Chapter 324: Got a Secure Job, Fam
Hoshimi Miyabi stared at the unbelievably composed figure standing in front of her, momentarily caught in a daze. Still clutching the snapped tachi in her hand, she gave the ears atop her head an instinctive little twitch.
Just as expected — Andrew had never once let the trust she placed in him go unanswered.
His fist was still held out in the very posture of the punch he’d just unleashed, the knuckles dusted with scraps of moss and bits of clinging dirt — while the white armor encasing his body had been speckled here and there with tiny flecks of blood.
Naturally, none of that blood was his. It belonged to that Mosswine.
The armor was supposed to be a clean, pristine white — and yet that scattered streak of crimson splashed across its surface had, against all logic, lent the whole piece an unspeakable air of menace, as though the armor’s wearer had always been meant to bathe himself in the blood of his enemies.
Hoshimi Miyabi gazed at his back, her lips parting just the slightest fraction.
This was, it seemed, the very first time since she had taken Wuwei in hand that anyone had stood between her and danger like that — shielding her behind their own body in the face of a threat.
And the last time anyone had stepped in front of her like that... had been back during the period when the Old Capital fell — that face from her memory, eternally gentle.
Afterwards, she had made up her mind — firmly, irrevocably — that she would never let such a situation come to pass again. And yet...
Hoshimi Miyabi’s fingers tightened almost imperceptibly around the hilt of her tachi. Her heart skipped a beat in that single instant — and then began to pound at a noticeably faster pace.
Her lips moved, almost giving voice to something on pure instinct. But in the end, she said nothing at all.
And as that massive Mosswine finally and definitively keeled over, for everyone present, this not-particularly-grueling battle had drawn fully and completely to a close.
Snapping back to herself, Hoshimi Miyabi looked down at the hilt still in her hand — and what surfaced in her eyes was an unmistakable trace of irrepressible regret.
As that just-finished fight against the monsters had stretched on, Hoshimi Miyabi — already fully in the zone by the end of it — had begun to feel, more vividly with every passing exchange, the techniques she’d only recently learned merging at breakneck speed with the swordsmanship she’d long since mastered.
Exactly as Andrew had said.
The monsters featured in this particular commission really were the most ideal sparring partners she could possibly have hoped for as live-combat training material, and her progress over the course of this battle had been nothing short of miraculous — as though some unseen god had been at her shoulder. A pity. The moment her weapon snapped, the egoless, in-the-zone state had been broken — and vanished right along with it.
And as for what would have come after that...
Had her weapon not broken, had she been allowed to push the fight forward, Hoshimi Miyabi was actually deeply confident she could have closed out a complete hunt on that titanic Mosswine — and the fusion between her two styles would surely have advanced by leaps and bounds in the process.
Unfortunately, this world had never been kind enough to offer anyone the luxury of "if only."
She stared somewhat blankly at the hilt in her hand, savoring the aftertaste of her very first true combat since completing her training — all while her thoughts wandered to who-knew-what else along the way. Then, abruptly, a flash of insight raced through her mind.
A realization struck her out of nowhere.
This tachi — wasn’t it, in a way, technically the very first gift Andrew had ever given her?
Granted, back when Andrew had originally placed the Tachi into her hands, he’d already preemptively set her expectations — telling her in plain terms that this particular blade had been forged with one purpose only: as a purely consumable practice piece meant to help her grow accustomed to the form before she finally got her hands on the Cursed Ice Dragon Tachi itself.
But for some reason she couldn’t quite explain...
The thought of simply tossing it aside left a small, stubborn pang of regret in Hoshimi Miyabi’s chest that she couldn’t quite shake.
She honestly couldn’t say whether what she was mourning was the equipment itself — or the hard-won opportunity for live combat practice under such genuinely safe conditions, the likes of which would no longer be available to her once they went back.
Or perhaps... it was the unspoken, special meaning hidden within the gift itself.
While no one’s attention was on her movements—
Hoshimi Miyabi nonetheless found herself instinctively drifting, quietly and discreetly, over to the broken-off shard of the blade that had gone flying when the weapon snapped. Bending down, she scooped up the severed length of steel and slipped it gently away into the scabbard.
Finally, she used the hilt — with only the barest sliver of blade still attached to it — to plug up the mouth of the sheath, and then, with all the same precise care as before, she hung the whole assembly back at her hip. As though pretending, just for a little while, that this was still one intact, unbroken Tachi.
Meanwhile.
Unlike Hoshimi Miyabi, lost in her quiet contemplation, Andrew had paused for absolutely nothing the moment the battle ended — diving straight into the work of harvesting the spoils of this particular fight.
Namely, the exquisitely delicious matsutake mushrooms growing in lush clusters along the backs of the Mosswine sprawled out across the ground.
