After Aki left, the Flame Rathalos then landed beside the Scorching Heat Rathian, ignored the flames on her body, and rubbed against her wing, only to accidentally scrape the injured part.
The pain made the Scorching Heat Rathian disregard Logan's presence; she snapped her head around with a roar, bit the Flame Rathalos and slammed him down—pure mother tyrannosaur posture.
Yet even after being forcibly toppled, the Flame Rathalos did not get angry and instead got up to keep currying favor.
The sight burned Logan's eyes.
"Disgracing wyverns!!"
Not wanting to watch the couple's cloying display, Logan took to the air and flew after the direction in which Aki had left.
As Logan departed, several monsters that had sneaked nearby at the beginning of Aki's fight with the Scorching Heat Rathian, wanting to scavenge a cheap win, came brazenly out of the dark and looked with ill intent at the Flame Rathalos couple.
The Flame Rathalos couple were not surprised by the scene.
The Flame Rathalos, who had just been fawning a moment earlier, had his eyes turn sharp in an instant; frenzied flames swept the field along with a ringing wyvern roar.
Behind him, the Scorching Heat Rathian watched the Flame Rathalos—like a fire god descended, fearlessly locked in a melee with those monsters—and her shining pupils were filled with his figure radiating bright flames.
The Scorching Heat Rathian did not choose to join the battle, because she knew very well that this mate she had resolutely chosen—this mate who could make her abandon her own territory and follow him to this dangerous place—could, when she was injured, hold up a safe zone for her.
...
Returning to the basalt nest, Logan saw those few new empty bottles in the corner.
He looked at Aki, who had her tail pointed at him and was constantly pounding the ground, seeming a little angry.
Logan silently came to Aki's side and squatted to sit nearby, leaving a small gap.
Sensing Logan's presence, Aki looked up, jabbed the spines on her lower jaw against Logan's wing to vent her unwillingness, and only then rose and lowered her head to clean the scales that needed replacing after this battle.
As time went on with Aki's self-abusive method of improvement, the degree of Aki's metamorphosis also seemed to be steadily advancing.
Although Logan surmised that this was largely due to the contribution of the Symbiosis Trait, it also had to be credited to Aki's own powerful talent.
However, based on Logan's observations of Aki, Aki seemed to be metamorphosing toward an Elder-Dragon-class creature, rather than, like Logan, undergoing an Elder Dragon's metamorphosis.
This resulted in Aki's metamorphosis being fast, yes, but the improvements in vitality and energy were somewhat underwhelming.
What's more, thinking deeper, Logan was now an Elder Dragon, with a lifespan so long that even he could not see its end.
But Elder-Dragon-class creatures, although they bear the words "Elder Dragon," have a lifespan only a few decades to a hundred years longer than ordinary monsters.
Logan did not like talking in terms of lifespan, but now that it had happened to himself, he had to think of a way.
"Symbiosis Trait, let me see just how far you can go."
On the Symbiosis Trait's influence pyramid, Aki's position had already surpassed the Tempered Azure Rathalos and stood side by side with the Flame Rathalos on the second tier; as Aki's metamorphosis continued, she would sooner or later surpass the Flame Rathalos and even occupy the second tier alone.
'If I want further mutation, perhaps I myself still have to become stronger!'
He opened the panel he had not opened for a long time. Looking at the Traits column there, ever since he had successfully broken through to become an Elder Dragon, the progress bar in that column seemed to have sped up slightly, and the rule by which it sped up seemed to have undergone some changes.
Logan seemed to sense something faintly, but he would have to wait until he returned to the Ancient Tree later to verify it.
And beneath that progress bar, the bar that had originally displayed his evolution level had, surprisingly, not disappeared!
Only, the label that had originally shown "Evolution Level" before the bar was now a jumble of garbled text, which had puzzled Logan for several days without him finding a single clue.
In Logan's memory, the strongest individuals among the Fire Wyverns should be the Gold and Silver Fire Wyverns, but this still-present column on the panel truly left him somewhat baffled.
