It was hard—incredibly hard. After all, it was the tooth of an ancient dragon, and its exterior was encrusted with a thick layer of mineral crystals that had accumulated over countless years.
As for the mineral crystals on its body, they went without saying. Even its head was covered in a thick layer, intermingling seamlessly with its tar-like, pitch-black shell until the two became indistinguishable.
This was armor forged from centuries of Zorah Magdaros consuming the lava of underwater volcanoes. Rich in the essence of various metallic elements, it was far harder than even a Dragonator, vastly superior to any materials ordinary hunters used to craft armor—a defensive miracle honed by time itself.
Rather than a clean cut, Asterion's previous heavy, forceful strike felt more like swinging a massive hammer and delivering a crushing blow to the back of Zorah Magdaros's head.
The impact was so immense that Zorah Magdaros's colossal body staggered back two steps sideways into the seawater. Its heavy feet gouged two deep trenches into the seabed, stirring up a murky gray cloud of silt and debris that lingered in the water for a long time.
Yet, it managed to keep its footing and did not fall.
Although Asterion's attack failed to decapitate Zorah Magdaros outright, it still inflicted a considerable amount of damage. Compared to the sheer dizziness and concussive shock brought by the high-speed collision, the wound—which only trickled a tiny amount of blood—was practically nothing.
This was likely the first time Zorah Magdaros had ever experienced an attack of this nature. It wasn't the impact of an erupting underwater volcano, nor was it the searing heat of magma or the crushing pressure of tectonic plates... It was truly baffling for the dragon.
Needless to say, Asterion instantly became the target of Zorah Magdaros's ultimate hatred.
As its roar of agony subsided, Zorah Magdaros turned its head and spat out four consecutive magma balls. The glowing, orange-red spheres whistled through the air, each flying along a different trajectory, attempting to compensate for their lack of accuracy with sheer area coverage.
But their speed was simply too slow to catch Asterion, who was moving nimbly through the air. This was a classic match-up of a lightweight assassin against a heavily armored tank—well, even if this assassin wasn't exactly "lightweight," his agility was certainly on par.
With a casual adjustment of his flight posture mid-air, he slipped right through the raining barrage of magma fireballs, which crashed into the distant sea, throwing up four fleeting geysers of white water.
Standing tall, Zorah Magdaros couldn't even use its forelimbs to swat at Asterion, who hovered in the airspace nearby. The volcano on its back, which had grown larger and larger as it matured, weighed down more than just its wings—under centuries of crushing rock layers, Zorah Magdaros's wings had long since completely vestigialized. Not only had it lost the ability to fly, but it couldn't even spread them open.
The volcano on its back restricted not just its wings, but also the range of motion of its forelimbs. The angles at which those two front legs could extend were extremely limited; attempting to swat a highly agile target flying through the air was simply beyond its capabilities.
A useless Elder Dragon, a pure target.
This was Asterion's primary thought at the moment. Curling his blade-tail forward mid-air, he inspected it to see if it had deformed after that previous Meteor Slash. He discovered that the blade-scales along the side of his tail had been flattened into square shapes by the sheer force of the collision.
It really was tough. After all, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Fortunately, this issue was easy to solve—he could just shed the damaged blade-scales and regenerate them immediately.
The process would be swift, but for now, the real object of attention was Zorah Magdaros itself.
Yet, how should he put it? Facing a Zorah Magdaros like this, Asterion felt a tinge of... regret.
He didn't regret failing to deliver a one-hit kill, nor did he regret any lingering suspense over the battle's outcome—Asterion had never once entertained the thought that he might lose. The conclusion had been written from the very beginning; reaching that finish line was merely a matter of time and process.
He regretted something else entirely.
As the final sacrifice for his ascension to godhood, Asterion had actually wanted a head-on, brute-force clash with Zorah Magdaros.
Just like his battle with Nergigante many years ago, where they tore into each other until they were drenched in blood, exerting every ounce of their strength—blade against blade, fangs against claws. He longed to gradually wear down his opponent under the high-pressure thrill of an even match until one of them was completely dead.
That was what made it thrilling; that was what made it exhilarating. But clearly, this world rarely allowed a dragon to always get what it wished for. Just like with that old Kushala Daora decades ago, harboring earnest expectations didn't guarantee a matching reward.
Zorah Magdaros was truly terrible at fighting.
By nature, it was a total homebody of a dragon. Unless its home volcano ceased its activity or it sensed its own impending death and needed to find a graveyard, Zorah Magdaros would do nothing but hunker down beside a volcano to store up energy, refusing to take a single step away.
