"Well, when it's bright out, this is about what you'd expect. Though, even at night, the result probably wouldn't have changed."
Rei murmured to himself as he looked at the numerous Dragonias lying dead throughout the grove.
What had played out there was exactly the same sight as the previous night, the only difference being that it was day instead of dark.
The Dragonias surged toward Vihera—driven by appetite, that is—and ended up tangled in the grove's trees, unable to move.
The commander-type Dragonias had apparently shown up today as well, because the creatures that got themselves stuck among the trunks simply went docile on the spot.
Rei dispatched them from behind, one after another, using the Twilight Spear.
Vihera, meanwhile, fought multiple Dragonias in a somewhat wider clearing—specifically, the spot where the creatures had broken trees the night before.
The one real difference was that this time, the commander-type Dragonias wasn't taken down before the others were annihilated, so the ordinary Dragonias never went berserk.
Which meant, in other words, that a commander-type was still lurking somewhere.
(Last night, it apparently charged into the settlement and lost to Set... but that didn't happen this time? We heard combat sounds coming from the settlement's direction, so there's no doubt a fight broke out, at least.)
No matter how outstandingly powerful Rei and Vihera were, the fact remained that there were only two of them.
Given that, protecting the settlement while also fighting inside the grove made it virtually impossible to defend completely.
If the settlement had been on open grassland rather than inside a grove, they wouldn't have had to worry about letting enemies slip past.
As things stood, though, when fighting groups of Dragonias that advanced from all sides rather than from a single direction, some enemies inevitably slipped into the settlement.
During last night's battle, a copper-scaled Dragonias had appeared at the settlement while Rei and Vihera were fighting outside, and Set had ultimately killed it.
He'd assumed the same thing might happen this time—that it would slip into the grove without encountering them and be slain by Set again.
But throughout this entire battle, the Dragonias never went berserk... which meant the copper-scaled Dragonias, or perhaps some other special individual, was still out there somewhere.
"Still... against Vihera, ordinary Dragonias are completely hopeless."
"Oh my... is that so?"
Vihera, who looked thoroughly satisfied with her fight against the Dragonias, responded to Rei's remark with a light smile.
Normally, a Dragonias's scale color granted it powerful resistance against specific attributes.
A red-scaled Dragonias, for instance, would possess such overwhelming defensive power that even Rei's magic couldn't kill it.
But having Vihera as their opponent was probably the worst possible scenario for the Dragonias.
After all, she wielded Magic Impact Palm—a devastating strike that completely bypassed her opponent's defenses.
On top of that, Vihera could naturally employ joint locks as well.
No matter how tough a Dragonias's scales made it to damage with ordinary attacks, it still had to move—which meant its joints weren't protected by armor.
At Vihera's level of skill, snapping those joints was effortless.
"The fact that they never went berserk like last night means there's still a copper-scaled Dragonias somewhere out there... but it's not showing itself."
"True. Being small doesn't mean being weak, so I'd think it could afford to attack."
"No, that's not what I—well, if it did come out, you'd be the one fighting it, so it's not a bad call."
Rei decided not to press the point, since Vihera clearly relished the prospect of fighting the copper-scaled Dragonias.
More importantly, he needed to stay alert for wherever it might strike from.
...But five minutes passed with no sign of the enemy appearing.
(Wait—did it... escape?)
Even as a special individual with copper scales, it was still a Dragonias.
He hadn't thought their intelligence was that high, but its smaller build meant it naturally needed to rely on something other than raw physical ability.
Intellect was one such advantage.
Most Dragonias were ruled by hunger, and few possessed any real cunning.
If that was the case, then the copper-scaled Dragonias was likely putting its wits to use.
And if it had fled the area, that meant it had carried back intelligence about them.
Having their information reach the Dragonias was a serious blow.
Until now, Rei's group had been occupying the settlement, but whether the Dragonias actually knew that was uncertain.
The creatures likely hadn't known for certain that Rei's group had taken over, either.
But if the copper-scaled Dragonias had escaped, they would almost certainly come back with overwhelming force.
(Then again, considering this incident, it wouldn't be strange if they already knew. What was probably just a suspicion before has most likely become a certainty.)
Did that mean things would stay the same as they were now? Rei couldn't entirely dismiss the thought—though the current situation itself was undeniably harsh enough already.
Rei's group aside, the Centaurs must have felt that fact especially keenly.
"Rei? What are we going to do?"
"Finding the Dragonias with just the two of us in this grove would be tough... and it'd be hard for Set, too."
With Set's sense of smell, tracking the copper-scaled Dragonias that had likely fled wouldn't be all that difficult.
The problem, however, was the grove's dense trees.
They made movement extremely difficult for Set, whose body was over three meters long.
That was why he couldn't afford to rely on Set carelessly for this particular task.
(Which means... should I have him fly above the grove and track the scent from there? No, but without having actually seen the copper-scaled Dragonias directly, even that would be unreliable.)
