ZZZ: A Hunter's District Zero!

Chapter 319: Survey

Passing through the wooden palisade that ringed the outer edge of Felyne Village and heading southeast for about a quarter of an hour, the mushroom field came into view.

Though calling it a "field" was perhaps generous — this was the Ancient Forest, after all. It was less a proper farm and more a woodland clearing that someone had deliberately cut out of the undergrowth.

The ancient trees had been left standing on all sides, their canopies weaving together high overhead into a natural roof that let through only scattered speckles of light. The ground had been leveled and laid with a thick bed of humus — but what should have been neat, orderly rows of mushroom racks were now tilted and toppled in every direction, the whole place a scene of utter ruin.

Andrew stood at the edge of the field with a slight furrow between his brows.

The field before him was even worse than he’d imagined. The scale of the destruction was far, far greater than he’d expected.

Upturned earth was scattered everywhere, as though something had rooted through the soil again and again without rest. Deep gouges and craters of all sizes pitted the ground; in some places the earth had been heaved up wholesale, exposing the dark, damp soil beneath. The air carried a heavy, fermented smell of mushroom and loam all mixed together.

"This is bad."

Andrew had barely crouched down to start picking through the damage when the figure beside him spoke up — a note of urgency in her voice.

"I checked it over before. These marks — they look less like foraging and more like something frantically searching for more matsutake, meow."

Kairu was standing atop one of the collapsed racks, looking down at Andrew as he examined the traces, her tail swaying lightly behind her. Her arms were folded across her chest as always, and her wide blue eyes held their usual air of cool, sovereign indifference — nothing to do with me.

But she still took advantage of the added height the rack gave her to peer down at him from above and add:

"And it’s not just here, meow. The other mushroom fields that were hit over the following nights — they all looked exactly the same."

Kairu’s words sent Andrew’s mind turning, and it didn’t take long before a few suspicions began to take shape.

He turned to glance at her and offered a warm smile.

"Thanks, Kairu. That observation saved us a serious amount of time — you really helped out."

Kairu immediately shifted her gaze to somewhere far away, feigning a sudden interest in the distant scenery. Her voice drifted over from beside him, lightly lilting, yet doing its absolute best to maintain the tone of someone who couldn’t care less:

"I’m only doing this to make sure the mission doesn’t fail, meow. If the monsters keep harassing Felyne Village, Granny will just keep having to worry about it."

And before anyone could press her further on that, Kairu promptly turned and bolted, leaping up into the branches of a large tree at the field’s edge. She settled there with her legs crossed, expression firmly set to its default of lofty, unconcerned detachment.

"The rest of it is Hunter business, meow. If you need to go check the other fields, just call me."

What she didn’t notice, however, was that with nothing left to hide behind while perched up there on the branch, the tail idly swaying at her back had already given away every last bit of the contentment she was trying so hard to conceal.

By now Andrew had gotten a fairly good read on her temperament. He knew perfectly well that pointing it out would only cause a full-scale explosion, so he swallowed the smile that wanted to break free, gave a small nod to acknowledge what she’d said, and turned back to slowly sweep along the field’s edge in search of any details he might have missed.

Hoshimi Miyabi followed along behind him, her fox ears turning slightly, catching every sound around them.

Her gaze swept the craters and gouges in the field, then came to rest on Andrew’s back. He was moving slowly — pausing at each step to study the ground, crouching now and then to touch the soil with his fingertips, lifting his head every so often to scan the surroundings.

Without really thinking about it, Miyabi found herself mirroring him — slowing her own pace, beginning to observe the traces beneath her feet.

The systematic knowledge she’d been absorbing over these past few weeks was already bearing fruit. Before long, she noticed something — a set of footprints distinct from anything a Felyne would leave.

"Andrew."

Miyabi crouched down, her fox ears tilting slightly forward, curiosity shading her voice as she asked:

"What creature made these tracks?"

Andrew turned back and found Miyabi crouched at the field’s edge, one finger hovering just above a deep hoof print — not touching it, simply suspended there above the soil.

Her posture was a perfect mirror of his own from moments before.

"Hm?"

Andrew walked back over and crouched beside her, following her gaze down to the ground.

It was a clear, crisp print — larger than the palm of a grown man’s hand, its edges pressed deep and firm into the earth, the shape round and full, with two distinct clefts at the front.

The question made Andrew realize something — while he’d spent these past weeks teaching Miyabi the fundamental techniques of a Hunter, expecting her to identify specific monsters from their tracks alone as quickly as veterans like himself and Kairu could was, honestly, still asking a bit too much.

