The Second Cohort Leader, having gotten the news, ran like the wind; in just a few seconds, his figure had already vanished from the vast workshop area.
Leaving only his eldest disciple standing there, dumbfounded.
Faced with the fact that his own master had actually bolted, this long-haired, burly man couldn't even process it for a moment. By the time he came to his senses, he suddenly realized—
He was going to have to prop up the entire workshop area all by himself again, just like back during the days of exploring the Icefields. And this time was different from the last.
Compared to back then, when all the main forces had been transferred to the Icefields, this time most of the main forces were still over at the Astral Outpost!
Looking at the workshop before him, where there was already no trace of his master...
This burly man, who looked rather unruly in his getup, found his face instantly twisting into a bitter expression at this sudden, heavy burden.
What was this even?
When immortals fight, it's the mortals who suffer?
But no matter what, this was still his own master—what could he possibly do about it?
As for the threat from Sapphire Star, he didn't really take it to heart. After all, even though Sapphire Star was never all that serious most of the time, the root cause of all this was his own master courting disaster in the first place.
As an elder, surely Sapphire Star wouldn't stoop to bickering with a junior like himself, right?
Probably?
Meanwhile, Andrew, gazing down from afar at the floors below, discovered that the fellow Sapphire Star had already emerged from the conference area looking thoroughly satisfied and was walking off toward the elevator.
But as the source of everything that was happening now—
How could Andrew not know exactly what the situation in the workshop was right now? The Second Cohort Leader had long since bolted because Andrew had tipped him off in advance.
So, to keep Sapphire Star from looking at the workshop area now devoid of the Second Cohort Leader and realizing that it was Andrew who'd snitched, Andrew immediately grabbed Hoshimi Miyabi and Kairu, who were standing nearby, and slipped off toward the training grounds at top speed.
He really didn't want to get caught and harshly interrogated by the old geezer who, having failed to show off, would surely be flying into a fit of embarrassed rage.
You bolted, bro, and so did I.
As for the Second Cohort Leader's eldest disciple...
Andrew could only wish him good luck.
As for Kairu, that one glance from afar likewise confirmed for her that the person she'd heard about earlier in their conversation really was the one she'd been thinking of. Her already short-circuited brain now came to a complete standstill.
Even being hauled along by the scruff of her neck by Andrew as they fled drew no reaction from her at all.
Had it been before, no matter who it was, anyone touching such a sensitive spot as the scruff of Kairu's neck would have triggered an immediate, instinctive resistance from her.
In the training grounds.
Many wooden barrels were scattered about, arranged around the training cart in the center that was used to simulate large monsters, mimicking the small monsters that frequently appeared out in the environment. A few Felynes stood by at the edge of the training grounds, ready at any moment to change the setup according to the Hunters' needs and to repair the damage caused by training.
Hoshimi Miyabi looked at the training grounds before her, the place she'd come to every single day during this period.
Compared to her initial unfamiliarity, after this stretch of high-intensity training, she was now as familiar with the place as could possibly be.
However, just as she was about to go find the Felynes to change the setup like before, so she could better test out this newly acquired weapon, she discovered—
Her new partner Kairu, dangling from Andrew's other hand, was in a state of utter stasis.
Even after being set back down on the ground, she gave no reaction whatsoever.
Looking at the dazed Kairu before her, Hoshimi Miyabi couldn't help tilting her head a little in puzzlement, and instinctively glanced at Andrew beside her, asking:
"Andrew, what's wrong with Kairu?"
However, Andrew, standing beside her, was equally baffled by Kairu's state.
"You're asking me? I have no idea either..."
Looking at the utterly dazed Kairu, Andrew scratched his head, a little troubled, and said in puzzlement:
"I remember Kairu was perfectly fine before we entered the workshop area, wasn't she? Back then she even had this curious look on her face, wanting to see what our new equipment was."
"Why did she suddenly turn out like this?"
The two of them, completely unaware of just how many violent shocks Kairu had been through in the past little while, simply exchanged a blank look, and then chose to ask the person concerned directly.
After waving a hand back and forth in front of Kairu's eyes for a good while, the little kitty gradually came back to her senses.
And once she had finally come to...
Looking at Andrew and Hoshimi Miyabi before her, Kairu stayed dumbstruck for a good while before she finally realized that everything that had just happened wasn't a hallucination of hers.
"From Granny's earlier attitude, so very affectionate, I'd already sensed something was off—now I've finally figured it out, meow."
Looking at the two before her, Kairu instinctively murmured to herself:
"But it can't be—this absolutely can't be, meow..."
"And yet the only Hunter who could ever claim to be a disciple of His Excellency Sapphire Star has always been one, and only one, meow!"
"Then... that means..."
Kairu, having come to her senses, looked at Andrew, her once-dazed eyes growing brighter and brighter.
As she murmured to herself, her tone grew more and more certain.
Until at last, the more she thought, the more evidence she gathered to verify it—and, abandoning her originally tsundere attitude, she instantly closed in right in front of Andrew while the two were completely off guard.
