From the moment the battle began, Jara had barely launched any meaningful attacks.
If anything, all he had done was direct his Kinsect to sting the Lagiacrus again and again, drawing extract to push his own mobility to the limit.
He was not an offensive Hunter, whether hunting alone or cooperating with other Hunters.
But he was never a slacker either. At critical moments, he could always step up in time and play his role.
The layer after layer of erupting lightning pillars kept the two frontliners from closing in, and the Gunner's long-range attacks were also struggling to interrupt the Lagiacrus's assault for the moment.
If this continued, the situation would slide toward a disadvantage, so Jara, who had been circling around the edge of the fight, decisively chose to charge in.
Enhanced by Kinsect extract, his speed was in no way inferior to Altaïr's after entering Demon Mode, and his agility even surpassed it.
Most importantly, the Gypceros S Armor Set he wore possessed extremely strong lightning resistance. Forget mere aftershocks; even if he were struck directly by a lightning pillar, he would not be critically wounded.
Altaïr dove aside in time, yet even three or four meters from the erupting pillar, the aftershock left his whole body numb and half-paralyzed. Jara, however, slipped right past the lightning pillar as if nothing had happened.
It was a textbook example of equipment chosen for a specific opponent.
Within just a few leaps, Jara had already closed in on the Lagiacrus.
His assessment of his own role was very clear: the Insect Glaive lacked the Gunlance's astonishing burst power, and it was not as sharp and fierce as the Long Sword.
If he wanted to interrupt the Lagiacrus's assault, he had to execute a more targeted attack.
Thus, he locked onto the wound on the Lagiacrus's shoulder and neck, the one blasted open by Wyvern's Fire.
The Lagiacrus was intelligent enough in battle to read his intent. Its long, flexible, serpentine neck twisted as it turned its head to bite at him.
Jara did not panic. He vaulted using his polearm. Although his build prevented him from springing four or five meters into the air with nimble twists like most Insect Glaive users, dodging the Lagiacrus's bite was not a problem.
Having evaded the bite, Jara aimed for the wound on the Lagiacrus's shoulder and executed a downward thrust.
Bolstered by his weight and strength, the power of this downward thrust was considerable, causing the Lagiacrus to stagger back half a step in pain.
Jara rolled, sprang up from the ground, leaped forward, and closed in again with a Leaping Slash. Then, using the momentum of a Wide Sweep, he spun, vaulted into the air, and unleashed an Insect Glaive user's most formidable technique.
"Take my Chubby Tornado Slash!"
An Insect Glaive was known for lightness and agility, yet in Jara's hands, backed by his weight and strength, it somehow landed with tremendous force.
The blade tip of the Névé Frost, as if forged from condensed ice, bit deep into the wound, adding a layer of frost and rime to the flesh scorched black by high heat.
With a wound-focused strike and extreme frost aimed at a weak point, the blow truly struck the Lagiacrus right where it hurt the most.
The Lagiacrus howled in agony, its entire body convulsing as it staggered backward, the sustained lightning pillar attack interrupted in the process.
"Nice!"
After gulping down a Potion, Altaïr shouted his approval. Ignoring the fact that the wounds inflicted by the residual electric shocks still had not healed, he charged forward at full speed.
Isis moved a little more slowly, but followed close behind.
Seeing the two frontliners return to the fray, Jara decisively halted his assault and withdrew from the Lagiacrus's side.
His Insect Glaive, Altaïr's Long Sword, and Isis's wide-sweeping Gunlance all required considerable space to maneuver freely.
Altaïr and Isis could avoid interfering with each other if one was at the Monster's chest and the other at its head, but adding him into the mix was a different story entirely.
Leave the head-on brawling to those two. Time to slip away!
As Altaïr and Isis rejoined the battle and resumed their fierce suppressive assault, Nymera, who had been firing while maneuvering at a distance, also closed the gap.
This meant she was about to intensify her attack.
