For Hunters, observation balloons hovering high above the hunting grounds were a common sight, but watching a Monster from one was a relatively novel experience.
The observation platform aboard the Pioneer was cramped, with room for only one or two people at a time. Any more would have been dangerous.
Therefore, eager though the Hunters were to try it, they could only take turns going up to the observation platform under Ms. Meow-It-All's direction and looking down through the fixed high-magnification binoculars.
A whole night had passed, yet the Pariapuria remained curled up exactly where it had been, asleep and digesting its bellyful of food.
"Is this normal?" Altaïr pulled away from the binoculars' eyepiece and looked at Ms. Meow-It-All beside him. "Given how voracious they are, I thought they'd eat more often."
Ms. Meow-It-All wrinkled her nose. "Why do you think they're so voracious? Do you imagine it's a personal preference, meow?"
The question stumped Altaïr.
Ms. Meow-It-All did not wait for his answer. "Habits and preferences are two different things. A habit is a survival behavior developed by a population in response to a particular environment, while a preference belongs to an individual. There is a fundamental difference between the two, meow.
"Pariapuria aren't so voracious, throwing caution to the wind whenever they encounter food, because they enjoy eating. They behave that way because food is scarce in their original habitat, meow.
"As Large Monsters, they must seize every opportunity to eat if they want to survive, meow.
"Sleep is the best way to convert what they have eaten into stored nutrients. If nothing disturbs this one, it should sleep even longer, until most of the food in its belly has been digested. Then it will spit out the remains and go looking for more, meow."
Hearing Ms. Meow-It-All's explanation, Altaïr finally understood why they had found no trace of the Pariapuria during their first few days in the depths of the Mangrove Forest.
The sandy ground of the Mangrove Forest covering their tracks was one reason, but the more important reason was that Pariapuria were not nearly as active as the Hunters had imagined.
They probably spent most of their time sleeping in one place, almost as though hibernating, and only woke when the scent of food roused them.
The Hunters had initially imagined that the Monsters ate as they wandered, vomited, and immediately started eating again, but that was not the case.
Altaïr followed Ms. Meow-It-All back to the main deck, looked up, and saw Theo and Sajji carrying several large crates toward them.
Both the human and the Felyne looked exhausted, yet their eyes shone with excitement.
"Yo, did everyone sleep well last night?" Theo ran a hand through his messy blond hair. "I didn't get a wink of sleep!"
Altaïr and Morgan merely stared at him. Only Isis humored him by asking, "Were you busy making all of these? Is this Bowgun Ammo? Something looks off. The rounds seem much larger than normal Bowgun Ammo."
Sajji, who also had heavy circles under his eyes, waved his paws as he explained, "These are rockets, meow. They're for our Rathian Model-1, meow.
"Ms. Meow-It-All told us about the plan to drive away the Pariapuria with Barrel Bombs.
"To keep us safe, the Pioneer will stay at least a hundred meters up, meow. Barrel Bombs dropped from that height can easily miss, but rockets with stabilizing fins are a different matter, meow! Fire them straight down, and hitting a target at this range is a cinch, meow!"
Morgan perked up as well. "How much firepower do they have? How do they compare to Sticky Ammo?"
Theo shrugged. "Honestly, they're so-so. They're weaker than Lv1 Sticky Ammo because they don't have the same penetrating power."
Disgust was plain on Morgan's face. As a die-hard enthusiast of heavy firepower, he saw no point in rockets that were much larger than Sticky Ammo yet considerably weaker.
Sajji quickly came to Theo's defense. "Our goal is to drive it away, not kill it, meow.
"This batch of rockets doesn't use regular gunpowder. We used a cheap alchemical explosive instead, which is how we managed to make so many at once, meow. They're loud, flashy, and intimidating enough for the job, meow."
"In short, they're fireworks," Theo concluded.
"If that's the case, firepower doesn't matter much. As long as they serve their tactical purpose, they'll get the job done," Altaïr said as he took a crate of rockets from Sajji.
