"The Old World?"
Tilting his head curiously, Sparky rested the pile of wood he was carrying on his shoulder against the wall and asked, "What does that mean, meow?"
"Uh, the Old World means... hmm, if you compare the place we lived before to a super huge island, that kind of island is called a continent. Uh, an island is land in the sea, but only small lands are called islands." Caly stumbled over his words for a moment before explaining, "For us, the continent you've always lived on is brand new and was previously undiscovered, so it's the New World. The place we came from is the Old World... I'm not explaining it very standardly, but you get it, right?"
"I think so, meow." Sparky scratched his head. "So you're going back, meow? You can't come back, meow?"
"Yeah, it's too far, and the journey is full of danger." Caly didn't look downcast. He looked around and said, "The Admiral and the others won't stay too long either. There's a lot to do back in Astera. Once you guys are mostly familiar with the new environment, we'll have to leave."
"Is that so?" Sparky's feline mouth twitched, and he didn't quite know what to say. "That's a bit sad, meow."
During the migration journey that lasted over a year, Sparky had gradually learned the language of the Hunters—picked up from the Palicoes—and had built friendships with the Hunters along the way. In the end, the Lynian races were indeed pure-hearted species; if you gave them sincerity, you would receive sincerity in return.
"Well, that's life. There are meetings, and there are partings," Caly was surprisingly open-minded. "Even if we never meet again, I will never forget that I have a Grimalkyne friend named Sparky."
"Me too, meow!" Sparky rubbed his eyes. "I won't forget Caly, meow!"
"That's enough then." Caly rubbed Sparky's furry head, smiling. "Maybe my child will reach the New World in the future. You have to recognize him then, okay?"
As he spoke, Caly took something the size of a palm out of his pocket and handed it to Sparky. It was a wood carving, exquisitely crafted, recognizable as Sparky himself.
"A parting gift for a friend," Caly blinked. "I've already thought it through. When my child comes to the Glavenus tribe in the future, he'll just say he's looking for the Grimalkyne with the cat wood carving."
"Then he'll definitely find me, meow! Sparky will always be here!" Sparky liked the carving of himself very much. He solemnly placed it into his bag, deciding to take it home and treasure it.
Thinking for a moment, he then untied a decoration from his spear—it seemed to be the bone of some monster.
"This is the trophy from my first hunt, meow! It's for you, meow!"
"Then I'll accept it graciously." Caly happily took the small bone. He planned to treasure these keepsakes from his friends in a box.
They were all beautiful stories. Caly had even fantasized about telling his children beautiful stories by the fire when he was old—stories about everything he had experienced in the New World.
"When exactly are you leaving, meow?" Rubbing the tears from the corners of his eyes, Sparky asked with a serious face, "The Wildspire Guardians won't let friends leave coldly, meow! We must have a grand banquet, meow!!"
"Uh, I really don't know about that." Caly scratched his head. "Should be soon? The Admiral has already met Boss Glavenus, and the communication mission is complete... Speaking of which, why does Boss Glavenus always stay in the nest?"
"I don't know, meow." Sparky shook his head and said, "The Boss doesn't really manage tribal affairs, meow."
This was a lie.
As the patriarch of the Glavenus tribe, Sparky knew exactly what Asterion was doing right now—hibernating.
Grimalkynes didn't understand what evolution was, so Asterion's order was simply that he was going to sleep and was not to be disturbed during the process; the Grimalkynes only needed to continue building the nest.
This was the real reason Sparky asked when the Hunters were leaving. Even though these Simian Wyvern friends had shown infinite friendliness over the past year, out of duty to the Glavenus tribe, Sparky wanted to ensure there were no outsiders in the nest during Asterion's hibernation. After all, these Simian Wyverns had always been very curious about the Boss.
It wasn't exactly malicious deception, but Sparky still felt a bit bothered by his own thought of hoping his friends would leave. He felt it was a bit despicable and insincere, so he wanted to hold a grand farewell and thanksgiving banquet as compensation.
As for Asterion—he didn't care what exactly the Grimalkynes were doing, as long as the orders he issued were carried out.
