The sound of claws raking against something rang out, followed by a dull impact.
The next moment, the Flame Rathalos—wreathed in fire—was sent flying. The flaming claws that had raked across the Vaal Hazak's body had only managed to cut a shallow gash into the outermost layer of its hide.
That hide—layered upon layer—was so tough that even the Flame Rathalos's blow hadn't fully pierced its defenses.
Just as the Vaal Hazak was about to lunge forward, several fireballs rained down from above, landing ahead of its path in a calculated prediction of its movement, slowing its pursuit.
Immediately after, flames surged across Logan's body. With a downward sweep of his wings, a blast of wind pressure carried countless embers down, blanketing the area where the Vaal Hazak stood in an instant.
These embers were flames with a sticky, clinging nature; if they were to be treated as a skill, they might bear some grandiose name like Meteor Fire Rain.
But to Logan, it was simply a way to inflict a burning debuff on the Vaal Hazak.
Given the monster's massive size, both it and the surrounding ground were quickly engulfed in flame.
Yet before Logan could act further, the dense miasma—now fully activated—instantly smothered the flames.
The erupting active miasma surged like a tidal wave, sweeping over both Logan and the Flame Rathalos.
Even though the flames cloaking their bodies kept the miasma from seeping in, fire and miasma negated each other at the cost of energy.
As the miasma's concentration continued to rise, the now fire-resistant, active miasma became far harder to disperse.
In that instant, the Vaal Hazak had created a battlefield perfectly suited for itself. Within this choking fog, Logan's energy consumption spiked sharply, and even his vision began to falter.
With a roar, the Vaal Hazak charged at high speed toward Logan, its powerful forelimbs lashing out with claws as it swept past him.
The strike missed, but as its wings beat behind it, several clusters of miasma detonated in succession, forming a swirling vortex that enveloped Logan.
[Boom!]
Flames roared as Logan decisively ignited the flammable fluid seeping rapidly from his body. The blast tore apart the miasma vortex, and in the same breath, he spat a fully charged fireball at the Vaal Hazak's exposed back.
Unexpectedly, the Vaal Hazak folded its wings, taking the exploding fireball head-on, and used the force of the blast to hurl itself toward the Flame Rathalos, who had just taken off and was not yet airborne.
"Rrrroar!"
The Flame Rathalos's eyes widened, the fire on its body flaring even brighter.
"You think I'm some pushover?!"
In an instant, it unleashed a blazing breath, its heat rivaling Logan's charged breath attack. The torrent of flame and wind blew away the miasma before it, colliding head-on with the charging Vaal Hazak.
At a temperature far surpassing that of the mantle's magma, the miasma swirling around the Vaal Hazak's body couldn't fully negate the flames. This strike landed true, driving the Vaal Hazak to the ground under the push of the fire.
Dodging the lingering blaze, the monster revealed that part of the spore sacs clinging to its body had been destroyed, exposing the scorched hide beneath.
The Flame Rathalos, seizing the moment after landing a hit, climbed swiftly into the sky. Together with Logan, it burst free of the miasma's reach, the haze clinging to them crackling in the heat before quickly dissipating.
Logan's expression darkened as he looked down at the forest below. A vast expanse was shrouded in thick yellow miasma, its density like a rolling sea of gold. Even with a Fire Wyvern's keen eyesight, nothing beyond a single meter was visible.
And this was despite the fact that, due to their own unique traits, neither of them suffered corrosion from the miasma.
It was hard to imagine that this entire expanse was saturated with the Vaal Hazak's unique life energy—the miasma fully activated and alive.
In just this brief exchange of attacks, Logan estimated that nearly ten percent of his stored energy had been drained.
The Flame Rathalos's flames burned at a higher temperature than his, but without Logan's energy cycle system—formed by the synergy of his own traits—its energy consumption was likely even greater.
And the Vaal Hazak?
While maintaining such a vast field of active miasma, it was still directing massive surges of it to wear them down, even clashing head-on with Logan's attacks.
Had it burned through ten percent of its energy? Most likely not. This was an Elder Dragon, after all—every aspect of its body was beyond anything an ordinary monster could ever compare to.
Even if fire could counter the Vaal Hazak, it still depended on what kind of fire.
The Elder Dragons of this world were a peculiar breed. With their life force bound to the leylines, most of them preferred to dwell close to these veins of the earth.
Even Velkhana kept its lair beside a leyline. Its favorite pastime was to freeze the gushing magma, shaping it into towering ornaments of ice.
Or it might roll itself in magma brimming with life energy, feeling it cascade over its body before the extreme cold transformed it into a coat of azure scales, draped across its form like a fish's armor.
A game was a game—reality, however, was reality.
