Having already surveyed the surrounding terrain, Xingyan had chosen a suitable battlefield for himself.
He ran, his powerful legs kicking up clouds of sand. Constantly changing direction, he zigzagged unpredictably to dodge the Blade Scales Seregios fired down from the sky behind him.
This was the first time Xingyan had seen a Seregios in the real world, so he didn't know whether this method of attacking from high above without closing in was normal hunting behavior for the species. After all, if you were judging its combat strength, Seregios's claws were just as formidable a weapon as its Blade Scales—and it was accustomed to attacking with them.
Well, unfortunately, aside from that first attack, Xingyan hadn't seen this Seregios show any sign of that habit—
Had it learned from past mistakes? Or did it have experience?
Thinking as he ran, Xingyan knew that if his guess was right, it meant this Seregios had fought a Glavenus before—perhaps even killed one. A veteran Seregios?
Now that was interesting.
An enemy's strength didn't frighten Xingyan. Quite the opposite: the stronger this Seregios was, the happier he became. Its strength meant that even among its own kind, it was an unusually capable individual.
A long life and great strength both suggested that this Seregios had more pronounced evolutionary traits than others of its kind. If hunting it could satisfy Xingyan's need for evolutionary information, he wouldn't have to go through the trouble of finding another Seregios.
That would save him a lot of effort.
Xingyan looked ashen. Xingyan moved poorly. Xingyan got hit again. Xingyan fought while retreating. Xingyan was caught between a rock and a hard place. Xingyan had nowhere left to run—he dashed into the canyon!!
As if someone had cleaved the earth with an axe, this enormous canyon had formed when two massive rocks collided and ground against each other under the influence of flowing Ley Line Energy.
It was tall, deep, and wide enough. Xingyan could easily do a Tail Bite Great Spin inside it, at least.
Seregios in the sky naturally noticed which way Xingyan was running. As a Flying Dragon Species, and one with especially rich combat experience, it knew exactly how the terrain of a canyon would affect its ability to fly.
But—to Seregios, that was no problem at all.
It wanted to fight! It wanted to kill this fleeing dragon! Having faced Glavenus before, it found great joy in defeating another one and taking the life of a formidable foe.
Fighting felt great!
Without the slightest hesitation, Seregios folded its wings close to its body and shot downward like an arrow loosed from a bow.
It had no fear of fighting in a canyon. Seregios had the strongest burst of speed and coordination among all Flying Dragon Species. Though it had no special ability to control the wind, it knew how to use the wind and updrafts through physical means, adjusting its position and launching attacks in midair.
Compared to Seregios, Female Fire Dragon flew like a fledgling bird that had just left the nest. Even getting close to it was a pipe dream.
A dive! A spin! A volley of Blade Scales!!
Seregios had barely dived into the canyon when it fired countless sharp Blade Scales forward in a dazzling display.
Boom!!
They blew up. A few more pieces of Air Sac Carapace exploded, but Xingyan had no time to feel the loss. He simply took the incoming Blade Scales head-on.
Now wasn't the time to worry about the Air Sac Carapace. Even as he ran at full speed, his massive Sword Tail stayed angled toward the left side of his body. Xingyan was sprinting along the canyon's left side.
He was cutting.
Even in the canyon, Seregios stayed in the air. It had no intention of fighting Glavenus at close range. Instead, it was trying to make it bleed with its Blade Scales.
Well, in a way, it and Xingyan were birds of a feather.
But flying in the air also meant it couldn't see the ground clearly. From Seregios's vantage point, everything at the bottom of the canyon looked more or less the same: rocks and low, yellow-green vegetation. The ground where Glavenus was running and the rock walls on either side seemed to blend together, with no clear boundary between them.
But from the ground, from Xingyan's point of view, it was obvious: a huge hollow lay at the base of the rock wall on the canyon's left side!!
Xingyan—well, he'd gnawed it out himself.
Glavenus had its reasons. Don't ask.
Ahem! Aside from the rocks near the canyon entrance, Xingyan had only gnawed up to about his own height—around six meters—and then another twenty-odd meters into the left canyon wall. He'd left a rough stone pillar every few meters along the edge for support.
At first, Xingyan had only wanted to eat some minerals and regenerate the Air Sac Carapace he'd used up in Miasma Valley, and find somewhere cool to rest. But while he was eating, he'd had an idea. Why not make a trap?
A huge trap, big enough to catch a large dragon.
Even dragons that truly fed on rocks and minerals couldn't eat as much stone as Xingyan. They had limits to how much they could consume at once, and they also needed to digest it.
But Xingyan was different. He could eat endlessly, as if he had a bottomless pit inside him. No matter how much he put away, he never filled up.
All he had to do was endure the monotony of repetitive work and be patient—and luckily, Xingyan was always patient when it came to hunting.
Through sheer persistence, and at the cost of wearing down and replacing his teeth twice, Xingyan had gnawed a long, hollow space into the base of the canyon's left wall. It was the trap he'd envisioned—a giant version of a birdcage.
Along the way, he'd also eaten plenty of ore, filling in some gaps in his Air Sac Carapace. He'd simply avoided following the mineral vein any farther.
And just now, from the moment he entered the canyon, Xingyan had extended his Sword Tail and slashed through the stone pillars he'd left along the edge of the wall.
Xingyan didn't know how much the massive slab of rock jutting above the ground weighed. He only knew that it was heavy enough to crush a dragon with ease.
Once the pillars he'd left along the edge for support were gone, the exposed slab gave way to gravity and collapsed. The hollow underneath caused it to tilt and fall, and Xingyan could even hear the rocks snapping!
