Although for Nakarkos, its true body's skin was in fact far stronger than the bone plates covering it in terms of various resistances, without scales or bone plates serving as protection, it took the full force of the Calamity Flame head-on.
This attack not only interrupted Nakarkos's next planned move, but also created an extremely rare opening for Darren below to attack.
Closing in with the Clutch Claw, he slightly lowered his head to evade Nakarkos's instinctive counterattack. The Blazing Wing in his hand probed forward lightly, and the spreading Calamity Flame seemed to be drawn toward it—what should have dissipated in midair instead poured continuously into the Greatsword.
This change gave Darren a slight shock, but the movements of his hands did not stop!
Battle energy throughout his body began to erupt, his body temperature rose sharply, and the heavy breaths from his mouth and nose turned into white mist that sprayed out through the gaps of his faceplate.
First slash!
He cut through the connection point between the base of the tentacle and the main body!
Second slash!
During the charging process, large amounts of dissipating Calamity Flame surged one after another into the Blazing Wing, wrapping Darren into a ball of fire.
As the charge for the third slash was completed, the Calamity Flame in the air dissipated, the fireball was completely absorbed by the Greatsword as if by a black hole, and the Blazing Wing—its blade originally smooth and gleaming with a cold sheen—now became incomparably red-hot. Strands of blue-violet Calamity Flame, like ribbons, burst forth from the spines along the back of the blade.
"True Charged Slash!"
Absolute high temperature tore through Nakarkos's powerful muscle mass, ripped apart its Dragon-element energy defense, and amid a burst of scorched aroma, carved a massive wound directly into Nakarkos's true body—one that reached a depth equal to fully two-thirds the length of the Greatsword's blade.
The Blazing Wing did not lose momentum, crashing down onto the bones beneath Darren's feet. Amid a nauseating, acrid stench of melting material, it cleaved a fissure stretching nearly ten meters.
"This!!"
The power of this strike far exceeded Darren's expectations. He had been using the Blazing Wing for quite some time and had basically grasped how to wield it, but damage of this level was, in all honesty, somewhat excessively powerful.
As Nakarkos let out a hiss from the pain of the massive wound, the now-recovered Darren quickly pulled the Blazing Wing out of the pile of bones, then rolled backward to evade Nakarkos's counterattack.
Perhaps that strike had completely expended the Calamity Flame the Blazing Wing had just absorbed, because this Greatsword returned to its original state. In Darren's next several slashes, it never again dealt similar damage.
Calamity Flame in front, and Darren's fierce slashes behind.
Caught in a pincer attack from both sides, Nakarkos, in a real sense, suffered a wound that even its vitality could not ignore. If it had to withstand another ten or twenty attacks like that, it would probably already be preparing to retreat.
This sudden turn of events once again dispelled Noah's thought of retreat. In his gaze, after Little Loren succeeded with a strike, he burst out from the clouds and spat several more fireballs at Nakarkos, interrupting the charging of its mimic tentacles.
This ambush had been planned for a long time, but Nakarkos, having already taken one hit, would not so easily give another opportunity. Rather than continuing to hide in the clouds and wait for the next chance—uncertain whether it would even appear—it was better to join the battle openly.
Taking advantage of the fact that Nakarkos was now in a fatigued state, they needed to seize the time to inflict more damage on it. Even if, in the end, it was still like before and they could not win, at least this bit of attrition would make things more secure when Aki finished it off.
With Little Loren joining, the hunt—originally becoming more and more difficult—once again became easy.
In fact, because Darren had just discovered a new way to use the Blazing Wing, he would, in battle, intentionally or unintentionally brush against Little Loren's Calamity Flame, renew the Blazing Wing's enhancement, and then look for a chance to give Nakarkos a vicious hit like that.
As the battle continued to deepen, Little Loren discovered that Nakarkos was actually not that frightening. Already ten years old, his strength had made great leaps over these years. He was no longer a hatchling that Nakarkos could easily take down with a single lightning net.
With Darren's restraint as well—one man and one dragon, one in front and one behind, one in the high sky and one on the ground—they forced Nakarkos into an immense headache.
It felt like he could not deal with either one first!
The monster bones that most threatened Little Loren—those with lightning-element energy—had also been completely consumed over the day-and-night battle. What remained were either Glavenus bones or those of a Anjanath-like monster, which had even less high-altitude deterrent power.
And the ink-mass mucus spray that did not use elemental energy attacks was useless as well, because its projectile speed was far too slow.
This feeling of being unable to hit them, and unable to kill them, was an exaggerated torture on Nakarkos's mind.
The more it could not hit them, the angrier it became; the angrier it became, the more patternless its attacks were, pointlessly creating openings for Darren and Little Loren to attack.
After Aiden ran out of stamina and chose to withdraw, only two dragons and one man remained on the battlefield.
If not for the dignity of being at the absolute apex of the ecological niche pressing on Nakarkos's heart, it truly would already have had the thought of retreating.
No one wants to fight such a stifling battle!!
"Roar?"
On the other side of the cliff, the Flame Rathalos let out an inquiring roar toward Aki.
Given Nakarkos's current condition, if they launched a surprise attack, there was a high probability that they could severely injure it within a short time. If they focused their attacks, they could even force Nakarkos onto the coastal area, thereby greatly eliminating the possibility of its escape.
Moreover, once they made a move, the Lunastra and Kirin—who were likewise hidden in the shadows, seeking an opportunity to deliver a fatal blow—would certainly not continue to stand by and watch.
That's right. The prolonged battle in the Dragonbone Graveyard had long since alerted Lunastra and Kirin.
It was just that they had likely also realized this was an excellent opportunity to completely kill Nakarkos, so they concealed their auras and lay in ambush nearby, waiting for the hunters to whittle down Nakarkos's vitality while they searched for the optimal moment to move in and finish it off.
If these Elder Dragons had possessed any sense of morality or distinction between good and evil, they really ought to thank the Research Commission. After all, if the hunters had not forced Nakarkos into fighting at full power, they would not have been able to lurk at such close range and would have been detected by Nakarkos long ago.
"Roar~" (Wait a little longer!)
Aki stared intently at Nakarkos, completely releasing her perception and analyzing its true current state based on its various behaviors.
At present, Nakarkos still had no intention of retreating, and Darren and Little Loren still had sufficient stamina to inflict considerable damage on it.
Therefore, they could wait a bit longer!
Sharing the same line of thought as Aki, Lunastra and Kirin thought the same way.
However, what they did not expect was that this wait would last another entire day.
And then—the battle on the battlefield actually ended!
After Little Loren enveloped himself in Calamity Flames and dove down from the sky, smashing into Nakarkos and shattering the Anjanath monster bones on its mimic tentacles, Nakarkos did not, for a long time, retract its tentacles back into the sea of bones to pull out new remains.
Disgusting blue mucus flowed over the pitch-black mimic tentacles, which simply faced off using the tentacle bodies themselves.
Moreover, at this moment, both mimic tentacles were covered in wounds, each bearing injuries so deep that bone was visible.
It was not that there were no other monster bones within the Dragonbone Graveyard, but those that Nakarkos had enhanced had already been completely consumed.
At this point, amid its rage, Nakarkos also felt a trace of fear.
Its sixth sense was sounding a frantic warning. It seemed to have realized something—over all these years, those four Elder Dragons had repeatedly come to harass it, constantly keeping the quantity of its mimic bones at a precariously low level, likely all for the sake of this very day!
As an Elder Dragon hated by the world, there was nothing that understood the world's malice toward them better than they themselves!
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