＊
Now facing three tree-eating lizards and one bugbear, the adventurers that had been lured deep into the forest were completely in a panic. Some fell to attacks from the beasts, others stood and faced them, and were slaughtered for it. Some began to retreat whether or not they’d been ordered to, and some ran off randomly into the forest and fell into kobold traps in their terror. As more and more of them fell victim to these horrors, the adventurers quickly broke away from the area Wyatt hoped to command them in and lost all semblance of a cohesive group.
Amid all that...
“Nrrah!” Zuuuum. The patterns along the length of the Scarlet Plate lit up as Wyatt activated it for a second time, lopping off the head of a tree-eating lizard with his Sword Eater. The magic crests engraved in the armor temporarily enhanced his strength, giving him the power to hack through the beast’s neck.
“Gaaaaah!” Wyatt screamed once more. This time his shout was not part of his attack, but a reaction to the pain the strengthening had on his body as the spells channeled power through his joints, muscles, and bones. The burden the impossible movements had on his body tormented him. The pain would cause a normal person to collapse or writhe in misery. The fact that Wyatt did nothing but shout in reaction was proof of his mental and physical fortitude. ...This isn’t something I can use more than a few times.
He sheathed his sword and looked around, catching his breath. In the time he had been fighting that one magic beast, the adventurers had scattered every which way. The knight Ashcroft was nowhere to be seen either.
“Guildmaster!”
Wyatt turned at the voice. A sorceress was running toward him.
“Oh, thank goodness! I don’t know where anyone went!” She must have been anxious, separated from her party. She was out of breath, running as fast as she could toward him until a spiked ball fell from the trees above her and impacted the top of her head.
“Tss...” Wyatt couldn’t help the hiss that escaped his lips as she toppled forward. The impact had caved in her skull and the thorns had pierced her skin. She didn’t move an inch after falling to the ground; her death had likely been instantaneous. The wretched sight reminded Wyatt that the area he was in was too dangerous to run through blindly. He wished he could run around and gather up his scattered companions. They had to defeat the beasts, regain control over the panicked adventurers, and reorganize themselves properly. But if he wasn’t careful, he’d fall victim to one of those traps.
“Could this be any more vexing...” Even his irritation was likely part of the enemy’s plan.
Taking a deep breath to get his emotions under control, Wyatt kicked Cyril, who was crouched down next to a tree and shivering, and motioned for him to stand up. I’ll get my allies together. We’ll defeat these beasts. We’ll head straight for the village, watching out for traps. Slowly but surely. He simplified the situation, put everything in order, and confirmed it with himself. Wyatt had always used this technique to calm himself when things got out of hand. He’d survived the Five Year War by doing so. He would get through this in much the same way, and he’d continue to do so in the future..
“...All right.” He put the still-shackled Cyril in front of him as a trap detector and shield and slowly began to take action to get himself out of this situation.
＊
The second and third kobold squads found themselves chasing after a small group of humans. They’d gone after a group that had escaped from the magic beasts but was stuck now, not knowing where the traps around them hid.
Of course, it wasn’t coincidence that they’d found this group. Sashalia had selected a target for them to attack based on information her spirit messenger scouts had sent her about where the nearby traps were set and the distance between groups of adventurers.
“Hah! Rah!”
“Yaaah! Yah!”
“Hoh! Toh!”
Their shouts and appearances were adorable on their own, but both sides were fighting for their lives in this battle. The spears, crafted by the blacksmith in Ryburgh, stabbed out at the adventurers’ legs and bottoms. They were almost like hunters, driving their prey into position.
“Ah?!”
“Oh! He fell!”
“This one fell!”
“No! Nooo! Aaaaaah?!” One man tripped on a tree root, while others succumbed to their wounds and were rendered unable to run any farther. One by one, the spears took them down.
One adventurer, who had let others flee before him to act as bait, fell into a pit trap and let out a reverberating scream as he was impaled on the spikes below. Needless to say, this was all according to the kobolds’ plans.
“Did we get ’em all?”
“The ones lying there and there are still alive.”
“Finish off the sorcer’ and leave the other one be. We’ve gotta move.”
“Orders from the miss. Squad two’s moving on.”
“Gotcha.”