Likewise, the Vaal Hazak, dwelling beside the leylines, was weak to fire only in relative terms compared to its other resistances. It did not truly fear flames.
At least for now, Logan's fire was not enough to pose a serious threat to it.
With that in mind, Logan had no intention of charging back into the miasma to trade hundreds of blows like the Flame Rathalos.
If the heat wasn't enough—then raise the temperature!
"Rrroar~"
A low growl rumbled from his throat. The Flame Rathalos paused for a heartbeat, then, without hesitation, drew in a deep breath and frantically stirred the fire-aspected energy within its body.
Concentrated flames gathered in its maw, and in the next instant, a breath of fire marked by visible compression lines surged forth, pouring over Logan.
The Vaal Hazak was not some mindless creature that simply waited in place to be hunted—it could fly as well.
Before it sensed something amiss and closed in, the Flame Rathalos needed to convert as much of its internal fire energy as possible into flames, charging Logan in the process.
Shrouded in fire, every gap between Logan's scales absorbed the heat at a rapid pace, so fast that not a wisp of the Rathalos's breath was wasted. In moments, his entire body had become a swirling sphere of flame.
Down in the forest, the Vaal Hazak tilted its head upward, sensing through the miasma, yet still failed to detect the actions of Logan and the Flame Rathalos.
With a beat of its wings, the miasma heaved like surging waves. Under the Vaal Hazak's guidance, it seemed to push the monster upward toward the sky.
Its speed was astonishing—hard to imagine that such tattered-looking wings could propel a body of that size. It defied all biological logic.
But on second thought, these Elder Dragons could be considered fantastical creatures; trying to explain them with the rules of ordinary biology was, after all, far too forced.
The miasma billowed upward with the Vaal Hazak as it took to the air. The moment it appeared, it caught sight of a Rathalos actually breathing fire at one of its own kind.
The scene defied all logic, leaving the Vaal Hazak momentarily stunned.
With its mastery over the miasma, it could clearly sense that its fumes hadn't penetrated the bodies of either Rathalos. Without the influence of miasma, why on earth were they turning on each other?
Could it be that it hadn't let them fight to their fill, so they decided to start a second round on their own?
As an Elder Dragon that had lurked in the deepest reaches of the Rotten Vale for decades, the Vaal Hazak's urge to attack was never strong, and its actual combat experience was limited. Thus, the sight before it left it utterly shaken.
It simply flapped its wings, hovering in place, stunned—showing no sign of continuing its attack for the moment.
The Flame Rathalos, which had originally intended to pause its breath attack because of the Vaal Hazak's arrival, instantly poured on the flames when it saw the elder dragon had no intent to strike. It no longer cared whether Logan could keep up, frantically squeezing every last bit of power from its blast sacs, refusing to stop even as the flames on its body dimmed.
Before long, the Vaal Hazak lost patience and unleashed a cloud of miasma in a single breath.
The Flame Rathalos immediately broke off its attack and darted aside.
A heartbeat later, Logan's blue-violet flames met the miasma head-on. With a crackling hiss, the toxic cloud was burned away completely.
The temperature in the air spiked. From within that searing blue-violet fireball above, blinding light poured out.
Then, with a piercing roar, the fireball erupted. Logan spread his wings, shrouded in Scorched Flames, sending waves of heat and crushing wind pressure surging in all directions.
In the sweltering air, the miasma's activity was suppressed; the white spores close by withered in an instant, and the rate of miasma reproduction dropped sharply.
The Black Veil Vaal Hazak's scarlet pupils narrowed. At that moment, it felt from Logan the same searing heat it had only sensed decades ago—from a Teostra.
With a hoarse, furious roar, the Vaal Hazak no longer hesitated. It lunged straight at Logan, while behind it, the active miasma was drawn together in a frenzied rush, churning like a sky-darkening tide as it spiraled toward him.
The weakened Flame Rathalos, sensing the danger, immediately veered away in the same direction to escape.
Only now did Logan check the intangible panel, realizing his current state and its time limit. Almost instinctively, he triggered his Sunlight Trait.
As his body temperature surged, waves of scorching heat billowed from each beat of his wings, rolling toward the Vaal Hazak.
Within the blazing air currents, pockets of miasma began to combust. Blue-violet flames flickered into being in the air, appearing and vanishing in an instant.
Though there were no open flames, the heat carried in those waves was staggering.
The tide of miasma clashed with the rolling heat, the two forces locked in a stalemate, while Logan and the Vaal Hazak battled between them—heat against miasma.
With the aid of the Scorched Flames, Logan could finally break through the elder dragon's defenses. Even when the Vaal Hazak stirred its miasma, it could not so easily extinguish the searing burn of the flames.
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