Nursery Wood didn't feel like the kind of forest meant to suffocate you.
The trees were spaced far enough apart to let the morning light through, and the ground wasn't overrun with thick roots or bushes so dense they forced you to stoop. At first glance, moving through it seemed almost easy. Yet, after a few minutes of walking, none of them had found any comfort in this space.
On the contrary, something about this forest gave the impression of pressing down on those who entered it.
Elsa walked beside Towa, slightly ahead. Elena kept her hood up and cast nervous glances around her. Rin, for her part, still gave the impression of walking casually, but Kai could clearly see that she was already gripping her chain tightly. Peko, on the back of her feline summon, was twitching his ears in all directions.
It was Elena who finally broke the silence. "I really hate this place."
Towa raised an eyebrow. "Yet just yesterday, you said Selis was peaceful."
"The village, yes. Not the forest surrounding it."
Elsa glanced up at the heights, then ahead of her. "Do you at least know why it's called Nursery Wood?"
Rin shook her head. Towa turned his slightly as well, without slowing down.
It was Elena who answered, her voice a little lower than usual.
"For as long as the villagers can remember, there have been sounds here at night."
The wind slipped between the tree trunks, without really moving them.
"What sounds?" Rin asked.
Elena hesitated only briefly. "Baby crying."
Even Rin didn't answer immediately.
Elsa spoke up instead, in a more neutral tone, as if simply stating the facts made them more bearable.
"Not constantly. Just at times. As if it were coming from very far away. Then, after that… there was a sort of humming. A kind of lullaby."
Towa finally looked up at her. "Did you hear it?"
Elsa nodded once. "Yes."
"A few times," added Elena. "The first night, I thought someone was playing a joke on us. The second, I realized they weren't."
Rin huffed through her teeth. "Charming."
They kept moving forward.
The ground here was damp without being muddy. Patches of moss covered some of the tree trunks, and the air remained colder than it should have been in the middle of the morning. Yet there was nothing oppressive about the layout of the forest itself. No closed canopy above them. No walls of vegetation. Only spaces between the trees, lines of sight too short to react, too long to be reassuring.
Kai watched all this in silence.
The feeling didn't come from being enclosed. It came from the opposite. From those openings between the trunks, which always gave the impression that something could spring up from anywhere, with no direction seeming safer than another.
Elsa continued.
"The strangest thing is that for the past few weeks… we haven't heard a thing."
Elena nodded immediately. "Not a single sound."
"At first, everyone thought it was because of the dungeon," said Elsa. "The one forming outside the forest. A manifestation of mana, something like that. But now…"
She didn't finish her sentence.
Peko then emitted a small, muffled sound through his summon. Towa immediately raised his hand to signal the group to stop.
Kai followed his gaze.
A little way back, at the foot of a leaning tree, something lay in the shadows.
Or rather, someone. The body no longer really looked like a body.
The clothes had almost entirely fused with a viscous substance that enveloped it in places. Some of the equipment was still recognizable. A broken bow. A belt. A boot half-engulfed by a translucent mass, streaked with pale shards. The rest of the corpse was already nothing more than a collapsed silhouette, dissolved into something that bore no resemblance to a human being.
Elena covered her mouth, unwilling to believe what she was seeing. "It's…"
Rin took a step forward, then stopped immediately. "What is that…?"
Kai didn't need to get any closer to understand.
Mana stagnated there in an abnormal concentration, as if held within a forming substance. In places, the mass pulsed faintly. And at the center, within the gelatinous mass, shapes were slowly taking form. A curve. The beginnings of a jaw. Something that already all too clearly resembled the silhouette of a young, unfinished wolpertinger.
Towa clenched his jaw. "A hunter?"
Elsa looked away. Not out of disgust, but out of respect. "Surely Noah, the first to disappear."
Silence fell, heavier than the mere sight of the corpse.
It wasn't just death lying there. It was what it was becoming.
Rin spoke first. "Is there anything we can do?"
Kai shook his head slightly. "Not properly."
He crouched down without touching the mass. "The mana has concentrated around the corpse. It'll eventually spawn something. Nao could have drained it or moved it. We can't."
Elena frowned. "So we just leave it there?"
Kai looked up at her. "No. We delay it."
A few minutes later, the job had been done without ceremony.
