With a mix of apprehension and excitement, Asterion cautiously explored the surroundings, centering on the exit of the tunnel he had dug himself.
After the initial excitement faded, Asterion ruled out the conjecture that there were any unknown monsters nearby. After all, the location he chose for digging the tunnel was in the southwest direction of the Wildspire Waste, relatively close to Astera.
If there really were some unknown monster inhabiting this place year-round, the hunters of the Fifth Fleet should have discovered something when exploring deep into the forest.
He didn't plan to find a giant tree nearby to serve as a new nest; this place was simply too close to the tunnel exit. Even though he had opened this path himself, it would inevitably become a route for various creatures traveling between the two regions in the future.
Asterion didn't want to go out for a stroll, eat an Elder Dragon, and come back only to find his home demolished by some hyperactive dragon. It wasn't like he was rushing to catch a subway; being a bit remote was fine.
Considering that he would inevitably evolve into a dragon capable of flight in the future, mimicking those Flying Wyverns and placing his nest at the top of a giant tree might be a good choice. That way, the Bazelgeuse brothers, who weren't great at flying, could land and take off freely without getting half-stuck in the dense trees.
To be honest, even though he had been leaving notches on both sides with his sword-tail as trail markers along the way, Asterion was having a hard time recognizing his direction. The last time he felt this way was in the Rotten Vale.
The Ancient Forest didn't just contain a forest; it also held massive amounts of vine-like plants and flora Asterion couldn't name or classify. Under the influence of bioenergy, these vines grew exceptionally thick and sturdy—the long and thick kind.
They coiled around the surface of the trees, connecting one giant tree to another, even forming natural bridges.
Asterion tried jumping forcefully on one of these vine bridges a few times. Its load-bearing capacity was quite "shocking for a dragon"; it only swayed slightly without breaking. It was exceptionally tough.
He was having trouble distinguishing where the ground was. His eyes were filled with trees and vines, or moss covering bark and rocks. He felt as if he had already left the ground and was walking on a platform built of giant wood and vines, but he wasn't entirely sure.
He also didn't know how the giant tree he was currently walking on ranked in height within the entire Ancient Forest region. Asterion discovered old scales and claw marks on the wide bark that seemed to have been left by a scraping Rathalos. Judging by the traces, they looked quite fresh, so he continued to trek upward.
He had noticed it earlier: scorch marks appeared on the surface of some vines and moss. The new moss hadn't yet covered the dead patches. This area was likely the territory of a certain Rathalos, so looking around, he could find many traces left by battles.
It was just that there were a bit too many battle traces, like mold spots; every now and then, he would see one or two charred marks.
And when Asterion turned a corner around the tree, he abruptly saw a small patch of dead trees—dead trees, how novel. In the treasure land that was the Ancient Forest, this was a rare term.
A great battle had obviously occurred here. These dead trees seemed to have been smashed directly into segments by some giant beast and then scorched by flames.
Asterion walked over and inspected them carefully. Detective Glavenus was online again. The battle didn't seem to have happened long ago because the charred wood looked damp, yet no fungi or moss had grown on it.
Theoretically, wood burned in this high-temperature, humid environment was the best seedbed for fungal growth.
The fire caused by the battle between monsters didn't seem to have spread. The abundant moisture in the Ancient Forest made things like forest fires very difficult to occur. Out of instinct, monsters would also actively extinguish flames that might lead to the destruction of their own living environment.
Only these small, ungrown trees would get snapped or burned. When Asterion first stepped into the Ancient Forest, he had already tried breathing fire. He could ignite weeds that were half a person high, and he could ignite small trees about his own height.
But no matter what, he couldn't ignite those giant trees that allowed him to walk on their branches, whose trunks were thick enough to rival his own body length.
Compared to monsters, these giant trees could be said to be soaked directly in bioenergy year after year. Their root systems might have already taken root deep in the earth's veins.
Under the accumulation of bioenergy over the years, these giant trees perhaps couldn't even be called trees anymore. Hmm... Arch-Tempered Wood?
Their nature seemed to have changed. They were trees, but the wood quality was a bit like stone. When Asterion continuously breathed fire at a single point for a few minutes, a pit was burned into it.
