In the swamplands, four Ancient Tree Fire Wyvern Grimalkynes were pushing a wooden board. A gravely wounded hunter lay atop it, clutching his injuries, his face pale. Blood poured relentlessly from the wounds in his waist and thigh.
Another researcher, guarded by the Grimalkynes, was fending off waves of juvenile Jyuratodus drawn in by the scent of blood. Yet there were simply too many of them, and the group's advance slowed to a crawl.
Not far from them, two Barroths were thrashing about in the swamp. They had only just shaken off the Jyuratodus wrapped around them when new ones slithered in, coiling tight around their bodies like constrictor snakes.
Clusters of juvenile Jyuratodus circled the battlefield. Whenever a Barroth collapsed, they darted in at once, trying to wriggle into its nostrils or fresh wounds.
During the winter, rising swamp waters had forced the Barroths to migrate. With their natural enemy gone, the Jyuratodus had been left unchecked, and during the long downpours of the rainy season, they reproduced in vast numbers.
Even with their cannibalistic nature and the presence of other fish-eating monsters that thinned their numbers, the lack of Barroth interference meant that by spring the surviving juveniles still numbered in frightening amounts.
This hunter team had come here on a mission to investigate the unusual state of the swamp—only to stumble straight into a battle between the Jyuratodus and the Barroths.
Curiosity had lured them deeper into the swamp than intended, and before they realized it, several Jyuratodus had struck. Caught off guard, the hunter had been wounded.
By rights, a Jyuratodus, a mid-tier Piscine Wyvern, even in numbers and even by ambush, should not have been able to injure a seasoned First Fleet hunter so badly.
The real problem lay with the juveniles lurking in the mud.
Juvenile Jyuratodus were small, about the size of an ordinary fish, but from the moment they were born, they were fiercely carnivorous. Their survival came not only from cannibalism but also from feeding on the scraps left behind after adult Jyuratodus hunted.
Worse still, they would wriggle into a creature's body through its mouth, nose, wounds, or other openings, then gnaw away at the host's organs from the inside. To make matters worse, their gills carried rows of backward-facing barbs, designed to anchor them tightly and prevent the host from dislodging them.
So, drawn by the scent of blood, the hunter had been forced to fight off the adult Jyuratodus while also fending against the insidious ambushes of countless juveniles.
In such circumstances, even with all his experience, the hunter had misjudged the swamp's current state and found himself surrounded.
At last, a juvenile seized its chance, burrowing into his wound and locking itself in place with its hooked gills.
To prevent the damage from worsening, the hunter had dragged the researcher to a patch of dry ground within the swamp. Gritting his teeth through the pain, he tore the juvenile out by force.
After downing healing medicine to keep himself alive, he had called for a Felyne cart and fired a rescue signal.
What he hadn't expected was that even with the cats pushing the cart to his aid, the swamp was now crawling with roused Jyuratodus. They swam ceaselessly through the waters, making it impossible for the cats to retreat.
This was the scene Logan saw now.
From high above, he could easily spot two Jyuratodus hidden in the mud, ready to strike at any moment, with waves of juveniles swirling around them.
Logan could not make out their exact length, but judging from the size of their shadows, each was around 16 meters long. Combined with the terrain advantage, even with the cats and the researcher together, escaping this encirclement was impossible.
"Roar!"
A thunderous roar split the air as Logan dropped lower, skimming above the cats.
The oppressive force of a higher apex predator radiated with that roar, shaking the Jyuratodus lurking in the mud below into stillness.
When the cats spotted Logan's arrival, their faces lit with relief. They quickly dragged the wooden board, carrying the wounded hunter, through the muck.
Logan hovered above them, eyes locked on the swamp below, missing no detail.
It was the inexperienced juveniles, those who had never endured nature's harsh beatings, that broke first. Bold beyond sense, they dared to swim toward the cats right under Logan's gaze.
Logan gave them no quarter. With a sweep of his wings, he scattered a flood of combustible fluid mixed with flame, drenching the ground ahead of the advancing juveniles.
The mud there dried instantly under the searing heat. A cluster of juveniles, too slow to retreat, sizzled and cracked as the flames consumed them.
