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Gourmet Hunter - Chapter 2
🕑 Added 2024-03-21 05:35:49 +0000 UTCChapter 2: Machi X Meteor Street
Luo Lie was utterly baffled for an entire week before he reluctantly accepted the bizarre encounter that had happened to him.
He had clearly discovered an architectural ruin at the bottom of the Unfrozen Lake, but then a terrifying presence appeared out of nowhere. Before he could even process it, he found himself inexplicably in Garbage Mountain. What was more frustrating wasn’t the language barrier, but rather... he had shrunk in size just like Conan!
Fortunately, the shrinking of his "little brother" was due to his overall body shrinking.
Thanks to his experience of consuming the fruit, his resilience had greatly improved, preventing him from being overwhelmingly shocked upon arriving in this world.
A week was not a short time, and it was enough for him to come to terms with his situation.
"Priority is to solve the language issue, but luckily, the people here seem kind."
Luo Lie sat on a wooden bed, touching the scar above his right eyebrow, deep in thought.
He was still unaware that he was no longer on Earth, nor did he know the name of this place. He couldn’t possibly realize how ridiculously "kind" was as a description here.
Right after he emerged from Garbage Mountain, he saw three people wearing protective suits. Although he didn’t know where he was or why these people were wearing protective suits or what they wanted in the garbage dump, the moment these strangers started speaking, Luo Lie felt despair from the bottom of his heart.
"What kind of bird language is this?"
Being fluent in several languages, he couldn’t understand a word the people in protective suits were saying.
Fortunately, despite the language barrier, one of the girls showed clear goodwill and took him to a place where normal humans lived. These actions earned Luo Lie’s assessment of their kindness. Of course, it would have been better if the girl hadn’t taken his jade stone.
Touching the familiar scar above his right eyebrow and thinking about the jade stone taken by that barbaric girl, Luo Lie fell into habitual contemplation.
Based on his current appearance and scar, he could confirm he had shrunk, and his physical condition had regressed with his age. Fortunately, he could still feel the extremely faint "life force" within him, his weapon. Although now weak as a flickering flame, it remained a precious spark.
During this time, he was constantly worried about the "spark" fading away, as it was his support for surviving in this unfamiliar world. Luckily, these concerns were unnecessary; the life force inside him, although weakened, showed no signs of disappearing.
"Anyway, while mastering the language, I must also try to strengthen the life force within me so I won’t be helpless in facing problems."
Luo Lie slowly closed his eyes, calming his mind, then concentrated his mental energy to connect with the faint life force inside him, as if a pair of gentle hands were softly massaging a tiny ball of energy the size of a thumbnail.
In this week, as he came to terms with his situation, he had been cultivating, but with almost no progress. Although he didn’t know why, he kept at it.
Initially, after consuming the fruit, he could clearly sense the life force and began to cultivate using this method. The effect wasn't significant, but it was there.
After a year of cultivation, not only had his physical condition improved to beyond human levels, but he could also hold his breath for up to twenty minutes.
However, since shrinking and arriving in this strange world, the same method of cultivation seemed to make no progress.
Luo Lie attributed it to his smaller body and didn’t think much of it.
Massaging the life force for an entire hour, he saw no change.
With his eyes tightly shut, a row of white text suddenly appeared in his dark vision, floating uncertainly like smoke but forming clear words.
Power: Unknown.
Awakening Level: 0.5%.
The sudden appearance of these mysterious text messages shocked Luo Lie into opening his eyes. As he did so and exited the calm state of mind, the text that seemed to appear in his consciousness vanished like smoke.
"What on earth is this?"
As deep confusion surfaced in Luo Lie’s eyes, the old wooden door creaked open.
A girl with purple hair and golden eyes came in carrying two bowls of steaming porridge, placing them on the simple wooden table. Then, pointing at the porridge, she said, "Eat."
