Rico looked personally offended, and it was not the dramatic kind he used for coffee theft or minor insults. He turned toward Phong with both paws on his chest like he had just been betrayed by the world itself.
"Farmer throws Rico into battle trial like spare goblin."
Phong did not even blink. He knew the drama racoon too well to buy the act. "If you can't keep up with the Wolven, I revoke your allowance to join the war."
Silence.
Then, the changes in Rico was instant. His ears went still, his back straightened, the raccoon locked in with the intense focus of a coffee thief, or a challenge runner.
Jake would have called it a gamer moment, Dominic would have called it "the zone". Phong, watching from a safe distance, simply called it dangerous. Rico stepped forward, and threw an empty pack of instant coffee at the Wolven like he was throwing glove.
"Then witness greatness."
The raccoon stroke a pose, then screamed at the top of his tiny raccoon lungs.
"Chou Henshin!"
The baby treant on his back reacted at that command. Roots and vines burst outward in a tight, practiced rush, climbing over Rico's body like living snakes as wooden plates locked into place. In merely an instant, the raccoon was covered from head to paws with the living wooden armor. Every joints, every veins were pulsing with mana, but this was not the usual form the camp had seen before.
This time, the armor grew thicker, heavier. Caps of Shielding Shiitake pushed out in layered plates over the shoulders, chest, and thighs, forming broad, sturdy sections that looked closer to dungeon-made hulkbuster than the sleeker rider look he had used before. The mushroom caps overlapped like curved shields, pale and hard, giving the suit a bulkier, tougher silhouette.
Then the were the changes made to the fists. Bonktatoes swelled along the gauntlets, dense and ugly and full of brutal promise. Thick vines ran from the shoulders down the arms and into those oversized fists, twisting tight like cords under tension.
By the time the transformation finished, Rico no longer looked like a raccoon playing hero. He looked like a tiny living siege weapon.
Phong stared.
The outline to that wooden armor was absurdly familiar. The bulky mushroom plates, the massive gauntlets, the heavy, stomping build, the rounded helmet.
"…that looks like Hulkbuster," he muttered.
Rico pointed proudly. "Correct. Rico a modern kamen rider. Rico had different forms! This is Judgement Form!"
The three Wolven had looked openly contempt before. Now they were all staring with bright, eager eyes. Whatever contempt they had felt at the idea of dueling a raccoon vanished on the spot. The Wolven were practically vibrating. In their eyes, there were now something else, something dangerous.
Excitement.
One of them stepped forward immediately, baring sharp teeth in a grin. Another snapped back at him, using the human hand to shove the first back. The third wedged in between them with a growl. For a moment they were actually arguing about who got to fight Rico first.
Phong folded his arms and watched them bicker like battle-starved teenagers.
Eventually the first Wolven won the right.
He paced out into the open, all coiled legs and sharp muscle, then lowered his stance toward Rico. Rico rolled one shoulder under the mushroom armor and planted his feet.
The juvenile Wolven struck first. He shot forward in a blur, claws aimed low and then high in the kind of snapping combination meant to test how serious the little armored thing really was.
Rico didn't dodge. Speed wasn't the strength of the Judgement form anyway. The raccoon held in place, on hand raised up, pointing the mushroom cap bracer toward the advancing Wolven. The claws slammed into the Shielding Shiitake plating with a heavy crack, carving grooves and sending dust off the mushroom caps. But it was not enough to break through. The impact rocked Rico back one step.
Then came the retaliate.
If Dominic was here, he would laugh proudly while filing for a violation of copyright.
Rico fought just like how the gentle giant would fight.
The bonktato gauntlet came around in a brutal hook. The vines running from the armor's shoulder plates into the gauntlet tightened and snapped forward at the same time, working almost like hydraulic pistons, adding both power and speed to the attack. Thus, a hook from a tiny raccoon quickly turned into something that carried the force of a jack hammer behind it.
The Wolven saw it coming, and made a very bad choice. Curiosity lit in his eyes for one stupid second, and instead of dodging, he decided to tank the hit and feel what the weird little armored raccoon could really do.
