"How could this happen, meow!!"
At this moment, several Cats, including Steak, were holding their little tools, mimicking Spice's movements as they cleaned the rust off some unknown pieces of metal.
And right now, Spice was actually over by that unknown monster's side, methodically communicating with it as they cleaned up that pile of junk together.
"This one can't be used anymore, meow. Using this would be worse than just chopping down a new tree, meow!"
"Yes, yes, that's it, meow. Clean off all the sand and grit on the surface, then it can be pieced together with another thing, meow!"
"Wow! You're so strong, meow! You can actually just crush this piece of metal flat, that's amazing, meow!"
Watching Spice being so carefree, Steak really couldn't figure it out—before joining the Ancient Tree Fire Wyvern Tribe, how had Spice's tribe even managed to raise him to this size? Could a personality like his really have survived back then, in such a harsh environment? Or was it that Spice hadn't been like this before, and only after merging into the Ancient Tree Fire Wyvern Tribe, once life got better, did he regain this sort of temperament?
Thinking of this, Steak quietly asked the Palico next to him: "By the way, do you guys know what Spice used to be in charge of, meow?"
"Seems like it was accompanying Lord Fire Wyvern's hatchlings, meow," the Palico thought for a bit, then replied with some uncertainty.
Hearing this, in Steak's mind flashed the image of Spice carrying several of Lord Fire Wyvern's hatchlings, darting and weaving through the Ancient Tree.
"I remember now, meow. Spice really did used to be a Grimalkyne who accompanied Lord Fire Wyvern's hatchlings and handled hunting training. And I heard that when the Admiral first came to the Ancient Tree, Spice even mistook him for possibly being a threat to the hatchlings, so there was even a brief standoff, meow."
"Now that you say it, I remember too—but it wasn't really a standoff. Back then, Spice was just playing with the female Fire Wyvern hatchling, and he misunderstood, that's all."
Listening to their conversation, Steak remembered as well. At the time it had just been a trivial matter, but as the Grimalkynes of the Ancient Tree interacted more and more with those at Astera, and the relationship between the two sides grew ever closer, this little story was brought up again by Spice's old companions.
And somehow, it ended up spreading through the whole Ancient Tree—everyone saying that Spice really had been carefree back then.
But thinking of Lord Fire Wyvern's hatchlings also made Steak recall the time he had once helped take care of that Fire Wyvern couple's brood. He couldn't help but wonder whether that young wyvern had managed to survive in the Wildspire Waste.
"Chiuu~"
After several hours of buried work, Ahtal-Ka looked at the two piles before it. The larger one was made up of parts that were completely useless. The only reason they still looked relatively intact was because its sticky silk threads had wrapped around them, barely holding them together.
The smaller pile, however, was made up of parts that had been properly cleaned. Roughly eighty percent of these came from dismantling the abandoned Fire Wyvern dwelling, while the rest were just a few chunks of metal and the tip of a Dragonator.
Looking at the 'dowry' that had been cut down by more than half, Ahtal-Ka couldn't help but feel sorrow rise up.
This was the biggest difference between wild Ahtal-Ka and the ones living beside human fortresses.
The Ahtal-Ka near Old World fortresses, though still not having strong aggression, had such an ingrained instinct to collect fortress parts that it drove them to proactively attack human fortresses.
As for attacking, that wasn't the end of it—once the fighting was done, they would go so far as to tear the fortress apart! Whether city walls, various facilities, or even ordinary houses, all would be dismantled clean and taken away in a single package.
Thus, in a certain sense, Ahtal-Ka's danger to humans was even greater than that of ordinary super-giant Elder Dragons.
Adding to that its vaunted intelligence, with which it could piece these materials together into 'Gundams' over 100 m tall, one could say that Ahtal-Ka's threat to humans was no less than any natural disaster! It was practically specialized in preying on humans!
But wild Ahtal-Ka, like the one before them now, could only search for ancient ruins on its own, using what remnants it dug up as parts for its 'walking fortress'. If its luck was bad and it couldn't find ruins, then pitifully it would be forced to use wood and stone.
