"Huff... so tired..."
After completing a set of training moves with the longsword from his memory, Sherwin, only slightly sweating, immediately stabbed the longsword into the ground and quickly sat down.
Although his physical strength had mysteriously improved after crossing over, the laziness cultivated from years of inactivity wasn't so easy to fix. Even though his body didn't feel that tired, Sherwin just didn't want to move at all right now.
Of course, Sherwin didn't stay in that lazy state for too long. After all, compared to his own life, something like "fatigue" was nothing he couldn't overcome.
So after a short moment of idleness, Sherwin picked up the longsword again and resumed training hard.
As he gradually became more familiar with his body and weapon, Sherwin was finally able to smoothly connect the moves from the inherited memories.
But he knew clearly that this alone was not enough. Practice and actual combat were totally different things.
Not to mention that, even with his body being enhanced, as a small kid he still couldn't compare to professional hunters.
Sherwin roughly estimated based on the memories in his mind that, as he was now, even taking down an Arzuros would be difficult — and that assuming he didn't panic during his first real battle.
If he got nervous, even a wild boar-type monster could easily end him.
Given the current situation, there was a high chance that no Felynes would be there to cart him back to camp before he kicked the bucket.
Thinking about this, Sherwin trained even harder, pushing himself until he was completely exhausted and had no strength left to swing his sword.
Only then did he collapse onto the beach, gasping heavily for air.
"Huff... huff... damn... I overtrained..."
Just when he was feeling a little proud of his effort, Sherwin suddenly realized — in this kind of environment where safety wasn't guaranteed, he shouldn't have drained all his stamina.
If a Daimyo Hermitaur or something similar crawled out right now, he would have zero ability to fight back.
The thought of dying in such a ridiculous way made Sherwin shudder violently.
He forced his trembling limbs to get up from the beach, leaning on the longsword, and staggered toward the forest...
Compared to that, he would rather get rammed to death by some wild boar charging out of nowhere.
Wait, I still have portable BBQ!
Halfway through dragging himself, Sherwin suddenly remembered the items inside his dimensional waist pouch.
In the game, BBQ meat could increase maximum stamina. He didn't dare expect the same game-like effect, but it should at least help him recover a bit of strength, right?
Sherwin pulled out a piece of portable BBQ meat from the pouch and examined it carefully.
The portable BBQ wasn't very big, about the size of most of his palm. From the feel of it, it didn't seem much different from regular cold roasted meat. Sherwin brought it close to his nose and sniffed... it actually smelled pretty good.
He didn't catch any whiff of mold or rot, so Sherwin finally stuffed the portable BBQ meat into his mouth.
Maybe it was because it was classified as a "tool," or maybe it was because his hunter physique had been optimized to boost eating speed — either way, even though the BBQ was supposed to be chewy, Sherwin finished it off in just a few bites. Surprisingly, it even tasted quite decent.
"Holy crap... it that effective?"
After swallowing down the piece of portable BBQ, Sherwin, whose limbs had been soft and weak, immediately perked up. He hadn't completely recovered, but at least he could move around properly now.
Seeing this, he realized these items might be way more useful than he originally thought. Also...
"I'm getting more and more curious about what exactly my situation is now..."
Sherwin patted his stomach, which didn't feel particularly full, and muttered to himself.
After regaining part of his stamina, Sherwin decided not to continue training. Extreme training like this would be better saved for when he found a safe place to camp.
So Sherwin dragged the longsword: White Nagi to the edge of the forest, found a stone to sit on, and placed the weapon within arm reach just in case. Then he pulled out the hunter knife meant for carving materials from his waist pouch.
"Looks like... nothing special about it."
Sherwin casually swung the primitive-style hunter knife in his hand a few times. Seeing nothing particularly special about it, he stuffed it back into his pouch and then pulled out the fishing rod.
As for the fishing rod, aside from being especially tough and resilient, there didn't seem to be anything special about it either.
Still, that wasn't bad — at least he wouldn't have to worry about the rod snapping when fishing in the future. As for whether the line would break, that remained to be seen.
Next, Sherwin pulled out the infinite whetstone and did some maintenance on his weapon.
But since the longsword: White Nagi hadn't suffered any noticeable wear, there wasn't much difference before and after sharpening.
After putting away the whetstone, Sherwin hesitated a little between the BBQ grill and the Hunter Notes. In the end, he chose to check out the Hunter Notes first.
