Free Web NovelChapter 315: Sapphire Star’s Reminder
He studied Andrew’s expression — that unmistakable look of brooding frustration — and a rare flicker of genuine seriousness crossed his eyes as he spoke:
"What’s gotten into you? You’ve been walking around with that thundercloud face all morning. Did someone actually manage to get under your skin?"
A moment later, Sapphire Star’s eyes lit up as another possibility came to him, and he leaned forward with barely-contained eagerness:
"Or wait — don’t tell me... you’ve run into some kind of problem you can’t solve on your own? Do you need me to step in?"
The way he said it, with both eyes practically sparkling, made it abundantly clear: if Andrew so much as gave the faintest nod, Sapphire Star would be on his feet and reaching for a weapon before the motion was even finished — thoroughly ready to fulfill every last duty of a proper master.
Andrew looked at him.
He was completely unmoved.
He knew his master’s nature down to the bone. Every quirk, every habit, every angle.
To someone who didn’t know Sapphire Star, that eagerness might have looked genuinely touching — the kind of selfless offer that could bring a person to tears.
But Andrew knew better.
He knew him far too well for that.
Because that look — that barely-restrained, practically-vibrating-with-readiness expression — told Andrew exactly what was really going on. He had a serious suspicion that Sapphire Star was simply looking for any excuse, any opening at all, to shove the half-finished report sitting on the desk directly into the hands of his future self.
If the report could just... disappear entirely in the process? Even better.
And so, meeting that hopeful gaze head-on, Andrew shook his head without a moment’s hesitation.
"Nobody’s gotten under my skin. And I haven’t run into any problem I can’t handle." freewebnøvel.com
The eager light in Sapphire Star’s eyes died on the spot. The expectation crumbled into open disappointment.
Andrew pretended not to notice. He let out a quiet sigh and pressed on:
"I just... want something to do."
"But no matter what I try to help with, everyone keeps stopping me. It’s starting to make me feel a little... out of place."
"Well, isn’t that only natural?"
Having completely given up on using Andrew as an escape from his report, Sapphire Star’s mood paradoxically evened out. He leaned back, crossed his arms over his chest, and settled into the expression of a man who found nothing remotely puzzling about the situation.
"Natural?" Andrew frowned. For a brief moment, he genuinely wondered if the old man was just making things up now that his getaway plan had collapsed.
But his eyes — and Andrew could read those eyes like a well-worn map — told a different story. Whatever Sapphire Star was about to say, he meant every word of it.
Which made Andrew instinctively push back:
"But I’m not a guest. I’m a Hunter who came out of the New World. I just... left for a while."
"Right. You’re a Hunter who came out of the New World."
Sapphire Star nodded — but before Andrew’s expression could soften even a fraction, he followed it up immediately with a sharp question:
"But have you forgotten how long you’ve been gone?"
Andrew blinked. Sapphire Star didn’t give him a chance to answer before continuing:
"Four years."
He raised four fingers. Then, as if to really drive the point home, he waggled them slowly in front of Andrew’s face.
"You spent nearly four full years in the Forbidden Lands. Then another half a year in another world entirely."
"You know as well as I do — most Hunters eventually go home. After this long, the people you were close to here at the outpost? The majority of them have already done exactly that. The ones like me who’ve stayed rooted in this place are the exception, not the rule."
"Even the way the outpost runs has changed considerably. Once the Elder Dragon migration ended and the shipping lanes got safer, the Commander overhauled a good chunk of how things operate around here."
"The systems you knew, the rhythms you were comfortable with — they’re not the same anymore."
He paused. When he spoke again, there was a faint note of something almost rueful in his voice:
"Think about it. When you left four years ago, the new wave of Hunters hadn’t even arrived yet. Now? They’ve been living and working in this outpost long enough to be veterans in their own right. They have their own divisions, their own rhythms, their own routines. You showing up out of nowhere and trying to wedge yourself into that — it’s just not a great fit, kid."
"And at the end of the day, it still comes back to the same thing: what kind of person brings a kid home after four years away and immediately puts him to work the moment he walks through the door?"
Andrew went quiet.
Sapphire Star’s reasoning was so airtight, so thoroughly and annoyingly correct, that Andrew had no choice but to admit it.
"So that’s your problem right there. You’re overthinking it."
Sapphire Star looked at the silence stretching across Andrew’s face and clapped a hand on his shoulder, his expression warm and oddly sincere.
"For the next little while — stop looking for work. Rest properly. Wait for the vaccine to be finished, then pack up your things and head home. That’s all you need to do."
"Honestly? I can’t even bring myself to envy you. That kind of deal is beyond enviable."
Even as he said it, a trace of sourness crept into his voice.
"The Commander — that crafty old fox — the moment he finds someone useful, he runs them into the ground. Piles task after task onto me every single day, and then on top of all of it, makes me write a report for every single one!"
"I’m being worked like an absolute beast of burden. I haven’t had a proper rest in ages and there’s no end in sight."
As he spoke, Sapphire Star gave a righteous, aggrieved slap to the towering stack of manila folders sitting beside him.