Elena had frozen the most unstable parts of the mass under a rough layer of ice. Towa and Elsa had then shattered the frozen structure with powerful blows, scattering the pieces as far as possible. With any luck, that would be enough to prevent the formation of other monsters. But the process was likely only slowed down.
When they resumed their walk, no one spoke for several minutes.
The path they were following wasn't really a path. It was merely a route more passable than the others, a passage where the tree trunks parted a little wider, where the ferns didn't grow quite as high. The group moved forward without speaking too loudly, their eyes regularly glancing up at the branches, then immediately dropping back down between the trees. Slight movements were beginning to be noticed in the distance. They were clearly being followed. Even though everyone had already been convinced of this since entering the forest.
Kai was the one who broke the silence. "Remember, they adapt quickly."
Towa turned his head slightly backward.
Kai continued without raising his voice. "We don't show our best hand right away. We keep as much of the element of surprise as possible."
Rin let out a small, joyless laugh. "That sounds a lot like a way of saying we're going to have a rough time."
"Yes," Kai replied simply.
That answer at least had the merit of leaving no room for illusion.
They moved forward again.
Then the forest changed.
Kai wouldn't have been able to explain it clearly if he'd had to. Nothing, on the surface, seemed to be moving any more than before. Yet the air seemed to grow tense. Peko jerked his head up. His feline summon slowed, then nearly stopped.
A rustling sound swept through the ferns to their right.
Then another, a little further to the left.
Towa was the first to take his position. His shield rose immediately, his axe still waiting on his back. Elsa shifted without them even needing to exchange a word, taking the opposite angle with her claymore. Elena took a step back. Rin slipped behind Towa, more agile, already ready to spring around him.
And the wolpertingers emerged from the thickets.
There weren't many of them yet. Three at first. Then two more a little further away. Their bodies crouched and rose again with an animal tension that was anything but chaotic. They didn't pounce right away.
They watched them.
Kai immediately felt that uneasy feeling return.
It wasn't the hesitation of cautious predators. It was an assessment.
"They're testing us again," he murmured.
One of the wolpertingers finally pounced.
It didn't target Elena.
It passed in front of her to lunge at Peko's summon.
Or rather, no.
It feigned the summon and aimed directly for Peko himself.
The small body perched on the cat's back narrowly dodged by leaping backward. His summon spun to intercept the bite.
Kai immediately sensed the shift.
The day before, they had avoided Peko as soon as they realized his summons were replaceable.
Now, they were doing exactly the opposite.
"Did they figure it out? How?" Kai whispered.
Peko didn't even try to counterattack. His summon dissipated in a burst of mana and was immediately replaced by a taller, more massive form. At first glance, it resembled his spiked-arm summon. But this time, Peko wasn't positioned above it, but inside it.
Kai immediately tossed two mana crystals to Peko. Peko caught them and in turn hurled them at the other two attackers. As they flew, they transformed into two feline summons, like the one he just recalled.
Before the summons were even fully formed, a volley of spikes shot out from the trees.
The shelled-hare was there, perched on a branch, already watching.
Elena held out a hand. Her bracelet glowed slightly, and a wall of ice appeared in front of the summons. Most of the spikes were intercepted, but the wall collapsed.
A second volley passed through. The summons had time to brace themselves on the ground and leap. But their hind legs were shredded nonetheless, rendering the summons useless.
Another crash was heard. This one slammed against Towa's shield.
He had moved barely half a step forward, but that had been enough. One of the wolpertinger crashed into the guard, which vanished immediately, replaced by his axe. The blow came from below, but had enough force to slice through the beast's shoulder and send it flying. Before it even hit the ground, Rin seized the opening he'd just created and drove her chain clean into the base of its neck.
"Nice move," she said with a brief smile.
Towa didn't have time to answer. Another one was already surging forward.
Elsa joined the fray almost at the same moment, her claymore held high. She wasn't trying to hold a line like Towa. Where he pushed back, she struck. So she prepared to strike directly. But her target leaped backward.
Elena then raised her other hand.
The mana around her arm crystallized instantly, then a sharp cold cut through the air. Ice needles shot out in a fan-shaped pattern. They should have cleanly severed the path of the last two beasts circling Towa and Elsa.
They didn't touch them.
For a moment, the wolpertingers reacted with such precision that Elena froze. One leaped exactly before the main surge. The other lay down in the only blind spot left between two spikes, as if it already knew the spell's pattern.
"How?" Elena whispered, her gaze tense.