For a Gunner, especially one in a team fight, offensive intensity was often inversely proportional to shooting distance.
On one hand, distance diminished the force of Bowgun Ammo and arrows. More importantly, though, there were issues of accuracy and safety.
With Blademaster comrades fighting ahead, a Gunner had to consider the possibility of friendly fire, even if those comrades were not currently in the line of fire. After all, there was no guaranteeing a Blademaster would not suddenly leap into the projectile's path to dodge a Monster's attack.
The greater the distance, the longer the ammo's travel time, and the higher the risk of such accidents.
Conversely, if the Gunner closed in, even right up against the Monster, then as long as the Blademasters did not deliberately step in front of the muzzle, accidental friendly fire was much less likely.
Nymera's original shooting distance was around forty meters, a medium-to-long range for a Bowgun user, but now she was gradually advancing, compressing the distance between herself and the Lagiacrus to under twenty meters.
For a Gunner, this was practically point-blank range.
At this distance, she could hold down the trigger and fire at will without worrying about accidentally hitting her two frontliner teammates.
"Bang-bang-bang! Bang-bang-bang!"
The Rathalos Cannon's rotary multi-barrel muzzle spun rapidly, continuously belching firelight.
Its large drum magazine and mechanism tuned for Rapid Fire Flaming Ammo gave the Light Bowgun firepower no less formidable than a Heavy Bowgun's.
"Boom, boom!"
The detonations of Flaming Ammo merged into a continuous din.
Across the Lagiacrus's back, searing firelight flashed repeatedly. Even Altaïr and Isis at the front could feel wave after wave of searing heat. As the direct target, the Lagiacrus was suffering far worse.
By common sense, the thick-shelled back should not be a weak point; even highly penetrative Pierce Ammo might not breach the Defense there.
However, a hard spot could still be a weak point.
This was intel acquired from Az: the part of the Lagiacrus most vulnerable to fire was neither the head, the universal weak point on living creatures, nor the chest or abdomen, where the carapace was relatively thinner.
It was the back, the area with the thickest carapace and the most formidable Defense.
The reason was simple: that was where the Lagiacrus's electricity-generating and electricity-storing organs were located.
Unlike a Khezu, which used internal electric sacs to generate electricity, the Lagiacrus produced it through specially structured back muscles and dorsal spines, storing the charge within those spines, which had a crystal-like texture.
This was also why whenever the Lagiacrus unleashed its lightning attacks, the arcs always flared first from its back.
The fight so far had proven that the Lagiacrus's bites, Claw Swipes, Tackles, and similar attacks posed little threat to the Blademaster teammates.
The real danger lay in those powerful discharge-based moves. If they could continuously strike the Lagiacrus's back with Flaming Ammo, disrupting its charge buildup or even destroying those dorsal spines, they might just be able to seal away its electrical discharge ability entirely!
That was exactly why Nymera had decided to risk closing the distance, pouring her full strength into Rapid Fire Flaming Ammo to assault the Lagiacrus's back.
This fierce onslaught yielded results almost immediately.
The Lagiacrus had long since realized that mere bites and claw swipes were useless against the two troublesome foes before it. To mount a counterattack, unleashing electrified attacks was its only option.
So when Altaïr and the others closed in again, it resolved to prepare a discharge even if it meant withstanding the full brunt of their assault.
However, its charge was barely halfway complete when Nymera's concentrated fire forcibly interrupted it.
Seeing this, Altaïr and Isis, who had already been about to pull back, immediately pressed forward again and resumed their offensive.
As the Lagiacrus was visibly suppressed under their combined, all-out attack, Nymera, as a Gunner, found even more freedom to open fire.
Just as she finished dumping an entire magazine and moved to reload, a deeply malicious glare made her whole body jolt.
She traced the gaze back and, as expected, saw the Lagiacrus, pinned down by the Blademasters and struggling to lift its head, glaring viciously at her with bloodshot crimson eyes.
She had been marked.
(Translated by yourtl.app)