The life of a mountain dragon was spent in endless accumulation—amassing energy, accumulating rocks, piling up minerals... transforming itself into a mountain range that grew progressively harder to move, until the day it died of old age, leaving behind yet another mountain range for the world.
Its offensive repertoire was even more impoverished. It either dissipated its internal heat through the three magma cores on its back, or erupted magma from the hollows in its shell—amounting to little more than a small-scale volcanic eruption. Of course, it could also vent heat directly from its maw, just as it had done when attacking Asterion moments ago.
Honestly, it wasn't fair to call these attacks weak. They were highly lethal to both human-sized hunters and large monsters alike—especially a close-range volcanic eruption, which was more than enough to turn any slow-moving creature to ash.
Coupled with its immense proportions, Zorah Magdaros's sheer size was its greatest defense. A couple of casual steps could level forests or hills; a mere graze meant injury, a direct collision meant death. Its vitality was incredibly resilient, making it an exceptionally tough nut to crack.
But from Asterion's perspective, Zorah Magdaros's methods of attack were dreadfully simplistic and ineffective—its attack ranges were fixed and devoid of tracking capabilities, its movements were sluggish and dull, and its reaction time was agonizingly slow. Its melee options were severely constrained by its own massive bulk, forcing it to rely entirely on area-of-effect coverage to make up for a lack of precision. Asterion, meanwhile, happened to be the exact type of fighter who excelled at using supreme mobility to evade wide-area attacks.
If an attack couldn't be concentrated into a single point, it stood no chance of breaching Asterion's defenses, while wide-scale assaults could easily be bypassed or shattered by him.
At this moment, Asterion suddenly realized that the monster he once deemed insurmountable had, before he even knew it, become separated from him by a massive, invisible wall.
Only this time, he was the one looking down from above, while Zorah Magdaros was trapped below.
Would Zorah Magdaros feel dread because of the immense energy he was continuously radiating? Would it become so terrified that it would instinctively flee?
Ha!
Should he take flight again and continue to crash down like a falling star to hack at Zorah Magdaros? Or should he utilize the jet thrusters in his wing-bones to nimbly change directions, hovering around Zorah Magdaros's head while looking for an opportunity to pierce its eyes or other weak points with his blade-tail?
Neither.
That strike from the heavens was merely Asterion giving closure to his past. It was proof of his growth, the very foundation he had once relied upon to survive in this world—but now, Asterion suddenly realized he no longer needed it.
The razor-sharp blade-tail, which had even developed a venom sac at its tip for sneak attacks... without him realizing it, he had already gained methods of attack far more potent than relying on a tail to slash or stab. This old friend, which had accompanied him for decades, had finally lived to see the day of its retirement. Still, Asterion had no intention of allowing this form of his tail to atrophy or degenerate.
Whether kept as a memento or reserved for a rainy day when it might just come in handy, it was a part of him after all. Yet, from this moment on, Asterion would no longer treat his blade-tail as his primary means of offense.
To grow even stronger, Asterion was willing to abandon his old friend!
Sentimental feelings didn't matter. No matter how excellent a weapon was, there would always come a day when it had to be replaced. If he had to put it in words: he only respected victory! Only the victor gets to survive and claim everything!
A brief burst of jet propulsion launched Asterion straight onto Zorah Magdaros's head. Given Asterion's body length, he couldn't possibly lie flat across the entirety of the Elder Dragon's massive crown, but this was more than enough. He only needed a foothold, a point of contact, sufficient for him to drive his bio-energy directly into the wound on the creature's body.
Having several hundred tons suddenly slam onto its head was naturally impossible for Zorah Magdaros to ignore. However, it possessed no viable means to strike at Asterion while he was perched atop its skull, leaving it with no choice but to violently shake its head in a desperate bid to fling him off.
Asterion's limbs weren't just for show. His razor-sharp claws dug firmly into the various crevices and mineral protrusions on Zorah Magdaros's skull, rendering him completely immune to being shaken loose.
"Roar! Roar!" (Stop struggling, you old fossil! Since you came here seeking death, then die quietly!)
Amid Asterion's roars, Zorah Magdaros's thrashing grew increasingly violent, but it was all in vain.
"Roar—Roar!!" (Once I consume you, I will be a god!!)
Time to drop your loot, old dragon!!
BOOM—M—!!
