When the Mudfish Dragon thought of running, it ran. It had no sense of shame, nor any desire to keep fighting.
But that wouldn't do.
The Mudfish Dragon flopped down and was about to burrow into the swamp. Xingyan hurriedly spat the slag from his Flame Sac at it.
Boom! Boom-boom-boom!
First, a Lava Ball slammed into the ground. A moment later, it exploded violently.
The swamp mud at the impact site was first baked into dry clods, then blasted apart along with the mud surging in from nearby. The explosion even launched the Mudfish Dragon back out after it had already buried half its head in the muck.
He absolutely couldn't let the Mudfish Dragon return to its nest—or, more accurately, to the area where several Mudfish Dragons had made their nests.
If it escaped, Xingyan wouldn't dare chase after it.
No matter how poorly the Mudfish Dragons got along, if a Glavenus showed up in front of them, they would surely join forces to kill it first.
They might not even need to join forces.
"ROAR!!!"
With its escape thwarted, the Mudfish Dragon first shrank back in fear. It quickly retreated to an open patch beside the explosion, then shook itself furiously like a golden-haired dog that had just climbed out of the water, trying to fling off the muck stuck to its body in the blast.
No, not muck—slag spat from Xingyan's mouth.
Still sparking, smoking as it cooled on contact with water... The Mudfish Dragon desperately tried to shake the fragments off its body. It didn't even bother to defend itself, deliberately shedding the layer of mud armor covering its skin.
Xingyan stared at the scene in astonishment. The Mudfish Dragon's reaction seemed a little too extreme, almost as if—wait.
Xingyan suddenly realized something.
He had caught that familiar oppressive presence again, the one he'd been doing his best to get used to. That's right. The Lava Dragon!
When he'd eaten the chunks of rock the Lava Dragon had spat out, some of the mineral and stone fragments had been stored in Xingyan's Flame Sac. As he'd gradually grown accustomed to the Elder Dragon's oppressive aura, he'd almost forgotten about them.
But the Mudfish Dragon clearly couldn't ignore the Lava Dragon's Elder Dragon pressure.
Unlike the new mineral deposits on his tail, these fragments hadn't been swallowed and digested into part of Xingyan. They were simply stored as they were, still bearing the Lava Dragon's presence.
To the Mudfish Dragon, it felt as if countless Elder Dragons were crawling all over its body. Their aura kept rousing its instincts and urging it to flee, filling it with terror.
An unexpected bonus.
And an opportunity!
Without hesitation, Xingyan twisted his hips and swung his Sword Tail, slashing across the Mudfish Dragon—hit!
A child holding a weapon could be more dangerous than an unarmed adult. Though Xingyan was still young, the sharp Sword Tail unique to Glavenus gave him the ability to injure a full-grown monster.
To escape the Elder Dragon's aura, the Mudfish Dragon had stripped away the layer of mud armor covering its body, leaving it with even less protection.
Strike while it's down! Xingyan swung his Sword Tail again and again, attacking the Mudfish Dragon's lower half—or, more accurately, the wound in its lower abdomen that had already been torn open. But to his astonishment, the blood flowing from the gaping wound was steadily decreasing!
What kind of ridiculous vitality was this?
Could the large monsters of the New World really recover like this, thanks to their abundant Life Energy?!
The section of intestine the Mudfish Dragon had spilled earlier had been torn off by its violent movements, yet even now, the creature showed no sign of growing weak or collapsing.
If a human suffered the same injuries, Xingyan couldn't imagine anyone still moving around naturally—with their guts ripped open and crushed, and several deep gashes across their body—let alone striking back with any strength.
Was this Mudfish Dragon even legal?
But that didn't matter. Xingyan was a natural hunter, and he had patience to spare.
He'd somehow turned a perfectly good Glavenus into a Kulu-Ya-Ku. Like a nervous skirmisher, he darted around beside the Mudfish Dragon, never getting too close or too far away.
