"It... it even makes weapons for itself?" Altaïr murmured from their hiding place, disbelief thick in his voice.
Earlier, when the Elderfrost Gammoth had coiled its long trunk around a giant tree and stripped away the branches and leaves, he had assumed it was simply feeding.
Now it seemed more likely that the Elderfrost Gammoth had been using that method to make its "wooden club" straighter and easier to wield.
Whether it had prepared the weapon deliberately or fashioned it by chance, the Elderfrost's strike had dealt massive damage to the Grimclaw Tigrex.
More importantly, it had thrown the Grimclaw Tigrex off its body and seized back the initiative.
As the Elderfrost Gammoth thundered toward it, intent on crushing it underfoot, the Grimclaw Tigrex planted its forelimbs and scrambled upright after tumbling awkwardly across the ground.
The difference in their size was immense, and the Elderfrost might have weighed ten times as much. If those massive, pillar-like hooves trampled the Grimclaw Tigrex, even its resilient body would suffer torn muscles and shattered bones.
Altaïr had expected the Grimclaw Tigrex to exploit its superior speed and agility to avoid the onslaught. Instead, the beast faced the charging Elderfrost Gammoth head-on and unleashed a frenzied, thunderous roar.
Bloody light flared in its already crimson eyes, and red-hot patterns spread across much of its body, especially its head, neck, and foreclaws.
To the Grimclaw Tigrex, the Gammoth was merely an unusually large piece of prey. Yet its ambush had failed, and it had taken a considerable blow. How could a creature so violent and proud endure such humiliation?
The Grimclaw Tigrex entered an enraged state almost instantly.
Its heart pumped furiously, driving searing blood through its body in a violent torrent. Its already overdeveloped, almost deformed foreclaws swelled even further, engorged with blood, while a faint dark-red glow suffused its chest.
Hidden in the shadows, Altaïr watched the Grimclaw Tigrex's every move. His primary reason for volunteering for this quest had indeed been his deep concern for his two teachers, but there was another reason he had not mentioned.
He wanted to observe the Grimclaw Tigrex with his own eyes.
Every human and Monster had distinctive movement patterns.
Did it prefer biting or clawing? Did it swing its left claw more often or its right? When closing the distance, did it favor a charge or a leaping pounce? And what about the powerful techniques unique to particular individuals?
Fine details about such combat habits were difficult to convey accurately through a verbal account. Fighting the target directly a few times was the most straightforward way to understand them.
The problem was that Altaïr was in no position to fight the Grimclaw Tigrex. Doing so now would be suicide.
Watching it fight firsthand was the next best way to learn.
Knowing an opponent's favored techniques in advance would allow him to devise specific countermeasures. In a future battle, those preparations might grant him an advantage decisive enough to determine the outcome.
Under the Hunters' watchful eyes, the Grimclaw Tigrex drove its talons deep into the ground and ripped them violently forward and upward.
Altaïr knew this move all too well.
Ordinary Tigrex could rip stones from the earth and hurl them at their opponents. Brute Tigrex could do the same, and there was no reason a special individual such as the Grimclaw Tigrex could not.
Admittedly, the move was more than powerful enough against an opponent the size of a Hunter, but could it really stop a charging Elderfrost Gammoth...?
The thought had barely crossed his mind when a frozen boulder eight or nine meters across, surely heavier than the Grimclaw Tigrex itself, tore free of the ground and hurtled toward the charging Elderfrost Gammoth.
What in the world was that?!
Altaïr's eyes widened.
Beside that mountain of a boulder, the stones hurled by ordinary Tigrex and even Brute Tigrex looked like mere pebbles...
Faced with the oncoming boulder, the Elderfrost Gammoth did not slow down. It had no time to.
It lowered its head slightly, then snapped it upward with a tremendous heave.
The boulder was massive enough to flatten a Yian Kut-Ku into paste, yet the thick bone plating on the Gammoth's forehead and its two curved tusks knocked it aside like a ball. The frozen mass smashed into the ground and shattered, its fragments toppling several giant sequoias.
The Elderfrost Gammoth had neutralized the Grimclaw Tigrex's boulder assault, but the impact inevitably checked its charge.
The Grimclaw Tigrex seized that split-second opening. As the boulder blocked the Gammoth's forward view, it lunged.
Almost the instant the Gammoth tossed the boulder aside, the Grimclaw Tigrex landed directly in front of it.
Its bulging azure foreclaws clamped onto the Gammoth's two giant tusks, one on either side, while its hind claws dug into the ground and gouged two deep furrows through the rock-hard frozen earth.
