Leveling Up By Surviving Alone - L.U.B.S.A Chapter 41

Soon, the Watcher’s vision was shared with Ji Yeonwoo’s.

The memory began in a fish market.

There, a roughly 3-meter-long shark lay slumped with lifeless eyes.

From outside the camera, the voice of a market ajumma, common in such places, began to echo.

– “Oh my, it got caught in a net and died. This isn’t illegal. It’s been a while since dombegi meat has been available in the market, you know!”

Dombegi refers to the act of cutting something into chunks to eat, and it usually refers to shark meat.

In other words, shark meat isn’t filleted but cut into chunks.

You cut open the belly, remove the innards… then make 30cm cuts along the back and slice it horizontally.

After that, you remove the bones from the chunks and separate the meat from the skin, just like regular meat.

Ji Yeonwoo opened his eyes after watching the entire process, including the final butchering.

There was no need to watch how dombegi skewers or other dishes were made from it.

It had already started to spoil, and the fishy smell was unavoidable.

Ji Yeonwoo disliked the faint, unpleasant fishy smell.

“Well, if it were properly fermented skate, maybe… hehe.”

Slurp.

Ji Yeonwoo licked his lips.

That’s right.

It wasn’t that Ji Yeonwoo couldn’t eat such things, but he had no intention of eating something that was only partially spoiled.

In any case, after seeing the Watcher’s memory, Ji Yeonwoo changed his approach.

Thinking about it, you can’t fillet every fish like that.

Especially not with a 30cm sashimi knife.

Of course, cutting open the belly and removing the innards was possible even with a sashimi knife.

So he removed the innards and also took out the large liver, setting it aside.

He would boil it soon.

Now, all that was left was to cut it into chunks.

Ji Yeonwoo made marks on the bull shark’s back, using a 1-meter-long stick as a guide. The cuts from Ji Yeonwoo’s previous attacks now had knife marks drawn between them like a ruler. Now, the juvenile Rift Bull Shark would be cut into chunks along those marks.

Soon, his multi-tool knife transformed into a saw.

A roughly 1-meter-long saw that could even cut through basalt (though the blade would wear out)!

This would cut the bull shark better than a kitchen knife.

And so, Ji Yeonwoo’s saw started.

Swish, swish~

Perhaps because it was a cartilaginous fish, the bones were easily cut, and the meat was cleanly sliced. Except for the occasional spurt of remaining blood, it was a very clean butchering.

Starting from the easier tail, he worked his way up. As the chunks got larger, the difficulty increased. Cutting through the part with the sharp dorsal fin required considerable effort.

It took 30 minutes for the bull shark’s body to be transformed into seven large chunks.

As he peeled off the skin with the sashimi knife, Ji Yeonwoo thought,

‘Ugh, I was planning to fillet this….’

If the Watcher hadn’t shared his memory, he would still be struggling.

“Thank you, Watcher!”

– The Watcher says they can’t share memories anymore, that they need to eat two more meals before they can share another memory.

“Oh, don’t worry about that! I’ll cook something delicious for you later!”

Because he had stabbed it so much with his spear, the only high-quality skin he could salvage was about 2 meters in area.

The tough, sandpaper-like skin of the shark.

On Earth, shark skin is used for covering sword handles or, if not that, for grating wasabi.

And this bull shark skin in front of him…?

“It’s even tougher than I thought.”

It was so tough that it could probably be used as a substitute for sandpaper. Come to think of it, when he had climbed onto its back, the rough hunting suit had started to pill every time it rubbed against the skin.

If Ji Yeonwoo ever needed to sharpen his weapons, this would’ve been perfect.

“It seems useful in many ways.”

And so, Ji Yeonwoo loaded the dombegi shark meat onto the combat raft.

The combat raft was, as the name suggested, half-destroyed, but perhaps because of Ji Yeonwoo’s wish, it didn’t sink even with the shark chunks loaded onto it.

But it couldn’t carry the entire massive shark.

As he loaded six chunks, it slowly began to sink.

– The Watcher says it’s sad, since he worked so hard on it.

“Well, I can just reinforce it or make it again, right? The fact that it’s usable in a pinch is amazing!”

– The Watcher praises him for being so positive.

“Hehehe. I didn’t know it before, but I think I’m pretty positive!”

As proof, Ji Yeonwoo is quite excited right now.

He caught a bull shark, cooked it, and extracted skills from it… and now he’s planning to use the remaining meat to lure fish from the kelp forest to his beach. It’s fun to create quests for himself and then clear them.

Being able to do this in the unknown Rift, where death could come at any moment, is a talent in itself.

Ji Yeonwoo is very grateful to his father and mother for passing down such a carefree (?) personality.

