The subjugation operation against Nakarkos had already lasted a full day.
This day was a torment for both sides of the fight.
For Nakarkos, the hunters were like unkillable mosquitoes. The physical damage was secondary; the mental torment made it repeatedly come close to losing its sanity.
A great number of monster bones were lost during the battle. Wounds on its body healed and then reappeared. It tried to resolve them in one go by blanketing a wide area with elemental energy, but the cannons and ballista bolts hidden at a distance would fire rapidly, forcibly interrupting it.
It wanted to ignore the stamina cost and directly use "Genesis," but a recommendation squad hunter was still in emergency treatment because of that very move—so how could the command platform here not be prepared?
Those two cannons fixed onto the command platform existed specifically to deal with that situation.
Two enormous armor-piercing shells fired down, punching straight through the thick bone armor on its main body. Their tips penetrated into Nakarkos's body and triggered explosions.
With attacks like that, let alone interrupting Nakarkos's charge-up—if both shots hit, Nakarkos would have to dive back into the dragon graveyard and replace its bone armor with a new set.
Nakarkos had been fighting in the New World and the Guiding Lands region for hundreds of years. It had crushed opponents, and it had also been beaten into fleeing in panic.
But among all the battles it had experienced, none had ever been this stifling!
It clearly felt these ants were not strong. Aside from the guy who often charged right up and gave it two slashes, the rest were merely ants wearing gear that gave off faint Elder Dragon aura—barely a little threatening.
Yet it was precisely these contemptible types—once they coordinated to restrain it—who could always create an opening for that one truly dangerous guy to land a hit that injured it.
Facing an opponent it had never dealt with before, Nakarkos, beyond its rage, also felt a trace of unease deep down.
Too strange!
Today's experience was truly far too strange!
Early in the morning, there had been delicious food delivered right to its door—so why, after only a short while, had it turned into this?
At this moment, aside from Darren and Aiden, the other recommendation squad hunters—including the Ancient Wyverian girl—had already reached their limits in both spirit and stamina.
Even though in the past there had been times when they fought high–ecological niche monsters for an entire day, the two simply were not comparable at all.
When fighting ordinary monsters, ordinary monsters most of the time engage in melee combat; after the occasional energy attack, they will also, because they have expended a great deal of stamina, enter a fatigued and weakened state for a period of time. At that time, the hunters can gain a brief chance to catch their breath in the fight, and can even expand their gains and take the monster down in one push.
But what about Nakarkos? Even after enduring so many attacks, its elemental energy attacks never stopped from beginning to end, and its condition still remained at an extremely high level. As one waned and the other waxed, even with the help of long-range equipment, the exaggerated stamina consumption still had a considerable impact on their combat power.
Therefore, at nightfall, tonight's weather also seemed to be setting the stage for this battle: a huge full moon hung in the sky, with not a cloud for ten thousand miles. The bright moonlight spilled onto the ground, lighting it up like daytime and not affecting the hunters' vision in the slightest.
But at this moment, the only ones still within a certain range of Nakarkos, and even chasing Nakarkos to attack, were Darren and Aiden.
The other hunters, because of Nakarkos's frequent energy attacks, had been forced to move to a slightly more peripheral area, and their targets had shifted from Nakarkos's main body to two mimetic tentacles.
Aiden braced his greatshield to hold back the tentacles coiling up around him, then retreated with a jumping step to avoid the next attack. Beneath his face-covering helmet, out of the corner of his eye, he watched Darren—surrounded by a mass of tentacles entwined with dragon-element energy—still calmly swinging his Greatsword, darting up and down, constantly trying to seize the initiative in offense.
The other man's charged slashes seemed not to have changed at all as time passed; his stamina was so abundant it was like a monster.
From this alone, you could see that sometimes the gap between people really could be even greater than the gap between a Fire Wyvern and a Great Jagras!
Aiden did not know that, at this moment, Darren also had his own bitterness in his heart.
After such a long fight, he had already clearly sensed that the Elder Dragon before him was drastically different from the Elder Dragons he had encountered in the past.
Although, purely in terms of attack power, aside from the attacks launched by its main body, it even seemed to be slightly inferior to an ordinary Elder Dragon, its vitality was, frankly, far too outrageous.
For an ordinary Elder Dragon, after fighting for an entire day, even if the degree of injury had not yet reached a life-threatening level, it should at least show some signs of weakness in terms of stamina, right?
Just like the Kirin he had previously repelled: its lightning-empowered state had only lasted for a short half day before, due to excessive stamina consumption, it had been forced to deactivate it. Only after resting for one or two hours did it enter the lightning-empowered state again.
By contrast, once Nakarkos's main body emerged, the dragon-attribute shroud never disengaged. Its two mimetic tentacles continued to switch various elemental energies without any pattern. The main body also occasionally attempted to spray "Genesis." As for the small tentacles on the main body, he cut them off one after another, yet after a short while, they simply grew back again.
Setting combat power aside, this vitality alone was enough to allow Nakarkos to gain the upper hand in a fight against ordinary Elder Dragons.
This level of vitality truly exceeded Darren's expectations. For Darren—who, before every battle, was accustomed to evaluating a monster's various parameters and planning the fight based on existing data—what he hated most was precisely this kind of situation that fell outside the plan.
But since the battle had already begun, and with his extensive experience fighting Elder Dragons, he knew very well that when facing an Elder Dragon, one had to press the attack in one continuous push. Otherwise, it was easy to be dragged down alive by relying on the Elder Dragon's vitality and recovery.
That would cause an originally planned repulsion operation to helplessly devolve into a defensive battle, relying on massive manpower and resources to grind against the Elder Dragon until one side finally withdrew.
Crack!
As another True Charged Slash came down, Darren's Greatsword once again emitted a faint but ominous sound.
Ordinary weapons really found it hard to withstand Darren's style of combat—using charged slashes as if they were normal attacks. Even the Radiant Fire Wyvern Greatsword, under such prolonged fighting, was starting to struggle.
Just as Darren began to consider whether he should temporarily pull away from Nakarkos to recondition the weapon and conduct a more thorough inspection—
From deep inland, a piercing dragon roar rang out.
On the command platform, Noah raised his binoculars and looked toward the forest. After searching several times, he finally found the monster that had let out the roar.
Under the full moon, a massive black, spiky silhouette was frantically beating its wings, flying toward the battlefield like a black meteor!
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