At this moment, the Brute Tigrex kept unleashing roars akin to "Black Wind Cannons," using sheer power to make sudden, explosive leaps—forcing the Aki it had ambushed to break from the air and engage it in ground combat.
Fortunately, the current Aki already showed the traits of an all-around warrior.
Merely being forced to the ground was far from enough to put this largely transformed Queen of the Land in any real danger.
Her twin wings ignited with flame, the bright fire-elemental matter burning within her Flame Sacs. The scales across her chest radiated intense heat, glowing crimson like molten gold.
Facing the Tigrex's high-speed charge, Aki had no thought of dodging. As if taking a leisurely stroll, she too charged head-on in the same "wyvern car" posture to collide with the Brute Tigrex.
The outcome was clear—Aki was still slightly inferior in raw strength.
Yet from the halted steps of the Brute Tigrex, its ferocious expression, and its enraged roars, one could tell that it had not come out of that clash unscathed either.
Thanks to her increasingly hardened scales, Aki—though defeated in the contest of brute force—had sustained little actual damage.
With a roar, she began gathering flames.
Sensing something amiss, the Brute Tigrex lowered its body and broke into a full sprint.
In the next instant, clusters of fireballs tinged with blue-violet flames erupted like machine-gun fire, bombarding the Brute Tigrex without restraint.
A continuous series of explosions thundered across the land; chunks of basalt were blasted apart, and the magma beneath seemed to stir restlessly under the tremors caused by the relentless detonations.
Relying on its extraordinary physique, the Brute Tigrex executed one high-speed evasive maneuver after another—occasionally even charging through Aki's attacks—circling around her as it moved. Yet Aki's fireballs were always just a fraction too slow, landing behind the Brute Tigrex in vain.
Meanwhile, the Brute Tigrex was steadily tightening its circling radius, gradually closing in on Aki.
In the sky, Logan restrained his aura, concealing himself within the dust clouds.
For ordinary monsters, these dust clouds carried deadly toxins, but to Logan, they were nothing more than harmless specks of ash. Even if inhaled, his powerful metabolic system could easily neutralize them.
Below, the battle between Aki and the Brute Tigrex unfolded clearly before Logan's eyes.
Logan immediately saw through what the Brute Tigrex was plotting.
Its speed was easily fast enough to strike between Aki's attack intervals, yet it insisted on circling around her. It was obvious that it intended to exhaust the combustible matter within Aki's body, along with her stamina.
Once her throat could no longer endure the heat, once the flammable substances were depleted and her physical strength sharply declined, that would be when it would seize the chance to launch a fierce assault.
Clearly, this was a seasoned hunter. What it sought was not to wound Aki and then spend half a day pursuing and finishing her off.
It wanted to end the fight completely in a single battle, minimizing the risk of any unforeseen complications during a chase.
However, sometimes the line between hunter and prey was but a hair's breadth apart.
Aki's fireballs were not as simple as they appeared. Moreover, Aki was the type who excelled at combining physical combat, toxins, and flames—how could she possibly be foolish enough to just keep spitting fire?
The Brute Tigrex's plan had long since been seen through by Aki, and she too was laying her own trap!
Just as the Brute Tigrex was circling closer and closer, it suddenly noticed that Aki's fireballs no longer chased after it—instead, they were landing in the places it had passed through moments ago.
[Sss—]
The Brute Tigrex halted, its foreclaws on the ground suddenly hissing under the scorching touch of fire.
Tilting its head slightly, it saw that the flames, edged with blue-violet tongues, now blanketed a wide stretch of ground. The crackling sound from earlier was the blue-violet fire burning away the dried blood caked upon its claws.
"Why is there so much fire left on the ground?"
The Brute Tigrex instinctively sensed danger. Its muscle groups tensed as it prepared to charge toward Aki—but in that instant, it saw her wings touch the ground, and within her pair of blue pupils was reflected its own figure standing in the midst of the blazing field.
[Boom!!]
Flames ignited from her wings, triggering a secondary ignition of the blue-violet fire that covered the entire area.
With a thunderous roar, pillars of fire shot skyward, accompanied by torrents of surging magma!
The eruption of magma on this layer was no less than a small volcanic explosion. Even the Brute Tigrex, which possessed higher resistance to fire, would still be injured if caught unprepared without having set up any defenses—let alone this time, when it was not merely a simple minor magma spray, but one mixed with Aki's flames.
