ZZZ: A Hunter's District Zero!

Chapter 304: Habit

The moment Andrew’s answer reached her ears, Hoshimi Miyabi’s eyes lit up in an instant.

The soul of a true martial fanatic had begun to blaze within her.

During the ambush to intercept Nineveh, she had already been closely watching Andrew’s techniques — observing, analyzing, attempting to imitate them in real time. In the end, she had managed to produce that one strike: a swing that resembled the genuine article without quite being it.

It had looked powerful. But Miyabi knew the truth better than anyone, because she had been the one to throw it.

Those two things had never been the same. Not from the very beginning.

No matter how much she had experimented after returning home with her new scabbard, Miyabi could feel it with absolute clarity — the gap between her imitation and the genuine article was vast beyond all measure. Not a single millimeter of ground gained.

When she had once visited the various sword schools of New Eridu in search of answers, no matter how advanced the swordsmanship, she had never encountered anything like this.

The movements looked slow. Simple. And yet, try as she might, the true essence of them was completely beyond her grasp.

If anything, it felt like the distance was only growing.

But soon she had arrived at the reason: the combat techniques of New Eridu and the techniques Andrew used came from entirely different roots. They were separate things at the source itself.

And in that domain, she was a complete and utter beginner.

For a beginner, the opportunity to learn through a structured, systematic method was something of incomparable importance and value.

And didn’t Andrew’s words just now mean that she finally had a real, genuine foundation from which she could begin to learn these techniques in this world?

But just as quickly, Miyabi pressed down the surge of excitement rising in her chest.

Until now, she had been quietly concerned — would the fundamental difference between worlds mean she couldn’t learn these critical techniques at all? That some inherent incompatibility would seal them away from her forever?

Because Miyabi understood one thing with perfect clarity.

Casually exchanging ideas and discussing Tachi techniques was an entirely different concept from structured, systematic instruction.

And through watching Andrew’s conduct during the Nineveh hunt, she had come to understand: the profession of Hunter was, like that of a Void Hunter, something that carried its own set of responsibilities and convictions. A code it did not readily set aside.

But now that she had come to this world — things were different.

If this energy was the threshold one had to cross before one could truly call oneself a Hunter — didn’t that mean that if she could become a Hunter, she could learn these techniques directly?!

All she had to do was become a Hunter, just like Andrew!

Even if she didn’t master everything completely during her time here — when she returned, she would have every right to go directly to Andrew and demand he teach her everything. Fair and square, with no room for refusal!

This moment.

The battle-mad soul of the Tachi swordswoman had fully ignited Miyabi’s potential, sending that single-track mind of hers spinning at a speed it had never managed before.

She had even come up with a roundabout strategy to get what she wanted.

She immediately raised her head, looked at Andrew standing before her, and asked outright:

"Andrew — can I become a Hunter too?"

Andrew, who understood Miyabi’s martial fanatic tendencies well enough, blinked once — and then quickly pieced together a rough picture of what she was thinking.

He hadn’t expected that she’d already been attempting to replicate his techniques at home. But the conclusion he’d drawn — that she wanted to learn everything there was to know about Tachi swordsmanship — had been entirely, perfectly correct.

For this, Andrew didn’t hesitate for even a moment. He nodded.

"Of course."

But he immediately added:

"With me as a guarantor and reference, you can bypass the Guild’s identity screening. But the assessments required to become a Hunter — those are something only your own effort can pass. That’s not something I can help you with. And even if I could, I wouldn’t."

Miyabi gave a nod of complete understanding.

A trial upon entry — that was nothing she hadn’t expected. Even with the name of the Hoshimi family behind her, she had still gone through a formal assessment when she first joined Hollow Special Operations Section 6.

As the head of the Hoshimi family, she had never made a habit of using back doors.

The fact that Andrew was willing to step forward and give her a legitimate chance at the assessment was already more than enough. The rest — she was confident she could handle herself.

Truthfully, if Andrew had tried to offer her special treatment, Miyabi would have flatly refused it.

"Alright, alright — then let’s not waste any more time. We should get moving."

Watching Miyabi, who now had a clear goal burning in her eyes and was barely containing her impatience to get her hands on these new sword techniques, Andrew rose from the folding chair and spoke in a calm, measured tone:

"Miyabi — don’t forget that you still can’t truly adapt to this environment yet. Whatever’s on your mind, the first order of business is to take the journey ahead and properly acclimatize. Alright?"

Miyabi’s expression immediately sharpened.

So — fully adapting to the wilderness was the most fundamental baseline requirement for becoming a Hunter. That was clear. The seriousness in her eyes brooked no argument as she gave one firm nod.

