Unable to find an outlet for his anger, Logan once again shifted his gaze to Nakarkos, and only then did he realize what their battle had done to this Dragon Graveyard.
In the battle just now, even though he still had trump cards he had not played, the intensity still did not allow Logan to be distracted; if he had not beforehand settled on his fighting style and objectives, this fight would probably long since have devolved into a battle to the death.
At this moment, that Ivory Lagiacrus whose body was far larger than a normal individual, just like that Zinogre, had its entire body unleashing torrents of electricity as it pushed through Nakarkos's attacks and lunged up to Nakarkos. However, because of the difference in their energy tiers, its defenses were shattered by Nakarkos in less than two exchanges, and one tentacle after another wrapped tightly around it.
A great amount of blue liquid, together with Dragon-element energy, continuously poured into the other's body, while two mimicry tentacles kept releasing energy attacks.
Apart from lashing Nakarkos's main body hard with its tail one last time, the Ivory Lagiacrus was then dragged into the sea of bones by Nakarkos with no strength left to fight back.
At this point, even Logan himself no longer knew what those two things had come here for.
Although they were neither ordinary Ivory Lagiacrus nor ordinary Zinogre, their strength still had not reached the level where they could take part in the battle between Logan's side and Nakarkos.
Logan could understand attacking an Elder Dragon out of anger or for the sake of one's living environment; after all, he himself had once done the same.
But looking at it now, aside from helping Nakarkos replenish the high-grade monster bones it had lost to consecutive battles, he really could not think of any other purpose to their actions.
Watching as Nakarkos disengaged from the fight, dove deep into the sea of bones, and began to "feed," and seeing the state of the Dragon Graveyard now match the outcome he had anticipated, Logan, who understood the intent of nature's will, also understood that, having reached this degree, they were already hovering at the edge of the bottom line.
He immediately beat a retreat, let out a low roar toward Aki, and the two of them flew up into the sky and withdrew.
Seeing this, the Admiral and Little Loren, who had been watching the battle, also hurried to leave; this fight had broadened Little Loren's horizons and had also allowed the Admiral to gather quite a lot of information on Nakarkos, so it could be considered a pretty good harvest for both of them.
Only a certain Nakarkos, after finally killing the Ivory Lagiacrus completely and using blue mucus to wrap it in a layer of corrosive coating on the bottom of the Dragon Graveyard, then burst out again, intending to continue fighting for another three hundred rounds, only to be greeted by nothing but the corpse of a Zinogre and a cloudless moonlit night.
As for those two opponents, they had long since vanished without a trace.
Staring at his own precarious habitat, and making a rough calculation of the losses from this battle, the two mimicry tentacles suddenly went rigid and stopped moving, while the main body—like a giant squid—gasped for breath in great gulps.
At this moment, after this battle, his Dragon Graveyard as a whole had reached a highly awkward tipping point.
Although he could still maintain combat power that surpassed that of ordinary Elder Dragons, those ordinary bones that would shatter at the slightest touch would have to be accumulated all over again.
It was like a house where all the walls had collapsed, but the foundation and the main support pillars were still there.
Like a chicken bone—tasteless to eat, yet a pity to throw away~
Building the Dragon Graveyard was like starting a business. Nakarkos really did not want to abandon the conditions he already had and then, helplessly, go fight Lagiacrus for food. So even though he knew the situation of the Dragon Graveyard had already become this bad, after struggling with it hard for a while, he ultimately still had no choice but to drag Zinogre's corpse and dive back into the sea of bones once more.
After this battle, the entire Ancient Forest was like a chain of dominoes: because of disturbances in the jungle swamp's vein-branch networks, the already-chaotic territorial slaughter escalated again.
And this time, even the Seregios packs in the Ancient Tree region could no longer intercept every single monster that had migrated in from elsewhere. The boundary of the Ancient Tree region was like a plastic bag full of water that had been forcibly torn open; large numbers of monsters poured in without end through that tear into the already biologically saturated Ancient Tree region, and launched round after round of slaughter against the native inhabitants of the Ancient Tree region.
There was no denying it: under the influence of Logan tirelessly acting as the sun for so many years, the Ancient Tree region had abundant species, and every monster was well-fed and robust. In addition, as a node region of the Everstream, the Ancient Tree region's life energy was filtered a second time by the Ancient Tree and became easier to absorb, which naturally made monsters stronger than those in other regions.
But this time, far too many monsters had come, and the impact was comparable to the disturbance once caused by Chameleos back then.
On top of that, aside from the Ancient Tree Fire Wyverns and a handful of other monster groups that acted in packs, most of the rest fought alone, so for a time the slaughter on both sides was evenly matched.
The Ancient Tree research base repeatedly dispatched large numbers of hunters to investigate, striving to ease the local ecological situation within a limited scope.
But under a trend like this, unless Nakarkos was dealt with, this turmoil would not stop—enough monsters would have to die for the Ancient Forest to complete a new cycle.
This turmoil was not much of an issue for Logan and Aki. Standing at a certain height meant thinking at that level, and besides, the Ancient Tree's current defensive setup was enough to give even Logan a headache just looking at it—there were two newly developed activatable Dragonators alone.
Although this version of the Dragonator was somewhat outdated and posed no great threat to ordinary Elder Dragons, for non–Elder Dragon creatures its deterrent power was frankly excessive.
Wasn't it obvious that ever since the Dragonators were deployed, even the number of times Ahtal-Ka came to the Ancient Tree to trade new materials had dropped?
Taking one or two hits like that, even something with high attack and defense but low vitality would not have it easy.
With defenses like these, the Ancient Tree Fire Wyvern group had ample room to fall back. There might be Fire Wyverns that died in this chaos, but that level of loss was nowhere near enough to seriously damage the Ancient Tree Fire Wyvern group as a whole.
At this moment, Logan and Aki had already been suppressing their presence and keeping watch on the Dragon Graveyard for several days.
Every day, they watched Nakarkos diligently go out along the waterways to hunt, then drag back large quantities of bones to reinforce his Dragon Graveyard anew.
After recovering from their injuries, Lunastra and Kirin had also come by several times. Each time, however, they "just happened" to detect the presence of Logan and Aki, while Nakarkos, the intended target, also "happened" to be out hunting. Unwilling to provoke a conflict, they could only withdraw in frustration.
This phenomenon allowed Logan to confirm some of his earlier conjectures.
This time, although Logan had not been summoned, by substituting for Lunastra and Kirin to weaken Nakarkos to a certain extent and keep his strength within a controllable range, there were no longer any incidents of being "intercepted."
Moreover, once Kirin and Lunastra joined in, the current Nakarkos would not be a match for four Elder Dragons acting together with a shared purpose, and would very likely be killed on the spot.
As a result, Logan and Aki—who had inserted themselves midway—ended up becoming the ones who "intercepted" Lunastra and Kirin instead.
This series of maneuvers made Logan realize that nature's will was like a cold-blooded boss who cared only about results and not the process. As long as the outcome did not change, it truly did not care about how it was achieved.
With this understanding, the primary objective of Logan's trip was fully achieved.
In the future, when nature's will, that boss, began harvesting those major energy holders of the New World, Logan could finally rest assured about creating opportunities to take a share for himself.
Having sorted this out, Logan stopped acting as an unpaid laborer and called for the Admiral and the others to head back.
As they left the swamp jungle, Little Loren turned back and took a long, deep look at the Dragon Graveyard hidden beneath the cliffs and shrouded in mist, as if trying to etch it firmly into his memory.
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