Without Ruiner Nergigante blocking in front, the laser struck the ground.
In an instant, the area of ground that was hit turned into molten lava due to the extreme heat, and the laser, losing no momentum, drilled deep into it to an unknown depth.
Before Ruiner Nergigante could even catch its breath, it discovered that the laser had suddenly vanished, and a streak of blue light in the sky was racing toward this side at high speed.
Its body instinctively assumed a defensive posture once more, but at such close range, Ruiner Nergigante's reaction speed was simply not enough. The black spikes that had only just regrown on its body, before they could even transform into adamantine spikes, were shattered again.
Logan descended from the sky. On his enormous right claw, wrapped in Terastal crystal, raging flames ignited.
A single Fire Wyvern Flying Kick, amid the thunderous roar of a fiery explosion, once again turned Ruiner Nergigante into a cannonball-like pinball. Skidding diagonally across the ground, its body spun out of control and was hurled another hundred meters away, smashing countless Terastal pillars along the way, before finally carving a long trench into the ground and coming to a halt beneath a pile of rubble and shattered Terastal fragments.
"I knew it."
Ruiner Nergigante stiffly pulled itself free, crawling out looking as though it were unscathed, yet its ferocious eyes were filled with helplessness.
With regenerative power far surpassing that of ordinary Nergigante, before its energy was overly depleted, unless it suffered a terrifying attack like a Black Dragon's calamity fire—one capable of burning it to ashes in an extremely short time—it could practically be described as an undying existence.
Yet such an ability, when facing an enemy that was even stronger and had an even worse compatibility against it, turned it into a glaringly obvious punching bag. Aside from passively taking blows and searching for chances to counterattack amid the punishment, it seemed capable of doing nothing else.
At more than ten spike points along the front edges of Logan's wings, Terastal crystal rapidly proliferated. As Logan swept his wings, over a dozen massive, sharp, prismatic Terastal spikes blasted forth. The blue-violet flames erupting from the tails of the spikes further propelled their flight speed.
Although it lacked any exaggerated maneuvers such as homing or course correction, this kind of straight-line speed and saturation-style bombardment still possessed considerable suppressive power.
What was more, at this moment Nergigante had only just crawled out of the ground. Its wings had barely flapped a few times. Without Logan's Gale Wings—an ability that allowed precise control of airflow—and without the Fire Wyvern's backward-jump fireball explosions that could generate enough shock airflow to accelerate assisted takeoff, when faced with Logan's relentless high-speed offensive, Ruiner Nergigante was firmly suppressed to the point of being grounded and unable to fly.
As the Terastal spikes collided with the adamantine spikes on Ruiner Nergigante's body, purely in terms of hardness, the Terastal spikes—once ricocheted and lacking any follow-up energy support—were not as hard as the adamantine spikes. Naturally, the sharp tips at their front ends could not penetrate its defense, and upon contact they produced a crisp, ringing sound.
But Logan, who had already roughly judged the hardness of the adamantine spikes through those two flying kicks, would never do something so futile just for the sake of grounding his opponent.
Those Terastal spikes—inside them was already-prepared, relatively stable mixed energy of Fire attribute and Terastal attribute!
After the violent collision, that barely maintained stability was shattered. The Fire attribute energy within the Terastal spikes was instantly activated, and amid the explosive roar of flames, all of that fire energy was forcibly released at the same moment by the Terastal energy imbued with the Sheer Force trait.
Therefore, what Logan had fired were not Terastal spikes meant for penetration at all—they were clearly Terastal grenades!
"Monster Hunter science, brothers!!"
Logan watched as clusters of continuously detonating flames directly covered the area where Ruiner Nergigante was located. Large quantities of basalt were pulverized in the explosions, and massive suspended boulders crashed down one after another.
As the ground shook and the mountains trembled, a small-scale earthquake was triggered, loosening the clutch claws of the research team that was struggling to climb, nearly sending them plummeting from the sheer cliff.
"W-what just happened? Who is the Sunblaze Dragon fighting?"
Mia, caught and held in Darren's arms with one hand, clutched tightly in terror at the tail of the meowing Elu. To avoid being dragged down by Mia, Elu could only endure the pain in his tail and extend his paws, gripping Darren's shoulder tightly to secure himself.
With a heavy Greatsword on his back, Darren used one hand to hold the clutch claw steady, one arm to hold Mia, and still had an armored Palico hanging onto him. And one should not forget that both Mia and Elu were carrying quite a lot of items in their packs.
With all of that added together, Darren himself was still fine—but the clutch claw was visibly wavering, showing signs of coming loose.
"I don't know, but for the Sunblaze Dragon to unleash an attack like that, it's probably no ordinary Elder Dragon. Don't dawdle—keep accelerating!"
The Wyverian hunter's tone was as cold as ever, yet that calm voice somehow soothed Mia, who was still shaken after the clutch claw had just slipped loose.
Once she calmed down, she also noticed the problem with Darren's clutch claw. After quickly apologizing, she extended the clutch claw on her arm again and disengaged from Darren's embrace.
The battle above the cliff was intense, and it was very likely that combat would begin the moment they reached the top. Without even thinking, Elu leapt onto Mia's back. Once they got up there, protecting Mia and Lea would be its task.
Although the cat was a little scared itself, at a time like this, as Mia's "creditor," protecting Mia was its unquestionable duty!
As they drew closer and closer to the mountaintop, in addition to the thunderous explosions, the research team seemed to faintly hear excited dragon roars and some indistinct wails.
With the retraction of the clutch claws, the hunters leapt forward and landed on ground littered with Terastal fragments.
Before they could even steady themselves, a bolt of lightning struck down brazenly. Immediately after, a massive figure slammed heavily into the ground not far away, then in the next second, as if nothing had happened, it scrambled back up at incredible speed.
"Nergigante?"
"Not an ordinary Nergigante! Look at its spikes!"
The moment the Wyverian hunter finished speaking, a buzzing warning sounded from the Radiant Crystal Butterfly kinsect above their heads. The group swiftly dodged to the side. In the next instant, a massive figure wrapped in blue-violet flames threaded with streaks of lightning dove down. Amid the trembling ground, it forcibly smashed the Ruiner Nergigante—just barely airborne—back into the ground once more.
"Roar!!"
With an unwilling, furious bellow, the Ruiner Nergigante—whose huge wounds on its wings were healing at a speed as if time itself were reversing—dropped to all fours and roared at Logan, who had once again climbed to high altitude with a swallow-like rising maneuver.
The flames around its body dissipated, and the uncontrollable lightning vanished along with them.
Logan let out a deep, satisfying roar. It had been a very long time since he had beaten an opponent so thoroughly.
With astonishing regenerative ability, respectable defensive power, and equally formidable combat instincts, the Ruiner Nergigante was truly an exceptionally suitable punching bag.
On the ground, the Admiral, who had just climbed out of the dust, stared wide-eyed at Logan, who was "hovering" high in the sky without even flapping his wings. His lips moved slightly.
"When did the Boss Fire Wyvern turn into this?"
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