The black panther, having put distance between itself and Rei, sank its body slightly before kicking off the ground.
The earth kicked up by its four legs scattered behind it.
An ordinary panther—no, not just a panther but any four-legged animal would be entirely different. This creature had kicked the ground with sharp, elongated claws, meaning the amount of soil scattered behind it was considerable.
But that was precisely why. The black panther's movements were extremely swift and sharp.
The fact that it was a monster based on a panther likely played a part, but in the single aspect of agility, it was undoubtedly beyond the reach of any other monster inhabiting the Treant Forest.
However... even at such speed, it could not escape Rei's eyes.
For Rei, who frequently engaged in mock battles with the likes of Elena and Vihera, the black panther's speed was fast but not something he was seeing for the first time.
Rei swung Death Scythe in time with the black panther's speed... and the next moment, a faint look of surprise crossed his face.
It was a strike unleashed with enough leeway to normally cut the black panther down even if it attempted to evade, but the panther combined several actions—plunging its sharp claws into the ground, beating its wings, and jabbing the tip of its tail into the earth—to dodge Death Scythe's attack.
Moreover, it did not merely evade; it moved in short, erratic bursts so Rei couldn't read its aim...
"Tch!"
The panther reversed direction right next to Rei—or so it seemed—and thrust its long tail out like a spear.
...No, not "like a spear." That strike truly possessed the power and sharpness worthy of being called a spear thrust.
It had been impossible to tell while it was fighting the Orcs, but at the tip of its tail was a sharp needle, like a spearhead.
Rei deflected that sharp spear-like thrust by swinging the Twilight Spear in his left hand.
Spear-like strike though it was, it was ultimately still a tail.
It was effortlessly knocked off trajectory by the shaft of the Twilight Spear.
If he had swung the spear a bit more forward, he could have cut it with the spearhead instead of deflecting it with the shaft.
Or perhaps the black panther had been aiming for exactly that.
Rei had been caught off guard by the panther's attack, but he immediately linked into his next move.
With just a flick of his wrist, he reversed Death Scythe and unleashed a slash as though bisecting the black panther.
A strike that took advantage of the weapon's ability—in Rei and Seto's hands, its weight became comparable to a twig lying on the ground.
The black panther, being a high-rank monster, unquestionably possessed high intelligence, but in this case, that worked against it.
From the sound and appearance when Death Scythe was swung, it understood that the weapon's weight was tremendous—which was precisely why it never imagined Rei could reverse Death Scythe's blade so effortlessly.
The moment it saw Death Scythe's blade rushing toward it, it desperately tried to evade the strike... and that effort was half-rewarded.
It was a devastating blow that would normally have been enough to sever the black panther's body, but thanks to the panther's desperate actions, its body was slashed deeply though not completely cut through. However...
"Kishaaa!"
Desperately evading Death Scythe's attack with an all-out, full-body motion meant that it could not cope with any subsequent actions.
As a result, the black panther, slashed by Death Scythe, took a follow-up kick from Rei and went flying.
"Hah!"
Against the black panther sent flying by his kick, Rei unleashed yet another follow-up strike.
Using the recoil from his kicking foot touching the ground, he threw the Twilight Spear he had been holding in his left hand.
It was not a throw made from a perfect stance, so the spear's strike was weaker compared to usual. Weaker, but that was only in comparison to a throw made under normal circumstances.
Though weaker than usual, the strike still carried enough power to easily pierce through the black panther's body.
"Gyaun!"
A scream erupted from the mouth of the black panther, whose right rear thigh had been pierced by the Twilight Spear.
Both flesh and bone were pierced by the Twilight Spear, leaving it barely connected by skin alone.
And then... a support attack that even Rei had not anticipated occurred.
Grass growing up from the ground bound the body of the black panther, which had collapsed to the ground with its right rear leg rendered useless.
Who could have done that?
It was obvious without needing to think.
(That damn Nielson. I told her to evacuate from here.)
Under normal circumstances, the black panther could have easily broken free even with its body bound by grass.
A high-rank monster possessed that much power.
However, with its right rear leg unusable, it apparently could not manage such a feat. It thrashed about desperately but could not escape its restraints.
And whether fortunately or unfortunately, that thrashing caused the right rear leg—barely held on by skin—to tear through the remaining flesh and fall to the ground.
"It's over."
Muttering, Rei used the Twilight Spear's ability to return it to his hand.
The Twilight Spear had pierced through the black panther's right leg and continued through several tree trunks behind it, finally embedding in a trunk after its power had diminished. It returned instantly to Rei's hand.
With Death Scythe and the Twilight Spear back in his hands, Rei began walking toward the fallen black panther.
Naturally, the black panther had no intention of meekly accepting its death.
The intense pain of losing its right rear leg was there, but merely crying out in pain would only mean death.
To prevent that, it endured the pain and used the one attack method still available to it in this situation—its long tail—to keep Rei from approaching.
The tail whipped through the air with a whooshing sound.
Of course, Rei knew that the tail was no ordinary tail.
If it were just a normal tail, he could treat it like a whip or something similar and deal with it accordingly.
But at the tip of that tail was a sharp needle—sharper than a mediocre spearhead.
Having learned this during the previous exchange, Rei remained wary of the black panther, which wielded its tail not as a spear but as a whip... a vicious whip with a sharp needle at its tip.
It was said that when a master wielded a whip, the tip could exceed the speed of sound.
