Inside the Treant Forest, Rei advanced on Set's back.
The Treant Forest didn't have anything resembling a proper path. Well, the areas where the woodcutters felled trees had worn into something path-like, so it wasn't as though there were no paths at all.
...In that sense, a few path-like traces existed in the Treant Forest near the Birth Tower as well. Strictly limited to the vicinity of the Tower, that is.
(The Lizardman Children are probably finding it interesting and going into the Treant Forest to play. ...Playing in the lake got banned for them, after all.)
When the lake first teleported in, the Lizardman Children had been able to play in it to some extent. But the lake held monsters. The fanged fish they had eaten last night, for instance, had more or less forced its way into the shallows. Letting children play in such a place was far too dangerous.
That was why the Lizardman Children had taken to playing in the Treant Forest instead.
...As the incident with the Cerberus had shown, the Treant Forest wasn't exactly safe either. Even so, fighting on solid ground was undeniably more advantageous than fighting in the water, so the children were permitted to enter the Treant Forest on the condition that they stayed near the Birth Tower.
Naturally, it wasn't just the children—the Female Lizardman caretaker, the recently teleported Lizardmen, and sometimes even Gilm's adventurers would accompany them.
That said, the paths such people had trodden were already gone. Given Set's speed, they would have flashed past in a dozen seconds... no, mere seconds.
And so Set dashed through the Treant Forest.
The trees growing there weren't arranged in any regular pattern. Yet even under those conditions, Set didn't hesitate in the slightest—if anything, it kept running without barely slowing down. The speed at which it wove between the trunks was so great that even if allies of the Black Garb group from earlier were lurking about, catching up would be virtually impossible.
(Good call traveling through the Treant Forest instead of flying over it.)
From atop Set's back, Rei stroked its neck in gratitude.
"Grrrl."
Though still running, Set let out a happy purr at Rei's touch. In other words, even sprinting through the forest like this, it still had energy to spare.
They pressed on through the trees and, fortunately—perhaps because they sensed Set's presence—arrived at their destination without encountering a single monster.
The central area of the Treant Forest. The place where the passage leading to the Underground Space, which housed the Wisp—a being possessing the power of inter-world Teleportation—was concealed.
Rei dismounted and swiftly surveyed the area. Was there anything out of place? Any signs that someone had searched the site? Was anyone hiding?
Beside him, Set was doing the same. From Set's perspective, it was probably just imitating Rei.
"...Yeah, we're good. No sign of anyone nearby, and no indication this place has been tampered with."
"Gruu!"
A few dozen seconds later, Set nodded in agreement with Rei's murmur. Rei let out a visible breath of relief at the response.
He knew his own senses were sharp, but where this matter was concerned, he wanted to be absolutely certain.
"I came all this way, so I could go down into the Underground Space... no, I'll pass."
Rei wanted to check whether the Wisp had shown any changes. The Underground Space was also connected to Grimm's laboratory, and there was a chance Grimm was researching various things about the Wisp. After all, he had actually gone so far as to place a Wind Spirit sealed inside an emerald down there.
But if he lingered too long, the allies of the Black Garb group might find it suspicious that they had vanished from the Birth Tower and come investigating. Moreover, the adventurers standing watch at the Birth Tower relied heavily on Set's presence. They should have been maintaining vigilance on their own, but after days of camping with Set, they had grown accustomed to leaning on his sharp senses.
...If Set were actually absent, they probably wouldn't be so dependent. Right now, Set's presence had simply become the norm, and that was the root of the problem.
"Well, it's not like I'm one to talk." When it came to being attached to Set, Rei himself was utterly inseparable from the creature.
Currently he belonged to a party called the Crimson Lotus Wings, but back when he had operated solo, Set would keep watch every time he camped outside Gilm. In terms of relying on Set, not much had changed even after forming the party.
"Gruu?"
Set tilted its head as if to ask, "What's wrong?" Rei shook his head to indicate it was nothing, then spoke.
"Anyway, I've confirmed this place is safe. Even though we just got here, let's head back to the Birth Tower."
With those words, he remounted Set and set off toward the Tower.
"Too slow!"
A fist slammed against the desk.
The Old Man—Veen—glared at his subordinate, his irritation plain.
"What is going on? They just need to confirm whether a lake actually exists. They should have returned by now! So why is it taking this long!?"
It was less a question than him taking his frustration out on the nearest target. But that was understandable. Not a single one of those he had sent into the Treant Forest had come back.
When he first heard the report from his subordinate, he had been half in doubt—no, two parts belief, eight parts doubt. Even so, he had gathered what information he could as a precaution and found several leads that seemed to corroborate it. That was why he had succeeded in hiring individuals renowned for their skill, and dispatched them to investigate whether the lake truly existed.
Of course, Veen would have preferred to hire those more familiar with Gilm's affairs—specifically, people who had been part of Gilm's underworld since before the Expansion Construction. For some reason, they had all refused.
For those living in the underworld, they had probably learned through their information networks that Rei was involved in this matter.