After all, he still had some portable BBQ meat left in his pouch, and given his "add flour when there too much water, add water when there too much flour" cooking skills, it was probably better to leave the BBQ business to his own Felyne chef later.
The Hunter Notes weren't very big, just a little larger than Sherwin current child-sized palm, about the size of one of those pocket-sized comic books he used to read. Whether it was standard 64K size or not, Sherwin had no way to tell.
The cover had a very Monster Hunter-style design, with a monster illustration. Judging by the color and the look, it should be the Rathalos and Rathian, the famous workhorses of the series.
Sherwin opened the notes, and on the title page, there was a line written in that peculiar Monster Hunter text: "May the Meowster guiding the way shine for you"...
Strangely, although the script was completely unfamiliar, Sherwin could understand its meaning instinctively.
"Meowster, huh..." Sherwin curled his lips a little.
In the game, players were called things like "the White Gale of the New World" or "the Meowster that lights the way," but in reality, they were just grunt laborers doing all the dirty and exhausting work.
And judging by his current situation, he hadn't seen any sign of a Meowster — but that death omen star above his head sure was twinkling bright.
Turning past the title page, the first thing that appeared was a map — a map styled exactly like the ones in the game, even dynamic just like in the game.
Since Sherwin already suspected that he had either entered the game world or gotten a player template, he wasn't too surprised. Instead, he carefully studied the animated map.
He didn't even need to touch it just by thinking about it, Sherwin could zoom in and out of the map.
However, most of the map was covered by a thick black mist, with only a small section in the lower left corner revealed, clearly showing the terrain of the ocean, beach, and the edge of the jungle. At the boundary between the beach and the jungle, there was an arrow representing Sherwin himself.
Besides that, there was also a faint yellow Felyne icon moving through the dark mist. When Sherwin focused his attention on it, not only did the surrounding area of the map zoom in, but the name "Sanji" also appeared beneath the Felyne head.
"Whoa... this is surprisingly user-friendly."
Sherwin then tested how far he could zoom the dynamic map out, but quickly found that it couldn't shrink any further. At the bottom of the map, a progress bar showed an exploration rate of just 0.7%.
So, does this mean I have to run all over the island to unlock the full map? Or is it like in the games, where I have to defeat the boss monster of the area first?
Sherwin scratched his head instinctively.
But no matter which it was, even without the map prompt, he would have needed to explore the whole island anyway — after all, he was still hoping to find a human settlement as soon as possible.
Seeing nothing new on the map page, Sherwin flipped to the next one. The back of the map was blank, and the new page was covered in a hazy gray mist with a faint lock-shaped icon in the center — clearly, he hadn't met the conditions to unlock this page yet.
But Sherwin could vaguely see that behind the gray mist, there was a horizontally branching tree diagram — a very familiar icon — the classic weapon list interface from Monster Hunter.
Wait a minute. I clearly have a fully-upgraded the longsword White Nagi in my hand, so why is the weapon interface still locked?
Sherwin scratched his head in confusion...
Maybe I have to find a village first and talk to a weapon smith to unlock it?
Without any better ideas, Sherwin could only continue guessing based on the logic of the game.
He flipped through a few more pages the following sections were similar to the weapon interface, if not even emptier — not only were they all locked, but Sherwin couldn't see anything behind the gray mist either, leaving him completely clueless about what those pages might represent.
Without a hint, he had no idea how to unlock them.
So... the only purpose of longsword White Nagi was to let me peek at the weapon page a little earlier?
Sherwin chuckled helplessly and flipped back to the earlier page, noticing that the gray mist covering the weapon page was indeed just a tiny bit lighter...
Looks like I really do need to find a village first.
Sherwin closed the Hunter Handbook, his expression not at all disappointed — just the dynamic map alone was already a huge win. The rest could wait.
Thanks to the surprise brought by the handbook, the not-so-skilled Sherwin decided to try out his portable barbecue spit.
He reached into his belt pouch, and very unscientifically pulled out a spit nearly half his own height from that tiny bag. Then he pulled out a slab of raw meat and placed it on the spit.
The moment the meat touched the spit, a flame automatically ignited beneath it, and Sherwin could even faintly hear a familiar tune playing in his ears.
"Whoa, no way!"
Sherwin was about to gleefully start spinning the spit — planning to enjoy a quick barbecue just like in the game — when suddenly a sharp cry echoed from the nearby forest—
"Stop right there! Meat cooked like that has no soul, meow!!!"