Doubt—an inevitable doubt—had begun to creep in. Could I really take down a monster this vicious head-on?
If all dragons were monsters in a hunter's eyes, then to ordinary dragons, Elder Dragons were the real monsters.
But without fighting, he couldn't evolve toward becoming an Elder Dragon... It wasn't as if he could go looking for a Gold Rathian or a Deviljho, either.
Not only would they be hard to fight, but even if he won, there wouldn't be much to gain. He could risk getting himself killed in a fight, eat his fill afterward, and still not achieve a bloodline ascension from an ordinary dragon to an Elder Dragon.
Aside from the extra layer of Air Sac Carapace, Xingyan's body was now about the same size and strength as a normal adult Glavenus.
And lately, he'd realized that no matter how much he ate, his body no longer grew as quickly as it had over the past six months. It was as if he'd reached the limits of his physical form.
He'd been fretting over this for a long time. Now that he'd witnessed Kushala Daora's world-shattering power, it was hard not to hesitate... Maybe he should run for now?
He could build up more Life Energy and kill some ordinary dragons... But would killing ten thousand ordinary dragons really let him ascend and become an Elder Dragon?
What was this, some kind of leveling game?
Xingyan had never thought that one day he'd face a problem like Accelerator's. The difference was that he didn't have to kill any Misaka Sisters, and he wouldn't be as conflicted as Accelerator.
Even if he used his ass to think, Xingyan couldn't believe that eating ten thousand ordinary dragons would turn him into an Elder Dragon. The gap between ordinary dragons and Elder Dragons was a sheer cliff—no number could bridge it.
The difference lay in their mastery of Life Energy, and in the special abilities inherent to each dragon species.
In the end, he still had to challenge an Elder Dragon. Only then could he find out where he fell short, how to play to his strengths and cover his weaknesses, and how to find a way to defeat one. Then he could hunt an Elder Dragon. Otherwise, he could only fantasize—and one-sided fantasies were useless.
For instance, right now, Xingyan felt like these two Kushala Daora had played him for a fool. I got totally screwed!! (Sun Ge's voice)
And the game's intel had screwed him over, too!!
Earlier, those two dragons had been fighting so fiercely that the heavens darkened and the earth shook. They'd battled from the sea to the land, bringing storms and gales in their wake, then grappled and wrestled each other in an intense melee.
That melee was the problem!!
Elder Dragons' physical combat abilities weren't all that different from how they were depicted in the game. They were just more flexible and adaptable in reality, no longer limited to a handful of attack moves.
Those two Kushala Daora had been grappling and relying purely on muscle. Their fighting was crude and primitive, with no particular technique or supernatural flair. That was why, after observing them at first, Xingyan had thought he might be able to go in and land a couple of hits himself.
He'd assumed the storm raging around them was the result of the two Kushala Daora going all out. That was more or less how powerful they seemed in the game. But who could've guessed those two hadn't even been trying?!
It wasn't until Rusty Steel Dragon began using its Elder Dragon powers in earnest, unleashing a Black Storm to destroy everything in sight, that Xingyan realized how wrong he'd been... and how spectacularly wrong.
Uh... can we talk this out?
Xingyan felt like he was about to sweat buckets. Who could've guessed that those two Kushala Daora hadn't been fighting for their lives, even though their battle had looked so intense?!
You two were just putting on a show!
But if he turned and ran now... It really felt like this was the worst possible moment for a joke.
Never mind whether slashing Rusty Steel Dragon before fleeing would only infuriate it further. Right now, Xingyan first had to lower his center of gravity and crouch down to keep the violent wind from knocking him over.
And trying to find his way out through a storm like this... He'd probably be caught off guard and kicked to death before he could escape.
Facing the Black Storm, Xingyan couldn't even make out where Rusty Steel Dragon was. His mind filled with a jumble of thoughts. It was the confusion and emptiness—and the helplessness—that anyone trying to fight a natural disaster would feel.
But moments later, Xingyan pushed that confusion aside.
As an old saying went, thinking bred doubt, doubt bred heresy, and heresy bred betrayal.
He had no intention of running away in disgrace, or returning to his comfort zone to spend every day picking on the ordinary dragons of the Great Sand Sea.
