"What the hell are you bastards thinking?!"
That roar echoed through the Guild.
Since the sun had fully set and night had fallen, there were hardly any people inside the Guild hall. ...Of course, the adjoining tavern was a different story—plenty of adventurers were noisily celebrating the day's successes or drowning their failures in drink. It was positively rowdy.
For a shout to carry all the way to that noisy tavern, one could only imagine just how loud it had been. In fact, several of the patrons drinking there turned their gazes toward the Guild hall... or more precisely, toward the group of woodcutters gathered within.
"We're still in the middle of business, so it would be helpful if you could lower your voices or move somewhere else..."
A receptionist Rei had seen a few times before called out to the man who had shouted—the person overseeing Gilm's woodcutters.
Those words seemed to snap the man back to his senses. He hastily bowed his head to the receptionist and then to Rei.
"Sorry. We'll move somewhere else. ...Rei, sorry for all the trouble these idiots caused you."
The sight of a middle-aged man with a rugged, woodcutter-like face bowing deeply wasn't exactly unusual. To begin with, this was the Guild in Gilm. The people here were adventurers, and the most common among them were warriors.
Some warriors relied on speed and technique, but that naturally required talent. As for whether those who fought with brute force didn't need talent—the answer was no. However, muscles were easy, or at least relatively easy, to build. Train the body, and they would surely grow. In that sense, there were many warriors who fought by forcefully relying on strength, which required comparatively less talent. ...Of course, it was difficult for that type of person to become a high-rank adventurer. Elk, an A-Rank adventurer, was also that type, but he possessed exceptional combat instincts and the Magic Item known as the Axe of the Thunder God.
Regardless, men with heavily developed muscles were hardly unusual at the Guild. Out in the city streets, perhaps, but not here.
Incidentally, this was one of the reasons Rei didn't come to the Guild early in the morning. Adventurers searching for work gathered in front of the Request Board, and among them were no small number of people so heavily muscled it was stifling.
"No, don't worry about it. But if you keep repeating the same thing, it'll be a problem for us too. Just understand that. Also, I've already brought back the trees those guys cut down, so I'll hand them over to the Guild later."
"Ah, sorry. About those trees—would you take them as compensation for the trouble this time, Rei?"
"...No, I'll pass. Truthfully, even if I received those trees, I wouldn't have any particular use for them."
In reality, Rei had cut down a few trees himself and sold them to the Guild, so it wasn't that he had absolutely no use for them. If push came to shove, he could always chop them into kindling. Even so, he declined out of consideration for Fekts and his group.
While there had been no deaths, many of them had suffered minor injuries. Furthermore, those were trees felled in the frontier wilderness at night—an extremely dangerous place by any standard. Snatching them away like a thief in the night didn't sit right with Rei.
"Are you sure? You don't need to hold back for Fekts and his guys, you know?" the woodcutter pressed.
Rei nodded. "Yeah, don't worry about that."
"...Well, if you say so, Rei, then I've got no complaints."
"Besides, this Nomination Request wasn't for free anyway. I'll be getting proper compensation, so there's no need to worry."
Once Rei repeated that, the man finally seemed to accept. He looked at Fekts and let out a deep sigh.
"Anyway, you guys take the day off today. We've got work tomorrow too. ...But your wages will be cut for a while, so brace yourselves."
"Foreman?"
He probably never imagined they would be let off this easily. Fekts looked at the woodcutter before him—the foreman who oversaw their work—and spoke with visible confusion.
Even now, he realized full well that what they had done was extremely dangerous. Precisely because he understood that, he never expected to get off with almost no reprimand—though their pay would take a hit.
"Shut up! Just get yourselves home and go to sleep! You're up early tomorrow too!"
At the foreman's shout, Fekts and the others bowed and took their leave.
The foreman watched them go, then noticed Rei and Vihera looking his way and spoke.
"You think I'm being too lenient?"
"You do. Compared to what they did, that's awfully lenient, don't you think?"
It wasn't Rei but Vihera who murmured that.
A short distance away, Marina, who had been discussing the reward for this request with the receptionist, briefly glanced their way before returning to her negotiation. The only ones who understood what Marina's action meant were the receptionist and the foreman himself.
"This request originally requires a lot of woodcutters. If Fekts and his group quit at a time like this, we'd be short-handed. ...There aren't that many woodcutters in Gilm to begin with."
The foreman's words were true. To fell trees, you had to go into the forest, and since this was the frontier, it wouldn't be strange for powerful monsters to lurk in those woods. Moreover, unlike the trees of the Treant Forest, in an ordinary forest you needed to leave felled timber for a period after cutting. And while the logs sat unattended, it wasn't uncommon for other monsters, including Goblins, to make free use of them.
Of course, the pay was good precisely because there were so few workers. This was also influenced, no doubt, by the lord Daskar offering favorable terms to prevent the number of woodcutters from dwindling and disappearing from Gilm entirely.
"But I'll never let this happen again. ...That much I promise."
At the foreman's forceful declaration, Rei and Vihera exchanged a glance and nodded.
"Well, it wasn't that tough for me, honestly."
"If some stronger monsters had shown up, at least we could've enjoyed ourselves... but it was just Treants."