"Understood. I will complete the discipline of familiarizing myself with and fully adapting to nature before this journey is over."

"D... discipline?"

Before Andrew could even fully process the word, a flood of memory crashed through Miyabi — the brief, overwhelming torrent of sound from when she had first thrown her senses fully open...

But then she thought about it: if she was permanently unable to perceive her surroundings, she would be no better than someone navigating blind. Worse than useless to Andrew, let alone capable of providing any real assistance to him.

After a moment’s reflection, Miyabi made her decision: she would face it head-on.

Better a short, sharp pain than a long, drawn-out one.

Turning away from her weaknesses had never accomplished anything. The only real solution was to confront them directly and grind through them until they broke.

With that resolve firmly in place, she looked at Andrew with complete sincerity and said:

"Andrew — if the same thing happens again as when we first arrived, I’ll ask you to do the same as you did before."

"Uh..."

It was true that now that he had confirmed there was nothing medically wrong with Miyabi, if she lost consciousness again it wouldn’t be the same as that first time — no need to stop and find shelter, no risk of falling behind schedule...

But even so — being carried like that still counted as intimate contact, didn’t it?

Was she really absolutely sure she was fine with that?

But when he saw the look in Miyabi’s eyes — that absolute, resolute seriousness of someone who had committed completely to treating this as a personal challenge to be conquered — all intention of trying to dissuade her drained right out of him.

If she wasn’t bothered by it, then who was he to make it into a bigger deal than it needed to be?

With that thought settled, Andrew stopped overthinking it, gave a small shrug, and accepted her request outright.

"Alright then — if that’s what you’ve decided."

It was just carrying one extra person occasionally during the journey ahead. Hardly a difficult thing for Andrew.

Miyabi’s weight was less than that of his arm armor, for that matter.

All he needed was to be a little more mindful. That was all.

With that settled, Andrew quickly packed everything back into his Item Bag in a few smooth motions, and the two of them set off along the road ahead, guided by Andrew’s map.

---

This time, careful not to throw her senses fully open again, Miyabi was at last able to take in the world before her from close range, with her own eyes — truly, for the first time.

A riot of color. Endless green.

Plants she had never heard of, never seen, never imagined — they appeared before her in their true forms.

Tree ferns — food for the herbivorous monsters — grew low and broad, their enormous fronds spreading out like giant fans and casting dappled patches of shadow across the forest floor. Horsetails stood upright and rigid at the water’s edge, swaying gently in the faint ripples on the surface. Scaly tree ferns — tall and deceptively similar to coconut palms at first glance, yet fundamentally different in every meaningful sense — were everywhere one looked, without exception.

But despite all the uniquely shaped ancient plants and the towering trees whose every ring bore the weight of centuries — the one thing that truly commanded the eye was something that stood utterly, completely apart from everything else in a forest already full of giants.

The Ancient Tree.

That was the true reason the Guild had named this place the Ancient Forest.

When Miyabi had first landed here, the alien surroundings and the sheer distance had made it impossible to gauge the true scale of the enormous mass visible at the far edge of her vision. She had instinctively looked past it — dismissed it without meaning to.

But as the two of them kept walking, kept closing the distance — day after day after day —

The Ancient Tree, which had begun as nothing more than a single small point on the horizon, grew. And grew. And grew. Until, to Miyabi’s genuine, wide-eyed astonishment, it had expanded to the point where it blotted out everything else in her entire field of view.

The shadow it cast had enveloped them both long before they even reached its base.

As they walked, Andrew and Miyabi moved side by side, and along the way, Andrew introduced Miyabi — who was curious about absolutely everything she encountered — to the animals and plants around them.

It wasn’t just lessons in natural history and ecosystem education.

Though this was Miyabi’s first time ever living in the wilderness, and though everything about operating in the wild was deeply unfamiliar to someone who had grown up entirely in a city — she had never once sat back and let Andrew do everything for her.

From the very first day she arrived in the Monster Hunter world, she had begun quietly watching and learning. Then, once she felt confident enough, she had proactively started taking things off his hands, dividing the work between them and carrying her share.

As the days passed, the hem of her dark skirt picked up no small amount of dust and grime from the inexperience that still showed in her movements — but the coordination between the two of them grew steadily, naturally smoother.

Many times, Andrew didn’t even need to open his mouth before Miyabi had already prepared everything he needed, as naturally as breathing.

This held for the small things in daily camp life — and it held when they ran into the occasional unavoidable monster encounter.

Of course — this being the Ancient Forest of the Monster Hunter world — large monster sightings were anything but rare.

In the beginning, Miyabi’s first instinct every single time a monster came at them was, without exception, to reach for her blade on pure reflex, channel her energy, and prepare to deliver a killing blow with full intent behind it.