To the point of nearly pressing right up against him.
"Be... because the Guild has never publicized your name, I didn't recognize you until just now, meow!"
As Hoshimi Miyabi's eyes instinctively went wide, the expression on Kairu's face was incomparably excited—even somewhat fanatical—as she said:
"Esteemed Lord Andrew, I... I've been a fan of you and your Felyne partner Meow-Da for many years, meow!"
Before Andrew could even react to this sudden change, Kairu had already instinctively stepped back two paces.
Hugging her chest with both paws, she began murmuring to herself again.
"Oh my goodness..."
"My idol was right beside me this whole time, and yet I never noticed at all—it's just like a dream, meow!"
However, just before Kairu, out of excitement, instinctively tried to draw even closer, Hoshimi Miyabi reflexively cut in at an incredibly sharp angle, slicing into the by-now barely perceptible gap between the two.
Though she didn't know why she was doing this.
But upon seeing Kairu suddenly draw so close to Andrew, Hoshimi Miyabi—who instinctively felt that 'I was here first'—still reflexively used her body to wall Kairu off from Andrew.
And because of Hoshimi Miyabi's barging in, Kairu's mind, originally clouded by excitement, regained a certain measure of clarity once more.
She immediately stepped back two paces and said, her face full of apology:
"I'm terribly, deeply sorry, Lord Andrew—I got a little too excited just now, meow."
Then, unable to help herself, she took another step forward, while struggling to suppress the excitement in her tone, and said:
"Could you—no, would you... would Your... could you give me an autograph? And a photo together, meow!"
Looking at the excited Kairu before him, even with Hoshimi Miyabi keeping them apart, Andrew—somewhat unable to cope—couldn't help instinctively stepping back a pace as he said:
"Sure, of course it's fine—but so the idol you mentioned back when we first met, Kairu, was me all along?"
"Mmgh..."
At Andrew suddenly bringing up what had happened before, Kairu immediately recalled the kind of attitude she'd had toward Andrew back then, and her face went red in an instant.
Even her black fur couldn't conceal it; her flushed cheeks made it look as though a faint pink eyeshadow had been gently dabbed all around her eyes.
After agonizing over it for a good while.
Kairu, who truly couldn't keep up her haughty act in front of her idol, finally said, with a mix of self-abandonment and boundless regret:
"I'm truly, deeply sorry, Lord Andrew. Because I didn't recognize you back then, I held that kind of attitude toward you—it was genuinely a most disrespectful act, meow."
Looking at Kairu before him, whose tears had already welled up...
Realizing that what he'd originally meant only to lighten the mood had instead turned out like this, Andrew hurriedly comforted her:
"It's all right, Kairu. After all, it was because I didn't want to be publicized everywhere that I asked the Guild to help keep my name a secret—that's what led to you not recognizing me."
"When it comes down to it, the source of the problem is actually me."
"No, no, no—how could this possibly be your fault, meow!"
Hearing Andrew take the responsibility upon himself, Kairu immediately shook her head wildly in denial:
"This is clearly because I, as a fan, was just far too immature—that's what led to it taking me so long to recognize you, meow!"
Just as this bizarre situation of the two frantically heaping responsibility upon themselves was about to drag on indefinitely, Hoshimi Miyabi—who'd been tilting her head to one side and watching the pair's antics the whole time—suddenly spoke up and asked in puzzlement:
"So, Andrew, you're this famous in this world?"
"But of course, meow!"
Before Andrew could get a word in, Kairu beside them had already looked up with an incredulous expression and started explaining to her partner.
"Lord Andrew, together with his partner, became a Hunter in the New World, and in no more than two years he joined the subjugation campaign against the Heaven-Chosen Xeno'jiiva as a support member. After that, in mere years, he fought through the entire subjugation campaigns against Alatreon and Fatalis from start to finish, playing an enormous role, meow."
"And during those subjugation campaigns, the Elder Dragons he hunted were beyond counting, meow!"
"Later, in the Forbidden Lands, he even directly subjugated, together with the Hunter Evelyn, a forbidden monster known as the Incandescent Dragon, successfully earning the Guild's exclusive title—Conqueror of the Forbidden, meow!"
As she spoke of Andrew's exploits, Kairu—who had long since memorized them by heart—grew more and more excited the more she talked.
By the end, she even wore the look of someone basking in shared glory.
Looking at Kairu's excited, exhilarated state before her, for Hoshimi Miyabi—who had only ever heard those monsters described in words and had never actually witnessed them—it was still somewhat hard to imagine.
Such a situation was, admittedly, unavoidable.
But beyond that, it also gave Hoshimi Miyabi a bit of a genuine, tangible sense of Andrew's fame in this world.
After all.
Although she'd previously heard of Andrew's reputation in this world from the mouths of others at the Astral Outpost, but...
During these few days at the Astral Outpost, the people Hoshimi Miyabi had met under Andrew's guidance were all his old acquaintances from the past.
Whether it was Sapphire Star, or the Commander-in-Chief, or the Second Cohort Leader.