Simple syllables, simple meaning, but Luo Lie couldn’t understand. However, since the girl pointed at the porridge and usually said the same thing when bringing food, Luo Lie roughly knew it meant "eat."
His gaze swept past the girl’s undeveloped chest, noticing her quick move to guard the white jade stone hanging in front of her, a threatening expression on her face.
"This is the payment; it’s mine now!" The purple-haired girl’s voice was young and distinct, her serious demeanor declaring ownership of the jade stone.
Luo Lie couldn’t
understand her words, but he guessed they weren’t anything good. He shrugged helplessly, not really caring since he intended to reclaim the jade stone eventually. He picked up the bowl and started sipping the rice soup.
"Ugh... the rice wasn’t washed." The moment his tongue touched the rice soup, Luo Lie sighed inwardly. As a foodie spoiled by many delicacies, his tongue was constantly protesting, struggling with the poorly proportioned watery porridge, a real torment for him. But as a dependent, he had no right to demand more.
This was a very watery bowl of porridge, with very few rice grains and no side dishes, not even a small plate of dried radishes. This had been every meal for the past week.
Although he couldn’t communicate and dared not wander around, based on the small room he lived in and the girl’s daily meals, he could roughly gauge the standard of living here, with the garbage dump outside being a constant reminder.
Luo Lie quickly finished the porridge, placing the empty bowl on the table. The girl also finished her meal, and the room fell silent as they looked at each other.
The girl was petite, around ten years old, with purple short hair, thin eyebrows, rare golden-colored eyes that were large and expressive, a slightly delicate nose and mouth, wearing a white outfit resembling a judo uniform with a skirt on the bottom and black shorts underneath, longer than the skirt.
Honestly, she was a very cute loli, enough to stir the hearts of many loli fans, but Luo Lie was not one of them. He was well aware that this seemingly adorable loli was not to be trifled with. Not to mention anything else, her physical strength was surprisingly stronger than his.
He couldn’t fathom how such a small and cute loli possessed such strength.
If not for this, he wouldn’t be in such a passive position, unable to reclaim even a jade stone.
In the quiet standoff, the girl suddenly took out a worn book from her clothes, slammed it on the table, and said, "I'll teach you to read."
Luo Lie didn’t understand, but he wasn’t shy about it and opened the first page of the book. Upon seeing the text resembling a phonetic alphabet on the first page, his eyes narrowed slightly.
This strange text felt familiar to him, as if he had seen it somewhere before, perhaps... on the stone pillars at the bottom of the Unfrozen Lake.
Realizing this, Luo Lie was startled and began to compare the texts without showing any outward reaction.
"It looks similar, but it’s not quite the same."
Comparing the two texts, he could discern their differences.
Suppressing his inner doubts, Luo Lie looked up at the girl, pointed at the book, then at her, and finally at himself, asking if she intended to teach him to read.
The girl understood Luo Lie’s gesture and nodded slightly.
"Then let's hurry up," Luo Lie brightened, speaking in Chinese, but the girl couldn’t understand him.
The girl didn’t mind what language Luo Lie spoke, considering there are over two hundred languages in the world; he might have been speaking one of them. The language she intended to teach Luo Lie was the common tongue.
Although the girl’s teaching was mediocre, Luo Lie mastered this previously unknown written language at an incredibly fast pace, thanks to his linguistic talent. In less than a month, he was likely to fully grasp the language of this world.
As night deepened, he finally learned the girl's name and the place they were in.
The girl’s name was Machi, and the place was Meteor Street…
If it were just Machi or just Meteor Street, Luo Lie might not have thought much of it. But when these two were combined, a storm of shock surged in his heart.
"Is this the world of Hunter x Hunter?"
Images of a purple-haired, golden-eyed woman surfaced in his mind, gradually overlapping with the girl in front of him.
Machi... a member of the infamous Phantom Troupe, involved in numerous heinous crimes worldwide, far from the harmless appearance she had now.
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