Set had killed a copper-scaled Dragonias the night before, but just because they were the same type didn't guarantee their scents would match.
Given that, he needed to think this through carefully.
"For now, let's head back to the settlement. As for the corpses in the grove... they'll probably be dust by tonight, or tomorrow morning at the latest."
Since last night's corpses had already weathered away, there was no point worrying about the current ones.
That much was easy enough to predict.
...There was also the simple fact that cleaning up grove corpses in their current situation was a hassle, but Vihera didn't need to know that.
She seemed to agree with his assessment, and before long the two made their way back.
"Oh my, not as many enemies made it through this time," Vihera murmured, glancing at the Dragonias corpses scattered inside the settlement.
The body count was indeed not that high—undoubtedly a lighter fight than the previous night's.
Lighter it may have been, but most of the fighters were still nursing hangovers. Many were utterly exhausted, and Rei and Vihera, with their sharp senses, faintly furrowed their brows at the sour stench hanging in the air.
The time between waking up and the attack had let the worst of the hangovers subside somewhat, but they were far from peak condition.
Fighting for their lives in that state meant it was only natural that some had ended up retching.
Natural as it was... the sour stench was hardly something they could receive charitably.
The one small mercy was that the smell was outside; if the wind blew through the settlement, it would carry the odor away.
...Though as long as the vomit remained where it was, nothing would improve until they dealt with it.
"Clean it up properly. If you don't... you know what happens, right?"
Vihera delivered those words with a radiant yet deeply intimidating smile, and the Centaurs—despite having just fought through their hangovers—immediately scrambled to clean up what they'd left behind.
That was how thoroughly Vihera was feared.
Naturally, in their current state—hungover and just finished with combat—no one had the slightest desire to face her in a mock battle.
So they figured their best move was to handle the mess first and avoid provoking her... every last one of them.
Normally, a few would have grumbled about following orders from someone while nursing a hangover-induced foul mood.
"Zai, come here for a second."
Amidst the commotion, Rei called out to Zai just as the Centaur was about to start his own cleanup.
Expecting another lecture about the drinking, Zai turned to find Rei's expression dead serious—clearly not about to address the hangover at all.
Though a faint sense of foreboding crept over him at that look, Zai approached.
And his bad feeling proved correct.
"You're kidding. The copper-scaled Dragonias got away?"
"Looks that way. I have to ask, though—it didn't come through here like last night, right?"
"No. Only a handful of Dragonias showed up... though they gave us plenty of trouble."
Fighting hungover was apparently just as rough as it sounded.
That said, the excavation work seemed to have mostly cleared Zai's head; he spoke while slightly averting his gaze.
Rei noticed, naturally, but this wasn't the time for that conversation. He steered things back.
"It didn't come to our side either... and yet the Dragonias followed orders properly the whole time."
In this case, the conclusion wasn't hard to reach.
The Dragonias, for whatever reason, were avoiding breaking the grove's trees.
More precisely, the ones issuing orders—the ones not driven mad by hunger—were enforcing that restraint.
And that made them undeniably useful in situations like this.
"So what does that mean...? That even more Dragonias will come next time?"
"If the one that escaped was the copper-scaled Dragonias, that's a serious problem. It probably has higher intelligence than the gold or silver-scaled ones."
That was still speculation, not confirmed fact.
But Rei delivered it as such because he was fairly confident he was right.
Zai understood all too well how dire things would be if that proved true, and he spoke with a grave expression, the earlier evasion of eye contact seemingly forgotten.
"What do we do?"
"What can we do... I'll admit I framed it definitively, but this is really just speculation stacked on speculation. I can't rule out the possibility that the copper-scaled Dragonias is still somewhere in the grove."
Rei's tone made it painfully clear he didn't believe that himself.
From his demeanor, Zai judged he couldn't possibly take those words at face value either.
"So? I get that our intel being brought back to the Dragonias is bad, but what's the plan?"
"There are a few options. The quickest one... is for me and Set to search for their headquarters from the air."
Rei and Set both tended toward a poor sense of direction, but with the grove as a landmark on these plains, getting lost wasn't a concern.
That was the reasoning behind his proposal, but Zai's expression grew troubled.
"That means Set won't be here, so excavation work will stall... what about that? And there's the combat power issue, too."
"You'll have to handle it yourselves. As for combat power, I'm leaving Vihera here."
Vihera's expression soured at those words.
But she didn't voice any complaint—likely because she understood that without at least one of their trio staying behind, there'd be no one capable of fighting a commander-class Dragonias if they attacked.
...The fact that she was someone who could fight in the grove, and—more importantly—that she possessed the pale, supple body that drew the enemy's attention, also weighed heavily in the decision.
"...Got it. I can't give you an answer right away, but I'll think it over."
That was Zai's reply to Rei's proposal.