Free Web NovelChapter 309: Andrew’s Growth Trajectory
That moment, Andrew was genuinely taken aback.
After letting out an instinctive sound of surprise at Sapphire Star’s words, he couldn’t help but scratch his head in utter bewilderment and press his master for an answer:
"Why would it be me?"
"You were the one who was really carrying the team when we fought the Black Dragon back at the Fatalis Citadel, weren’t you? Old man, are you pulling my leg here?"
Midway through the sentence, Andrew’s first instinct was that Sapphire Star was up to his old tricks — spinning another yarn to mess with him.
Back when they were still in the New World, Andrew had been fooled more times than he cared to count by this old man and his seemingly airtight logic.
With that in mind, Andrew immediately voiced his suspicion:
"They’re actually your fans, aren’t they? They came all this way because of you — the one and only Sapphire Star, the first person in the world to push back the Black Dragon. And now you’re here trying to tell me it’s about me?"
What Andrew hadn’t noticed, however, was this:
Miyabi, who had been standing quietly behind him throughout the entire exchange, had already perked up all four of her fox ears the moment the conversation began.
The two in front of her claimed to be master and disciple.
But the effortless familiarity between them — the natural, unguarded warmth — felt far less like a master-disciple relationship and far more like a father and son.
And Sapphire Star’s words had already snagged Miyabi’s attention.
She suddenly realized something.
She had come to learn a great deal about Andrew himself — but what he had been like before arriving in New Eridu, before he had gained the power he carried now, was something she knew absolutely nothing about.
What had Andrew done out there? Why would people travel halfway across the world just to follow in his footsteps? And how had he come to possess such overwhelming strength?
More to the point — just what was the true extent of Andrew’s power?
Miyabi was very curious.
And this time, faced with Andrew’s suspicion, Sapphire Star did not put on the usual guilty, caught-in-the-act expression of someone whose bluff had just been called.
Instead, he simply shot back with a look of exasperated displeasure:
"Me? Don’t get the wrong idea. I didn’t start out as a hunter in the New World, you know. Your master here had already been a hunter for a long, long time before ever setting foot here."
"If they looked up to me as their idol and wanted to follow in my footsteps, the New World would be the last place they’d come first, wouldn’t it."
"Ugh... yeah, actually, that’s... a fair point."
Sapphire Star’s grumbling was so thoroughly reasonable that Andrew found himself momentarily at a loss for words.
But somewhere in the back of his mind, he was already starting to believe it.
Scratching the back of his head, Andrew muttered to himself, still a little puzzled:
"But that still doesn’t make sense, does it? Don’t tell me news of what I did in the Forbidden Lands actually got out?"
He ran back through his career as a hunter in his head, and the more he thought about it, the more he leaned toward that conclusion.
"I mean, it’s not like I did anything particularly stand-out during my time in the New World, was it? So if something produced this kind of effect, it has to be what happened in the Forbidden Lands that spread, right?"
"’Didn’t do anything particularly stand-out’?! Do you even hear yourself?"
Sapphire Star was instantly even more exasperated.
He crossed his arms over his chest. He was clearly annoyed — but the moment he looked at Andrew’s expression and understood that the kid genuinely, sincerely believed what he’d just said, Sapphire Star let out a long-suffering sigh and started explaining anyway:
"Alright, yes, it does have a little something to do with the Forbidden Lands — but the main reason is your performance during your time in the New World."
"You, kid, have absolutely zero awareness of just how absurd your track record in the New World actually is."
He couldn’t help but keep going:
"When you first arrived in the New World, you weren’t even at the level of a lower-rank hunter. Forget combat and hunting — you couldn’t even survive in the wild on your own. You barely scraped the bar of being called an apprentice hunter at the Guild."
"No — scratch that. Some random kid from a backwater village in the Old World had more fighting ability than you did!"
But the moment Sapphire Star thought about what Andrew had become afterward, he couldn’t help but feel a genuine flicker of amazement.
"And yet, by the time we discovered Vaal Hazak, you could already provide meaningful support from range. Then, barely three years later, when we found the Icefields, you had made a single, stunning leap — straight to the level of hunting solo, an Elder Dragon that moves like a walking natural disaster."
"And by the end of the Icefields expedition, when we faced Xeno’jiiva — a forbidden creature capable of destroying the world — and especially when Fatalis itself appeared over the Old World’s Citadel, the so-called Destroyer of Civilizations, the Ender of Eras — you could already fight shoulder-to-shoulder with me. In a direct clash, you held your ground without losing the upper hand for a long, long stretch of time."
"After that, in the Forbidden Lands, you and Evelyn teamed up and took down an Incandescent Dragon — another forbidden-class monster."