Unlike Rei, Vihera's words went beyond anything the foreman could have imagined. He was startled, but Rei, knowing her personality, didn't pay it any particular mind.
"Then we'll be off. You're heading back to the Treant Forest tomorrow, right?"
"...Of course. But Treants appeared, didn't they?"
The foreman asked, picking up on Vihera's words, but Rei nodded as if it were obvious.
"Yeah. But none showed up during the day, and if it's the adventurers hired as escorts, they should be able to handle Treants without any issues."
"I see."
It wasn't that he completely believed Rei's words, but still—if a high-rank adventurer who was an Alias Holder said so, then... the foreman forcefully convinced himself. Besides, even if the escort adventurers couldn't handle whatever appeared, there was also the thought that with Rei there, things would work out somehow.
"Alright then, we'll disperse here. ...I'm telling you, and I'll say it again—I don't want to see you repeat this kind of stupidity."
"I know. Fekts is normally a serious woodcutter. It's just... something happened."
From those words, Rei understood that Fekts had some kind of circumstances behind his actions. But he didn't pry any deeper. Rei and Fekts didn't have that friendly of a relationship to begin with. They were merely connected through this particular request.
With the conversation with the foreman finished, only Rei and his group remained in the Guild. That was because they still had business to attend to there.
Rei looked around, but as expected, Kenny was nowhere to be seen. He had noticed when they entered the Guild, but he'd held out a faint hope anyway.
Rei had never been particularly good at social interaction. Even so, he had managed as an adventurer thanks to two receptionists—Lenora and Kenny—who always looked out for him. That was why he had wanted to report this matter to one of them if possible, but unfortunately, their working hours had apparently already ended. Kenny bringing the request to Rei was probably her last job for the day.
"Rei, Luche here can listen to your report."
Marina must have understood what Rei's demeanor meant. She called the name of the receptionist she had been discussing the reward with.
"Ah, I've received the handover from Kenny, so I can take your report."
"...Understood. When we went to rescue Fekts and the others in the Treant Forest, we engaged in combat with Treants, just as the name suggests."
"I see. So the monsters do appear once night falls, as expected."
"Ah... actually, that seems to be a bit different."
Rei recalled the information he had heard from one of the woodcutters while they were on the move.
"One of the woodcutters confirmed that there was a Treant bearing a mark he had carved into it himself as a landmark."
"Isn't that simply because he didn't realize it was a Treant in the first place?"
"...Do you think a professional woodcutter would mistake a normal tree for a Treant when handling it? Well, of course, if it had been a high-ranking species or a rare species, that'd be a different story, but the Treants we fought were ordinary ones."
"Then... what does that mean?"
"The Treants we fought were Treants and yet not Treants. It's not exactly proof, but I brought back a few of their corpses."
"But how does that serve as proof?"
Just bringing in corpses—what was he going to do with them? The receptionist's gaze asked that question, and Rei smiled faintly before speaking.
"What if those monsters had no Magic Stones inside their bodies?"
"...Eh?"
The receptionist let out a blank sound. That was only natural. If they were called monsters, they had to have Magic Stones inside them. But no Magic Stones—what did that mean?
A look filled with that question was directed at Rei. Under the receptionist's gaze, Rei silently shook his head.
Rei didn't fully understand the clear reason why there were no Magic Stones either. Still, since it was certain that none existed, he couldn't just pretend it hadn't happened.
"I've brought the corpses without Magic Stones with me. I want to hand them over. ...Well, there's also the matter of materials, so it'll probably end up being a purchase."
A Treant's body could be used for various things. The most famous was probably as a staff. Since there was a possibility they weren't monsters at all—given the absence of Magic Stones—it was unclear whether they could actually be used as staves. But to investigate that, the Guild would purchase the Treant corpses Rei had brought.
"Understood. If it turns out that monsters truly exist without Magic Stones, that would be an extremely significant event. I will report this matter to the Guild Master."
She must have understood from Rei's demeanor that this was no joke and was genuinely dangerous. The receptionist nodded at Rei's words with a serious expression and told him so.
"Yeah, please do. ...Honestly, I may have underestimated that Treant Forest. Of course, the monsters that appear there aren't that strong... but it has a different kind of terror."
If it were purely a matter of monster strength, they wouldn't be a threat at all. At the very least, that was certain for Rei or the adventurers hired as escorts. But a fear born of the unknown—something beyond such obvious concerns—struck Rei. Or rather, in this case, it was more accurate to say he feared it precisely because it was unknown.
What kind of monsters specifically appeared in the Treant Forest, and in what way did they manifest? If he knew that, he wouldn't feel nearly so threatened.
(The Treant Forest, huh. It seems it was named after Thresha, who first encountered it... but the enemies we fought today were mostly Treants too. Of course, given the absence of Magic Stones, they weren't exactly Treants. Calling them Treant-like mockeries would probably be more accurate.)
Thinking that, Rei placed the Treant corpses in the warehouse and then left the Guild with Marina and Vihera.
Byune was still waiting for them at the inn, and he wanted to get back as quickly as possible to put her at ease. ...Of course, with Byune, whose expression rarely changed, no one besides Vihera could accurately read her emotions.