Chapter 323: Invincible Under Heaven, Enemy from the Sky?!
"Thud. Thud. Thud."
The heavy, dull footsteps grew clearer with each passing moment, and the tremors running through the ground grew steadily more intense in tandem.
The branches of the ancient tree beneath Andrew’s feet had already begun to shiver gently in time with the approaching footsteps, and a handful of dry leaves drifted free from the canopy overhead.
At the same time.
Unlike Andrew, who had the trunk of the tree beneath him to absorb the vibrations, Hoshimi Miyabi — with her feet planted directly on the ground — was undeniably feeling the tremors with far greater clarity.
The body that had only just begun to relax tensed up all over again in an instant.
Her eyes snapped away from the direction of Andrew’s perch in the tree and locked onto the source of the disturbance, and her right hand — at some point she couldn’t quite recall — had already settled back onto the hilt of the Tachi at her waist, while her gaze remained fixed unwaveringly on the direction the sound was coming from.
The moonlight didn’t reach in that far. There was nothing at all to see.
But that sound — the sound itself didn’t lie.
She might be unfamiliar with the soundscape of this new world, but that didn’t mean she had lost the sharp, hard-earned instincts of a Void Hunter — the keen sense for an enemy’s movements.
For something to produce this much commotion just by moving...
At the very least, in Hoshimi Miyabi’s memory, not even an ordinary Level 4 Ethereal from the Hollows would be remotely capable of putting out a presence like that.
Maybe, in terms of raw physical mass alone, this thing was already on the level of something like Nineveh?
The weapon in her hand was crude beyond words, but Hoshimi Miyabi still squared up to face the source of the noise without the slightest hesitation, displaying not a hint of any intention to retreat.
Back-to-back fights — was that all? The dangers she had faced back in New Eridu had been far, far greater than this.
"Thud. Thud. Thud."
And along with the sound, a massive black silhouette gradually surfaced from out of the shadows of the woods.
A Mosswine. Still just a Mosswine.
But unlike any of the Mosswine that had been roaming around the Ancient Forest up to now, this one’s sheer enormous size gave it an overwhelming, oppressive presence on a wholly different order of magnitude.
If the five Mosswine she had just hunted — whose shoulder height even reached Andrew’s — were already more than twice the size of an ordinary Mosswine, then this newcomer was the square of those.
The moss layered across its back, mixed together with packed earth, looked like a heavy suit of armor in its own right — and through the gaps in that mossy plating, Hoshimi Miyabi could even glimpse fragments of metallic ore that had deliberately been worked into the layers.
Those exposed shards, jutting out from the moss, gave off a dull bluish-gray gleam in the moonlight.
There was no doubt about it.
Even if it was "just" a Mosswine, with this kind of monstrous size piled on top of it, it became saturated with threat.
And that was without even getting into the fact that Mosswine themselves were anything but weak.
Their terrifying muscle mass made them unstoppable in a charge, and that destructive power — that level of threat — scaled exponentially with the creature’s body size.
The moss acted like cordage binding individual plates into a true suit of armor, weaving the chunks of ore and the slurry of mud into a single dense layer wrapped across this enormous Mosswine’s back.
Once it dried out, the whole thing would harden into a naturally formed coat of armor.
This colossal monster — practically a walking fortress in its own right — had now fixed its eyes upon the only living thing still standing on this battlefield.
As the youngest little brother of the Mosswine family, Sixth Puu may have had the largest body of any of them, but there was no question that he also had the lowest IQ of the entire bunch.
Having only just rushed onto the battlefield, his eyes — still a little dazed and unfocused — swept around to take in the whole scene.
Looking at his Boss Puu lying motionless on the ground, his not-particularly-bright head dug back through past memories and found only one situation that resembled this one.
And that was — the big brother who had always, without fail, looked after him was now in the very same state as their mother.
No matter how gently he nudged him with his snout, his big brother wouldn’t get up grumbling and cursing the way he always did to go scrounge up food for him, and he wouldn’t lie sprawled across the top of his head during thunderstorms to shelter him from the rain anymore either.
