his axe.
The blade sheared through a vine that had been slithering around his feet like a snake.
The severed vine writhed as though letting out a silent death scream, twisting and curling in on itself... before finally going limp and collapsing onto the ground.
"Fekts! What do we do?!"
"Just run! Get out of here, now! We need to put some distance between us and break out of the forest! Once we're clear, these things probably won't follow!"
In answer to his companion's cry, Fekts hacked at the encroaching vines and shouted over his shoulder.
The axes Fekts and his men carried were logging tools, pure and simple. They were not Battle Axes forged and balanced for war.
Even so, an axe was still an axe, and it packed enough force to do damage.
Following Fekts's orders, the group ran, desperately trying to clear the forest.
Several factors worked in their favor. As woodcutters by trade, they knew exactly how to swing an axe against wood. Unlike the adventurer party that had been ambushed in their sleep, they hadn't been caught off guard. Night had only just fallen, so their guard hadn't dropped yet. And since their original purpose had been logging, they had been working near the outer edge of the forest.
Thanks to a combination of these advantages and sheer luck, Fekts and his men had sustained injuries but had not yet lost a single life.
Not that they had the luxury to feel proud of it. Right now, survival demanded every one of them working together in perfect coordination.
In this moment of crisis, having Fekts—a natural leader among the younger woodcutters—proved to be a blessing. ...Though without Fekts, they never would have dared enter the Treant Forest at night in the first place.
Whatever the reasons, one fact remained undeniable: Fekts and his men were still alive.
But while everyone had survived so far, there was no telling how long that would last.
They had been operating near the edge of the forest, yet that last stretch of ground simply refused to close. They were already pushed to their limits, and every man bore wounds to some degree. At this rate, it was only a matter of time before someone died.
Only now did Fekts truly appreciate just how vital escort adventurers were. With that hard-won understanding etched into his bones, he and every woodcutter still on his feet swung their axes and ran.
Desperately—pouring every last ounce of their lives into each stride—they kept running, until at last the outer edge of the forest appeared ahead.
They were going to make it.
That thought had barely formed in the woodcutters' minds when the man at the front came to an abrupt halt.
Stopping dead from a dead sprint placed an enormous strain on the body. His already exhausted muscles, worn down by the fighting even if it had only been brief, had no chance of absorbing the shock. Shoved from behind, the man went tumbling across the ground.
The blade of the axe he'd been carrying nicked his cheek, leaving a thin line of blood. Even so, he forced himself back to his feet.
"Hey! What the hell are you doing?!"
"Fekts, it's no good!"
Fekts had screamed at his companion's sudden stop, but what came back was a voice raw with desperation—a man driven to the very edge.
With vines slithering in like snakes from behind and all around, though, Fekts couldn't afford to stop here either.
One of the reasons they had survived this long was that their attackers were only vines. If the monsters that had wiped out those adventurers had shown up, no amount of luck would have saved them all.
Regardless of the reason, they had only one option: flee the vines closing in from every direction.
For the front runner to suddenly halt in a situation like that—it was only natural for Fekts, bringing up the rear, to shout.
But no matter what Fekts felt, the man at the front couldn't simply charge through the forest ahead. Because...
"Shgyaaaaaaa!"
With a thunderous, hostile roar, a Treant emerged from the darkness.
Trees, by all rights, should not be able to move. But this one was walking across the ground on its roots as though they were legs.
The man at the front raised his axe and fixed his gaze on the Treant, a bitter expression twisting his features.
Because one of the Treants bore a scar on its trunk—a scar he recognized.
Naturally. He had carved it himself as a marker on a tree he'd felled.
In other words, this Treant was the very same tree he had scored moments ago.
"Damn it, you weren't a Treant back then!"
He cursed aloud and raised his axe to face the creature.
As a woodcutter, he encountered monsters like Treants on a regular basis. Any competent woodcutter could tell the difference between ordinary wood and a Treant by touch alone—it wasn't particularly difficult.
A higher-tier monster might be a different story, but at the very least, this man had absolute confidence that he would never mistake a normal tree for a Treant, and he had the skill to back it up.
Which meant he was certain: the tree he had scarred had not been a Treant.
And yet here it stood, as a Treant.
Wanting to scream at the sheer impossibility of it was only natural.
The Treant, for its part, paid no mind to the man's disbelief. It swung its branches.
A blow like a fist smashing down.
The man threw up his axe as a makeshift shield and managed to deflect the strike, but—
"Gugah!"
—a second impact came from a direction he hadn't guarded, and sent him flying.
...Yes. The Treants blocking their path weren't alone.
Over ten of them stood in a wall, cutting off any route of escape.
An adventurer might have stood a chance. But could mere woodcutters break through a pack of Treants? The answer was no.
And from the forest behind them, vines stretched endlessly in pursuit.
Tigers at the front gate, wolves at the back.
If Rei could see Fekts and his men's predicament right now, that old saying would have been the first thing to come to mind.
"Damn it, what do we do, Fekts?!"
Even facing certain death, not a single woodcutter turned on Fekts. That alone spoke volumes about how deeply they trusted him.
"Heavy wounded to the center, light wounded to the outside! Hold formation, and when you see an opening, we break through at one point!"
Following his command, they formed up in front of the Treants.
Of course, unlike adventurers who trained for combat, Fekts and his men had no battle drill to fall back on. Woodcutters were a rough crowd, and plenty of them had been in their share of brawls—but a brawl was a brawl, not combat.
So even following Fekts's orders, the formation they managed was rough and uneven.
Even so, clumsy as it was, fighting together was far better than facing Treants one-on-one.
...Being woodcutters, every one of them carried an axe. None had bows or any kind of ranged weapon. That meant only the men on the outer edge could engage, while those inside could do nothing to support them—only watch.
"Uwaaaaaagh!"
Unable to bear it any longer, one of the woodcutters in the interior hurled his axe with everything he had.
His arm was injured, but he could still throw.
The axe spun through the air and buried its blade deep in a Treant's trunk, but—
"Damn it, it doesn't even flinch! What the hell?!"
The Treant, axe still jutting from its body, showed no reaction whatsoever and raised its branches to strike—
"Like hell I'll let you!"
A voice rang out from nowhere. The Treant, on the verge of crushing the woodcutter, was cleaved clean in two—left from right.