Flames didn't even ignite; only a ring of bright red light appeared at the edges, radiating heat. As the tree sap flowed and secreted, even that burning state was quickly extinguished, leaving only a pit with coagulated sap.
After drying, knocking on it produced a sound like stone—clang clang.
This kind of thing was hard to imagine in the Wildspire Waste. The trees in the Wildspire Waste were like dry wood meeting a raging fire; once touched by flame, they wouldn't stop burning until they were completely consumed.
It was time to test the mettle of the local apex.
The existence of this battlefield meant there was an ecological ruler in this area, a victor who had competed in the Ancient Forest—a place no different from a jar of venomous insects.
How should he put it? A little nervous, a little expectant, and a little shy... It reminded Asterion of his first time.
But before he could find the path to the top of the giant tree beside him, Asterion heard a sharp and furious roar!
"ROAR-HA!!!"
Asterion's right ear only heard a huff of breath. Before he could turn his head to see clearly which dragon it was, a ball of fire smashed down onto his face and body—it literally smashed. The impact was like walking in a canyon and being hit by a giant boulder falling from the summit. The scorching high temperature instantly carbonized the moss on the bark beside Asterion.
The local apex seemed to have found him first. After all, an excellent dragon like Asterion was as conspicuous as a firefly in the dark. The scent he scattered, his very existence, signaled a powerful predator.
Asterion—he felt like he had run into some kind of mad dragon.
The kind that wasn't joking around.
What was spewed at him was a continuous pillar of fire, not a fireball. It was a sticky flame, like the difference between ordinary fire and burning gasoline; the latter would continuously adhere to surfaces and burn, impossible to extinguish.
It would even explode a second time, right at Asterion's feet.
And such a breath attack was just a simple opening greeting. In his haste, Asterion only had time to rush a few steps toward the outside of the fire—or what he assumed was the outside—trying to break through the fire-covered area. But before he could run out of the flame's range and see clearly what guy had attacked him, Asterion felt a heavy blow to his back.
A triple heavy strike!
It was obviously the claws of some monster. It dove from the sky and smashed into his back, first trampling and tearing with its claws, then flying up and diving for a second hit, and then a third!!
This was terrifying.
One had to know that the explosive reaction scales on Asterion's back had already responded and detonated in reverse the moment he was attacked, stabbing sharp shrapnel toward the assailant. But this guy had forcefully taken the first wave of scale shrapnel, ignoring the damage to continue the attack.
Because of this, the guy even took the damage from the second batch of exploding scales—the batch that regenerated rapidly right after the first batch exploded.
He took all the damage, yet his momentum didn't diminish in the slightest, his roar remaining powerful and resonant.
"ROAR-HA!!!"
Asterion, who was no longer a greenhorn dragon, didn't panic because of the sudden attack. He steadied his body calmly. When the attacker's third diving pounce arrived, he had already readjusted his posture and slashed his sword-tail diagonally back and upward!
Whoosh!
Missed!
The attacker's reaction was extremely fast. Asterion only heard the sound of powerful, rapid wingbeats before seeing the attacker twist and adjust its posture in mid-air with a bizarre maneuver to avoid the sword strike.
Just from this display of flight skill, it was clear that this guy's flying ability was miles ahead of the Bazelgeuse brothers. It wasn't something those poor guys who relied on gliding to get around could compare to.
Having gained some breathing room with that forcing slash, Asterion finally saw clearly what kind of thing had popped out to attack him.
At a glance, the overall color scheme was deep black. It was covered in a layer of black scale armor from head to tail, and atop this armor were patterns resembling red lotus flowers. At this very moment, those crimson patterns were flowing magically like lava.
This f*cking—Asterion had already recognized the dragon. It clearly had a familiar physique and posture, a standard bipedal, winged Flying Wyvern skeleton, but those pitch-black scales revealed its identity.
A Deviant individual of the Rathalos, possessing the exclusive title "The Dark Lord," known as the King of Kings who has survived a hundred battles.
Dreadking Rathalos!
Putting aside that Gilgamesh-esque "King of Kings" title, the phrase "survived a hundred battles" explained a lot—the New World was never short of battle-hardened dragons.