To those old-timers who had watched how Andrew had grown up step by step, Andrew, in front of them, was just like a child who needed to be looked after.
Even though Andrew's strength had since grown to such a degree, this point would never change in their hearts.
So, in the course of getting along with them...
Hoshimi Miyabi truly found it hard to sense the existence of this so-called thing called fame.
It wasn't until Kairu displayed such an excited demeanor after learning Andrew's identity that Hoshimi Miyabi finally got a bit of a tangible sense of it.
She nodded and said:
"I see."
"Wh... why are you so unmoved after hearing all that, meow?! Even if you're my comrade, on this matter I will not agree with you, meow!"
Hearing that her lengthy introduction had ultimately gotten just this kind of reaction, Kairu instantly puffed out her cheeks a little in dissatisfaction.
But faced with the huffy Kairu, Hoshimi Miyabi merely tilted her head and said as a matter of course:
"Because to me, Andrew is just Andrew."
"Mmgh...!"
Faced with Hoshimi Miyabi's matter-of-fact attitude, Kairu was momentarily at a loss for what to say.
Andrew, who had already been made a bit uncomfortable by Kairu's overly fervent attitude, hurriedly waved his hand and said to Kairu:
"All right, all right—maintaining the peace of the ecosystem is something a Hunter ought to do in the first place, isn't it? There's nothing worth praising about it."
"So, Kairu, stop calling me Lord Andrew—just call me Andrew like before."
"Yes, Lord Andrew, understood, Lord Andrew, meow!"
With Kairu agreeing to everything yet not changing a thing, Andrew—at his wits' end—had no choice but to try steering the conversation in another direction, saying:
"But by the way, Kairu, what was the reason you chose to come all this way, across a thousand miles, to get here?"
But the moment the words left his mouth, Andrew noticed Kairu's mood had changed—from the excitement and elation of meeting her idol to dejection and anger.
Such an obvious change—even Hoshimi Miyabi noticed it right away, let alone Andrew.
'Uh-oh...'
Andrew, who hadn't triggered his passive skill of 'bringing up the one thing you absolutely shouldn't' in a long while, suddenly realized he'd done another bad thing—poking at the heart of this Felyne who had only just become his comrade the day before.
So he immediately apologized to make amends:
"Uh... sorry, it's totally fine if you don't want to talk about it."
"It's all right—Granny actually knows about this too, so it's not really some secret that can't be told, meow."
Faced with Andrew's apology, Kairu merely shook her head, and having quickly composed herself, she lifted her head again and candidly said to her idol and her Hunter comrade:
"Granny should have told you both—I was originally a Felyne partner from a village in the Old World called Flamefire Village, and the skill I specialize in is the Barrel Bomb, meow."
"But there's something you two probably don't know, meow."
"In the Old World, because Felynes are so numerous, every Hunter in Flamefire Village could have many Felynes serving as partners under them, meow."
"And I was originally one of the many Felyne partners under an elite Hunter in that village, meow."
The Old World was a continent where Felynes and humans lived together; there, Felynes were a very common presence.
But the New World was different.
Here, originally, there were not only no humans, but likewise no Felynes.
So the Felynes of the New World were, without exception, scarce beings who had come here aboard the ships of the members of each successive expedition cohort.
And the Forbidden Lands were the same in this regard.
So for Andrew, who was used to one Hunter having only one Felyne as a fixed partner, the idea of a single Hunter having many Felyne partners was something he was hearing about for the very first time.
But even having learned of this, Andrew didn't feel the slightest bit envious.
After all, having Meow-Da was already enough for him.
Meanwhile, Kairu's account had not stopped.
She continued, somewhat sorrowfully:
"During one outing to hunt, my original partner ran into the intrusion of the Calamity Star of the Silver Wing—Namielle—right in the middle of the hunt, meow."
"After that, because Namielle's aim was to capture prey rather than to destroy, my partner—who was merely caught in the crossfire—managed to keep her life thanks to a timely rescue."
"But even so, her left hand was left disabled because of it, and for a Hunter that is, without a doubt, a fatal blow, meow."
At this point, the sorrow in Kairu's tone vanished, leaving only anger.
Not anger at others, but anger at herself.
She said through gritted teeth:
"And in that incident, I didn't set out together as my partner's attendant—instead, I'd been left behind to stay in the village, meow."
With this, Kairu spoke the true reason she had come all this way, across a thousand miles, to the New World.
"This kind of situation—where my partner faces mortal danger in battle while I hide away in some safe place, completely unaware—I never, ever want to experience a second time, meow!"
No matter what degree of danger her partner might encounter, she wanted to face it together with them.
Rather than, after it was all over, looking at everything that had already happened, powerless to change any of it.
In that case, the New World—where every Hunter had one and only one partner—would surely be able to fulfill this goal of hers.
The goal of living and dying together with her partner.
Looking at the earnest Kairu before her, Hoshimi Miyabi's face, too, held nothing but solemnity and seriousness.
She nodded and said in a low, grave voice:
"I understand. This—it will not happen a second time."
____
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