Grooooooo…….
At that moment, I sensed presences from behind.
In the direction opposite Laurent's position, a group of Woodmen was rising from beneath a mound of earth.
'Fuck.'
Sons of bitches. This game plays so fucking dirty.
I'd done <Wood Revenge> at least dozens of times, but this was the first time I'd seen mobs spawn from the rear.
At the same time, I felt it once again.
Refer to my experience as a gamer, but never trust it blindly.
"Take my hand!"
"Huh. Huhh?"
I seized the wrist of Seigrena, who still hadn't come to her senses, and hauled her upward.
"Mommy!"
With a limp shriek that made me forget the crisis, Seigrena's body floated up. She could manage the landing herself—I dropped to the ground, crossing paths with her.
"Weasel!"
Kyaaaa—!
With a thunderous roar, the party's ace revealed itself.
"A-a Magic Beast?!"
Seigrena, having somehow clung to a branch, was aghast, but this was no longer the time for hiding it.
I'd think of excuses later—I immediately raised the shield and began engaging the Woodmen.
[Lv.30 'Woodman Guardian']
Fortunately, these weren't Avengers.
Judging by the name Guardian, they were beings that protected the tree, or something along those lines.
'This must be the best it can do, too.'
Because the Avengers that had already appeared would be tied up with Laurent.
Either way, seeing a new pattern appear lent more weight to my guess.
GROOOOO!
I fought level 30 Woodman Guardians.
The basic tactics were the same.
While I defended and held the enemies, the Blade Weasel finished them.
We were behind on level, but the engagement held up more or less.
For two reasons.
One, Woodmen are weak compared to monsters of the same level.
Two, I was receiving additional stat correction through the <Taming> skill.
……Of course, that didn't make it an optimistic situation.
For one, these bastards were far too many.
'Fuck.'
How much longer do I have to hold out?
If I could at least know the exact time remaining, it'd give me strength, but this game, unkind beyond measure, didn't even display a line like that.
The only way to guess…… was the size of the ash-gray branch?
"Th-this! It keeps getting bigger, is that really okay?!"
Who knows…… I'm not sure.
Maybe that thing will absorb all the tree's nutrients, massacre the Woodmen, and then try to kill us too.
'The odds of that are low, though.'
A fairly reasonable guess.
In the end, the Woodman Colony is the forest's entrance. However vicious <FoS>'s developers are, they don't drop a high-level monster out of nowhere in a place like this.
The upper limit would be about the Woodman Avengers we saw earlier?
'Which means the odds aren't low either, after all.'
A grin slipped out.
I know, but what do you want me to do?
My policy is always the same.
In any situation, move toward the option with even slightly higher odds of survival.
[Magic Beast 'Blade Weasel' has been afflicted with the status ailment, <Poisoned>.]
[Health of Magic Beast 'Blade Weasel' decreases continuously.]
Amid the fierce battle, several gashes had opened on my body and the weasel's too.
Unlucky as it was, the weasel had even been poisoned.
Regrettably, I had no room to help it either.
'Hurts so bad I could drop dead…….'
The first pain in a while stung and ached until I could barely keep my wits.
Even if I wanted to check my wounds, there was no room for it.
Because the Woodmen's numbers were strangely failing to go down.
RUMBLE-RUMBLE-RUMBLE……!
"Aaaah."
At that moment, the ground suddenly shook and Seigrena screamed.
An earthquake? No. Glancing back, I saw the two of them clinging to the tree like monkeys.
'The tree?'
The black tree was trembling like an aspen.
WOOOOOOOO—!
At the same time, the Woodmen began to go berserk too.
Come to think of it, by the lore, all Woodmen are connected to the <Black Tree>.
With the being that's effectively their main body in agony, that pain must spread to these things too.
"Kaindel! Th-the branch……!"
At Kria's cry, I focused on the ash-gray branch.
It had grown far larger than before, but more than that, a far clearer shape came into view.
'A lizard?'
It was coiled up, but its overall form was unmistakably close to a lizard.
A lizard that parasitizes trees?