"Do you have any idea how absolutely unhinged that growth curve looks to every hunter out there?!"
And to think — after all of that, Andrew’s time as a hunter still hadn’t even reached eight years.
Eight years.
That sounds like a lot. But put it in terms of school, and eight years isn’t even enough to finish compulsory education.
In those eight years, Andrew had gone from an ordinary person who couldn’t hold a candle to anyone, to a powerful hunter who had slain the forbidden.
Sapphire Star sometimes even found himself wondering:
If he himself hadn’t been there for the final battle — could Andrew have pulled it off alone?
No matter how he turned the question over in his head, his honest answer was always: he didn’t know.
Truly — he didn’t know.
Because if he was being frank, that hunt — the one the Guild had since dubbed the Battle of Destiny — even if it were replayed, Sapphire Star wasn’t certain he alone could reproduce that victory for humanity a second time.
But with Andrew beside him, he was absolutely certain.
The thought of it made even the perpetually unshakeable Sapphire Star pause and feel something close to wonder.
In this world, anyone who set their heart on becoming a hunter started training without exception from the age of four or five.
Through ten-plus years of relentless work, from childhood to adulthood, they grew. And even then, only a small handful ever reached the point of being able to hunt a Rathalos as part of a team.
To reach that level was already to stand among the elite of all hunters.
Even Sapphire Star himself.
After witnessing Andrew’s meteoric, almost vertical growth curve, even he had found it impossible to refuse the Commander’s demands when it came to training and requirements.
And it was precisely because of that — after Andrew had gone on to slay the Incandescent Dragon in the Forbidden Lands, another forbidden-class monster — that everyone who knew his story could only nod and say: of course he did.
It was the inevitable result of that impossible growth curve.
And the hunters who admired him — they looked at Andrew because, despite starting from a position so far below their own, he had achieved what he had achieved in the New World. And they thought to themselves:
If I start the same way Andrew did — from the New World, from scratch — could I accomplish the same feats he did?
It was also precisely because of that insane growth curve that the Guild, anxious about what unknown terrors might be lurking in the Forbidden Lands, had pulled Andrew in as a safeguard.
As it turned out, they had been right to do so.
Even if their disciple had ended up in another world entirely by accident — in the most literal sense of the phrase — well, hadn’t he found his way back?
Miyabi, having listened to all of this, was so stunned that her eyes had gone wide without her even realizing it.
Andrew’s strength was actually... actually that terrifying?!
An Elder Dragon that moved like a walking natural disaster. A forbidden creature called the world’s end. A Destroyer of Civilizations.
The sheer horror of each of these monsters had already blown so far past anything she could have imagined.
And yet all of them — every single one of these nightmares — had been Andrew’s prey. Enemies he had faced and conquered, again and again.
So just what level of power did Andrew truly possess?!
She had once come across the word "hunter" in a book from her family’s collection, and according to that text, it was simply a profession — people who hunted wild animals.
So Miyabi had assumed that even the strongest of monster hunters would be roughly at the level of the terrifying creatures that had attacked New Eridu a short while ago — perhaps a few degrees more powerful, but no more than that.
But the monsters Andrew had fought and hunted were of this caliber?!
She... could barely begin to picture it.
But at the same time, this resolved a question that had been sitting quietly in the back of her mind.
Earlier, when she and Andrew had fought together against Nineveh, she had already sensed it — that the battle hadn’t registered to Andrew as a real fight at all.
If it hadn’t been for the need to prevent innocent casualties, describing that battle as effortless and leisurely would have been no exaggeration whatsoever.
A man who had fought walking natural disasters — how could someone like Nineveh ever push him into a corner?
Standing off to the side, listening to Sapphire Star’s complaints, Andrew belatedly scratched his head with a somewhat baffled look:
"Wait, so... pulling all that off is actually considered outrageous?"
Honestly, Andrew had never felt there was anything particularly excessive about his own strength.
After all, whether in the New World or the Forbidden Lands, hunters who could solo a Rathalos were a dime a dozen — and hunters capable of taking down Elder Dragons weren’t exactly rare sights either.
The first time Andrew had managed to solo an Elder Dragon himself, his initial reaction wasn’t a sense of how powerful he had become. It was more along the lines of: finally, I’ve caught up to the New World’s elite units.
Because even setting Sapphire Star aside entirely — every person he was close to, whether that was Sunshine Bro or the Sword Saint, each and every one of them was someone capable of hunting Elder Dragons.
And as for Sapphire Star himself, the one Andrew had been striving to catch up to all this time... even now, Andrew couldn’t say with complete confidence that he was definitely stronger than his master.
