Everything went dark before his eyes.
"Grrrooooaaaar!"
"Grooaaar!"
The wailing of a Diamond Bear cub (height: 2m 30cm, 400kg) echoed through the whole forest.
"This is a problem."
The escort captain apologized like a man who'd committed a crime.
"I'm truly sorry."
"Forget it. I'm the one who's too much of a piece of trash for telling you to abandon someone who was dying."
"More importantly, are the adults really that huge?"
"Bigger than most of the giant trees in the forest."
Adam answered flatly.
The escort captain didn't seem to believe it.
Being told that cats evolve into tigers only in this forest, of course he wouldn't believe it.
"What's so special about the Sundered Forest that magic beasts that big exist here?"
"It's because the mana density is high, so just accept it."
"Density? What about it?"
"......."
The density of substances in the atmosphere was a critical matter.
Especially in an ecosystem.
It's no exaggeration that if the concentration of oxygen doubled, insects would become the rulers of the ecosystem.
People's bodies have mana too, so if the density of mana in the atmosphere changes, changes happen in the body as well.
It was a natural phenomenon for magic beasts from the Sundered Forest, where mana density was high, to be bigger.
Of course, there was no way someone from the Empire would understand if he explained it, so he just kept his mouth shut.
THUD—!
Just then, the earth shook and a tree fell in the distance.
"That sound!?"
Birds of every kind that had nested in the trees soared into the sky and vanished.
"It's coming."
The sound of falling trees drew steadily closer.
He turned his head toward the direction of the sound.
Between the collapsing trees, thick yellow dust rose and hid the Diamond Bear's form.
Glowing eyes stared their way.
"Grooaaar!"
"Fuck... you were right."
"You didn't believe me?"
"That's a real adult Diamond Bear?"
A steel belly like armor covering its torso, a massive bulk like a great mountain.
The adult Diamond Bear looked down at Adam's group with an arrogant gaze.
"Keep your wits about you."
Adam murmured quietly to the stunned Anya.
"Employer, don't run for now. Stay here."
Anya nodded without a word.
"Escort captain, can you handle this?"
"It's not completely hopeless."
"Don't bluff."
"I've faced magic beasts even bigger than this. I may not win, but I won't die."
"Okay."
The warriors of this world seemed to have even less fear in them than he'd thought.
"It's not attacking right away?"
Anya faltered and tightly gripped the storage key in her coat.
"It's feeling us out. We might be a stronger enemy than it expected."
"Magic beasts consider the difference in strength?"
"Even animals do that much."
"Grrrr......."
Just then, a sound came from behind the carriage.
"Look out!"
"Grooaaar!"
Another Diamond Bear that had been hiding appeared and lunged straight at Anya.
In the split second, Adam shoved Anya out of the way and saved her, and the Diamond Bear lost its balance and rolled across the ground.
In that opening, he jammed a sphere into the Diamond Bear's snout, and the beast, with a bomb in its mouth, rolled on the ground drooling.
"Hrk! Hrk!"
3 seconds.
2 seconds.
1 second.
KA-BOOM—!
With the explosion, the Diamond Bear cub's blood and bits of flesh splattered everywhere.
For a moment, silence fell.
The eyes of the escort captain and his men were dyed with shock.
"A Diamond Bear in one shot......."
"Wh-what the hell kind of magic did that guy use?"
"The crazy mage, just like they said......."
"With this, don't we have a shot at the adult too?"
The escort members murmured among themselves.
He could hear their dying morale surge back up.
'We've got a monster on our side too!'
It was a welcome reaction, but he wished they wouldn't think it was fine.
Even if that kill a moment ago was unavoidable, the result it brought was the worst.
"Grrrrl."
They'd touched the adult Diamond Bear's reverse scale.
"Grooaaaar!"
Seeing its cub's head blown apart, the adult let out a roar, and its enormous forepaw struck the escort's front line.
WHAM—!
The upper and lower bodies of the guards who took the direct hit separated like sheets of paper and flew through the air.
Chunks of what had been people scattered across the sky and landed on Adam's face with a plop.
What a fucking son of a bitch.
***
Having watched the butchering process up close, Anya let out a scream unbecoming of a young lady.
"Waaaaaagh!"
"Shut up, would you. Don't provoke it."
Adam lightly smacked Anya on the head.
"Ow, that hurts!"
"Better than dying, right? Get a grip."
"H-how are you so calm?"
He wasn't calm at all.
Honestly, Adam had almost screamed too, but he'd just held it in.
Screaming wouldn't change anything.
They'd already killed the cub and provoked the mother.
Because he wanted to live, Adam thought.
Every scrap of information around him lined up, and the information in his head was rapidly sorted.
His judgment was quick.
"Escort captain, please have a staring contest with that monster."
"What?"
He didn't say much.
"Buy us time until we get on a horse!"
"You intend to use me as bait?"
"No, we're the bait!"
At Adam's answer, the escort captain's eyes wavered.
He's going to be the bait himself?
He didn't know what that meant, but he trusted him anyway.
"You can do it, right?"
"If I can't, I die too, so I have to."
"Understood."
Adam grabbed Anya by the wrist and ran for the horses.
