Free Web NovelChapter 306: Sapphire Star
The Great Jagras clearly intended to resume its pursuit. Hoshimi Miyabi, who had just descended from the Jagras alongside Andrew, saw the situation and could no longer hold herself back. Her hand tightened around Wuwei at her side as she prepared to step forward.
But the moment her sword-drawing motion began, Andrew raised a hand beside her and pressed it still.
Gazing at the distant silhouette, Andrew spoke:
"Relax, Miyabi."
"Never mind whether they even need help before firing a support flare — with that guy over there, they’re not going to be in any real danger."
"That guy?"
Hearing Miyabi’s puzzled echo, Andrew showed not the slightest surprise.
A faint smile tugged at his lips. He tilted his chin slightly, gesturing toward the direction he meant, and said:
"Ah, yeah. The most important master I have in this world — Sapphire Star."
"Master?"
It was only with Andrew’s direct prompt that a slightly dazed Miyabi finally noticed the lone figure standing motionless at the edge of the battlefield.
Wait — there was another person here?!
When had they appeared?!
No. That wasn’t right.
The truth was that they had been there from the very beginning. She simply hadn’t seen them.
Even without fully releasing her perception of the surrounding environment, her instincts — with all the sensory acuity she currently possessed — had completely overlooked this person. Naturally. Automatically. As though they simply weren’t there at all.
In her field of vision, the silhouette simply stood there in silence... like a living piece of the Ancient Forest itself.
Not the practiced disguise of someone deliberately blending in — but a natural quality that had long since settled deep into the body after years and years of surviving in the wild. Quiet. Serene. And yet, capable of erupting at any moment into a terrifying, earth-shaking force.
To avoid drawing his attention to her gaze, Miyabi instinctively began observing the figure from the ground up.
A single glance was enough to confirm his strength.
The man’s legs were encased in magnificent silver armor, but every gap in the plating was covered by vicious, malevolent black dragon horns. The surface of the armor bore countless patterns — elegant yet eerie, intricate beyond description.
What appeared to be wings emerging from behind his lower back coiled around the lower half of his body like a skirt of plate armor, radiating a dreadful, arcane presence.
Yet unlike the heavy, fully armored legs, his upper body was — to Miyabi’s complete and utter surprise — entirely bare.
Yes. Completely bare. Literally.
Exposed to open air, his tall, imposing frame was covered in taut, rock-solid muscle with sharply defined lines — carved like stone. Even just standing there in perfect stillness, the raw power and vitality coursing silently through him radiated an invisible, suffocating pressure with every surge of his blood.
His arms were crossed over his chest, the lines of his forearms pulled taut and clearly visible with each subtle movement.
This wasn’t the exaggerated bulk of someone who had trained purely for appearance. This was the shape a body carved itself into under extreme, relentless duress — swinging a tachi day after day, scaling cliff faces, trekking through countless harsh and unforgiving environments.
Powerful, yet impossibly fluid.
His skin had been tanned a deep, sun-kissed wheat brown from years under the open sky. A few long, thin scars marked his exposed forearms and chest, inevitably sparking the imagination — just what kind of battle, and at what level of intensity, could have left marks like those?
What made Miyabi’s eyes light up was the weapon on his back: a standard-issue iron tachi that, at a glance, looked identical to the ones in the hands of the novice hunters.
Except it wasn’t.
Unlike the pristine, freshly-issued weapons the beginners carried, the tachi on his back looked less like new equipment and more like something he had dug out of the forgotten bottom of a storage room on a sudden whim.
The grip had been worn smooth and gleaming by the countless times the same palm had closed around it. The guard even bore a hairline crack running across it — though it had been carefully, precisely repaired with silver wire.
Compared to the somewhat unfamiliar weapons in the three hunters’ hands, this tachi hung casually at his back as though it had always belonged there. Naturally. Without question.
The full weight of that blade was something the man knew in his bones — so intimately that the angle his shoulder tilted when bearing it matched the curve of the scabbard perfectly.
But most distinct of all were the ornaments tied to the tachi.
Hanging from the scabbard on his back were two flowing blue ribbon streamers — so light and delicate they seemed like wisps of trailing smoke.
They danced freely in the fierce winds sweeping across the battlefield, faintly luminescent in the shadows with a soft, ethereal glow.