Whenever the Mudfish Dragon charged, he leaped aside. And when it moved too far to turn around in time, he sprang over and took the chance to slash it twice.
Whenever the Mudfish Dragon tried to burrow into the swamp and coat itself in a fresh layer of mud armor, Xingyan would bite his tail, charge up a Great Spin, and unleash it. The Mudfish Dragon would burst back out of the ground only to take a full-force blow. Things didn't improve—they got worse.
Xingyan had somehow turned the sharp greatsword that was his tail into a little knife for bleeding his prey. He wondered what other Glavenus would think if they saw him.
But the Mudfish Dragon wouldn't have to wonder for much longer.
Even its incredible vitality was nearing its limit. The clearest sign was that its movements had slowed. Its charges and lunges grew slower and slower, until Xingyan could dodge them with barely a movement.
Panting heavily, the Mudfish Dragon wasn't the only one who felt tired. Xingyan was exhausted too.
Dodging and attacking both took a lot out of him, especially those few Tail Bite Great Spins. They cost far too much energy for a young dragon like him.
Still, the battle was finally about to end.
Xingyan nimbly sidestepped the Mudfish Dragon's now sluggish charge, and at the same moment, his Sword Tail swept across its neck.
Thud.
The uncontrolled body hit the ground with a heavy crash. The swamp had already been churned into a muddy soup by the two dragons' earlier battle. Now, a huge splash of mud soaked Xingyan's legs as he stood there.
He'd won.
Won!
"ROAR!!!"
He raised his head and let out a thunderous roar. The joy of victory filled Xingyan's heart—the joy of winning the battle, the joy of an imminent meal, the joy of revenge... Nothing could have satisfied him more.
The Mudfish Dragon hadn't turned him into a pile of shit. On the contrary, now he was going to turn the Mudfish Dragon into a pile of—oh, he couldn't, could he?
Remembering the strangeness of his body brought Xingyan back to his senses a little. He had no time to savor his first battle victory. Instead, he threw himself into the business of eating as fast as he could.
"Roar, roar, roar! Roar, roar, roar, roar!" (I won't say more than I need to—let's dig in!)
After a brief mealtime ritual, Xingyan leaped onto the Mudfish Dragon's corpse and buried his head in it, eating like a starving man who hadn't had a meal in decades—or as if another dragon might come along at any second and steal his feast.
As usual, he started with the nutritious, fatty organs. They were also where the Mudfish Dragon's Life Energy was most concentrated. For Xingyan, who had just spent so much energy in a major battle, the fat would replenish his losses—and might even make him stronger.
Delicious! So delicious!
Xingyan even ate with a rumbling, purring sound.
So flavorful!
The fat was soft and sweet, the meat chewy. Unlike Aptonoth and other herbivores he'd eaten before, the Mudfish Dragon tasted distinctly like freshwater seafood—or, in dragon terms, a little fishy.
It was pretty novel.
This was the best meal Xingyan had eaten since he was born. He didn't have the luxury of cooking yet, and the meat in his mouth was smeared with swamp mud, but to a Glavenus, it was still a feast.
The plentiful meat quickly turned into Life Energy once it reached his stomach. This wasn't the low-grade meat of those herbivores he'd hunted before, but meat from a Mudfish Dragon in the middle of the food chain... Well, it wasn't all that high-grade after all.
In any case, by the time Xingyan had swallowed the entire fish tail, he wasn't afraid of anything anymore. There was nothing left to fear.
So what if there were Earth Sand Dragons, Female Fire Dragons, and Rathalos? None of them had shown up yet!
Eat when it's time to eat, drink when it's time to drink. Don't let trouble get to you.
Dig in!
As Xingyan wolfed down the Mudfish Dragon's meat, he failed to notice someone watching him from the top of an unusually tall, protruding stone pillar near the edge of the Flower Field Marshland Area.
That's right. A person, not a dragon.
Well... perhaps they could be considered an Ape Dragon Species?