The bonktato fist smashed into him.
The sound was horrible.
A thick, meaty crack that echoed off the lakeshore stones.
The Wolven left the ground.
He flew backward a full two meters and hit the dirt like someone had clipped him with a speeding car.
Phong's mouth dropped open so wide a tennis ball could have fit inside. The other two Wolven froze, the Tortura collectively looked down at their chest shell and all took one cautious step back just in case. Even the Kamohai stopped arguing with the Lizardmen and turned to look.
Rico put both arms on his waist in triumph. "Observe! This is the pinnacle of raccoon science!"
Phong found his voice again. "What did you do."
Rico puffed out his chest. "Fed baby treant parts of defensive plants."
That was bad enough.
Then the raccoon added, with unbearable pride, "This only one-third complete. Rico has two more up sleeve."
Phong stared at him in horror.
"You've been experimenting."
"Yes."
"You didn't tell me."
"Got your permission."
That, annoyingly, tracked perfectly.
Phong remembered the raccoon had approached him to ask for permissions to use the defensive plants after Josh came to the camp. He had naively agreed under the condition that Rico didn't harm his plants, thinking the raccoon was just scared of Josh and his hyperactive mind would get bored of experiment in give or take a few days. Phong was wrong. He had created this.
A raccoon whose intrusive thought won 90% of the time, with a powered armor that had multiple forms.
Phong felt like a dungeon Dr. Frankenstein.
The Wolven on the ground got back up bruised and battered. But he got up, shaking out his arms and grinning now in a way that made it clear the hit had not insulted him. It had delighted him.
He came in harder, faster, more vicious the second time.
He aimed for the seams in the armor, testing the mushroom plates, aiming to sweep the legs, trying to break Rico's balance before the next bonktato fist could land. But the problem was much simpler to see now. The Shielding Shiitake was too sturdy to chew through quickly, and every extra beat spent hitting it meant risking another one of those club-like gauntlets smashing his face inside out.
The Wolven feinted left. Rico, lacking any real battle experience, swung anyway.
The Wolven barely twisted off the line in time as the bonktato fist missed by inches and cratered the dirt hard enough to make everyone nearby flinch.
The Wolven tried to move behind, but his tail were caught by the massive gauntlet of Judgement Form. Rico, cackling like a complete maniac, slammed the Wolven toward the ground like what Hulk did to Loki. The wolf centaur back hit hard against the floor of the ruin with a loud thud, but it was not enough to incapacitated a high level monster. The Wolven broke free by kicking the fingers of Rico armor hard enough to break it. Chunk of wood fell onto the ground, forcing the treant to repair the broken fingers on the spot.
The Wolven took this opening to back out of the danger zone.
For a few more exchanges, despite his experience, the Wolven could not safely commit enough force to break the armor without entering the danger zone. Rico could not quite tag him cleanly again unless the wolf-boy got greedy.
Then... the whole suit shuddered.
The baby treant on Rico's back trembled once, then twice.
And Rico, who had just started to laugh like a tiny dungeon tyrant, suddenly flopped onto the ground face first.
Thunk.
Phong blinked.
The armor peeled back in exhausted strands of vine and mushroom flesh. The baby treant sagged against Rico's back, utterly spent.
Rico groaned into the dirt. "…five minutes."
Phong crouched beside him and picked the raccoon up by the collar. "That's the limit."
The raccoon turned his head weakly. "Rico would have won if baby treant didn't go on a strike."
Phong snorted, but now he knew that at least Rico could protect himself on the battlefield. And Josh... given how Rico's armor had incorporated parts of his garden into itself, was about to have a Vietnam flashback moment. Phong had thought about getting a baby treant for himself ever since Rico showing off his kamen rider armor back before the trip to Lyon, but the treant had denied his request.
Somehow, they seemed to tolerate a raccoon, but human was off-limits to them.
The Wolven who had dueled Rico stood there breathing hard, dusted in dirt and still rubbing his chest where the bonktato fist had sent him flying. Then, slowly, he started laughing. His two packmates joined in a second later, bright-eyed and thrilled.
