Free Web NovelChapter 320: Someone’s Bragging, But I Won’t Say Who Meow
Kairu sat perched on the branch with her legs crossed, her tail swaying idly behind her.
Her gaze drifted from Andrew to Hoshimi Miyabi, then back again to the ruined mushroom field below. In the slanting afternoon light her blue eyes narrowed to the point where no one could have read her expression — but her heart was anything but calm.
Kairu gave a silent, dismissive sniff inside her head, and her inner voice immediately delivered its verdict.
Boasting. "Over in an instant," he said — what brazen boasting, not even bothering to draft a script for it first. Even the seasoned veterans who had spent long years in the New World, even the elite Hunters with the power to take on an Elder Dragon — none of them would dare spout that kind of nonsense, would they?
The only person who could actually make herself believe something like that was the legendary Hunter still actively roaming the New World even now — the Sapphire Star.
She had no idea what Sapphire Star looked like, but it was absolutely, categorically not the guy standing in front of her — the one wearing white armor crafted from materials she had never laid eyes on in her life. Not to mention, while he was certainly tall enough, his build didn’t hold a candle to those elite Hunters in terms of raw, muscled mass.
He definitely wasn’t like an ordinary Hunter — she’d grant him that much — but there was no way in any world he was at the level of taking down a large monster in a single strike.
Even if you do seem like you’ve got some ability, claiming it’ll be over in an instant is laying it on just a little too thick.
Kairu gave a small, satisfied nod inside her mind, pleased with her own judgement.
Was there any chance she could be wrong?
The moment that possibility crossed her mind she shook her head firmly, dispelling it at once. These conclusions had been drawn from her own accumulated experience — they were absolutely, positively infallible.
But even if that man did love to run his mouth — the girl who’d come with him, the one called Hoshimi Miyabi...
Kairu’s gaze shifted over to Hoshimi Miyabi.
The young girl was crouched beside Andrew, one finger hovering above a hoof print, measuring the distance, her fox ears tilting slightly forward as she committed every single word Andrew said to memory with quiet, careful attention.
Those dark crimson pupils reflected Andrew’s face, her expression serene and utterly focused.
"These Mosswine are large individuals, but at their core they’re still herbivores — their attack patterns are simple and straightforward. Good for getting practice in."
Andrew was still talking. He fished six Tranq Bombs out of his Item Bag, weighed them in his palm for a moment, then held them out to Hoshimi Miyabi as he continued:
"That said, the fact that these Mosswine have grown to this size does make them somewhat unusual — it would be best to hand them over to a Scholar for study. And since they’ve only been destroying the fields rather than harming anyone, we want to capture them alive, not kill them."
"At this size the Mosswine haven’t quite reached large monster classification, so once they’re sufficiently worn down a single Tranq Bomb will be enough to drop them. You won’t need a Paralysis Trap to assist — so I won’t be giving you one."
"Understood."
Hoshimi Miyabi accepted the Tranq Bombs with a nod and tucked them away into her satchel.
Once Andrew had finished laying out the assignment, she moved into action without a moment’s hesitation.
No questions. No wavering. Not even a flicker of doubt.
Watching the scene play out, Kairu’s tail swayed again without her meaning it to.
Going by how she carried herself, she seemed far more serious than those rookie Hunters — talented as they may have been — that the Sapphire Star had brought along a while back, the ones who’d treated the whole thing like a day trip into the countryside.
Well — then again, with the Sapphire Star walking alongside you, how could you possibly not treat it like a day trip?
The moment that thought surfaced, Kairu gave her head a brisk shake and flung it right back out of her skull. Whatever the circumstances, they were in the wild where danger could come at any moment — lowering one’s guard was simply not acceptable.
As for the things Andrew had said...
She decided to let it go. She’d leave him to his tall tales.
When they ran into the monsters, she would simply spare a tiny bit of extra attention to make sure he didn’t come to any grief. Just — just to keep the mission from failing. That was all. Yes.
As for anything else...
She dropped her gaze to the Barrel Bomb pouch hanging at her waist and pressed one paw lightly against it.
No. Granny had said so — unless things were truly desperate, she was not allowed to use those modified Barrel Bombs inside the forest.
Kairu withdrew her gaze, rested her chin on her folded paws, and rearranged herself back into her default expression of supreme, languid boredom.
But she didn’t close her eyes.
Through the veil of her half-lowered lashes, her gaze stayed fixed, unmoving, on Hoshimi Miyabi below.
Hoshimi Miyabi rose to her feet and began to pace along the edge of the mushroom field.
Her steps were unhurried, but her eyes missed nothing at each one.
