At this moment, Zorah Magdaros looked exactly like a titan pulling a thick, heavy layer of yogurt right out of its cup!
The horizontal mountain range suddenly bulged upward at a rapid pace. Zorah Magdaros's colossal head steadily rose, lifting its entire upper body along with it. The displacement was so massive that the seawater surrounding its body and covering its back was hoisted completely into the air!
The surface waters surged outward in massive waves, while the deeper waters crashed back inward to fill the sudden vacuum. The ocean violently churned. Countless schools of fish—both those that had failed to flee in time and those living symbiotically on Zorah Magdaros's underbelly—were instantly knocked unconscious by the sheer pressure, floating away into the distance with their white bellies upturned.
Still submerged in the water, Asterion naturally bore the brunt of the turbulent currents. The seawater, usually yielding, now felt as solid and forceful as a battering ram, causing his body to rock violently back and forth.
Lacking sufficient experience in underwater combat, Asterion increased the output of his bio-energy propulsion to stabilize himself. However, against such erratic, expanding currents, the extra thrust only caused him to spin around awkwardly in the water a few times.
Splash!!!
With an earth-shattering roar of parting waters, Zorah Magdaros suddenly reared up and stood upright out of the sea!
This was the ultimate spectacle of a giant monster breaching the surface. What had previously looked like a small island on the ocean was now a towering colossus; even when the displaced water rushed back in, it only reached up to the monster's chest. Torrential sheets of seawater cascaded down its pitch-black rocky shell like countless temporary waterfalls, crashing into the ocean below and sending plumes of spray flying in every direction.
From his position underwater, Asterion got a clear view of Zorah Magdaros's underbelly. To his absolute dismay, however, this behemoth's stomach was nothing like the soft, vulnerable weak spots of ordinary monsters. It was entirely encased in countless layers of cooled mineral and lava crystals accumulated over centuries. The defenses on its underbelly were practically just as impenetrable as the armor on its back.
Siss siss siss siss siss—Pff!
With a single thought, Asterion blasted through the surface of the water and shot back into the sky. Zorah Magdaros's massive head slowly turned, its gaze tracking Asterion's trajectory.
At this point, even Asterion couldn't guess what was going through the old dragon's mind. He knew Zorah Magdaros had realized he was the source of the call that drew it here, but he had no idea what it would do now that it had found him.
—Would it simply accept this place as its final resting ground and drop dead right here?
Or would it feel deceived, thinking it had walked straight into another dragon's trap, and turn around to leave?
Or worse... would it engage him in a brutal, all-out brawl?
As Zorah Magdaros suddenly stood up, the wildlife living on its rocky peaks—or rather, its island-like back—suffered terribly. It was like dropping dumplings into a boiling pot. The flying creatures managed well enough, but the flightless ones plummeted into the ocean under the relentless pull of gravity. It was highly doubtful they would survive; after all, they were a massive distance away from the shoreline. As the saying goes, a mountain looks close until you try to walk to it.
The creatures that had lived on Zorah Magdaros long enough had experienced it standing up a few times before, so they had some survival experience. Whether that experience would be enough to keep them alive during the impending battle, however, remained to be seen.
Asterion couldn't afford to wait for Zorah Magdaros to make landfall. He was going to send this old dragon on its way right here and now, whether it liked it or not.
The world of adult dragons had no room for pleasantries. The gateway to godhood stood right before him; all it took was one final push of his claws!
Long, majestic, and deep—Zorah Magdaros threw its head back and roared. The sound washed over the area like a tidal wave, carrying no real malice, but serving as a stern warning.
Yet, to Asterion's surprise, he wasn't the one to strike first—it was Zorah Magdaros!
The Elder Dragon lowered its head slightly, and the primary thermal organs along its back instantly glowed a brilliant, scorching red. The next second, massive chunks of magma erupted from those vents, whistling through the air with a ferocious hiss as they hurled straight toward Asterion!
Each magma boulder was at least the size of a human carriage, tracing perfect arcs across the sky with highly visible trajectories.
"Weak! Weak! Weak!!"
Asterion didn't even need to make any drastic evasive maneuvers. He merely separated his eight wing-blades and adjusted his propulsion angles slightly to weave through the incoming assault with ease. The magma boulders zoomed past him one by one; one came so close that he could feel the blistering heat radiating off its surface, yet none managed to score a hit.
As the magma crashed into the ocean, it hissed violently, but aside from shrouding the surface in a thick blanket of white steam, it accomplished nothing. The churning waves quickly snuffed them out, sending them sinking into the abyss.
