"Tch, there's no doubt that flower is the cause of the Treant Forest's expansion, but... regardless, we need to deal with that thing first!"
Even as he spoke, Rei cleaved two Treants that had lunged at him clean through their trunks in a single stroke.
Plant-type monsters were known for their exceptionally high vitality. With Treants in particular, severing a branch or two had no real effect.
...Even so, a clean cut through the trunk meant certain death.
Treants were by no means fast, and they presented large targets. To Rei, who wielded the powerful Death Scythe, they were nothing more than that.
Nothing more than targets, that is—yet the endlessly swelling horde of Treants emerging from the depths of the forest was still highly troublesome.
In response to Rei's frustration-laced words, Vihera, who had been destroying Treants from within using Magic Impact Palm, shouted.
"Then let me go. Fighting Treants just makes them targets, and more than that, I have too few effective ways of attacking them."
Battling amid the moonlight pouring down, her thin garments fluttering, Vihera possessed a beauty that seemed to draw the eyes of everyone around her even in the midst of combat. Not a few of those fighting had their gazes captivated by her appearance.
Even in such a situation, she fought Treants and vines, deflecting or evading the seeds raining down from above—a testament to the fact that she possessed at least enough skill to participate in this rank-restricted request.
At first there had been some surprise at the seeds raining from the sky, but they were not particularly fast. They simply fell.
Of course, for ordinary humans—Researchers unaccustomed to combat, for instance—even that would make completely evading the seeds difficult. But for the adventurers participating in this request, it posed no great challenge.
"I don't mind that, but that's a giant flower, you know? Doesn't it lack any means of attack?"
Normally, the thought of an unknown monster's Magic Stone would flash through Rei's mind in an instant. But the monsters of this Treant Forest fundamentally did not possess Magic Stones. Given that, it didn't matter who defeated the creature.
The reason Rei hesitated was Vihera's means of attack. The claws and blades of magic extending from her Hand Gauntlets and Foot Guards were finite in length. She could slash through a Treant's trunk, but she couldn't bifurcate it in a single stroke like Rei's Death Scythe.
Granted, striking the same spot repeatedly would eventually sever a trunk, but rather than cutting through the trunk of a Treant that—though slow—was nonetheless still moving about, it was far quicker to simply use Magic Impact Palm and attack from within.
"If I use Magic Impact Palm, I can manage something. At worst, I can always just attack repeatedly with my gauntlet's claws."
"...Understood. Set, can I ask you?"
"Grrrrrrrgh!"
Rei addressed Set, who had been mercilessly snapping Treant trunks with single front-leg strikes.
"Carry Vihera to the base of that flower!"
"Gruh!"
At Rei's words, Set delivered one final front-leg strike to snap the trunk of a nearby Treant, then moved directly to Vihera's side and crouched low—a stance to make it easy for her to mount.
"Sorry about this. I'll just borrow Set for a bit."
With the exception of a certain child, Set could not carry anyone other than Rei on its back and fly. But carrying someone on its back and running was no problem at all.
With Vihera mounted, Set began weaving through the gaps between the Treants. Even so, the way Vihera slashed through the Treants' bodies with the claws extending from her gauntlets as they passed by was truly the essence of what made Vihera who she was.
Even without a sense of pain, the Treants seemed to understand they were being attacked. They tried to turn toward Set and Vihera as the pair raced past them—and that became a fatally exploitable opening.
Rei swung Death Scythe in continuous strikes at the Treants whose movements had stopped. The sight of Treants being split clean in half, one after another, made the watching adventurers realize with visceral certainty that the alias Crimson was no mere decoration.
"Mm!"
At a short distance from Rei, Byune hurled Long Needles in succession. The needles, launched as if melting into the darkness of night, pierced one after another into the face-like areas on the Treants' trunks.
Though the embedded needles caused no particular change in behavior from pain, they were evidently sufficient as a momentary check. The instant a Treant's movement halted, a spear of rock formed from rising earth pierced it from below in the next moment.
"I'm not particularly skilled at Earth Spirit Magic, but... this much is no problem."
Marina murmured, a radiant smile on her lips. She held a bow in her hands, firing arrows in succession while simultaneously issuing instructions to the gathered bow users and others who excelled at long-range attacks.
Under normal circumstances, managing all of this at once would be utterly impossible. But the ability to do precisely that was what made Marina who she was.
"Does it feel like everything would be resolved if I just left it all to Marina? Is that just my imagination?"
Rei muttered as he watched Marina's valor—truly the fury of a lioness.
"Mm!"
Byune barked at him shortly—work properly.
Since the start of the battle... more precisely, since Crimson Lotus Wings had joined the combat, not much time had passed. Byune still had considerable stamina to spare.
Even so, the reason she complained to Rei was likely because she knew her own body was small—meaning that while her burst power was one thing, her stamina was not particularly high.
Of course, even in the midst of battle, she was not always fighting at full power. She varied her pace, throwing off the timing of attacks from monsters like Treants and vines while also suppressing the drain on her stamina. Such a fighting style had been made possible for Byune. This, too, was likely one of the fruits of the combat training she had continued through the winter.
Urged on by Byune, Rei channeled magic into the Twilight Spear held in his left hand.
"Hah!"
Released with a spirited shout, the Twilight Spear struck a Treant dead-on, piercing through while pulverizing its trunk.
But the Twilight Spear, forged by Asimov's hands, would not end there. It pulverized one Treant's trunk as it pierced through, its speed undiminished, then shattered the trunk of the Treant behind it, and smashed the trunk of the one beyond that as well.