The carriage was right under the Diamond Bear's nose.
Just then, the Diamond Bear swung its forepaw at them.
"Oh no you don't, you teddy bear bastard!"
At that instant, the escort captain knocked the Diamond Bear's forepaw aside with his sword.
An exclamation came out on its own.
Blocking that monster's attack with that small body.
'Warriors are badass, huh?'
Anya safely took hold of the horse's reins.
Of course, the rider (horseback-hand) wasn't Adam.
Anya asked, her face gone pale white.
"I'm the one who's going to be the rider (horseback-hand)?"
"You don't know how to ride?"
"I-I do know how, but. Isn't this usually the man's job?"
"Who says so? Everyone does what they can. Hurry. Is it okay to dump all the luggage from the carriage?"
"Absolutely not!"
"Then move!"
Stirred by Adam's shout, a sharp light came into her eyes.
No one else would do.
In a crisis, the person with the most at stake gives it their all.
When Anya pulled the reins, Adam climbed on behind her.
The horse cut right between the escort captain and the Diamond Bear as if showing off.
Not missing the opening, Adam threw a sphere at the beast's feet.
KA-BOOM—!
"Graaaaah!"
The blue explosion scorched the Diamond Bear.
The adult Diamond Bear immediately turned all its attention on them.
The target it most needed to watch had changed.
"It's switched targets to us. It's going to chase us, so brace yourself."
"Wh-why would you do that!?"
"Then you want me to abandon the captain who volunteered to tank for us? Were you by any chance a villainess in a past life?"
"Ugh, seriously, what are you even saying!"
The Diamond Bear leapt high and closed the distance in an instant.
The huge, hulking mass cut through the air as it bore down on them. It was the start of the chase.
"Waaaah! It's chasing us!"
Screaming, Anya brought down the reins.
***
"Northeast!"
Saying so, Adam guided Anya along the way.
After that, he planted spheres at the locations he'd planned.
He used a few to keep it in check, but magic beasts really are smart.
It figured out the pattern in no time and started dodging the spheres.
"It's so fast!"
"My lady, you're dropping the polite speech more and more."
Unfittingly for its huge bulk, the magic beast succeeded in closing the distance in an instant.
"Waaaaaah!"
Trees over 5 meters tall fell like dominoes.
Giant trees came crashing down, smashed like dry twigs snapping.
Every stretch of forest the drooling Diamond Bear charged through was scorched to nothing.
The distance was steadily closing.
"Grooaaar!"
"Uhuhuhuk... fuck......."
Anya showed off her talent as a rider brilliantly while crying.
She must be a descendant of the Khan.
Anya glanced back for a moment and shouted.
"What are you doing right now?"
"Drawing magic circles. Ah, and at the fork here, southeast!"
The idea was that if a magic circle applied rules to magic, it might apply to the explosive spheres made with magic too.
He didn't know if it would work.
If it didn't, they were done for, so he decided to believe it would definitely work.
"You reinforced their power with magic circles?"
"No. Modifying power can't be done in a short time. It's a simple 'Time Extension' magic circle."
"Time Extension?!"
"I'm going to set off all the explosive spheres at the same time."
As they rode, Adam explained the plan to Anya.
First, toss explosive spheres into areas where the ground is weak.
He'd drawn a simple magic circle into the spheres.
'Time Extension'
-10 minutes later, explode.
-8 minutes later, explode.
Adam's plan was simple.
Lay time bombs at the key chokepoints where the ground is weak.
Then, the moment the beast passes that point, stack all the explosions together to cause a landslide.
Best case, the landslide crushes the Diamond Bear to death completely.
Even if not, just blocking the road and cutting off its path would be enough.
Either way, the plan only worked if every sphere went off at the same instant.
"That's impossible......."
Anya timidly objected.
"How are you going to measure the timing?"
"I've been keeping time since earlier."
"You can cause a landslide with a few explosion spells?"
"I can. And I roughly know where the ground is weak. And out of the explosive spheres the magic circle's been spitting out periodically, a fair number of duds come out now."
Adam showed a bundle of spheres in front of Anya's eyes as she looked straight ahead.
"19 in total."
"Th-then... all of those?"
Set them all off at once.
It might not work if their luck was bad, but where in the world was there anything that wasn't luck?
Everything was luck.
They'd been driven to the edge of the cliff.
Clutching his pounding heart, he gulped.
Before he knew it, the Diamond Bear had chased them right up under their noses.
"Grooaaar!"
"From here, northeast!"
"Northeast? Wait a minute. Isn't this where we came earlier?"
"This is the first point now!"
The first explosion spell he'd planted.
He'd adjusted the timing so that, with this spot as the reference, every explosion would go off at the same moment.
The reference was the moment they reached that yellow rock exactly.
A small bomb came into view right in front of them.
"10 seconds."
They passed over the bomb.
From here, 5 seconds.
4 seconds.
3 seconds.
Adam covered her ears, and he'd already stuffed a wad of leaves into his own.
"Cover your ears!"
And then.
KA-BOOOOOM—!
A massive explosion erupted, and nature's fury poured down, enough to throw even that tough magic beast.
Adam prayed.
If this fails, we really are all dead.