Wordless, yet exuding a presence both deep and immeasurable.
He simply stood there, projecting no hostility, no battle intent — not even a flicker of emotion — and yet the combat instincts honed deep within Miyabi had already begun screaming.
Danger.
This was the primal reflex of a warrior standing before a powerful enemy.
In that instant, Miyabi no longer had a single doubt that this man was Andrew’s master.
But just as she steeled herself, raised her gaze to the very top, and prepared to finally see the face of this person Andrew called his master—
Her expression froze involuntarily.
For one brief, absurd moment, Miyabi nearly convinced herself she was hallucinating from lack of sleep.
Because as her gaze traveled all the way up, what she found atop that neck was not some fearsome helmet matching the ferocity of those leg plates — nor a human face, nor even the mask she had initially imagined would be there.
What appeared in her field of vision was a giant, swaying... Sway Eel head?
A Sway Eel???
Yes. Miyabi recognized exactly what was sitting atop the neck of this powerfully built human body.
It was nothing other than the Sway Eel — the distinctive species native exclusively to the Coral Highlands — and she knew it because Andrew had pulled out a field guide more than once during their journey, enthusiastically educating her in detail about this particular creature.
She had originally assumed Andrew simply liked the adorable little things.
But the realization that struck her now was something she could never, in any version of her imagination, have anticipated—
Had Andrew been going out of his way to tell her about Sway Eels this entire time...
...so that she would recognize one if she saw it and not be left completely blindsided?!
What... what even was this??
A Sway Eel Thiren?!
Even Miyabi’s thoughts short-circuited for a moment.
But then — the rookie team’s panicked, reflexive shouts as the Great Jagras bore down on their still-recovering formation snapped her right back to attention.
Her eyes went wide as she watched with unblinking intensity.
Sure, the headgear was a bit... abstract. But the aura rolling off that figure was absolutely not something that could be faked.
Since Andrew said not to worry...
Was Andrew’s master about to step in and shield these rookies himself?!
The Great Jagras, having apparently determined that its last charge had been effective, shook its massive head twice with violent force and readied itself for another run.
But contrary to Miyabi’s expectations, the man known as Sapphire Star made no move to charge in and single-handedly flatten the monster. Instead, he turned and bellowed at the Lance Hunter, who was instinctively scrambling backward in a panic:
"Lance! What are you retreating for?!"
Even as he shouted, in a place no one noticed, a Flash Bomb had already been silently loaded into the launcher strapped to his arm.
He had prepared to step in if it came to that. But his words didn’t stop.
"Don’t forget what I taught you! Charge into that rush — now!"
The moment those words hit, the Lance Hunter — who had been stumbling back on reflex — froze as though struck by lightning.
Time was short. The Great Jagras had already launched into its charge. But with the thought of his teammates behind him, and of the responsibility he bore, the Lance Hunter made his decision without a moment’s hesitation. He planted his feet and raised his shield wall.
It was rushed. But in that moment, every grueling hour of past training paid off in full.
BOOM!!
"GHHK—!!"
With a thunderous crash of flesh against shield and a bitten-back grunt of effort — barely, but definitively — the charge stopped. The Great Jagras did not advance another step.
His body’s instincts had driven his guard stance as close to perfect as he could manage.
And in the few precious seconds bought by that standoff, his two teammates were anything but idle.
Recovering their composure with speed, the hunting team finally began performing at their true level.
The Felynes — instantly recognizing their master no longer needed backup — dropped the cart and sprinted back to the battlefield at full speed, releasing the Flashfly Cage.
The intense burst of light successfully cut off every follow-up action the Great Jagras had been winding up for, and it gave the Lance Hunter the window he needed to fully break free from the standoff.
Watching the Great Jagras still thrashing, fighting to pull itself back upright—
The Light Bowgun laid down a steady stream of suppressing fire. The Tachi Hunter kept circling for openings, slashing whenever they appeared, simultaneously dividing the monster’s attention.
But the brief wrestling match had already dealt the Lance Hunter a serious internal blow. The backlash from the impact sent waves of burning pain rippling through his chest, and both arms had gone numb and limp from the recoil.
Because there was a fundamental difference between blocking a monster’s attack and wrestling one head-on.