The one who fought first looked at Rico with open respect now.
"We judged too early," he said.
Rico raised one paw while being held by Phong. "Correct."
Phong looked between the raccoon, the exhausted baby treant, and the grinning Wolven, and felt the strange shape of the situation settle.
This had worked.
And worse, if Rico had not been exaggerating. If that was only one-third of whatever insane armor ideas he had been feeding into the treant, then Phong too had another future headache to deal with after the wars against Josh.
For now though, one thing was clear.
The Wolven were interested.
And Rico, flattened in the dirt and grinning through exhaustion, had just earned their attention the hard way.
That night, after the first wave of Mushroomires had been settled and the camp had a moment to breathe, Phong updated Team Nemean on Rico's latest disaster.
The group chat stayed quiet for a full five seconds after he described the armor.
Then Joanne sent:
[You let the raccoon become a miniboss.]
Jake followed right after.
[Correction. A tokusatsu miniboss.]
Phong did not bother defending himself.
There was nothing to defend.
Rico had somehow fed the baby treant parts of defensive plants, turned the result into a three-stage Kamen Rider armor system, and punched a Wolven hard enough to launch him backward like roadkill in reverse.
That was simply reality now.
Emma replied next.
[Interesting.]
That one word carried enough dangerous interest that Phong immediately regretted saying anything.
The next morning, Team Nemean started moving the Mushroomires.
They could not rush the colony. The smaller Mushroomires panicked too easily, and the larger ones reacted to that panic by clustering tighter, which made the whole migration messy. So Dominic split the group properly. Jack and Janet handled the flanks. Jake, Séline, and Camille kept watch for threats. Nyx and Bruno helped surprisingly well, mostly because the Mushroomires seemed to trust them faster than they trusted humans. Emma and Alex, both still recovering, stayed with the rear elements and the more nervous groups while Dominic coordinated the whole miserable procession.
The Mushroompires were another matter.
Those had to be handled in pieces.
The lizardmen mages met them near Lake Baratok exactly as planned. Cold magic rolled in controlled pulses over the more aggressive fungal forms, knocking them inert and letting the team secure them without turning every contact into another fight. From there, the subdued Mushroompires were transported out toward the meadow between Deathpeak and the Dungeon Gate leading to Manhattan.
For Josh and the divers gathering under him, that stretch of land was the safest route. It avoided the Black Ant Colony and the regular patrol lines of the Greencap cavalry. It looked like the cleanest path for a human advance.
Phong had chosen it for the same reason.
If Josh wanted safe ground, then that safe ground could become a hell pit filled with fungal demons very quickly.
Emma had also given the group some insight the night before, while they worked through the logic of how the elites would react.
Most of them, she said, had already guessed Josh's true intention. Not every detail, maybe, vut enough. They knew this was not pure generosity.
Not pure heroism either.
To them, Josh looked like a stubborn rich young man whose ego had grown too large to survive embarrassment. A man trying to reclaim his own image by forcing reality to cooperate. The heroic spin they built around him was starting to feed back into him, and now he wanted to prove he could be the main character for real.
But that did not mean the powerful would stop him.
Because the divers moving with Josh were not heirs, they were students, aspiring talents. They were young people from families outside the inner circle, wanting to change the world, to be different, to stand out. They were bright with hopes and dreams, and were perfect to be used and taken advantage of just by dangling a carrot in front of them.
If they died, or if things turned ugly, the elites could still use the story.
A noble push into dangerous lands. Brave sacrifice. Noble heroic attempt. Human expansion. The forging of new heroes on the frontier.
Emma had said it with cold disgust.
"Worst case," she told them, "they spin it into a westward expansion story."
She was right, and everyone in team Nemean and camp Stymphalian hated every single bit of it.
Trolls would get far less empathy than Native Americans ever did. Most people would not even try to pretend otherwise. That ugly truth sat in the back of everyone's mind as the relocation continued.
