"Mr. Brayvil, then, when did you enter this forest?"
His coat was frayed here and there, and his hair was matted, pressed down by sweat and dirt.
At a glance, he looked like someone who had been out here for several days at the very least.
"Well. I think it’s been about ten days already."
"Ten days...?"
He had been here far longer than I expected.
If he had investigated the forest for ten whole days and still seen only a single Aberrant Leaf Tree, perhaps he had simply been lucky.
Then, assuming there were only about two of them, if we were careful, we might be able to get out again.
"By any chance, are we close to Mondark from here?"
"Mondark... If you mean that city, once you get out of the forest, you should reach it in about two days."
We had ridden the carriage along the forest road for about half a day.
If we had come that far by carriage, then on foot it would take more than a day.
And on the way back, there were monsters.
Why hadn’t we gone around the outskirts like when we headed to Riverton, instead of cutting through a forest like this?
Looking back, it must have been the coachman’s decision to make up for the time we lost in the village.
As shortcuts always do, it had demanded a heavy price in the end.
I asked Mr. Brayvil cautiously.
"Then, Mr. Brayvil... once you find the missing people, will you be going back?"
He shook his head and said,
"No. I must resolve the source of the problem. That is the very essence of a pilgrimage."
"Ah..."
...I should probably start keeping my distance.
We had only entered this forest by chance, and after being chased by a monster, we had fled all the way here.
True, gripped by fear, we had rushed blindly deeper into the forest, but judging from the Aberrant Leaf Tree’s slow speed, we could have shaken it off well enough.
So once day broke, we simply needed to slip out quietly—a relatively clear-cut situation.
But this pilgrim priest had the air of someone trying to accomplish something major all on his own.
It was obviously dangerous, and I had no reason to help.
Even if I was the type to accept a loss, this was recklessness that crossed the line.
Fortunately, Mr. Brayvil did not ask us for help.
He must have known it was unreasonable as well.
"You plan to leave once day breaks, correct?"
"Ah, yes. I think we’ll have to."
"I don’t know which direction you came from, but it would be better for you to go north."
He pointed toward the northern part of the forest.
It was a more considerate explanation than I had expected.
"Is it safe that way?"
"It’s difficult to find a safe path in this forest. But north is at least the shallowest area. The route is relatively simple as well."
As expected, it wasn’t empty optimism, but it wasn’t exactly a great reassurance either.
It meant the fact remained that this forest was dangerous no matter which direction we took.
"Then, Mr. Brayvil... where are you planning to go?"
For a moment, his words trailed off.
"If I could, I would guide you all the way to the end, but there is somewhere I must go tomorrow."
There was a subtle awkwardness in his tone.
A sense that he was hiding something.
But pressing him on it would mean getting far too deeply entangled in his circumstances.
I merely nodded briefly.
After all, it would be enough if we could leave this forest.
We made small talk while cautiously dividing up the watch, then spread our robes on the temple’s cold stone floor and lay down.
It was quiet on all sides, but it was not a silence that allowed complete peace of mind.
The situation we were in remained uncertain.
‘Please let us be safe tonight as well.’
Muttering briefly in my heart, I closed my eyes.
***
"Ugh."
It was the least refreshing morning of the journey.
Fatigue still clung to my whole body, and my energy felt as heavy as if it were stuck to eyelids that had not fully opened.
We were still in the middle of a deep forest.
A place where you never knew when something might happen.
That alone was enough to make me uneasy, but the person beside us now was a strange priest I still could not fully trust.
There was no way I could have slept comfortably in a situation like that.
I slowly pushed myself up into a sitting position.
The chill from the cold floor still seeped into my back.
In the silence, only the faint sound of leaves rustling in the wind could be heard from somewhere far away.
"Are you awake?"
Aileen rubbed her eyes and slowly sat up.
Her voice still carried the heaviness of sleep, but her gaze was cautious, as though she had grasped the situation.
"How much food do we have left?"
I asked, rubbing the back of my neck, which still felt damp.
"Um..."
Aileen took out the pouch at her waist and carefully rummaged through it.
That was right.
Because we had fled the carriage in such a hurry, we had not been able to take everything.
Anything heavy, or low on the list of priorities, had inevitably been left behind in the carriage.
Though we had been lucky enough to bring our equipment and weapons.
Most of the things important for travel—tents, blankets for warmth, food—had been lost.
"All that’s left in the pouch is a few pieces of hardtack and four slices of dried apple."
Aileen’s voice was calm, but the faint breath caught at the end could not hide her unease.
I pressed my lips together.
If we ended up walking through this forest for several more days, hunger might become the bigger problem.
