The young Rathalos knew very well that these "seniors" of his were all outstanding individuals among the Fire Wyverns. Even though he had plenty of confidence in his own strength, being with them inevitably put him under quite a bit of pressure.
When the battle with the Lagiacrus had just begun, the way these "seniors" dealt with the Lagiacrus had indeed proved this. Whether in terms of their flame output or their agility in the air, they were all much stronger than him.
But when he saw the senior who was working with him suddenly dive down, he had originally thought the other was planning to show him the gap between them in close combat. Instead, what came was such a slow breath of flame.
What was he doing?
The young Rathalos could not understand. With an attack like that, even with the strength he had before coming to the Ancient Tree, he could have easily dodged it, let alone that Lagiacrus down below.
Yet what the strong Rathalos did next truly opened this young wyvern's eyes.
The Lagiacrus below did indeed evade the attack, and the charged flames of the strong Rathalos fell into empty space. But as a deep, muffled dragon roar rang out, the strong Rathalos twisted his head, and the pillar of flame laced with explosive substances swept across the surface of the water. Explosions erupted one after another along the path traced by the pillar of flame.
The Lagiacrus, having just completed its evasive maneuver, had no time to dodge a second time and was brushed by the flames. A violent explosion blasted open at its side.
These explosions were like a pushing hand: once it was hit by one, it had to endure all of the subsequent chain explosions.
Before the young wyvern's eyes, the Lagiacrus's massive body was like a sandbag, blasted from one explosion point to the next. After more than a dozen consecutive blasts, it was directly blown all the way to the reef island where the hunters were.
The Lagiacrus's body, charred in many places by the blasts, crashed heavily to the ground. Amid the shrill sound of scraping, the quartz spines finally managed to bring its sliding body to a halt.
Under the Lagiacrus's heavy weight, a large number of them snapped, and its hollow back thunder shell was also badly clogged.
"Roar!"
"All right, you can go all out in close combat now!"
The strong Rathalos let out a long breath of hot air, forcibly enduring the emptiness in his Flame Sac as he gave a calm, low roar toward the young Rathalos.
The young Rathalos glanced at this senior, then at the Afflicted Lagiacrus on the reef island that was struggling to climb back up, its body covered in wounds.
At this point, he was convinced.
Could ordinary Fire Wyverns like them really unleash an attack like that?
With that question still in his mind, the young Rathalos dove at the Lagiacrus. With its thunder shell clogged, the Lagiacrus could only fight in close quarters for the time being. It was forced into a position below, taking blows passively, and it could not even manage to leave the reef island and return to the shallows.
On the other side of the reef island, the hunters once again lowered the weapons they had drawn. From the looks of it, that Rathalos that was launching attack after attack already had victory in hand, so there was no need for them to do anything unnecessary.
With one less Lagiacrus in the water, gaps began to appear in the combined current field formed by the Lagiacrus, and the Fire Wyverns seized this opportunity to inflict even greater damage on them.
Perhaps sensing that their hosts' lives were under serious threat, the Qurio eggs hidden in the gaps of the Lagiacrus' shells began to hatch in large numbers. While injecting more toxins into the Lagiacrus and squeezing out their life force, they also flew out from the Lagiacrus' bodies.
Driven almost purely by instinct, they tried to take advantage of the fierce battle to parasitize these Rathalos.
And as the Qurio swarmed out, some mottled silver fragments on the Fire Wyverns' bodies detached under the hunters' stunned gazes and, before their very eyes, turned into silver-bodied butterflies one after another.
Like the Qurio, they almost ignored the flames and electricity, and in midair they opened up another round of slaughter.
Thus, in the sky, in addition to the flames and currents, bands of silver and red light appeared.
The two sides refused to yield, tangling together like mortal enemies, even forming at one point a storm woven from silver and red.
Logan watched the fighting within the storm. The Radiant Crystal Butterflies currently deployed were only a contingency he had placed on those Rathalos to prevent the Qurio from secretly parasitizing them.
In terms of numbers, the Radiant Crystal Butterflies were nearly one-third fewer than these forcibly hatched Qurio, yet judging from the battle, the two sides were actually evenly matched.
The Qurio's large cylindrical mouths were indeed very convenient for anchoring themselves to large monsters, but in direct combat they were still a bit inferior to the Radiant Crystal Butterflies, whose beak-like long mouths were like sharp spikes.
Moreover, the rhombic crystals on the Radiant Crystal Butterflies' wings were far harder than the Qurio's wings, and they could also release high heat, increasing their lethality in close combat.
The scale powder that kept drifting on the wind ignited the instant it touched anything.
With so many layers of enhancement, the Radiant Crystal Butterflies were indeed considerably stronger than the Qurio. Their only drawback was their territorial limitation: they could not leave the Terastal sprout, unlike these mutated Qurio, which could forcibly parasitize a monster, turn it into a breeding host, and then mass-produce new Qurio.
"What are those? Since when did the Rathalos have such powerful bugs parasitizing them?"
Hearing the Admiral muttering to himself, Logan's brow twitched.
Parasites? What parasite? These are Radiant Crystal Butterflies, not Qurio! Could he choose his words properly?
Having seen almost everything he needed to see, and noticing the Lagiacrus falling into their final frenzy after the Qurio forcibly triggered their life force, Logan spread his wings.
The Radiant Crystal Butterflies that had been disguised as scales on Logan's massive wings opened in a dense wave and turned into a silver torrent, crashing at high speed into the insect storm in the sky.
With this large group of reinforcements joining the fray, Qurio began to die in huge numbers, falling endlessly like rain.
To the Radiant Crystal Butterflies, their relationship with the Qurio was like that of hostile subspecies: they looked down on the original species entirely and even wished to kill them as quickly as possible.
And to the Qurio, these Qurio that had undergone a different evolution no longer had anything to do with them and were instead the greatest obstacle to their parasitism.
Thus, although both sides were small in size, the slaughter was extraordinarily fierce. Not a single one retreated, and they fought until one side was completely wiped out.
With the Qurio completely gone, the Lagiacrus burned through the last drop of their life force and were torn into several pieces under the final charge of the Rathalos.
As the Rathalos let out excited roars, the Radiant Crystal Butterflies circled and danced in the sky, and sunlight passing through their crystal-like wings scattered onto the ground in shimmering colors.
Yet within this beautiful illusion, the crimson blood and the countless Qurio corpses rising and falling in the puddles with the flowing water appeared utterly disharmonious.
"So beautiful."
The young hunter looked at the Radiant Crystal Butterflies in the sky. For some reason, he suddenly felt that the Kinsect in his pack—the one that had accompanied him for so long and that he had carefully raised for many years—no longer seemed all that appealing.
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