Before Asterion could even counterattack, Zorah Magdaros proved it fully understood the essence of turn-based combat: My turn, my turn, and it's still my turn! It threw open its jaws toward Asterion—Roar!!!
A massive torrent of magma breath spewed from Zorah Magdaros's wide-open maw. The thick, golden-red molten liquid unleashed a devastating wave of heat. What the monster spat out wasn't even melted stone, but a liquefied essence of pure minerals—entirely molten metal.
Honestly, though, an attack with this much physical mass was far too slow for the current Asterion. While the magma was packed with dense fire element energy, it also carried a massive weight of heavy molten metal. This naturally dragged down its velocity, rendering its trajectory so sluggish in Asterion's eyes that he could practically predict where every single drop would land.
It couldn't hit him at all!
Like a petrel cutting through a raging storm, Asterion leisurely glided through the magma rain, even finding the leisure to swat away a stray molten orb with one of his wing-blades just for fun.
With Asterion's temperament, there was absolutely no way he would take a beating without retaliating. If anything, Zorah Magdaros's aggression made him breathe a sigh of relief—it would have felt deeply uncomfortable if the old dragon had just rolled over and waited for death.
His eight wing-blades shifted slightly, and a sudden burst of bio-energy propelled Asterion higher into the sky. The deep blue bio-energy left a long, vibrant contrail across the azure heavens, looking like a rainbow—though a rainbow had never been quite this perfectly straight. And then... DIVE!!!
Ever since the day he transmigrated into this world and first discovered his unique abilities, Asterion had fantasized about executing an attack just like this! It required no technique, no intricate swordplay. It relied entirely on pure, unadulterated stats—Speed and Power!!
What kind of devastating force is unleashed when speed reaches its absolute limit?
Zorah Magdaros! Have you ever witnessed a blade that descends from the heavens?!
Limiters released: Twelve Stars!
Thermal vents: OK!
Internal heat organs: OK!
Bio-energy charge: Fully cleared!
COME ON! METEOR SLASH!!!
For the first time, he completely ignored the strain on his developing internal heat organs. For the first time, he unleashed the full extent of his underworld bio-energy. Asterion could even feel the thermal vents inside his body beginning to throb with pain—a searing, burning sensation that crept inward from the tips of each wing-blade, flashing warning signs like an overloaded circuit board.
Yet, he had absolutely no intention of holding back. Instead, he pushed harder, unleashing even more power—Just a bit more! Just a bit faster!
Surge! Launch!! SPRINT!!!
With a target this massive right before him, pinpoint accuracy wasn't even necessary. Zorah Magdaros was right below. Aiming roughly for the colossal dragon's neck, Asterion transformed into a literal falling star—PLUMMETING!!
Tearing through the atmospheric barrier and shattering the sound barrier, a violent sonic boom rippled behind Asterion, expanding into a series of dissipating rings. The deep blue light surrounding him began to shift into something closer to brilliant white, as the overloaded bio-energy ignited into a whole new hue under the intense friction of high-speed descent! Blinding and fierce!
This wasn't like a Valstrax rocketing into the atmosphere during a hunt only to dive-bomb its foe head-first; Asterion possessed a far superior weapon.
His entire dragon form was enveloped in the overflowing, incandescent bio-energy, blinding his forward vision with a radiant shroud of raw power. Yet, Asterion was guided by an intangible intuition—his primal instinct!
Just a fraction of a second before his head could collide with Zorah Magdaros, his eight wing-blades twisted violently, snapping his entire dragon body into a sudden, mid-air 180-degree spin!
Come forth, Blade!!
His rigidly straightened blade-tail followed the momentum of the spin, slamming heavily into the shell of Zorah Magdaros's nape in an instant. A dull, metallic thud echoed out, sounding as though two incredibly thick slabs of metal had collided at terminal velocity. The violent shockwave of the impact traveled all the way up to the base of Asterion's tailbone, leaving it completely numb.
SLASH!!!
Have you ever been slashed at the speed of light?
Cough, alright, sorry for the exaggeration—the speed of light was obviously impossible, but the speed of sound was definitely achieved. Empowered by gravity and sheer momentum, even an Elder Dragon like Zorah Magdaros, whose absurdly thick hide plunged hunters into absolute despair, could not simply ignore this attack. This was not the kind of damage that could be shrugged off by armor alone.
"ROAAAR!!!"
Bellowing in agonizing pain, Zorah Magdaros naturally couldn't reach back with a hand to clutch its wounded neck, leaving the injury fully exposed. The rocky carapace had been sliced clean through, and even the monster's inherent shell had cracked open, revealing the deep crimson, heat-radiating muscle tissue beneath.