By the time the first of the Mushroomires had been safely guided toward the lake routes and onward to Camp Stymphalian, Dominic made another call: Alex and Emma would be sent back first.
Neither woman liked it.
Neither had enough strength to argue convincingly.
The worst of the Berserking Strawberry debuff had passed, but that only meant they were no longer collapsing. It did not mean they were fit to keep escorting a fungal migration across hostile land. Emma's class made her simply unfit for long, dragged out battles that were expected in an escort mission. Alex was indeed team Nemean's strongest DPS, but the damage done to her body by the extra stats were still very much presents.
So they went back.
The moment Emma reached Camp Stymphalian, she found Rico.
More accurately, she hunted him.
The raccoon had been in the middle of slacking off while trying to look busy when she scooped him up under one arm like a personal pet she had every right to own.
Rico made a startled noise. "Excuse—"
Emma held up a can of energy drink, and Rico stopped protesting immediately. His eyes locked on it with the focused reverence of a pilgrim spotting a holy relic.
Emma smiled. "Show me the other two forms."
Phong, watching from a short distance, put a hand over his face.
Of course.
Of course this was how Emma chose to recover.
Rico, to his surprise, clutched the can to his chest and said with full dignity, "Negotiations unsuccessful."
"I'm surprised," Phong muttered.
Rico cracked the can open. "Rider forms are secrets that are nonnegotiable!"
Emma set him down and crouched to eye level, entirely too amused. "How about two?"
"Two cans?"
'Two dozen packs."
The raccoon's whiskers twitched, and he thought long and hard about a good price to sell out his principles.
Phong abandoned them to their madness and turned to the problem that mattered more to him: Alex.
He brought her back to their lodging himself, carrying her like a princess, just like how she demanded after the run in with Olen earlier this year.
She insisted she was fine the whole way.
Alex wasn't being loud, wasn't being stubborn enough to start a fight. She did so in that flat, composed tone she used when she wanted to pretend pain was irrelevant because admitting otherwise felt too close to troubling other.
Phong ignored all of it.
The moment they got inside, he pointed at the bed. "Rest."
Alex leaned one shoulder against the wall and crossed her arms. "I said I'm fine."
"You're not."
"I can still walk."
"That's not the standard."
Her mouth twitched faintly, but she held the line. "You're being dramatic."
Phong looked at her for a moment, then stepped closer in a firm, unyielding way very much unlike the usual him.
"You're hurt," he said. "You're recovering. And you're going to rest until you actually recover. This is final."
Alex blinked once.
He almost never pushed like this.
Not with her.
He was steady, yes. Quietly stubborn, yes. But this sort of direct insistence came out less often, maybe because he knew she hated being handled, maybe because he usually chose softer angles first. Now he did not.
"Sit," he said.
And somehow that hit harder than any argument would have.
Alex stared at him for another second, then looked away first.
"…bossy."
"You can complain from the bed."
That got the smallest huff out of her.
She surrendered after that, letting him guide her down, letting him settle the blankets, letting him fuss in that practical, gentle way of his that always felt more honest than grand declarations ever could. He checked her bandages, made sure she had water, set food nearby, and adjusted the pillow when she tried to pretend it was fine the wrong way. Every motion was careful and intent and just pushy enough to make it clear he was not negotiating this one.
Alex watched him in silence for a while.
Then, when he turned away to get one more thing, her expression softened where he could not see it.
Because the truth was simple: She liked this side of him.
The part that stepped forward and decided for her when he truly thought she needed protecting, even from her own pride.
It was rare.
And because it was rare, it mattered more.
By the time Phong came back to sit near her, still looking like a man managing three wars at once with sleep deprivation and sheer spite, Alex had already stopped fighting the order.
She leaned back, closed her eyes, and said, "Fine. I'll rest."
Phong nodded once, like this had always been the obvious outcome.
Then he stayed there with her, keeping watch while the camp outside shifted toward the next phase of crisis, and Alex let herself enjoy, quietly and without ever admitting it aloud, the pushier side of her soon-to-be fiancé.