It was only then that Andrew noticed — the thick pile stacked next to the report wasn’t more paperwork. It was commissions. A whole heap of them.
A rough count put it at over a dozen.
Andrew’s eyes lit up the instant the realization hit him. He inched a little closer to his master, eyeing that towering stack with barely-disguised longing:
"But the thing is... with things the way they are, there’s no way I can actually rest easy in good conscience..."
"You little— you’re doing this on purpose, aren’t you?"
Sapphire Star’s mood, which had been settling into something almost pleasant, soured immediately.
He shot Andrew a sidelong glance, and as the comparison between their two situations crystallized in his mind, he couldn’t stop himself from grinding his teeth.
"You’ve got a deal most people would kill for, and you don’t appreciate a single second of it?! You know, I’m starting to seriously think you came over here knowing full well what my situation was, just to rub it in my face!"
One glance at the sheet of paper on his desk — two lonely lines scrawled at the top and nothing else — and Sapphire Star’s fist was clenching all on its own. Hard.
Andrew watched his master’s composure starting to crack around the edges, and realizing that his plan was about to fall apart entirely, he quickly waved his hands in retreat:
"Come on, Master, I would never do something like that to you. How could I?"
He dropped the roundabout approach and cut straight to the point:
"You’ve got mission reports to write, and you’ve clearly got more commissions piling up than you can handle right now — so why not let me take some of that weight off your shoulders?"
"Hand off some of the suitable ones to me. Let me take care of them. How does that sound?"
But what Andrew hadn’t expected was this: Sapphire Star looked genuinely tempted for a moment — a flicker of real interest crossing his face — before going quiet. And then, after a pause that stretched just long enough to feel significant, he slowly shook his head and turned the proposal down.
"There aren’t any suitable ones."
"None?"
Andrew blinked, genuinely caught off guard.
"With my strength, you’re seriously going to say that with a straight face?"
"Given your strength, there are certainly no shortage of missions that could technically be assigned to you." Sapphire Star cut him off before he could build any momentum, his tone measured and calm — but carrying an unmistakable weight of sincerity beneath it. frёewebηovel.cѳm
He looked at Andrew directly.
"But what you actually need to be doing right now has never been picking up commissions from me. And for the record — your old master hasn’t fallen so far that he needs his student to carry his load for him."
Andrew frowned. "Then what should I be doing?"
"What should you be doing? Have you even considered that you might not be the only one feeling out of place here at Astera?"
Andrew paused.
Sapphire Star tossed the apple core he’d been holding into the nearby wastebasket with a casual flick of his wrist, then stood and walked to the porthole window, his gaze drifting out toward the bustling Exchange Area in the distance.
"If I’m remembering correctly — the young Miss Hoshimi Miyabi who came with you, this is her first time in this world, isn’t it?"
"After all, for someone like Miss Hoshimi Miyabi, who’s facing a world completely foreign to her, her knowledge of this place is practically zero. She’d be starting from scratch on even the most basic wilderness survival fundamentals."
He turned back, and his gaze settled on Andrew. His tone was calm, and it left no room for argument:
"And in a situation like that — you are the person she trusts most in this entire world. Bar none."
"The waiting is always the hardest part. And it’s no different for her. So instead of standing around trying to squeeze yourself into places where you’re not needed, why not spend these five days actually being with her?"
Andrew opened his mouth — he’d had something ready to say — but when it came down to it, everything Sapphire Star had just laid out was simply, unarguably true. The words dried up before they reached his lips.
"Because it’s your responsibility to look after her. She knows nothing about this world, and you’re the only guide and anchor she has."
Sapphire Star let the sentence breathe for a moment before continuing, something faintly weighted in his tone:
"If something happened to her over the next few days while you were busy trying to be useful somewhere else — how exactly would you explain that when you got back home?"
Look after Hoshimi Miyabi?
Andrew turned it over in his mind — replaying the past several days of travel in quiet review — and found himself nodding before he’d consciously decided to.
Sapphire Star was right.
Miyabi genuinely did need guidance.
She was endlessly curious about everything in this world, yet her entire upbringing had been in the city — she had no frame of reference whatsoever for life in the wilderness.
And he, undeniably, was the person she knew best in this world.
Looking after her was his responsibility.
No matter which way he cut it, Sapphire Star hadn’t said a single thing that was wrong.
"So... I should go find her?"
Andrew’s voice came out with a small, uncertain lilt.
"What else would you do — wait for me to go ask the Commander to write you up an official commission letter?"
The mention of commission letters — all those commission letters — dragged Sapphire Star’s mood right back down, and his teeth were soon grinding again.
He flicked a hand in the air — a firm, unambiguous dismissal.
"Alright. Now that you know what you’re supposed to be doing, go do it. Stop hanging around here interrupting me while I try to wrestle this godforsaken mission report into existence!"
Andrew nodded, turned on his heel, and left without dragging it out.
Sapphire Star listened to the sound of retreating footsteps until they faded into silence. Then, quietly, the corner of his mouth curled upward. He reached into the fruit bowl beside him and fished out another piece of fruit, biting into it with easy satisfaction.
