After reporting his return to the Lizardmen and the adventurers—naturally, without mentioning anything about the other world—Rei rode on Set's back with Elena and Ara, roaming through the Treant Forest in search of fairies.
Meanwhile, Anastasia and Fana had split off right after leaving the Birth Tower, and were likely conducting research by now in the underground space beneath the central Treant Forest where the Wisp resided.
(No matter how interested she is in fairies, there's no way she'd abandon her Wisp research just to go looking for where they live... right?)
There was no question that Anastasia found fairies fascinating.
But at the same time, there was also no question that she found the Wisp equally fascinating.
After all, there were a fair number of past precedents when it came to encountering fairies. But a being capable of summoning various entities from another world into this one—let alone making contact between another world and this one—could easily draw Anastasia's interest even more than fairies would.
Even so, the reason Rei couldn't help but think Anastasia might still be more interested in fairies was largely because, for this particular situation, fairies were simply the newer discovery.
That was strictly his own assumption, though, and he couldn't rule out the possibility that some entirely different reason was at play.
"So, Rei. We're walking through the Treant Forest like this, but how exactly are we supposed to search for fairies from here?"
Elena, riding behind Rei, asked while surveying their surroundings.
"Don't ask me. In the end, we have no choice but to wait for one to show up. ...Should've brought Ielo."
"Even so. Ielo is by no means skilled at tracking a specific target in a place like this. Even if we had brought it along... I suspect it wouldn't have been much use in combat either."
"Still, having more eyes on our side is an advantage, right? Besides... fairies are small. If that's the case, Ielo being similarly small might have come in handy in all sorts of ways."
"Lady Elena, Lord Rei. Since Ielo didn't come with us, isn't worrying about it pointless?"
Ara, who had been listening to their conversation, chimed in.
Since her words were perfectly reasonable, Rei and Elena decided there was no point arguing the matter and changed the subject.
Rei figured Ielo was probably flying around playing near Marina's house right now.
Then again, Ielo was still young and had a tendency to get lonely.
If that were the case, playing alone might make it feel lonely enough to head into the city.
"For now, let's focus on finding fairies. ...How do you think we should go about it? Like searching for small birds, maybe?"
"Rei is the only one among us who has actually encountered a fairy. If even Rei doesn't know, what do you expect us to do? ...What was it like on the Seremuse Plain?"
Elena's question reminded Rei of the Seremuse Plain, but it wasn't as though he had been searching for fairies and found one. It was more accurate to say he had been caught up in a fairy's prank out of nowhere.
If that was the case, expecting to find fairies in the Treant Forest under the current circumstances was asking too much.
"On the Seremuse Plain, it's more accurate to say they showed themselves on their own. In this situation, I really can't say. ...We have no choice but to search diligently, checking the branches and such, thinking they might be hiding there."
At Rei's words, Elena and Ara looked once more at the branches of the surrounding trees.
That said, simply staring at branches didn't mean a fairy would appear right away.
"Ah! ...It was a squirrel."
Ara, spotting something moving at the tip of a branch, let out a small cry—but what sat on that branch tip wasn't a fairy, but a squirrel.
Still, in the early days of the Treant Forest, there had been neither animals nor monsters, so in that sense, it was a rare sight.
(Well, there were monsters born in the Treant Forest, like the Gigant Turtle, but...)
Monsters that came from outside the Treant Forest had been virtually nonexistent until recently.
Seeing animals at all was a truly new development.
Given that, the Treant Forest becoming a normal forest was something Rei could celebrate.
(That said, if the special nature of the Treant Forest's trees is influencing this, could it mean that as this place becomes an ordinary forest, the growing trees might no longer be usable as construction materials for the expansion construction?)
If that truly happened, Gilm's expansion construction would end up costing far more than Daskar had originally anticipated.
And as a matter of course, whether purchasing lumber similar to the Treant Forest's trees from somewhere else, or having alchemists spend even more time and effort processing the Treant Forest's trees to give them the same properties as the ones currently in use, either way it was certain to take more time than it did now.
"Rei? What's wrong?"
"No, it's a good thing that animals are increasing, but I was thinking it might cause various problems too."
Elena nodded in agreement, though she didn't truly understand what Rei was actually thinking.
This was likely due to the difference in how much information each of them had.
"Grrr!"
As Rei and Elena talked, Set suddenly let out a growl.
At the same time, the bushes a short distance away rustled...
"Hah!"
Rei activated the Eye of Nebula, a Magic Item on his belt, generated an arrowhead, and swiftly hurled it.
"Gugaa!"
The arrowhead pierced through the bushes and struck something beyond them.
Whatever was hit sought to retaliate against the one who had inflicted the pain, lunging forward... but just as it leapt from the bushes, Rei threw another arrowhead generated by the Eye of Nebula, striking the airborne attacker mid-lunge.
"Gyan!"
What hit the ground with a cry was a wolf-type monster.
It could be identified as a monster rather than an ordinary wolf because a single tentacle extended from its back.
(Come to think of it, I think I fought a wolf monster with two tentacles before... was it in the dungeon with the Altar of Inheritance?)
But the wolf monster in Rei's memory had two tentacles, and more importantly, it was clearly larger than the one now lying on the ground.