Theo might have seemed flippant, but he always came through when it mattered. With Sajji helping him, Altaïr felt confident that their fireworks would be effective.
"Ms. Meow-It-All, can we start the operation now?"
Ms. Meow-It-All looked over Altaïr and the other two, who were brimming with energy, then at Theo and Sajji, whose faces were exhausted but whose spirits remained high. She nodded firmly.
"Then let's begin, meow." She raised her voice. "Millsy, take us down, meow.
"Pariapuria have mostly lost the ability to fly, but their powerful leaps still allow them to glide short distances, meow.
"Keep the Airship between eighty and one hundred meters. Never take us below fifty, meow."
"Got it." From the cockpit, Millsy expertly worked the Airship's controls, slowly venting gas to bring the vessel down in a smooth, steady descent.
Before their eyes, the Pariapuria, which had shrunk to the size of a cockroach from their previous altitude, grew larger and larger until the Airship came to a hover once more.
They barely felt the vessel sway.
Millsy poked her head out from behind the helm. "We're at about ninety-five to one hundred meters. I'll keep us steady here. Just tell me if you need me to adjust, okay?"
Altaïr had always heard that the Wyverian girl was a top-tier pilot, and now he was seeing her skill firsthand.
Not just anyone could fly a vessel with an air sac over twenty meters long and maintain a pinpoint hover at low altitude with a margin of error measured in single-digit meters.
"Watch this, meow!" Sajji shouted excitedly as he hoisted the Rathian Model-1 Rocket Launcher and headed for the railing.
The weapon had never seen real combat since its completion, and he could not wait to try it out.
Theo carefully took out a rocket, disengaged the safety, and helped Sajji load it.
The others also gathered at the railing, ready to watch Sajji operate the weapon.
To get a better firing angle, Sajji fastened a safety rope to his armor and secured himself to the railing. Then, hoisting the rocket launcher, he leaned through a gap in the railing and trained his sights on the sleeping Pariapuria below.
Morgan opened his mouth to say something, but Sajji had already let out a loud meow and pulled the trigger.
"Fire, meow!"
With a soft "whoosh," the conical rocket burst from the barrel in a flash of flame and streaked straight toward the target.
Then it missed completely. With a loud bang, it exploded into a beautiful ball of fire on the ground about twenty meters from the Pariapuria.
Everyone froze.
Silence fell over the deck.
Clawdia was the first to speak. She looked at Sajji as though he were an idiot. "The target is almost twenty meters long, and you still managed to miss by that much from only a hundred meters away, meow? Were you aiming with your butt, meow?"
"That's scientifically impossible, meow!" Sajji's entire face turned red. "This rocket launcher..."
Clawdia narrowed her eyes. "You built it yourself, meow."
"The rocket, meow!" Sajji corrected himself.
Theo quickly said, "I only supplied the explosive and propellant. You designed and assembled the rockets yourself."
Sajji had no reply.
He really could not blame anyone else for this.
"What range did you zero the scope for?" As the only Gunner present, Morgan immediately spotted the problem.
"What do you mean, what range, meow? Aren't the crosshairs just supposed to be parallel to the barrel, meow?"
"Your rocket doesn't fly in a perfectly flat trajectory. That might be fine at twenty or thirty meters, but at this range, the error becomes enormous. Then there's the wind direction. Even if the Airship and the target are both stationary, you still have to calculate how far the rocket will drift. Have you never fired a ranged weapon before?"
"I have, meow! I've always used weapons from the Rathalos Series, meow, though my firing distance usually never exceeded thirty meters..." Sajji's voice grew quieter as he spoke.
"Forget it. Let me." Morgan took the Rathian Model-1 Rocket Launcher from Sajji's paws. Without needing any instructions from Sajji or Theo, he expertly reloaded it, leaned out, and casually fired.
The rocket became a streak of fire as it left the barrel, plunging squarely into the gaping maw of the Pariapuria. The first explosion had awakened the Monster, which now raised its head and let out a series of threatening roars at the uninvited guests above.
"Boom!"
(Translated by yourtl.app)