Shuma carried the cooking utensils and the enormous pot, with Buggy and Mohji inside as "ingredients," as he made his way along the trail behind the mountain.
Buggy stowed the map of the island. He hadn't expected his casual remarks to have such an astonishing effect. That old woman had suddenly become like a different person, her whole personality changing in an instant. It was bizarre.
Buggy asked, "What's the deal with your Great Matriarch?"
Having narrowly escaped death and been given a new lease on life, Mohji leaned against the pot and gazed at the village growing farther and farther away. He let out a shaky breath. "She looked ready to eat us just a moment ago, then suddenly turned into a kindly old lady next door... though she's still a kindly old lady next door who wants to eat us."
Shuma walked steadily along the mountain trail and answered without hesitation, "The Great Matriarch has a quirk. Whenever she hears someone compliment her, she'll accept whatever they ask of her, for no reason at all."
"So that's it. No wonder her attitude suddenly became so... ambiguous..." Buggy murmured, enlightened. "What a strange weakness."
"Also, I've heard that when the Great Matriarch was young, she went out into the world beyond the island. But after she came back, her temper changed completely. She went from longing to see the outside world to hating it. Once she became the Great Matriarch, she forbade the tribe from leaving. I think she must've been deceived and mistreated out there, and that's why she's like this now." Shuma suddenly stiffened after finishing his story, his face turning anxious. "I'm doomed if the Great Matriarch finds out I blabbed about this. Buggy, Mohji, you can't tell her I said anything."
Mohji replied listlessly, "Sure, sure. And... my name's Mohji."
As he listened to Shuma's little story, Buggy pondered with interest. "Deceived and mistreated... No wonder the Great Matriarch got so worked up when Shuma just said he wanted to go out into the world. But what kind of deception and mistreatment could it have been...?"
He silently filled in the details: A lonely young woman drifted across the sea and was luckily rescued by a fisherman on the island. The fisherman saw how beautiful she was and was instantly struck by her looks, praising and complimenting her from the bottom of his heart. Lost in the fisherman's flattery and exaggerations, the girl developed an unprecedented fondness for him. After spending every day together and listening to his sweet talk, she finally gave herself to him. But later, she discovered that the fisherman already had a wife. And so she went from being a gentle wife to the other woman, coming between the fisherman and his wife.
Wait... Buggy pictured the old woman's dry, wrinkled face and the two grotesque yellow teeth in her mouth. A shiver of revulsion ran through him, and his imagined scenes shattered in an instant. Could she really have once been a beautiful young woman?!
He couldn't help asking, "Shuma, was your Great Matriarch pretty when she was young?"
Shuma thought for a moment. "I guess she was beautiful. I never saw her back then, but Ailuo and Saya both say she was a once-in-a-century beauty."
"I see..." Buggy picked up where his earlier train of thought had left off. His guess was probably pretty close to the truth. It all made sense now: an innocent, naive young woman had been cruelly deceived, grown bitter and resentful, then seen through the ways of the world and gone into seclusion in the mountains.
Shuma independently reached much the same conclusion, then said, "The Great Matriarch must've gone through something really painful when she was young."
Mohji chimed in, "I never knew she had a side like that."
As the three of them sighed over the Cannibal Tribe's Great Matriarch, elsewhere, inside the Kumate Tribe's great tent, the Great Matriarch sat on her bed with a mirror in her hand and murmured, "Even time hasn't taken away my beautiful looks..."
The sudden arrival of those two outsiders had reminded her of the time she'd secretly left home as a young woman.
That year, she'd ignored the previous Great Matriarch's warning and gone to sea alone. She'd drifted to some unknown island and been rescued by a local fisherman. He'd cared for her with such devotion that she was moved by him and finally decided to be with him. The fisherman was deeply touched, then... sold her to human traffickers.
Later, she'd done everything she could to escape. During her flight, a kind, warmhearted middle-aged man had helped her and taken her in. His gentlemanly conduct and manners made her admire him, and she openly poured out her feelings to him. She still remembered how, when he heard her confession, the man had been so moved that he cried all night. In the end... he'd pawned her off to a restaurant as a dishwasher in exchange for a meal.
Thinking of the more than ten similarly unfortunate incidents that had followed, the Great Matriarch looked at herself in the mirror, consumed by indignation. "Why do all those people from the outside have to deceive me? I'm so beautiful—why do they all abandon me? They're all so filthy and hypocritical that they can't even see how beautiful I am!"
Outside the tent, an old man of the Kumate Tribe sat on the ground. Remembering what the Great Matriarch had been like when she was young, he silently sighed.
Time flew by. In the blink of an eye, Buggy and the others had reached the middle of Bear Spirit Mountain.
Shuma set down the cooking utensils and the enormous pot he'd been carrying. "We can't go any farther. If we do, Lord Bear Spirit will get angry."
Buggy and Mohji leaped out of the pot. Buggy asked, "So what do we do now?"
"Once I've cooked something, Lord Bear Spirit will follow the smell down here."
"Shuma, you're not really planning to treat us as ingredients, are you?" Mohji leaned closer, feeling a little uneasy.
Shuma thumped his chest. "You're both my friends and my ingredients. I'd never do anything to hurt you, so don't worry!"
This simple-minded guy was unexpectedly reliable. Buggy glanced at the dense forest all around them and said, "In that case, what kind of beasts are around here?"
"I don't know either. This is my first time on Bear Spirit Mountain," Shuma said with a chuckle.
Looking at Shuma's utterly carefree face, Buggy sighed and suggested, "Then let's split up and look for prey. That'll be more efficient. Sound good?"
After Shuma agreed, Buggy continued, "Once you find some prey, come back here."
"Then it's settled. Whoever finds ingredients first is the winner!" Shuma suddenly grew fired up, his eyes burning with the flames of victory.
"I never said anything about competing..." Buggy's eye twitched at the sight of this guy suddenly getting excited and dragging everyone into it.
"Heh heh. In that case, Lord Mohji, the beast tamer of dark legend, will take you on!"
Wait, what was with this beast tamer who'd been trembling in fear just moments ago...? Had he already been completely swept up in the competition?!
Mohji and Shuma immediately sprinted off in opposite directions, disappearing from Buggy's sight.
Before you continue