Bear in mind, the deliciousness of these things was something every single person universally recognized as a delicacy of the highest order — and on top of that, this was a unique mutant variety he was laying eyes on for the very first time. Having gone through all the trouble of actually finding them, there was no way in hell Andrew was going to let an opportunity like this slip through his fingers.
Just one small disappointment, though.
Mosswine meat — equally renowned for its flavor — was off the menu this time around. After all, this herd was obviously a one-of-a-kind mutation, and if he genuinely went and carved off a slab of meat from one of them, the moment that crew of old scholars back at base realized he’d butchered their unique specimen, they’d probably hunt him down to settle the score in person.
And besides — you couldn’t exactly carve meat off a living animal, could you?
That would be just a touch too cruel.
Looking at the matsutake in his hand — plucked off Sixth Puu’s back, easily four times the size of an ordinary one and packed brimming-full to boot — Andrew gave a satisfied nod.
That fragrance hitting him in the face — sliced thin and casually pan-seared on a hot iron plate, this thing would already be a flavor without rival. And matsutake of this caliber were anything BUT scarce on Sixth Puu’s back!
Meanwhile.
Watching Andrew below — casually harvesting matsutake off the back of a Mosswine as though it were the most ordinary chore in the world — Kairu remained crouched on a tree trunk, her claws sunk dead-locked into the branch beneath her.
Her tail had, entirely without her noticing, puffed itself out into one bristling, fluffed-up ball of fur.
Her mouth hung half-open, her eyes blown perfectly round as she stared down at the dust-shrouded clearing below — staring at the man standing dead-center in the middle of it all.
What, exactly, had she just witnessed?
That man had — with a single, bare-fisted punch — hammered to a flat-out dead halt a monster weighing over a hundred tons, one that had been mid-frenzied charge no less.
That hadn’t just been any monster — that had been a monster in the middle of an all-out Dragon Charge, the kind designed to send a Hunter straight back to camp in pieces, which made what he’d just done orders of magnitude more terrifying than simply downing a creature from a neutral stance! And he’d done it with his fist!
Pulling off a stunt like that — even the legendary Sapphire Star, the current pride of the New World, couldn’t have done much better!!!
In that single moment, Kairu’s brain crashed and froze completely.
She thought back to all the times she’d silently mocked Andrew in the privacy of her own head for being an insufferable braggart — how, when he’d casually claimed he could end the fight in the blink of an eye, she’d written him off as a guy who just loved running his mouth. And now? Looking back at it, the clown in this whole scenario was... apparently her?!
The thought immediately pinned Kairu’s ears flat against her head, and her tail behind her began swishing wildly back and forth completely without her consent — as though she were locked in some fierce, internal struggle with something invisible.
She didn’t want to admit she’d misread him.
But the facts were sitting right there in front of her.
No — more accurately, the facts were sprawled out across the ground.
That colossal Mosswine still lay out in the clearing with its limbs splayed wide, eyes shut tight, dropped directly from a state of foaming rage into a slumber as peaceful as a newborn’s — without, as of this moment, the faintest sign that it intended to wake up anytime soon.
If this didn’t qualify as ending a battle in the blink of an eye, then what on earth would?
Even if all those snippy commentaries had only ever existed in the privacy of her own thoughts — given Kairu’s personality, she absolutely could not pretend that none of it had happened.
She instinctively drew in a deep, deep breath, squeezed her eyes shut, and opened them again.
But to her great disappointment, none of what had just transpired had been a hallucination — and that Mosswine was still lying there, peacefully nestled in the crater its own bulk had carved out on impact. No miracle had come to her rescue.
In the end, Kairu opted to twist her face to the side and bury her field of vision behind her own tail in a desperate bid to escape from reality.
She didn’t want to look anymore.
But even so, her previously-flattened ears instinctively pricked themselves back upright — one of them pointing unwaveringly toward Andrew’s direction, while the other kept rotating restlessly, keeping watch on her surroundings. Vigilant against any potential threat. Even though her services as a guide were technically no longer required at this stage.
As a Hunter’s partner, keeping watch for any dangers that might appear in the area was simply part of her duty.
Mm-hm.
Andrew and Hoshimi Miyabi, as the team’s frontline combat power, had already completed their own jobs. Which meant that the Felyne — as the support — absolutely could not afford to fall behind on her end of the responsibilities either.
In thinking this, Kairu very conveniently chose to overlook the tiny detail that this particular division of roles only actually applied once a Felyne and a Hunter had officially partnered up.
At that same moment.
As for Boss Puu — who had originally been lying in wait off to the side, preparing to spring a surprise attack — he was now staring at the massive cloud of dust thrown up by Sixth Puu’s enormous body slamming down hard onto the earth.
Stopped dead in his tracks by a single punch from the man who’d dropped straight out of the sky, Sixth Puu had keeled over rigid as a fallen log — and was now in some indeterminate state somewhere between alive and dead.
