After the Fire Wyvern family below had fully calmed down, Logan slowly descended amid a gust of wind pressure.
At Logan's low growl, the Rathian unwillingly pushed the hatchling hiding behind her out into the open.
As always, it was a big-headed hatchling, yet from the arrangement of its scales and spikes there were clear traits of the Ancient Tree Fire Wyvern group.
The more Logan examined it, the more he felt something was off.
Its spirit was obviously strong, its proportions were fine, its body showed no signs of deformity, yet it still looked malnourished.
After inspecting the hatchling, he glanced at the nest beside it. Inside were four intact eggs, but even now none showed the slightest sign of hatching. Their shells had already begun to darken, and before long they would most likely become dead eggs.
For a newborn Fire Wyvern hatchling, once those unhatched eggs turned into dead eggs, they would immediately serve as food for both itself and its Rathian mother.
Having finished his inspection, Logan did not linger. He continued flying through the Ancient Tree's middle layer to examine other Fire Wyvern families.
He spent an entire day at it, and by the time he returned to the nest, his doubts had only deepened.
Not only were fewer Fire Wyvern hatchlings born this season, but each one that appeared looked small and thin, as though premature.
Yet strangely, all these hatchlings were full of vigor, showing none of the weakness that premature offspring should have.
Aki watched Logan's return with worry. She too felt uneasy, afraid that her own future eggs might turn out like this. But out of her trust in Logan, she believed he would surely find a solution.
"Premature… premature."
Gnawing down the Aptonoth carcass Aki had brought back, Logan felt he might have found the source of the problem.
"Nutrients!!"
For non–Elder Dragons, the importance of nutrients even surpasses that of life energy.
For monsters that cannot make use of life energy, life energy is more like a catalyst than a necessity; nutrients are what truly matter in the life development of ordinary monsters.
This is also why, though the resources of the Coral Highlands are not especially abundant, they can still sustain groups of Legiana, and even Pink Rathian are more willing to dwell there—it is precisely because the food there is richer in nutrients.
Fire Wyverns are oviparous; when their young hatch inside the egg, it is unlike viviparous creatures that can constantly receive replenishment of nutrients and energy from the mother.
Logan speculated that very likely under the influence of Symbiosis, the Fire Wyvern group of the Ancient Tree is still in a state of mutation. This results in the eggs laid by the female Fire Wyverns still being able to provide only the level of nutrients of ordinary females in the past.
But the hatchlings inside the eggs, due to insufficient nutrition, either—if lucky—become like these successfully hatched young, "premature infants" who rely on the powerful physiques brought by mutated genes to force their way through the weakness of prematurity, or else, simply because of lacking nutrients, suffocate silently to death inside the egg.
This hypothesis is not very scientific, yet in the world of Monster Hunter it seems to make sense.
In any case, to know whether his speculation was correct, all Logan had to do tomorrow was go take a look at the Fire Wyvern hatchlings of the couples on the upper and lower levels of the Ancient Tree, and then find a dead egg to know.
As long as there was a corpse of a Fire Wyvern hatchling that had failed to hatch, that would mean Logan's speculation had a high chance of being true.
At the very least, having come up with one possible explanation, Logan felt much more at ease.
Nestled together with Aki, the night quickly passed.
The next day, Logan followed his plan to investigate and discovered another pattern—that in a Fire Wyvern family, the greater the strength gap between the Rathalos and the Rathian, the lower the hatching success rate of the eggs.
For according to the current Symbiosis trait, this was an energy pyramid. The stronger ones were higher up the pyramid and thus closer to Logan, so their rate of mutation was faster.
Judging by the present state of mutation in the Ancient Tree Fire Wyvern group, there was already a genetic gap between the strong and the weak.
At Logan's order, a confirmed dead egg was soon carried over by the cats.
When the cat cracked open the shell of the dead egg, sure enough, the corpse of a Fire Wyvern hatchling that had been dead for quite some time, not yet fully formed, appeared before them. At its side remained only a small amount of egg fluid.
