At Altaïr's command, the Gunners, who had been preparing to fall back to a safe distance, closed in once more.
Greater distance meant greater safety, but it also reduced Bowgun Ammo's power and made shots less accurate by increasing projectile travel time.
To compensate, the Gunners had to lower their rate of fire and aim more carefully, further reducing the density of their fire.
Closing the shooting distance was therefore the most direct way to unleash maximum firepower and suppress the target.
Nymera maintained a medium range of twenty to thirty meters. She combined the Rathalos Cannon's Rapid Fire Flaming Ammo with a large-capacity drum magazine, sweeping the Gore Magala with sustained fire and scorching it without pause.
Morgan, meanwhile, advanced to an extremely close range of about ten meters. This time, however, he did not use Spread Ammo. With two Blademasters fighting at close quarters, the risk of friendly fire was too high.
He loaded a round of Lv3 Sticky Ammo into the chamber.
With its large caliber and tremendous explosive charge, this type of Bowgun Ammo sacrificed range, projectile speed, and magazine capacity for unmatched power among conventional ammunition.
But raw power was not the only reason Morgan had chosen it...
At such close range, he easily found an angle past Isis, who was assaulting the Monster head-on, and planted the Sticky Ammo squarely in the Gore Magala's forehead.
The thumb-thick steel spike at the round's tip bored through the Monster's scales and struck bone.
The round did not detonate immediately. To maximize Sticky Ammo's most important effect, Morgan had set a long delay on its fuse.
He executed a Quick Reload. A second round whistled out, followed at once by a third and a fourth...
Four or five Sticky Ammo rounds soon studded the Gore Magala's forehead, lending it a faintly comical appearance.
Morgan silently counted down until only a few seconds remained. "Brace yourselves! Five!
"Four!..."
"..."
Isis prepared herself as soon as she heard him. To avoid alerting the Gore Magala, she deliberately waited until the last second before raising her Large Shield and entering a Defensive Stance.
"Boom!"
The first Sticky Ammo round exploded with a thunderous roar as the countdown reached zero. Its blast detonated every round that had struck after it.
The instantaneous force of the volley surpassed even a Large Barrel Bomb. The blast wave drove Isis backward behind her braced shield, forcing her to slide a considerable distance.
Even more terrifying than the flames was the impact. At the moment of detonation, the shock traveled through the steel spikes embedded in the rounds and directly into the Monster's body. Not even thick scales and shell plating could stop it.
The penetrating spike anchored the round inside its target, giving Sticky Ammo its name.
The shell plating on the Gore Magala's head cracked. The shockwave traveled through the steel spikes and its skull to rattle its brain, knocking it briefly unconscious and leaving it stunned.
"Now!" Altaïr shouted.
At the same time, Isis sprinted forward after being driven back by the blast and reclaimed her position before the Gore Magala. She pressed her muzzle against its forehead and pulled the trigger.
"Dragon Blast!"
Terrifying energy gathered inside the muzzle and compressed again and again... The process lasted a full two or three seconds.
That might not have sounded long, but in a high-intensity battle, it was an agonizing stretch of time. Had the Gore Magala been fully conscious, it would have had more than enough time to react.
The concentrated Sticky Ammo barrage, however, had briefly knocked it unconscious and cost it the best chance to evade.
By the time it forced itself back to awareness, an explosively expanding fireball was already surging toward it. Golden-red flames swallowed its entire body.
It resembled a miniature sun intent on purifying the very source of the plague.
"What a blaze..." Nymera murmured, momentarily entranced by an attack she had never witnessed before.
For an instant, she even considered switching to the Gunlance. An instinctive reverence for firepower lived in every Gunner, and none could resist an explosion like that.
"Finish it in one go!" Altaïr shouted as the blast's hot wind rushed over him and nearly scorched his skin.
