Letting out a quiet sigh, Logan spread his wings and launched into the air, leading the charge in a dive toward the bay.
Like a signal, more than twenty Rathalos rose into the sky behind him, accelerating rapidly under his lead.
Their flame sacs ignited, and the rising heat turned the flesh from their chest to their necks a bright crimson. Flames and fire energy steadily built up inside their mouths.
The rush of air from their wingbeats was noticed by the Ivory Lagiacrus below. Lifting its head warily, it let out a furious roar.
The Lagiacrus, once lazily basking in the sun, immediately sprang to their feet, muscles tightening. Their dorsal shells lit up, glowing with a striking blue as if they were rows of electric diodes.
Closer. Closer.
Sensing Logan's intent, the Rathalos all unleashed their power. Explosive fireballs formed one after another, raining down in unison toward the group of Lagiacrus.
The Lagiacrus refused to be outdone. Their dorsal shells erupted with violent currents, releasing a massive discharge.
The electricity, incredibly conductive, intertwined as more than ten Lagiacrus discharged at once, weaving together a huge electric net. The blinding light met the fireballs mid-air, detonating them prematurely and neutralizing much of their destructive force.
Logan didn't join the Rathalos in their barrage. Instead, his eyes locked directly on the Ivory Lagiacrus.
When he reached the perfect position, the flames he had been storing burst out in a massive breath, pouring forth with overwhelming force.
Thick smoke rolled outward, and a scorching heatwave swept across the entire beach in an instant.
A torrent of orange-red flames tinged faintly with blue and violet fanned downward. From the Ivory Lagiacrus's perspective, there was nothing else in its vision but fire.
It felt as though the world had narrowed to the sand beneath its body and the ocean of fire pressing down from the heavens like a black stormcloud. The searing winds bit into its scales, and the sheer force of the blast even drove back the waves not far from shore.
It had seen plenty of Rathalos breaths before. Back in the rivers of the Ancient Forest, it had often encountered them because of overlapping territories and hunting grounds—even Azure Rathalos.
But never had it witnessed a Rathalos's flames carrying such power at the seaside. Did its flame sacs truly contain so much combustible dust?
The Ivory Lagiacrus didn't know.
It only knew one thing: if it didn't act immediately, that single attack would be enough to leave it gravely wounded.
The dorsal electric shell lit up, currents spilling outward, threading and flashing back and forth across its ridges.
The Ivory Lagiacrus tensed every muscle in its body, straining with all its might as it poured out every ounce of lightning it could muster, gathering it into the sky above.
The massive currents attracted one another, merging until they formed a colossal spiral vortex of electricity.
Flames and lightning clashed, arcs snapping wildly at the edges of the fire. Fire energy and thunder energy collided again and again, producing a cacophony of sharp, grating cracks.
Yet in less than half a second, the lightning was completely consumed.
Logan's breath, forged from long preparation and already carrying the faint embryonic form of Calamity Flame, was not something that lightning hastily thrown together by the Ivory Lagiacrus could ever hope to stop.
Unless, perhaps, it were the Abyssal Lagiacrus.
If that thing showed up, Logan would turn and run immediately. To hesitate even for a moment would be an insult to an Abyssal Lagiacrus—after all, that creature might very well surpass even a Silver Rathalos.
Of course, that was just theory. Abyssal Lagiacrus, as rare sea wyverns that existed only in the deepest oceans, could never appear in the shallows.
The flames tore through the lightning, and under the Ivory Lagiacrus's stunned gaze, engulfed its entire body.
The inferno carried with it such tremendous force that it toppled the 31-meter beast outright, slamming it back into the sea and shoving it dozens of meters away.
Even then, Logan had no intention of stopping. His flames poured forth without pause, the trailing blaze rising more than 10 meters high, expanding outward nearly 50 meters before finally beginning to dissipate.
It wasn't often he found such a slow-moving target—Logan intended to let loose until he was fully satisfied.
But this relentless torrent of flame left the Rathalos behind him anxious.
Burning that Ivory Lagiacrus was fine—better still if it burned to death!
