"Run!"
The second X-97’s voice reached his ears, Nico dumped every bit of mana into the Cloak of Flight before taking off with every ounce of speed it could afford him.
The forest blurred into streaks of dead green beneath him.
Behind him, Nom-Nom clung tighter as fingers dug into his shoulders as she watched X-97 halt and draw the Jubokko’s attention towards herself.
"MASTER!"
"I KNOW!" Nico shouted back with a crack in his voice, yet he pushed harder until the clearing vanished behind them.
X-97 had slammed to a halt midair and turned, wings flaring wide as she dropped altitude on purpose while fire erupted from her like a signal flare meant for hell itself.
"Over here," she said calmly.
And the mutated Jubokko answered.
The ground below her convulsed.
Roots didn’t burst upward like before; they uncoiled
X-97 twisted sideways as one passed where her torso had been. Another root followed. Then another, while she answered with flames raining down from the sky.
While Nico didn’t look back again.
His precognition was still active with two seconds of screaming futures trying to overwrite the present as flashes of red roots.
Up - Too slow.
He jerked sideways instead, just as a massive red tendril tore through the air behind him.
"They’re getting faster!" Nom-Nom yelled.
"I SEE IT!" Nico snapped, knuckles white as he fought to keep his flight steady. "DO NOT LET GO!"
Behind them, X-97 fired again as a column of flame lanced downward, engulfing one of the rising roots and turning it into a spiraling inferno midair.
The tree recoiled with a soundless scream; the psychic weight of it made Nico’s vision blur.
"That thing is not supposed to be awake," X-97 whispered over the commotion.
While another future slammed into Nico’s mind.
One with Nom-Nom slipping, and the sky tilting as a tendril wrapped around his leg and pulled.
"No!"
He arced his flight upward as he forced altitude while his every instinct screamed that hight meant safety.
So Nico pushed forward, his heart hammering so hard it drowned out everything else, and just as he felt out of range –
—Woosh.
Something massive tore through the air in front of him.
Nico barely registered the shape of a full-uprooted tree spinning end over end nearly a hundred meters above the forest.
Precognition slammed into him and flooded his vision with a single, horrifying future where it crashed onto his face mid-flight.
"What the-"
He jerked sideways on instinct alone while Nom-Nom yelped as the sudden movement nearly tipped them both.
And the next moment, the tree screamed past the space he’d occupied a heartbeat ago before vanishing downward, and smashing back into the forest far below.
Nico skidded to a halt in midair, chest heaving as he fought to stabilize.
That was when he saw it.
The Jubokko Forest didn’t just thin out ahead of them, it... ended.
A hard line cut across the land like someone had drawn a border straight through the trees with one side painted in that dead, oppressive green while the other looked... normal.
He even saw birds scatter on the far side.
"We’re almost out..." Nico said and despite the panic still crawling up his spine, a shaky grin formed on his face.
And then the ground on the safe side exploded.
-ROAR-!
A massive gorilla-shaped monster made entirely of stone roared from below before ripping another tree from the ground with a single hand, roots and all.
Nico felt his stomach drop as it wound up and hurled it straight at them.
"Nom..." he said quickly, dashing sideways as the tree screamed past him, "You’re up. Handle the rest."
With a nod and a grin, she said, "Okay!"
Nom-Nom let go before dropping like a meteor, and before Nico could even fully process it, a sonic boom cracked the air as she launched forward, tearing across the forest floor straight toward the stone monster.
Nico exhaled hard, shoulders loosening just a fraction as he hovered there.
Turning around, he found X-97 already catching up, wings wide as she closed the distance and rejoined them from behind.
Beyond her, the Jubokko Forest stood silent again with red roots and branches frozen mid-reach as though nothing had happened at all.
"As terrifying as they are," Nico muttered, forcing his breathing to a steady rhythm, "... they’re still trees at the end of the day."
X-97 nodded in agreement as she said, "They cannot pursue beyond their roots."
While ahead of them, finally set free, Nom-Nom bashed herself straight into the monster in utter delight.
Nico turned back to X-97 as he said, "Just this final stretch... as we agreed... we run parallel to the border without causing much chaos, and once we’ve changed our perceived direction of exit from the Jubokko Forest... well, it’s gloves off."
X-97 gave a single nod before speaking, "Young Master, there’s something I believe may benefit us..."
"And that’d be?" Nico asked, tilting his head.
"The Night Of The Red Moon."