The Scout Bug nestled in the bug cage at her hip had long since grown impatient in the face of so many unread traces — it burst out and swarmed toward the clusters of uncollected signs scattered across the ground, each one glowing with a faint, pale-green luminescence that illuminated every monster trace without exception, leaving nothing to hide.
She was still a little rough around the edges — she kept failing to let the Scout Bug know clearly that a given trace had already been collected, which led to the same spot being lit up twice on several occasions.
This was knowledge Andrew had taught her just a few days ago, and it was her first time putting it into practice in a real hunt.
But true to form, she was improving fast.
Fast enough, if anything, to be just a little astonishing.
Kairu watched the scene from her perch in the tree, and her tail swayed again without her noticing.
Hoshimi Miyabi held her breath, watching the tiny jade-green points of light leap and cluster over each hoof print, then scatter and drift toward the next trace.
After Hoshimi Miyabi had quietly collected close to twenty traces one after another — deliberately gathering tracks from as many different Mosswine as she could — a faintly glowing dotted line of insects materialized in the middle of the path ahead, drifting through the air and stretching from where she stood outward into the distance.
To the southeast.
"That’s enough traces."
Andrew stood at her side. He glanced down at the Scout Bug’s reaction, then looked over at Hoshimi Miyabi — who hadn’t noticed, and was already moving to search for the next trace — and spoke up to stop her:
"You don’t need to keep collecting anymore. They’re leading the way now."
At his words, Hoshimi Miyabi gave a small nod and stood without hesitation.
She instinctively turned her head toward Andrew. In the deepening dusk her dark crimson pupils looked especially deep and still. Her lips parted slightly — as though she were about to say something — but in the end all that came out was a quiet "Mm."
Andrew didn’t press her. He simply and naturally moved to take his place just behind and to the side of her — the exact position an attending staff member would occupy, not the lead position of a Hunter who dictated the course of action.
From this moment on, the initiative was in her hands.
Kairu dropped from the branch and landed a few steps behind them both.
She wore the same detached air as always — I’m only here to show the way — but without thinking about it her footsteps had grown considerably lighter, her soft paw pads landing on the fallen leaves with almost no sound at all.
The three of them followed the direction the Scout Bugs indicated, their silhouettes slowly dissolving into the gathering dusk.
The forest at twilight was far quieter than it was by day. fɾeeweɓnѳveɭ.com
Light slanted down through the gaps in the canopy overhead, slicing the woodland paths into alternating slivers of brightness and shadow. The air was thick with the smell of damp earth, threaded through with the distant chirring of insects whose names no one knew, weaving together into a close, seamless net.
Hoshimi Miyabi walked at the front, her fox ears turning gently, catching every sound around her.
She moved slowly, each step placed with deliberate care, as though testing whether the ground beneath her feet was safe. But her gaze never once left the small cluster of drifting jade-green lights ahead — the Scout Bugs gliding through the half-dark air, pausing every so often to circle in place, as if waiting for her to catch up.
Andrew walked roughly two paces behind her.
His eyes rested on the line of Hoshimi Miyabi’s back, flicking occasionally to the trees on either side, but for the most part he simply watched her every movement in quiet, unhurried silence.
Kairu walked at the rear.
Not because she didn’t want to be further forward — but because she had realized something: walking at the back gave her a clear view of both of them at the same time.
Every so often Hoshimi Miyabi would stop, crouch down to check the traces on the ground, and confirm that she was still going in the right direction. Her movements were noticeably more practiced than they had been that morning, but you could still see the earnest, slightly awkward care of someone doing this for only the second time.
Each time she investigated, her fingers hovered above the trace without ever making contact — as though she were afraid of disturbing something important, worried that damaging it would cause the Scout Bugs to lose the trail entirely, and that her very first assignment would end right there for exactly that reason.
In reality, of course, once a Scout Bug had begun tracking, it was wholly unconcerned by damage to the physical trace at that level.
And whenever she stopped, Andrew stopped too — but he never crowded in to look over her shoulder.
He simply stood there, arms folded across his chest, and waited in silence. Waited for Hoshimi Miyabi to reach her own conclusion. Waited for her to stand back up on her own. Waited for her to take the next step herself.
Kairu’s gaze swept back and forth between the two of them twice, and without quite meaning to she gave her ears a small, reflexive flick.
This Hunter actually seems fairly competent when he’s doing something real.
She handed out the grudging assessment in the privacy of her own mind, then promptly snapped her attention back to the forest ahead.
Absolutely not because she had taken any particular interest in these two people.
It was simply to keep the mission from failing, meow.
When the light finally faded to nothing, the Scout Bugs came to a stop.
They clustered around a massive ancient tree, their jade-green points of light weaving back and forth between the trunk and the branches, while the fresh tracks pressed into the earth below made it plain that their quarry was very, very close.
