ZZZ: A Hunter's District Zero!

Chapter 301: Is This Passive Reasonable?

Just as Andrew had predicted, Miyabi showed no additional reaction whatsoever — still standing there, blank-eyed and locked in full parrot mode.

Watching this, Andrew simply threw caution to the wind and said it straight out:

"Fine! Don’t say I didn’t warn you!"

With that, he stopped overthinking it.

He reached out toward the completely motionless Miyabi and, in an exploratory gesture, prepared to make direct contact with the arm she had wrapped around Wuwei.

What happened next, however, was not what Andrew expected.

The instant his fingers made contact — in the very next moment — the glazed, vacant Miyabi’s grip on the hilt snapped taut.

Her body’s instincts were already screaming at her to draw.

It was zero-frame startup, and it scared Andrew badly enough that he whipped his hand back in an instant, dropping into full alert.

He was wearing armor — he was completely certain that even if she actually landed that slash, he wouldn’t be hurt. But that wasn’t the point. Andrew was not a masochist. Who in their right mind would volunteer to get sliced for fun?

...Getting stepped on by someone in black stockings or white stockings was a separate conversation entirely. Completely unrelated.

But just as Andrew braced himself against the possibility of Miyabi actually following through on that draw —

He noticed something.

Right at the very instant she was on the verge of completing the draw, Miyabi’s fox ears gave the faintest twitch. Then, as though she had confirmed something, she immediately stopped the motion that had been carrying the blade halfway out of its sheath.

The arm that had gone rigid gradually released. She drifted back to her original state — that perfectly unsuspecting, completely unguarded stance of hers.

And all of that had happened in an instant. Faster than a blink.

If Andrew hadn’t had the sharpened senses of a Hunter, he might have missed it entirely. If it had been Belle reaching out instead, she probably wouldn’t have caught Miyabi’s micro-movement at all — and would have just gone ahead and hugged her without thinking twice.

But for Andrew, who worked with a Tachi for a living —

He knew the exact muscle state of a draw better than he knew his own heartbeat. If Miyabi hadn’t stopped herself on her own, that blade would have genuinely come down.

What on earth was going on?

Andrew, now thoroughly at a loss, stared at Miyabi — who was just standing there as if absolutely nothing had happened — and couldn’t stop himself from asking again:

"Miyabi? Are you in there right now, or not?"

Without surprise, the Miyabi standing there like a switched-off machine echoed back:

"...Not."

"..."

Andrew instinctively pressed his palm to his face again, the torrent of commentary inside him surging to new heights.

That answer was so perfectly, precisely accurate that it didn’t even qualify as echoing anymore. That was just... answering the question.

As for what Miyabi’s actual current condition was —

Rather than standing here clueless and either waiting blindly or guessing wildly, Andrew decided to just run a hands-on experiment.

It wasn’t like he could just leave her here over this, right?

Andrew carefully reviewed every movement and reaction Miyabi had displayed during her unconscious period so far.

Drawing on the vast reserves of gaming knowledge he’d accumulated in his first life during his university years, a possible explanation surfaced quickly.

Don’t tell me this is some kind of automated defense system.

A human being, with no conscious awareness, still capable of doing... this?

No sooner had the thought formed than he was acting on it.

Using the hook-and-wire on his arm, Andrew reeled in one of the Jagras that had been pinned to the ground earlier — the one that had been knocked half-dead but had been jolted back into pure, pain-fueled savagery by the sheer agony of its injuries.

This one was in the best shape of all the heavily wounded Jagras still left. As for the rest — they had fallen into a vicious cycle: the more they struggled and snapped, the worse the pain; the worse the pain, the more their instincts screamed that they were under attack and needed to fight back; the more they fought back, the more they struggled. Round and round, an endless loop.

With adrenaline pushing them past all rational limits, those broken Jagras had already begun their final dance.

Andrew shook his head at the sight, a mildly resigned expression on his face.

Leaving them where they were clearly wasn’t going to work. In that death-spiral state, none of them were going to make it out alive.

The Jagras dying, in itself, wasn’t a problem.

The problem was the blood-scent their corpses would put out. The thrashing and noise they were already making. In a forest like this, that kind of signal was an open invitation — and there was no telling what kind of predator would come running. None of the monsters drawn by the smell of blood in this place would be remotely low on aggression.

This spot wasn’t safe to linger in. Not for long.

In the short term, at least, this area was almost certainly going to become very, very loud.

Since that was the case, he might as well put the Jagras in hand to one final use — a live test. In terms of sheer aggression, it was more than qualified.

Andrew held the Jagras and began slowly bringing its snapping head toward the range where it might realistically threaten Miyabi — while simultaneously keeping every bit of his focus on making absolutely certain the thing didn’t actually get a bite in.