Watching the scene unfold in front of him, Boss Puu’s brain simply... stopped processing altogether.
This... this freaking thing was a HUMAN?!
As a former human himself, how had he never known that humans were actually capable of pulling off this kind of nonsense?!
This world — was the problem with HIM, or was the problem with HUMANS?!
Stopping a charging wild boar the size of a small mountain dead in its tracks with a single bare-handed punch — even a freaking humanoid Tyrannosaurus shouldn’t be able to do that, right?!!!
In all his memories, when humans went up against monsters of this kind of colossal size, weren’t they all supposed to be weak, pathetic, and absolutely helpless?!
And then this guy just... one-shots old Sixth in a single punch?!
Was this fair?!!!
As a perfectly ordinary, perfectly decent young man who’d once gone abroad to study in a city with the rather unique name of Red Tomb City, he’d had absolutely no idea humans were capable of this kind of raw strength.
The one thing he didn’t quite get, however — though he’d long since assumed he’d died some kind of abrupt, sudden death — was how exactly HAD he died in his previous life, anyway?
All he could remember was getting back to his dorm after class, taking a delightfully refreshing shower, and then — feeling like the stress had been piling on too heavy lately and deciding he deserved a little indulgence — collapsing straight into bed to sleep until he woke up naturally.
And then he’d opened his eyes from that nap and found himself dropped into this freakshow of a world... as a pig.
In any case — he had, with no small amount of effort, put himself through a thorough regimen of testing.
Over these past two years in the Ancient Forest, setting aside those monsters that arrived already wreathed in their own built-in environmental effects, when it came to pure raw strength, he had genuinely and literally gone undefeated across the entire territory — no contest at all.
Which was precisely why Boss Puu had carried such towering confidence into this fight.
And then...
That woman could literally weave through the entire herd’s charge as smoothly as a swimming dragon, and then, on pure technique alone, square off head-on against Sixth Puu’s charge — and that was just for openers.
Then, after all of THAT — after her weapon FINALLY snapped, after the situation was supposed to be salvageable — some guy drops out of the sky and one-shots him with a single punch?! What in the actual hell was this?!
So... this was that legendary thing they called dimensional-reduction warfare...
This world was way too dangerous, he wanted to go back to Earth...
If only he’d known — he never would’ve gone abroad to study in the first place.
Looking at Sixth, sprawled motionless on the ground after eating a single punch, the next thought to surface in Boss Puu’s mind was...
Welp, this time we’re really going to end up as braised pork belly!
Then again, he had no idea whether the cuisine of this world even had a dish like braised pork belly to begin with... judging purely by the look of the humans’ attire, he was probably more likely to end up roasted whole on a spit, wasn’t he?
No — that wasn’t the point!
The point was that, as the family’s last remaining hope, he absolutely could NOT allow himself to just throw in the towel like this!
He had to find an opportunity to escape, first and foremost. As for his younger brothers and sisters...
At the very least, Boss Puu was certain of one thing — there was no way he could drag all of them, unconscious as they were, out of here together. And once he was trapped inside a cage, there would be absolutely no way for him to come back and free them either.
BEASTMEN SHALL NEVER BE SLAVES!!!
With that resolution firmly in his heart, Boss Puu began rooting his way, snout to the dirt, ever so gradually toward the edge of the battlefield.
But just then, a snatch of conversation that suddenly drifted over brought Boss Puu’s next move to a dead halt.
Hoshimi Miyabi, having finished tucking away the pieces of her broken tachi, glanced over at Andrew currently standing atop that enormous Mosswine’s back — and remembered something he’d mentioned to her before, that all of these captured monsters would end up being sent off to the Guild’s research institutes for study.
This processing pipeline bore a certain, uncomfortable similarity to something else — and it dragged Hoshimi Miyabi’s thoughts back to a memory she’d carried for some time, of the research facilities she had once seen with her own eyes, the ones set up deep inside the Hollows.
As a member of Section 6, of the Special Operations Department for Hollow Affairs, she had once carried out very similar capture missions herself.
And the eventual fate of those captured Ethereals...
How strange.
They were all monsters, all of them, all the same — and yet when it came to those Ethereals, Hoshimi Miyabi could obliterate every last one of them without so much as a flicker of expression crossing her face. But when it came to these creatures, who had been beaten down by her own hand into unconsciousness, who now lay incapacitated and limp across the ground —
The mere thought that they might end up suffering the same fate as those Ethereals had her chest, for reasons she couldn’t quite articulate, beginning to twinge with a faint, slow-burning sort of unease.
It was a little like the times back in the Hollows, when she had occasionally come across Hollow Raiders torturing small animals in order to lure soft-hearted passersby into elaborate traps.