Catching himself, Andrew immediately launched into an explanation:

"That’s a Mosswine print. They look a lot like wild boars — they’re animals found all over the world, and they live on a diet of mushrooms. Most of the time they travel in small groups of two or three."

Andrew extended his hand, the tip of one finger lightly tapping the twin clefts at the front of the print, then tracing a slow circle around its edge.

"These prints, though — their owner isn’t an ordinary Mosswine."

He stood and followed the direction of the tracks forward a few steps, then crouched again to examine the next print.

Miyabi kept pace beside him, her gaze dropping to the distance between the impressions in the soil.

Andrew pointed at the ground as he spoke:

"A normal Mosswine’s stride is about this long."

He held his hands apart to indicate a length.

"But this one — at least half again as wide."

His finger traced the empty space between the prints, drawing out the gap so it was plain to see.

"A longer stride means longer legs. Longer legs mean a larger body."

Miyabi gave a small nod, the ornament at the back of her hair catching a glint of sunlight as it moved.

She brought her gaze back to the prints, her dark crimson eyes studying every last detail pressed into the mud with quiet intensity.

"And there’s more than one."

Following the line of his hand, Miyabi looked again — and this time she saw it.

The tracks were layered on top of one another in a tangled mess of back-and-forth passes, but if you looked carefully — comparing direction, stride length, and depth — you could just barely tell them apart. freewebnøvel.coɱ

He went through them one by one, quickly but with absolute certainty.

"Five distinct sizes, five distinct stride patterns, five distinct gaits. A group this large is already unusual — but for all of them to be this big? That’s something I’ve genuinely never seen before."

He stood. The mushroom field had nothing more to offer. Andrew began scanning the surrounding environment, searching for any other traces that might have been left behind.

The outer edge of the field was ringed by a natural barrier of trees and undergrowth. His gaze moved slowly along the boundary — from the overturned earth, to the bushes at the field’s edge, to the row of tall trees standing further beyond —

And then his eyes stopped.

He hadn’t found a clue to those five creatures — but he had found something else. Something even more peculiar.

He moved toward it without hesitation.

Miyabi noticed the shift in his attention and rose to follow, her gaze tracing the line of his to the spot he was heading — but she couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary.

Not far away, Kairu was still perched in the branches with her air of studied indifference — but whenever the two weren’t looking her way, she’d been keeping a watchful eye on their every move from her elevated vantage point.

Says she’s not participating in the investigation. Ears standing straight up like two little antennae.

Andrew came to a halt before the tree he’d been heading toward.

On the thick trunk was a faint scrape — a thin, shallow graze that had barely stripped away the outermost layer of bark. Several days had passed since it was made, and the tree had begun to heal, making the mark all but impossible to notice now.

All that was left was a very faint difference in color compared to the bark around it.

"Here."

Andrew raised a hand and pointed to the barely-visible scrape he’d spotted, then glanced over at Miyabi beside him.

"See it?"

Miyabi leaned in close to look where he was pointing, studying the mark intently. Her shoulder was nearly brushing against Andrew’s arm. The very tip of one fox ear even grazed the underside of his chin.

She didn’t notice at all.

"What is it?" frёeweɓηovel.coɱ

She gave a small nod, then looked at him with curiosity.

"A scrape mark."

Andrew’s finger traced along the direction of the groove.

"It doesn’t look intentional — anything deliberate wouldn’t be this faint. The way this reads, something passed along this route and its body brushed against the trunk without meaning to."

"Based on how far the tree has healed, this mark was made at the same time the mushroom field was destroyed."

But none of that was the thing that had made Andrew snap his attention to it in an instant. He stepped back two paces, holding his hand up level with the scrape to indicate its height.

"The key thing is this — the width of this path is more than enough for those five Mosswine. But this height? Going by the size of the hoof prints we found, even if they were trying, they couldn’t reach up here."

"Even if you doubled their body size, they still couldn’t."

Miyabi’s pupils contracted slightly. Her voice was quiet with surprise.

"So... Andrew, you’re saying there’s an even larger individual?"

"Not certain."

Andrew shook his head — he wasn’t going to overstate his conclusions.

"There weren’t any other tracks in the mushroom field that could confirm it, and nothing else in the surrounding area to go on. So it’s possible it’s just a coincidence — reality doesn’t always play by the rules, after all."

"But if it really is a separate monster —"

He paused, and the look in his eyes as he studied the scrape turned something close to serious.

"Then whatever made this mark is considerably larger than those five Mosswine we’ve already been tracking. Considerably."

Miyabi’s brow furrowed slightly.