If that sword had actually landed, the Pukei-Pukei’s head would have left its neck in a single clean stroke.

Andrew understood her reaction completely — in New Eridu, every single monster without exception was humanity’s enemy. That was the world she’d grown up in.

But this was the New World!!

Every single time, just as Miyabi was about to deliver the killing blow, Andrew — who had already seen it coming from a mile away — would catch her arm and hold her back.

Faced with Andrew shaking his head gently at her, Miyabi chose each time to stand down and defer to him.

And each time, after Andrew drove the creature away with a Dung Pod, he would immediately launch into a lengthy explanation during the next rest break — covering all the ways these two worlds were different, and why indiscriminate hunting and disrupting the ecosystem was something that simply couldn’t be allowed.

Unfortunately, the results were... minimal at best.

In the end, a somewhat exasperated Andrew resorted to a blunter tactic: he flatly explained that if she went around killing whatever she pleased without Guild authorization, there was simply no possible way she would ever be allowed to become a Hunter — his recommendation or not.

At that, Miyabi immediately gave a very solemn, very sincere nod, and confirmed that she truly, genuinely, completely understood now.

Though from Andrew’s observations afterward — it was less that Miyabi had actually grasped the concept of protecting natural ecosystems, or internalized the idea that these monsters were essential links in the food chain.

She had, more precisely, simply decided that because she trusted Andrew, she would stop thinking about it entirely and just do exactly what he said.

That single-track mind of hers was something he honestly didn’t know what to do with.

And beyond these ordinary, expected moments of getting to know each other, there were, naturally, some less ordinary ones as well.

Over those four days, single-minded Miyabi had locked herself into an absolute, head-on collision course with the training objective she had set for herself — without a single exception.

Every chance she got, she was at it.

And each time, under her personal policy of ’if I don’t push myself to the absolute limit, the training won’t produce any real effect’ — the result was always, inevitably, the same: she lost consciousness again.

The frequency was anything but low.

So much so that through sheer, relentless repetition, Andrew had become completely practiced at carrying her — smooth and effortless, not even thinking about it anymore. What had once been a slightly uncertain act had long since become purely automatic.

Now, all it took was walking along and noticing that the sound of Miyabi’s footsteps had gone quiet beside him — and Andrew would instinctively take a half-step back, reach out without looking, catch her as she crumpled, and simply continue forward without breaking stride.

At a certain point, it had stopped being something he had merely adapted to. It had become habit.

Though — possibly because Miyabi’s adaptability was genuinely, steadily improving — the duration of each subsequent loss of consciousness never exceeded three hours, even at its longest. Always shorter than that very first time.

The only unfortunate side effect of the progress: a shorter recovery time had convinced Miyabi the training was working, which had only made her attempt it even more frequently than before.

Andrew could only sigh quietly and shrug.

---

By now, the two of them had arrived at last beneath the Ancient Tree at the heart of the forest. Beyond this point lay the Tree itself.

Once they crossed through it — they would finally reach Astera, the Hunter’s base of operations in the New World.

"Crossing through the Ancient Tree" — the words sounded simple enough. Like passing through a slightly larger-than-average tree.

But the actual scale of it defied every human expectation.

The prestige behind naming an entire forest after a single tree was self-evident. And to put it in concrete terms — Andrew’s original estimate of under a week’s travel? Three full days still remained. freēwēbηovel.c૦m

And that was calculated using a Hunter’s legs. By ordinary civilian standards, the time estimate would need to be multiplied by ten or more before it came anywhere close to reality.

That was without any monster encounters slowing them down. Pure transit speed, nothing else.

The Ancient Tree, in Andrew’s eyes, wasn’t a tree at all. It was a mountain. A mountain that happened to be made of wood.

And there were mountains, and then there were mountains.

If the largest of the other ancient trees in this forest topped out at the scale of an ordinary skyscraper — then the Ancient Tree was a continuous mountain range, ridge upon ridge extending endlessly into the distance.

Its sheer magnitude was worthy of the weight of time that its name implied.

Looking at the campfire that had just been re-lit, its warm light dancing against a sky that had gone completely dark, Miyabi came back to consciousness once again from Andrew’s arms — and couldn’t help but furrow that beautiful brow of hers into a quiet, contemplative frown.

The shadow that blotted out the sky above forced a genuine reckoning upon her: the smallness of humanity before nature.

In these past few days, she had seen far too many things she had never witnessed before — so many, in such relentless succession, that she had grown almost numb to the steady stream of wonders.

As for waking up in Andrew’s arms — both of them wore the exact same expression: utterly unbothered. Perfectly natural. Completely ordinary.

By now, they had both gotten completely used to it.

____

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