Centered around the area where Zorah Magdaros stood, every single inch of air vibrated violently at this precise millisecond. No, it wasn't just the air—even the seawater submerging Zorah Magdaros's chest and abdomen was shaking, as if every single molecule was being relentlessly hammered.
It was hard to tell whether this was a high-frequency or low-frequency resonance, but everything in the vicinity was trembling so violently that it would have turned an ordinary human's bones to jelly, vibrating them to death on the spot.
An unimaginably massive wave of energy poured out from Asterion's body, surging like a bursting dam.
It forced its way inward through the wound on Zorah Magdaros's neck. The gash opened by the Meteor Slash instantly became a critical breach; passing through it was no longer cool air or seawater, but countless waves of bio-energy infused with Asterion's absolute will.
Seen from a distance, a brand-new ocean seemed to suddenly materialize atop Zorah Magdaros's head. Cascades of eerie blue water gushed and flowed downward like a waterfall. The energy no longer seemed ethereal or formless; instead, it felt like a tangible substance that had manifested in this world, possessing actual mass like a liquid.
At the exact moment this shimmering blue ocean erupted across the back of Zorah Magdaros's neck, the cascading liquid simultaneously flooded into its eyes and agape maw, seeping into every available orifice as it washed downward.
In just a few brief seconds, Zorah Magdaros's tar-like black skull was stained with a magnificent coat of eerie blue. The coloration began spreading from the cracks, looking as though someone were slowly pouring blue ink along the veins of a stone, tracing every microscopic fissure as it bled out in all directions.
The corrosive, invasive nature of the bio-energy was put on full, terrifying display at this moment.
But Asterion hadn't come to help Zorah Magdaros break past its limits or achieve a secondary evolution. This old dragon enjoyed none of the good fortune shared by the lifeforms in the Ancient Forest. Under Asterion's conscious command, the bio-energy was operating at full throttle with a single, absolute purpose: to execute Zorah Magdaros.
Devoid of even a shred of gentleness, the bio-energy rampaged violently through the gaps between Zorah Magdaros's blood vessels and muscle tissues. It offered the Elder Dragon zero time to adapt to its presence, surging straight toward the vital organs essential to its biological survival, tearing them apart in the most savage and direct manner possible.
The bio-energy flooding in from the neck wound rapidly dispersed, decimating flesh and nerves, even directly transmuting Zorah Magdaros's flesh into solid crystal. These eerie blue crystal chunks were then ignited by the Elder Dragon's boiling blood. The destruction occurring deep within Zorah Magdaros's body was anything but beautiful.
Those very crystals that formed the crystallized forests—wonders that left hunters struck with awe and longing—were, at this moment, nothing more than the residual slag of corruption. They were the solidified waste left behind after the bio-energy plundered and converted vital life energy: cold, rigid, deathly still, and utterly devoid of life.
As for Zorah Magdaros's eyes, they had been completely blinded the very instant the bio-energy invaded. Those twin pools of dark red flame that had burned for centuries suddenly snuffed out, replaced by a pair of blazing, eerie blue fires that could show the Elder Dragon nothing at all.
"GRAAAOOH!!!"
Pain!
Nothing but sheer agony remained for Zorah Magdaros!!
It was impossible to tell whether this unendurable torment was destroying Zorah Magdaros's mind, or if its brain itself was generating this agonizing pain as it was directly assaulted by the bio-energy.
As a mountain dragon born with a premier pedigree, Zorah Magdaros had spent its entire life nestled beside underwater volcanoes. From its youth to old age, it had never suffered any real injuries, let alone endured a beating—and because of this, the pain was all the more unbearable.
It felt as though every single nerve was being roasted over an open fire. The destruction of its eyes combined with the excruciating pain screaming along its nervous system drove the massive, normally slow-witted Zorah Magdaros into a state of absolute madness. The agony utterly shattered its sanity—or rather, with its brain actively being destroyed, Zorah Magdaros could no longer think, reduced to operating entirely on pure, unadulterated instinct.
Zorah Magdaros's roar even pushed back the seawater in front of it, forming a massive, visible tidal wave. The entire dragon seemed on the verge of fainting from the pain; its reared-up body stopped making any further deliberate movements, hanging in a slightly backward-leaning stance—SPLASH!!
Or rather, CRASH?
Under Asterion's overwhelming onslaught, Zorah Magdaros could no longer even maintain its footing. Its entire colossal form crashed heavily into the sea!
The sound of its impact with the water was like a clap of thunder—the sound of tens of thousands of tons crashing into the ocean's surface under the violent tug of gravity.
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