When Elder Dragons fought together, their combat power was not merely the sum of each—it multiplied several times over.
In the skies above, winds and clouds shifted violently, lightning storms flashing against blazing suns.
The creatures of the Coral Highlands suffered in misery.
Even on the far side of the Great Ravine, monsters in the Wildspire Waste felt the effects, an irresistible urge pressing them to flee far from the gorge.
Under such relentless assaults, the Shagaru Magala grew steadily more battered. Before long, it could no longer even sustain its Frenzied state, its aura dwindling to the barest flicker.
At this, the Flame Dragon couple moved first to bring the battle to an end.
They hovered face to face in midair, as though engaged in courtship.
Blue flame intertwined with orange-red, surging fire-aspected energy gathering between them. The temperature climbed swiftly, swathes of coral reef liquefying into molten drops.
The Kirin and the others quickly pulled away. The Flame Dragons' combined technique, while normally a display of affection, became utterly terrifying when deliberately invoked in battle.
The Nergigante, of course, noticed as well. But unlike the others, it did not retreat. Instead, every muscle in its body tensed as it forced its massive horns beneath the Shagaru Magala, hoisting it up in spite of its frantic thrashing. With a thunderous roar, it locked its forelimbs around the dragon's lower body, relying on raw brute strength to wrench it skyward, then beat its wings furiously, carrying it straight toward the Flame Dragon pair.
Sensing Nergigante's intent, the Shagaru Magala's heart screamed alarm. Its wing-claws hammered wildly against the beast's back, its whole body writhing in desperate struggle to break free.
In its current state, it could never endure a close-range strike from the Flame Dragons' joint attack!
High above, Logan witnessed it all. He couldn't quite explain why—perhaps a sudden impulse, perhaps the desire to show his true power before the battle's end, to make sure the Elder Dragons remembered that he too was not one to be trifled with.
He began to gather his strength. Scorching fire clustered toward his gaping jaws, every trace of his inferno drawn inward.
His chest, his neck, even his jaw flushed crimson.
The air before him warped, a torrent of fire-aspected energy impossible to ignore.
When the burning in his throat became unbearable, when the flames threatened to break free, he fixed his mind's eye firmly on the Shagaru Magala—clutched in Nergigante's grip, thrashing helplessly.
Spreading his wings at a wide, exaggerated angle, he unleashed his breath. At the very moment the flames poured forth, his wings snapped forward with explosive force.
The spiraling currents drew the flames tighter and tighter, the breath compressing mid-flight until it gathered again, streaking downward like a blazing white arrow.
At the same time, the Teostra and Lunastra completed their final charge. In an instant, their power erupted like a nuclear blast.
Together with Logan's concentrated breath, it all struck the Shagaru Magala head-on.
Heaven and earth shattered.
The entire Coral Highlands shook as an earthquake ripped through it. Countless creatures scattered in panic, fleeing in all directions with nowhere to go.
Along the Great Ravine, jagged cliffs split apart, boulders crashing down in showers.
Amidst endless light and heat, the battle at last came to its end.
When the smoke cleared, Logan opened his eyes again to see the Flame Dragon couple already departing, their figures vanishing into the distant sky.
The Namielle faded into the rising mist.
The Kirin disappeared along with its storm.
As for the Chameleos—by the end, no one had any idea where it had gone.
On the broken ruins, half of the Shagaru Magala's corpse dangled from a pillar not yet fully collapsed, its body facing toward the direction of the Old World. Its charred wing-claws stretched weakly outward, as if trying to grasp something.
The wayward one who had left home had failed to return. A young life, extinguished in a foreign land. Perhaps this was always to be the final fate of those who went astray.
Far off, the Nergigante—blown away by the explosion—struggled to drag itself free from a fissure in the cliffs.
Though it had used Shagaru Magala as a shield, the force of Logan's concentrated breath exploding in tandem with the Teostra's detonation had hurled it far away.
Even with its extraordinary Regeneration, blood poured freely from its wounds. This time, the attack had clearly surpassed the limits of what even it could endure.
But fortunately, the corpse of Shagaru Magala remained as spoils. Even with its body wracked in agony, the Nergigante's excitement burned high.