He had attempted to dig a small nest leading to the tree's core deep inside the Dreadking Rathalos's lair, near the trunk, but progress hadn't gone very smoothly. This tree was simply too hard, so hard that even with Asterion's teeth, he could barely gnaw through it.
The bark part was okay; Asterion expended some effort and broke a few teeth, but at least he chewed through. However, unlike ordinary trees, the closer he got to the core, the harder it became. Asterion couldn't even gnaw to the center of the trunk; he stopped after getting only about one-fifth or one-sixth of the way in.
It was too exhausting. Just gnawing that short distance—a hole that barely fit most of his body—had cost Asterion seven or eight teeth. A thin layer of dull, fallen teeth now littered the ground.
The hardness of the trunk itself was one thing, but the sap that flowed out after Asterion gnawed a breach was another. This sap was terrifyingly hard after solidifying, and terrifyingly sticky before it solidified—just like glue. It nearly stuck Asterion's mouth shut.
The whole project couldn't be paused for too long either. If he stopped and didn't gnaw deeper, the sap would soon fill back a portion of the hole. It was like taking one step forward and sliding back twenty or thirty centimeters for every meter gnawed.
After breaking so many teeth without managing to dig a satisfactory hollow, Asterion simply gave up on that operation. He curled up right there, issued orders prohibiting any Grimalkynes or other creatures from approaching, and began a new round of evolution.
The Teostra Gem contained most of the life energy accumulated over the Teostra's lifetime. This saved Asterion a tremendous amount of time, allowing him to begin the next evolution without having to spend time and effort hunting to accumulate life energy.
Unlike the last evolution, which drastically altered his body structure to the point of completely deviating from the standard Glavenus image, this evolution was more like a completion of the previous one, utilizing the abundant life energy.
For instance, those decorative little wings. Asterion planned to focus on remodeling those wings in this evolution and optimizing the heat dissipation pipes inside his body.
Discover a problem, solve the problem, become stronger. Asterion's logic was simple.
He had thought that routing the heat dissipation pipes directly to the vents at the tip of his sword-tail was adding a jet-powered Great Sword to himself, allowing his sword-tail to unleash greater power and speed.
But in actual combat, Asterion found his concept was a bit naive. In a life-or-death struggle where he exerted his full strength, the heat generated by his body was higher than he had imagined—so high that he didn't dare close the valves on his sword-tail to accumulate steam for a sudden release of power.
If he dared to close them, his internal heat dissipation pipes would dare to explode.
As a result, although he could continuously jet steam like a smokestack and swing his sword-tail faster, it wasn't Asterion's intended goal—he wanted that sudden burst of speed from a normal state, to catch the opponent off guard and deal higher damage.
Therefore, in this supplementary evolution, Asterion would focus on modifying the heat dissipation pipes. At the very least, they had to become rugged and durable, better adapted to physical combat between dragons.
He didn't want a repeat of the situation where, after being pierced by Nergigante's spikes, he was too afraid to fight properly for fear of a backfire explosion. Regardless of the environment, he needed to be able to unleash his strongest combat power.
Upholding this philosophy, the wings of the slumbering Asterion began their secondary growth. Dragon bones developed and proliferated, while flesh, fascia, and scales grew and expanded.
Looking back at all the monster flesh he had eaten, Asterion did not choose the wings of the Kushala Daora—the Elder Dragon with the highest structural strength—as the developmental direction for his own wings, because Kushala Daora's wings were simply too big and too heavy.
Rather than wings, Kushala Daora's wings were more like a metal shell. From its shoulders to its tail, they covered the entire back like a manta ray, completely covering even the mid-section waist area, as if wearing a metal cape.
This didn't fit Asterion's needs. His body was already heavy enough; he didn't need such a large, wide set of wings to increase his weight further and push him further away from the possibility of flight.
With the existing example of Valstrax, Asterion believed he just needed to lean towards the direction of Valstrax—even though he had never even seen a Valstrax, let alone eaten one.
