Note: Hey everyone, sorry about the name change for the stinkmink, I thought I'd updated it in all the chapters, but I totally forgot about the early ones that were already saved as drafts. His name literally translates to 'rice cake', but I preferred going with 'Dango'
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"BOOM!"
A massive fireball erupted beside the Teppeki Shen Gaoren's head.
Dark green flesh and blood could just be seen scattering through the flames along with fragments of shell.
The tremendous blast threw the Teppeki Shen Gaoren off balance. Its enormous, top-heavy body tilted to one side, and it staggered several steps before crashing heavily into a cliff wall dozens of meters away. Debris came pouring down like a landslide.
Altaïr, who had retreated well in advance, grimaced.
The explosion deep inside the wound had been devastating. He and Isis had spent an entire day hacking away at the Teppeki Shen Gaoren without making it so much as flinch.
Yet a single Supernova from Sajji and Clawdia had almost knocked it over.
"BRRROOOOM!"
The Shen Gaoren arched its body. The dragon skull vibrated and resonated, producing a roar-like boom that made the ground and surrounding cliffs tremble.
"Something's wrong!" Isis shouted, covering one ear with one hand and pointing at the Teppeki Shen Gaoren as it "roared" toward the sky. "Look at the blast site! It's turning red!"
Altaïr and the others had already noticed the change in the Teppeki Shen Gaoren.
After its fight to the death with the base-species Shen Gaoren, the Teppeki Shen Gaoren had seemed to exhaust the energy within its body. The crimson, lava-like glow had gradually faded, and its shell had returned to its original bluish-black color, leaving it almost indistinguishable from a base-species Shen Gaoren at a glance.
Their sustained attacks against its feet and joints had also caused its limbs to redden, but that was a separate phenomenon.
The redness around the Teppeki Shen Gaoren's feet looked more like the color of ruptured capillaries or damaged muscle tissue engorged with blood.
Combat records on Shen Gaoren mentioned the same thing: when a particular part of one of their limbs was seriously injured, it would turn red.
But the "anomaly" Isis had pointed out was clearly something else.
After the explosion, dark red, web-like patterns resembling cooling lava had appeared across the shell around the wound behind the Teppeki Shen Gaoren's head.
They were not yet as violent or unstable as the surface of a volcano on the verge of erupting, but the patterns were slowly spreading...
Altaïr raised his binoculars and studied them for several seconds. "It may be some kind of stress response. Its body has sensed the danger and started reacting.
"That's good news for us. If we keep attacking, it should gradually respond with more obvious movements."
That was exactly what the Hunters had been hoping for.
They were not afraid of the Shen Gaoren fighting back. What they feared was that it would ignore them completely and keep trudging forward, which would mean their actions were having no effect at all.
"Sajji, Clawdia! Get ready to climb back onto the Shen Gaoren's head and place another bomb. Push it as deep into the wound as you can."
Sajji nodded firmly and whistled for Hakucho.
Altaïr turned to his companions. "We need to stay alert too. The Shen Gaoren could counterattack at any moment, whether by spraying magma or acid around its feet. Don't let your guard down."
The Hunters acknowledged him and waited where they were. Only after the Teppeki Shen Gaoren's roar ended and it resumed its original slow pace did they cautiously close in again.
Spotting an opening between its steps, Altaïr rushed toward the targeted leg. To be safe, he did not use a Charged Slash this time, but instead delivered a quick, ordinary Overhead Slash as he drew his weapon.
The blade bounced off as before, but Altaïr narrowed his eyes.
From the feedback through the sword's hilt, he could tell that the Teppeki Shen Gaoren's shell had grown ever so slightly softer.
"Altaïr!" Isis called from nearby. "Did you feel it too?"
"Yeah." Altaïr sheathed his weapon for the moment, sprinted several steps to avoid the Shen Gaoren's hind leg, then slipped close beside the limb. He lightly pressed his palm against the end of its leg and held it there for a second.