At this rate, we might collapse from starvation before the bizarre monsters ever got us.
"...For now, let’s share it. If things get really tight, we’ll have to hunt or something."
"Yes."
Aileen gave a small nod.
Crunch.
I slowly exhaled and put a piece of the dried-out hardtack into my mouth.
My mouth turned dry and stale, and I desperately wanted a sip of water, but now it was time to make our way through the forest.
Not knowing when or what might happen in this forest, we could not use water or mana carelessly.
Just as I was silently chewing on the hardtack, someone’s arm quietly entered my field of vision from the side.
"Here, drink this."
It was Mr. Brayvil.
He held out an old canteen and nodded silently.
"Ah... water. Thank you."
I offered a brief word of thanks and accepted the canteen.
The moment I opened the lid, a musty smell stung my nose, but in our present situation, that was not a particularly important problem.
The only thing that made me hesitate at all was whether I could trust this water enough to drink it.
Gulp, gulp.
Thirst was a desire that came before judgment.
I tilted the canteen back in one go.
"Phew..."
At the coolness of the water flowing down my throat, a sigh of relief I had been holding in for some time slipped out.
"You must have been very thirsty."
Mr. Brayvil sat down beside us with a gentle smile.
His gaze had a somewhat familiar yet difficult-to-explain quality.
"Yes. We were in such a hurry to run... well, we left a lot behind."
"In this forest, a small inconvenience often becomes a threat to one’s life. At times, a single mouthful of water is worth more than a thousand pieces of gold."
He wasn’t wrong.
I quietly nodded, gave some to Aileen as well, then carefully closed the canteen and returned it.
"Thank you. Truly."
"It’s all right. Helping one another is a pilgrim’s virtue."
"By any chance, is there somewhere nearby where we can get water?"
"The Black Forest is humid. If you gather the morning dew properly, it’s enough drinking water for a day."
As he said that, he sat down on the floor and took out a small pouch.
He pulled out what looked like a tiny mushroom and pieces of dried root, then quietly put them into his mouth.
...Is it all right to eat things like that? No matter how I looked at him, he seemed more like a man of the wild than a priest.
"Will you be leaving right away?"
"Yes. Are you leaving too, Mr. Brayvil?"
"...I should be on my way soon as well."
He brushed the dust from his backside and slowly stood.
As he headed for the entrance, there was no particular hesitation or regret in his figure.
He looked simply like a man going on to his next task.
Then, after walking a few steps, he suddenly stopped and turned his head.
"There are things in this world that cannot be judged by sight alone."
"Yes?"
I paused for a moment.
The words he had suddenly brought up, changing the atmosphere all at once, made me feel puzzled first and foremost.
He gave a short laugh and slowly opened his mouth again.
"The Aberrant Leaf Trees, I mean."
"...Pardon?"
"From the outside, they appear to be nothing more than alien tree monsters. But why they came into being, and for what reason they have remained until now... those depend on things that cannot be seen."
Only then did the context connect a little.
He must have wanted to say that this was not a problem that would end simply by subjugating monsters.
Still looking at us, he added,
"Perhaps the fact that you two set foot here was also because of that unseen bond."
"...As far as bonds go, it’s a little too unsettling to call it coincidence."
When I said that without thinking, Brayvil gave a faint chuckle.
Then he immediately turned his shoulders and began walking.
"Now then, I’ll show you the way. The north is rougher than you might think. Root vines are tangled everywhere, and there are also beasts’ territories."
I looked back toward Aileen.
She quietly nodded.
"Let’s go."
"Yeah."
And so we entered the forest path once more.
The heavy, piled-up mist. Dew-laden leaves brushing lightly against us.
And the low breathing of beasts coming from somewhere.
‘Things that cannot be seen, huh.’
For some reason, those words lingered in my mind.
Mr. Brayvil guided us as far as the path leading into the northern forest.
Where he stopped, traces of human passage remained intact.
Rather than a road someone had made, it looked like a place from which time had pushed people away.
"Thank you. Thanks to you, we should be able to get our bearings."
I offered a brief thanks. Mr. Brayvil nodded and looked around once.
"This forest... is quiet, but do not let your guard down. No one knows what may have settled in a forest people no longer visit."
At those words, a chill ran over the back of my neck for no reason.
He was, to the very end, a more diligent guide than I had expected.
There was no need for him to see us off any farther, yet he had gone out of his way to come to the path’s entrance and add a word, a piece of advice.
"Mr. Brayvil... will you be all right?"
"Me? I’ll be fine. My work is not yet finished."
A strangely firm resolve lay within that short answer.
