"...Looks like you all made it out in one piece."
Seeing the woodcutters — some injured, but none with wounds that appeared life-threatening — Rei let out a breath of relief.
Without pausing, he swept the Death Scythe in a wide arc and planted himself between the Treants and the woodcutters.
The Treants froze for a moment at the sight of him... and in that opening, the two flanking him were sent flying — one from a punch by Vihera, the other from a swipe of Set's foreleg.
Immediately after, multiple spears of wind shot through the air and buried themselves in the trunk of one of the Treants.
A woodcutter near Fekts turned toward the source of the wind spears. There, despite the dire situation, stood a Dark Elf of such breathtaking beauty that his eyes were instantly drawn to her.
"You're..."
Fekts muttered, staring at Rei — Death Scythe in his right hand, Twilight Spear in his left.
Who this person was, Fekts already knew. After all, he had met Rei just earlier that day. It was only obvious. What's more, as far as Fekts knew, Rei was the only adventurer in Gilm who had a Gryphon as a Tamed Monster.
"...Step back a little."
Rei murmured, shooting a glance at Fekts, who looked as though he wanted to say something but couldn't find the words. The irritation in Rei's voice was unmistakable.
And understandably so. These men had pulled a foolhardy stunt — venturing into the Treant Forest at night.
As a result, Rei had been in the middle of dinner, thinking the day's work was done and it was time to rest, when the emergency request came in and dragged him all the way out here.
While en route, the frustration hadn't fully registered. But now, standing face-to-face with Fekts, it was only natural for it to surface.
Under normal circumstances, Fekts was not the kind of man who would stay silent after being spoken to that way by someone younger than him. But the monster attack had drained him — physically and mentally. Above all, he knew with absolute certainty that without Rei and his party, they would all be dead. So despite a flicker of resentment, he didn't talk back.
...Though the fact that he could feel even slight resentment in this situation was proof that Fekts still had some composure left.
"There's something behind us too!"
Seeing Fekts fall silent, another woodcutter nearby shouted.
"Something?"
Rei's voice rang out as he faced the Treants, the scene settling into an odd stalemate.
"Y-yeah. They're plant vines, but they attack almost like snakes..."
"Marina, I'll leave that side to you."
That was all Rei needed to hear. The snake-like vine monsters and the Treants in front of him — bows aside, Spirit Magic would be better suited to handling the vines. That was the reasoning behind the order.
It spoke to just how much Rei trusted Marina's Spirit Magic. Having witnessed it time and again — a display so versatile it could almost be called omnipotent — such confidence was only natural.
Marina, understanding this without a word, moved behind the woodcutters. As someone who fought with Spirit Magic and a bow, she was a pure rear-guard fighter. Normally, that would mean a vanguard should be assigned to protect her, but...
"Fufu, how very passionate. But... do you really think attacks of that level can capture me?"
Wearing a smile that radiated composure, Marina dodged the vines that lunged to entangle her alluring figure. She slipped past each strike with split-second timing, addressing the spirits as though singing to them.
O Wind Spirits, let us sing together — sing, chant, recite, carol, harmonize. Deliver our song and grant eternal repose.
At her words, figures materialized around Marina — numerous beautiful women clad in what appeared to be nothing more than wisps of cloth draped over their bodies. Most were semi-transparent, making it clear they had no true physical form. But given the incantation — the call to the spirits — what had just appeared was unmistakable.
"Wind... spirits..."
A woodcutter near Marina muttered, slack-jawed.
At his words, Marina flashed a bewitching smile, glanced his way, and the next moment swept her hand wide.
Simultaneously, the Wind Spirits — no, the Wind Maidens — raised their voices in song.
The melody became Wind Blades that sliced through the vines, Wind Cannonballs that shattered them, wind spears that pierced them, and haunting strains that threw the vines into chaos.
The layered songs rendered the vines that had been attacking the woodcutters from behind utterly powerless in the blink of an eye.
From the moment the Wind Maidens began singing to the neutralization of every last vine — only a few seconds passed. In that brief span, the threat closing in from behind vanished completely.
The vines that had endlessly surged forth no matter how many times they were hacked apart with axes were, in the most literal sense, wiped clean away.
Even a woodcutter who harbored resentment toward adventurers would have nothing left to say after witnessing that scene with his own eyes. The realization that he had despised adventurers based on his own stubborn assumptions now felt absurd beyond words.
Even as the woodcutter stood there lost in thought, Marina suddenly turned her gaze toward him. Just that — merely meeting her eyes — was enough to completely captivate him, his gaze stolen by her figure.
"It's dangerous. Step back."
"...Yes."
With those words, he had no choice but to comply. He retreated, stepping back one pace, then two, and bumped squarely into a fellow woodcutter.
Naturally — Fekts and his men had been standing in a circle formation.
But despite the chaos around them, the woodcutter he bumped into showed no reaction at all.
Several seconds passed before the man finally noticed. Marina had already turned her gaze away, so he faced forward — and at the sight unfolding before him, he froze as if he had forgotten how to breathe.
"...You've gotta be kidding me... What the hell is this..."
What reached the frozen woodcutter's ears was Fekts's voice, thick with disbelief. Those words captured the exact same sentiment shared by every woodcutter present, Fekts included.
They didn't want to admit it. They didn't want to acknowledge it — but they had always known that adventurers were stronger than them. Even so, the scene unfolding before their eyes was beyond astonishing.