With a single strike—a single magic-charged throw of the Twilight Spear—the number of Treants killed exceeded ten. When also counting the Treants whose bodies were partially shattered without dying, the devastating effect of that one throw was plain to see.
And the Twilight Spear, which should have continued deep into the Treant Forest, smashing Treants and tearing through vines—before he knew it, it was back in Rei's hand. Automatically returning to its wielder was one of the weapon's abilities.
"Whoa, what the hell was that... no way!?"
"Amazing... so this is, this is what an Alias Holder can do..."
"How wonderful."
The adventurers fighting nearby let out voices of astonishment at the sight of that single throw. Even so, the fact that they never stopped fighting the Treants and vines was admirable indeed.
"Phew... there!"
Whether thinking the moment the Twilight Spear returned to his hand would bring a brief lapse in focus, a Treant swung down a branch at Rei—what served as a hand for a Treant. Despite being a branch, the strike carried the flexibility of a whip, but in the next instant it was sent flying by a sweep of Death Scythe.
With a returning slash, he severed the Treant's trunk... but then felt something off at his feet and reflexively leapt away.
As he did, a single tree erupted from the ground as if to pierce through the spot where Rei's body had been an instant before.
No—"sprouting" was far too mild a word. "Bursting out" would be far more accurate.
The sight of its tip ending in a sharp point, though differing in material—wood rather than rock—brought to mind the rock spears Marina had used moments ago.
(...Or perhaps... it imitated her? After seeing what Marina just did?)
Had it learned?
The thought crossed Rei's mind for a moment... but in truth, the Treant Forest had long employed a similar attack when preying on quarry. This was, without question, a complete coincidence.
But the opponents Rei had fought in the Treant Forest until now were only Treants and vine monsters. This battle marked his first encounter with the giant flower that resembled a sunflower, and he did not consider the possibility that it had imitated anything.
...Imitating "growing larger" would also raise the question of what exactly one should imitate in the first place.
"Gyaaaah!"
The tree erupting from the ground was not only aiming for Rei. From multiple locations across the battlefield, screams echoed through the surroundings. What had happened was obvious to anyone who turned their gaze toward it.
Rei had evaded, but a sudden attack from underground was invariably difficult to react to. Screams of those whose soles had been pierced rang through the air.
Some scrambled to help their companions, but since their bodies were skewered through from the soles of their feet, they were essentially pinned to the ground. To ignore that and cut the tree growing from below would likely require something as drastic as severing the foot itself.
"A new one's showed up! Be careful!"
Once again, a voice of caution rang through the surroundings. When Rei turned his gaze toward its source, he saw a patch of grass with sharp fangs trying to bite an adventurer, only to be deflected by a longsword.
(Is that... a Venus Flytrap?)
Rei had seen them in books and on TV, but never with his own eyes. Even so, the plant resembled what was called a Venus Flytrap. Of course, genuine Venus Flytraps were not large enough to swallow a person whole, and while they did have thorns, they certainly did not have fangs.
For that matter, Rei didn't even know whether Venus Flytraps existed in this world. At the very least, he had lived here for several years and never seen one.
(Gilm is a frontier, so it wouldn't be surprising if they were actually common in forests.)
Saying it was a frontier was enough to make most things accepted—that was the world of Elgin.
Thinking along those lines, Rei swung Death Scythe.
"Flying Slash!"
The slash unleashed from Death Scythe effortlessly severed the stem of the Venus Flytrap—the part without fangs. It went through so easily it seemed impossible that fangs of that size and the surrounding parts could be supported by it at all.
"That Venus Flytrap's stem is its weak point! There's no need to panic—evade its attacks and strike the stem!"
"Venus Flytrap? The name of this monster?"
An adventurer who had been on the verge of being attacked momentarily questioned Rei's words. But evidently understanding that this was no time for such things, he forcibly cast the doubt aside and shifted to the attack. For the time being, he decided that if Rei said so, this monster must be called a Venus Flytrap, and set upon the same type of monster a short distance away.
...This was the reason the monster would henceforth be called the Venus Flytrap, but it was something Rei himself did not know at the moment.
At any rate, the rapid succession of new monsters appearing elicited a genuine sense of crisis from Rei. If he were alone, they would be opponents he could handle without particular difficulty. But whether all the adventurers present could say the same was another matter—and the answer was no.
Especially when facing unknown monsters like Venus Flytraps or trees that suddenly erupted from underground, ordinary adventurers might find themselves unable to land a single blow.
"Troublesome."
What was even more troublesome was the direction Rei now turned his gaze toward—yes, the place where the Researchers had gathered.
If it were ordinary monsters like Treants, the adventurers tasked with guarding them could probably manage. As for the falling seeds, fortunately they had stopped for the time being, so there was no need to worry about them at the moment.
(It'd be Vihera, though.)
For just an instant, his thoughts went to Vihera, who was fighting the sunflower monster, but he immediately returned his mind to the matter at hand.
Yes, threats from the ground and the sky required no attention, but the ones from underground were an entirely different matter. If one did not evade the instant they appeared, one's soles would be pierced.
Fortunately—or perhaps there was some reason—the trees that suddenly surfaced from underground had not, for now, attacked the Researchers. But how long that would last was anyone's guess.
"Rei, that!"
While he was still thinking, Marina's voice suddenly rang through the surroundings. That Rei could properly pick out Marina's voice even amid the cacophony of multiple battles was surely because the one who produced it was Marina.
Marina had temporarily paused her instructions to the bow-wielding adventurers. When Rei followed the direction of her gaze, what he saw was the figure of a giant sunflower crumbling to the ground.
"Oh..."
The voice of delight lasted but an instant. In the next moment, two, then three new giant sunflowers emerged once more.