Altaïr was the first to sheathe his weapon, his eyes fixed on the target as he tracked the Gore Magala's every movement. Dragon Blast's terrifying impact had not merely made the Gore Magala stumble. It had flipped the Monster entirely onto its back.
That left the Gore Magala's head lying not far from him...
Altaïr decisively shifted Tyrant Blade [Heaven Swallower] into Great Sword form, braced it on his shoulder, and began charging. Using Tackles to advance through the charge stages, he closed in on the target's head with sliding steps.
By the time he assumed the final True Charged Slash stance, he was less than five meters from the Gore Magala's head, the ideal range for the attack.
Altaïr released the attack with a low shout. It did not matter that the first swing missed. He used its momentum to flip himself upward and poured all his strength into the second stroke.
Wreathed in golden fighting spirit, the Great Sword descended vertically and split the Monster's scarred head shell in an instant, even cleaving into the skull beneath. The erupting Dragon Element energy became crimson lightning and blasted away part of the Gore Magala's cranium with a crackling roar.
With the attack complete, Altaïr rolled clear of the opening and sheathed his weapon as he retreated.
His gaze swept over the exposed bone where the Gore Magala's head shell had shattered, and a strange thought crossed his mind.
So this Monster had eye sockets? Then why did it have no eyes?
Before he could consider the question further, Isis had already taken his former position. The blade of her Gunlance, glowing red-hot after Dragon Blast, inflicted damage on the Gore Magala every bit as severe as that of a Fire Element weapon.
Full Burst erupted alongside successive Wyrmstake Cannon blasts, and Isis's "Gymnastic" onslaught was as ferocious as ever.
The Gunners closed in again, pouring fire into the struggling, downed Gore Magala with maximum efficiency.
Sajji and Clawdia swiftly arrived as well, piloting Rathalos Model-10. Its powerful shelling hammered the Gore Magala without pause, blasting open one bloody crater after another.
At this stage of the battle, the outcome seemed almost beyond doubt.
Setting aside its ability to spread the Frenzy Virus and cause epidemics, the Gore Magala itself had a Danger Rating of 6★.
Its physical strength, vitality, and ability to manipulate energy all fell far short of a true Elder Dragon's standards.
Under the Hunters' relentless assaults and bombardment, its life already guttered like a candle in the wind...
Yet for some reason, Altaïr felt an ever-growing unease.
The gold-white sheen he had glimpsed while the Gore Magala fed frantically and attempted to molt kept replaying in his mind.
Whether they were reptiles shedding their skin, crustaceans molting, or insects emerging from cocoons after complete metamorphosis, creatures were always most vulnerable immediately before and after such a transformation.
This thing was at death's door. Surely it could not still complete its transformation?
As the thought crossed his mind, the Gore Magala, reduced to its final breath under the Hunters' assault, released a low roar that sounded both stifled and frenzied.
As though bent on suicide, it detonated what little Frenzy Virus and scale powder remained around its body in a single burst. The eruption of purple-black energy forced the nearby Hunters to retreat.
Its iconic jet-black scales and wing membranes were already riddled with holes, like tattered cloth ravaged by fire.
On its head, where the shell had shattered, its pair of feelers drooped limply as though it had given up on sensing its surroundings.
Then a faint but unmistakable click sounded from inside its body. Immediately afterward, its scarred form began convulsing violently, as though it had lost all control.
The flesh around its wounds seemed to come alive, writhing and proliferating at a pace that defied all reason. The new tissue, however, was no longer pure black. Broad swaths of it gleamed with a dazzling platinum-white sheen.
The gold and black flesh repelled and eroded each other even as they twisted together.
Before the Hunters' shocked and furious eyes, the gold-white tissue was on the verge of devouring the comparatively frail, tainted black body and remaking the Monster into a form more elegant, more powerful, and more perfect.
Then its evolution and metamorphosis stopped dead.
A despairing shriek tore from its throat as the creature that had once been a Gore Magala was reborn before the Hunters in a chaotic, twisted form.