"Graaaaooowwr!!"
Roaring madly, the Grimclaw Tigrex strained against the Elderfrost Gammoth, a creature several times its size and weight, in an attempt to halt the charging behemoth.
"Bwooonnng!!!" Locked in the struggle with the Grimclaw Tigrex, the Elderfrost Gammoth answered with an enraged bellow of its own.
Unlike carnivorous Monsters, it possessed no sharp fangs or claws, but its unparalleled size and sheer muscle mass gave it strength that ordinary Monsters could never match.
In a contest of raw power, even the Grimclaw Tigrex was no match for the Elderfrost Gammoth. It slid steadily backward under the behemoth's advance.
The Grimclaw Tigrex, however, clearly had no intention of competing with the Elderfrost Gammoth in brute strength.
From the moment the Elderfrost charged after knocking it to the ground to the instant they locked together in this contest of strength, the Grimclaw Tigrex had successfully overcome the disadvantage caused by its initial carelessness.
Still bracing both claws against the Elderfrost's tusks, the Grimclaw Tigrex opened its terrifying jaws and snapped at the Gammoth's long trunk with crushing force.
It knew that this was the softest part of the Gammoth's body.
Those jaws had bitten the trunks off more than one Gammoth, leaving them to bleed to death in a frenzy of excruciating pain.
Yet it had still underestimated this aged Gammoth's combat experience.
The instant it opened its jaws to bite, the Elderfrost Gammoth lowered its head and blocked the Grimclaw Tigrex's gaping maw with the thick bone armor covering its forehead and nasal bridge.
The Grimclaw Tigrex's fangs could bite clean through granite, but now they were trapped. It snapped its jaws several times in succession yet failed to bite through the cracked, grayish-yellow bone plate.
Sensing danger, the Grimclaw Tigrex immediately changed the angle of its bite and tried to tear into the soft flesh beneath the Gammoth's nasal bridge, where no bone armor protected it.
The Elderfrost Gammoth's counterattack came at that very moment.
It lacked the Grimclaw Tigrex's dexterous limbs, but it had a weapon of its own. Its trunk, composed almost entirely of muscle, wrapped around the Grimclaw Tigrex's waist and lifted it off the ground.
The Elderfrost immediately unleashed another long roar and accelerated, carrying the Grimclaw Tigrex pinned in front of it as it slammed into a giant snow cedar at least four or five meters thick.
The colossal cedar crashed down amid the Elderfrost Gammoth's roar and the Grimclaw Tigrex's howl of agony.
Blood sprayed from the Grimclaw Tigrex's mouth and nose.
The impact had dealt it a serious blow and might even have broken several bones.
But it refused to retreat. Its wounds and searing pain only inflamed its ferocity further.
Since the Gammoth already had it trapped in its trunk, the Grimclaw Tigrex simply released its grip on the tusks and began furiously clawing and biting the trunk coiled around its body.
The portions of the trunk unprotected by bone plating could not withstand the Grimclaw Tigrex's razor-sharp claws and teeth. In only two or three seconds, it tore several enormous, blood-drenched gashes into the trunk.
Its trunk grievously wounded, the Elderfrost Gammoth bellowed in pain, swung its huge head, and flung the Grimclaw Tigrex aside.
The two Monsters were now dozens of meters apart, facing each other in a wary standoff.
The Elderfrost Gammoth suddenly raised its trunk and inhaled deeply. Its tremendous lung capacity drew in a violent torrent of air that swept ice and snow back toward it.
The ice and snow clung to its fur and trunk, forming thicker ice armor bristling with sharp icicles, a formidable blend of offense and defense.
The Grimclaw Tigrex dug all four limbs into the ground, resisting the gale that threatened to drag it toward the Elderfrost Gammoth.
The instant the wind weakened slightly, it used the remaining pull to spring forward and slammed its azure foreclaws into the ground before the Elderfrost Gammoth.
Had it missed?
As if mocking the thought that had surfaced in Altaïr's mind, the ground beyond those giant claws erupted. A devastating shockwave tore through layer after layer of frozen earth and raced toward the Elderfrost Gammoth.
Altaïr's body went rigid.
That was... fighting spirit?!
P.S. Grimclaw Tigrex's signature attack is a claw slam that strikes the ground and erupts after a brief delay. Tigrex do not normally possess elemental attacks, so the story interprets this effect as an application of fighting spirit.
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Warhammer: Wait, Do I Have to Sit on the Golden Throne Too? is also available here on Webnovel. Thank you for reading.