Boundless rage and grief caused Sixth Puu’s eyes to flush a deep crimson.
The only thing he wanted now was to destroy everything in sight.
Mimicking the way Boss Puu had taught the other brothers and sisters during their training sessions, he aimed his head squarely at his target, dropped it just slightly — and then, for the very first time in his life, threw himself into a charge with absolutely everything he had.
Like a runaway heavy-duty truck loaded down to the brim with steel.
Facing Sixth Puu as he came barreling toward her, Hoshimi Miyabi tightened her grip on the Tachi in her hands and, without a moment’s hesitation, threw herself sideways to evade.
She wasn’t an idiot — when facing an attack that almost certainly carried real danger, dodging was obviously the first choice.
But what Hoshimi Miyabi hadn’t seen coming was this.
Despite having such an enormous frame, this Mosswine was actually able — through the rock-solid muscle layered beneath all that fat — to keep adjusting its trajectory mid-charge at full speed, tracking her every evasion!
Not one of those five from earlier had been able to pull that off!
Caught completely off guard, and with Sixth Puu’s sheer size meaning his attack covered an enormous area, Hoshimi Miyabi realized that even if she committed to evading at full speed right now, there was still a substantial chance she’d be clipped by those long, slender tusks.
And given the terrifying force of this charge, getting clipped would not be a pleasant experience in the slightest.
Should she keep dodging?
Hoshimi Miyabi was quite confident she could successfully evade — but it was worth remembering that this battlefield also still had all those other unconscious Mosswine sprawled across it.
Faced with this situation, Hoshimi Miyabi did the opposite — she brought her dodging footwork to a stop.
Andrew had asked earlier that this commission be resolved using the Hunter techniques she had learned, and so Hoshimi Miyabi was going to see it through with everything she had.
As for whether this choice carried any danger?
She trusted Andrew. And she trusted the blade in her own hand.
Although this was the very first time she’d be deploying this extremely high-risk technique in real combat, Hoshimi Miyabi didn’t hesitate for so much as a single heartbeat.
The force she had built up through her earlier swings was now surging restlessly inside its sheath, and as Sixth Puu came thundering toward her in his wild, frothing charge, the Tachi in Hoshimi Miyabi’s hands was coiled and ready — primed to be unleashed.
At that same moment, up on her tree branch, Kairu’s expression had grown unbelievably tense.
Faced with this monster that had appeared out of nowhere, she instinctively went rigid, her tail stiffening straight out behind her — and even the fur along her tail bristled and puffed up on its own.
Her blue eyes locked unblinkingly onto the approaching black shape, and with tension thick in her voice she murmured under her breath:
"What... what even is that..."
However you sliced it, this monster was unquestionably way beyond anything a rookie Hunter could be expected to handle!
Based on the disturbance it was generating just by moving, this Mosswine had absolutely reached the kind of threat level that only an elite-tier Hunter should be tackling!
And right now, facing this monster’s charge, there was only one person standing there — a brand-new rookie Hunter by the name of Hoshimi Miyabi!
This was, on top of everything else, her very first commission!
But when she saw that Hoshimi Miyabi had chosen to stand her ground with her Tachi in hand in the face of a charging monster, Kairu — who had seen plenty of things back in Flame Village — instantly figured out what Hoshimi Miyabi was planning.
And in that moment, even as Kairu found herself breaking into a cold sweat on Hoshimi Miyabi’s behalf, she couldn’t help the flicker of genuine respect that rose up alongside the worry.
Whatever Hoshimi Miyabi’s actual combat strength might be, just having the kind of nerve it took to face down a monster’s Dragoncart charge head-on was already more than enough to win Kairu’s wholehearted respect from the bottom of her heart.
After all, not just anyone had the guts to stand stock-still in the path of a monster going at full charge.
The mere few hundred meters of distance evaporated in the blink of an eye under Sixth Puu’s all-out charge, propelled as it was by that massive frame.
The ground underfoot trembled relentlessly as the monster tore toward her at breakneck speed, and even with that colossal mass nearly upon her, Hoshimi Miyabi held to absolute, unwavering composure, focused her concentration, and waited for the exact instant Andrew had described to her when teaching this technique.