A creature I'd never heard of in my life, but it was clear that thing held our lifeline.
KRAAAAAAK—!
The moment a howl snapped me alert, I thrust the shield forward.
My back teeth clenched on their own.
Every time they hammered the shield, my knees creaked as if about to shatter.
'Fuck…….'
These bastards. Their strength had grown far greater than before.
Did they get a buff while going berserk?
Fortunately, even in this situation, the shield Kazen had made held up well.
CRUNCH!
[<Patchwork Shield> is destroyed.]
Fuck.
Hurling away the completely shattered shield, I immediately drew the scythe slung on my back and swung it.
Shlick!
The trees cut more easily than I'd expected.
Of course, there was a trick to it—instead of thick spots like the waist or neck, I cut mainly at the legs and arms to strip their combat ability right away.
The weasel finished off the Woodmen felled that way.
It was certainly going smoothly, but…….
"Hahh, hah……."
My body is heavy.
Health, mental strength, even stamina. All of it was bottoming out. The same went for the weasel.
Even in that situation, the Woodmen's numbers showed no sign of decreasing.
Mid-fight, I realized why.
Bulge.
Beneath the ground, groups of Woodmen were sprouting up without pause.
Fuck. Don't these bastards have a population cap? They should.
"Ah! Sir Laurent!"
Seigrena's voice.
'Laurent?'
I couldn't see from my position.
I asked Seigrena urgently.
"How are things over there?"
"Sir Laurent defeated all the red Woodmen! Just as you'd expect from Sir Laurent! Amazing!"
Defeated all of them?
Hard to believe. Not that I underestimated the White Knight, but Woodman Avengers are no pushover enemy.
'Did the black tree unsummon them directly?'
The possibility that came to mind at once. There must certainly be a limit to the number of Woodmen it can summon.
That's how this game's system works.
Classes that can command armies—spirit summoners, summoners, necromancers, and so on—have a limit on the minions they can control.
'The same goes for mobs.'
And depending on each individual's combat power, the headcount each occupies would differ too.
To use a famous RTS game as an example…….
Some units count as only 1 population even with two combined, while a higher-tier unit fills 6 or more on its own.
'Naturally, an Avenger would count far higher than a level 30 Guardian.'
And now the black tree, sensing danger, had unsummoned the Avenger group and brought out Guardians.
'Not bad?'
The causality had become a bit clearer now, and to give only the conclusion, this was a misjudgment on the tree bastard's part.
Because this development would, if anything, give the White Knight wings.
Shlick!
Just as I cut the leg of the Woodman in front of me, I saw Laurent's group in the distance.
As Seigrena had said, there wasn't a single Woodman around them.
I had no room to convey our situation, but the state of things was plain to see.
"Sir Laurent! Over here!"
Seigrena was useful for the first time. She shouted loudly and even waved her hand.
But.
'What are they doing?'
Why aren't they thinking of moving?
Unlike our urgency, from the way they stood still, I could even sense an unsettling composure.
Only one person, Kazen, was shouting fiercely, shaking his whole body.
But just then—
"……!"
Laurent's fist drove into Kazen's abdomen.
Then Kazen's body went limp, and I saw the other members take hold of him.
"……"
Laurent looked at me.
Those inorganic eyes had become the gaze I'd seen several times before.
A chill ran down my spine.
Because I knew that man's eyes turned like that when he was inwardly weighing some value.
'Don't tell me?'
The moment a strange hollow laugh leaked out of me, Laurent turned away along with his companions.
Gritting my teeth, I shouted.
"Laurent Lefebvre!"
I'd forced the shout out with leeway I didn't have, but that bastard didn't so much as pretend to hear.
It took less than 10 seconds for those bastards, backs turned, to vanish completely from view.
"S-Sir Laurent……? Where are you going? I-if you leave me, Father will……"
Does this one still not grasp the situation?
She was in his group, so I'd assumed she'd at least have a sense of White Knight Laurent's character.
That's right. That bastard had possessed that kind of <Trait> from the start.
'……The trait, <Utilitarian>.'