As it turned out, he had been worrying for nothing.

One moment, the Jagras was snarling and lunging at anything in its line of sight. The next — its head hit the ground.

Exactly as Andrew had suspected: a razor-sharp flash of steel, and the creature had been cleaved cleanly in two.

And after bisecting the Jagras, Miyabi — seemingly unwilling to let even a drop of blood soil Wuwei’s sheath — instinctively flicked the blade in a clean snap to shed the blood from the steel before sliding it back into the scabbard with perfect, unhurried precision.

Throughout all of it, she hadn’t so much as moved her vacant, unfocused gaze. Every bit of it had been executed entirely by her body’s own will.

Andrew had watched every single frame of it.

"...So it really is fully automated. Targets anything inside the threat range, no exceptions," he muttered, the words escaping before he’d consciously chosen to say them.

Then the commentary really started coming.

"Okay but — is this even scientifically possible? Shouldn’t you wake up first when you sense danger? An autonomous attack response running while completely unconscious — even the old man at the Guild couldn’t pull that off!"

His heart was genuinely, deeply envious of that technique. It was, without question, absurdly cool.

But looking at Miyabi — still standing right there, not having moved an inch — and taking stock of the situation, Andrew quietly set aside the urge to keep testing and prodding.

The absolute worst-case outcome was she’d get a slash in on him. He had full armor. Even if she actually landed a hit, it’d be fine — he could even use the opportunity to physically restrain her if it came to that.

With that thought settled, Andrew simply reached out again.

This time, though, something unexpected happened.

When Andrew poked at her sword arm again — this time with the mindset of forcing a physical restraint if necessary — Miyabi offered no reaction at all. She seemed to have already confirmed him as an ally. She let him do as he liked, from start to finish, without the faintest trace of resistance. Nothing but the occasional echoed word — no other response of any kind.

"Huh?"

Skeptical, Andrew ran the test again. And again. And again. He tried it so many times that the last attempt had him outright poking her in the side — and still, the combat-ready tension from before never returned.

The Jagras now doing its best impression of Louis XVI on the ground might as well have been a hallucination Andrew had conjured on his own.

Except the body was still right there. Undeniably real. Which meant he couldn’t convince himself he’d imagined any of it.

Either way — one fewer slash in his future was still a relief, and Andrew let out a quiet breath without thinking.

"Miyabi — your attack isn’t just automated, is it. It comes with automatic friend-or-foe identification built in?"

After confirming it again and again until he was absolutely sure, Andrew finally couldn’t hold it back any longer.

"Is this a mode you can turn on? Or has it just... never had an off switch?"

But regardless of how much commentary he had, the road still had to be walked.

Andrew stopped wasting time. He reached out, slid one arm beneath her, and gathered the completely unguarded Miyabi into his arms.

Though — because of the wordless trust that had just been confirmed between them, and because his conscience wouldn’t let him do otherwise — he didn’t sling her over his shoulder like a bag of rice the way he might have before.

He chose something gentler instead.

He cradled her the way he’d carry a dragon egg — held securely against his chest.

Fortunately, Miyabi was nothing like a dragon egg in terms of size. Dragon eggs were unwieldy precisely because of their sheer bulk; Miyabi, slender and compact as she was, nestled into the crook of one arm without the slightest difficulty.

And it had to be said —

The experience of holding her was incomparably better than carrying a dragon egg. Not even close.

Because, for one thing: wild dragon eggs were not like grocery-store chicken eggs. They didn’t come in neat, clean packaging. As objects that had been sat on, incubated, and lived in during the hatching process, it was entirely normal for them to have picked up all manner of... additional material.

And on top of that, there was another contributing factor.

Most monsters had a habit of dragging prey back to their nests to feed, and the bones of whatever they’d eaten tended to get discarded right there in the lair. Those remains, given enough time, would begin to rot — and the smell that resulted was uniquely, indescribably foul.

Different monsters ate different things. But the stench of decomposition was a universal constant, equal-opportunity offender across all species.

And because of fermentation doing its particular work, the exact flavor of the rotting varied depending on the menu. Monster lairs, as a result, each had their own distinctive aromatic character.

Dragon eggs that had spent any amount of time in that environment carried that character with them. The less said about the specifics, the better — anyone who’d ever hauled one out of a nest already knew.

Miyabi, by contrast, was in an entirely different category.

She made a habit of training every morning, and of bathing afterward without exception. As a result, she carried a scent on her at all hours — faint, clean, and unmistakably her own. Cool and clear at its core, with something softer woven through it. A quiet warmth underneath the crispness.

It was a uniquely distinctive scent. At the very least, Andrew had never encountered anything quite like it on any flower he’d come across.

If he had to reach for a comparison...

