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The air turned murderous.
My wariness rose on its own.
The intuition inside me was sounding a quiet alarm.
I glared at them and thought.
'What the fuck are those bastards?'
To me, Gaians were always objects of suspicion.
Otherworlders I could let slide, even if they made me a little uneasy.
Because their reason for coming into the forest was just to gawk, like watching monkeys at the zoo.
To Otherworlders, this place was nothing but a game, so the sentiment they carried was infinitely shallow.
And, frankly, even if they picked a fight, they weren't all that threatening.
But the people here, Gaians, were different.
The very fact that they had come into this forest at all was unusual.
Because this forest, with threats lurking in every direction, was a place even A-Rank adventurers didn't enter lightly.
Unlike Otherworlders, they only had one life.
If you made one wrong turn on the paths and couldn't get out before nightfall, that was when things turned genuinely dangerous.
Thus, the cases where Gaians entered this place fell into two categories.
The first was criminals fleeing from pursuit, like me or that Lian I'd seen last time.
Or people who had come in here with a specific purpose.
"Damnation, if you've searched that much and still can't find him, you ought to know when to give up. What's that man to us that we have to crawl into a place this dangerous?"
"...Calm down. Well, if the higher-ups tell us to jump, we jump. What can we do about it?"
And judging by their reaction, it seemed they were the latter.
Perhaps because they were too busy talking to each other, they hadn't discovered us yet.
I stopped Chae-rin and scrutinised them intently.
A number of questions surfaced in my mind.
'What have they come looking for?'
No, before that, how had we run into them at all?
'Did the viewers tip them off on our direction, maybe...'
I dismissed the thought moments later, shaking my head.
It was a stupid idea even as I thought it.
How could viewers who'd sent a donation possibly pinpoint a location that was shifting every moment? There was neither a reason nor a method for them to relay it.
And in the first place, her current broadcast was being conducted while minimising the surrounding scenery as much as possible.
So if you looked at the view through her broadcast right then, her face took up a significant portion of it.
To an almost burdensome degree.
Of course, when we came out of the cave, she'd flat-out covered the screen.
So, meeting viewers along the way was, in most cases, pure chance.
Granted, they might have spotted an extremely tiny part of the forest scenery visible in gaps of the stream and come looking... but there was no way they'd have searched with that level of obsession.
...I wanted to believe there wasn't.
At any rate, for those reasons, the circumstances of our encounter with them boiled down to one thing.
'Simple coincidence.'
What shit luck. And when I was in a tired state, no less.
Soon enough, the pair who had been sauntering along finally spotted us. A short exclamation burst from their mouths.
"...Oho?"
"Nice."
Their eyes were aimed straight at me. By now, it was a reaction I'd grown reasonably used to.
"Well, what in the world is this? Seeing such a rare treasure in a forest like this."
"Right you are. Keuh, fuck, look at that body and face. The little shits in the brothels can't even compare, can they?"
I pulled my guard up. Just from the way they talked, they didn't seem like women of particularly high quality.
I blocked Chae-rin, who was about to approach thinking they were viewers, and asked them.
"...What are you?"
"Nice, this guy's voice is good too?"
There were two of them in total.
A red-haired woman carrying a greatsword, and an orange-haired woman with a shortsword and round shield.
Among them, the orange-haired woman gave me an answer.
"It's nothing you need to know in detail. We were just looking for someone. Have you, by any chance, seen a man with brown hair and blue eyes? Anywhere, not just here."
Hearing that, I knew exactly who they were looking for.
'Fuck.'
It was me.
Then, were these bastards with Lemegeton?
The odds were high. They were said to be in a frenzy trying to find me.
I'd heard that for the past two months they'd only searched the cities near the Empire, and now they had at last expanded their search radius to the 'Forbidden Forest.'
Good grief, who investigates thinking a person could actually survive here?
The superior of those bitches was undoubtedly an absolute numbskull.
For the moment, I made an effort to maintain calm and answered them.
"Afraid not. I've seen so many men like that, I wouldn't know which one you mean. In the first place, aren't men with those features a dime a dozen if you go to any city?"
It wasn't untrue. Brown hair and blue eyes were a common colouring for commoners.
It was what I'd asked for when I received the 'Illusion Sight' to begin with.
At my words, the woman nodded.
"Hmm... You do have a point there."
"Then may we pass now? I need to be getting back soon for a request."