The White Knight is a man who will gladly abandon the one to save the ten.
Even so, that bastard's identity is a knight. I'd wondered whether he'd really abandon even his charge.
'There must be some further reason.'
Barely escaping the grip of a tenaciously clinging Woodman, I climbed up the black tree.
"……Th-this is a dream……. A horrible nightmare. It's strange that I came to the forest at all, isn't it……? Right. I-I'm of House Montrier……"
I surveyed the overall appearance of the dazed Seigrena.
A shoddy getup, like a child who'd stolen an adult's clothes, but the most awkward thing was the glove she wore on only one hand.
……Don't tell me.
"Wh-what are you doing!"
When I snatched off the glove just in case, a snow-white back of a hand was revealed.
And with it, the ominous pattern stamped there.
'The brand of the sacrifice.'
I looked at Seigrena and said.
"Did Laurent tell you to hide that?"
"Wh-what?"
"Answer me."
Seigrena, cowed, read my face and tucked her chin faintly.
"Ha……."
A hollow laugh escaped on its own.
'Laurent, that son of a bitch…….'
He knew about Wood Revenge.
***
Seigrena, reading my face, asked.
"Th-this, you called it a brand just now, right? Exactly what kind of brand is it……?"
"Laurent didn't explain?"
"He just said I absolutely had to hide it……."
Mumbling, Seigrena hung her head low.
When I saw that, my head went cold.
"A brand as a sacrifice."
"A sacrifice……?"
"Simply put, if your life is offered as a sacrifice, the rest can save their lives."
"Th-that can't be."
I looked down for a moment.
The Woodman Guardian bastards were crawling toward the tree and trying to climb it.
For now they kept tangling with and bumping into each other and falling, but they wouldn't keep doing that forever.
"A-are you going to throw me? Down there?"
What is she talking about?
Ignoring Seigrena, who asked with a face like the world had ended, I shouted.
"Weasel! Come back!"
The Blade Weasel hopped and returned to me. It was covered in blood, and its health bar was precarious too.
A little later and it might have been incapacitated again.
"……Good work."
Without even the strength to reply, the weasel flopped over.
I set the weasel on my shoulder and looked down.
A desperate situation, but that didn't mean I could give up on survival.
So think. What to do from here.
"……How can you be so calm?"
At Seigrena's words, a sneer came on its own.
Calm, my ass.
Of course, my head was surprisingly cool, and emotionally I was accepting the current situation with composure.
If you ask why, well.
"Because I considered the possibility that things would turn out like this."
"What……?"
Realizing the meaning of my words, Seigrena asked with a startled expression.
"So, you mean you knew Sir Laurent would abandon me?"
"To be precise, he didn't abandon you. He abandoned us."
"That's the same thing……."
Completely different.
Either way, with the causality clear, several of the White Knight's puzzling actions made sense too.
'So he'd noticed that Kria was a sacrifice, too.'
She'd been openly covering the nape of her neck from the start, after all.
And then Kazen had volunteered to join them, which would have made things even easier.
From Kazen's standpoint, it was an action born of wanting to send his sister to the safer side…… but in the end, it had helped Laurent.
"What are you going to do now?"
"Huh……?"
"Do you want to live? Or will you obediently become a sacrifice and die as a noble scapegoat? Well, then the White Knight you revere so much might save his life."
"……"
Seigrena ground her teeth.
"…D-don't make me laugh. I, I can't die here."
Right. That's the answer I wanted.
The current situation looks hopeless at a glance, but in fact it isn't.
In a sense, my mind had even grown lighter.
Because although things had worsened, with the variable named Laurent gone, the situation itself had become far clearer.
'This is better, actually.'
If it's simply a matter of the difficulty being a bitch, I'm confident I can cut through it, however bad it is.
"Then from now on, follow my instructions."
"If I follow your words? Then I can live?"
"Yes. I promise."
Seigrena hesitated, then nodded.
"Good. Then, the first instruction."
Taking out the item I'd bought from the <Achievement Shop>, I said.
"Hand over your hair."