"Yeah, I've seen the natives you mentioned here, meow."
After getting in touch with the village natives under Shermie Meow guidance and gathering some information, Sherwin had the self-awareness to contact Haibara Meow, who was still back at the palace.
It worth mentioning that to avoid getting on Sherwin bad side, Shiki proactively withdrew the surveillance News Birds patrolling the area once he noticed them arriving at the village.
Even if he hadn't, it wouldn't have mattered much. Sherwin and the others had only shared some food with the gaunt, emaciated natives and hadn't mentioned anything about a fallout.
"The feathers on their arms—or more accurately, wings—should be a form of incomplete evolution after consuming IQ, meow."
Haibara Meow analyzed logically over the phone: "The effect of the IQ plant is actually to make organisms evolve toward their own needs. To be more precise, it an accelerator, shortening an evolutionary process that would normally take thousands or tens of thousands of years down to hundreds or even decades, meow."
"According to what the natives say, this island is the peak of a cylindrical mountain that was broken off. Those natives must have all wanted to go down the mountain and see the world, so naturally, they'd want to fly like birds. Several of the native maids on my end have said things like 'I want to fly' or 'I want to become a bird,' meow."
"However, compared to the animals that actively consume IQ, these humans haven't used IQ as a regular food source they've only used it as an antidote for Daft-Green. This has caused their evolutionary speed to be much slower than the animals. Now that Shiki has gathered all the IQ for himself, their evolution has become even more difficult, meow."
"So... as long as they are given enough IQ, their evolution can be accelerated?"
Sherwin rubbed his chin, feeling like something wasn't quite right.
Since Shiki monopolized the IQ, how did these natives manage to complete their collective evolution two years later? Even if they occasionally found a few stray plants, it shouldn't have been enough to benefit everyone, right?
"Of course it not that simple, meow."
The little kitten on the other end of the phone shook her head. "Crabs evolved shells to keep from being eaten, and fish evolved limbs to become amphibians because the water was no longer enough for them to survive... Evolution isn't like buying something where you get the goods once you have enough money. To get them to complete their evolution, they need a catalyst, or rather... they need to be forced to evolve in some way, meow."
"The reason Dr. Indigo put these animals in different environments and used drugs to increase their aggression was also based on this consideration. Only for the sake of survival and reproduction can their evolution truly be promoted, meow."
After Haibara Meow explained it this way, the situation in the movie version became reasonable.
These natives had lived here for an unknown number of years before being captured by Shiki, so the accumulation of IQ itself should have long been sufficient what they truly needed was a life-threatening sense of urgency.
Of course, it had to be a sense of urgency that aligned with their evolutionary direction, such as the sudden falling of the island in the movie. If it were replaced by a fire or a flood, they, who had already evolved wings, wouldn't be able to instantly manifest heat-resistant skin or gills.
In other words... I don't need to bother with them at all? Once Shiki is taken out, these people will naturally learn how to fly?
Sherwin rubbed his chin again. Being steady by nature, he felt this plan wasn't quite reliable.
The thought did occur to him to grab a native and toss them off the island to see if they could fly, but he quickly suppressed it.
This kind of inhumane operation was fine as a prank on a friend or an experiment on an enemy, but doing it to a stranger seemed a bit much, even if it was under the banner of "it for your own good."
Then...
Tell Haibara Meow hypothesis to the natives here and find a few volunteers to cooperate with the experiment?
Sherwin looked at the elderly, weak, and disabled in the village and decisively gave up on that idea.
As for finding the young and strong natives captured by Shiki, it wasn't impossible, but if he did that, Shiki would definitely find out, and there would be a risk of exposure.
He wasn't particularly afraid of his true motives being exposed, but given Shiki cunning and cruelty, he might directly attack those innocent natives, which was completely unnecessary.
Whatever, the natives here are just ordinary people anyway. Even if they haven't evolved the ability to fly, it doesn't seem like a big deal. After much consideration, Sherwin decided to stick to his original plan.
So, he ended the call with Haibara Meow, left some food for the natives, and departed the area with Robin and the Felynes.
...
Over the next few days, Sherwin and the others didn't return to Shiki palace at all. Instead, after finishing their tour of the main island, they took Dodo Advance to the other islands.
Sherwin even had Dodo Advance switch to Ceadeus form to swim through the islands that were completely encased in seawater.
In truth, if it weren't for Sanji Meow occasionally picking out certain animals to show off his cooking skills, Robin periodically investigating the ruins on the islands, and the need to give Haibara Meow and Purah Meow enough time for their research, Sherwin and the group could have finished touring all the islands on the very first day.
But going slow had its advantages...
Sherwin saw every single animal on these islands.
There were six-legged tigers, octopuses that lived on land and never touched the water, flat-bodied crocodiles that looked like Formula One race cars, giant bears with black-and-white stripes and incredibly long arms, green giraffes, fire-breathing beetles, and more.
The monster gallery in the Hunter Handbook received a massive, long-overdue update.
And slightly different from what Sherwin had previously guessed, while there were indeed many cases where only the maximum size was updated, there were also many "subspecies," "rare species," "special individuals," and even "Apex" monsters that had their own independent entries. Some animals even had completely new entries altogether.
According to Haibara Meow, these animals had either undergone a significant evolutionary leap or had a rapid iteration speed, evolving into creatures completely different from their original forms.
It is just as dogs and wolves share a common ancestor, yet there is no claim that a dog is a subspecies of a wolf, or that a wolf is a special individual of a dog.
In biology, this is called divergent evolution.
Well, as Haibara Meow said these things to him, Sherwin could imagine the little kitten on the other end of the Den Den Mushi, putting on a pair of gold-rimmed glasses and acting all sophisticated.
He wondered if some strange switch had been flipped after she venomously criticized Dr. Indigo before since that day, this little black-bellied kitten had become increasingly fond of playing the teacher. Every time he called her, she would always ramble on and on...
She completely disregarded whether the Hunter, with his meager knowledge and brainpower hovering right at the average level, could even understand such complex concepts.
But whether it was divergent evolution, convergent evolution, MEGA evolution, or Ultimate evolution, the varying evolutionary paths of the animals on these islands caused the monster entries in the Hunter manual to increase by nearly ten percent.
With so many new entries, there was naturally no shortage of summoning voucher fragments from the standard pool. In fact, two appeared all at once. Sherwin could not only summon a new Felyne but even had one fragment to spare.
He felt that if he ever ran out of fragment sources in the future, he could follow Shiki lead: find a few uninhabited islands and use IQ to accelerate the evolution of the local animals he might just be able to farm quite a few fragments that way.
Of course, that was a matter for the future. For now, the map was fully explored, the entries were unlocked, and the fragments were collected. The research on Haibara Meow and Purah Meow side was also mostly finished...
It was time to go back and find trouble with Shiki!
...