Drawing a few deep breaths of fresh air, Logan dove back down, entered the dust cloud, and, looking at the Elder's Recess in the distance reflecting multicolored light within the red fireglow, judged his position.
With a rush of wind, he flew quickly toward the basalt zone on the other side of the Elder's Recess.
Suddenly, from the volcanic crater below came a howl that mixed anger with fear.
Logan, in mid-flight, cast a casual glance; his superhuman eyesight instantly locked onto the direction of the sound.
He saw that the Tigrex which had run out of the Everstream ahead of him just now was, at this moment, like a little chick, its neck grabbed by a big black hedgehog.
The strength the Tigrex prided itself on seemed to have lost its effect. Its powerful forelimbs were frantically pounding on Nergigante's body; apart from getting its hands covered in blood from those black spikes and snapping a few spikes that were at poor angles, it could not cause any real damage to Nergigante's burly, mountain-like frame.
With Nergigante's heavy slap, the Tigrex that had been smashed into the ground had its neck snap on the spot; the spikes on Nergigante's arm drove deep into the Tigrex's neck, pierced through the blood vessels, and a large amount of blood sprayed out.
The pitiable Tigrex had finally struggled out of the Everstream with great difficulty; before it could enjoy much of the joy of surviving a disaster, it became Nergigante's self-pickup meal.
Up in the sky, although it was strange why Nergigante would appear here rather than in the Elder's Recess playing hide-and-seek with the Elder Dragons, Logan had no interest in thinking about it at this moment and still flew quietly overhead.
But just as Nergigante was preparing to have a good meal, its nose suddenly twitched; the next second it lifted its head and locked onto Logan, who was flying off in the sky into the distance.
Having just come out of the Everstream, Logan naturally still carried some life energy that had not been fully absorbed; it was this that allowed Nergigante, even with Logan suppressing his aura, to precisely capture Logan's trail.
"Brother, you smell even better!!"
In Nergigante's perception, Logan at this moment was irresistibly attractive to a dragon; that surging life energy made the Tigrex under its claws immediately lose its appeal.
After all, that was a ready-to-eat dragon; even though it knew deep down it could not catch Logan, was very likely to be kited, and might even suffer a little injury, Nergigante still found it hard to restrain itself.
"Give it a try? I'll just give it a try!!"
Like a demon's whisper, this thought welled up in Nergigante's mind.
But its reason was reminding it that to waste the already not-much energy on a target it certainly could not catch was a very bad bargain.
The two impulses kept struggling in its mind.
Just as it was about to lose control, Logan's sixth sense in the sky suddenly perceived great malice.
This feeling was like a vicious dog behind him about to catch up.
With a chill, Gale Wings activated, and Logan's figure, driven by the gale, shot out like a shell.
The wavering Nergigante then saw Logan's speed surge in an instant; with a bang he broke the sound barrier, turned into a streak of light, and quickly disappeared into the clouds.
Fine, no need to hesitate—at this speed, even if Nergigante grew another pair of wings, it still might not be able to catch up.
"I hate those fast-flying bastards! Can't there be a big one without wings for once!!"
Nergigante was extremely irritated, pounding the Tigrex's corpse with his forelimbs to vent his anger.
Perhaps the boss of nature heard Nergigante's inner voice. Feeling pity for this big black hedgehog who had managed only one good meal in so many years, It chose to grant his wish.
At the exit of the Everstream, a pair of massive, curved ram horns slowly emerged. Amid crisp metallic clanging sounds, a colossal figure, its entire body gleaming with gold and radiant like a wealthy matron among dragons, strolled out from the somewhat narrow cave mouth.
That vast life energy was like a beacon in the night—so dazzling, so resplendent.
In an instant, it caught Nergigante's gaze.
A body length of 45 meters, an unrestrained aura, and life energy as boundless as the sea.
If he could eat it—no! Even if he could only eat half—perhaps that alone would be enough for Nergigante to fulfill three to four reproduction cycles!!
Shameful tears of excitement trickled from Nergigante's mouth. Though he knew that an Elder Dragon possessing such an ocean of life energy, and not concealing it in the slightest, was certainly not a good sort, Nergigante simply couldn't hold back!!
These past days, Elder Dragons had escaped one after another from under his claws; that feeling of seeing yet never catching had driven him nearly insane.
Now, finally encountering one that didn't run—and indeed, one that had no wings and couldn't escape—how could Nergigante not be thrilled?
All the spikes across his body grew madly; under the catalysis of life energy, the regenerative shell exerted its full power, and the spikes quickly turned from white to black. His whole body tensed as his wings flapped rapidly, and with eyes bloodshot, he charged toward the massive figure in the distance!!
Kulve Taroth, known as the Mother Goddess of Gold, had spent these years tidying up several unsuitable leyline branches within the Everstream, stabilizing the energy supply in parts of the New World. For once, she had come out from underground to breathe some fresh air.
Only to see a little black thing, 20 meters long, rushing toward her with malice.
Without the slightest hesitation, the golden battle skirt that resembled armor flared outward as Kulve Taroth entered her combat stance.
Just right—after so many years underground, she was feeling rather stifled and needed to stretch her body properly.
...
Very few creatures knew about the battle between Nergigante and Kulve Taroth, and the commotion it caused was not large.
Apart from some monsters discovering that the volcanic crater connected to the Everstream's exit had been forcibly melted halfway and turned into an outflow of running lava, there were no other problems.
But the Elder Dragons of the Elder's Recess clearly knew a bit more.
Last night's outpouring of such a vast energy startled quite a few Elder Dragons. That level of energy had obviously already surpassed the strength a normal Elder Dragon should possess. A similar feeling had last occurred years ago, when that irritable Dalamadur had forcibly smashed open a gaping breach in the outer rim of the Elder's Recess.
Just as the Elder Dragons were curious why a monster of that tier would suddenly erupt, some Elder Dragons that were closer saw that the always headlong, overbearing Nergigante of the Elder's Recess actually carried burns that even its regenerative ability had not restored in the first instant, along with a miserable state of extensive bodily damage.
It wobbled and fell from high above into the depths of the Elder's Recess, and for a long time afterward there was no news of this fellow.
To be able to injure Nergigante to this extent proved that the opponent Nergigante faced this time was likely not inferior even to those few Arch-Tempered Elder Dragons that hole up within the Elder's Recess.
In fact, those Elder Dragons truly had not guessed wrong.
As a fully intact, full-state Kulve Taroth, although she could only be considered mid-tier among Elder Dragons at the High-tier, her strength still possessed an absolute gulf from ordinary Elder Dragons.
Whether it was the powerful physique that could freely burrow through the underground and withstand all kinds of pressure; the battle skirt resembling gold, possessing absolute defensive power, smelted at high temperatures by attracting various subterranean metals; or the ultra-high-temperature heat wave whose outward display took the form of flame, yet in reality far exceeded the temperature of flame, able to willfully burn away everything before her and turn it into magma, used by Kulve Taroth to comb the Everstream—
None of these were things Nergigante could possibly "bump into" and get away with.
The instantaneous, wide-area explosive lethality of that ultra-high-temperature heat wave was enough to burst through the instant-recovery limit of Nergigante's regenerative ability, thereby achieving, in the true sense, grievous injury to it.
It can be said that if that battle had not taken place at a volcanic crater, and if Kulve Taroth had not lacked wings and been unable to fly—so that with one careless moment Nergigante, after reacting, flew up into the sky—then that big black hedgehog would likely already have become a tasty meal for the Mother Goddess of Gold.
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