Free Web NovelChapter 321: Legend of Boss
Oink, oink~ (Today’s a great day for eating~ A great day~)
The Mosswine Boss ambled leisurely down the path toward its beloved dining hall.
It harbored a secret it had never told a single soul — namely, that it was, in fact, a transmigrator.
It had been roughly two and a half, almost three years now since it had died an accidental and thoroughly undignified death and been reborn into this bizarre world teeming with countless monsters.
Discovering that it had transmigrated into the body of a pig — and, to add insult to injury, without so much as a single golden finger to show for it — had sent it into a spiraling breakdown for quite some time. But by now it had long since made its peace with who, and what, it was.
After all, it had come to realize that its species’ primary food source consisted of all manner of mushrooms, and the flavor of those mushrooms was — well, to put it plainly — beyond words.
Far more savory and delicious than anything it had ever eaten in its previous life, even the finest mountain delicacies and wild game!
And these days, the Mosswine Boss no longer dwelt on what once was. Its most important goal — the one that mattered above all else — was to take good care of its brothers and sisters after their mother had passed.
It cast a sweeping glance over its equally robust and powerfully built siblings and gave a satisfied nod.
The sun that would have lit up the forest — and simultaneously betrayed the group’s location — had sunk completely below the horizon. Those short little cats who’d been scurrying around in the new dining spot it had discovered didn’t dare linger there once darkness fell. And so the night ahead belonged entirely to the Mosswine Boss and its beloved siblings!
As for humans...
The Mosswine Boss had, in fact, spotted some from a distance on occasion.
But the clothing and bone-plated armor those humans wore had led the Mosswine Boss — upon first sighting them — to instinctively suspect that humanity had apparently reverted to being primitive cave-dwellers.
Though it had later gathered, from listening to their organized and systematic conversations, that humans were actually not nearly as backward as it had first imagined, it still had absolutely no desire to go and show itself. After all, the Mosswine Boss had never once forgotten that it was currently a pig.
It had no intention of becoming braised pork belly.
That said, while the Mosswine Boss didn’t dare touch any human farmland, the fields belonging to other beastmen? Not only did it dare touch those — it touched them every single day without hesitation!
It had, over the past two-plus years, built up quite a few cards to play.
And ever since discovering that particular mushroom patch, not just the siblings — even the youngest of the Mosswine Boss’s brothers and sisters had never gone hungry again.
Most importantly, every single day they got to eat their absolute favorite: matsutake mushrooms!
Compared to the old days when they had survived on nothing but blue mushrooms, this was something the Mosswine Boss could never have imagined before.
The forest glowed a pale silvery-grey in the moonlight, but to the Mosswine Boss’s eyes, this was nothing less than a glorious, open highway — one that belonged entirely to the Mosswine family!
Oink oink! (Move out! To the dining hall!)
OINK!! (Food! Food!!!) ×4
His siblings’ collective intelligence remained deeply questionable on a good day, but their well-practiced enthusiasm for cheering him on still prompted the Mosswine Boss to give a satisfied nod. He’d long since stopped expecting anything more from them in other departments.
Just as the Mosswine Boss led the charge with its siblings hot on its heels, all of them eager to reach their destination and eat their fill together, a faint, unfamiliar sound of something plummeting from directly overhead reached its ears — and its brow furrowed in an instant.
The Mosswine Boss sensed that something was very wrong.
It was an incredibly subtle sound, but buried within it was the unmistakable whisper of a sharp blade cleaving through the air — and that sound put it on high alert in an instant.
It had heard something like this before, on the occasions when it had secretly crept close to that place full of cats during the day — and it had heard it more than a few times at that.
It was in danger. And the threat was coming from above!
Had those cats tracked it down?!
Yet even faced with the imminent threat bearing down on it, the Mosswine Boss did not panic.
Don’t go underestimating what the Mosswine siblings are made of!
The attacker was still airborne. As long as it tilted its head up to locate them, it could use its battle-hardened body to dodge the strike at the last moment — and then the siblings would charge in together and make that daring fool regret ever raising a paw against it!
In that moment, its authority as leader would be displayed in all its magnificent glory!!
The Mosswine Boss’s mind raced through the scenario at lightning speed, deeply satisfied with the glorious future it had just envisioned.
And in reality, only a single instant had actually passed.
With its other siblings also shrieking as they registered that something was wrong, the Mosswine Boss moved without hesitation to execute the plan it had laid out in its head.
But in that very moment, it suddenly realized — its perfect plan had been stopped dead at the very first step.
Not because its attacker had suddenly changed tactics. But because the Mosswine Boss had just remembered something.
It had forgotten, while designing that flawless plan, that it was currently a pig.
And as a pig — due to its fundamental physiology — it didn’t actually have a neck to speak of, which meant that tilting its head upward was simply not something it was physically capable of doing.
Oink. (Oh no.)
Feeling the cold gleam of the blade growing closer, its skin prickling painfully from the sheer proximity, the Mosswine Boss instinctively curled its body inward and let out a loud, anguished cry:
SQUEAL!!! (I’M GONNA DIE!!!)
