The Battle Against the Female Fire Dragon!

In the real world, Tempered Monsters didn't just attack with stronger bodies and more powerful abilities than their ordinary kin. They had even mastered something that could be called technique, honed through countless battles and the experience of surviving them.

Being able to learn from experience and apply it the next time was, in itself, a sign of intelligence.

On top of that, Tempered Monsters often had new attack moves. Their attacks were faster and flowed together more smoothly than those of ordinary individuals, and they left fewer openings.

For a Tempered Monster to emerge, it had to survive countless difficult battles through sheer luck. It also needed an abundant supply of Life Energy, because only then could it recover after being wounded again and again, making its body more resilient.

And the New World had one thing in abundance: Life Energy.

Which meant that the New World had far more Tempered Monsters than the Old World—and the phrase "danger at every turn" really did fit.

As the flagship of the Flying Dragon Species and a staple of every generation, the Female Fire Dragon had the standard two-winged, two-legged wyvern build. Its forelimbs had evolved entirely into wings, each tipped with a single claw, while a row of sharp spines lined their sides.

Spines like those covered nearly the entire body of this Female Fire Dragon, from its head to its back, then from its back to its tail. Its tail tip was especially bristly—and even poisonous.

A large spine jutted from the front of its jaw, which helped it feed chewed-up food to its young.

But many of those spines were broken now. Judging by how badly they were snapped and worn down, this hadn't been the result of just one or two battles. Scars of all sizes covered nearly every part of the Female Fire Dragon's front that Xingyan could see. There was an especially long one across its head, running right over its eye.

It was a battered old thing, all right. That was why Xingyan had recognized it as a Tempered Monster at a glance.

He suspected that some Glavenus had left the scar across its eye. The wound was far too clean-edged, and far too long and thin. No ordinary dragon's claws or jaws could have made a mark like that.

Well, all right, there was another clue: the moment it saw him, the Female Fire Dragon had looked absolutely furious. Xingyan was certain he'd never seen it before. And on top of that, it seemed far too practiced at dealing with Glavenus's sword-tail strikes.

This was going to be a tough opponent.

Xingyan steadied himself and waited. His opponent clearly had far more experience fighting as a dragon than he did. If he rushed in recklessly, he'd probably die a horrible death.

His advantage was that, unlike an ordinary young Glavenus, he already knew a lot about the Female Fire Dragon's usual attacks and abilities.

Compared with a Rathalos, the Female Fire Dragon could fly, but it was more of a ground-dwelling wyvern. It couldn't stay airborne for long like a Rathalos, and its habit of moving about on the ground had strengthened its hind legs.

It had even evolved green scales to help it hunt on the ground.

Compared with a Rathalos, the Female Fire Dragon had more developed poison glands. It could secrete venom from both its back and its tail, then release it through the spines there. Those spines were hollow, like hypodermic needles, allowing it to inject venom directly into its prey.

In the fight ahead, he absolutely couldn't afford to get hit by that thing.

Even without the venom, the Female Fire Dragon's tail was like a spiked mace. Getting walloped by it couldn't possibly feel good.

He wasn't planning to run, at least not for now.

For the sake of his dream of flying, Xingyan would have to take on the Fire Dragon family sooner or later. There were simply too many of them in the New World, and they ruled over the Ancient Forest.

Lots of them, lots of wings—bring it on.

The Female Fire Dragons that came to the Great Sand Sea were often the losers in the competition to become a Rathalos's mate in the Ancient Forest. They had no choice but to wander off alone to the neighboring Great Sand Sea, where they built nests and raised their young by themselves.

That meant they had no Rathalos partners to guard and protect their nests. Once they left to hunt, their nests were left unprotected, which was why egg thieves like the Kulu-Ya-Ku could steal from them so easily.

Honestly, when Xingyan thought about it, he wondered if the Ancient Forest was a little too much of a breeding ground for monsters. Even a Tempered Female Fire Dragon that was beginning to transform into a Gold Fire Dragon could be one of the losers in the competition?