From high above, Logan dove downward, intending to rush into the blaze and fish Aki out.
Yet unexpectedly, a massive black silhouette burst out first.
Or rather—it was two figures entangled together, forcing their way through the lava eruption where the basalt covering had vanished, bursting out amid the explosion.
Aki was bracing the Brute Tigrex, using its enormous body as a shield as she rammed straight through by sheer force.
Large amounts of scattered magma splashed over the Brute Tigrex's body, drawing a loud bellow from the creature. Its powerful forelimbs, ignoring the fine venomous barbs along Aki's back, shoved at her in an attempt to break free.
However, the difference in strength between them was not so great that the Brute Tigrex could suppress Aki.
[Bang!]
Bursting free of the magma-jet zone, Aki slammed on a sudden brake and flung the Brute Tigrex away.
The Brute Tigrex let out a long, pained groan. On closer look, its back had been scorched into patch after patch of char by flames and magma, and its abdominal scales had split off in large swathes from Aki's charge.
Worse, because of the hemotoxic venom's effects, the bleeding from those wounds would not stop for a long time, and the even more intense pain brought on by the toxin made the Brute Tigrex extremely miserable.
High above, Logan looked at Aki, who was panting hard. Seeing that, aside from some disordered scales and a few bloody claw marks on her back from the Brute Tigrex's earlier scratching, there were no other visible injuries, he halted his dive.
He rose into the air again, sharp gaze sweeping the surroundings.
That commotion just now was very likely to attract the attention of certain creatures.
Below, the battle between Aki and the Brute Tigrex reignited. Only this time, the Brute Tigrex could not seize the initiative; after taking an inadvertent injury, it could no longer stop Aki from taking to the sky.
Even if it was only a low-altitude flight suitable for combat, it still imposed a positional suppression on the Brute Tigrex.
Aki sometimes ascended, using flame attacks and midair tail-whips as her primary means of offense, pulling the Brute Tigrex around.
At other times she descended, facing that creature's terrifying strength head-on, deepening the Brute Tigrex's injuries through biting and the venom on her barbed spines.
This almost flaw-free fighting style left the Brute Tigrex unable to adapt for a time, getting beaten back step by step.
Finally, after taking a tail-whip strike that scraped a long gash across its face, the terrifying venom—with its intense burning sensation—hurt so badly that the Brute Tigrex instinctively shut one eye.
With no choice, it drew in a deep breath of air thick with sulfur and volcanic ash; at the same moment Aki instinctively assumed a defensive stance, it let out an ear-splitting roar like a super-amplified loudspeaker.
The sound waves seemed to take on substance, carrying a black aura as they spread outward in rings, kicking up great clouds of dust.
Taking that blast head-on, Aki—despite having prepared herself mentally—was still stunned for a brief moment by the roar.
Seizing the opening, the Brute Tigrex suddenly made a standing leap of more than 20 meters. Its degenerated wing-arms beat forcefully as it vaulted over a massive basalt formation and glided away toward another area as if in flight.
Snapping her head, Aki cleared her slightly muzzy mind and looked warily all around. After confirming she could find no trace of the Tempered Brute Tigrex, she slowly let out a breath.
The persistence of this Brute Tigrex had indeed exceeded Aki's expectations. A Tempered subspecies that had lived for years—perhaps since youth—in the Elder's Recess truly possessed combat power beyond that of its ordinary kin.
Even after being injected with so much venom, it still endured the pain and fought Aki head-on, managing to inflict no small amount of injury on her.
Fortunately, the Brute Tigrex still had a desire to survive—unlike Tempered Yian Garuga, that battle maniac. Knowing it had fallen completely to the disadvantage, it decisively chose to run rather than fight Aki to the bitter end.
Otherwise, if the battle dragged on, it might have been Aki who chose to retreat first.
After all, paying the price of serious injuries just to take down a stubborn Tempered Brute Tigrex would not be worthwhile no matter how you looked at it.
Stretching her somewhat sore neck to look upward and not seeing any sign of Logan, Aki thought nothing of it, spread her wings, and flew toward the nest in the basalt zone.
She needed to take some medicine to restore her stamina—after that, she still had to continue hunting.
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