A slime mass weighing several tons landed on the dragon skull on the Teppeki Shen Gaoren's back. Foul green liquid splattered across most of its body.
A dangerous hissing arose as thick white smoke billowed from the Teppeki Shen Gaoren, carrying the pungent stench of acid.
The Hunters watching from the shadows then realized that none of the indecent behavior they had imagined was taking place. Those foul green masses of slime were a potent acid capable of melting an entire city wall.
At the same time, the Teppeki Shen Gaoren's massive pincer slammed violently into the base-species Shen Gaoren's abdomen.
To spew the mass of acid, the base-species Shen Gaoren had opened the Lao-Shan Lung skull protecting its soft underbelly, leaving its weak point completely exposed.
The Teppeki Shen Gaoren's strike was vicious. Its searing-hot pincer easily tore through the soft, thin armor on the other Shen Gaoren's abdomen. Green blood unique to Carapaceons sprayed through the air as the base-species Shen Gaoren stumbled forward several steps with a pained hiss.
But the Teppeki Shen Gaoren was also in bad shape.
Although both Shen Gaoren could spew strong acid, that did not mean they were immune to it.
Even its obsidian carapace, formed from rapidly cooled lava, could not withstand the acid's corrosive power. The affected areas smoked and became riddled with holes in moments, losing their integrity and flaking away.
However, the ancient, withered Jhen Mohran skull it carried on its back proved remarkably resistant to the acid, protecting its vulnerable abdomen.
Neither colossal crab gained the upper hand in that first exchange.
After stumbling several steps, the base-species Shen Gaoren worked the muscles in its back to close the unusually large Lao-Shan Lung skull. It then turned and charged headlong at its opponent with remarkable speed for a Shen Gaoren.
The Teppeki Shen Gaoren refused to back down.
With a silent roar, it fully awakened the astonishing energy within its body. No longer did only a faint glow show beneath its carapace. Its entire body now resembled an erupting volcano, scorching hot and blindingly bright, with golden-red lava spraying and flowing between the plates of its carapace.
Radiating a terrifying heat of over a thousand degrees, it met the charging base-species Shen Gaoren head-on.
"Boom!"
With a crash like a collapsing mountain, the two Shen Gaoren slammed into each other.
The base-species Shen Gaoren was larger. The ten-meter difference in height gave it a weight advantage of nearly thirty percent.
It was like a muscular man weighing eighty or ninety kilograms charging head-on into a woman who, at best, could be described as not particularly frail. The former naturally had the advantage.
The base-species Shen Gaoren's tremendous impact drove the Teppeki Shen Gaoren backward. Its poor balance and agility left it unable to counter the terrifying momentum generated by such a colossal body.
After being driven back more than a hundred meters, it slammed heavily into a sturdy cliff wall.
The ground trembled as countless shattered boulders tumbled down the cliff face. Several landed near the group's hiding place, startling them badly.
Altaïr leaped up, grabbed Erik, who was engrossed in taking photographs, and hoisted him over his shoulder. He called sharply to his companions, "We're too close! Fall back behind that slope!"
At the same time, Isis grabbed the Professor, who refused to lower his telescope, and the group sprinted desperately toward the more distant slope.
Fortunately, neither the Teppeki Shen Gaoren nor the base-species Shen Gaoren had any attention to spare for those "little bugs."
The Teppeki Shen Gaoren had suffered severe damage in the violent collision.
Harder than steel but extremely brittle, most of its obsidian armor had shattered under the base-species Shen Gaoren's powerful charge, and its keratinous carapace was covered in cracks.
One of its long, slender pincers, its primary weapon, had snapped off. A large section of its triangular head carapace had also been smashed away, exposing the writhing flesh beneath.
However, the base-species Shen Gaoren was in equally bad shape.
It might have been the "big bruiser," but the Teppeki Shen Gaoren was no ordinary "lady"; this "lady" was wreathed in flames!
As the Teppeki Shen Gaoren's carapace cracked, its superheated body fluid, indistinguishable from magma, gushed forth.
Shen Gaoren normally lived in the dark, frigid depths of the ocean and only occasionally ventured onto land. Even if temperatures of over a thousand degrees were not fatal to them, such heat still caused unbearable agony.
It was like having a huge pot of boiling water poured over you. It might not kill you, but it would at least strip away a layer of skin.
