The violent splash and shockwaves produced upon crashing into the water's surface caused the surrounding air to warp subtly for half a second.
This drove the marine monsters, who were already fleeing for their lives, to swim even faster, diving deeper into the distant depths.
An intense agony was gradually consuming Zorah Magdaros entirely. From its head to its tail, the pain rapidly spread to the rest of its massive body like a withered forest set ablaze, the fire whipped by the wind with no intention of slowing down.
The bright surface water rapidly receded as the pitch-black darkness of the deep sea swallowed Asterion's vision. Sunlight was choked out by the thickening layers of water, shifting from azure to deep indigo, and finally to a profound, near-absolute black. The entire process took only a few seconds, as if someone were dimming a lamp notch by notch, until the only thing left was the eerie blue glow radiating from Asterion's own body, bleeding faintly into the surrounding dark.
Well, there was also the Xeno-energy erupting from his chest and the tips of his wingbones, illuminating the dark ocean floor once more... not to mention the molten lava spewing from within Zorah Magdaros.
Though the violent impact and deafening roar of crashing into the water left his mind somewhat dazed, Asterion did not loosen his grip even a fraction. His claws remained deeply embedded in Zorah Magdaros's skull carapace as he unleashed his Xeno-energy with everything he had.
This was no longer just an attack; it was his way of feeding.
Naturally, the deep sea offered no oxygen to breathe, but fortunately, Asterion possessed an exceptionally large air sac. During Zorah Magdaros's chaotic plunge, he had already vacuumed up a massive reserve of air like a hurricane, stuffing the sac to its absolute limit. For the time being, suffocation was the least of his worries.
Instead, the most noticeable shift was the oppressive, heavy sensation of being submerged. Even the sounds entering his ears became utterly muffled, like listening to a distant conversation through thick layers of cotton—the general shape of the noise remained, but the finer details were lost entirely.
Paradoxically, this heavy silence helped Asterion's racing heart steady itself. He focused entirely on steering the Xeno-energy he unleashed, acting like a general leading an army into battle as he stormed into Zorah Magdaros's body to ruthlessly plunder its bio-energy.
Uh, why does that sound a bit like a succubus's trick? ...Must be my imagination.
Shaking his head, Asterion batted away the bizarre thought that had suddenly popped into his mind and focused entirely on the task at hand.
This dark ocean floor was likely seeing more action right now than it ever had since the dawn of its creation.
Even submerged in the ocean, Zorah Magdaros found no relief. That bone-deep agony relentlessly pursued it. It instinctively tried to roll over and thrash about, desperate to shake off the creature gripping its head, but the mountainous shell that had weighed heavily on its back for centuries forced it to remain stranded on its side, blindly flailing its massive limbs against the seabed.
At this critical juncture of life and death, even an Elder Dragon like Zorah Magdaros—which had plunged into the sea fully prepared to find a graveyard and welcome its demise—instinctively fought for survival. The energy it had accumulated over its entire lifetime erupted violently outward. It was as if a miniature sun had risen from the abyssal depths, casting a brilliant, golden-red radiance that illuminated a sea floor untouched by light for countless millennia.
How magnificent. This final, radiant blaze of life was so intense it even suppressed the eerie blue glow emanating from Asterion.
Zorah Magdaros was a living volcano incarnate, and its wrath naturally brought about an apocalyptic spectacle. Scalding, incandescent magma erupted furiously from its back and the fissures between its armor plates, flash-cooling the instant it collided with the frigid ocean water.
The entire underwater world erupted into chaos. An absolute deluge of white bubbles surged toward the surface like a reverse rainstorm, accompanied by a deafening, unified hiss. The violently churned-up silt and sand choked out what little visibility remained, transforming the depths into a chaotic, blurry void where up and down ceased to matter.
Asterion lost all sight of his surroundings, completely engulfed in a swirling mass of bubbles. Even the bubbles themselves were stained a brilliant, beautiful golden-red by the searing magma and flames blasting from Zorah Magdaros.
If not for the heavy ocean currents enveloping him, Asterion might have genuinely believed he was relaxing under the sun.
Any deep-sea fauna too slow to escape met a grim fate. The waters surrounding Zorah Magdaros had completely boiled, the scalding torrents turning the clumsy creatures bright red instantly. Up on the surface, a massive blanket of dead fish began to float, their flesh cooked to a stark, clean white.
As Zorah Magdaros's struggles grew more desperate, the energies unleashed by both the Elder Dragon and Asterion surged into absolute frenzy. Two violently opposing forces clashed, collided, and buckled against each other within the cramped confines of the deep trenches...
