Before long, Gelman learned the rust-red beast's true name from the "Hunter Badge"—"Bloodthirsty Claw Beast's Grudge Memory."
He turned around. The huge beast's fall had wrecked the path he had come by, leaving a gap about three meters wide.
But for a Nen user, the gap might as well not have existed. Gelman could easily leap across it.
Of course, Gelman couldn't turn back now.
He continued toward the mountaintop. This time, he didn't put away the Sacred Moonlight Greatsword, because he knew the battle might not be over.
His ultra-long-range En had detected more than just that one Bloodthirsty Claw Beast. There had been several enormous life signals.
When he reached a more open area near the summit, Gelman found the reason the Bloodthirsty Claw Beast had fought so desperately to block the mountain path.
This was their nest—or at least a temporary one.
A dozen or so Bloodthirsty Claw Beasts, all Medium Species like the one he'd fought, were sprawled across gray boulders or heaps of yellow-brown weeds, their eyes all eerily closed.
The strange thing was that Gelman's clash with the beast had been extremely loud. There was no way the ones in the nest hadn't heard it.
And yet the Bloodthirsty Claw Beasts showed no reaction at all. Even when Gelman stood only twenty meters away, they gave no sign of moving.
They seemed to be in a deep, collective slumber, their gaunt, enormous bodies curled up in balls wherever they lay. Not one of them had even opened an eye.
Why?
Gelman couldn't help asking himself.
Soon, he keenly noticed that the Bloodthirsty Claw Beasts also showed the same sickly symptoms as the one he'd just fought—and theirs were even more severe.
Some parts of their bodies had withered like tree bark. A few had