But the shallow-water ecosystem creatures were innocent. Without them, the fish of the sea would never gather at this shoal.
"Rooaaar!!" (Brother, brother, stop! The hunting grounds will be ruined!!)
That was more or less the meaning of the Rathalos' urgent roars. They all abandoned their fight with the Lagiacrus and cried out anxiously to Logan.
Realizing the true purpose of this trip, Logan reluctantly cut off his breath attack.
As the white mist rose, the water he had bathed in flames was now scattered with fish of all sizes, belly-up and floating lifelessly on the surface.
One unlucky Lagiacrus that hadn't escaped in time bobbed among them, its eyes rolled back. It looked as though it had taken Logan's breath head-on without managing to dive beneath the surface in time—whether it was dead or not, no one could tell.
At that moment, the Ivory Lagiacrus slowly surfaced. Its quartz armor along the head was half-melted by the flames, leaving it looking ferocious and battered. After spewing out a mouthful of hot steam, it cast a fearful glance at the Rathalos blazing with fire in the sky. Without the slightest hesitation, it let out a roar, then dragged its injured body down into the sea at speed.
Had it not been blasted into the water by the force of the flames, and had it not dived deeper against the crushing wind pressure, that one breath might have completely robbed it of the ability to move.
So, after surfacing briefly to give a 'kindhearted' warning to the other Lagiacrus, the Ivory Lagiacrus made no further move and simply fled for good.
Even without that warning, after witnessing Logan's display just now, the other Lagiacrus had already lost any will to keep fighting.
If it had only been Logan alone, perhaps they would have risked it, relying on their numbers and their experience battling Rathalos.
But the truth was that Logan wasn't alone. A host of Rathalos stood behind him, and the outcome was already clear.
Wild as they were, the Lagiacrus weren't mindless. One by one, they quickly turned and dove into the depths.
From the sky, it was clear to see—dark shapes slipping away from the beach, swimming off toward the open sea.
...
On the cliff, the two who were secretly spying on the battle below through binoculars had their mouths hanging open.
They had thought that with so many Fire Wyverns mobilized, it would surely turn into a hard-fought battle.
And just as they expected, the Fire Wyverns' opponents this time were actually a group of Sea Wyverns.
Such rare monsters were usually only seen by the hunters stationed in coastal villages. Hunters who operated mainly inland could only learn about them from the Guild's monster catalog.
That said, as an elite of the First Fleet, this hunter naturally had a wealth of monster knowledge stored up and knew full well what ecological niche the Sea Wyverns occupied.
At first, he believed this would be a closely matched fight, with the Fire Wyverns ultimately relying on sheer numbers to secure the final victory.
But the result?
The Fire Wyvern leader actually unleashed flames on such a massive scale that with just one breath it defeated a Sea Wyverns that might have been a subspecies.
Even from this high cliff, they could still feel the wave of heat.
Placing himself in that position, the hunter thought: if he ever had to face Logan one day, he probably wouldn't even be able to withstand that breath.
As a side note, he was a longsword user—no shield.
"So this is the power of the King of the Ancient Forest Fire Wyverns? Just watching from afar feels suffocating," the field researcher muttered, pulling out a notebook, quickly sketching Logan's appearance in simple strokes and jotting down the details of his fighting style.
"King of the Fire Wyverns?" The longsword hunter stared at the researcher, question marks all over his face.
King of the Fire Wyverns? What was that supposed to mean? Wasn't their Research Commission's designation always just the leader of the Ancient Forest Fire Wyvern group?
He had been about to correct her, but when he noticed how completely absorbed she was in her own world, he shut his mouth instead.
"What's wrong?" Noticing the strange look on the longsword hunter's face, the researcher paused her pen and turned her head with a puzzled expression.
The longsword hunter thought for a moment, then finally shook his head. "Nothing."
'Forget it,' he told himself. 'Back at base they all just call him the Fire Wyvern leader anyway. If she wants to write it down her own way, let her.' Raising his binoculars again, he returned to observing.
The researcher simply shrugged, thought no more of it, her eyes shining as she grinned at her notes, nodding in satisfaction.
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