Heat surged into his palm. His armguard protected him, and the contact was too brief to burn him immediately, but Altaïr estimated that the shell around the Teppeki Shen Gaoren's leg had already exceeded one hundred degrees Celsius and was still getting hotter.
"Hot, meow!" Sajji and Clawdia shrieked from above.
Altaïr understood. The Teppeki Shen Gaoren must have sensed the threat on its back. Whether deliberately or through a natural bodily response, it had activated the heat stored within its body.
With the efficient internal circulation system unique to Carapaceons, its entire shell began heating rapidly.
As the temperature rose, the shell would inevitably soften. In exchange, however, the Felynes would no longer be able to climb freely across its body.
They could forget about crawling into its wounds to place Barrel Bombs. Crawling into the body of a Monster with a temperature of several hundred degrees, or even higher...
How would that be any different from crawling into an oven?
Heat waves rolled across the Lao-Shan Lung skull.
Because the torso lay closer to the Teppeki Shen Gaoren's core, it was noticeably hotter. If the Lao-Shan Lung skull had not blocked and insulated them from most of the heat, the two Felynes would have been forced to leave long ago.
Clawdia was still stubbornly trying to approach the wound near the Shen Gaoren's head when Sajji snatched the Supernova from her back. "Forget the wound, meow! We can't take that heat, meow!"
"If I can just get a little closer, I can throw the bomb inside, meow!" Clawdia argued.
"You'll be roasted before you get there, meow!" Sajji activated the delayed fuse. "And what if you miss, meow? Your father wouldn't take a risk like that either, meow!"
Clawdia said nothing.
While she stood there stunned, Sajji ran to the dragon skull's eye socket and hurled the Supernova Bowgun Ammo inside.
He immediately deployed his glider, grabbed Clawdia by the shoulder, and leaped from the Shen Gaoren.
"Fall back, meow! Twenty seconds until it explodes, meow!" Sajji's shout rang in everyone's ears.
The Hunters had only just returned to their fighting positions and had barely managed a few attacks before they were forced to retreat again.
They, too, could feel the rolling waves of heat gradually radiating from the Teppeki Shen Gaoren.
Before Sajji and Clawdia had even glided down to the ground, another tremendous explosion rocked the Teppeki Shen Gaoren.
Golden-red flames erupted from the Lao-Shan Lung skull's eye socket and between its teeth. It was not nearly as effective as the Supernova they had lodged deep inside the Teppeki Shen Gaoren's wound, but the blast still sent the creature staggering.
It stumbled forward several steps before finally regaining its balance.
"BRRROOOOM!" The low, rumbling roar sounded once more.
The crisscrossing, searing red patterns across the Teppeki Shen Gaoren's body grew brighter. Its temperature was climbing at an alarming rate, especially around its torso, where the areas between the glowing lines were changing from a dull, dark red to a dazzling orange-red.
"Sorry, meow." Now back on the ground, Sajji scratched at the whiskers the intense heat had curled. "The temperature was rising too fast, meow. If we hadn't acted then, we would've lost our chance, meow."
"You both did well!" Altaïr vigorously ruffled Sajji's and Clawdia's fur. "It looks like the heat source inside the Teppeki Shen Gaoren has been fully activated.
"It'll certainly be more dangerous and harder to approach in this state, but it'll also burn through its stamina several times faster than before.
"We can ease off our attacks a little from now on and let it waste more energy by itself."
Isis smiled and joined in. "It's just like managing a Gunlance's Heat Gauge. We can't let it cool down completely; keeping it in the red zone would be ideal.
"Wait, come to think of it..."
Isis quickly pulled a map from her pack and unfolded it. "There aren't any lakes or rivers nearby, and the coast is a long way off. If this thing overheats, do you think its 'barrel' will burst?"
P.S. This thing can spew magma, yet it is extremely weak to Fire... Overheating is the only explanation.
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