Maybe chrysanthemum? Or lotus?

Unfortunately, Andrew had never been particularly well-versed in flowers, and couldn’t find the right name to pin it down. The closest he could get was a description so blunt it almost looped back around to elegant: it smelled good. It just smelled genuinely, simply good.

Andrew slipped one arm around Miyabi’s waist and lifted — and the soft warmth of her settled into his hold, unresisting. The girl, still without a trace of conscious awareness, showed no sign of objection from beginning to end.

In this world, entirely foreign and strange to her in every way, Andrew was the only presence she recognized.

Instinctively seeking more stability now that her feet no longer touched the ground, Miyabi’s legs drew up slightly in a small, unconscious curl. fгee𝑤ebɳoveɭ.cøm

And more importantly —

With nothing to brace against, her hands — which had maintained a firm grip on Wuwei from the moment they’d landed, even through everything — finally let go. Driven by the same instinct to find something solid to hold, her arms rose and wrapped themselves around Andrew’s neck.

It was a more practical arrangement for Andrew too — his movements would be less hindered with her holding on — and the natural result was that the girl’s body pressed closer against him, drawn in by its own momentum.

There was only one regrettable detail.

Roughly ninety percent of Miyabi’s softness was blocked entirely by Andrew’s heavy plate armor — a wall of steel between them that allowed nothing through. And the one arm that should have been able to feel her warmth directly was encased in the Gore Magala gauntlet, rendering it equally impervious.

The only point of genuine contact was the arm curved around her waist — the inner bend of his elbow, where there was no plate, pressed against the slender arc of her figure.

Slender. But not without resilience, not without strength. The line of her was perfect — one touch was enough to know she had an extraordinary waist.

Still — deep in the Ancient Forest, out in the open wild, even an embrace that would have looked undeniably intimate to any outside observer failed to stir so much as a flicker of anything beyond focus in Andrew’s mind. His entire attention was trained outward, sweeping the surroundings for any sign of a monster about to catch them off-guard.

Carrying a person through a forest was not exactly something Andrew did every day — but it wasn’t as challenging as it might have seemed.

If anything, in every way that mattered, carrying Miyabi was dramatically easier than every single Ingredient Quest the Meowscular Chef had ever commissioned him for — the ones that had him trawling the Ancient Forest day after day, hauling dragon eggs from one end to the other.

The fact alone that he could move at full pace with one arm and without slowing down made this an absolute non-comparison. The egg-hauling days weren’t even in the same conversation.

With one hand freed up, his movement was slower than his usual pace — but it wasn’t a fundamental limitation.

Guided by the glow of his Scoutflies, Andrew moved steadily through the canopy, tracking two objectives simultaneously: the direction of Astera, and any sheltered location suitable for a temporary camp.

His experience came through. Before long, he’d picked out a well-concealed hollow among the interlocking branches — hidden, defensible, hard to stumble into by accident.

The whole walk, he encountered no shortage of monsters. This was the New World, after all — creatures of every variety moved through this forest at all hours.

But not a single one of them managed to catch him. Hunter’s instinct, hunter’s experience — Andrew ghosted past every one of them without making contact.

He had absolutely no interest in hunting right now.

Miyabi was still running on instinct-only. Still conscious of nothing. And while her body was apparently capable of defending itself, Andrew had no way of knowing whether her autonomous responses had any blind spots. He wasn’t going to start a fight and leave her sitting alone on the sideline to find out.

Bringing her into a fight with him was equally out of the question. That was irresponsible in a different direction entirely.

He was the one who had agreed to bring her here. That meant it was on him to see her back safely — whole, unhurt, and intact. The moment he’d made that call, the responsibility came with it.

That weight made him careful. Made him quiet. Made him move through that forest like he was barely there at all, leaving almost nothing for any creature to notice.

Beyond that —

There was another consideration, separate from responsibility: he was currently a single Hunter, alone, with no Alma standing nearby to issue a Commission on the spot. No official framework. No authorization.

Unless a situation turned genuinely critical — or unless he encountered something that posed a severe threat to the local ecosystem — he had no desire to carry even the shadow of a poaching accusation.

His reputation at the Guild was solid. His standing was good. In all likelihood, nothing would come of it even if he did hunt. But wasn’t it precisely because he never let that trust make him careless — never used goodwill as a license to do whatever he wanted — that he’d built the kind of reputation where Alma could hand him a Commission on the spot in the first place?

He spotted the camp site ahead.

Andrew let out a quiet, unconscious breath of relief.

Moving through a forest while carrying someone was, admittedly, a novel experience — something like picking up a completely new category of Exploration Quest for the first time. But novelty wore thin after a while, and a faint thread of tiredness was starting to make itself known.

____

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