"Heh. That kid," he murmured to himself, "still just as easy to talk around as ever."
"Aibo! The only reason Little Mo is that easy to convince is because he trusts you, you know."
Aibo — who had been sitting to the side this entire time, gnawing on a drumstick and watching the whole exchange unfold — finally spoke up, unable to hold back any longer:
"And besides — with Miss Hoshimi Miyabi’s level of ability, there’s absolutely no way she’d encounter any danger in the area around Astera."
"The woman was up bright and early this morning with a weapon in hand and marched straight toward the training grounds with a look that said she knew exactly what she was doing. That’s not exactly the picture of someone who ’needs looking after’ — which is what you told Little Mo."
"What are you going to do if he turns her down?"
"Ha — you just don’t get it." Sapphire Star dismissed the concern with a grand wave of his hand, thoroughly unembarrassed.
"Trust my eye for these things. The way that little miss looks at Andrew? She’s definitely got a soft spot for him. She won’t turn him down. Not a chance."
"And if I hadn’t done something, given how dense those two are — if we just sat back and let things develop ’naturally’ between a pair of wooden logs like them, who knows how many years it’d take before either of them even noticed what was going on."
He leaned back, fully at ease with himself now.
"Besides, it’s not like I was entirely making things up, either. When all is said and done — what kind of person drags a young woman into a world she’s never seen before and then just... leaves her standing on the side like forgotten luggage?"
"Hmm..."
Aibo mulled it over for a moment, feeling uncomfortably close to being convinced, and then shook its head.
"You know, if Andrew ever finds out what you pulled here, Aibo, don’t come crying to me when he comes for revenge!"
That said, Aibo couldn’t resist muttering quietly under its breath:
"Those two are honestly identical when it comes to matters of the heart — both completely and utterly oblivious. But the second it comes to reading the other person’s situation, suddenly they both get weirdly perceptive."
"Is this what people mean when they say outsiders see the game more clearly than the players?"
Right in the middle of the two of them talking it over —
A voice came through the doorway.
"Hey, old man. You’ve been whispering over there with that shifty look on your face. What exactly are you plotting?"
That familiar voice. It was Andrew — and he’d come back.
The effect was instantaneous.
That unexpected reversal triggered an explosive, full-throttle response from Sapphire Star — every ounce of reflex honed across countless brushes with death firing at once. In the fraction of a second between Andrew lifting the door curtain and it falling back into place, Sapphire Star snatched up the report he’d been treating like trash, slammed himself down at his desk, and buried himself in what looked for all the world like the agonized contemplation of a man deep in scholarly thought.
Then, as if registering the newcomer only belatedly, he raised his head with a perfectly puzzled expression.
"Hmm? I wasn’t saying anything. What’s up? You turned around and came back — did you need something?"
Andrew pulled back the door curtain and stepped partway through, brow furrowing slightly as he scanned the room.
...Had he imagined it?
The scene he’d glimpsed through the gap in the curtain a moment ago — it definitely hadn’t looked like this.
But with no idea what had actually just happened, Andrew ultimately filed it away as his own eyes playing tricks on him.
Still — what he could see clearly enough was Sapphire Star already slumped back over the desk, sheepishly clutching the draft paper he’d flung aside earlier, staring at two measly lines of writing with the tortured expression of a grade-schooler forced by their parents to sit down and write an essay.
Andrew thought about it for a moment. Then he spoke:
"This one isn’t about me. It’s about you."
He’d been given decent advice a few minutes ago — Sapphire Star had pointed out something he’d genuinely overlooked. Taking that into account, Andrew decided he wasn’t going to leave the old man to suffer alone.
Instead, he offered a practical solution:
"Old man — if you’re completely stuck on what to write for the mission report, you could try borrowing the structure from old reports of the same type."
"For instance... the field combat training reports that the Sword Master wrote back when he was taking me out on live exercises."
He watched Sapphire Star snap upright as if struck by divine revelation, leap to his feet with the sheer uncontained joy of a man who had just been freed from under a mountain after five hundred years of imprisonment, and immediately sprint off toward the archive room at full speed.
Andrew couldn’t help shaking his head — and then called after him, just loudly enough to carry:
"Don’t copy too much of the same phrasing when you’re referencing them. Mix it up, rework it a bit. If you leave it too close to the original, the Commander will see straight through you — you know how sharp his eyes are!"
"And if the Commander does catch you, don’t you dare tell him it was my idea!"
He watched the distant hand wave — heard in its casual dismissal a clear ’message received’ — and Andrew let out a long, resigned sigh.
Somehow, he had a deeply unshakeable feeling that given how utterly beside himself with glee the old man was right now, whatever report came out of this particular adventure was absolutely going to get caught by the Commander.
But he’d said everything there was to say. Whatever disaster unfolded afterward as a result of the old man’s own doing — that was no longer his problem.
Shaking his head one final time, Andrew turned and headed off in the direction he’d just been told to go — toward wherever Miyabi was.
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