Elsa turned her head, surprised as well.
From that point on, the fight left no room for discussion.
More wolpertingers emerged from among the trees, and this time they didn't stay at a distance. They struck in brief waves, numerous enough to force the group to move, yet never so disorganized as to seem panicked.
Kai hadn't chosen any new Skill of the Day yet.
He simply moved, dodged, and analyzed, all while materializing his knives.
Every enemy movement confirmed a little more what he feared. The beasts weren't improvising. Or at least, not on their own. They attacked with disconcerting precision. They forced Towa to hold the center. They pushed Elsa to cover Elena. They closed in on Peko to force him to stay on the defensive. And every time Rin tried to take advantage of an open angle, another wolpertinger seemed to have already anticipated it.
The group still held the upper hand, though. Wolpertingers were falling, while they themselves suffered no injuries.
"To the right again!" Elsa shouted.
Three more hares came at their flank. Mainly toward Elena.
Towa closed his eyes for a moment. They all felt it. A pressure washed over them, like a wave emanating from Towa. The monsters all changed course to attack him.
Kai struck one of them with a knife. Elsa managed to slice another, which wasn't even trying to dodge anymore.
Towa spun in turn, taking a claw strike on his gauntlet before swinging his axe in a short arc. The handle sent the hare flying through the air once more. Rin's chain shot out again, finishing off the beast.
Rin quickly realized that Towa's strength didn't lie solely in taking hits. With every counter, he was repositioning each monster back into his strike zone.
"I like working with you," she called out to Towa between breaths.
Elsa couldn't help but smile briefly.
Then Elena, who had repositioned herself, suddenly thrust both hands forward. This time, it wasn't a frontal attack. A sheet of frost skimmed along the ground beneath the damp leaves, seeking to freeze the space between several tree trunks to block the enemy's advance.
The wolpertingers retreated even before the ice reached the point where it would have been most effective.
Elena paled. "No…"
Kai saw it in her eyes. It wasn't mere frustration. It was worse. She, too, had just realized that the pack was reacting to her spells as if to something it had already observed.
Their numbers were growing.
Not enough to overwhelm the group immediately, but enough to confirm the essential point. They had them. The monsters were following. They were moving away from Selis. And as expected, a window opened for the village.
Kai glanced around him, assessed the density of the attacks, then the layout of the trees.
Something struck him immediately. Many were holding back. Which confirmed that they were drawing their targets in as planned. But the ones he could see had a familiar appearance. A scorpion's tail here, a shell there. Flaming claws here as well.
On reflex, he looked at the carcasses they'd already eliminated. He saw only simple claws, fangs, beaks, and the like.
He smiled slightly.
They want to play the long game? That's good, keep wasting time on us.
He glanced back one last time. He threw a knife, which was easily dodged, but then drew his flare. He aimed it at the sky and fired.
A green streak immediately sliced through the heights of Nursery Wood.
The whistling sound faded among the branches, then the light rose above the treetops before bursting into a bright green glow.
For a moment, everything seemed suspended.
Even the wolpertingers hesitated.
Rin exhaled. "Now we're going to have some fun."
Elena finally pulled back her hood.
Towa didn't lower his guard, but his voice grew deeper, steadier. "Just hold on."
Kai didn't answer.
Because instead of lunging at them again, the pack changed.
No flight. No chaotic rage. Nor an immediate redoubling of the assaults.
Some wolpertingers retreated only a few steps. Others moved to the sides. Two vanished between the tree trunks without trying to strike. Those who remained no longer attacked to force an opening. They waited.
As if they'd received new orders.
Kai felt his stomach clench.
"This isn't normal," he said.
Rin, who had already figured it out too, stopped smiling. "You bet."
Peko suddenly let out a growl much clearer than before.
All eyes turned.
Behind them, between two tree trunks, a small black shape had just appeared.
The village cat.
It had stopped just a few meters away, its dark fur barely standing out against the gray shadows of the forest. The white patch on its chest stood out, damp with dew.
For a second, no one moved.
Then, Elsa took a step toward it without thinking. "Did he follow us?"
Towa was already halfway turned toward her. Kai, on the other hand, felt a sudden alarm flash through his mind.
And before he had time to open his mouth, a wolpertinger burst from the thicket behind the small black figure and leaped straight at it.
"No!" Elsa screamed as she rushed forward.
The entire forest seemed to close in at that very moment.