Andrew didn’t press further. He simply reached into his Item Bag, pulled out the map, and marked the position of the ancient tree.

"Note it down for now. Might come in useful."

Up in the tree, Kairu had been watching the whole thing. Her gaze drifted to the scrape mark — she narrowed her eyes at it for just a moment, then shifted them with practiced ease toward the distant sky, as if the mark had never interested her at all.

She would absolutely never admit that she hadn’t spotted this particular mark during her own survey of the scene after the incident — and yet here was Andrew, arriving days later, finding it anyway.

"Hmph."

A sound so faint it was barely audible, a tiny mutter that only she could hear:

"He’s got a good eye, I’ll give him that. But the most important quality in a Hunter is still the strength to actually take down a monster when it’s right in front of you, meow."

The scrape mark had given up everything it had to offer. Andrew turned his gaze toward the ancient tree where Kairu was perched at the field’s edge — only to find himself locking eyes with her, because she’d been staring at both of them the whole time.

The moment their eyes met, Kairu — conscience suddenly not entirely clear — felt a spike of alarm that Andrew was about to ask her about the mark. Her ears pressed flat against her head on instinct as she whipped her face away and fixed her gaze on the distant horizon with the dedication of a woman who had been doing nothing else this entire time.

"I’m just keeping watch, meow."

Her voice floated down from the branch above, carrying just the faintest trace of a guilty conscience she was doing her absolute best to smother:

"There are occasionally small monsters that appear around the mushroom field’s perimeter. I need to make sure you won’t be ambushed while you’re investigating, meow."

"Is that so? You’re working hard — I’ll leave it to you, then."

He’d noticed her watching long ago, of course — but picking a fight over it would only set her off, and that was the last thing Andrew wanted. He held back the smile threatening to escape, gave a quiet nod, and turned away to make his way back along the field’s edge.

Miyabi followed along behind him. She walked a few steps, then stopped, and glanced up at Kairu in the tree.

Kairu, ears pricked and listening, had heard Andrew’s footsteps grow distant — and at last allowed herself to cautiously turn back around —

And came face to face with Miyabi’s gaze.

Two beings of the same breed of cool and aloof stared at each other for approximately half a second. Kairu, the guiltier party, was the first to look away. She reached out, pulled her tail over to cover half her face, and adopted the posture of a creature that had entered sleep mode and wished very much not to be disturbed.

Miyabi tilted her head slightly at the display, puzzled, then turned and went after Andrew.

After a while longer of walking the field and sharing more about Mosswine habits and behavior, the two of them came to stand before the wrecked mushroom field once more. The sun had shifted westward, and the shadows stretching across the earth were longer than before.

"Miyabi."

Andrew spoke suddenly, his tone carrying a shade more formality than usual.

Miyabi’s fox ears twitched.

"This monster — I’m putting you in charge of dealing with it."

Miyabi blinked, startled, and turned to look at his profile.

"Of course — for this commission to function as a proper trial, you’ll be limited to only the Hunter techniques you’ve been learning over these past few weeks."

"From the initial tracking of the culprit, all the way through the hunt itself — and even the final call on whether to catch or release — the whole thing will be led by you."

At that, Andrew paused, then added with an easy smile:

"Think of it as your real trial for becoming a Hunter."

Miyabi went still for a beat.

A trial.

She thought back to what Sapphire Star had told her after he’d learned she was genuinely serious about becoming a Hunter — that if she truly wanted to pursue that path, she would need to pass the Guild’s formal assessment.

She’d assumed at the time that there was no way she’d have the chance to complete it. She certainly hadn’t expected that an opportunity might appear like this.

"Alright."

Not a moment’s hesitation — she nodded and agreed without missing a beat. But then, a beat later, the question caught up with her:

"Then... what about you, Andrew?"

"As my fellow companion on this journey — does that mean you can’t step in to help during the commission?"

Hearing the question, Andrew let out a slightly rueful expression and scratched the back of his head.

"Normally speaking, even for a first mission as a rookie Hunter, your companion is absolutely allowed to step in and provide support. But the thing is —"

Andrew spread his hands in a helpless shrug.

"If I step in myself, this commission will probably be over in about two seconds flat, and there’s zero point in calling it a trial at that point."

"And when we get back and the old man hears about it, he’ll definitely give me grief for throwing the whole thing just to help a friend pass — say I’ve got no shame, that I let the water flow so freely the whole river flooded."

He was complaining, but the look in his eyes as he spoke held nothing but quiet confidence in her — the kind that didn’t need to be said out loud:

"Besides, a commission at this level — it’s not going to give you any trouble, is it?"

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