Monster Hunter: I can hear the monsters' thoughts

Chapter 364 Consuming a piece of raw meat per 100 kilometers

Eliminated?

Lin Lin was slightly taken aback.

Oh right, the choice is two-way. While the hunter chooses the Palico partner, the Palico is also choosing the hunter. However, Shion is a proper two-star hunter, and she has a high-ranking hunter as her teacher. Her conditions should be quite excellent. How could no Palico be willing to follow her?

Hmm... considering Shion's personality, this seems to make sense? With her adventurous and reckless nature, most Els might not dare to follow her.

Looking at Shion again, her face turned bright red after being exposed, and she kept saying things like, "Not liking someone doesn't count as elimination... It's a hunter's job, can you calculate it like that?"

Then came a string of incomprehensible words, such as "hunting spirit" and "risk," which made the three of them burst into laughter, filling the sandboat with a joyful atmosphere.

Only the axe beetle at the tail of the sandboat seemed out of place in this atmosphere. Its bright yellow compound eyes kept flashing, but it still couldn't understand what these people in front of it were doing.

As the laughter subsided, Ziyuan finally stopped dwelling on the matter. She raised the sails again, made slight adjustments to the direction, and let the hot desert winds propel the sandboat. However, after trying for a short while, the sandboat had only moved a small distance before it stopped again.

"what happened?"

Ye Zi asked curiously, as she still didn't quite understand what a sand boat was, so she had to ask.

Ziyuan's little face scrunched up. "The boat is too heavy, and the wind isn't strong enough right now, so the sandboat can't move."

As she spoke, she turned her gaze to the axe beetle lying innocently at the stern of the boat. If the ore they had mined only accounted for half the weight of the sand barge, then if this guy were included, the sand barge would probably be overweight.

"Should we abandon some of the ore?"

After pondering for a moment, Ye Zi looked down at the fruits of their labor piled up in the cabin.

Brave disagreed, saying, "Since the axe beetle can fly, why not just let it fly alongside the boat? Like the hops did before."

Lin Lin looked at the wound on the axe beetle's abdomen and slowly shook his head. Jumpy could keep up because it was strong and healthy, but this one was seriously injured. If it did this, it would most likely run out of strength and fall behind.

Suddenly, his eyes lit up – he had an idea!

The sandboats couldn't move because of two reasons: their weight was too high and the wind wasn't strong enough to power them.

In that case, the axe beetle could grab the stern of the boat and make a flying motion, but without leaving the ground, thus entering a "low-energy flight mode".

In this way, firstly, the axe beetle does not need to completely overcome its own gravity, thus saving energy while achieving weight reduction; secondly, the axe beetle's flight can also provide some power to compensate for the lack of wind power. In short, the axe beetle can act as an external power engine on the sand boat!
Lin Lin had thought it through very clearly, but whether he could understand it was another matter, and even if he could understand it, whether he could actually do it was another matter.

Let's give it a try. If it really doesn't work, we'll just have to discard some of the ore...

However, to Lin Lin's surprise, whether it was because the axe beetle was intelligent enough or because the power of the bond allowed Lin Lin's thoughts to be completely transmitted to the other side, the axe beetle's bright yellow compound eyes flickered slightly for a moment, then it grabbed the stern of the boat, opened its elytra, and its semi-transparent wings began to vibrate rapidly.

"It's moving! It's moving!"

As the sandboat gradually began to move, and its speed was slowly increasing, Ziyuan quickly adjusted the sails to ensure maximum wind power, while looking on with surprise, "This really works?!"
……

On the vast sea of ​​sand, a sand boat speeds by, raising clouds of dust along the way.

Unlike ordinary sandboats, this sandboat is equipped with a very advanced external engine at the stern, which not only increases the speed of the sandboat but also has low energy consumption, requiring only one piece of raw meat per 100 kilometers.

At this moment, Shion was sitting at the stern, staring intently at the axe-beetle. The task of controlling the sails had now shifted to Brave—after all, of the four people on board, only the two of them knew how to control the sandboat. Yoko, munching on her provisions, sat down beside Shion, following her gaze to the axe-beetle:

"What are you thinking about?"

"I was thinking, all of my senior brother's monster companions seem to have names, so what's this axe-beetle called?"

Lin Lin took a piece of raw meat he had just casually plucked from a passing armored dragon and offered it to the axe beetle's mouth, giving the sand boat's external power engine a little boost.

He tilted his head upon hearing Shion's words:

"I haven't decided yet, can you guys help me think of something?"

"Hmm... I'm really not good at naming things, why don't you ask Yoko-nee?"

Upon hearing this, Lin Lin couldn't help but twitch the corner of his mouth. Ye Zi's naming skills...

White Fang Hound, Fukumu Rabbit Afu, Rhinoceros Beetle Hunter Xiaojia, if she were to name them, they would most likely be Little Axe or Afu, right?
It would be better to just copy any name, like "Oozora" or "Brawl's Toothhound Zacian".

Watching the axe-beetle multitasking, flapping its wings while happily munching on raw meat, Yoko actually started to ponder:
"Hmm... According to the monster data I read before, the axe beetle is a subspecies of the stag beetle. The biggest difference in their appearance is that the stag beetle only has one pointed horn, like a rhinoceros beetle, while the axe beetle has two forked pointed horns, similar to a stag beetle."

"And my little rhinoceros beetle happens to be a rhinoceros beetle, so how about we call the corresponding stag beetle..."

"How about we call him Gujia?"

Lin Lin suddenly spoke up, genuinely afraid that Ye Zi would come up with some kind of name like "Xiao Yi" that would leave people bewildered.

"Eh? Kuga? What a strange name..."

Ziyuan complained, "I don't know how my senior brother's imagination comes up, he just keeps coming up with such strange and weird names."

"Kuuga, the name corresponds perfectly to a stag beetle, how wonderful!"

Yoko: ...

How does this correspond to anything?!

Lin Lin, however, became interested and looked at Xiao Jia, who was quietly lying in the cabin eating honey bait. He couldn't help but feel a little restless.

How about we rename Xiaojia too? How about Kabuto? They're both rhinoceros beetles, and both are red, so it'd be a perfect match…

Hmm, if we really want to match them up, we should name the Axe Beetle Steel Fighter Gatack. But never mind, Guga sounds nice, let's leave it at that.

Thus, to the bewilderment of the two, the axe beetle was officially renamed: Guga.

……

Perhaps it was because they had spent a little too much time with Mrs. Mineyama Dragon that they smelled of her perfume... and were covered in her ancient dragon scent. The return journey was quite smooth, and no foolish monster dared to jump out and block their way. The group returned to Lokrak on the third day after accepting the mission.

(End of this chapter)