Closer. Closer still.
Right at the moment when Hoshimi Miyabi could practically feel the hot blast of Sixth Puu’s panting breath buffeting against her body as he stampeded toward her.
In the very next instant, the Tachi at her waist whipped free of its scabbard.
That terrifying Dragoncart charge — strong enough to grind anything in its path into dust — barreled straight through the spot where Hoshimi Miyabi had been standing only a heartbeat earlier, but her body, in the very motion of the Tachi being drawn, seemed to dissolve into a phantom.
Right as Kairu’s heart leapt clean up into her throat.
In the very next moment, a sharp, gleaming arc of steel sliced across Sixth Puu’s enormous body, and Hoshimi Miyabi’s phantom-like form re-materialized into solid flesh and bone within the very trail that Sixth Puu’s charge had already torn past.
Foresight, Spirit Roundslash!
Even a Tachi that was practically nothing more than a forged iron bar was transformed, under the sheer force of the Spirit Roundslash, into an unbelievably keen, cutting slash.
In a single instant, the layer of earthen armor along its flank — never particularly thick to begin with — was driven clean through.
Bright red blood began to spill from the wound at once, but on Sixth Puu’s enormous, hulking frame, this shallow cut amounted to little more than a slightly more serious flesh wound.
If anything, it served to whip Sixth Puu’s primal fury into a frenzy.
The eyes that had been merely flushed red turned a deep, blood-soaked crimson, and Sixth Puu had now been wholly consumed by rage, past all caring.
All he wanted now was to throw every ounce of strength he had into sending the enemy in front of him flying.
And it was right at this moment.
A faint splintering sound suddenly reached everyone’s ears — and the source of the sound was none other than the practice Tachi in Hoshimi Miyabi’s hands.
It had only ever been a stopgap, something thrown together to be used for a few days of training before her Cursed Ice Dragon Tachi was ready — and in Andrew’s original plans, there had been no allowance whatsoever for an unexpected battle like this one.
The only requirement he had placed on this blade was that it survive three days of training intact — if it could manage that, it was considered a success.
Not only were the materials used the most ordinary kind available, the forging and crafting had been done very loosely — calling it nothing more than a half-finished product wouldn’t have been an exaggeration in the slightest.
Andrew had, in fact, already done his best to overestimate the durability the blade would need.
But on top of this already-unscheduled battle, slamming head-on into the earthen armor on Sixth Puu’s back yet again had ultimately pushed this half-finished Tachi past the breaking point.
In the end, and to nobody’s surprise, the blade snapped cleanly apart right at the base.
Facing Sixth Puu as he prepared to charge a second time, all that remained in Hoshimi Miyabi’s grasp was a hilt with the tsuba still attached — completely stripped of any blade whatsoever.
The situation seemed to plunge into hopeless desperation in an instant.
Kairu’s eyes locked unblinkingly onto the trajectory the monster was about to charge along, and her paw moved on instinct to press down on her custom-made Barrel Bomb, stowed away in the pack slung across her back.
The supposed warning that her job was only to act as guide had long since been flung clean out of her head.
Feeling the slightly coarse grain of the wooden Barrel Bomb under her paw, Kairu mounted a quiet defense in the depths of her own heart:
As a Felyne Hunter aspiring to one day become an icon, how could she possibly stand by and watch her Hunter run headlong into danger and just let her get hurt without lifting a paw!
Then again — as the old saying went, where some find joy, others find sorrow.
Boss Puu, who had been knocked out cold earlier after slamming into that tree but had — given that it was, after all, only a tree — ultimately come away with only light injuries, had now come to. And as he took in the scene unfolding across the battlefield, his heart was filled with nothing but relief and smug satisfaction.
Smugness. Boss Puu’s heart was overflowing with the smug pride of having finally achieved his objective.
’You lot don’t play by the rules, but you know what — neither do I! Wait and wait and wait — and at long last, Sixth Puu’s finally caught up!’
