“Damn it…!”
“What is this?! It’s useless!”
The tough tendrils kept deflecting the sharp blade.
If it were a plant—meaning a soft, fibrous, and delicate plant—this wouldn’t be possible.
That monstrous giant flower was as tough as if it were wrapped in a magical beast’s hide.
“Get back!”
Wendy, who had been knocked down by a tendril, staggered to her feet and shouted.
She gathered all her magical power and summoned a massive gust of wind from the ground.
What started as a small breeze quickly grew into a fierce storm, whipping through the surroundings.
“Walter!”
At her call, Walter, who had also been sprawled on the ground, got up and rushed forward.
He conjured a ball of fire and hurled it into the winds she had created.
Merged with the wind, the fire transformed into a massive pillar of flames, surging toward the core of the giant flower.
Boom!
The sharp column of fire struck directly at the center of the monstrous flower, which had been wildly flailing its tendrils.
With a tremendous explosion, it was utterly obliterated.
Shredded plant debris, torn apart by the blast, scattered through the air and rained down onto the ground.
Letier stared in horror at the fragments that landed right in front of her with a dull thud.
‘It’s twitching…’
The fallen pieces writhed as if they were still alive, but soon, they stopped moving entirely.
Before long, the forest was once again engulfed in silence, as if nothing had happened.
“…Did we get it?”
Everyone seemed too shocked by what they had just witnessed.
They gasped for breath, glancing around with fear in their eyes.
Fortunately, it didn’t seem like there were any serious casualties.
“Damn it, what the hell is this?!”
Someone shouted.
Efron quickly got up and grabbed Letier’s arms.
“Are you all right, Lady Letier?”
“Ugh…”
Letier murmured blankly, her face still dazed.
It was hard to accept the reality of what had just happened.
A magical beast…?
No, it wasn’t a magical beast. That thing was…
“To think there would be a magical plant here that rivals magical beasts, in a place where magical beasts have completely disappeared…”
“We need to get out of this forest immediately. It’s no longer safe here!”
“Y-Yeah! Let’s get out, now!”
Someone shouted.
The people, still shaky, began stumbling toward the entrance of the forest.
None of them wanted to stay in this terrifying place any longer.
“What happened here?!”
Drawn by the massive explosion Wendy and Walter had caused, the expedition leader, Dante, Adele, and the other expedition members arrived late.
Their faces were filled with shock.
“There are magical plants in this forest that rival magical beasts! They attack people!”
One of the knights shouted.
“W-What?”
The blood drained from the expedition leader’s face upon hearing the unexpected report.
Dante, who was standing behind him, quickly turned his head to find Letié.
Thankfully, she was walking with the support of her escort knight.
“That can’t be! The mages clearly said there were no magical beasts in this forest…!”
“There aren’t any magical beasts. But there are aggressive magical plants.”
Wendy stated calmly.
The expedition leader, who had been staring at her scorched clothing, fell silent.
Aggressive…?
“You said this place was safe! What is this?!”
Isaac, who had been sprawled on the ground, suddenly got up and shouted at the expedition leader.
His eyes, having been closest to the monstrous flower, were filled with terror.
After briefly observing Isaac’s disheveled state, the expedition leader slowly opened his mouth.
“…But we defeated it, didn’t we?”
“What?”
“The mage and her brother took it down in one blow, didn’t they?”
The expedition leader turned to Wendy and Walter as he continued speaking.
“Those things aren’t terrifying magical beasts that can move freely! For battle mages like you, magical plants that just stand still and attack from one spot should be nothing. Right?”
Wendy frowned and glared at the expedition leader.
She had no idea what nonsense he was spouting.
“The investigation of the magical plants will proceed as scheduled.”
“What did you say?”
“We still have time. U-Until tomorrow… we must reach the designated location.”
He mumbled, as if he were under some kind of spell.
Wendy, staring at him in disbelief, finally exploded.
“Do you not understand the situation?! We need to get out of here immediately! This forest is dangerous! People could get hurt or even die!”
“That’s why we brought you along! And we reinforced our forces, didn’t we?”
The expedition members around the leader began murmuring amongst themselves.
“What’s he talking about?”
“Shouldn’t we just leave on our own…?”
None of them could understand why the expedition leader was so insistent on continuing the investigation, even in this situation.
Letier also frowned and observed the leader closely.
He seemed like someone hiding something.
As if he had received different orders from the rest of them…
“Expedition Leader. Let’s stop here and leave. You must know by now that this is nothing but a pointless stubbornness.”
Dante placed a hand on his shoulder.
“But still…!”
The expedition leader looked around desperately, his expression wavering.
All he saw were cold, unyielding gazes.
