"Shhk."
With a clean, crisp slicing sound, a shower of blood and an enormous rat's head fell from the air.
"Just as I thought. Once I switched back to White Calm, I didn't even need an Iai Slash. Spirit Blade was enough."
With a calm expression, Xie Wen sheathed his sword and murmured somewhat listlessly. Then he took out his Carving Knife and plunged it into the oversized rat he had just killed.
With a simple stab and pull, a complete rat hide lay draped over the giant rat's corpse.
"Hmm... we don't really need hides anymore, either..."
Xie Wen pursed his lips and casually put the hide away. Sanji Meow, who had been waiting nearby, immediately darted over and expertly began preparing their latest quarry as usual.
By now, it had been... who knew how long since they killed the Forest Sheep King and the Bullfango King.
Unlike the characters in plenty of movies and TV shows, Xie Wen hadn't scratched a line into a rock or tree every day to keep count. All he knew was that he had grown considerably taller. He finally no longer had to carry his Long Sword horizontally and could wear it diagonally across his back like a proper Long Sword user.
Also, since his "villager set" had no automatic adjustment system, its top had long since become a crop top. His trousers had grown so tight that he simply abandoned them, then used the tailoring skills he had picked up while making the tent to sew himself a pair of hide trousers.
Once Xie Wen finished making the tent, they began a life of moving camp while exploring the map.
By now, Xie Wen and Sanji Meow had changed camps several times, and their map exploration had reached 36.3%. They had covered practically the entire southern region of the island.
Naturally, they had fought plenty of large monsters along the way. But as Xie Wen grew stronger day by day, he rarely encountered any that could threaten him anymore.
In fact, to hone his combat skills, Xie Wen hadn't used Fresh Knife: White Calm in ages. Instead, he used a crudely made homemade bone sword, occasionally playing around with the Bullfango King's tusks as dual blades.
The reason he switched back to Fresh Knife: White Calm today wasn't that this giant rat was particularly strong. Its lair simply happened to make a suitable new camp. On top of that, the rat was vicious by nature; unlike certain large monsters, it couldn't be beaten into submission and kept around as a sparring partner. So Xie Wen had simply given it a quick death...
And tested his current strength while he was at it.
While Sanji Meow prepared the ingredients, Xie Wen took his Hunter's Notes out of his bag.
Although the new entry brought the number of monsters in the Large Monster Guide up to ten, it remained as unresponsive as ever. Reaching double digits hadn't earned Xie Wen another summoning ticket fragment.
"Tch!"
Xie Wen clicked his tongue in annoyance. After casually naming the new entry "Rat King," he flipped the notes back to the first page, where the map was displayed.
"Hmm, once we settle here, we won't need to move camp again for a while," Xie Wen told Sanji Meow as he examined their current location.
"Who cares about that! Still no Summon Ticket, meow?"
Having packed away all the ingredients, Sanji Meow darted to Xie Wen's side. He tugged at the arm holding the notes and leaned his furry head over.
"No. Who knows how many monsters' information I need to collect before the second fragment appears?" Xie Wen shrugged helplessly. "Or... maybe there's only this one, and we have to unlock other pages for the rest?"
"Impossible! Absolutely impossible, meow!" Sanji Meow shook his little head like an electric fan on its fifth speed, clearly unwilling to accept such a dreadful possibility. "At the very least, we'll get one when we finish exploring the island, meow! Otherwise, why would it give us a progress bar, meow!"
Though Sanji Meow was using that excuse to avoid reality, it did make a certain amount of sense.
In fact, Xie Wen also felt that once the progress bar reached a hundred percent, something new would definitely appear in the Hunter's Notes. Whether that would be a summoning ticket fragment... was another matter.
Besides...
"Even if it gives us a summoning ticket fragment at a hundred percent, we'll still only have two-thirds. That's not enough for a whole ticket." Xie Wen stroked the cat as he continued teasing him.
"I-it might give us a whole Summon Ticket, meow!" Sanji Meow argued without much confidence.
After all, this stupid book's stinginess was plain for everyone to see. Xie Wen had unlocked so many things, yet so far it had only given him one-third of a Palico Summoning Ticket.
"Then do you think there's a chance..." Xie Wen continued teasing him as he stroked his fur. "That when I first arrived on this island and unlocked the map page, I used the first Summon Ticket to summon you?"
This was one of the theories Xie Wen had come up with out of boredom, and it made perfect material for teasing the kitty. The actual truth no longer mattered.
"I wasn't summoned here, meow!"
Sanji Meow first snapped back indignantly, then added with some uncertainty, "Probably... not, meow?"
Because he didn't really remember how he had arrived on this island. And when he first saw Xie Wen, he had instinctively known that this man was his employer, so...
That really might be possible, meow?!