The hunters he’d encountered in the Forbidden Lands afterward were, for the most part, at the same tier as those he’d known from the New World.
And his partner Evelyn — well, she was another matter entirely.
She looked like a small, beautiful, seemingly delicate girl — and yet her strength was only marginally below his own, even at what he’d thought was the peak of his development. ƒreewebɳovel.com
And when it came to going head-to-head with a monster in raw physical terms, she matched him blow for blow.
All of this had given Andrew a slightly... skewed impression of where his power actually stood relative to the hunter community as a whole.
His companions had all told him he was exceptionally strong — but Andrew himself had never truly felt it.
After all, you can’t expect someone to imagine something they’ve never seen.
It was only after watching those three rookie hunters perform, and after Sapphire Star’s insistent emphasis, that Andrew finally felt the faintest, tentative flicker of reality sink in.
Though admittedly, that flicker of realization seemed to have arrived just a little bit late.
"Alright, enough of this. Let’s head back together and check in with the Commander first — Aibo’s still waiting for me at the outpost gate."
"Once we’ve reported in, have your Wingdrake take you straight to the Research Facility."
"You vanished for this long without a word. Even if everyone believed in their hearts you’d be fine, that doesn’t mean the worry just went away."
"But since the official reason is ’accidentally fell through to another world’ — which is about as legitimate an excuse as it gets — the Commander definitely won’t hold it against you."
As he said this, Sapphire Star marked the Great Jagras’ carcass and then fired off a signal flare.
The flare burst open in the sky above, signaling to all that the subjugation mission was fully complete. Now it was just a matter of waiting for the dedicated retrieval team to come and haul the Great Jagras’ body back.
Just before they were about to set off, however, Sapphire Star tilted his head slightly, a puzzled look crossing his face:
"Come to think of it."
"Why can I still sense the presence of another human? Is that one of your companions?"
Before Sapphire Star could finish the last part of that sentence — the "why haven’t I seen her, then" — Andrew had already anticipated it and cut him off:
"That’s right, that’s right."
"She’s someone I met in that world. A trustworthy friend. Her name is Hoshimi Miyabi."
With that, Andrew stepped lightly to one side, revealing Miyabi, who had been standing just behind him. Guided by Andrew’s gesture, Sapphire Star lowered his gaze — and only then noticed the silhouette that had been half-hidden this whole time.
Definitely not because he hadn’t looked down. Not at all. ƒrēewebnoѵёl.cσm
"She was worried I might run into danger making this trip back alone to look for the vaccine, so she took special leave just to travel here with me from that world’s New Eridu."
"Oh?"
Sapphire Star’s eyes lit up at that. He extended a hand in formal greeting and said:
"Welcome to the New World, Miss Miyabi."
Miyabi met Sapphire Star’s welcome in kind, returning the courtesy with equal formality.
The brief pause while Andrew made the introductions had given her just enough time to quietly collect herself — to tuck away the shock that had built up while she’d been listening to their exchange.
Even so, she felt no fear. Not a trace of it.
No matter his strength, Andrew was Andrew.
The only change that had come from learning the true extent of his power was this: Miyabi felt a sense of security toward New Eridu that she had never felt before. A feeling wholly new, unlike anything she’d known.
And at the same time, for the very first time, she felt that her own goal — the eradication of all Hollows — might actually be within reach. That it could truly be done.
But even more than that — if Andrew’s master was Sapphire Star, then Sapphire Star’s own strength must be utterly, incomprehensibly terrifying.
Coming along with Andrew on this trip had been an absolutely correct decision. More correct than she’d even dared to hope.
She gently took the hand Sapphire Star offered and shook it twice, then — with all the gravity that the head of the Hoshimi family owed to an elder — addressed him with composed dignity:
"Hello. I am Hoshimi Miyabi, head of the Hoshimi family of New Eridu. It’s a pleasure to meet you."
That expressionless coolness of hers — carrying within it the innate elegance and poise of someone born and bred to the manor — was enough to make Sapphire Star’s heart give a quiet, suspicious little lurch.
This little rascal... he hadn’t gone and charmed some sheltered young lady from a great family out of her own house in that world, had he?
And if her family came looking — then what?
But then he thought about his disciple’s signature blend of blunt honesty and zero tact that had apparently been passed down across generations...
You know what? Scratch that. Rather than believe Andrew sweet-talked a refined young lady into running away with him, it was considerably more plausible that her own family had cooked up an excuse to push their daughter out the door themselves.
At least that version of events had better odds.
Still — for some reason he couldn’t quite place, the young lady’s gaze seemed to be fixed rather... intently on his headgear?
____
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