He had said he was a pilgrim, and he truly seemed like someone walking his own path.
"Then, from here on, we’ll manage on our own."
"I pray you have a safe journey. Please be careful. And..."
He took something from the inside of his leather belt.
It was a small, thin piece of leather.
Something like a drawing had been carved into it.
"If, by any chance, you end up going farther inside, remember this."
"What is it?"
"It is the temple emblem of the Kaltzheim Order. If you see something similar on an interior structure or on the floor, you can use it as a temporary refuge."
The emblem of the Kaltzheim Order. It was a shape formed from the wings of a giant bird intertwined with a staff.
"...Do you think that will happen?"
I asked cautiously. He smiled faintly.
"I hope not, but such is the way of the world. Even when one does not wish it, one often finds oneself stepping in."
Those words felt strangely eerie.
"I will take my leave now. May the footsteps of God touch your adventure."
Without saying anything more, he quietly walked toward the opposite side of the forest.
Soon, his silhouette disappeared as if swallowed by the forest mist.
I stared for a long while into the forest beyond, the piece still in my hand, then slowly turned back to Aileen.
"Shall we go?"
"Yes."
Cautiously, we began searching for the path through the fallen leaves and moved forward one step at a time.
***
Why was the Black Forest called the Black Forest?
When I first heard the name, I honestly found it strange.
Because for a place called the Black Forest, this forest looked green and full of life.
Sunlight poured warmly between the leaves, and the wind flowed through the pine needles with a pleasant sound.
Names could be wrong, I had thought.
But it did not take long to learn the reason.
"It’s so dark."
"Damn it..."
As we followed the faint path leading north and entered deeper into the forest, our surroundings grew as dark as a cave.
The trees densely covering the sky above completely blocked out the sunlight, and at some point, not the sky but a ceiling of leaves had spread over our heads.
Even though it was midday, our vision was dim, and we could not even see the ground properly.
The earth underfoot was damp, and even the air was humid and heavy.
Moisture clung to the tip of my nose, and it felt as if it were seeping even into my clothes.
Thankfully, it was cool since no sunlight reached this place, but the farther we walked, the more damp and heavy my body became.
“Should we take out a torch?”
“No. If we light one in a place like this, we’ll be targeted immediately.”
Lighting a fire in this darkness was no different from walking around with a target hung around your neck.
It was stifling, but… we had no choice but to adapt.
“Is this the right—”
“Shh.”
Aileen reflexively responded to my words as I walked in front, but I stopped her with a gesture, telling her to be quiet.
When I strained my ears, a strange sound came from somewhere beyond the leaves.
Crunch, crunch.
It wasn’t a simple footstep, nor the sound of branches breaking.
It was unmistakably the sound of something chewing.
We pressed ourselves tight against the back of a tree and very carefully poked our heads out.
Among the vegetation, in the middle of the deep shade, something was writhing.
At first, I thought it might be a deer.
A half-prone shape, a head with antlers, a faint outline—it looked that way.
But I soon realized. It was not a living deer.
The deer’s neck was bent at an unnatural angle, and one side of its face had been torn off, leaving not even skin behind.
One of its antlers was twisted and caught on a tree, and its eyes no longer existed.
Only, something was clinging to the nape of that deer’s neck.
“…Fuck.”
I unconsciously let out a low curse.
The figure was crouched on all fours like a beast, but if you looked closely, those were not four legs.
Its forelegs were shaped like human arms, and grotesquely bent legs trailed limply behind.
Its back bulged unevenly, and over the wart-like lumps protruding from it, tiny eyes clinging like parasites gleamed.
Its mouth—or the place it used to tear apart its prey—was long and deformed, gaping open as if only the jaw had been pulled out from a human face.
Its teeth were more brutish than sharp, matted with rotten blood and fur.
Ghoul. That was the word that came to mind the moment I saw it.
It looked like something you’d only see in a zombie movie… but facing it in reality, I couldn’t help but frown at its grotesque appearance.
‘Why is something like that in the forest?’
This was clearly different from an ordinary monster or wild beast.
As if… someone, somewhere, had released it with a purpose.
“……Aileen.”
I whispered as quietly as I could.
“Back up, slowly. Don’t think about running. Slowly.”
She seemed to read my gaze at once and nodded without a word.
But at that moment, as if it had noticed us, the monster whipped its head up.
A green glow flashed from within the forest’s shade.
But this time, it wasn’t simply reflected light in its eyes.
It was definitely looking our way.
“……Run!”
I immediately grabbed Aileen’s wrist and started running.
Behind us, I heard something launch itself with a heavy thud.