Scorched by the intense heat, the base-species Shen Gaoren convulsed in pain and recoiled, missing its chance to press the attack.
The Teppeki Shen Gaoren seized the opportunity to steady itself, and the Jhen Mohran skull on its back began to open with a series of cracks.
With a rumble like a volcanic eruption, massive chunks of molten rock shot from the skull's gaping maw and soared more than a hundred meters into the air. Tracing high arcs, they then crashed down like meteors upon the retreating base-species Shen Gaoren.
The base-species Shen Gaoren noticed the airborne attack, but its sluggish reflexes and limited mobility cost it the chance to evade.
Of the seven or eight molten rocks launched in succession, at least half struck the base-species Shen Gaoren. Under the combined force of the impacts and the extreme heat, the volatile substances within the magma triggered a series of deafening explosions.
"BOOM!!!"
Even the Anti-dragon Bombs designed specifically for use against ultra-giant Monsters could not match the power of those magma explosions. Pummeled by one shock wave and blast after another, the base-species Shen Gaoren was knocked to the ground.
By then, both Shen Gaoren were battered and half-dead.
Under normal circumstances, when a fight between members of the same species reached this point, one side would almost certainly back down. Yet the battle between these two Shen Gaoren continued.
To the death.
Having been practically carried by the Hunters the entire way, the Professor reached a safer area farther away. He spoke solemnly. "We've found more than one Shen Gaoren carcass on the continental shelf.
"Their bodies are too heavy to swim through seawater. To crawl from the deep sea to the shore, they can only trample over the corpses of their own kind.
"Competition within this species may be far bloodier than we originally believed."
Knocked down by the magma bombardment and explosions, the base-species Shen Gaoren tried to rise. But the burning, viscous magma continued to sear its body while gluing its joints together, making every attempt excruciatingly slow.
The Teppeki Shen Gaoren, nearly half its body embedded in the mountainside, recovered first. Having just launched its magma projectiles, it had not yet closed the dragon skull on its back.
An almost golden radiance emerged from within its body. Staggering energy and heat rapidly converged, ultimately condensing into a terrifying beam more than five meters in diameter that erupted from the dragon skull's gaping maw.
"A... breath attack?!" Erik's mouth fell open as wide as a Congalala's.
He did not even check how many frames remained in his portable camera. His fingers hammered the shutter, intent on capturing the entire scene.
The devastating heat stream shot out like a colossal spear of gold and crimson, hurtling straight toward the base-species Shen Gaoren dozens of meters away.
The first thing it struck was the ancient, colossal Lao-Shan Lung skull, which had endured for untold years.
Faced with a terrifying breath attack capable of instantly melting a steel city gate, the Lao-Shan Lung skull held firm like a reef against a towering wave. It showed no sign of breaking or burning and continued to shield the base-species Shen Gaoren's fragile abdomen.
The Teppeki Shen Gaoren seemed to realize this as well. It slowly rotated its body until the golden heat stream struck the other Shen Gaoren's head and chest, which the skull did not protect.
"Skreee!"
The nearly deafening shriek echoed through the lava-streaked mountain range.
Without long-term adaptation, its multilayered carapace had little resistance to extreme heat and lasted only four or five seconds before being breached. The torrent of thermal energy flooded inside, reducing the organs and soft tissues beneath the carapace to foul-smelling charcoal.
The agonized shriek stopped abruptly. The base-species Shen Gaoren, which had been struggling for its life, crashed back to the ground. Its limbs twitched faintly, but it was already dead.
Amid the heat waves distorting the air, the breath attack ceased, and the Teppeki Shen Gaoren slowly turned around.
"Ssssss..."
The Jhen Mohran skull on its back did not seem as heat-resistant as the Lao-Shan Lung skull carried by the base-species Shen Gaoren. The sustained heat breath had charred its jawbones and massive tusks black.
The Teppeki Shen Gaoren did not raise its remaining pincer in a victory roar as the Hunters had imagined it might.
Instead, it kept twisting its body, its limbs trembling violently as though it were enduring intense pain.
With a series of sharp cracks, the Jhen Mohran skull mounted on its back detached from its body and crashed to the ground, sending tremors through the earth.
Immediately afterward, the Teppeki Shen Gaoren, looking especially awkward without its skull, limped toward the corpse of the other Shen Gaoren nearby.
There lay the spoils it had been seeking.
* * *
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