Without a doubt, this Dreadking Rathalos was the "try-hard king" that had competed and survived in this corner of the Ancient Forest until now. He had defeated unknown numbers of his own kind and other monsters to evolve into this form, becoming a Deviant Monster Rathalos!
His combat power naturally matched the prestige of a Deviant Monster. If nothing else, that ferocious triple dive and the emergency mid-air flip just now proved his gold standard; the reputation wasn't just hype.
That Dreadking Rathalos seemed angry.
Perhaps because Asterion had violated his territory?
The Dreadking Rathalos had an extremely strong sense of territory; he would actively attack intruders as soon as he caught their scent from afar. For hunters, the more terrifying aspect of this guy was his resistance to Flash Pods—a Flying Wyvern with extremely strong aerial combat capabilities that didn't eat Flash Pods, possessed an extremely high desire to attack, and dealt massive damage.
It was a good thing Asterion didn't have Flash Pods, or he'd look like a fool.
As his wings beat, the wing membranes of the Dreadking Rathalos didn't let even a sliver of light pass through; their thickness and hardness far exceeded that of an ordinary Rathalos.
Asterion's gaze locked dead onto the tip of the Dreadking Rathalos's tail. As an intelligence-gathering Glavenus, he knew exactly how dangerous that tail was. A sharp spine grew there, pitch-black and distinct from the surrounding scales.
It was long and thick, like a syringe, and its base was faintly glowing with an orange-pink light.
Deadly poison, potent venom.
Before Asterion could fully recall the details, the enraged Dreadking Rathalos launched another attack. Like a flying scorpion in the sky, the Dreadking flapped his wings rapidly and thrust his tail toward Asterion!
Even without being hit, Asterion knew this poison was far more potent than that of the evolving Rathian he had encountered in the past. Probably only the venom of a Dreadqueen Rathian could surpass it.
Asterion, who had been guarding against the tail spine all along, executed a sliding step to dodge the thrust. He snapped his jaws wide open, his sharp fangs biting toward the Dreadking Rathalos as it turned sideways!
Dragon Bite!
Asterion's mouth was filled with flames. Just like the countless Flying Wyverns he had dealt with in the past, as long as he destroyed their wing membranes first, these guys who flew around in the sky wouldn't be able to annoy him anymore.
With the intelligence of a Deviant Monster, perhaps they could communicate like the Bazelgeuse brothers. But once the Dreadking Rathalos displayed his aggression and bloodlust, Asterion abandoned any plans for peaceful communication—perhaps this was the normal mode of interaction between dragons, and the Kulu-Ya-Ku brothers were the anomaly.
However, to Asterion's surprise, although his bite successfully landed on the Dreadking Rathalos's wing, the hard dragon bone couldn't be immediately severed or snapped even with his bite force. And after taking the hit, the Dreadking not only showed no sign of flinching but went into a frenzy, twisting his head to bite back at Asterion's shoulder and back!
Madness, calmness, hot-bloodedness, rationality—it was hard to imagine these states appearing simultaneously in a single monster. This Dreadking Rathalos displayed something completely different from any monster Asterion had encountered at the southernmost tip of the Wildspire Waste!
Boom!
Fam, who understands this pain?
The Dreadking Rathalos's bite actually came with fire. The most absurd part was that the flames in this guy's mouth were explosive!
He forcefully bit through Asterion's blade scales. Even though the regenerating scales exploded inside the Dreadking's mouth, it couldn't stop him, because the flames harbored in his mouth had already started detonating, maintaining the bite on Asterion's flesh!!
"ROAR!"
Roaring in pain, the agony instead triggered Asterion's beastly nature. Battles between giant beasts were often this simple and brutal. Enduring the pain and burning sensation from his back, he raised his forelimbs, pressed them onto the Dreadking Rathalos's body, and forcefully pinned the guy to the ground!
Pop-pop-pop-pop!!
Under Asterion's conscious control, his blade scales detonated rapidly. Along with the previously exploded scales, they cut into the Dreadking Rathalos's armor as much as possible—there was some damage, but not many places were penetrated.
This guy's scale armor was much harder than that of ordinary monsters.
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