Terrifying.

The young Glavenus found himself entertaining some pretty horrifying fantasies about the Ancient Forest.

Unexpectedly, the Female Fire Dragon was patient. When it noticed that Xingyan wasn't making a move, it held back its rage over its stolen egg and waited instead of attacking in a fit of anger.

Xingyan thought the Female Fire Dragon was a tough opponent, but as far as the Female Fire Dragon was concerned, Xingyan wasn't easy to handle, either.

His heavy sword-tail, red and blue, gleamed with a metallic sheen in the sunlight. He was covered in thick armor, and his whole body looked powerfully built.

For a moment, the two of them were locked in a standoff.

But that was fine. Xingyan had plenty of ways to deal with this.

"Roar!" (Toss the egg over!)

Maybe it was because they'd lived together for so long, but even though they were different species, the Kulu-Ya-Ku understood what Xingyan meant. It hadn't gone far; it was hiding behind a rock on the inner side of the canyon.

When it heard Xingyan call, the Kulu-Ya-Ku tossed him the egg without any sign of reluctance.

In an instant, the Female Fire Dragon moved.

It leaped down from the high cliff, but its target wasn't its egg. It was Xingyan. It suddenly spun vertically in midair, then slammed its spiked tail at Xingyan's body from the inner side of the canyon!

The blow was so powerful that it sent the air screaming.

Bam!!!

"Eee-yah!!!"

"Roar!!!"

Two roars rang out almost at once. One was a shrill, high-pitched scream, filled with fury: the Female Fire Dragon's cry.

The other was a deep, heavy roar, threaded with pain as well as anger. It was Xingyan's bellow.

He was hurt.

In a sense, the real world was a turn-based game too. Within any given moment, you could make only one choice: one of two options.

When the Kulu-Ya-Ku tossed out the egg, Xingyan chose to attack the space between the Female Fire Dragon and the egg. He twisted his hips, charged up, and swung his heavy iron tail toward the space in front of the egg.

But Xingyan had never imagined that a Female Fire Dragon in its breeding season—a dragon that should have been influenced by the maternal and reproductive instincts of this stage—would simply watch its egg fly through the air, knowing it would smash to pieces if it hit the ground.

The wrong choice.

In that split second, the Female Fire Dragon hadn't even tried to protect its egg. It had seized the opportunity to attack Xingyan instead!

The sharp spines, driven by tremendous force, punched through Xingyan's armor and sent him staggering sideways. At the same time, dark purple venom seeped into his body.

His breathing grew ragged. In his haste, Xingyan turned his head and bit at the Female Fire Dragon. His jaws caught the wing membrane on its right wing. Honestly, the sensation of his bite connecting felt almost unreal, because by all rights, he shouldn't have been able to land it at that moment.

Even Xingyan himself was puzzled. With the Female Fire Dragon's combat experience, it should have moved away the instant it hit him. It could have flown upward or landed back on the cliff—either would have worked.

But—

All those life-or-death decisions and that fierce struggle had played out in a single instant. In the eyes of the Kulu-Ya-Ku, the two dragons had simply clashed and parted in the blink of an eye.

The Female Fire Dragon was wounded.

It was wounded in a way no one expected. The Kulu-Ya-Ku hadn't even seen how it had happened.

It wasn't from Xingyan's hurried bite in retaliation after taking the hit. The Female Fire Dragon had been hurt at the very instant it struck its own offspring.

Enduring the pain of the venom entering his body, Xingyan forced it down and quickly adjusted his position to meet the Female Fire Dragon's next attack. But when he finally had enough room to look at it, he saw that it was in pretty bad shape too.

Aside from the bite Xingyan had just taken out of it, its wing membrane now had several holes of various sizes, the kind that let the air through. Three or four pieces of blue-green material were also embedded in the scales on its chest. But the worst damage was to its right eye. It was squeezed shut, and a translucent fluid mixed with dragon blood kept seeping out.