Scorching dragon blood sprayed outward from the wound. The moment it splattered against Zorah Magdaros's pitch-black rocky hide—which was still damp from the sea—it erupted into plumes of scalding red steam, releasing an absolutely foul, pungent stench.
Yet, in truth, the wound wasn't particularly deep.
Zorah Magdaros's hide was simply too thick.
Currently, Asterion measured around 50 meters in length, but Zorah Magdaros stretched to a staggering 250 meters, and it was incredibly wide. The mountain of rocky carapace and volcanic mineral deposits anchored to its back gave it an immensely massive build and unparalleled defensive capabilities.
To put it into perspective, Zorah Magdaros's average size had completely shattered Dalamadur's records. A Dalamadur, widely considered by seasoned hunters to be the largest monster in existence, looked almost small in front of Zorah Magdaros. Of course, this was purely a comparison of physical size. In terms of combat prowess, Zorah Magdaros was no match for a Dalamadur; if they ever actually fought, it would undoubtedly be blasted to smithereens by Dalamadur's white energy beams.
Being massive alone wasn't enough to secure a spot at the absolute apex of the ecological pyramid. After all, what monster capable of reaching that tier didn't have a few ultimate tricks up its sleeve?
Did it hurt?
Good. If anything, Asterion felt his slash still hadn't been fast or vicious enough—it hadn't managed to decapitate Zorah Magdaros right then and there. Cough, well, that was admittedly a bit of a pipe dream.
Fighting Zorah Magdaros felt somewhat like a battle between a mosquito and a human. No matter how hard a single mosquito tried, it could never drain all the blood from a human, let alone bite them to death. Of course, the gap between Asterion and Zorah Magdaros wasn't that wide—he was hardly a mosquito.
A human versus a venomous snake, perhaps... yes, that was a much closer comparison.
Throwing its head upward, Zorah Magdaros used the movement to naturally constrict and close the wound on its nape, preventing Asterion from seizing the opportunity to widen the gash.
Frankly, it was overthinking things. If Asterion were to fly back up and attempt another majestic sky-dive, he couldn't guarantee hitting the exact same spot. If his eyes had undergone some sort of evolution, maybe he could give it a shot, but as things stood now... it was completely out of the question.
Roaring in pain, Zorah Magdaros shifted its massive bulk once more. For a behemoth of this scale, every single movement carried the crushing weight of a landslide. Zorah Magdaros merely twisted its body and swung its tail—a basic attack that any quadrupedal monster could execute, something that should have been entirely ordinary.
But when executed by Zorah Magdaros, the sheer scale was terrifying. As its body twisted, its submerged tail swept in from the side, lifting diagonally upward. Asterion watched as an infinite volume of seawater rose along with it—SPLASH!!!
Like a shovel scooping up a massive clod of dirt, the liquid ocean seemed to solidify before Zorah Magdaros's tail, getting scooped up entirely and hurled straight at Asterion!
This wasn't even a wall of rain anymore—it was a literal brick made of seawater! Or rather, a massive net of ocean sweeping upward to engulf Asterion from below!
Illumined by the sunlight, the blue seawater turned into a translucent, blinding white. Blotting out the sky, it blanketed Asterion's entire vector with staggering mass.
Should he dodge?
Asterion let out an excited breath.
What a joke. Dodge? Me?!
Front claws, hind claws, forelimbs, and hind limbs—every protruding part of Asterion's body tucked inward as tightly as possible, streamlining his silhouette. The eight wing-blades on his back snapped together in an instant. From afar, his entire dragon form looked as straight and lethal as an arrow!
Siss siss siss—Whoosh!
LAUNCH!!!
Deep blue bio-energy erupted violently behind Asterion. The next fraction of a second, charging directly against the wall of water and Zorah Magdaros's rising tail, Asterion rocketed straight ahead!
A frontal breakthrough!!!
CRASH!!!
This time, even Asterion felt a jolt of pain as he instantly pierced through the wall of water. However, he wasn't foolish enough to collide directly with Zorah Magdaros's tail; instead, he veered sharply mid-flight, aiming his trajectory straight for the Elder Dragon's skull!
CLANG!!!
It was no illusion. Following Asterion's brutal impact, Zorah Magdaros's head was forced backward, and three thick, blunt teeth came flying out of its mouth!
"ROAAAR!!!"
Zorah Magdaros was... completely dazed by the blow.
Of course, since every action has an equal and opposite reaction, Asterion was left feeling a bit dazed himself.
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