The time rewound slightly.
In the Treant Forest, Antelme addressed the pack of wolves that had revealed themselves with a mocking sneer.
"Took you long enough to come out. Honestly, I'd already lost interest since I found something far more important than you lot... but well, if you're going to show yourselves anyway, can't be helped."
With his Magic Sword in hand, having spotted the wolves, he spoke those words—thinking he could take revenge on Rei, the one whose very existence infuriated him, rather than the fairies.
Antelme couldn't distinguish individual wolves, but the one leading the pack was unquestionably the same wolf he'd seen at Rei's side while monitoring them with a Magic Item.
In other words, he had found the target that had entered the Treant Forest.
"Grrrrrrrr..."
Facing Antelme, the wolf let out a wary growl.
The wolves were here because Antelme had threatened to set fire to the Treant Forest.
As wolves bound by contract to the fairies, having the fairies' home burned down was something they could never tolerate.
That was precisely why they had stepped forward to confront Antelme and stop him.
It seemed Antelme was saying something, but the wolves weren't listening.
They couldn't understand complicated notions like contracts, but they instinctively knew that the fairies... that the fairy chief had accepted them.
In other words, the fairies had become their companions—no, beings they should call family.
Whether the fairies felt the same way, the wolves couldn't know. But since they themselves recognized them as family, protecting their family's home was only natural.
Antelme must have sensed the wolves' resolve. He clicked his tongue in displeasure.
From his perspective, the wolves should have understood the gap in strength between them and fled.
His plan was to hunt them down casually, playfully, and flaunt their corpses before Rei.
That alone couldn't repay all the humiliation he had suffered, but it would at least settle a fraction of the debt.
And yet, rather than running, the wolves he intended to hunt were baring their teeth, ready to fight.
Just like Rei, they refused to bend to his will, and Antelme's irritation only sharpened.
"Can't be helped. Then I'll make sure to kill you nice and slow. ...You're last."
He declared this to the pack's leader.
It was no kindness. It was pure sadism—the desire to force him to watch his packmates being slaughtered to his heart's content.
Sensing Antelme's malicious intent through their wild instincts, the wolves raised their wary growls even louder.
Even so, Antelme was an A-Rank adventurer with absolute confidence in his own strength.
Even in the Frontier, he had no intention of losing to mere monsters. And against what weren't even monsters but ordinary animals, he considered them opponents he could defeat with his eyes closed.
And so, Magic Sword in hand, Antelme set forward without the slightest concern for the wolves' wariness.
"Awooooooo!"
At Antelme's careless approach, the wolf leader loosed a thunderous howl.
That howl was also the signal to attack for the rest of the pack.
The other wolves obeyed the command of their leader without hesitation.
Possessing remarkably high intelligence for wolves, their pack hunting was far more refined than that of an ordinary wolf pack.
When the opponent showed an opening, they would sink their fangs in.
But they wouldn't hold on for long.
First, they would inflict wounds little by little—truly, bit by bit—and gradually wear the opponent down.
If they could drag the fight into a war of attrition, the wolves held the advantage. However...
"Don't you dare touch me, you filthy beasts!"
"Yelp!"
Antelme's Magic Sword flashed through the dark of night, bisecting the first wolf that had lunged to sink its fangs into him, cleaving it cleanly from torso to tail.
A strike launched the instant he evaded the attack.
A slash so swift that a lower-ranked adventurer couldn't have even followed it.
With that single blow, one wolf died without a struggle.
But losing one of their pack didn't make the others cower.
They hurled themselves at Antelme one after another, fangs bared.
This, too, must have caught Antelme off guard.
Normally, seeing one of their own cut down would rattle any pack.
Yet the wolves charged straight at him.
And then—whether by chance or not—one wolf's fangs carved a thin line across Antelme's cheek.
"Tch. Don't get cocky, you beasts!"
The wound was a mere scratch, far from fatal.
But taking that hit at all was an affront to his pride, and there was no forgiving the one responsible. Antelme swung his Magic Sword in swift, irritated slashes.
One flash. Two. Three.
With each swing, another wolf fell dead...
"Awooooooooooooo!"
The instant one wolf fell, the pack leader let out a grief-stricken howl and hurled himself at Antelme.
Had anyone knowledgeable about animals been present, they would have recognized that the slain wolf was a female—and that her swollen belly carried the leader's unborn pups.
The pack leader was charging in fury, his mate and children stolen from him.
If these had been humans, someone might have sneered: If it angers you that much, don't bring a pregnant woman to a battlefield.
But the wolves had needed every last body they could muster for this fight.
That was why the heavy-with-child wolf had joined the battle... and it had cost her everything.
Noticing the leader's anguish, Antelme smiled as though the howl were music to his ears.
"Come on, what's wrong? Come. You're the last one left... and you're in the way."
With those words, he swept his Magic Sword and knocked away a Wind Arrow flying toward him.
Who had fired it—there was no need to wonder.
If these had been monsters, they might have used magic. But the wolves before him were ordinary animals, not monsters.