Boss Puu thought to himself with absolute, unrestrained self-satisfaction:
’Whether it was cultivating the moss with the strongest possible defensive properties, or drilling that hard-to-counter group charge formation to use as cover for my own ambush — sure, both were designed with the hope of taking the enemy out of the fight outright, but the real purpose, beyond a shadow of doubt, was buying time!’
After being polished up through Boss Puu’s own ingenious cleverness, even the Mosswine who had already been knocked unconscious — every single pig in the bunch, deep down — held an absolutely unshakable belief.
As long as their sixth brother reached the battlefield, the final victory of this fight would absolutely belong to the Mosswine family——
After all, in countless previous battles, Sixth Puu’s unmatched physical strength had — without a single exception — borne out the truth of Boss Puu’s inner conviction.
But even so, as the leader of the group, Boss Puu maintained a cautious mindset.
In order to ensure that Sixth Puu wouldn’t be discovered by humans or beastmen — and so that they could catch their opponent completely off guard — Boss Puu had taught him long ago how to hide his tracks while moving.
And in order to pull that off, his pace of travel was unavoidably much slower than that of Boss Puu and the rest of the pigs.
But this was exactly the effect Boss Puu had been going for.
The appropriate distance meant that by the time Sixth Puu arrived at the mushroom field, Boss Puu himself and the other siblings would have eaten their fill and gathered enough food for him to fill his stomach as well — so that he wouldn’t need to leave any trace at all on the field.
And in the event that they actually ran into real danger, Sixth Puu — no longer needing to conceal himself — would be able to launch into a charge and reach the battlefield with unparalleled speed.
Catching the enemy completely off guard, he was certain to land an unexpected blow with results that nobody on the other side would see coming!
And reality, sure enough, had not disappointed him.
Looking at Hoshimi Miyabi, still standing motionless in the same spot, the once-terrifying Tachi in her hand now reduced to nothing but a bare hilt — Boss Puu’s heart swelled with utter, undiluted smugness.
You’ve lost your weapon entirely — how on earth do you think you’re going to fight us now!
At the same time, however, Boss Puu wasn’t actually about to sit back and bask in this seemingly assured victory.
Using the tremors generated by Sixth Puu’s charge as cover, Boss Puu was subtly shifting his own stance, getting ready to seize the perfect moment to launch yet another righteous sneak attack!
And as Sixth Puu launched himself into another charge, Boss Puu’s internal battle cry rang out in perfect synchronization.
’My sixth brother is invincible under heaven!!!’
The next moment.
Suddenly, without warning, a white figure descended out of the sky, slamming down heavily onto Sixth Puu’s charging path.
The ground splintered under the impact, and in an instant, a fine cloud of dust and sand was kicked up into the air.
The heavy armor he wore made him look like a god descending from the heavens, and his towering, powerfully-built frame all but radiated the explosive strength contained within it at a single glance.
But Boss Puu wasn’t particularly worried about it.
Sixth brother had already begun his charge — no human or monster alive had ever been able to stop Sixth Puu’s Dragoncart charge head-on, not even those monsters who looked particularly powerful at first glance!
It bore repeating.
My sixth brother is invincible under heaven!!!
And yet... that woman holding the broken blade, for some inexplicable reason, looked like she had just heaved an enormous sigh of relief?
Boss Puu was hit at once by a sudden ominous premonition — and in the very next moment, that ominous premonition turned, right before his very eyes, into stark reality.
As Sixth Puu’s renewed charge bore down toward the two figures standing in front of him.
This time, the man’s response was even simpler than what that woman had done a moment ago.
He just, very plainly.
Raised his arm. Threw a punch.
In the very next instant, Sixth Puu — who had been charging like a madman just a heartbeat earlier — felt as though he had just slammed straight into the legendary Wall of Sighs.
The horrifying force of his own inertia even sent his back end flipping high up into the air, and he nearly tumbled head over hooves right then and there from the sheer momentum.
"SQUEAL!!!"
Along with Sixth Puu’s anguished, ear-splitting wail of pain from the recoil — head spinning, brain rattled — Boss Puu, who had witnessed every moment of it from the side, could only mutter dumbly to himself:
"Oink?! (E-Enemy... from the sky?!)"
____
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