After hesitating for a moment, he finally lowered his head.
“…Understood. We’ll withdraw.”
****
The atmosphere within the expedition quickly plummeted.
They had thought this would be a simple, non-dangerous investigation—one that was, if anything, prestigious and even enjoyable.
But the moment they encountered a magical plant they had neither seen nor heard of before, an uncontrollable fear took root in their hearts.
A fear that this unknown lifeform might take their very lives…
The expedition members retraced their steps in complete silence, not exchanging a single word.
“Lady Letier, are you all right?”
Efron, who was leading the way, turned slightly to look back.
Letier nodded.
From behind, Dante, who had been staying close to the exhausted Letier, whispered in a quiet voice.
“If we keep following this path for about an hour, we’ll reach the entrance and border of the forest.”
“Okay…”
“Whoa…! Watch out!”
“What—what is it?!”
At that moment, someone at the front shouted loudly.
Startled by the cry, Letier lifted her head just in time to see a perfectly fine tree slowly tilting with a heavy, ominous noise.
The massive trunk collapsed in an instant, crashing down on the knights who had been walking ahead.
“Aaahhh!”
“Ugh…”
Once again, the scene turned into chaos in an instant.
The quick-footed ones barely managed to dodge the falling tree, but a few were trapped underneath, groaning in pain.
Watching the scene unfold, Letier gasped and instinctively stepped backward.
Why had a perfectly intact tree suddenly fallen…?
Dante reacted on instinct, pulling her toward him.
The knights, knowing it was futile, still unsheathed their swords in unison.
Nearby, Letier could hear the sound of Wendy gathering her magic.
“Is everyone okay?”
The expedition members checked on each other while nervously scanning their surroundings.
Everyone present could sense it—something was about to happen.
After a brief silence, sharp poison darts shot out from somewhere.
“Poison darts incoming!”
“Block them!”
The knights swung their swords frantically, deflecting the darts one by one.
Dante also stepped in front of Letier, striking down the incoming darts with his blade.
“Letier! Get down!”
While everyone was focused on the poison darts, tendrils filled with fine root-like appendages shot out rapidly from between the trees.
These tendrils looked different from the long ones they had encountered earlier.
“Damn it, where are all these things coming from?!”
It was another complete disaster.
The tendrils wrapped tightly around people’s legs, lifting them high into the air before violently hurling them away.
Wendy and Walter, just as they had done before, hurled fire pillars toward the tendrils, but the towering trees made it difficult to land a clean attack.
Wendy turned to the expedition members and shouted.
“Run for now!”
Dodging the poison darts and the attacking tendrils as best as they could, the expedition members began to flee.
“If we keep going this way, there’s a cliff ahead!”
Letier quickly turned her head.
Just as someone had shouted, a sheer cliff stretched out in the distance.
It was as if the tendrils were driving them toward the cliff edge, their attacks growing fiercer.
“Ugh, get away, you disgusting things!”
Every now and then, fragments of tendrils shattered and fell to the ground, burned by Wendy and Walter’s fire pillars. But there were simply too many left.
As she backed away, Letier glanced down at a piece of severed tendril twitching at her feet.
“Lady, duck!”
At Efron’s urgent shout, Letier instinctively bent down, barely avoiding a tendril’s attack.
However, in her haste, she moved too quickly and lost her balance, tumbling forward.
“Ah!”
She desperately planted her hands on the ground, careful not to touch the still-twitching tendril fragment.
“Wait…”
As she stared at the writhing piece right in front of her, Letier narrowed her eyes.
From up close, she could see the fine, wavelike patterns on the tendril—details she hadn’t noticed from a distance.
‘Wait a minute. I’ve seen this before in Modern and Contemporary Magical Beasts…’
The patterns were familiar.
And when she examined the parts that had been burned by fire, she noticed something else—the green tendrils had curled into a dark purple hue.
A characteristic wavelike pattern and a color change to purple when burned…
If her memory was correct, there was only one magical creature known to exhibit these traits.
“Is there a water-affinity mage here?!”
Letier quickly lifted her head and shouted.
“M-Me!”
Someone called out amidst the chaos.
“Right now! Widen the range and soak these tendrils completely!”
At Letier’s urgent cry, the water mage—who had barely escaped from under the fallen tree and had been too focused on running—closed his eyes and concentrated.
Soon, a massive column of water surged up from the ground.
It shot high into the sky before raining down heavily on the tendrils.
“Ugh…”
The knights groaned as the sudden downpour blurred their vision.
“We can’t even attack properly like this…”
“Wait, look at that!”
Someone pointed and shouted.
At the tip of his finger, the drenched tendrils stood frozen in midair, as if petrified.