More tellingly, the Wind Arrow had come from a completely different direction than the wolves... from somewhere among the treetops.
With most of the moonlight blocked by the canopy, even for Antelme with his Night Vision, casually slicing through something as hard to track as a Wind Arrow was proof enough of his caliber as an A-Rank adventurer.
"Didn't expect a fairy to show itself. But what's the point of coming out now? If you were going to appear, you should have done it sooner."
Antelme sneered at the fairy... but the last remaining wolf seized what it judged to be a fatal opening.
He kicked off the ground and closed the distance to Antelme in a flash.
Driven by rage—his mate, his children, his packmates all slaughtered—his speed far outstripped any of the others.
So fast that against ordinary prey... no, even against a monster, he might have drawn blood with ease.
But that was only if the opponent were ordinary. An A-Rank adventurer like Antelme was anything but.
"You're too slow. It makes me yawn."
With that single remark, he severed the head of the wolf charging at him with gale-like speed.
"What!?"
But the one who cried out in surprise was Antelme himself.
His strike had indeed severed the neck—a clean horizontal cut.
Yet riding the momentum of that very cut, the severed head twisted unnaturally in midair and sank its fangs into Antelme's cheek.
He had been wounded by a wolf once before, but this cut ran deeper.
And that, naturally, was humiliation of the highest order.
"You... filthy beast!"
He stomped and crushed the wolf's severed head underfoot, rage spilling over.
The act sent flesh, bone fragments, brains, and bodily fluids scattering across the ground. But unless he did this, there was no way Antelme could forgive the wolf that had wounded him.
His clothes were fouled again—which only soured his mood further.
Irritated, he decided the fairies were next once the wolves were dealt with... but then he stopped dead and turned his gaze upward.
Through the branches overhead, the night sky was barely visible.
But Antelme could sense it—a presence descending toward him.
And then, snapping branches aside, that presence revealed itself.
"Oh."
A grin spread across Antelme's face at the sight.
Of course it did. The very person he'd been hunting had walked right into his hands.
Rei dismounted from Set's back and surveyed his surroundings.
Wolf blood and corpses, strewn everywhere.
"...I don't suppose I need to ask who did this?"
"No, you don't. The wolf corpses scattered around are my handiwork. Serve them right for thinking they could defy me."
"For all that, it looks like those beasts managed to wound your face in two places."
Antelme had hoped to provoke an expression of rage from Rei. Instead, Rei's words cut Antelme down to size.
Antelme glared at him, seething.
"You... daring to run your mouth at me. I hope you're ready."
"Yeah, no problem. In a place like the Noble District, I held back out of concern for collateral damage. But here? I don't need to worry about that."
The real reason Rei hadn't fought in the Noble District was Nielson hiding inside his Dragon Robe—but there was no need to say that aloud.
And Nielson was no longer in the Dragon Robe anyway.
Slipping away in the confusion of their landing, she had already separated from Rei.
Thanks to that, he could fight without worrying about her safety.
"Let me ask you one thing before you die. You know there are fairies here, don't you?"
Figured as much.
Hearing Antelme's words, that was Rei's immediate thought.
Based on Nielson's information, he had already suspected Antelme had caught wind of the fairies' existence.
This confirmed it.
He had expected as much—but honestly, he'd hoped to be wrong.
"Well... even if you did learn about the fairies, it won't mean a thing since you're dying here."
"Oh? You'll kill me? Do you actually believe that? If you're planning to die yourself, I could at least understand."
It was precisely his confidence in his own abilities that let Antelme speak to Rei with such bravado.
Whether he couldn't read Rei's strength even while standing face to face, or whether he had read it and still judged he could win—Rei couldn't say.
But given that Antelme was a formidable A-Rank adventurer, Rei figured it was the latter.
"Yeah. I'd say I can. ...Though if you've got what it takes to fight an S-Rank Adventurer on even footing, you might actually stand a chance of walking away."
"...S-Rank, you say?"
"That's right. I've fought the S-Rank Adventurer Noise the Immovable. Surely even someone as clueless as you has at least heard about the civil war in the Bestia Empire?"
Rei's words were not a lie—but they weren't entirely true, either.
It was a fact that he had fought Noise the Immovable.
But when they fought in the Fighting Tournament, the rules had barred him from fighting alongside Set or using his most powerful magic. He had lost.
And the battle against Noise during the civil war in the Bestia Empire—the one Rei had just referenced.
Rei had fought with everything he had. At first glance... certainly to anyone watching, it would have looked as though he'd fought Noise to a standstill.
But Rei never believed Noise had been truly serious.
It even seemed as though Noise had been humoring him.
...And yet to everyone else, it had been a clash worthy of being called a death struggle—which said everything about how far beyond the realm of common sense the fight between Rei and Noise had been.
In truth, Rei considered that battle his loss as well. But he buried that thought, raised his Death Scythe and Twilight Spear, and spoke.
"This is the power that fought the S-Rank Adventurer Noise the Immovable. If you think you can win—come at me."