If Xingyan had noticed the three of them, he would have recognized the hunters he'd been longing to meet in an instant.
Guild Hunters.
"This is incredible... Such a tiny body, yet it hunted prey two or three times its size."
A burly young man murmured as he lowered the binoculars pressed to his face. Compared with his two companions, he was even more imposing—bigger, in fact. His black hair grew wildly like a lion's mane.
"Keep your voice down. We still don't know how different the Glavenus of the New World are from those of the Old World, especially when it comes to their hearing."
To the burly young man's right, an equally young woman was crouched down. She reached out and pressed his head lower as he kept craning his neck to look, telling him not to draw attention to them.
"This is a little scary. Are all the monsters in the New World like this?" asked the young man crouched on the burly hunter's left, who looked somewhat smaller and thinner by comparison. "You've both hunted Glavenus before, right? Compared with those, this little one is just... too smart."
"You mean cunning, don't you?" The female hunter chuckled. "It used another creature to set a trap. The trap was crude, but the fact that it did it at all proves how clever it is. At least, I've never seen another Glavenus do anything like that."
"That's not all." The thinner young man shook his head. "There was the pursuit afterward, too. That thing didn't act like a Glavenus at all. You both saw it, right? It deliberately dragged out the fight to weaken that fish-like dragon. That was a bleeding tactic. It completely avoided a head-on fight—that's not how the Glavenus I remember would behave."
That's right. The hunters had watched almost the entire battle, from Xingyan setting the trap to his unusual way of fighting.
"Exactly. The Glavenus I remember are short-tempered swordsmen. They wouldn't hop around like that in a fight," the female hunter commented. "I'm more curious about where its mother is. A juvenile like that shouldn't be ready to hunt alone. Or did it learn to hunt this way because it lost its mother?"
"Hey, hey, why have you two already jumped to conclusions?" the burly young man interrupted. "Maybe that wasn't a Glavenus at all, but a monster that looked like one, attacked like one, and acted like one—without actually being one."
"Do you hear yourself?" The thinner young man gave his companion a baffled look. "If a dragon looks like a Glavenus, fights like a Glavenus, and acts like a Glavenus, then it's a Glavenus."
"Ahaha, sorry, sorry. I got a little carried away," the burly young man said with a grin, scratching his head.
"Actually, it's not impossible," the female hunter said after a moment's thought. "There are creatures in nature that disguise themselves as other species when they're young, only revealing their true forms once they're grown and able to defend themselves."
"Maybe," the thinner young man said, shaking his head. "I'm more concerned about whether such a clever monster might threaten our camp."
"Should we hunt it or capture it?" the burly young man asked, raising his hand.
Xingyan suddenly felt a chill run down his back. He looked around, then lowered his head to eat again when he saw nothing.
"Wait, don't jump to conclusions so hastily," the female hunter urged. "I know you're all excited to have reached a new continent, and the Guild hasn't placed many restrictions on us, but that doesn't mean we can hunt whatever we want."
"Hehe, of course. I was only joking," the burly young man said with a chuckle. "Don't worry, Yano. And you too, Commander. Don't forget, we're only here to investigate. We can't act rashly when we don't know what's going on."
"Good. Commander, Yano gave the burly young man a displeased look. "Kushala Daora and that volcano-like dragon did head in this direction, but the volcanic dragon doesn't seem to have landed in this great valley. The evidence is that the monsters' behavior hasn't been affected by an Elder Dragon."
"Then let's keep moving," said the male hunter they called the Commander. "The sooner we figure out why the Elder Dragons are heading here, the sooner we can return to the Guild."
"Oh! Then let's go!"
After one last look at Xingyan, who was still eating with his head down, the burly hunter known as the Leader slid down the stone pillar.
He had remembered this unusually different young Glavenus. He hoped it would still be around when the Research Commission returned.
Don't lose to this cruel wilderness, little one!
Before you continue