...radiating outward in all directions through the ocean, vibrating along the seabed, and driving deep into the bedrock below. The shockwaves plunged further into the crust until even the Bio-energy within the subterranean leylines was thrown into disarray.
This was the definition of a catastrophic chain reaction. The earth began to tremble—not from the mere thrashing of Zorah Magdaros on the ocean floor, but from something far worse: an earthquake!
Rumble! Craaaash!
It wasn't the sound of an explosion, but the terrifying sound of bedrock snapping, tearing apart, and grinding together. The low, heavy groaning echoing from the depths of the Earth's crust caught Asterion completely off guard—it was his very first time witnessing a tectonic event of this scale.
The sight of the tectonic plates tearing open right before his eyes carried an overwhelming visual impact. Plumes of silt and magma geysered from the newly formed trench, rolling across the deep ocean floor like a vast, golden-red carpet.
Occurring so close to the coast of the New World, the submarine earthquake immediately struck Astera, which sat right along the shoreline. The hunters remaining at HQ rushed out of their quarters, shouting orders and calling out to one another as they scrambled to secure the base's supplies and facilities.
One hunter nearly got crushed by a heavy wooden beam falling from above. He lunged out of the way, cursed loudly, and immediately spun around to pull up a comrade who had been knocked over.
"Wait! Look out there! A tsunami!"
"Tsunami incoming! Take cover, now!!!"
Anyone looking past the docks toward the horizon could instantly see the impending disaster. A frothing white line, rising far above normal sea level, was surging toward Astera at terrifying speed. Behind that white line loomed a colossal wall of water, swelling larger, taller, and faster by the second as it swallowed the ocean.
No one could remain calm in the face of a wave that literally threatened to swallow the sky. The moment Astera realized what was coming, the entire base erupted into absolute pandemonium.
Panic and desperation gripped the air. The hunters abandoned the supplies knocked over by the quake, sprinting at top speed to find any semblance of safety. Some ducked into stone-fortified structures, while others fled toward the higher tiers of the base. Everyone scrambled to prepare for the impact that would strike in a matter of seconds.
Time was a luxury they didn't have.
A tsunami moves at a terrifying velocity, far swifter than any natural breeze. Before the hunters could even process whether their chosen shelters would hold, the towering wall of water crashed onto the shoreline with cataclysmic momentum!
CRAAAAAASH!!!
"It felt as if the entire sky had collapsed right on top of us." That was how one hunter later summarized the nightmare.
The reality was that a localized deluge completely submerged Astera, obliterating the docks in an instant. The watchtowers and defensive barricades built to withstand monster attacks were snapped like twigs under the sheer hydrostatic pressure.
That submarine earthquakes trigger tsunamis was basic textbook knowledge for most hunters, but when theory became terrifying reality, there was nothing they could do to prepare.
They could only watch helplessly as the ocean tore through Astera, completely capsizing the First Fleet's ancient galleon—which had long served as their living quarters and command center. It leveled the surrounding wooden housing, sweeping up decades of gathered provisions, research equipment, and personal belongings into the churning froth, dragging everything back out to sea as the waves receded.
Even the grand forge in the Workshop, whose fires had burned uninterrupted for decades, was instantly snuffed out by the deluge, sending massive, billowing plumes of white steam roaring out of the smithy.
The heavy doors of a storage facility were ripped cleanly off their hinges, spinning wildly out to sea. Crates of precious crafting materials meant for compounding potions split open, scattering herbs and reagents across the churning, muddy waters.
At a time like this, the loss of materials faded into irrelevance. The only thing that mattered was human life.
"Get the survivors out! Hurry!"
"Toss me that rope! Hold on tight!!"
Since its founding, Astera had never faced a natural disaster of this magnitude. Though the base hadn't been entirely wiped off the map, it was left in absolute ruin. A complete structural rebuild would likely be necessary, as the integrity of many waterlogged buildings had been dangerously compromised.
Even with the modern airships, and despite technicians having upgraded their propulsion systems by studying the flight mechanics of wind-riding wyverns, it would still take a considerable amount of time for the hunters stationed at the Research Base to make it back to Astera.
Disasters always struck when least expected. For now, the people left at Astera had no choice but to rely on their own strength to weather the storm.
Meanwhile, Asterion had absolutely no idea that his battle with—or rather, his execution of—Zorah Magdaros had inadvertently wreaked havoc on Astera. Even if he did know, he wouldn't have felt an ounce of guilt or remorse. The only thing occupying Asterion's mind was the fact that Zorah Magdaros was on the brink of death.
