Logan had not expected Nergigante to charge in after him. Fortunately, he only froze for a brief instant before immediately gritting his teeth against the pain in the joint of his right wing and quickly raising a vortex of flames to engulf Nergigante.
After blocking Nergigante's line of sight, he once again pulled away, trying to trigger the exaggerated self-healing ability of Regeneration that only activated after disengaging from combat.
But to his surprise, Nergigante suddenly seemed to have something snap in its head, forcing its way straight through the vortex of flames while bracing against the explosive scales within it, its whole body covered in dense wounds as it brutally charged after Logan's retreating figure.
Its pair of vertical pupils kept scanning the surroundings during the flight, trying to pick out Mother Chameleos, who was "hiding nearby."
"Seriously this reckless?"
Facing the Nergigante that had suddenly returned to "normal," Logan instinctively unfolded Gale Wings to accelerate himself, continuously launching attacks on Nergigante by relying on his absolute speed advantage in the air and his ranged capabilities.
Before Logan realized it, he discovered that Nergigante had no intention of retreating at all. It was as if it had fallen into an irrational berserk state, letting him "kite" it as he pleased.
You had to know, Logan's ranged attacks were not like Kushala Daora's, which seemed like energy output but were in essence wind blades that counted as physical damage. His were streams of concentrated breath attacks laced with the Sheer Force ability. They not only possessed the penetrating power brought by high speed and high temperature, but upon hitting the enemy, they also rapidly destabilized the originally stable internal energy within, thereby dealing purely explosive energy damage.
Attacks like these were far more efficient than the heated blade wings Logan had used before. Every time Nergigante took a hit, it had to expend much more energy to complete its regeneration.
Down below, on the Mobile Research Base, the Third Fleet Master tracked the two distant figures in the sky through a telescope, feeling a bit puzzled for a moment.
She kept feeling that Nergigante seemed to have been driven into a blind rage.
However, this was also a good thing. The Research Commission had no shortage of information on Nergigante and the Sunblaze Dragon, and the Third Fleet Master knew just how dangerous Logan's decision to take the initiative and engage in close-quarters combat earlier had been.
In battle, one ought to play to one's strengths and avoid one's weaknesses, but for the sake of the plan, taking the initiative to fight at close range had not been unreasonable. At least now things were back on track, increasing the margin for error in completing the plan by quite a bit.
High above in the sky, Nergigante gritted its teeth against the pain wracking its body and willingly let Logan kite it around, all for the sake of tracking down any trace of Mother Chameleos. Yet after searching for quite a long time, it still could not find the slightest sign.
After taking yet another hit from a vortex of flames and having its speed slow down once more, Nergigante also noticed its own energy rapidly draining away. Distressed, it had no choice but to abandon the idea of forcibly breaking through by using energy to cancel the attacks. Instead, it reinforced its own spikes, searching for a weak point in the vortex of flames to burst out from.
This brief delay gave Logan enough time to pull far away.
Racing against the clock, he mobilized his life energy to activate Regeneration. The wounds on his body healed at a rapid pace, and the slightly misaligned joint of his wing quickly knit back together, restoring itself to its original state with a crisp snap.
Multiscale swiftly replaced the scales that had been shattered in the battle. In just over ten seconds, a completely renewed Logan appeared once more, with only his stamina and energy consumption showing any difference.
Nergigante, having finally struggled free of the vortex of flames, took a deep breath in the scorching air. Fresh flesh rapidly grew over the many burned patches of its body, replacing the charred outer skin. Its regeneration shell went to work, and white spikes once again surged forth.
In the span of just a few deep breaths, Nergigante likewise returned to peak condition.
But as it lifted its head and its eyes locked onto Logan, the sight it least wanted to see appeared once again—Logan had actually recovered!!
"Roar!!" (You people have no honor, actually going two against one!!)
Nergigante's roar was so loud that it even formed waves of sound rippling outward.
Logan, who had been in the middle of a dive, was jolted by that roar and forcibly checked his descent in midair. He watched as Nergigante, wings beating and eyes bloodshot as if it wanted to devour a dragon, kept sweeping its gaze around while letting out all kinds of dragon roars laced with severe insults.
In its frenzy, it looked as though it wanted to root out some nonexistent enemy and then tear them into pieces, chew them up, and slowly swallow them down.
But how could an enemy that did not exist possibly be found?
Logan could not be bothered to care what exactly had happened to Nergigante. He simply hurled a single charged fireball straight at it.
Amid the sound of the fireball's explosion, Nergigante seemed to snap back to its senses quite a bit. Half its body sagged where its spikes had been blasted off, and its pupils were dilated as it glared at Logan—
Looking as if it had just seen a ghost.
Just now, the things it had shouted were unbelievably vile. Even with Chameleos's inherently patient nature, if it had truly been nearby and provoked like that, it definitely would have shown some reaction.
After all, this was a two-against-one. No matter how timid it might be, it would not possibly be so timid that it would throw away all its dignity, right?
An Elder Dragon's bottom line was flexible, but that innate pride in its bones was still there.
Thus, only one truth lay before Nergigante now: in the matter of regeneration, it seemed to have met its match!!