Was it—blind?!

Xingyan stared in shock at the Female Fire Dragon, which was roaring in pain.

Why?

He hadn't made any real counterattack just now.

What the hell had happened?

And those blue-green pieces... Why did they look so much like the mineral deposits coating his armor?

A little belatedly, Xingyan turned to look at the spot where the Female Fire Dragon had hit him. The armor there was shattered—not only the outer Air Sac Carapace, but the innermost layer as well—exposing a small patch of flesh.

It really was a small patch, smaller than the damage Xingyan had caused when he'd torn off some of his own armor to make the Kulu-Ya-Ku a vest. The intense pain he felt wasn't because his body had been badly injured. It was because of the poison the Female Fire Dragon had injected through that tiny wound.

Several broken spines were still stuck in the spot, with dark purple venom slowly dripping from their snapped ends. The surrounding muscles had even turned a deep, purplish color from the poison.

But that wasn't the point. The point was his armor—his Air Sac Carapace. Of course it had shattered too. And the things embedded in the Female Fire Dragon looked unmistakably like the material that had been coating his Air Sac Carapace, along with the carapace itself.

His mind raced to recall what had happened. The recent past was hard to forget. Xingyan finally remembered that in the instant the two dragons clashed, after his and the Female Fire Dragon's roars, there had been another sound almost at the same time: an explosion.

It looked like the Air Sac Carapace had another use he didn't know about.

Interesting. But none of that mattered now. What mattered was that the Female Fire Dragon was wounded. It had even gone blind in one eye, and its flight membrane was full of holes.

"I have a chance."

"I can kill it!"

Repeating those words to himself, Xingyan fixed his gaze on the Female Fire Dragon and brought his sword-tail around from behind, angling it in front of him. Hot magma stored in his Flame Sac poured out as a breath attack. Soon, the Great Sword he had painstakingly forged glowed red-hot—a bright, golden-yellow.

Just looking at it was enough to feel the scorching heat.

Red-hot Transformation.

Xingyan didn't particularly like using this move. When the blade of a Glavenus's tail went red-hot, its attack power reached its peak—but at the same time, the sword-tail also became more fragile and easier to sever.

Xingyan didn't want to lose his tail, so this was the first time he'd ever used the move.

His opponent wasn't one he could beat by holding back. Even though the Female Fire Dragon looked utterly battered and blind in one eye, a Tempered Monster could turn the impossible into reality.

The Female Fire Dragon had already taught him a lesson. It had shown him what made a Tempered Monster different, and how smart a creature at the top of its ecosystem could be.

It really was smarter than Mudfish Dragon or Sleepy Floater Dragon, those little nobodies with a bit of intelligence but not much. The Female Fire Dragon had enough intelligence to defy its instincts and make a calculated choice, seeing through his plan and using the opportunity to attack.

"Yaaah!!!"

The Female Fire Dragon roared again. At last, it steadied itself against the pain and fixed its hateful gaze on Xingyan.

Its egg had been smashed. Now, it wanted revenge for its offspring.

Whoosh—BOOM!!!

Without the slightest warning, the Female Fire Dragon spat a fireball at Xingyan in the blink of an eye!

The scorching fireball streaked through the air, but something else moved even faster than its explosion: a flash of crimson!

The air itself seemed to split. The fireball the Female Fire Dragon had spat was cleaved clean in two, and as it exploded behind him, Glavenus's blazing sword-tail swept across the sky!

Slash!!!

It was just a fireball breath attack. Xingyan would break through it with force!

And he'd carefully aimed his swing at the Female Fire Dragon as it landed on the cliff wall!

The Female Fire Dragon had plenty of experience fighting Glavenus. When it spat out the fireball, it had already jumped back and flapped its wings, taking to the air to dodge Xingyan's slash.