The three pairs of energy-receptors on his chest granted Asterion the ability to read the fluctuations of Zorah Magdaros's bio-energy perfectly. Since no monster had ever evolved the ability to mask its own life force, Asterion could gauge precisely how much longer the titan could hold out.
Like a bonfire slowly burning itself out without fresh timber, the core of the colossus known as Zorah Magdaros was dimming.
A steady stream of magma continued to leak from the fissures of the behemoth's carapace, its mouth, and its back—though at this point, it was less of an eruption and more of an involuntary ooze. Asterion had quite literally beaten it senseless.
Yet, upon closer inspection, the fresh magma carried a faint, barely discernible shimmer of eerie blue light.
It was proof that Zorah Magdaros's physical form was being completely overtaken by Xeno-energy. It functioned like a massive dragnet—except Asterion wasn't catching fish; he was trapping the Elder Dragon's entire reservoir of life force.
Fully understanding the concept of spending money where it counts, Asterion didn't hold back the reserves in his thermal organs. On the contrary, he pushed them to their absolute limits, pumping massive waves of Xeno-energy deep into Zorah Magdaros's flesh. He had no choice—the titan was just too damn big.
The behemoth was nearly five times his size. To completely execute Zorah Magdaros using Xeno-energy while preventing it from triggering a catastrophic self-detonation or letting its life force bleed away into the ocean required an immense upfront investment... but Asterion knew it would be worth every drop.
Finally, the thrashing of Zorah Magdaros's webbed limbs began to slow. The magma geysering from its core dwindled from an explosive fountain to a lazy, trickling stream. It continued to seep outward, but it no longer possessed the pressure to spray into the abyss.
Its heavily armored head finally sagged, dropping limply toward the ocean floor. Yet Asterion remained firmly perched on the titan's skull carapace, looking as though he had taken root right there—or perhaps, he literally had?
Mirroring the secret sanctuary Xeno'jiiva had once constructed for itself, a massive web of blue and white crystals began to sprout, anchoring Asterion directly to Zorah Magdaros's skull. The crystalline roots extended backward, snaking all the way into the first Magma Core on the Elder Dragon's back.
The translucent blue and stark white Xeno-energy crystals multiplied like rapid parasitic flora, growing at a pace easily visible to the naked eye. From the outside, the crystalline lattice formed a massive, glowing cocoon that slowly enveloped both Asterion and Zorah Magdaros. On the inside, however, the crystals were boring deep into the titan's flesh.
Tracing along blood vessels and nervous pathways, the crystals systematically linked into every single one of Zorah Magdaros's internal organs. They acted exactly like the roots of a tree: while only a small fraction was visible on the surface, the subterranean root system ran several times deeper, forming an intricate, tangled network that anchored itself everywhere.
These were the literal roots through which Asterion would draw his nourishment. It was his first time utilizing this unique ability inherited from Xeno'jiiva, and all things considered, it worked like a charm.
His absorption efficiency was arguably higher than Xeno'jiiva's own. After all, the energy Xeno'jiiva traditionally siphoned was a passive accumulation filtered through the leylines of the Everstream into the Confluence of Fates. Elder Dragons had to perish somewhere across the New World for their life force to bleed into the earth, suffering immense dissipation and degradation before finally reaching Xeno'jiiva's cocoon as nourishment.
Asterion, on the other hand, had shortcutted the entire ecological cycle. He had straight-up beaten an Elder Dragon to death and was now sitting directly on the corpse, guzzling the energy straight from the source. It was pure, unfiltered, first-hand energy, maximizing efficiency while completely eliminating any environmental dissipation.
The Xeno-crystal tree expanded aggressively. Centered around Zorah Magdaros's colossal carcass, countless spreading crystalline buds and clusters interlaced and stacked atop one another. They climbed along the mountain-like peak of the corpse, racing upward until they breached the ocean surface once more.
When the Bazelgeuse brothers spiraled in from the distant skies, they were greeted by the sight of a titan-sized spire piercing the ocean surface. The exposed portion alone loomed over a hundred meters high, composed entirely of hollowed-out Xeno-crystals. Through the intricate, woven gaps in the crystalline pillar, the horizon on the other side remained faintly visible.
Just like that, a massive new landmark had appeared out of thin air on the coast of the New World... if one could even call it a landmark.
"Roaaar!!" (Are you alright, Boss?!)
"Roaar!" (Are you still alive?!)
Circling high in the heavens, the Bazelgeuse brothers looked down, filled with immense worry.
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