Hoshimi Miyabi stopped walking and tilted her head back to look up at the ancient tree.
The trunk was so thick it would have taken three or four grown adults linking arms to encircle it. The canopy spread wide overhead, blotting out the sky above. Several great boughs jutted from the trunk and intertwined into a natural platform of concealment, roughly three to four meters above the ground.
To secure the full live capture Andrew required, rather than rushing straight in and making a move, Hoshimi Miyabi shifted her thinking — launching the attack from height would catch them completely off guard.
"The monsters are just ahead, not far. The sun’s almost completely gone — we attack from the tree."
Andrew naturally deferred to Hoshimi Miyabi’s plan without objection, since her arrangements had been without fault from start to finish.
The only problem was...
While Hoshimi Miyabi wasn’t looking, Andrew quickly pulled three Deodorant Balls from his Item Bag and crushed them against all three of them — Hoshimi Miyabi, himself, and Kairu, who was standing nearby watching the proceedings.
And then came the stealth approach through the trees.
Andrew’s breathing was light and even, its rhythm unhurried — no quickening of pace even in full stealth, as though it had been drilled into him through long and careful training, something he could sustain without conscious effort, as naturally and steadily as a banked flame conserving its heat, holding everything in reserve for the moment when full force would be needed.
Dressed in her new set of stealth gear, Hoshimi Miyabi found herself quietly marveling. It felt as though there was nothing Andrew couldn’t do.
She had no idea who had ever taught him all of this.
Hoshimi Miyabi didn’t know when she had started noticing these details, nor did she know why she found herself caring about them. She only knew that when she heard that steady breathing close beside her, she didn’t need to be tense. She didn’t need to hold herself at the highest edge of alertness every single second.
Because there was someone at her side.
Kairu crouched on a higher branch, her back pressed against the trunk, her black fur melting almost seamlessly into the shadows the moonlight cast across the bark.
She glanced down at the two people below.
Their shoulders were nearly touching. And Hoshimi Miyabi’s head had unconsciously drifted toward him — even the rhythm of her breathing had, subtly, begun to match his.
"These two..."
The very tip of Kairu’s tail gave a small, quiet flick. She muttered something to herself in the depths of her mind, then looked away — but her ears stayed angled precisely toward the two of them below.
With the sun fully set, moonlight washed over the entire forest like a layer of silver frost. The pale silver glow fell across the open ground between the trees, gilding every leaf and every branch with a cool, clean light that belonged entirely to the night. The sound of insects fell away by degrees, replaced by a deeper, more pervasive stillness.
Hoshimi Miyabi crouched on the trunk, her fox ears standing straight up, her dark crimson pupils fixed and unblinking on the clearing below.
She could feel Andrew right beside her. His shoulder was right there next to hers — two layers of armor between them, no warmth crossing the gap — but his presence was as vivid and undeniable as an open flame burning close at hand.
Her heartbeat was a little faster than usual.
Only the excitement before a fight.
Rustle.
In the moonlight, five dark shapes emerged from the shadows between the trees.
The largest was at the front — its shoulder height reached almost to an average adult human’s chest, and even came up to Andrew’s waist. Its broad, heavy limbs struck the ground with a dull, resonant thud with every step. Its back was blanketed in a thick layer of grey-green moss, and several clusters of dark brown mushrooms had pushed their way up through the gaps in the moss, gleaming with a damp luster in the moonlight.
The four behind it were somewhat smaller, but still more than twice the size of an ordinary Mosswine.
Their pace was a little more hurried than the one at the head of the group, their snouts rooting and pushing at the ground without pause, as though scenting something out.
Five massive dark shapes stepped into the moonlit clearing and began moving steadily in the direction of the mushroom field.
The Mosswine had no inkling they were being watched. They went on ambling forward at their unhurried pace, noses pressed to the ground, utterly at ease.
And facing the targets now before her, Hoshimi Miyabi’s fox ears had already gone ramrod straight, her body coiling taut as a drawn bowstring in a single instant.
High in her branch, Kairu narrowed her eyes.
Five of them. None of them small.
And if someone caught a blow from a Mosswine of that bulk during the fight, the resulting damage would be devastating — broken bones would be the easy end of it.
On instinct, she flicked a glance toward Andrew. ƒreewebɳovel.com
Somewhat to her surprise, the male Hunter was still crouched on his branch without having moved a muscle — his breathing hadn’t even changed tempo.
What was more, the gaze he had fixed on Hoshimi Miyabi held no worry whatsoever — only a warm, genuine anticipation for whatever she was about to do.
Watching that, Kairu’s brow furrowed slightly, and a small thread of uncertainty worked its way into her thoughts.
That trusting?
But in the end she kept the question to herself and said nothing. She simply turned her gaze back to the clearing below.
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