Aki bit down hard on the Yian Garuga's neck while Logan stood on its back. Only when a sharp crack rang out, and the Yian Garuga went limp, did she release her jaws, letting the creature drop heavily to the ground.
One had to admit, a monster's vitality was frightening. Even with its spine snapped, its body riddled with deep wounds that exposed bone, the Black Wolf Bird was still alive.
If not for the spinal break rendering it immobile, it might have still been able to get up and keep fighting.
Truth be told, Logan couldn't quite figure it out. This Scarred Yian Garuga, as a Bird Wyvern, had a body size that was small compared to most monsters. With its bird wyvern agility, how could it also possess strength on par with a Flying Wyvern?
Perhaps Bird Wyverns simply had a different kind of presence altogether.
Meeting the Yian Garuga's pale-grey eyes—still burning with a frenzied will to fight—Logan exhaled a stream of flame, snuffing out the last spark of its life.
The ease of it all left him a little incredulous.
With the strength this Scarred Black Wolf Bird had shown, even without calling Aki for help, taking it down alone wouldn't have been much trouble.
It would have just taken a little longer, and in its final, desperate counterattacks, he might have ended up with a few extra scars.
But for Logan, with his Regeneration, wounds of that level didn't even count as injuries.
Once the Yian Garuga was dealt with, Logan lowered his head, scanning for the Wyverian who had just been attacked by it.
He was certain the flute call he'd heard earlier had been from that Wyverian, and he couldn't help but wonder—why had that sound drawn him in, and just who was the one who played it?
Unfortunately, even though this fight had ended quickly, it had still dragged on for a while.
By now, that Wyverian was long gone.
Logan searched the area, but found nothing.
The irritating white spores in the forest were once again drifting through the air, and that restless agitation in his chest began to stir.
Glancing at Aki, who was also visibly discomforted by the spores, Logan let out a low growl. The two took to the skies, heading toward the cliffside where they had stayed the past two days.
They planned to rest there until Aki recovered her strength, then make the return trip.
From a cluster of tall ferns near the Yian Garuga's territory, a young Wyverian girl peeked out, staring after Logan and Aki with a puzzled look.
According to the elder Wyverian back in her village, wasn't it only the legendary creatures that could resonate with the call?
So why had the ancient flute summoned a mated pair of Fire Wyverns?
Even if Logan's battle posture had been utterly different from that of an ordinary Fire Wyvern, he was still a Fire Wyvern all the same.
Just then, the white spores overhead drifted down onto the corpses within the Yian Garuga's territory. Soon after, a yellow, smoke-like effluvium began to seep from the spores, spreading through the air.
Within that miasma, the bodies decayed faster, breaking down into nutrients for the forest in far less time.
Seeing this, the Wyverian girl's pupils contracted. She threw on her cloak and quickly turned back toward her village.
She had seen these white spores and yellow miasma once when she was very young, and she knew all too well how much harm they could inflict on living things.
...
On the cliff, once Aki had regained most of her strength and her wounds were no longer an issue, they took to the skies again, heading back toward the Ancient Tree.
On the return flight, Logan noticed that the entire forest was filled with these white spores. Their rate of proliferation was astonishing—many small creatures, and even some large monsters too big to clear them off in time, were covered in clusters of them.
At first glance, it looked as if they were parasitized by the spores.
And without exception, any creature burdened with them became noticeably more aggressive.
Logan even spotted an Aptonoth, its body thickly coated in spores, chasing down a Jagras!
From above, the entire forest was shrouded in a haze of yellow miasma, with white spores drifting through the air like falling snow.
"Vaal Hazak!!"
Logan had lived in this world for ten years—he had never seen a scene like this.
He had initially assumed they were simply fungal spores. Though their spread was fast, he hadn't thought beyond that.
But now, their numbers had reached a critical point. Dense clouds of effluvium had begun to form within them, multiplying and then being released into the air, turning the entire forest into an environment much like the Rotten Vale.
The Rotten Vale—a place that served as one of the New World's most vital cycles of life and death. It was an essential "internal circulation system" for the continent, and the final resting place of Elder Dragons that had crossed the Great Ravine.