I briefly pretended to be an adventurer. Right then, I was not an off-grid dweller living here, but an adventurer working for his daily bread.
So, please, just let me through. I didn't want a confrontation right now.
"No, I don't think that'll be happening."
But the reply that came back was a truly frustrating one.
'Damnation.'
Cursing inwardly, I whispered to Chae-rin.
Chae-rin had apparently realized they weren't players too. A faint tension had settled over her face.
"Chae-rin. Turn the stream off."
"Huh? Oh, but the atmosphere's a bit weird right now... Wouldn't it be better to get help from the viewers who came by earlier...?"
"I don't need that, just do it."
I was more afraid of attention being drawn to this place than I was of those bitches.
And right then, my instincts were giving me an ominous feeling.
An intense foreboding that I was going to clash with those bastards.
And judging by their relaxed demeanour, they were certain to be considerably strong.
What if I ended up so much as scratched fighting them? And what if that was broadcast live on the stream?
...A massive catastrophe could unfold.
"Alright... Just a moment."
Fortunately, she listened to me.
[Wait you're just leaving like this?]
[No fuck don't go]
[Going like this makes me anxious as hell just leave it on pls Baal~]
[zero sense of occasion lmaoooo]
Poof-
As if the power were cut, the chats visible before my eyes vanished in an instant.
I barely knew anything about streaming, having last watched it twenty-three years ago, but an abrupt ending like that surely dealt a significant blow.
Especially since the stream had been drawing aggro, viewers would have been flocking to it.
Yet she had given all of that up and cut the camera simply because I'd told her to.
I was grateful and sorry, but it couldn't be helped.
"Whoops, you had an Otherworlder beside you. How good of her to turn off the broadcast."
"Why can't you let us go? We clearly told you we didn't know. Wouldn't it be better if we each just went our own way?"
"Heh-heh, I'm sure you'd like that. But y'see, we've got a fair bit of stress built up."
The red-haired bitch said, hefting her greatsword.
"The higher-ups are having fits, tellin' us to find that man quick. We've been busy as shit. We've already been pent up and frustrated lately, so shouldn't we get to let off a little steam?"
In other words, she meant she wanted to screw me.
"Haaah..."
I let out a sigh and drew my spear.
These were a type of human I hadn't met in a very long while.
With neither law nor rules in this forest, people who came here were occasionally dominated by their lower halves. It wasn't a type I'd been missing.
"There's an Otherworlder here too. What do you plan to do if she dies and sends word back? Have you no fear of the law?"
"Heh-heh, sorry, but we're already criminals."
They said it like a badge of honor.
The bastards drew their weapons and began levelling them at us.
Though Chae-rin at my side drew her weapon as well, frankly, I wasn't expecting much.
Weren't these the kind who'd been moving about with such confidence in the middle layers, and with only one life to boot?
The level gap with her was certain to be considerable.
'There's no running away... is there?'
I entertained the thought for a moment but swiftly discarded it. It wasn't exactly for Yoo Chae-rin's sake.
It was a somewhat sorry thought, but... honestly, even if she died, she'd come back to life anyway.
The problem was what came after I ran.
If I fled, they wouldn't simply leave this forest, would they?
Having to cohabit in the forest for a while with rapists who wanted to screw me. A thing like that was better cleaned up swiftly.
So I'd be as careful as possible.
The attack I chose was the Throwing Sword.
It was safe because it was ranged, and I could add the element of surprise.
The first strike had to be sudden and intense.
That way you could start with the upper hand.
Pretending to step backward, I swiftly grabbed the dagger in my back pocket.
The familiar grip wrapped around my hand. Without a moment's hesitation, I hurled it at the opponent.
I was curious how they would react.
Would they dodge it quickly? Or raise a weapon to block?
The answer was neither.
"Don't worry. If you stay still, we'll make it so it doesn't hurt..."
Shlunk-!
As she spoke, the dagger lodged itself in the neck of the red-haired bitch.
Smirking as she approached, the woman hadn't even been able to react.
It was the ill-fated consequence of a fool who had dared let her guard down in this forest.
Helplessly, the wretch expired on the spot.
"Uh, uhh?"
Beside her, the orange-haired woman's dumbfounded voice popped out.
Inwardly, I breathed a sigh of relief.
Phew, what's this. I'd been scared for nothing.
I looked at her and spoke.
"Next, come on in."