One-Eyed Monster

Kadi and Igor reluctantly accepted the Spirit Book’s suggestion.

Despite this, the all-knowing Spirit Book did offer them a simple and feasible plan. The plan seemed primitive, but the two of them racked their brains and couldn’t find any flaws.

For the first time, these two guys felt their intelligence being crushed by a Spirit Book.

So, after a moment of silence, Igor closed the Spirit Book and took a deep breath. Being ridiculed by a book is quite embarrassing, he thought. So, before the chatty Spirit Book could scoff, he decisively shut it, denying it any chance to speak.

Kadi readily agreed. The moment the Spirit Book was closed, it struggled, emitting muffled groans. If Kadi hadn’t quickly added his hands to Igor’s, the book might have actually wriggled free.

But with four hands pressing down firmly on its cover, escape wasn’t so easy. In this state, the chatty Spirit Book soon gave up its bluster and obediently fell silent.

”Tie it tighter, make sure it’s really tight,” Igor kept instructing Kadi after stowing the book in his pack.

Kadi always tied knots casually, not caring whether they were secure or if they might slip with the slightest tug.

Seeing the knot Kadi had tied, Igor was stunned. That’s not a knot! It’s clearly just a haphazard tangle of rope. A slight tug would either make it fall apart or get even more tangled—only those two outcomes.

Kadi wasn’t entirely ignorant about knots. The one Stan Sol had used before had intrigued him for a long time. The more you pulled that knot, the tauter it became. Kadi had always wanted to know how to untie it, but even after he and Stan Sol parted ways, he still couldn’t figure it out.

Kadi’s study of knots was purely about undoing complex ones; he had never cared about how to tie them...

”The knot you just tied was a slipknot,” Igor explained. ”That kind is easily undone. Just give it a pull, and it comes apart...”

”Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know how to untie knots. You don’t need to explain it to me,” Kadi interrupted impatiently. ”Let’s hurry. We can’t afford to still be in this Ghost Wind Valley when it gets dark.”

”Can we even get out in a day?”

”It never took me much time to get from here to Grey Eagle Peak before. But never mind that. Why can’t that knot be wrapped around another time? I think adding another loop would make it sturdier.”

”If you wrap it around again and tie another knot, you’re just putting a new knot on top of the original one. That makes it a dead knot, and a dead knot can’t be undone.”

”Why is it so complicated? You make even tying a rope sound so troublesome,” Kadi grumbled, a bit irritated.

The rope they had hadn’t come easily, either. Kadi had tried several kinds of leaves before he managed to find some unnamed, sturdy, slender leaves and stalks...

Igor, on the other hand, displayed remarkable manual dexterity. He actually managed to twist the slender leaves and stalks into a rope. Kadi watched the entire rope-making process, but he didn’t understand a thing. He just saw Igor rubbing his hands, and a few slender leaves and stalks somehow melded together. Then it got longer and longer, gradually turning into a rope. The rope was green, dry yellow, and even partly red; it felt strange in his hand.

”These mixed weeds and leaves are surprisingly sturdy when twisted together; even you can’t break this rope,” Igor remarked with a sigh of admiration as he untied the dead knot Kadi had initially fumbled onto his hand.

”Well, you must have magic to turn these little grasses into ropes,” Kadi said, distracted. He was still frustrated about the slipknot from earlier. He had tried to tie it many times but couldn’t achieve the effect Igor described. In his vexation, he tied another knot, making his already fumbling attempts even more tangled.

Kadi’s earlier attempts had gone something like this:

”Igor, look, I’ve tied another knot!”

A moment later: ”What’s going on? This knot is tangled again!”

Then, in puzzlement: ”Why can I easily untie knots others have tied, but I can’t undo my own, no matter how hard I try?”

And finally, with a sigh of sarcastic self-admiration: ”Oh, I truly am something else, taking this long to learn such a simple knot...”

Kadi’s chatter didn’t annoy Igor, because Igor himself had taken a long time to learn this wilderness Hunter’s rope knot from Teacher Hadi. He’d had the same reaction in the beginning: impatient and easily agitated. After all, with such a complex winding method, a moment’s carelessness could leave one completely muddled.

Unlike Kadi, Igor at least knew how to tie a normal knot when he first learned this one; his fundamentals were solid. Kadi, however, was completely ignorant when it came to knot-tying—a total novice.

For a monster starting from scratch, learning to tie knots indeed seemed a bit troublesome.

After trying many times, Kadi still couldn’t master the trick.

Having learned his lesson, Igor, after undoing the dead knot on his hand, no longer let Kadi practice on him. He had Kadi find a large tree or rock to practice on first. If Kadi kept tying knots on my hand like this, our hands would probably be stuck together for the rest of our lives... Igor thought.

Good thing I was smart enough to have him practice on something else first...

Igor continued to twist, using up the remaining slender blades of grass and stalks he held.

Rope, huh? More wouldn’t hurt; it always comes in handy in the wilderness. Besides, material this rare... I should definitely keep a piece. We won’t find these strange plants once we’re off the mountain.

Ever since the chatty Spirit Book had proposed the plan, Igor and Kadi had been worrying about how to find rope, as they had none on them. Originally, Igor had thought of tearing strips from his clothes to make a rope, but Kadi said that kind of rope would be too soft. If pulled with any force, the cloth strips would shred, making them unreliable.

So, how were they to find rope?

Igor had then asked, ”Could some branches be used as a substitute?”

Kadi looked around for a few branches to try. They were all too hard and couldn’t bend like willow branches, so they were useless as a replacement for rope.

Later, Kadi discovered grass growing by the side of a large lake. It was long and supple, some yellow and some green, but most importantly, this grass was very tough.

This discovery led to Igor showing off his skills in front of Kadi. Kadi had never seen such craftwork before, and when he finally did, he was naturally deeply impressed.

”Ah, I finally figured it out!” Kadi exclaimed.

”Really?”

”As long as I get the order of the loops right, I can tie the knot you talked about!” Kadi had finally grasped the trick to the Hunter’s rope knot.

”Alright, let me check.” Igor walked over to Kadi. He looked at the tree trunk Kadi had tied the rope around, tugged at it, then grabbed a loop on the knot, slipped it over an adjacent one, and pulled hard. WHOOSH! The tightly bound rope came loose.

”Congratulations, you learned it!”