(If so, is it a lower-ranking species of that monster? Regardless, if it's different from that one, there's a chance I can acquire or strengthen a skill from its magic stone, so I should secure the corpse.)
Making that judgment, Rei dismounted from Set's back, approached the wolf monster that lay on the ground convulsing and bleeding, took out a disposable spear, pierced its throat, and ended its life.
"Elena, Ara, do you know this monster?"
If he looked it up in a Monster Encyclopedia, he might be able to figure out what kind of monster it was.
But since they were currently searching for fairies, he didn't want to waste time on something like that.
So he asked the two who likely had more knowledge than he did...
"It's a D-Rank monster, the Daar Wolf."
Elena answered far more readily than Rei had expected.
"Daar Wolf, huh. D-Rank is a bit disappointing. Still, it's an unknown monster, so I'll secure it."
As he said that and tried to store the Daar Wolf's corpse in his Misty Ring...
"Eh?"
The Daar Wolf's corpse vanished in an instant.
So completely that he might have thought the corpse that had been right before his eyes was some kind of illusion.
But that it wasn't an illusion was obvious from the Daar Wolf's blood still pooling on the ground, and the metallic stench of blood drifting through the air.
There was a possibility that the blood was also a hallucination and his sense of smell was being deceived by some means, but Rei thought that was probably not the case.
And then... a sudden sound of something falling.
"You've got to be kidding!"
Half-instinctively grasping the true nature of the falling sound, Rei quickly leapt from where he stood.
A few seconds later... the Daar Wolf's corpse fell from the sky, slammed into the ground, and scattered blood and eyeballs all around.
Fortunately, Rei had moved away from where the Daar Wolf fell, so he managed to avoid being splattered.
"Rei, you're unharmed?"
Elena asked from a short distance away, but there was no concern in her voice that Rei might have been injured.
She didn't think Rei would get hurt from something like this; it seemed she was asking merely as a precaution.
"Yeah, I'm fine. ...Still, what just happened? Elena, I'll ask just in case—do Daar Wolves have any ability to teleport after they die?"
"No, I don't know of any. Ara?"
"There should be no such precedent."
At their words, Rei nodded in understanding and spoke.
"In other words, an act that a Daar Wolf shouldn't normally be capable of... Well, since it was already dead, it might not have been the Daar Wolf that did it, but regardless, for something so inexplicable to happen..."
Rei said that much, then carefully observed his surroundings.
Something that should normally be impossible had occurred, which meant someone must have done it.
And Rei had a good idea of who would pull something like that.
To be precise, he was in the Treant Forest on a request from Daskar precisely to question those beings—the fairies—and take some kind of countermeasure if necessary.
"Gruu!"
It was Set who sensed something suspicious before Rei did.
Hearing Set's sharp cry, Rei broke into a sprint toward where Set was looking.
Set was staring at a tree branch about ten meters ahead from Rei's perspective.
Perhaps startled by Rei charging toward it with such vigor, something like insect wings faintly became visible among the leaves growing from the branch.
Of course, for them to be visible at that distance in such an open space was only possible thanks to Rei's sharp five senses.
That said, the wings were visible at a height of about five meters off the ground.
An ordinary adventurer would only be able to throw something at the branch at best.
...But Rei had a means to do something about a high place in the air.
Using the speed from his running start, he leapt and activated his Sleipnir boots to walk through the sky.
That made a height of five meters easily within reach.
Given Rei's physical abilities, he might have reached it with just the initial leap, even without the Sleipnir boots... but considering the need to land properly on the branch, the Sleipnir boots were necessary.
The moment Rei landed on the branch, he immediately reached out...
"Baka, baka."
As if slipping right through Rei's hand, a palm-sized figure... a fairy revealed itself.
"You're not getting away!"
To avoid being chased, perhaps, the fairy flew not sideways or downward, but upward.
Above, there were still branches extending from the tree, and the leaves growing from them concealed the fairy's form.
"I said, you're not getting away!"
Shouting, Rei kicked off the branch and leapt.
A fairy fleeing on its wings, and Rei kicking off the branch to jump after it.
Which was faster was obvious at a glance.
"Gyaaaaaaaaah!"
At Rei rapidly closing the distance, a scream erupted from the fairy's mouth.
...That scream was far from what one would expect a fairy to produce, sounding more like something a grown man would cry out... though that might have been a slight exaggeration.
Regardless, the fairy screamed at the sight of Rei bearing down on it, but paying it no mind, Rei reached out...
"Huh?"
He was certain he had grasped the fairy in his hand.
He could even feel the faint brush of wings against his palm.
But... before he knew it, the fairy was nowhere to be seen... and only glowing powder clung to his palm.
"...Whoa. Where'd it go?"
Since he had leapt into the air, Rei's body naturally fell toward the ground in accordance with gravity.
Rei, following gravity, landed on the branch he had used to jump earlier and hastily looked up.
But there was no sign of the fairy anywhere.
He checked the glowing powder—the scale dust he presumed it to be—on his palm, but of course, the fairy itself was nowhere to be found.
"Why? At that timing, I should have been able to catch the fairy for sure. And yet... how did it escape?"
Even as he voiced the question, Rei was struck by just how difficult searching for fairies truly was.