Startled by his own theory, Sanji Meow clutched his head with his little paws and shook it in disbelief.
"No, meow! I don't want that, meow!"
"Ahem. That's just one of my guesses. It isn't necessarily what happened. All right, all right, don't get so worked up. There are still loads of locked pages. I'll summon a new companion for you sooner or later."
Seeing Sanji Meow on the verge of a breakdown, Xie Wen felt a pang of sympathy. He quickly picked him up and gently soothed him.
It took Xie Wen quite a while to calm the frantic Sanji Meow down. The first thing the kitty did afterward was grab Xie Wen's hand and bite down hard in revenge.
"Ow-easy! Easy! You're going to break the skin!"
"You don't get hurt that easily, meow!" Still biting Xie Wen's hand, Sanji Meow glared at him and mumbled, "That's what you get for scaring me, meow!"
Xie Wen hurriedly begged for mercy, and only then did Sanji Meow reluctantly let go.
Rubbing the tooth marks on the back of his hand, Xie Wen pondered for a moment before suddenly asking, "Come to think of it, I still don't know much about your past. Could you tell me about it?"
After considering the possibility that Sanji Meow had also been summoned, Xie Wen had become curious whether his cheat had created the cat from nothing or actually summoned him from Monster Hunter: World.
But after thinking it over carefully, he felt there wasn't much difference between the two. To Xie Wen, the world of Monster Hunter was itself something game designers had made up.
Even so, Xie Wen remained curious about Sanji Meow's past.
"Meow? There wasn't anything special about my past." Sanji Meow tilted his head in puzzlement before answering, "I lived with other Palicoes and Melynx, then Granny Cat took me to the village to train as a cook, and then..."
He raised his head and strained to remember, then suddenly smacked his paws together...
"That's right, meow! I suddenly lost consciousness while catching fish in the water. When I woke up, I was already on this island, meow! And you were lying beside me, meow!"
In that case... Sanji Meow really might have been summoned here... though I probably wasn't the one who summoned him.
Like the original Sanji, Sanji Meow was an excellent swimmer. It was hard to imagine him suddenly drowning and losing consciousness just from going into the water to catch a fish.
After some thought, Xie Wen decided not to upset the kitty with that theory. Instead, he went along with his story and made something up. "It was pretty much the same for me. I was soaking in a hot spring, then passed out halfway through. When you woke me up, even my body had shrunk."
Sure enough, Sanji Meow immediately brightened when he heard that.
It wasn't that he disliked the idea of being summoned. Palicoes didn't care about that. The main issue was that, if he hadn't been summoned, Xie Wen would have a better chance of receiving a whole Summon Ticket when the map reached a hundred percent.
Xie Wen then chatted with Sanji Meow for a while about their lives before crossing over. Only now did he learn that Sanji Meow wasn't even an adult yet...
Though Palicoes were cats, they didn't have short lifespans like ordinary cats. Instead, they were a race that lived somewhat longer than humans. Their concept of adulthood was also similar to humans', at around eighteen years old. However, they judged it mainly by physical development rather than age, so there was considerable variation, though never more than five years.
When Sanji Meow appeared on this island alongside Xie Wen, he had actually been only eight years old... the same age Sanji had been when he escaped from the Vinsmoke family.
Who knew whether that was a coincidence.
Over the following stretch of time, Xie Wen felt that fighting these large monsters offered no further improvement, so he stopped bothering to use the bone sword or boar tusks for combat training.
When he encountered relatively docile large monsters, he beat them up with the sheathed Fresh Knife: White Calm to unlock their guide entries. When he met ones that couldn't be reasoned with, he simply drew White Calm and ended the fight with a single decapitating Spirit Blade.
This greatly increased their exploration efficiency. In less than a month, their map exploration had nearly doubled and was about to break seventy percent. Their camp had also moved all the way from the original southern coast to the island's northern region.
At this rate, they would be able to cover the entire island in a little over another half month.
Just as Xie Wen was studying the map in his notes and considering where to set up their next camp, Sanji Meow returned from foraging and leaped into his arms.
"Xie Wen, Xie Wen! I found something strange today, meow!"
Enjoying Xie Wen's petting, Sanji Meow reached a little paw into his Meowster Bag and pulled out a strange fruit. It was about the size of his head and looked somewhat like a dragon fruit.
At the sight of the familiar spiral patterns on the fruit, along with its flame-shaped peel and stem, a storm of shock surged through Xie Wen's heart.
It was actually the Dog Refusal Fruit!
Thirty thousand words in, and we're finally getting to the Pirates part...
Honestly, I didn't expect the opening to get this long either. I just kept writing, and before I knew it, more than ten chapters had gone by...
Thanks to Nulong-a for the tip.
Before you continue