Jyuratodus scales were never especially resilient, and once dried by fire, they grew brittle to the point of uselessness. Even adult Jyuratodus without their mud armor would not dare face such heat—how could these fragile young endure it?
In an instant, a great number of juveniles were annihilated. Yet the two adult Jyuratodus showed no sign of emotion. What was startling was their refusal to flee under Logan's pressure. One even reared up, spewing a breath of sludge—mud thickened by its internal water sacs into a viscous stream—straight toward Logan.
Perhaps the months of easy dominance in the swamp had emboldened them. With their numbers swelling, they had lost the instinctive fear owed to apex predators.
Logan twisted aside, avoiding the spray. From the corner of his eye, he saw that the cats had already carried the hunter far from danger. Drawing in a deep breath, Logan unleashed his flames in full. The two Jyuratodus froze, panic flashing in their eyes as the inferno engulfed them.
The mud clinging to their bodies hardened at once, while scorching heat penetrated deeper. Desperate, they rolled into the swamp in an attempt to use its moisture to stave off the fire.
But in the section seared by Logan's breath, the swamp water evaporated in an instant. What had been swamp was now barren ground. Trapped in layers of drying, solidifying mud, the two Jyuratodus were entombed, the earth hardening around them until they vanished beneath it entirely.
...
"What… what an astonishing power of flame!"
The wounded hunter, who had been lying on a wooden plank looking as though he was about to die, suddenly found strength from nowhere. Propping himself up with one arm, his eyes went wide as he let out a cry of awe.
Just now, Logan had effortlessly dispatched two Jyuratodus with a single breath of flame, and even transformed a section of swamp into a dry wasteland.
It had to be understood that their current location was in the lower-middle part of the swamp. Here, because of the abundance of underground water resources, the swamp's surface was always covered with a layer of water—it was not merely a simple mudflat.
Yet under such conditions, a single breath of flame not only evaporated the swamp's surface water, but also dealt with the two Jyuratodus burrowed into the mud. The difficulty of this feat, and the visual impact it carried, went far beyond the hunter's comprehension.
As a First Fleet hunter, he had once hunted a Zinogre solo, and even faced the "absolute powerhouse" Tigrex head-on. Though an old injury had kept him from joining the Teostra investigation plan, his résumé was anything but shallow.
But judging from Logan's display—while perhaps not reaching the level of Teostra—it was still undeniably the power of a being standing at the very pinnacle among ordinary creatures.
"So this is… the might of the King of the Ancient Forest Rathalos? And this is just… just a breath of flame!"
For hunters who had never had deep contact with monsters above Elder Dragon level, their worldview had always been that ordinary monsters fought primarily through melee combat, with elemental attacks as mere support.
Battles between monsters were usually decided by physical clashes. Who had ever heard of simply breathing once to finish an opponent?
That way of thinking wasn't exactly wrong.
After all, it was true that monsters below the Elder Dragon level, aside from a few rare exceptions, fought mainly through close combat. Breath attacks and elemental damage were usually nothing more than auxiliaries.
Only a very small number of legendary hunters—or the lucky few—had ever joined or witnessed battles involving monsters above the Elder Dragon class.
With the exception of a handful of brawlers or rare Elder Dragon subspecies, combat patterns at that level were inverted: a storm of elemental breaths, collisions of raw energies—such was the standard of battle at that tier.
Thus, the sheer force Logan had unleashed with this one breath was enough to completely reshape the worldview of both the hunter and the field researcher.
To hunters of the Old World, the monsters of the New World—untouched by hunting technologies or by the established hunting patterns of their kind—were like country bumpkins.
But by the same token, for hunters who had never directly faced an Elder Dragon, who had only ever felt the aftershocks of such calamities yet never witnessed a true high-energy battle—were they not also country bumpkins in their own right?
If it had been the Admiral, or those who had pursued Teostra and fought in that battle, Logan's breath would at most have drawn a moment of admiration, praise that he was indeed worthy of being that special Fire Wyvern who could force back an entire horde of sea wyverns with a single breath.
None of them would have been struck dumb like this hunter before him.
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