It was just that the cry contained not only anger, but also grievance, and even a trace of wailing, forcing the meeting to be abruptly terminated. The few of them hurried out to check the situation.
As soon as they stepped outside, they saw a crowd of hunters forming a circle, each wearing various expressions of hesitation.
This inevitably puzzled the Commander. Given Mother Chameleos's status, if she let out such a cry, the hunters should not have remained indifferent.
When he pushed through the crowd and arrived at the next platform, looking at the scene below, the Commander suddenly understood.
At the clearing where the forest met the wasteland below, Mother Chameleos—half-concealed—had multicolored light flowing across her body and was being pressed and beaten by the golden-red Aki in midair.
Mother Chameleos kept croaking, her voice laced with all sorts of emotions, while Aki above remained silent, doing nothing but relentlessly beating the Mother Chameleos below.
"If you keep this up, I'm going to fight back, gwa!"
"Don't kick the tail, don't kick the tail, gwa! I surrender, gwa!"
"Stop hitting me, gwa!!"
Threats and pleas both came from Mother Chameleos's mouth.
Yet Aki, the one delivering the beating, acted as if she heard nothing—swinging her tail, delivering flying kicks, and charging like a dragon straight at Mother Chameleos.
The principle was simple: you do your thing, I do mine; we do not interfere with each other.
Seeing this scene, the Commander and the others were at a loss.
On one side was their own mascot; on the other, one of the actual rulers of the "kingdom." And though it was a beating, Aki was exercising remarkable restraint—pure close-quarters combat, no lethal techniques at all, clearly venting and letting off steam.
How were they supposed to intervene?
Mother Chameleos felt utterly wronged. After painstakingly going out to gather intelligence from that scoundrel of a dragon, she had barely returned before being seized by that madwoman Aki and subjected to a furious thrashing without a word.
She had originally intended to use her medicinal mist to paralyze her, to let her understand that with Logan absent, she held no deterrent power here before her.
But never in her wildest expectations—
Aki had been influenced by Logan far more deeply than expected. That thin layer of crimson Terastal membrane on her surface completely sealed off any chance of the medicinal mist seeping in through the gaps between her scales. From time to time, black dragon-element mist spilled from the corner of her mouth, cutting off any possibility of the medicinal mist infiltrating through her airways as well.
Without using a large-scale breath attack, relying only on the medicinal mist's slow penetration simply could not interfere with Aki in the slightest.
"I hate dragons with Terastal energy, gwa!"
"Roar!"
Noticing the Commander and the others arriving, Aki also knew she had vented enough and that it was about time to stop.
After a tail swing that sent Mother Chameleos stumbling again, she roared at Mother Chameleos at the top of her lungs, "Speak!"
"Speak what, gwa?"
Mother Chameleos steadied herself and shot back just as loudly, her big round eyes full of defiance.
"???"
Playing dumb, were you?
Aki didn't believe Mother Chameleos didn't know what she was asking. If she could show up here, what else could it be for?
So Aki, who had been about to stop, charged in again. After another furious beating, she spread her wings from above, and let out another loud dragon roar.
"Are you going to speak or not?!"
"Gwa!!"
"What exactly do you want me to say?! Then ask me!"
Mother Chameleos glared with utterly clear, wide eyes as she croaked indignantly. The roar sounded imposing, but the sight of her shrinking her neck and keeping her body pressed as low as possible in cowardly fashion was, honestly, pretty painful to look at.
Aki blinked her eyes, reddened from drawing on massive amounts of Terastal energy, and Mother Chameleos blinked right back without backing down.
Staring at those clear eyes that somehow radiated stupidity, Aki suddenly had the feeling that this idiot truly didn't know what she was asking.
Because of that, Aki's next roar weakened a little.
"Roa~r!"
Mother Chameleos's mouth twitched slightly, and a surge of grievance instantly welled up in her chest.
"Gwa, gwa-gwa!"
"How would I know where he went, gwa! We agreed to watch each other's backs, gwa! But the moment we got over here, he just dumped me and ran off, gwa! Do you have any idea—I'd only been here a few days and I was already getting chased down and bitten by Nergigante, gwa!!"
Aki quietly watched the furious Mother Chameleos, watched her put on that whole performance, then turned around and left without a word.
"Gwa?"
Right in the middle of her heated rant, trying to stir up Aki's guilt, Mother Chameleos's voice caught. After freezing there in a daze for a moment, she flopped down on the ground, speechless.
"I'm such an idiot, gwa—actually trying to make this creature feel guilty. Other than when she's facing the Sunblaze Dragon, she doesn't have a heart, gwa!"
After Aki left, Mother Chameleos remained where she was, sulking. Only then did the Commander approach with the others.
Mother Chameleos glanced up at him, then turned her body away in annoyance, pointing her tail at the Commander to express her displeasure that they had not stepped in to break up the fight earlier.
But the Commander had long since figured out Mother Chameleos's temperament. Besides, this time he had brought someone with him.
After a round of persuasion from the former Provisions Manager, Mother Chameleos finally relented. Once she accepted the Ancient Potion, she turned back around and informed the members of the Research Commission of the intelligence she had gathered during this period.
As the cat translated, the Commander's expression grew darker step by step.
At this moment, he clearly understood what kind of existence the Research Commission's target truly was.
It was a monster that even the Elder Dragons of the Guiding Lands did not dare to provoke. The valley where it resided was a forbidden zone within the Guiding Lands.
It was a forbidden dragon that had transcended its ecological niche—one that could stand in opposition to the ecosystem itself, even feeding upon the "life" of the land.
Such a being, in the Old World, would exist only in scattered information held by the upper echelons of various powers. To everyone else, it would be confined to folklore and myth—like the Black Dragon said to have destroyed ancient Schrade.
It was a taboo.
And yet, their journey this time was to hunt a taboo.
"Gwa, gwa!" (You'd better give up, gwa. An existence like that isn't something you can stand against, gwa!)
Mother Chameleos spoke bluntly. In her view, even if there were "monsters" like Darren within the Research Commission, this was already a battle on another level. Even Darren would have little ability to resist before that being.
Such monsters were often assigned by nature itself to be eliminated by creatures of the same tier. And battles of that scale usually required the destruction of an entire region as the price. Hunters might be strong, but…
This was, in the end, a real world. A monster like Safi'jiiva often required the strength of an entire civilization to oppose.
Hearing Mother Chameleos's words, the Commander felt a heaviness in his chest. But when he turned to look at the senior officials and saw the firm expressions on the hunters' faces, a familiar smile appeared at the corner of his mouth.
"It's fine. So what if it's a taboo? We are Monster Hunters, after all!!"
Mother Chameleos tilted her head. Even after all these years, she still could not quite understand this kind of "death-seeking" behavior from hunters.
"Gwa!" (Let me make this clear first—I'm not going with you to die, gwa!)