"Roar, roar!" (How can there be a monster like you in this world, with such a disgusting self-healing ability!!)
"!!!"
Logan met Nergigante's bloodshot crimson eyes and listened to this big black hedgehog's baseless complaints.
This guy was actually slandering him!!
"Do you even hear what you're saying?"
To be called "disgusting" by the Elder-Dragon-world's "filthy thing," an Elder-Dragon cockroach that can neither be beaten to death nor out-lasted—Nergigante!
Was there no justice left in this world?
And this big black hedgehog actually had the nerve to say that?
Logan admitted it—at this moment, he broke composure.
Flames once again surged across his entire body. Sunlight fully ignited, and thoughts like "saving energy to increase the plan's margin for error" were all thrown out of his mind. He charged straight downward with a massive vortex of flames, pressing it onto Nergigante below.
At this moment, Nergigante—feeling its own defining trait severely provoked—had its sense of "dignity" ignited as well, determined to compete with Logan in the field of regeneration.
Thus, an even more intense battle began.
Only, amidst the intensity, the "style" of this battle carried something extra.
Relying on its Regeneration, Nergigante stubbornly tanked the vortex of flames while maneuvering around Logan.
Logan, meanwhile, would disengage from the vortex of flames whenever he suffered significant damage, activate his Regeneration trait to heal, and then dive back in again.
As the fight grew more and more heated, the battle that had originally been planned to take several days ended up lasting only from morning until dusk. Both Nergigante and Logan had already consumed large amounts of stamina and energy.
Even the vortex of flames no longer possessed the overwhelming force it had earlier.
With Nergigante's dragon roars and yet another forced detonation of the vortex of flames by Sheer Force, both Logan and Nergigante now found their internal energy reaching the personal thresholds they had set for themselves. Judging from the outcome, Nergigante's condition at the moment was slightly inferior to Logan's.
In this condition, they could still maintain about eighty percent of their peak combat power.
But in terms of stamina, the consumption truly was excessive. Unless they gambled their lives, their normal fighting state would definitely be affected.
And this was precisely the best timing the mutated Qurio had been waiting for.
At this moment, Nergigante urgently needed a massive amount of energy to replenish itself in order to ensure it could seize the final victory.
As Nergigante's opponent, Logan either had to go all out and settle the fight in one decisive push, or he would be forced to watch the mutated Qurio "support" Nergigante—only to be too unwilling to retreat in time, giving the mutated Qurio a chance to attempt "plundering" his life energy.
A regular Elder Dragon did not fear the Qurio's energy absorption. On the contrary, it could even consume or use other methods to absorb the Qurio's energy in return.
But an Elder Dragon in a weakened state was not quite capable of that.
Down in the swamp below, the grotesque, aberrant monsters that had been fighting all day suddenly convulsed. Amid their cries of excruciating pain, each mutated Qurio separated with ample vital essence, and before long, the battlefield was covered in a spreading crimson sea of insects.
The Radiant Crystal Butterflies, which had also fought the entire day and were now down to only one-third of their number, charged fearlessly toward the insect sea. Unfortunately, under the crushing suppression of sheer numbers, those butterflies—like ethereal sprites—were drowned by the mutated Qurio without even leaving a splash.
The mutated Qurio hiding near the battlefield also joined in at this moment, flowing together like converging streams into the surging insect sea rushing toward the sky.
Panting heavily with its jaws wide open, Nergigante sensed something, lowered its head to glance at the torrent of Qurio swarming toward it, then looked at Logan with a ferocious smile.
"Roar!" (Stunned, aren't you? I still have backup energy!)
Letting out a pleased, low dragon roar, Nergigante rumbled at Logan as if showing off.
After an entire day of intense battle, Logan's stamina consumption had reduced his speed noticeably. With enough energy now coming to replenish it, Nergigante was confident it could enter the "pursuit" state it was most accustomed to.
So what if Logan possessed the same Regeneration ability as it did? In the end, wouldn't the final victor still be Nergigante?
The joy of impending victory, combined with a thirty-percent chance of successfully preying on its "good brother," was enough to make Nergigante ecstatic.
This time, it was a win-win for it!!
Watching the insect sea draw closer and closer, Nergigante's mouth curled upward in a savage grin. In the twilight, it looked like a demon as it stared fixedly at Logan's every move, determined not to give him any opportunity to turn the tables.
Yet under Nergigante's watch, Logan—who should have been torn, even fearful—was instead utterly calm at this moment, so calm that even the flames around him withdrew.
His wings began to vibrate at a special frequency, sending out a faint, hard-to-detect low vibration far into the distance.
Before long, humming noises rose from the desert ravines below. Amid this resonant call, several silver streams tinged with icy blue rose into the sunset like flowing rivers.
Carried by the "tailwind environment" Logan had created, they soared upward faster than the crimson insect sea, intercepting it halfway.
Under Nergigante's eyes, wide with disbelief, they successfully blocked the Qurio swarm.
In an instant, the sky began raining insects!
"Roar??!!"
---
I will post some extra Chapters in Patreon, you can check it out. >> patreon.com/TitoVillar
---