Arriving at the entrance of the kelp forest, Ji Yeonwoo threw the tail portion of the bull shark into the sea.

Splash~

Now, the fish he had caught would swarm there, and a feeding frenzy would begin.

Indeed, as soon as the bull shark chunk hit the water,

Splash, splash, splash!

Large fish surged to the surface.

It was like a scene from a documentary, where piranhas in the Amazon River would swarm as soon as a piece of beef was thrown in.

Actually, these fish aren’t the ones Ji Yeonwoo needs for his beach terrarium.

But the fry hiding and waiting to eat the leftovers are what Ji Yeonwoo needs.

Ji Yeonwoo headed home on the raft, throwing a slightly larger bull shark chunk into the sea.

Splash!

“Eat that, and then eat this too?”

It’s the Hansel and Gretel strategy.

The plan is to lure the fish to his beach by scattering the bull shark meat bit by bit!

The larger fish that come to the shore will be caught and grilled, while the fry will be raised to become part of the terrarium’s ecosystem.

Splash, splash,

Splaaash~

And so, the bull shark chunks that had once brought Ji Yeonwoo to the brink of death were scattered into the sea.

Of course, one chunk connected to the head still remained.

He planned to load it and scatter it too.

Suddenly, as he threw the chunks at regular intervals, he realized he was one chunk short.

He wanted to maintain the spacing of the chunks he had thrown, but that would leave him one chunk short.

He thought about retrieving a chunk and cutting it in half, but that felt too bothersome, so he came up with another solution.

It was to return to shore and split the shark’s head in half.

“Hmm… this is tricky.”

The largest chunk, connected to the head and the body. He thought he might be able to split it into two pieces.

Should he just split the head vertically like a regular fish?

“Since it’s a cartilaginous fish, it should be possible, right?”

Until then, he had been casually trying to split the bull shark’s head in half.

In fact, the multi-tool knife, transformed into a saw, went into the bull shark’s forehead with little resistance. The organs inside were easily cut.

But at a certain point, it got stuck.

Crack!

“…Huh?”

Crack, crack, crack!

Even in broad daylight, sparks flew clearly.

When he pulled out the saw and looked at the blade, the teeth, which should’ve been jagged, were worn smooth.

“…What’s so hard about this…?”

Ji Yeonwoo looked at the part of the bull shark that had stopped his saw.

There was the bull shark’s massive jaw.

Though sharks are cartilaginous fish… their jaws, which need to tear apart prey, are harder than any bone.

“This is a problem…”

Just as he let out a sigh of frustration,

The system chimed in with a sweet remark.

– This is a monster you’ve already killed.

– You can use the skill, Prey on the Weak (A), on this target.

– Will you use it?

“……!”

Ji Yeonwoo immediately used Prey on the Weak.

*Prey on the Weak (A)*

– This monster shares the same habitat as the monster you killed.

– This monster is the same age as the monster you killed.

– This monster is the same grade as the monster you killed.

– This monster shares the same attributes as the monster you killed.

– This monster is the same species as the monster you killed.

– You can deal 100% additional damage to this target.

Whoosh—!

Soon, the multi-tool knife in his hand, now in the form of a saw, glowed blue.

“…This is perfect, isn’t it?”

From what Ji Yeonwoo understood, the Prey on the Weak skill seemed to allow him to deal stronger attacks the more similarities there were between the target and a monster he had killed.

If they share the same habitat, age (adult, juvenile, etc.), attributes, and species, the more similarities, the more additional damage he could deal.

If five similarities grant 100%, then each similarity seems to add 20% additional damage.

Of course, the bull shark in front of him matched all five.

Well, it’s the bull shark itself, so how could it not?

So, at this moment, with Prey on the Weak activated, Ji Yeonwoo could deal double the usual damage to the juvenile bull shark.

“Phew…!”

Taking a deep breath, Ji Yeonwoo raised the multi-tool knife in saw form.

Swish—chop!

‘It’s working!’

Swish, chop! Swish, chop!

The saw blade, which hadn’t been cutting, now sliced through the bull shark’s upper jaw like it was cutting wood. It was smooth. But when it came to cutting the lower jaw, sparks flew again, and the saw wouldn’t go through. The blue aura surrounding the saw also disappeared.

“Did the time limit run out…?”

A heavy sense of exhaustion washed over him.

It felt like he had used Rapid Swimming three times in a row. Even though his mana had been enhanced, improving the efficiency of Rapid Swimming, this level of exhaustion would’ve been equivalent to using it six times before the enhancement.

‘I would’ve been groggy after three or four uses….’

In any case, it seems the stronger the effect, the greater the rebound.

– The Watcher says they’ll time it for him if he uses it again.

“Oh! Really? You’d do that for me?”

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