There were plenty of Elder Dragons in the New World, but they weren't exactly common. If he ran away the first time he encountered one, what about the next time?
Every Elder Dragon had its own special trick. Just how many ordinary dragons would he have to eat to gain a special ability on par with an Elder Dragon?
What was so special about it? Could he eat it? Would eating enough turn him into a Lao-Shan Lung?
That would be a real waste of a good dragon—like eating too much junk data and evolving into Shitmon.
At that thought, Xingyan's mood actually settled.
At that moment, he inexplicably remembered the first living creature he'd hunted and eaten in this world: a young Carapace Dragon.
Its childish, heart-rending whimpers had been etched into the depths of Xingyan's mind. He'd thought he'd forgotten them, along with the complicated feelings he'd had at the time... Would another dragon hunt me like that one day, leaving me helpless to do nothing but cry out in pain?
He was surprisingly calm.
Xingyan didn't regret his choice today. His growth had slowed, so he had to find a new way to improve. And then he'd do it again, over and over, without end.
It was desire, yearning, and obsession all at once.
Since he'd chosen to walk this path, one destined to be bloody, he'd rather die striving for a higher place in the food chain than lord it over ordinary dragons only to get kicked to death by the truly powerful.
His crimson eyes narrowed slightly as he searched through the sight-obscuring storm for Rusty Steel Dragon. Xingyan had already thought of a way to turn the tide.
Don't underestimate Xingyan's intelligence network. As an embodiment of the natural phenomenon known as wind, Kushala Daora's ability to manipulate it consisted of two parts. The first was a special organ inside its body that could produce wind from nothing, then send it streaming outward to coil around its body or blast from its mouth as a breath attack.
The second was the pair of horns on Kushala Daora's head. It could use them to control the wind around it, directing its pressure, power, and course. The horns were what allowed it to whip up a massive storm in nature.
So, if he wanted to stop all these chaotic tornadoes, Xingyan had to break Rusty Steel Dragon's horns.
If nothing else worked, he'd have to trade wounds. One way or another, he had to destroy those horns, or he wouldn't have the slightest chance of winning.
No—amid a storm this dark and violent, he couldn't even find a chance to escape.
Amid the world-ending storm, all Xingyan could see was darkness. Tornadoes blocked his vision and sent him staggering from side to side. If not for the weight of his Glavenus body bracing him, he'd have been swept up into the sky already.
It felt different—completely different.
When Rusty Steel Dragon wasn't using its Elder Dragon Power, the signature ability that made Kushala Daora a natural disaster, Xingyan had thought he could trade a few moves with it. At the very least, he could land a couple of slashes. Who cared if they did any real damage? He could at least cut a gash into it.
He could say they'd traded blows, at least, as long as he was careful not to get hit by Rusty Steel Dragon's Wind Pressure Cannon. He might not be torn to pieces, but he'd still suffer internal bleeding.
But when Rusty Steel Dragon flew into a rage and began displaying its nature as a calamity of the wild with its Elder Dragon Power, Xingyan was completely overwhelmed.
Forget finding an opening to circle around and land a couple of hits. If he could stay on his feet and avoid being swept away by the fierce winds, that alone would count as a victory. In particular, he had no desire to venture into those two black tornadoes that seemed to cover the entire world. He doubted his carapace could withstand steel-knife winds scraping across it at who knew how many revolutions per second.
He couldn't win. His opponent was in a completely different league. When an Elder Dragon got serious, ordinary dragons could only retreat.
Xingyan understood that now, more clearly than ever. He was already trying to remember the quickest route to the nearest underground cave entrance. He'd fight as he fled.
The invisible wind had taken on a clear path. Suddenly, Xingyan saw the black wall of wind to his left twist. Parry Slash!!
His powerful legs dragged his heavy body hard to the right. The next second, Rusty Steel Dragon burst through the tornado with a crash and slammed down where Xingyan had been, its vast bulk blotting out the sky!
A Kushala Daora's weight was a weapon, too. Given its overwhelming mass, Xingyan had no doubt that if it pinned him down, he'd never be able to get back up. He'd be like an Aptonoth trapped under a Female Fire Dragon, stretching its neck out to wait for death.