If the former was about technique — redirecting force, using finesse and leverage to turn raw power against itself —
Then wrestling was every card on the table, every soldier deployed: a pure, unambiguous, head-on clash of brute strength against brute strength.
And the sheer difference in mass between a human hunter and a large monster needed no elaboration. Even the smallest among large monsters dwarfed any hunter by dozens to hundreds of times over.
Going toe-to-toe with a monster was something most hunters would never even consider.
That this rookie Lance Hunter had managed to hold his ground against one, however barely — that spoke to a level of genuine talent that stood out clearly among his peers.
The timely teamwork also drew a quiet, approving nod from Andrew, watching from the sidelines.
Not bad at all.
Their earlier performance had looked rough, sure — but that was because it was their first time engaging a large monster as new hunters.
Their actual skill level was genuinely solid.
But knowing your armor would hold, and actually surviving your first real, kill-or-be-killed battle against a monster — those were two entirely different things when it came to the mind.
No amount of mental preparation could make the psyche adapt that quickly.
For three rookies — these three rookies — to rally and regroup mid-fight like this was, in Andrew’s eyes, already impressively well done.
From Miyabi’s perspective, however, the situation on the battlefield had not improved.
The Tachi could hold the monster’s attention but couldn’t protect the Light Bowgun. With the frontline already taking injuries, the disadvantage would only compound as time went on.
But then—
In the corner of Miyabi’s vision, the utterly motionless figure finally moved.
Her eyes lit up at the sight.
This was Andrew’s master. A warrior of this caliber — how would someone like him step into a situation like this?
Would he charge in with pure physical force and knock the monster flat with his body alone? Would he draw the tachi from his back and cut it down in just a few strokes with overwhelming technique? Or would he strike with surgical precision — injuring it enough to neutralize the threat while keeping the hunt ongoing?
The flood of possibilities made it impossible for Miyabi to contain her rising excitement.
She couldn’t experience it herself, after all. freewёbn૦νeɭ.com
But whatever he did, she was certain she would learn something new from watching it.
Being able to witness someone move — someone whose strength she had recognized the very instant she laid eyes on him — filled her with genuine, electric anticipation.
And in the midst of Miyabi’s eager, expectant gaze, the figure standing at the edge of the battlefield finally moved, just as she had hoped.
The rock-hard muscles shifted with subtle, controlled tension. Tremendous power began gathering within them in silence.
With a single step forward, the earth beneath his foot shattered from the recoil, exploding into a cloud of drifting dust — and the man’s silhouette vanished from where he had stood.
Even with Miyabi’s vision, she caught only the vaguest, most fleeting blur of an afterimage.
The next instant, the man appeared among the three fighters on the battlefield.
"Here he comes—!"
Miyabi murmured, electric with anticipation.
The Great Jagras, suddenly finding something had materialized directly in front of it, startled — and involuntarily stumbled back a step.
But Miyabi, entirely focused on the battlefield, noticed none of it.
Andrew — who had equally spotted his master begin to move — felt not the slightest excitement. Instead, after a quick mental calculation of the distance involved, he wordlessly scooped Miyabi up into his arms, expression blank, and stepped backward several paces.
Oblivious to all of this, Miyabi noticed absolutely nothing wrong.
And simultaneously, on the battlefield, the man had already begun his own action in silence.
To Miyabi’s complete bewilderment, however, he made no move to attack the monster — not in any form she had anticipated.
"Instructor — are you here to help us?!" the three rookies called out, faces bright with relief at the sight of him.
The man’s answer was silence.
Then his hand moved to his waist and produced a large glass bottle, filled to the brim with a vivid green liquid. Before the stunned eyes of everyone present, he pulled the stopper free — and pressed the bottle directly to the base of his Sway Eel neck.
In just over a second, every last drop of the enormous bottle had been fully absorbed.
The action — one none of them had ever seen before — left the three rookie hunters and the watching Miyabi alike wearing identical expressions of blank confusion. The Lance Hunter instinctively opened his mouth:
"I-Instructor...?"
Unfortunately, the only reply was still silence.
Silent he may have been — but the man’s movements showed not the slightest sign of stopping.
One beat of quiet—
And then, beneath Miyabi’s utterly, incomprehensibly stunned gaze, the man suddenly began to spin.
____
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