If this were an ordinary whip, Rei would not go so far as to say it would be easy, but he would have had means to deal with it to some extent.
At worst, he could brace himself to take the hit and attack the panther.
But with a needle at the whip's tip, taking the attack so easily was not an option.
Furthermore, the most troublesome aspect of a whip was its high flexibility.
For instance, even if he struck the middle of the whip with his weapon, if that strike could not cut through, the weapon's blow could cause the whip's trajectory to become something Rei could not predict. However...
"Now!"
The moment he saw the tail's tip move away from him, Rei swung Death Scythe.
The instant the tail's tip was pointed away from him lasted less than a second.
But Rei did not miss that momentary opening. He stepped forward several paces and swung Death Scythe.
If the black panther could move more freely, it might have subtly shifted its body to alter the tail's strike.
However, the black panther was currently immobilized by the grass that had grown from the ground via Nielson's magic, and perhaps because it had not yet adjusted to the pain of losing its right rear leg or the disrupted sense of balance, it could barely move at all.
In a sense, the fact that it was still able to swing its tail to keep Rei at bay in such a condition was impressive.
An ordinary monster—the kind found in this Treant Forest—might howl in pain if it had a limb severed, but would find it difficult to take a counterattack stance against its enemy.
The fact that it still attempted to counterattack even in such a state was proof that the black panther was a high-rank monster.
That said, the desire to not die, to survive this situation no matter what, was the monster's concern.
It had nothing to do with Rei. As he approached the black panther, he swung Death Scythe infused with magical power.
An ordinary weapon would not have been able to cut through the black panther's tail.
During the fight with the Orcs, it had primarily used its sharp, long claws, but the tail was originally one of the black panther's primary attack methods as well.
In other words, it was likely confident that its tail would not be so easily severed...
With a clean cut.
Along with that very confidence, Death Scythe's strike effortlessly severed the tail.
Of course, Rei's attack did not end there. Using the Twilight Spear in his other hand, he pierced through the black panther's throat.
The sensation of breaking through skin, tearing through flesh, ripping apart blood vessels, and crushing bone transmitted through the spearhead.
"Gyu... gya..."
Because its throat had been attacked—no, destroyed.
The black panther could not even let out a proper cry, and with a faint death rattle, the Flame of Life faded from it.
Staring at the black panther collapsed on the ground, Rei nonetheless did not let down his guard.
The opponent was a high-rank monster—in Rei's assessment, a creature that appeared to be a B-Rank Monster—which meant he could not be certain it was truly dead.
It might be playing dead, waiting for an opening to escape, or even knowing it was going to die, it could be waiting for Rei to approach in order to return one final blow.
After about a minute passed with the black panther showing no signs of movement, Rei finally judged it dead and lowered his readied weapons.
Seeing Rei lower his weapons, she apparently concluded that the black panther was finally dead and that it was safe here now.
Nielson flew over to Rei's side.
Rei was about to offer words of gratitude to Nielson, but seeing that for some reason she was angry, a question arose in his mind.
"Why are you so angry?"
"What do you mean, 'why'?! You were telling me to go back to the Fairy Dwelling, so I totally thought it was going to be some incredibly strong monster... but it wasn't anything like that! Don't say things that are so misleading!"
Hearing Nielson's words filled with dissatisfaction, Rei understood the reason for her anger.
At the same time, his feelings of gratitude grew even stronger.
Rei had told Nielson to return to the Fairy Dwelling.
Despite that, Nielson had not listened to Rei's words, stayed behind, and even used her magic to support him.
Of course, it was not the case that he couldn't have won without Nielson's magic, but if it hadn't been there, he would have definitely had a harder time toward the end.
"I told you, didn't I? I'm a man who's even beaten a Dragon. Even if it's a high-rank monster, there's no way I'd lose to a black panther. ...Though admittedly, this black panther didn't seem to possess particularly outstanding strength even among high-rank monsters."
In Rei's eyes, the black panther was probably a B-Rank Monster.
Even among B-Rank Monsters, its strength was around mid-to-low, or perhaps low-to-mid tier.
This was strictly Rei's impression, so he didn't know how the Guild would classify it.
"Even so, if you were really confident you could win, you didn't have to tell me to go back to the Fairy Dwelling or anything like that. Because you said it that way, I was completely convinced it was going to be a fight to the death!"
"Whether it was a fight to the death or not, there's no question this monster was strong."
That was a fact.
It was a monster that had effortlessly killed five Orcs in the blink of an eye. There was no way it was weak.
If the woodcutters or their escorts in the Treant Forest had encountered it, it would not have been strange for them to be wiped out entirely.
"But you defeated it so easily."
"I'm an A-Rank Adventurer, and an alias holder, after all."
"Then you didn't have to tell me to go back to the Fairy Dwelling, did you?"
In the end, that was probably what Nielson found least acceptable.
From Nielson's perspective, Rei had likely made it sound grandiose in the face of a monster he could have defeated easily.
That was why the current situation was something Nielson could not accept.
"Listen... I could have beaten this black panther. That's certain. But that's only because it was me. What would you have done if the black panther had attacked you instead of me?"
"That's..."
When put that way, Nielson could not argue back.
She had undoubtedly grown stronger compared to before, but that did not mean she currently possessed the strength to fight a black panther.
At Rei's words, Nielson reluctantly accepted his reasoning.