Nico cut through the air with Nom-Nom on his back while the forest rushed beneath them in an endless green blur.
Ahead of them, far enough that Nico could barely make out the streaks of movement, X-97 flew with her wings of flames stretched wide.
He sent her ahead as vanguard to deal with any airborne monsters ahead.
And those poor souls barely had time to register her existence before being removed from it, which made her the perfect solution to the ’things that fly and want to eat us’ problem.
Their objective was simple yet time-sensitive: Cross the Jubokko Forest before sunset.
And according to the system, it was around 4:30 PM.
That gave them roughly four and a half hours before the sun dipped low enough for the forest to start moving.
Although X-97, at her speed, could clear the entire forest in less than half that time without breaking a sweat.
Nico... could not.
He had fifty-five MP total, and the Cloak of Flight was brutally honest about its costs: one MP for every two kilometers per hour.
Which meant his absolute top speed capped out at one hundred and ten kilometers per hour.
Still, math was on his side—for once.
At that speed, over four and a half hours, he could cover roughly five hundred kilometers as long as he didn’t stop, slow down, or get forced into an impromptu midair monster-murder session.
That was more than enough to clear the Jubokko Forest before sunset.
So far, so good.
But the problem wasn’t the Jubokko Forest.
The problem was everything after it.
Because, unlike the tree monsters, which could be handled by flying higher and very politely not existing near them at night, the monster-infested forest beyond it did not respect altitude.
Anything above Tier Three had enough intelligence to start throwing things. Even entire trees, if they felt particularly motivated.
And a depressingly high number of them could fly.
Which meant that once they crossed into the second forest, there would be no clean bypass, no "let’s just go higher".
They would have to fight their way through it.
Which was fine.
Because that part?
That was part of the plan.
"Master," Nom-Nom’s voice cut into his thoughts from behind, "... did you really have to sell all that loot to that weird voice?"
"That ’weird voice’ is the System," Nico sighed, keeping his eyes forward, "... and yes. I absolutely did."
Nom-Nom shifted slightly on his back. "Why?"
"Because... those weapons and armor had history. If even one of those belonged to someone important, or recognizable, or just well-known enough... suddenly we’re not ’travelers’, we’re prime suspects."
He paused for a moment before adding, "Yeah, there was a giant three-headed nightmare monster involved, so odds are low anyone would blame us... but I’m not gambling on that."
Nom-Nom was quiet for a second.
"...But you kept the long stabby thing," she said.
"The naginata," Nico replied. "Yeah. I kept that for you. Just in case you wanted a weapon."
"Nope," she said instantly. "I don’t."
[That was... decisive.]
Nico snorted despite himself, then remembered, ’right, internal monologue time.’
He’d sold everything X-97 brought back to the System. The spear, the sword, bow’n arrow, those armor pieces... all of it gone for a grand total of thirty credits.
Not exactly retirement money.
Still, enough to take care of Nom-Nom’s food binges for at least two days.
Besides, X-97 and Nico both fell squarely into the "mage" category, and Nico had exactly zero confidence in his ability to swing a blade without accidentally removing one of his own fingers.
And experimenting now felt like a fantastic way to die embarrassingly.
So staying in his lane it was.
As they flew on, the air began to change.
The dense, earthy scent of the forest slowly thinned.
Ahead, barely visible through the haze beyond a stretch of ocean, was the dark silhouette of the mainland stretching across the horizon.
Nico’s heartbeat picked up.
"Alright," he muttered under his breath, "...Stay cool. Stay steady."
The forest slowly fell away behind them as the endless green thinned until it finally gave up and broke against blue.
The open ocean stretched beneath Nico. Ahead of them, X-97 remained a distant streak. Every now and then, Nico would see brief flickers of flames, or sudden violent adjustments in the air, and whatever unfortunate flying thing had wandered too close simply ceasing to be a problem.
Vanguard duty suited her far too well.
They flew like that for a while with the ocean sliding beneath them, and a rhythm settling in.
No massive shadows moved below the waves before jumping at them.
Just water, wind, the tune Nom-Nom was humming, and the nervousness at the back of Nico’s mind.
And not even half an hour later, the mainland’s silhouette became clear along with the color that dominated it.
Or rather... the lack of it.
As they drew closer, Nico frowned.
The coastline ahead wasn’t just green.
It was... darker. Like the Gods had taken a perfectly healthy forest and turned the saturation knob down just a little too far.
"That’s it," Nico murmured. "The Jubokko Forest."
Nom-Nom leaned forward again, squinting. "They look like normal trees."
"They do," X-97’s voice carried back to them, as she reduced speed and let the distance between them close. "...During the day."
She drifted closer, no longer kilometers ahead but within talking range.
"If anything happens," she added calmly, "... I will be able to reach you two immediately."
Nico didn’t comment on that if. He was too busy staring.
They crossed the shoreline and passed over the first stretch of the forest, and the silence hit them like a physical thing.
No birds scattered at their approach, or animals fled beneath the canopy.
Absolutely nothing moved.
The trees were taller than any Nico had ever seen, with thick trunks that were a dark shade of brown, almost black in places.
Leaves atop them were a deep, unhealthy green that seemed to swallow light instead of reflecting it.
From above, the forest looked dense, but at the same time, lifeless, like a painted backdrop.
"This place smells wrong," Nom-Nom whispered. "Like... blood... but not blood."
"That tracks," Nico said softly.
They flew on, while below them, the Jubokko stood inert and even looked harmless.
But they all knew that when the sun dipped low enough, those trunks would twist with faces.
And this dead, silent forest would wake up hungry.
An hour passed in a blur of endless dead green as they flew on, and then his heartbeat suddenly picked up
Not in fear exactly, but this vague wrongness that made him tense up without knowing why.
Nico quietly began feeding mana into Precognition, despite needing free up some mana from the cloak.
Both Nom-Nom and X-97 immediately noticed the slight dip in his speed as they turned to him with a questioning gaze.
Nico spoke first before they could ask, "I’m running a 2-second precognition...Just in case. Something doesn’t feel right."
Before X-97 could ask what that was, Nom-Nom turned to her and began explaining to her what the magic was.
While Nico remained quiet, eyes scanning the forest over and over.
And that was when Nico saw it.
A single tree stood at the center of a clearing ahead.
Taller and thicker than the rest, and completely unlike the others.
Where the surrounding Jubokko were of a dark and muted green, this one was red. Blood-red.
Its trunk, branches, leaves, and even the roots jutting out across the clearing all shared the same wet crimson hue.
From its branches hung long red vines. And from those vines hung... bodies.
The ends of the vines completely enveloped their heads, sealing faces away beneath thick growths of red.
Their shriveled bodies were drenched in a deep red that was just a shade away from black.
Nico felt a chill crawl up his spine; even Nom-Nom went very still.
"...Master," she whispered. "That tree feels wrong."
"That is not a standard Jubokko," X-97 said calmly.
Still, they kept flying, because Jubokko didn’t move during the day, and stopping above that felt worse than passing it.
They adjusted altitude slightly, going higher, and continued over its vicinity with eyes fixed on the clearing below.
And then Nico’s Precognition flared.
He jerked sideways hard on pure panicked instinct, nearly tipping out of balance as Nom-Nom yelped and clutched tighter to his back.
And in the next instant—
—Swish.
A pulsing red root tore upward from the clearing before slicing cleanly through the space Nico had occupied a heartbeat earlier.
The air itself seemed to recoil as the root halted, then slowly began to withdraw.
They stared at the thing for a second longer in sheer dumb stun, before X-97 snapped, "RUN!"