Reluctantly, Ahtal-Ka looked at the pile of parts that should be discarded, tore its gaze away with pain, and began spitting out large quantities of silk to bind the cleaned usable parts together.
With a dazzling series of maneuvers, the pile of parts was pieced together. Under Ahtal-Ka's precise observation with its compound eyes, before long, an incomplete, 7 m long 'Nergigante' toy took shape. The most ridiculous thing was that on this toy, there wasn't even a place to put the Dragonator tip.
"Waooh~~ what an exquisite piecing method, meow! But isn't the way you handled the parts a bit too rough? And these golden threads—are their stickiness and toughness really this strong?"
Spice had absolutely no concept of fear. Under the tense stares of Steak and the other Cats, he hopped lightly onto the Nergigante toy, extended his paw pad to poke at the silk threads, and then actually grabbed one and began tugging at it with all his might.
In the end, Spice even used his teeth, and when he found he couldn't break it no matter what, his eyes lit up as he climbed to the top of the Nergigante toy's head, locking eyes with Ahtal-Ka.
Before Ahtal-Ka's enormous compound eyes, Spice's tiny body was scarcely the size of a single one of them.
Putting on a cute smile, Spice's crisp voice rang out: "Do you want to join our Ancient Tree Fire Wyvern Tribe, meow?"
The scene fell silent. After several seconds, Steak was the first to react.
"Do you know what you're saying, meow!"
Several Cats drew their weapons in unison, their gazes wary on Ahtal-Ka. At the slightest abnormal move, they had both stink bombs and flash bombs as double insurance.
Ahtal-Ka tilted its head, scratching at it with a scythe-like forelimb.
It… couldn't understand~
Although its intelligence was high, most of it seemed directed toward mechanical structures. Lacking creativity was, for Ahtal-Ka as for the vast majority of monsters in this world, a common problem.
Ahtal-Ka possessed extremely strong abilities of imitation, learning, and observation. By watching the most powerful creatures it encountered in its lifetime, it could then use its fortress parts to piece them together, even mimicking most of their attack methods, giving it immensely formidable combat power.
Its combat intelligence was also very high; even a human war machine, after observing it just once, it could learn how to use.
One could say that Ahtal-Ka's intelligence was unique in the Monster Hunter world.
It was just overly biased, a bona fide construction and engineering geek girl.
Thus, although it had communicated with Spice for several hours, it could only barely understand his meaning—the pile of junk had been sorted out this way. But now, with Spice speaking to it, it truly couldn't make sense of it!!
Ahtal-Ka and Spice stared wide-eyed at each other, and in the end, it was Spice who lost.
Because Ahtal-Ka's compound eyes simply didn't need to blink.
Licking his own paw, sensing that the other seemed a bit impatient, Spice nimbly scrambled down from the big toy.
Once Spice landed steadily, Ahtal-Ka's forelimbs began pulling at the silk again, and soon, the entire toy reverted back into that pile of ruins parts.
However, Spice keenly observed that the way Ahtal-Ka pieced things together and operated joints was different from what he had learned back when he was stuck at his teacher's side. Some of the ruins parts bore clear marks of deformation, obviously caused by materials being incompatible with each other, and then forcibly pried into shape with brute strength using those golden threads.
Also being a mild obsessive-compulsive himself, Spice found it a bit hard to accept.
So, hopping and bouncing, he once again drew the attention of Ahtal-Ka, who was packing away its belongings.
"Um, could you maybe find a way to make that piece of metal into a ball?"
As he spoke, Spice pointed at a metal piece that was badly deformed, gesturing nonstop.
But seeing Ahtal-Ka's seemingly uncomprehending look, Spice thought for a moment, dug out an irregular lump of dirt from the ground, then pointed at the metal piece and at the dirt in his paw.
Immediately after, he quickly kneaded the dirt into a clump of a ball. Under Ahtal-Ka's puzzled gaze, he picked up two twigs and placed them beside the dirt ball, using the ball as the joint part of a wrist, then swung the twigs about in all directions.
As a mechanical master of the natural world, Ahtal-Ka got it instantly!
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