As time passed little by little, on the battlefield, as each team grew more familiar with their respective teammates, coordination between the squads became increasingly tight. After gaining a general understanding of the range of his teammates' capabilities, Darren's attacks against Nakarkos grew more and more proactive, and he gradually began to fight without restraint.
The same was true for the other members of the main assault squad. Once they understood Darren's combat ability, they began to shift their focus, actively matching his combat rhythm and continuously creating comfortable windows for him to attack during the gaps between Nakarkos's assaults.
On the outer perimeter of the battle, the two support squads responsible for mobile assistance no longer harbored expectations of dealing significant damage to Nakarkos. With clear mutual understanding, they instead took the initiative to attack the bone plates on the mimic tentacles, weakening Nakarkos's defensive power so that the main assault squad could inflict greater damage.
As the coordination among the hunters grew smoother and smoother, the people on the temporary command platform on the cliff—who had been closely watching the battle—also began to put their minds at ease. The impatient hunter who had earlier thought Noah was merely talking big now found his face somewhat flushed with embarrassment, and inwardly he could not help but admire Noah.
'As expected of the Huntsman's disciple. Setting strength aside, at least when it comes to perspective, I really can't compare to him!'
With his arms folded across his chest, Noah watched the situation in the dragon graveyard. The muscles in his arms, which had been tense the whole time, quietly relaxed. He had not expected that things would actually turn out just as he had said.
As for things like coordination and mutual understanding—truth be told, even he had been startled by the recommended team's initial performance.
After all, among hunters, forming a temporary team was a major taboo.
Most hunters would only form a temporary team when they truly could not handle the hunt alone and also lacked fixed teammates.
And such teams would often disband after completing just a single quest.
Coordination and trust were not things that could be cultivated in a day or two. Without sharing the same mentor and training together from a young age, with full knowledge of one another's backgrounds, it was difficult for hunters to form a fixed team. After all, this was a matter of risking one's life—any slight mistake could cost them dearly.
As for fixed teams, even when they accepted newcomers, it was usually to fill a vacancy in the team, or under an old-leading-the-new arrangement, such as a mentor bringing along a disciple.
At the very beginning, especially the coordination between Aiden and Darren—the level of trust, each side's control over timing, and the tacit understanding in creating attack openings for each other—did not look like temporary teammates at all.
As a Greatsword user himself, at least in Noah's view, if he saw a fireball already being sprayed at him, he could not bring himself to keep charging in place and leave the task of defending against the fireball to a teammate he had never coordinated with before.
Nor would he, after completing that slash, roll away to yield the follow-up attack space—especially when the one he was yielding it to was a Sword and Shield user! If it were a Long Sword user, Noah would have accepted it!
On the battlefield, as the hunter squads exerted themselves, the wounds on the mimic tentacles gradually began to increase as well.
This made Nakarkos—who had originally thought he was merely clearing out a few ants and could deal with them easily—furious, and he immediately let out a roar.
The mimic tentacles on his body—especially those whose bone plates at the base had been mostly destroyed—hard-carried the attacks as they rapidly retracted into the sea of bones, then, in less than two seconds, burst out again.
Not only had the destroyed bone plates been reattached with new ones, even the mimicked monster skeletons had been replaced with new ones.
The sudden shift between attribute energies caught the hunters completely off guard. The attack methods were entirely different, and the forms in which the energy manifested were different as well. In particular, this time one of them had switched to Glavenus's skeleton: that blade radiating scorching heat coordinated with another Astalos mimic tentacle—one at range and one up close—once again taking the upper hand.
Now that Nakarkos was serious, he skillfully controlled all kinds of mimics. The diversified attacks also carried the original owners' fighting styles. In that moment, the hunters felt that it was not they who had surrounded Nakarkos, but that they had been surrounded by an army of thousands.
The constantly changing, randomly combined mimics—different types of fighting styles and attribute energy attacks—were dizzying to the eye, giving the hunters not even the slightest chance to adapt. The hunters who had thought to launch a counterattack on the back of their coordination and adaptability were forced to switch back to defense again, searching for an opening to break the deadlock amid the bewildering onslaught.
The battle once again became tense. Above the dragon graveyard, the ever-changing attribute energies also began to trigger some abnormal atmospheric phenomena. Even the recommended team hunters began chugging consumables under such variable attacks to maintain their condition.
Seeing the battle seemingly starting to develop in an unfavorable direction.
At this moment, two people finally stepped forward.
Taking advantage of the opening created when the Gunlance user blocked the bite of the Anjanath mimic tentacle, Darren slid forward and drove his Greatsword into the gaps between the bone plates. His muscles swelled as he forcibly used an upward slash, tearing out a large spray of blood. He then rolled into a shoulder check, smashing aside the small tentacles that had coiled in, and seized the moment to mobilize all the fighting energy in his body, completing triple charging within an extremely short span of time.
The first strike shattered the bone plates of the mimic tentacle.
Driven by inertia, the Greatsword swung out a crescent arc. The blade tore through the blue viscous fluid that rapidly hardened upon contact with air, sliced through the black skin of exaggerated toughness, ripped apart muscle, and amid flying sprays of blood, opened a massive wound that nearly tore one third of the tentacle apart.
On the other side, just as Darren inflicted the greatest damage Nakarkos had suffered since the battle began and drew its attention away—
The Ancient Wyverian girl, who had been lingering on the edge of the battlefield in accordance with Logan's orders to observe the recommended team hunters, performed a slight backstep to charge, then leapt beside another tentacle while swinging her Sword and Shield.
Using an attack pattern identical to Aiden's, under the reinforcement of overwhelming cold, the one-handed blade easily shredded Nakarkos's bone-plate defenses. The absolute zero cold, like supercooled coolant, turned the blue viscous fluid beneath the plates into brittle flakes.
The ornate Sword and Shield forged from Velkhana materials whirled in the Ancient Wyverian girl's hands. Large amounts of flesh and blood splashed out with each swing, only to crystallize and shatter under the absolute cold.
This cold drawn from an Elder Dragon not only froze the blood within the tentacle, but also prevented the muscles from closing. With just a single attack sequence, the Ancient Wyverian girl withdrew smoothly, and her level of attention from Nakarkos soared to a degree comparable to Darren's.
One relied on personal strength, the other on equipment advantage. By force, they inflicted sufficient damage under these unfavorable conditions, granting the hunters a brief moment to catch their breath and regroup.
The formation, previously disrupted by the diverse attacks, converged once more. Taking advantage of the gap while Nakarkos's two mimic tentacles—due to the excessive wounds—were unable to attach new protective bone plates in a short time, the hunters launched a counterattack again.
This time, Nakarkos could no longer remain still!
These two wounds truly disrupted its expectations. The mimic tentacles, having lost too much muscle, became less flexible, and even the conversion of energy began to turn somewhat sluggish.
Amid the surging of the sea of bones, Nakarkos's main body surfaced.
This time, it was truly enraged!!
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