The hunter party that had originally been almost certain of succeeding in this hunt suddenly exploded into an uproar, for the silhouette that had appeared on the distant horizon was simply too distinctive.
On the very first day the Fourth Fleet arrived in the New World, dedicated scholars had brought along a detailed portrait of it, explaining its physical features one by one and stressing how dangerous it was.
To become an elite hunter, unless you are an unparalleled prodigy, the ability to read the situation and make accurate decisions is almost a basic requirement, and it is also the key to surviving one difficult hunt after another.
"Smoke Bombs, ready!"
They did not have the impulsive urge of young hunters who want to rush in and "give it a try" whenever they see an Elder Dragon. Instead, without the slightest hesitation, they decisively abandoned the Afflicted Barroth that had fallen into a disadvantage after triggering the trap barrels they had set up in advance.
Before Nergigante landed, they immediately threw out two Smoke Bombs sufficient to mask their scent and quickly retreated in another direction.
With the hunters' figures gone from its field of vision, the violent rage that had been catalyzed in the Afflicted Barroth by the Qurio parasitizing it could not be contained at all; it roared and thrashed about blindly in the smoke.
At that moment, the spike-covered Nergigante dropped from the sky, slamming straight into the Afflicted Barroth with the momentum of a comet smashing into the earth. The seemingly thick outer armor of packed sand shattered piece by piece under Nergigante's full-body impact, and the flying spikes drove deep into the Barroth's body, punching through multiple organs and then bursting out the other side to bury themselves firmly in the ground.
The Afflicted Barroth, which had been extremely berserk just moments before, fell still almost instantly.
The smoke was dispersed by Nergigante's impact, while the hunter party had long since hidden themselves behind a distant earthen slope. Peering cautiously through the gaps in a clump of cacti, they watched Nergigante as it pulled its forelimbs out from the Afflicted Barroth's collapsed back.
They saw those scarlet Qurio swarming out from the gaps in the Barroth's carapace at the very moment it died, drawn to Nergigante and latching onto its body all at once.
"So that's—"
The young Light Bowgunner had only just begun to speak when the captain clamped a hand over his mouth.
The captain shot him a sharp look and only released his hand after confirming that the kid understood what he meant.
They then saw each of those scarlet insects, their once plump bodies shriveling rapidly the moment they came into contact with Nergigante. Only after the vast majority of the insects had died did the spikes once again grow out from Nergigante's regenerative carapace, pinning the few Qurio that had narrowly survived in place. Letting out a wild, satisfied roar, it whipped up a fierce gale and took to the sky, flying toward the depths of the marshland.
Only then did the hunters finally let out a breath of relief.
"I didn't expect the monster abnormalities in the Wildspire Waste to have been brought by Nergigante! Those insects that can spread plagues actually have such a deep connection with Nergigante."
"Yeah, there was already a hunter at the base who said he once saw a monster that looked just like Nergigante seriously wound a Rathian and then throw red insects onto her body. It was nighttime back then, so he wasn't entirely sure it was Nergigante. Now there's no need to guess—it definitely all traces back to it!"
The party members quickly started talking over one another, while the captain pulled out a telescope. After confirming that Nergigante had completely left, he swiftly got to his feet.
"Hurry, collect all the corpses of those insects. What we saw today must be brought back to Astera as fast as possible!!"
As soon as the captain finished speaking, the party members reacted at once. They put away their weapons, formed a commonly used alert formation, and quickly ran toward the ground beneath the spot where the Afflicted Barroth had died.
...
Elsewhere, Nergigante arrived at its temporary nest in the marshlands.
Here, many bleached bones of large monsters had already been piled up, and in addition, a male sea beast that was barely clinging to life, riddled with horrifying piercing wounds, lay there with only a single breath left.
Nergigante threw onto the sea beast the Qurio caught in its spikes—these too were barely alive, but, having undergone multiple mutations, had become all the more tenacious. Watching as the Qurio, amid the sea beast's anguished howls, opened their ferocious maws and bit into its body instead of continuing their suicidal attempt to cling to it, a trace of crimson flashed across its eyes, and it strode, satisfied, into the depths of the cave beside it.
To be honest, compared with Malzeno, Nergigante was like a total scumbag: its attitude toward the Qurio was simply to use them and then discard them, without the slightest intention of coexistence.
These "Apostles of the Abyss" were unable to gain even the smallest advantage from Nergigante, a villain likewise designed with a demon as its prototype.
Of course, not gaining any benefit was one thing, but whether it could affect Nergigante was another altogether.
The Apostles of the Abyss, over the passage of time, subtly corroded the knight's armor, tainted the knight's noble spirit, and in the end turned the silver-white knight into a crimson fiend, leading him to fall under that ominous power.
Even a terrifying being like the original Malzeno—an Elder Dragon capable of contending with Gaismagorm once its limits were lifted, and one who had relentlessly pursued it—had been unable to fully resist the erosion of the Qurio. Although Nergigante had always only absorbed the Qurio's life force, the accumulation of that peculiar insect toxin still broke through the Elder Dragon's mental defenses bit by bit.
Among Elder Dragons, Nergigante was already an extremely irritable one, and without even realizing it, the inner violence within it had been drawn out, faintly showing signs of losing control.
The current situation appeared as though Nergigante held the initiative, but so long as it could not give up the refined "life force" extracted from the Qurio—so long as it could not let go of this method of gaining energy without having to chase Elder Dragons to exhaustion—then one day, it too would be guided step by step, just like that knight, and would eventually fall of its own accord, entering coexistence with the Qurio.
...
"What! You really saw it!!"
At the meeting table, the Admiral stared in disbelief at the returning hunter party.
In the past few days, Qurio had spread rampantly in the Wildspire Waste. Although, after the scholars' emergency research, they had confirmed that Qurio, once they forcibly parasitized a monster, would also become exhausted and lose a great amount of life force, they concluded that under such a survival pattern, neither the Qurio nor the monsters would be able to survive in the end, and thus the ecosystem would not collapse rapidly.
And in a place like the New World, where monsters were extremely active, everything would surely return to normal with the passage of time.
This conclusion from the scholars left many of the Research Commission's upper ranks dissatisfied—especially the Third Fleet Master, who was also a scholar. She believed that the Commission's purpose was not only to investigate the Elder Crossing and then ignore the New World's ecology thereafter.
The existence of hunters was not only to protect human civilization, but also to serve as one of the maintainers of the ecosystem. Therefore, even if there was only a slight possibility of ecological collapse, they could not pretend not to see it and allow it to develop freely!!
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