"Don't tell me it's going to evolve again into a Blue-Eyed White Dragon? Silver-white scales, bony spurs at the corners of the mouth…"
Casting his eyes downward, he faintly saw the sharp bony spines sprouting from the gaps between the silver-white scales at the corners of his own mouth, and made a quiet jest in his heart.
Wait!
A figure filled with a sense of high technology suddenly appeared in Logan's mind.
"Zerureusu?"
Although that creature belonged to the Flying Wyvern species, in his previous life it had not been part of the mainline monsters, and it could not even be confirmed whether it was a subspecies of the Fire Wyvern.
But thinking carefully, it seemed that now the Fire Wyverns of the Ancient Tree group, under the influence of the Symbiosis Trait, after their mutations, were increasingly resembling the Fire Wyverns of the frontier in both appearance and ability focus.
That left Logan momentarily dazed.
Originally, in Logan's expectations, metamorphosing into a Silver Rathalos classified as an Elder Dragon was already the ultimate—after that, he could only rely on time to acquire a large number of Traits, forcibly stacking his own attributes so that, in the form of a Silver Rathalos, he would possess Forbidden-class strength.
Becoming a Forbidden-level creature would already have been good enough, but now, it seemed there was a higher evolutionary direction.
His thoughts drifting, Logan—quite uncharacteristically—fell into an open reverie about the future.
Until a wretched azure-blue figure stumbled and fell into Logan's nest, and, seeing its leader, finally relaxed and fainted.
For this kind of appearance of the Azure Rathalos—insisting on dying even if it died in its own nest—Logan and Aki exchanged a glance, both at a loss.
"How does this guy feel kind of dead?"
Aki stood up, tilted her head, and carefully walked to the side of the Azure Rathalos. Balancing in a one-legged stance, she stretched out a claw and lightly kicked it.
In the next second, they saw that Aki seemed to have kicked the Azure Rathalos right on a wound; even in a faint, its body involuntarily twitched twice, and a cry of pain came from its nose, as if proving it could still be saved.
Seeing the Azure Rathalos still able to respond, Aki's slightly raised heart settled again.
"So it's still alive~"
She turned her head and went straight to the depths of the nest to clamp that big bundle in her jaws and bring it out. Working together with Logan, they very roughly pried open the mouth of the Azure Rathalos. Ignoring the way this guy kept humming in pain, they threw both the bottles and the medicine into its mouth.
Anyway, given a Fire Wyvern's digestive ability, these bottles count as digestible things, so there was no fear of causing any secondary injury.
After pouring in the medicine and seeing the Azure Rathalos's breathing become steady again, Aki, finding it a bit in the way lying here, even dragged it and shifted it aside.
Not long after being dragged aside by Aki, the Azure Rathalos slowly came to. But the moment it moved even slightly, tearing pain came from all over its body; quite a few bones had even fractured.
At some of the wounds, black-red Dragon-element energy was still continuously scorching the injuries; even for a monster like the Azure Rathalos, it could not help but hum in pain.
To the side, Logan was also observing the Azure Rathalos's wounds. In this miserable state, without medicinal treatment, even if it did not die, it would certainly be left with no small sequelae.
Moreover, for this style of wound, Logan faintly felt a bit of familiarity, as if he had seen it somewhere before.
"Roar~"
As if it had recovered a bit, the Azure Rathalos forced itself to endure the pain and changed into a relatively easier posture to lie prone. Just like a wronged child seeing a parent, it let out a pitiful low roar toward Logan.
Alright, in a certain sense, Logan can indeed be considered the 'guardian' of the Ancient Tree Fire Wyvern group now.
Only, unlike humans, Logan had no intention of avenging the Azure Rathalos.
The strong prey on the weak—it was simply that it was too weak itself; but being able to beat an Azure Rathalos like this—one that had been under the influence of the Symbiosis trait for many years and whose strength had already surpassed an ordinary Azure Rathalos—also piqued Logan's interest.
Do not be fooled by the Azure Rathalos not being a Tempered individual right now; as a subspecies of the Fire Wyvern, it possessed no small strength, and even if placed in the Elder's Recess it likewise counted as mid-tier in the ecological niche.
What is more, this guy's strength ranked among the top within the Ancient Tree Fire Wyvern group.
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