The Treants — monsters they couldn't kill, creatures they could only desperately stall against while waiting to die. Facing those very monsters, what Rei, Vihera, and Set — two people and one beast — were doing could only be described as a rout.
Each swing of the Death Scythe cleaved through a Treant with ease. The Twilight Spear punched through their bodies without resistance.
Vihera's strikes appeared ineffective at first glance — until the next moment, when the Treant trunks burst apart from within.
As for Set, he was simply swinging his forelegs — and that alone sent Treants flying as though it were nothing more than a joke.
It was only natural to wonder whether the monsters before them were truly the same creatures they had so feared.
And ultimately, what had seemed like certain death for Fekts and his men was resolved in mere minutes.
Watching that overwhelming gap in power — so absurd it could only be called a joke — no one, Fekts included, could find words.
The relief of being saved from what moments ago had seemed like certain death. The jealousy toward the power that had annihilated in seconds the monsters they were helpless against. The humiliation of realizing that without adventurers, they were utterly powerless. A swirl of too many emotions left them speechless.
Yet Rei merely glanced at Fekts and his men before turning his gaze back toward the Treants, as if to say they weren't worth his attention.
"!? H-Hey! Didn't you come here to save us!?"
Rei's dismissive attitude caused the resentment Fekts harbored toward adventurers to flare up far stronger than any gratitude for being rescued, and he shouted almost reflexively.
It wasn't as though he had any logical basis for expecting someone who came to save them to hold back — it was pure hostility talking.
Compared to his own muscular frame, honed from years as a woodcutter, Rei's build hardly looked formidable. That, too, fueled the resentment. Of course, he had seen Rei wielding weapons like the Death Scythe and the Twilight Spear — weapons that would normally require both hands — each in a single hand. But outward appearances carried undeniable weight when judging an opponent.
"...What? There's no Magic Stone?"
As if he hadn't heard Fekts's shout at all, Rei examined the interior of a Treant he had split clean down the middle with the Death Scythe and muttered.
Just as he said, the Magic Stone that should have been present in any monster was nowhere to be found.
Since it was a monster, there should have been a Magic Stone without question — which was why his voice carried a heavy note of disappointment.
One of the reasons Rei had accepted this rescue request was, naturally, to obtain a monster's Magic Stone. Treants, in particular, possessed a Magic Stone that Rei — or more precisely, Death Scythe — had never absorbed before, giving him hope that he might acquire some kind of new skill. That made the reality of finding nothing his biggest miscalculation of the entire operation.
"No Magic Stone? ...Maybe you just couldn't find it?"
"Even with Treants, the location of the Magic Stone is more or less fixed. ...What's going on here?"
"Gurururu..."
Set purred in response to Rei's words.
Recognizing that the purr carried a questioning tone — born from a sense that something was wrong with these monsters — Rei turned his gaze back to the Treants.
"Vihera, have you ever fought Treants before?"
"A few times in dungeons. ...But what about it?"
Though Vihera had traveled with Rei and Set for a fair while, she couldn't fully decipher the meaning behind Set's cries the way Rei could. It was likely similar to how Rei couldn't completely understand Byune's intentions.
"From the sound of Set's cry, it seems like something feels off about these Treants."
"...Off?"
Hearing the word, Vihera tilted her head slightly. As she had just said, she had experience fighting Treants before — but she hadn't sensed anything unusual during this battle with them.
"I didn't really—"
"Hey!"
Unable to bear being ignored while Rei and Vihera talked among themselves, Fekts grabbed Rei's shoulder, about to shout something —
"Shut up, incompetent."
The single phrase that left Rei's mouth silenced him completely.
If someone ordinary had said that to him, his natural stubbornness would have kicked in and he would have fired back instantly. But what lay in Rei's gaze was exasperation and contempt — and that, struck together with an air of unmistakable killing intent, was more than someone like Fekts could resist.
"!?"
In the end, he couldn't say another word and retreated several steps.
Seeing Fekts recoil, another woodcutter tried to speak up — but Rei cut him off, opening his mouth again.
"In the first place, this whole incident wouldn't have happened if you hadn't pulled a stunt like going outside the city at dusk. What you were thinking, doing something like that, I honestly can't comprehend. But because of that, an emergency request was submitted to the Guild by other woodcutters and their families. Do you understand what that means?"
At Rei's words, Fekts and his men wore expressions of mingled resentment and confusion. They truly had no idea what he was talking about.
Rei must have realized this. His exasperation deepening, he spoke again.
"Listen here. I may not look it, but I'm a B-Rank Adventurer — what you'd call a High-Rank Adventurer. On top of that, I'm an Alias Holder. And you put in a request for someone like me? There's no way the request fee would be the same as what you normally pay the adventurers you hire, is there?"
Setting aside this current Treant Forest incident, the adventurers woodcutters typically hired as escorts were mostly D-Rank. Of course, the compensation for those escorts was by no means cheap — but it still couldn't compare to the request fees for a High-Rank Party like Rei's, or like the Crimson Lotus Wings.
Granted, because this request had come in so suddenly, they hadn't yet discussed the exact amount. Even so, it was certain to be a fee on an entirely different scale from what Low-Rank Adventurers would charge.
As if finally grasping that fact, Fekts and his men went pale.
Naturally. After all, they had come to the Treant Forest at night not only out of resentment toward adventurers, but because they had wanted to earn more.
And that decision had brought about the exact opposite of what they had hoped for.
It was more than enough to make them regret the sheer folly of what they had done.