On the tenth day after entering the Great Tree Sea, the relentless assaults stopped—abruptly, as if someone had cut them off with a blade.
The forest fell into a cliff-like silence. Apart from the occasional wind slipping through the branches, there was nothing—no growls, no rustling of lurking bodies. Even the hostile presences that had been circling the party for days had vanished without a trace.
It was eerily similar to what Duncan had experienced the year before, when he crossed into that barrier and the world around him seemed to be severed in an instant. The change was so sudden that even the Level 1 members could clearly feel it.
"Isn't it… too quiet?" a Level 1 guarding the supplies whispered. "Even the monsters aren't attacking anymore."
Another member replied in a calm, almost practiced tone. "We all noticed. No need to say it out loud. Lady Artemis and the captain aren't panicking, so why should we? Enjoy the rare rest while you can. Something has changed ahead—don't end up dead because you didn't recover when you had the chance."
Artemis, who had sensed the unease long before it reached the rear, ordered the party to halt and take a short break.
With no monster aura in the vicinity, Duncan requested permission to scout farther ahead. While he went, Letsa approached Artemis, her expression taut.
"Lady Artemis… can you sense anything?"
As the Goddess of the Hunt, Artemis's intuition surpassed that of most gods. The forest was her domain—no one should have been more attuned to subtle shifts within it.
But this time, she gave an answer that disappointed Letsa.
"…No."
Letsa's brow tightened.
Artemis continued, voice steady. "What I can say is this: the monsters in the area clearly sensed danger and fled early. A large portion of the attacks we endured were likely driven by the pressure of those displaced creatures."
She paused, gaze fixed on the darkness between the trees.
"But ahead, there's nothing distinct—only an absence. The disturbance is coming from deeper within the Tree Sea."
"Deeper…" Letsa murmured. "The Aelsos Ruins?"
As captain, she knew their mission and the broad framework behind it. Like many of the guild's periodic commissions, this world held countless sites where ancient monsters had been sealed away.
Before the gods descended, humanity's fighting strength had been painfully insufficient. Monsters ran rampant across the surface. The heroes of the ancient age—some of whom displayed power not inferior to modern First-Class adventurers—were simply too few to purge every threat.
In desperation, the Great Spirits used their own might to seal away monsters that could not be dealt with at the time.
Then the gods came.
With divine blessings engraved onto mortal backs, a new generation of heroes rose. Empowered by the gods, they suppressed surface monsters and contained the Dungeon—establishing wards, settlements, and long-term systems of resistance that stabilized the Lower World.
But time eroded even the spirits' seals.
As centuries passed, those ancient bindings weakened, and the sealed monsters—unwilling to remain buried—began to stir once more. The guild in Orario responded with bounties and commissions, sending familias to eliminate threats before they could break free.
Over a thousand years of effort, many manageable "hidden mines" were cleared. But ruins buried in complex environments—like those within the Great Tree Sea—remained exceptionally difficult to handle.
The spirits' seals were robust, built with layered caution: they locked the monsters in from the inside, and—preventing outside interference—formed external barriers that were extremely difficult to breach.
It was a sound strategy in an era when humans could barely survive.
But once high-level adventurers appeared and humanity began to dominate surface threats, those same barriers became a shield for the sealed monsters. Even powerful adventurers couldn't force entry.
So the guild settled for the next best option: regular inspection commissions. If signs of escape appeared, then stronger familias would be dispatched for an extermination campaign.
That was why Artemis Familia was here.
"It's likely," Artemis said, her expression darkening—so heavy it seemed it could drip. "No… it would be best if it were."
Unlike most mortals and even many gods, Artemis had heard more detailed knowledge passed down by the older deities. The Great Tree Sea was counted among the Three Great Secret Regions not only because it was vast and infested—but because, in its deepest reaches, monsters existed that rivaled First-Class adventurers.
If those creatures were moving…
Then her familia could do nothing.
Only the Loki Familia—or Freya Familia—could be expected to contain a crisis of that scale.
The one piece of good news was that they were still far from the "deepest" region recorded in common knowledge. Their current position could only be called the threshold of the inner depths.
Judging from the mass retreat of monsters, the most probable cause was that the Aelsos Ruins had destabilized.
Artemis exhaled slowly, forcing the darker possibilities out of her mind, and turned to Letsa.
"Letsa—has the guild's reply come?"
"It just arrived," Letsa said, visibly energized. "The guild received our report on the fifth day, but for some reason the return message was delayed for several days. Still—good news: they've already commissioned reinforcements to assist us. I don't know how close they are yet."
"Oh?" Artemis tilted her head. "Who?"
"It's Astraea Familia," Letsa answered, and her tone carried genuine relief. "I don't know their exact headcount, but during last year's Great Feud, 'Crimson Right Blossom,' 'Yamato Gentian,' and 'Gale'—they all reached Level 4. If it's them, they can absolutely handle this situation."
She passed the letter to Artemis and added, "And the guild has extended the commission deadline. We won't be marked as failed just because we waited."
"Astraea's children…" Artemis murmured, understanding at once.
She had heard plenty about Astraea Familia—the ones who had returned from outside Orario and shone brightly during the Great Feud. And Astraea herself was a god Artemis considered a friend.
Their arrival would be a major advantage.
Artemis skimmed the letter with practiced speed, eyes moving like a blade through text. Then she lowered it, thoughtful.
"So," she asked, "do you intend to withdraw for now—recover, reorganize—and then advance again once Astraea Familia arrives?"
"That would be the safest approach," Letsa said carefully. "The abnormality ahead is obvious. Our party is still in good condition, but…"
She didn't finish the sentence.
Because it didn't need to be spoken.
Adventurers might be called "adventurers," but they weren't fools. When danger could be recognized at a glance, the first instinct was almost always avoidance. The higher the level, the more strongly that instinct applied.
The reckless ones—the ones who charged headlong into the unknown without weighing cost—had long since been ground into dust beneath monsters' claws.
....
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