In that frenzy, it forced itself to move faster—
Until a gust of wind came.
The corpse, barely clinging to the cliffside, swayed once… and then slipped.
With wide, desperate eyes, the Nergigante watched as the body plummeted, tumbling into the abyss of the Rotten Vale.
"Roooaaaar!!"
It cried out in disbelief, a howl of grief and fury.
Just then, before the retreating Blackveil Vaal Hazak, the Shagaru Magala's corpse landed. It paused, then spread its wings. Hooking the body with the barbs upon them, it dragged the carcass deeper into the effluvium, carrying it into the furthest depths of the vale.
Since it had come here, let it serve as nourishment for the New World.
The Nergigante finally wrenched its body free, and without hesitation, dove toward the Rotten Vale.
But whether it could ever succeed in finding the corpse within that tangled labyrinth of effluvium—that was no more than a slim chance.
...
This battle lasted for quite some time, yet it scattered just as quickly.
Should one say the Shagaru Magala truly lived up to being an Elder Dragon? Surrounded and besieged by a host of Elder Dragons, it couldn't mount any effective counterattacks—yet it endured for this long, stubbornly refusing to fall.
Such absurd vitality… it really made wyverns envious.
Now, with his awakened state active, Logan's flame power, speed, defense, and the like were in no way inferior to those of an Elder Dragon.
But the most critical factors—vitality, endurance, energy conversion rate, and reserves—were things he could not match.
A monster at the Elder Dragon level might suppress one in combat, even deal considerable damage, but once the fight dragged into a war of attrition, the final victor would always be the Elder Dragon.
And if an Elder Dragon held even the slightest thought of killing its foe, no matter the price… escaping might not even be possible.
At that thought, Logan felt a wave of discouragement.
As he let go of his Sunlight State and returned to his normal form, the lightness in his body vanished.
Feeling his body grow heavier and more sluggish again, his envy of the Elder Dragons only deepened.
Before coming to the Coral Highlands, he had thought he had no real weaknesses left. But these recent battles had made it clear—he was still far from that.
He flapped his wings, ready to take off and find a quiet place to rest. Tomorrow, he would set out for home.
He hadn't expected that this trip alone would keep him in the Coral Highlands for over a month—not counting travel time. He wondered how Aki would react when he got back. She'd probably be a little angry, wouldn't she?
The image of Aki flaring her wings and puffing up in anger flashed through his mind. For some reason, beneath the worry, he actually felt a little anticipation!
"Gwaa?"
In the middle of his mental storm, Logan nearly jumped out of his skin, almost losing control of his flight.
Irritated, he turned his head to look. Beside him, the Chameleos dragged its limbs as if weighed down by its own wings, listlessly drifting through the air.
"So you haven't left yet?" Logan asked.
"Gwaa~"
The Chameleos drooped its eyes and let out a feeble cry.
Seeing it looking half-dead, Logan couldn't make sense of it at first. What was wrong with it?
Back when the fight first broke out, the Chameleos had been lively enough. How had it ended up like this?
Was it injured?
But after looking it over, Logan saw no trace of wounds anywhere on its body. If it wasn't hurt, then what was going on?
What he didn't know was that the Chameleos was in low spirits entirely because, during their all-out beatdown of the Shagaru Magala, it had somehow ended up being the one responsible only for "gwah, gwah"-ing on the sidelines!
Aside from its initial provocation that forced the Shagaru Magala into exposing a weakness, it hadn't contributed anything at all.
Not even its toxic breath had so much as brushed the Elder Dragon.
So halfway through the fight, it had slipped into sulking mode.
Activating its camouflage, it flew off to perch somewhere high up, silently playing the spectator.
That, in itself, would have been fine. After all, it had been spectating like this for years in the New World—one more time wouldn't matter.
But what truly stung was that just yesterday, Logan's combat strength had only seemed slightly above its own. In fact, halfway through, Logan had even needed its help to shoulder attacks.
So today, he had suddenly exploded with power!
Among so many Elder Dragons, his performance was in no way inferior to theirs.
What was that saying again? Afraid to see your brother suffer, but even more afraid when your brother suddenly turns into a tiger!
And so, faced with this double blow, the Chameleos fell into depression~~
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