But the wisdom of having once been human lay here. Asterion searched through his memories like flipping through a book for a long time. Valstrax, as a cool-looking and unique Elder Dragon, had high popularity in his past life. From Capcom's setting books to various analyses by social media bloggers, the curious Asterion had learned about Valstrax's flight principles.
Valstrax possessed a special organ in its chest capable of taking in large amounts of air and mixing it with Dragon Element energy to form a special Dragon Spirit (Dragon Qi). This Dragon Qi was similar to the breath attacks released from the mouths of other large monsters (like Deviljho), but Valstrax's Dragon Qi was exceptionally intense in both formation and consumption.
Valstrax's wing structure was also completely different from other flying monsters. Rather than wings, they were more like two guns. What sprayed from the "gun barrels" was the mixed Dragon Qi, which could be used against enemies or erupted in massive amounts behind it for jet-propelled flight.
The principle was just that—a principle. Even though he hadn't tasted Valstrax meat yet, Asterion was already preparing to steer the construction of his own heat exhaust pipes in that direction.
His body weight dictated that Asterion could only rely on brute force to achieve flight. This meant that the flight of ordinary monsters, which required flapping or special abilities, was not suitable for him. The elements his wings needed were hardness, a simple and refined structure, and no excess flesh like wing membranes.
Size didn't need to be too large either; they could even develop to be smaller. Since they would ultimately be driven by jetting energy or air, all that was needed was sturdy piping and the existence of exhaust ports.
After repeated consideration, Asterion chose Seregios's wings as the base model. The skeletal structure of Seregios was actually very similar to quadrupedal flying wyverns like Tigrex and Nargacuga, yet it possessed powerful flight capabilities that those other pseudo-wyverns lacked.
This meant that Seregios's wing skeleton, after millions of years of evolution, had a mature structural strength sufficient to support close-quarters combat with other sky apexes, capable of executing violent maneuvers like rapid climbing or flipping.
However, Asterion was only using the Seregios wing skeleton. There were four wing bones in total, short and thick. These four wing bones would be the main trunk of Asterion's wings. Without wing membranes or muscles sufficient to catch the air, Asterion was merely attempting to adjust the angles of these four wing bones and the main bone.
A total of eight wing bones. Asterion wanted these eight wing bones to be able to lie parallel to the ground and point vertically directly behind him, while also allowing each wing bone to turn independently, covering all directions from in front of him to behind him, and even below and above him.
He was planning to treat these eight wing bones as eight guns—hitting wherever he wanted during combat.
But that was a matter for later. Asterion was currently attempting to cover these eight wing bones with muscle while continuously extending the exhaust pipes from his main body along the connection between the wings and his back, until they grew to the ends of the eight wing bones, leaving a bony, pitch-black hollow there.
And, as always, Asterion grew eight thick scales at the entrances and exits of these eight holes to prevent any dirt or bad things from clogging them up.
It was actually quite funny; Glavenus was the first monster in the entire Monster Hunter series to have a "backfire" mechanic, and Valstrax was the second—Asterion seemed determined to go all the way down the road of preventing backfires.
When he woke up halfway through, Asterion used the light to inspect and test his newborn wings, only to find that perhaps because the branching point of every four wing bones was too close to his body, many envisioned movements—such as flipping the wing bones to point forward—could not be achieved, or were very awkward to perform. In a moment of inattention, he actually hit his own skull.
After thinking for a while, and referencing Valstrax's body structure again, Asterion extended the connecting bone between the junction of the four wing bones and the root of the wing on his back. This ensured that they wouldn't interfere with his head movements during attacks or flight.
When evolution reached this stage, Asterion at this moment didn't even look like a dragon with wings, but rather a dragon carrying a rack of rocket launchers on its back.
When the eight wing bones were neatly aligned and pressed against his back, this pair of grotesque wings looked more like a decoration than before, but they would definitely not make anyone who saw them think of toys or the word "cute."
They looked more like eight sharp spears. Their ends were shaped like sharp spikes; stabbing into flesh would leave eight holes, and they even came with built-in blood grooves.
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