It was slow, yet so heavy and unstoppable. As the fracture spread, the rock layer collapsed faster and faster.
At first, it was only the trembling earth, the clouds of dust, and the animals fleeing in every direction. No dragon paid it any mind.
Then the earth turned over.
It was just a figure of speech, but when the towering rock layer jutting up from the canyon's left side fell over to the right, it looked to Seregios as though the whole earth had turned over and come crashing down on it.
"Guaaahhh!!"
Seregios let out a terrified roar for the first time. It was so startled that it lost its balance and had to beat its wings rapidly to steady itself. It wheeled around, trying to escape the collapsing canyon as fast as possible. It was a fine idea, and the right one—but would Xingyan give it the chance?
He'd been waiting for this moment. Now, as the canyon filled with wind and sand from the collapsing cliff, the scene resembled the end of the world. None of it seemed to affect Xingyan. He wasn't afraid. Instead, he watched the figure in the sky with eager excitement!
Jump!!
It had been said plenty of times: Glavenus had a pair of powerful legs. Xingyan's own legs had even been enhanced with traits drawn from Great Jagras's thigh muscles, and Great Jagras itself was adept at leaping.
The two traits combined let Xingyan pull off an extremely dangerous maneuver. He leapt onto a jutting ledge on the canyon's right wall, then bounded back to the collapsing cliff on the left. Then he leapt back again!!
The air seemed to freeze. No—time itself seemed to freeze in that moment. Everything slowed.
With one final, forceful kick off the wall, Xingyan leapt toward Seregios, which was adjusting its posture as it fled for the open sky. He spun his body and swung his Sword Tail down!!
Slash!!!
Clang—shrrrk—crack!!
The sharp Sword Tail cut through Seregios's scales! It tore through flesh, spraying blood!! It hacked through the hard dragon bones, bit by bit!!!
"Guaaahhh!!!"
Roaring in pain at the sudden attack, Seregios couldn't understand why the enormous pillar forming one side of the canyon's cliff had suddenly collapsed. It couldn't understand why it had happened just as Glavenus had run into the canyon and it had chased after him. And it couldn't imagine why Glavenus hadn't taken the chance to flee during the disaster, but had instead turned back to attack!!
Because this wasn't a natural disaster. It was a dragon-made disaster!
A disaster brought about by Xingyan's own mouth!
The heavy, broad, sharp Sword Tail had cleaved into the left side of Seregios's rear. The sheer weight, the impact, and the unbearable pain threw off its balance and stopped it from continuing to climb. It fell like a bird with a broken wing.
"Guaaahhh!!"
Roaring in terror, Seregios didn't want to die. That was exactly why it beat its wings so frantically, trying to take off again—it wanted even more to escape the cliff rushing toward it, unstoppable, as though it meant to bury it deep underground!!
Boom!!!
The left half of the rock layer jutting above the ground came crashing down. From high above the canyon entrance, it looked like an enormous coffin lid slammed onto another outcropping on the right.
As for the hollow Xingyan had dug out beneath it, it was already filled with bent and broken rocks.
Dust billowed up and swallowed the air like an ocean. Visibility dropped to nearly zero, not only because of the flying grit but because the fallen rock layer had completely covered the canyon's roof and blocked out the sunlight.
Only the canyon's entrance still let in a faint glimmer. But from this far away, the light couldn't pierce the murky air. All that remained was a blurry, brownish-yellow glow.
"Guaaahhh!!"
Seregios roared like a mad beast. It was practically scared out of its mind. Why hadn't Glavenus tried to escape during a disaster that looked capable of destroying the world? Why had he even attacked?
What a lunatic!!
The pain in its rear inflamed Seregios's fighting spirit. Its vision was also gone in the dark, murky air. Add to that the terror of nearly being crushed to death by the earth, and Seregios began attacking everything around it in a frenzy.
It kicked with its claws and flung Blade Scales in every direction. After who knew how long, it finally realized, belatedly, that it was still alive.
The fallen rock layer had been propped up by the outcrop on the other side. It was still alive, trapped in a space shaped roughly like a triangular prism.
As for Xingyan—after knocking Seregios out of the sky with that strike, he'd run without looking back to the hollow he'd dug in advance between the rocks of the canyon's right wall. He was safely hidden inside.
Unlike Seregios, which had no idea what had caused the disaster, Xingyan had created it himself and had already estimated how far the left rock layer would collapse. He hadn't dug blindly.
But in truth, Seregios's panic was unnecessary. The canyon hadn't opened up nearly enough for the left rock layer to collapse across the entire gap, no matter how deeply or extensively Xingyan had hollowed out its base.
And things had gone just as Xingyan had expected: the collapsed left rock layer had come to rest on the outcrop jutting from the right side, leaving a huge gap between the canyon walls.
Still, to be safe, Xingyan had prepared a way out when he set his trap: the cave where he was hiding now.
If broken rocks had filled the entire canyon, he could have eaten his way upward from here. At that point, he wouldn't even have needed to think about how to kill Seregios. He could simply dig up the one crushed and buried beneath the rocks and eat it.
But considering the limited oxygen in an enclosed space and all the other things that could go wrong, it was better not to go that far if he could help it.
Besides, Seregios might lose too many nutrients.
Xingyan waited.
He waited for Seregios, maddened by fear and shock, to exhaust itself attacking everything around it. He waited for it to grow tired and regain its senses, with no choice but to stop its pointless rampage.
That would be his moment to strike.
Before you continue