Facing those smug, self-righteous faces that would loudly argue they hadn’t actually harmed any humans yet, that at the very worst they could only be charged with attempted assault —
Hoshimi Miyabi remembered exactly what her choice had been back then. Her choice had been to draw her blade.
But thinking back on the genuine, unguarded warmth of all those smiling faces that had turned toward her in the Starlight Stronghold, and the heartfelt care those people had shown her... rather than letting it gnaw at her in silence, Hoshimi Miyabi decided she would just ask outright:
"Andrew — what happens to these monsters once they’ve been captured?"
"What happens to them?"
Hearing Hoshimi Miyabi’s distinctly out-of-nowhere question, Andrew’s first reaction was, frankly, complete and total bewilderment.
It took a good long moment, and then, as Hoshimi Miyabi gradually, piece by piece, laid out the worry that had been weighing on her, Andrew finally understood the source of her concern — and, finding himself faintly amused, he said:
"So — Miyabi, what you’re saying is, you’re worried about what’s going to happen to these Mosswine once they’re brought in to the Guild?"
Still, when it came to Hoshimi Miyabi’s question, Andrew showed not the faintest trace of mockery. Instead, he answered her seriously:
"Generally speaking, the research the Guild conducts on captured monsters is primarily focused on the collection of various kinds of data."
"What happens to them afterward can vary quite a bit, but for any monster they’ve finished collecting data from, the standard procedure in most cases is to release them back into the wild. Naturally, monsters that would themselves cause severe ecological damage if released are an entirely different conversation, but that’s a separate matter."
"And for the ones who took severe injuries during the capture itself, the Guild actually waits until their wounds have basically healed up before they’ll release them back out there."
But at this point, Andrew instinctively glanced down at the Mosswine sprawled out across the field, rubbed his chin thoughtfully, and added in a contemplative tone:
"Although... these particular Mosswine probably won’t be."
Hearing that sudden pivot, Boss Puu — whose body had only just begun to relax — instantly snapped taut all over again.
His mind leapt instantly to a whole host of decidedly unpleasant scenarios.
Just as I thought — no matter what world you ended up in, the eternal endgame for a pig was always going to be the cookpot, huh?!
But what he hadn’t expected was that Andrew’s next words took an entirely different turn:
"Mosswine themselves are common enough, but a whole family unit that all grow to this kind of size? That’s a one-of-a-kind situation. Especially that one over there..."
Andrew’s gaze shifted over to Sixth Puu’s massive, unconscious form. He gave a small shrug.
"With a mutation this likely to be a singular, irreplaceable specimen — there’s absolutely no way that crew of scholars is ever going to agree to release them."
"It’s already an extremely rare group mutation to begin with, and considering Mosswine are creatures whose entire life pattern is centered on group living, isolating just one of them alone would actually cause its own problems. So odds are, what’ll happen down the line is they’ll get penned up inside a habitat specifically built and tailored to their needs, kept well-fed there indefinitely, and basically allowed to live out the rest of their natural lifespans in captivity until they die of old age, I’d say?"
In fact, a great many of the Guild’s monster-material supplies came from exactly this kind of arrangement.
Hearing Andrew’s explanation, Hoshimi Miyabi’s heart had completely settled — and not far away, Boss Puu had brought his entire escape attempt to a screeching halt.
This treatment... is actually kind of awesome?!
After all — when you broke "kept well-fed indefinitely" down to its essentials, what was that if not "free food included"?! And "penned up in a habitat," when you really thought about it, was just a fancy way of saying "free housing included"!
They’d even custom-build a tailored ecological environment specifically suited to him!
Beastmen shall never be slaves — sure! But everyone knew the unspoken second half of that line was "...unless room and board are included"!
As for the niggling little detail that Andrew was, in fact, lying through his teeth about all of this — the very instant that thought surfaced in Boss Puu’s mind, he hurled it directly out the back of his skull.
Given his own current situation, what conceivable motive could the other guy possibly have to lie to him?
Besides — who in their right mind would bother going to the trouble of telling lies for the sake of a bunch of pigs?
But paradoxically, this only made Boss Puu waver more — and just as he had fully descended into the depths of indecision, Andrew’s voice drifted over again, somewhat uncertain this time.
"To keep this kind of irreplaceable lineage from going completely extinct, the old man and his crew might even figure out some way to encourage them to breed and pass on the line, who knows?"
Upon hearing those words, Boss Puu instantly abandoned every shred of his original escape plan — the ancestral bloodline of the Flowery Land roaring suddenly awake in his veins in that very instant.
A blessing in disguise — with treatment THIS good on the table, why the hell would I run?!
No worries about food, no worries about housing, no need to fear sudden environmental upheaval — and they were even throwing in assigned mates as part of the package.
Folks, I think I’ve just landed myself a spot in that legendary lifelong-employment program!!
____
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