Gilm's underworld organizations had crossed paths with Rei on several occasions, and the majority of those that had clashed with him had been annihilated—or at the very least suffered catastrophic damage. The truly lucky ones, or those sharp enough to read the writing on the wall, the moment they realized they were up against Rei, had recognized the situation as dire. They had either settled matters peacefully or fled Gilm entirely, managing to survive.
Normally, an underworld organization wouldn't hesitate to exploit an opponent's weaknesses, or take family, friends, and lovers hostage. But with Rei, none of that worked. His sheer combat ability was high enough to be called inhuman, and he had Set—a Gryphon Tamed Monster. The moment he judged someone hostile, he would storm their headquarters and rampage. On top of that, since he treated bandit hunting as a hobby, any assets they couldn't afford to make public would be seized as well.
Considering all of this, the only conclusion was that opposing Rei simply wasn't worth it. That was why the only ones willing to accept Veen's request were organizations that had only recently arrived in Gilm.
The Expansion Construction had drawn a flood of people into the city. Among them, naturally, were underground organizations eyeing what profits they could carve out for themselves. Gilm was the only frontier city in the Kingdom of Mireana. If they could establish a foothold there, the rewards would be enormous.
Naturally, such a place already had established organizations, and moving in on their territory would spark conflict. Even so, no large-scale turf war had erupted—at least not publicly. The conflicts had stayed confined to the Slum District, which functioned as a kind of extraterritorial zone, so nothing had surfaced into the open.
But the organizations operating in the frontier of Gilm were, precisely because they operated there, staffed with seasoned veterans. Most newcomer groups had been crushed effortlessly. It was only natural. Gilm's underworld organizations counted many former adventurers among their ranks.
If they were merely former adventurers, one could find them in any slightly larger village, town, or city. But Gilm's adventurers were a different breed entirely. There were those who had come to Gilm with strong comrades but couldn't make it work, and those born and raised in Gilm who set out to become adventurers. But the vast majority were people who had come to Gilm on the strength of their own abilities.
That alone set them apart from former adventurers elsewhere. When such individuals could no longer make a living as adventurers—whether due to insufficient skill, injury, or some other reason—they drifted into the Slum District, where illegal organizations scooped them up.
When an organization whose fighting strength consisted of such individuals—people who would be considered formidable anywhere else—clashed with a group that had just arrived in Gilm, the outcome was a foregone conclusion.
Only the organizations that had genuinely sent capable fighters and possessed the strength to fight on equal footing, or those with some connection to Gilm's existing groups who could leverage those ties, barely managed to survive. Even so, such organizations were undeniably newcomers in Gilm.
That was why the lucrative jobs remained in the hands of the established organizations. If a newcomer had been permitted to operate through negotiations with Gilm's existing powers, work might be passed down to them. But for groups that had barely held their own through brute strength, whatever connections they had were far from impressive.
That was why they had accepted this particular job—verifying whether the lake actually existed and, if so, scouting what kind of place it was. The generous pay didn't hurt, either.
Of course, even as a newcomer organization, they had gathered at least a minimum of intelligence, so they knew Rei's name as someone to be wary of in Gilm. But knowing something through hearsay and knowing it through hard experience carried vastly different weight.
Those who thought they understood based on information alone had judged that as long as they didn't provoke Rei directly, his presence posed no problem. They had accepted Veen's request—routed through several intermediaries—on that assumption.
If it had been one of Gilm's existing underworld organizations, they never would have taken the job.
Whether Veen was aware of that fact or not, he had at least received word that they were a capable outfit. And so he seethed at the fact that these supposedly skilled individuals had sent absolutely no report, no matter how much time passed.
He took a sip of water from the table and glared at his subordinate.
"I'll ask just to be sure—the ones we hired weren't captured... were they?"
"I doubt it."
The subordinate stated this flatly, though it wasn't entirely baseless. According to their contact, the hired individuals were genuinely skilled.
And that much was true. They had enough strength to clash with Gilm's underground organizations and carve out a place for themselves. But this time, they could only be called unlucky. If they had gathered more information about Rei, things might have turned out differently.
As things stood, there was no way to know what had happened to those sent to investigate the lake. All the man before him could do was try to soothe Veen's irritation.
"What do you say, my lord? I've obtained that Alcohol you've been wanting for some time. Why not enjoy a glass while we await good news? A man of your stature, Lord Veen, should simply sit tight and let the report come to him."
If Veen were a bit younger, the option of providing women might also have been on the table. But he was already at an age where he could fairly be called an old man. Physical limitations had taken their toll, and he was no longer able to bed women.
That his thirst for power had grown all the more voracious as a result was, for those around him, an unfortunate side effect.
"Alcohol? Ah, you did mention getting your hands on a twenty-year Altois. ...Very well. Bring it here. Ideally I'd have received a proper report first and drunk it in celebration, but so be it."
Even so, a faint smile crossed Veen's lips at the prospect of finally tasting the Alcohol he had been searching for.