He let the cat send this dead egg back, so that it could still serve some residual purpose.
"Unbelievable, something like this."
After one night, even Logan himself had thought his speculation a bit far-fetched, yet now, seeing this, it actually looked more and more like a correct hypothesis.
At this moment, Logan even half-hoped it was due to life energy.
At least if it was because of insufficient life energy, he could simply lead the Ancient Tree Fire Wyvern group to migrate. With the strength of the Fire Wyvern group now, surely they could secure a foothold even in the Elder's Recess, right?
Even if the price was a bit high, and it seemed not very worthwhile, then at worst there was no need to go to the Elder's Recess—there was also the volcanic zone not far from the Elder's Recess, and the life energy there was not bad either.
But nutrients were troublesome.
The Fire Wyvern group's food was not lacking, and the Fire Wyverns had shown no cases of malnutrition. It was entirely a deviation caused by not yet having completed their mutation.
At the root, even if the Fire Wyverns now chose to break away from the Ancient Tree Fire Wyvern group, to cut themselves out of this Symbiosis, it would not salvage the present situation.
So now there were only two choices.
Either wait until the mutation completely ended, after the genes in their bodies stabilized, and then reproduce.
Or else, make an issue out of the eggs!
As long as the nutrients in the eggs were supplemented, then the Fire Wyvern hatchlings inside would naturally be able to hatch successfully.
As for how to do this, Logan had no idea.
But Logan having no idea did not mean others had none!
"It's time to issue some quests!"
As the overlord of the Ancient Forest, who had directly facilitated the cooperation between the Cats of the Ancient Tree Fire Wyvern tribe and the Research Commission, and who had indirectly made the Fire Wyvern group and the Commission into allies—this Fire Wyvern King, placed into a game, would absolutely be an important NPC.
After all this time, he had only ever issued a quest to the Admiral, which was truly a waste of all those hard-earned Research Points by the Cats.
It was said that the Grimalkyne quest board in Astera had already been gathering dust for a long time!
"And besides, I can also try issuing non-combat orders to the Fire Wyverns, see if it works."
Previously, the orders given had basically all been combat-related, the only non-combat order being the rules regarding Cat Meals.
And now, Logan planned to have the Fire Wyverns carry Cats, sending several dying Fire Wyvern eggs to Astera to let the scholars there study them, though he did not know whether the Fire Wyverns below would obey the order.
Soon, through Tonkotsu, Logan relayed the situation to a Palico, then gathered some Fire Wyverns and issued the transport order.
Upon learning that this trip was only to deliver Cats, two Rathalos immediately refused.
This was within Logan's expectations, but fortunately, though another Rathalos also showed reluctance, it did not refuse. Thus, this mission, different from the usual ones, fell onto this Rathalos.
Watching the Rathalos lift a basket—already updated and improved many times to fit perfectly to a Fire Wyvern's grip—and fly toward Astera, only then did Logan return to his nest.
Logan's speculation soon spread among the Cats.
After learning that the current Fire Wyvern hatchlings were all "premature infants," the Cats responsible for caring for them grew especially motherly. Each day, besides all kinds of meat paste, they even added nourishing ingredients like mandragora and blue mushrooms.
They would even sometimes share portions of their own Cat Meals with the hatchlings.
Under this nutritious feeding, these frail hatchlings quickly swelled back up like inflated balloons.
In less than half a month, they could already wobble their big heads, chasing after the Cats and trying to bite their tails.
Amidst such an atmosphere, the members of the Grimalkyne resource-gathering team finally returned to the Ancient Tree.
"These… these threads, and this metal, where did you get them?"
Sawing open the "discarded metal" brought back by the Grimalkynes with a small saw, a brawny craftsman tested these things, and discovered that though they had been somewhat corroded, they still retained sufficient strength.
The craftsmanship within them was something he had never seen before.
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