THUD——!
Hoshimi Miyabi crouched on the tree trunk, her body coiled taut as a bowstring.
Her right hand had already come to rest lightly on the Tachi she’d been using for training during this period — it looked effortless, but every muscle was primed and ready to draw the blade in an instant, keeping her poised to enter combat at maximum speed at any given moment.
This Tachi had, in truth, been custom-made by Andrew.
And "custom-made" was perhaps a generous term — in reality, it was nothing more than a suitably sized, thick iron bar that had been ground to an edge on one side of the blade. freewebnσvel.cѳm
Even the grip had been wrapped together casually with strips of cloth.
This was, in fact, a practice version Andrew had created in advance so that Hoshimi Miyabi could grow accustomed to the feel of the Cursed Ice Dragon Tachi — and the full-sized Cursed Ice Dragon Tachi she would eventually use would be identical in scale to this training replica.
Of course, to accommodate Hoshimi Miyabi’s fighting style and techniques, Andrew had shaved down the training Tachi’s size and thickness considerably so that it could still be worn at her hip in the customary manner.
Even so, it was still several sizes larger than Wuwei.
And now — for the very first time — Hoshimi Miyabi was about to use a weapon of this form in actual live combat.
The countless weapon techniques her mother had taught her in her childhood meant that an oversized weapon would not leave her helpless; and beyond that, this weapon was fundamentally still a Tachi.
The hunter’s combat rhythm and techniques Andrew had taught her over these past weeks quietly merged and flowed together in her mind, blending with the skills she had cultivated before.
She fixed her gaze on the target below, drew in a deep, slow breath — and held it.
The lead Mosswine — the largest of the five by a considerable margin — had gradually ambled into the very center of the clearing, its mushroom-covered back clearly visible in the moonlight.
It came to a halt, gave its head a small, self-satisfied shake, and snorted a plume of white mist from its nostrils. The expression on its face was uncannily human — smug, practically radiating self-satisfaction, as if it were silently gloating over something.
Watching the completely unsuspecting Mosswine Boss below her, Hoshimi Miyabi’s relaxed arm snapped taut in an instant.
Now.
The moment her toes pushed off against the trunk, her whole body launched forward like a fox pouncing on its rightful prey — carried by an overwhelming, razor-sharp momentum as she plummeted from the branch.
In midair, the blade sang free of its sheath.
The flash of steel traced a clean silver-white arc through the moonlight, aimed straight and true at the nape of the lead Mosswine’s neck below.
Capture the ringleader first — that had always been the axiom.
If the strike landed, Hoshimi Miyabi was ninety percent certain she could render it unconscious in an instant.
Watching the Mosswine below beginning to show signs of panic, Hoshimi Miyabi’s gaze shifted almost imperceptibly as a thought surfaced — this was her very first true hunt since arriving in this world, and she was executing it with the hunter’s blade techniques Andrew had taught her.
The blade cleaved through the air and fell.
THUD——!
A dull, heavy impact. Rather than the sensation of cutting into flesh or shell, what Hoshimi Miyabi felt was more like striking the earth itself.
Hoshimi Miyabi’s pupils contracted ever so slightly.
The blade had landed — but not on the nape of the neck. It had caught the back instead.
She could feel the edge cut into something, but it wasn’t the anticipated texture of flesh and blood. Instead, it met a thick, heavy resistance with a faint underlying elasticity that refused to give.
She sprang back with a light hop to open up distance — and only then did she fully see what her blade had actually struck.
Moss.
Across the back of this massive Mosswine, there grew a thick, dense layer of moss — its scale matching the creature’s own enormous size.
Wet soil mixed with moss and pebbles — it was as though the creature carried a patch of living earth on its back.
And that thick earthen mantle, like a natural suit of armor, had successfully absorbed the vast majority of the force behind Hoshimi Miyabi’s strike.
The blade — already not particularly sharp to begin with — had bitten barely two inches into the moss before being stopped dead by the densely interlocked plant fibers and damp soil, never coming close to reaching the Mosswine’s skin underneath.
Having narrowly survived its brush with death, the Mosswine Boss let out a tremendous shriek, wrenching its body sideways in a single violent motion — and with the nimble agility of a surprisingly flexible fat creature, it swung around to face Hoshimi Miyabi, who had just landed on the ground.
The solid, shell-like plating armoring the top of its head gave it no small amount of confidence. And yet that fierce, lightning-fast strike just now had made it hesitant to move rashly.
But what distracted the Mosswine Boss most of all was a realization that had just struck it.
Although the memories of its previous life allowed it to recognize that the fox-girl who had just appeared before it was, objectively speaking, beautiful — it found that it felt absolutely nothing whatsoever.
Oh no.
The human standing across from it hadn’t even managed to make the Mosswine Boss feel as charmed as its own fourth sibling did!
But almost immediately, the four siblings who came tumbling and scrambling to plant themselves in front of the Mosswine Boss drove that small existential crisis completely out of its mind.
