Amid the thunderclaps, rain poured down, washing away the last traces of pheromone gas from Clawdia and Dango.
The scent had completely lost its hold on Kuarusepu, but the Monster's attention remained fixed on Clawdia.
Her earlier attacks on its head and eyes had thoroughly enraged the giant beast. Now, the only thought left in its mind was to crush the irritating little creature before it!
However, Clawdia's agility kept her well beyond its reach. A massive claw wreathed in lightning came crashing down, only to strike empty ground once again.
She darted around like a flea, calmly evading the Monster's attacks.
Its blows could split rock and shatter mountains, which certainly looked frightening, but it was not even as fast as the mechanical beast controlled by the Meowcenaries' Felyne Instructor.
You're never touching me, meow!
"ROAR!" Its string of failed attacks only fueled Kuarusepu's fury.
It raised its head high, then slammed its conical skull hard into the ground.
Just as the Felyne and the approaching Hunter thought it was about to burrow underground, Kuarusepu used its embedded head as a pivot. It stretched its slender, thirty-meter-long body to its full length and swept it around in a complete circle like a cracking whip.
The attack covered an astonishing area. Isis was immensely grateful that she had not been fast enough to enter Kuarusepu's range yet. Its enormous tail, crackling with lightning, swept past more than ten meters ahead of her, and the shriek of displaced air made her skin crawl.
Clawdia narrowed her eyes.
At last, this was an attack worthy of the name. As Kuarusepu's massive tail came sweeping toward her, she sprang into the air and spun like a high-speed rotor, evading the blow while closing the distance.
The instant Kuarusepu pulled its head out of the ground, she pounced on it and unleashed another frenzy of wild slashes.
"ROOOOAR!!" Kuarusepu thrashed its head in frustration.
It was gradually realizing that crushing this flea-like creature with physical attacks would not be easy. Fortunately, the lightning it had absorbed gave it more options.
Kuarusepu shook its body violently, dislodging seven or eight crystal prisms over a meter long and scattering them across the ground around it.
Then its body, or more precisely, the crystal prisms covering it, began to blaze with the same blue electrical light as the thunderbolts overhead.
"Watch out!"
"Burrow!"
Alma and Isis, watching from a distance, shouted at the same time.
Whatever Alma's warning might have meant, Clawdia always obeyed Isis's commands without a second thought. She immediately broke off her attack, plunged her forepaws into the soil, and vanished underground after only a few quick strokes.
At the same time, the crystal prisms scattered around Kuarusepu erupted with blinding electrical light.
The thunder in the sky, the scattered prisms, and Kuarusepu's lightning-wreathed body combined to form a vast electrical field.
Amid a harsh crackle, a chaotic web of electrical arcs covered more than a thousand square meters around Kuarusepu.
Even fifty meters away, the stray charge left Isis's entire body tingling and numb.
She was wearing the Lagiacrus Armor Set, which offered excellent thunder resistance. Had she still been using the Zamtrios Z Armor Set with its terrible resistance to lightning, even the faintest aftershock might have paralyzed her.
"Clawdia!" Isis called out anxiously.
Clawdia did not respond right away. Although she had burrowed underground in time, there was no guarantee that she had escaped such a powerful, wide-ranging electrical discharge unscathed.
Burrowing was also one of Kuarusepu's specialties. When it seemed ready to dig after Clawdia and force her back to the surface, Isis charged forward without hesitation and pulled the shelling trigger.
Her Gunlance roared, lifting her feet off the ground and propelling her straight toward Kuarusepu as it prepared to burrow.
The sight left even Alma stunned. Could Gunlance users actually fly?
In the blink of an eye, Isis reached Kuarusepu's head. Carrying the momentum of Blast Dash into a ferocious swing, she knocked its head aside and interrupted its attempt to burrow.
Isis landed and quickly steadied herself. She raised her Gunlance and unleashed a Full Burst, blasting Kuarusepu backward once again.
She spun the Gunlance through a Quick Reload, raised her Large Shield, and continued forward like an indefatigable war chariot.
A little farther away, Alma raised her telescope. Peering through the dense curtain of rain, she closely observed the Kuarusepu locked in combat with the Hunter.
Absorbing the lightning had clearly increased Kuarusepu's offensive power, but it had not erased the creature's natural weakness to fire.
Moreover, the electrical arcs only crackled and leaped between the crystal prisms covering its body without ever truly entering Kuarusepu itself. That supported the scholars' hypothesis.
Otherwise, how could lightning-element attacks be one of Kuarusepu's weaknesses?
In other words, Kuarusepu and its crystal prisms could be treated as separate entities.
At least, once the prisms fell from Kuarusepu's body, they were no longer connected to it in any meaningful way.
Its previous wide-ranging discharge had not been Kuarusepu consciously controlling the fallen prisms. Instead, by exploiting the attraction between electrical charges, it had forcibly released the energy stored within them all at once.
If that was true...
In the head-on clash with the Monster, the Hunter once again seized the initiative.
The stray arcs escaping from Kuarusepu's body could not penetrate the triple protection of the Thunderproof Mantle, the Glavenus Large Shield, and the Lagiacrus Armor Set to harm Isis directly.
Kuarusepu's stamina and strength had also declined noticeably since the beginning of the fight.
The deep, bleeding wounds across its chest and abdomen, some severe enough to expose its internal organs, were no joke. The downpour might have brought thunder, but it was also accelerating the creature's exhaustion.
Kuarusepu had clearly realized this as well.
Ordinary bites and claw swipes were useless against the opponent before it. It had to unleash a more powerful attack.
Kuarusepu shook its body again, scattering its energy-saturated crystal prisms across the surrounding ground.
Realizing that Kuarusepu was preparing another wide-ranging electrical discharge, Isis started to retreat. She could no longer escape the attack's entire range, but putting more distance between them might at least lessen its impact.
Just then, Alma shouted, "Destroy those crystal pillars on the ground!"
Isis stopped in her tracks.
Since it was already too late to evade the attack, she might as well try Alma's idea.
Isis swept her Gunlance sideways while repeatedly pulling the trigger.
"Boom! Boom!"
A storm of spreading shrapnel tore into the crystal prisms like driving rain, pockmarking their once-smooth surfaces with countless craters.
Spiderweb cracks raced across them. The highly activated prisms glowed brighter and brighter until, a second later, they exploded like primed bombs and hurled wild electrical arcs in every direction.
Once the magazine was empty, Isis immediately lowered her center of gravity, covered herself with the Large Shield, and assumed a defensive stance. The current swept over her.
Even with three layers of protection, she still felt the distinctive, convulsing agony of an electric shock.
She was injured, but it was still far better than allowing Kuarusepu to finish preparing an attack that combined the electricity in its own crystals with the thunder overhead.
Most importantly, the crystals still attached to Kuarusepu were already discharging. They could not absorb the arcs released when the Hunter prematurely detonated the pillars scattered across the ground.
The arcs passed straight through Kuarusepu's mineral scales, rich in metallic ores, and invaded its body.
"GRAOOOOH!!"
Kuarusepu howled in agony, convulsed from head to tail, and toppled to the ground.