Effluvium microbes were a necessary part of that unique ecological cycle in the Rotten Vale.
They were also the key to the survival of the Vale's true master—the Elder Dragon known as Vaal Hazak, the so-called "Keeper of Hades," a living symbol of the death cycle.
Vaal Hazak was like a fish in water, and the effluvium was that water. Wherever there was water, there would be fish.
At this moment, the entire Ancient Forest was saturated with "water"—creating the exact environmental conditions needed for a special variant of Vaal Hazak to survive: the Blackveil Vaal Hazak.
No wonder the smaller creatures had become so aggressive.
No wonder that growing sense of danger had been gnawing at him.
No wonder that Scarred Black Wolf Bird had lost its mind!
If that Scarred Black Wolf Bird had once encountered the Blackveil Vaal Hazak and fought it, ending up heavily tainted by effluvium, then its change in temperament would make perfect sense.
And there was nothing so strange about a tempered monster daring to attack an Elder Dragon.
Vaal Hazak was an anomaly among Elder Dragons. It didn't possess the same overwhelming aura as the others, nor did it actively drive away the creatures living around its territory.
That gave the impression it had a good temper—something anyone could take a shot at.
But in truth, simply by existing, this Elder Dragon could bring about effects on par with a natural disaster.
It was the very definition of a Calamity-type Elder Dragon.
It didn't even need to fight. Any creature saturated with its effluvium became part of its reserve food supply.
Effluvium that hadn't been deliberately infused with life energy by Vaal Hazak would only affect small, weak creatures—like a mild flu.
But once deliberately strengthened, the effluvium's ability to strip away life energy increased dramatically.
Large monsters, with greater life force in their bodies, could hold out for a long time—sometimes even long enough to escape from Vaal Hazak.
Smaller creatures, however, had no such chance. Within seconds, their entire life force would be drained, leaving nothing but sustenance for the Elder Dragon.
Knowing exactly what they were dealing with now, Logan and Aki pushed their speed even further. They had to make it back to the Ancient Tree before the effluvium fully saturated the forest.
Otherwise, the cats would be in grave danger.
This newly formed symbiotic ecosystem could very well be wiped out in an instant.
...
In the northern reaches of the Ancient Forest, the silhouette of the Teostra appeared once again.
Wherever it passed, whether white spores or yellow miasma, all dispersed under the scorching heat radiating from its body.
The Teostra felt utterly weary. It had clearly sensed the location of that Elder Dragon somewhere nearby, yet after searching for so many days in a row, it had not found so much as a trace—almost as if that creature's task was still unfinished, and the world itself was unwilling to let it leave.
But the Teostra's frustration was real. If it kept lingering in this area any longer, and that lunatic found it again, things would get troublesome.
Irritated, small bursts of flame flared to life around the Teostra, burning the spores and miasma in their path into nothingness.
Beneath its feet, in the lower layers of the forest—
A quadrupedal, winged creature covered from head to tail in sharp, backward-facing spines stood amidst the gloom. The hides of countless dead monsters were impaled on those spines, and over the long passage of years, soaked in its unique life energy, those hides had hardened to an incredible degree.
At this moment, those hides were dotted with spore sacs formed from white spores, while yellow miasma coiled around its body. As the Vaal Hazak moved, it inhaled the miasma into itself, then released it again in areas where the miasma was thin.
It was the porter of the miasma—and the very embodiment of death.
Deep in the earth's ley lines, the dwindling flow of life energy was leaving this New World—a land still in its adolescence, as far as the world was concerned—a little malnourished.
Aside from relying on the life energy within the ley lines, it also needed the closed-loop cycle of life on the surface.
Now, the forest was ready to enter a new cycle—where the dead would become the nutrients of the forest, contributing to the growth of this land.
Of course, for the Vaal Hazak, this was nothing more than a bored recluse leaving its lair for a stroll. The surface conditions had conveniently shifted to favor the growth of a peculiar kind of spore, creating the perfect environment for it to stretch its wings and wander about.
For the other creatures of the forest, however, it was an unmitigated disaster.
The Elder Dragon's calamitous nature manifested in full through the Vaal Hazak.
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