Whatever the case — it was a pig now, not a human anymore.
And the human who had just appeared before them was dangerous!
Hoshimi Miyabi used the momentum to roll through the air, landing cleanly on an open patch of ground three meters back. She brought Wuwei up in front of her and fixed her gaze sharply on the five startled creatures now facing her.
First strike — damage: nearly zero.
But Hoshimi Miyabi didn’t panic.
She watched the Mosswine fidgeting irritably in front of her, pawing restlessly at the ground with their front hooves — and if anything, the corners of her mouth curved ever so slightly upward, the expression of someone who had just confirmed something and felt quietly reassured by it.
The training Tachi in her hand was far more blunt instrument than sharp blade — which meant there was no longer any risk of striking too hard and accidentally failing the capture requirement Andrew had set.
Up on a high branch, Kairu had witnessed every moment of it. freeweɓnovel.cøm
Her brow furrowed slightly.
Hoshimi Miyabi’s timing on the attack had been flawless. Her control of distance had been flawless. And when the opening strike failed to achieve its intended effect, she hadn’t pushed her luck or gone chasing after an advantage — she’d immediately and sensibly pulled back to a safe distance.
By Kairu’s estimation, as a rookie hunter, she was already impressive.
And yet — as Kairu replayed the image of that slash Hoshimi Miyabi had unleashed midair, she found her eyes narrowing involuntarily.
It was good — genuinely good — but the strike itself, and the landing recovery that followed, carried a certain dissonance she couldn’t quite put into words.
It was like two songs with completely different styles playing at the same time, stitched together into something that resembled a single piece only through the meticulous skill of an accomplished composer forcing them into alignment.
And yet because neither melody had been rearranged or adapted at all, they remained two parallel lines running side by side.
To an untrained ear, it sounded fine. But to someone who knew both pieces intimately, the subtle wrongness was everywhere — an inescapable, pervasive sense of friction.
Her blade technique wasn’t a pure hunter’s style.
If the hunter’s blade style was the ultimate concentrated force — born from harnessing every available resource in one’s surroundings to survive in the face of monsters many times, even dozens of times, more powerful than oneself — then the other style woven through her movements was something far more balanced.
Lighter. More fluid. Like a dance perpetually prepared to redirect itself mid-air — comprehensive and versatile, yet when faced with truly powerful monsters capable of blotting out the sky and shattering the earth with a single blow, it became fundamentally inverted. Prioritizing the wrong things.
How strange — this second style looked precisely like the kind of technique one would develop in a gentler world, one without monsters of that terrifying caliber.
But it wasn’t wrong, exactly.
And it was precisely because both styles were valid on their own that the two of them fought each other when used in combination.
Watching it all unfold below her, Kairu could no longer hold herself back. She dropped nimbly down from the higher branch and landed on the same trunk where Andrew stood.
Her gaze shifted to the battle below, and her lips moved — she seemed to be wrestling with whether or not to say something.
"That... um..."
In the end, Kairu couldn’t hold back any longer. She pitched her voice low — barely above a murmur, audible only to the person directly beside her — and asked:
"The way she’s fighting... is she really not in any danger?"
But in contrast to Kairu’s uncertainty, Andrew was the picture of relaxed confidence. He gave a single, unhesitating nod.
"Don’t worry — with her ability, she’ll be fine."
"Besides, if I’ve chosen to have her face them alone, it’s because I have more than enough reason to be certain of it."
His gaze settled on Hoshimi Miyabi below — already fully in the zone — and a faint smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. He tossed the pebbles in his hand idly and continued:
"Honestly, the timing on this couldn’t be better. For Miyabi at her current level, Mosswine are pretty much the ideal opponents for her to practice on, aren’t they?"
"Big frames, strong attack power — and while they can build up some decent speed during a charge, they can’t change direction mid-run. So as long as she doesn’t make any especially stupid and fatal mistakes, the worst that happens is she takes a bit of a hit. And most importantly — their hide is thick. They can take a beating."
"In these conditions, using them to let Miyabi slowly work through the dissonance between her two blade styles in a real fight? It’s practically a perfect teaching tool."
Kairu pulled her gaze away and looked back down at the battle below as she listened to Andrew lay it all out.
Predictably, the situation below was playing out exactly as the man beside her had described — and despite herself, Kairu’s tail began to sway gently back and forth of its own accord.
She had to admit it.
He might love to run his mouth — but when it came to reading the condition of his companions and gauging the difficulty level of a hunt, this guy was actually... pretty reliable.
No. Wait.
Kairu gave her head a sharp, decisive shake and flung that thought straight out of her skull.
Even if the two of them had performed quite well during this time, she absolutely could not let herself acknowledge them so easily!
After all — whether it was a partner, or a partner’s teammate — her standards were very high!
She absolutely could not accept them this readily.
At the very least, they’d have to sincerely ask her three times...
No — two times. Two.
____
👻🔥Walnut-chan ;)🔥👻
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