The forest, shredded into a heap of wreckage, felt like a threat display aimed straight at them.
Duncan had no idea when the bears had closed in, or how they'd managed to complete an encirclement without exposing themselves—despite Duncan and Bell moving at such speed.
The two bears they'd fought—one ahead, one behind—now felt like nothing more than bait.
Just as Duncan had started to believe they'd escaped, reality smashed him back down. That drop—from the brink of salvation into the pit—was hard to swallow even for him.
The Great Tree Sea began to tremble.
One hidden presence after another surfaced.
Eleven auras in total, sealing them in. No matter which direction they tried—retreat or advance—enemies were waiting.
"Spread out—don't let them net us together. Fight while pushing forward. This time I'm in front and you're behind. Aim for their limbs. Don't try to tank hits. And don't hang in the air unless you have to."
Duncan shifted tactics instantly.
Staying inside the ring was guaranteed death. Even if the odds were microscopic, they had to force a breakthrough.
Wind blades whispered past from below and the sides.
Up in the air, they were basically targets.
The "air bricks" vanished at the right moment—both of them dropped at once—and the converging wind blades detonated overhead with a shriek of tearing friction.
The instant they hit the canopy again, Duncan and Bell moved—splitting left and right and sprinting forward.
To prevent escape, four bears had positioned themselves along their route.
Seeing the two humans charge in, the bears roared together—almost like laughter at their arrogance.
"Hold your breath!" Duncan barked.
Left hand locked on the spear, he dug into a pocket with his right and snapped out two stink bombs, hurling them straight into the bears.
They burst beside the monsters—
A black fog bloomed outward, carrying the concentrated stench of a Poison-Belly Weasel.
The smell hit like a curse.
The bears froze—then, almost in perfect unison, clamped paws over mouth and nose.
The toxin itself didn't scare them.
But that lingering, soul-violating odor?
Even Level 1 adventurers dreaded it. The weasel wasn't strong, but it ranked high on any "monsters you never want to meet" list for a reason.
Duncan didn't care about their feelings.
The black fog masked movement, and the stench robbed the bears of reaction time.
In the blink it took to breathe, Duncan pushed his speed to the limit and was already inside their reach.
The wolf-fang spear snapped out faster than he'd ever moved it in his life. In a weaving surge of footwork, he carved multiple slashes into the lower limbs of the two bears closest to him—quick, shallow-but-costly cuts meant to cripple movement, not kill.
Bell burst from behind in the instant Duncan created space.
Reverse-gripping his dagger, he cut several lines into one bear's foot—then disengaged immediately, refusing to linger.
At the same time, he pulled out a stink bomb identical to Duncan's and threw it toward a bear farther off—one that wasn't covered by the black fog.
That bear—apparently smart enough to recognize trouble—was just about to use its ability.
It aborted the cast mid-motion and bolted sideways.
But another bear, with no one pressuring it, roared—
Its horn answered.
A wind blade fired out with terrifying speed, shooting straight for Bell.
In the last instant—
Duncan, now shifting from vanguard to rear guard, slammed in behind Bell.
He gripped the spear with both hands and chopped into the incoming wind blade.
Impact thundered.
The recoil numbed his hands all the way to the wrists—but the invisible blade was deflected.
A wind edge that could slice trees like noodles failed to break through Duncan's swing and the special-metal spearhead of the Wolf-Fang spear.
Duncan exhaled hard.
That had been instinct—pure impulse, triggered by Bell's danger.
He'd seen what those wind blades did. "Tanking" one without knowing the result was madness.
But now—hands tingling and burning—he at least had proof: they could be blocked.
With the strike exchanged, both sides opened distance.
But Duncan had stalled for that parry—an unavoidable pause—and the bear that had dodged the stink bomb used the gap to charge through the edge of the fog and appear directly in front of him.
A massive palm swept sideways.
Duncan was still in recovery—no time to dodge.
He thrust the spear tip forward to meet it—
And the force that followed was absurd.
Power slammed into the spear, into his hands, from hands into arms, from arms into his entire body—until the world blurred backward.
Duncan became a cannonball.
He flew more than ten meters and crashed into a tree trunk.
The hit drove blood up his throat.
He coughed—red in the dawn-dim canopy.
The bear was furious enough to accept mutual damage. To it, even being skewered through the paw was only a small wound—nothing compared to the humiliation.
Level 2 endurance—and Duncan's abnormal durability—kept him on his feet.
But his sway said enough: he was hurting.
He forced his screaming organs to obey, sprinting again even as he dug out a healing potion.
Thank the habit of keeping potions in close side pockets—if they'd been deeper in the pack, that impact might've shattered the lot.
He swallowed.
The vile drink eased the burning inside him—just a little.
But that small delay was enough.
The bears Duncan had stalled—especially the two that ate stink bombs and took limb cuts—closed in like enraged freight trains.
Their movements had lost finesse.
They didn't need finesse.
They simply hurled their overwhelming mass forward.
Trees toppled. Dirt and stones sprayed.
Duncan didn't dare meet it head-on. A casual paw strike had already launched him like a projectile—what would a full-body charge do?
He didn't want to find out.
As the two bears reached him, he jumped up onto a treetop.
The moment he moved—
The rear bear, the one that had been providing ranged cover the entire time, predicted it.
A wind blade—charged for a while—shot out.
It cleaved through obstructing trees along its path and screamed toward Duncan.
Almost simultaneously, Duncan's body reacted on pure reflex.
The instant his foot touched the treetop, he used it as a springboard—no pause—vaulting sideways.
The wind blade passed where he would've been.
A near miss.
Then—
From a blind angle, another wind blade ripped in with a tearing sound.
The bears showed terrifying coordination:
Two bears pressuring in close.
Two bears behind them firing wind blades.
Their timing was layered, orderly, deliberate—like a disciplined firing pattern designed to deny Duncan any breathing room.
Sky-Step.
At the edge of disaster, Duncan forced a midair jump—clawing upward with his skill and snapping his path into a new line.
The relentless barrage had him dancing on a knife's edge.
From the start until now, only one attack had truly landed on him—the rest had missed.
But it didn't matter.
Those bodies, those wind blades—one clean hit was all it took to become a corpse.
As the fight threatened to slide from a retreat battle into a full engagement, Duncan's mind went colder and colder.
Shouting wouldn't solve anything.
He could not let this become a straight brawl.
But how to break the situation—
Even with his brain running at maximum speed, he couldn't see the answer yet. The power gap was too wide, and the bears had learned—staggered attacks, layered pressure, no more easy "hit and run."
The one mercy was that Bell had already gotten clear.
At least Duncan no longer had to split his focus to protect him.
....
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