“Squad three’s that way. Be seeing you.”
The kobolds plunged their spears into the groaning sorcerer at their feet, then hurried on to their next mission.
＊
One adventuring party had luckily managed to mostly reunite under their leader Maureen, a swordswoman. Considering that the best most of the other groups could do was scatter and run for their lives, the fact that this group had stuck together while seeking safety marked them as a decently skilled and lucky bunch.
Having escaped the magical beast ambush, the party regrouped and set about finding some other adventurers to meet up with. They proceeded to strike at and pat the ground around them, avoiding any grass, bushes, or piles of fallen leaves. Even with all their precautions, they just barely managed to evade two traps. After some time, they finally met up with another group.
“Hey, if it isn’t Aubrey’s crew.”
“I see you made it out alive too, Maureen. You’ve got the devil’s luck.” A young man with close-cropped hair, Aubrey, gave a relieved sigh and smiled wryly. The restraint he showed in not running up to the other group on sight explained how his group had made it this far.
“I’ll settle for your glum mug. Frankly, I’m happy to see anybody right now.”
“Same here.”
There was nothing wrong with having a larger group if they were going up against those magical beasts or even fighting kobolds. Both parties agreed to band together and face the forest.
“We can’t find Anton, and we don’t know where the traps are, so we can’t go looking for him. What about you guys?”
“We’re still down Philander and Sylvester.”
“You seen the guildmaster? Hell, I’d even take Ashcroft and his baby face right now.”
“Nope. Not since everybody split during the chaos.”
The leaders faced each other and reported their current statuses. Then they looked around, confirming their situations, and sighed together as if following a script.
“...We should just continue on to the village. We were supposed to be pretty close already, right?”
“Yeah, should be.” Right when Maureen nodded, the bugbear gave a great roar in the distance and the whole group froze reflexively. They glanced around nervously, but the monster wasn’t anywhere near them.
Aubrey sighed yet again. “...Maybe we should just go on ahead and attack the village on our own.”
“Just us?”
“It’s like the guildmaster said: they only dragged us into the forest to protect their village. If we start setting fire to it, the kobolds’ll lose their cool and have to come face us themselves.”
Maureen debated the suggestion for a moment, but she turned toward the direction she’d come from and squinted, then took a breath and agreed with Aubrey. “That’s probably a good idea. Even if we head back, we can barely move with all the traps, and we can hardly fight magic beasts with footing like that. It’d probably help our guys more to hit the dogs’ den and draw them out of the forest.”
The two party leaders had enough experience to regain their calm and decide how to proceed. They had a nimble member of their parties climb up a thick, tall tree nearby and gauge the direction and distance to the plain they would find the village in. They knew about the twin mountains from Cyril’s information, so they were able to determine the location of the village fairly easily.
“Yep, that should be right.”
“Okay, let’s go.”
They quickly began to move toward the village. The group, now eleven strong, kept an eye out for traps, evading three more. They then immediately triggered one, but escaped with nothing more than a scare, arriving at a narrow path between the trees soon after.
“It got a lot more walkable all of a sudden.”
“Look, all the trees are stumps. Guess the dogs were gathering lumber here.”
They looked around and spotted some piles of logs as well. The kobolds must have been temporarily storing them here.
“In which case, there should be a path for them to carry it all back to the village. If we can follow that, we’re golden.”
Everyone nodded at Maureen’s words before catching a sound none of them expected to hear.
Rou...aaa...eee...
“An incantation?! Is there a sorcerer nearby?”
“Tyaah!” Bzzzap! There was a sound like lightning crashing through the air as something impacted Maureen’s head. It was a torrent of magical energy. The energy hit the side of her head and dispersed around it with enough force to knock her unconscious instantly.
“Wh-What was that?!”
Rou...
They could hardly take in the situation, but it was clear enough that it was an enemy attack and that a second shot was coming. The adventurers looked around and dove for cover behind the logs.
Aaa...eee...
Everyone hid behind piles of logs, and there was no second attack. Since they’d lost their target, their enemy had likely paused their incantation before finishing casting their spell. One astute adventurer estimated the enemy’s position from the angle Maureen had been hit from and the areas they were under cover from, then popped his head out to take a look and read the situation.