But events unfolded differently than Rusty Steel Dragon had expected. It had thought this Glavenus would dodge nimbly as before, then attack with its Sword Tail. It hadn't expected Xingyan to skip the Sword Tail attack this time and leap straight at it with his whole body!
A sudden opening?!
Xingyan landed right on Rusty Steel Dragon's back. It was true that a Glavenus weighed less than a Kushala Daora, but it was still heavy enough to make Rusty Steel Dragon's entire body sink a little.
"Roar!!"
Rusty Steel Dragon thrashed violently, twisting its body with all its might to throw the Glavenus off its back, but Xingyan held on tight.
Rusty Steel Dragon's basic four-legged, two-winged Elder Dragon frame helped Xingyan immensely. Compared with Beast Dragon Species or other oddly shaped dragons, its neck was slender and its head was small. That meant that when Xingyan jumped onto its back, his pair of short foreclaws could wrap right around its neck.
The black storm coiling over Rusty Steel Dragon's body scraped across Xingyan's carapace like a flurry of razor-sharp blades. The shrill screech of metal grinding against metal rang out, along with a rapid crackling like a string of firecrackers.
Xingyan's Air Sac Carapace was exploding. Against the storm shielding Rusty Steel Dragon, the air sacs—which had been designed from the very beginning of his evolution to reduce buoyancy and propel shrapnel through directional explosions, not to defend him—were torn apart in an instant.
Shards of carapace and chunks of ore burst outward in every direction. Pieces large enough to pierce an Aptonoth's body only clattered harmlessly against Rusty Steel Dragon's hide.
It was more like he'd turned into a bathhouse attendant who believed in brute force. The dense storm of metal fragments had scrubbed away a fair amount of rust from the surface of Rusty Steel Dragon's wings and back.
"Roar!!!"
That's it, Master! Harder!
Well, maybe he was imagining it, but Xingyan could've sworn he heard that in Rusty Steel Dragon's roar... and that only made him angrier. A plume of hot steam shot from the cooling shells on his back, making him look like some kind of steam locomotive.
Yes, some Wycademy researchers with unusual theories had claimed that Rusty Steel Dragons loved attacking human settlements because they wanted people to scrape the rusted old hide off their bodies, easing the pain of shedding. They even claimed the dragons would deliberately show up near Dragonators so the weapons could break through their rusty skin.
But that was only a theory, and the authorities had never confirmed it.
And besides, why should Xingyan use the same weapons as hunters? Even a hunter's Great Sword was no more than a skinning knife to a Kushala Daora, let alone dual blades for a back rub—but he was a Glavenus!
His blade might not be poisoned, but it sure as hell wasn't a little knife. And now you're enjoying it?!
Maybe Rusty Steel Dragon realized that its roar had sounded a little strange. After all, another Kushala Daora was watching from the nearby cliff. Its struggles grew even more violent—though it hadn't stopped struggling since the start.
But Xingyan had a really tight grip. A seriously tight grip. Right now, he looked less like a Beast Dragon Species and more like a Snake Wyvern Species, his foreclaws wrapped around Rusty Steel Dragon's neck and his thick hind legs straddling its back.
His hind legs didn't have anywhere to go. Rusty Steel Dragon's wing membranes stretched all the way from the base of its neck to its tail like a gigantic cape—a metal cape that couldn't be pierced. That left Xingyan with no way to break through the membranes and straddle its waist.
But that was fine. There was always a way around a problem. Xingyan was far more quick-witted than any ordinary Glavenus. Since he couldn't brace his legs against Rusty Steel Dragon, he pressed his long Sword Tail against the dragon's tail and wound them tightly together.
No wonder he looked like a Snake Wyvern Species. Xingyan had bound himself tightly to Rusty Steel Dragon, locking himself in place at both ends with his foreclaws and Sword Tail. His body in the middle swayed around, but Rusty Steel Dragon still couldn't throw him off.
Ironically, Xingyan had just mocked the two Kushala Daora for their crude hand-to-hand fighting. Now he'd joined in on that same crude brawl himself.
Just like that Tempered Female Fire Dragon, Rusty Steel Dragon had lived a long life. It had seen countless Glavenus, and a few bold ones had even challenged it. It knew those dragons well—then, when it tried to use that knowledge against Xingyan, it fell into his trap.
Before you continue