In a world where divine beasts could be easily lured away by a piece of roasted meat, this island surely had none. However, one of the former novice instructors from Monster Hunter—the Wild Boar King, who could potentially bring even seasoned hunters to regret their carelessness—definitely existed. In fact, there were two of them.

"I saw those two Wild Boar Kings confronting the Forest Goat King when I was exploring earlier, but they didn’t end up fighting, so their strengths should be about equal," Sanji meowed.

Having grasped nearly half of the situation on this island, Sanji quickly decided to make the Wild Boar King couple the target for Xie Wen's first hunting expedition. Xie Wen had no objections to Sanji's choice. Compared to other monsters, whether familiar or unfamiliar, the Wild Boar Kings had a much simpler attack pattern, making them ideal targets for starting out, both in terms of gameplay and reality.

It was a pity that they couldn’t find a blacksmith; otherwise, with the materials obtained from the two Wild Boar Kings, they could easily assemble a complete set of Wild Boar gear. Xie Wen thought regretfully. There was no way around it; in a reality where any injury would affect his physical condition and without any armor, he felt utterly insecure.

If he couldn’t find a village soon, Xie Wen hoped he could summon a forging-type Felyne. Although the forging Felynes in the game only seemed to craft equipment for cats and dogs, Xie Wen thought that with a little modification, he could make use of it too...

Thus, things returned to square one; if he wanted to summon a new cat, he had to first try to hunt other large monsters. After deciding on the target for today’s hunt, Xie Wen followed Sanji to the territory of the two Wild Boar Kings, collecting some ingredients along the way...

After all, food wasn’t just about filling his stomach; it could also be used as items to restore and enhance attributes. Besides...

“Tsk! So I still can’t unlock the ‘Environmental Creature Encyclopedia’?” Xie Wen muttered.

On the way, Xie Wen opened the hunter’s manual several times, but unfortunately, the "gray pages" showed no sign of unlocking. In the game, besides large and small monsters, many neutral or even friendly units also had their own encyclopedias, classified by game designers as "environmental creatures."

However, Sanji had previously brought back ingredients that didn’t even qualify as small monsters, yet they still failed to unlock this encyclopedia. Xie Wen speculated it might be necessary to go to their "refresh" locations in the game to trigger the unlocking. After moving through the woods for more than ten minutes, increasing the map exploration by one percent, he still did not see the environmental creature encyclopedia appear.

But on second thought, environmental creatures in the game either grant temporary states to characters or serve as collection items for hunting tools and points. The key point is that, although they are called creatures, they remain in fixed positions and do not move around. Rather than being part of the hunter world’s ecosystem, they are more of a mechanism to add fun to the game. Therefore, it was actually normal that no such encyclopedia appeared in the hunter’s manual.

Realizing this, Xie Wen shrugged and finally helplessly gave up on attempting this aspect.

“Still no luck, meow?” Seeing Xie Wen put away the hunter's manual, disappointment showed on Sanji's face.

Compared to Xie Wen, this little yellow cat was actually the one most concerned about whether the manual could unlock new pages.

“Well, there are many ways to unlock it. At the very least, the weapon page is confirmed; we’ll eventually collect everything,” Xie Wen said, rubbing Sanji's little cat head, smiling to comfort him.

Of course, when the time came to summon another cat, whether it would be a female or male cat remained uncertain, and he intentionally hadn’t mentioned this to Sanji...

Because he was really looking forward to seeing what kind of expression Sanji would have when he summoned yet another male cat.

“Meow?!”

While enjoying Xie Wen's petting, Sanji suddenly felt a chill, alertly sitting up and looking around, but found nothing unusual.

“What’s wrong?”

Xie Wen thought he had sensed some danger and tensed up, one hand gripping the hilt of his sword, preparing to draw the salted fish knife.

Sanji shook his ears, then shook his head, awkwardly replying, “I might have been mistaken, meow. Let’s keep moving.”

“Wait a minute,” although the attempt to unlock a new page just failed, Xie Wen suddenly thought of a new direction to try. “Take out a few of the small animals we defeated earlier. I have something I want to test.”

“Meow?”

Sanji tilted his head in confusion but obediently took out two rabbits and a bird carcass from his cat paw bag.

Xie Wen then retrieved the primitive-style hunting knife.

Having thought about how environmental creatures could serve as materials, Xie Wen instinctively associated it with the knife that hunters used to harvest materials. Since the hunter's manual, roasting rack, and even whetstones and fishing rods all had their special aspects, it didn’t make sense for the hunter's knife—being equally used—to only function as an ordinary dagger...

Of course, it was also possible that this knife's unique aspect, like the whetstone and fishing rod, was having infinite durability, but trying it out wouldn’t hurt.

“What are you trying to do, meow?!” Sanji exclaimed upon seeing Xie Wen pull out the hunting knife. “I can handle the ingredients myself; combat is more suitable for a clumsy one like you, meow!”

Saying this, he attempted to stuff the ingredients back into his bag.

Sanji was always particularly serious about cooking-related matters. Even after Xie Wen explained his purpose, Sanji still seemed somewhat reluctant.

After carefully selecting from the ingredients in his bag, he finally handed Xie Wen the smallest and most damaged bird carcass.

“For an experiment, you don’t need such good materials, meow,” the little cat said with conviction.

Xie Wen didn’t mind; he casually tossed the bird carcass to the ground, then gripped the hunting knife with one hand, mimicking how hunters harvested materials in the game, and stabbed down hard at the carcass.

“Meow!”

Seeing Xie Wen’s actions, Sanji felt a wave of discomfort.

But the next second, he was startled, his fur standing on end.

“What in the world is that?!!”

At this moment, Sanji didn’t even care that it might attract ferocious beasts on the island, shouting loudly.

Because as Xie Wen's knife plunged down and made a sharp cut, a perfectly shaped bird leg suddenly “popped” out from the carcass...

Even with Sanji’s strict standards for ingredients, the processing of this bird leg was flawless, making it an excellent ingredient ready for immediate use.

What astonished him the most was that even after the bird leg "popped" out, the bird carcass still maintained its original appearance; even the area where Xie Wen had stabbed showed no damage.

“Uh... it’s just harvesting materials...” Xie Wen scratched his head. “Aren’t other hunters like this?”

Well, while the hunters in his inherited memories didn’t seem to have such a peculiar ability, hunters in the game certainly did it this way; he wasn’t lying.

Unfortunately, Sanji clearly didn’t think so...

“Not at all, meow! What kind of hunter acts so strangely like you, you fool?!!!”