It couldn't even be called a tactical retreat. To be exact, the Nergigante simply fled.
There was no point in even mentioning things like the pride of an Elder Dragon; it immediately turned tail and fled into the depths of the Wildspire Waste without looking back.
Its thick, fleshy wings, covered in hard spikes, flapped frantically. It completely cast aside the hatred embedded deep within its bloodline instincts and any desire for revenge over the painful wounds it had just suffered in that grand battle. It would rather waste the massive amount of bio-energy consumed in a high-intensity fight just to distance itself from this area as fast as possible.
Nergigante... was indeed afraid of dying.
As a unique monster standing at the absolute apex of the New World's food chain—one capable of hunting and feeding on Elder Dragons—Nergigante possessed its own set of criteria for judging the strength of its prey.
From the prey's size and the intimidation it exuded, to the intensity of the bio-energy contained within its body, this specialized sensory ability ensured that Nergigante would not waste its precious stamina and energy on targets it stood absolutely no chance of killing.
Every bite of meat had to be earned; waste was the ultimate taboo.
Because of this, the moment that blinding sphere of blue light suddenly rose from the boiling sea, every single spike on Nergigante's body hardened in an instant. It clearly felt that overwhelming pressure—a sense of threat far greater than that of any ordinary Elder Dragon, a biological warning triggered by primal survival instincts.
It was just like how, in its usual hunting grounds, Flying Wyverns and Brute Wyverns that held no predatory value or occupied lower ecological niches would immediately flee in terror and scramble for cover the moment they caught Nergigante's scent drifting through the air or sensed its presence.
Except today, the one needing to run was not those monsters, but itself.
It had chickened out.
The kind of pressure that could make a dragon specializing in hunting Elder Dragons tremble to its very marrow could only come from something far more powerful than itself. No, a mere comparison of combat prowess couldn't even describe this gap; it was an aura that could only be possessed by a higher form of life—one that completely outclassed it in terms of biological evolution and ecological niche.
No dragon understood this better than Nergigante.
This was precisely why Nergigante chose to flee immediately without even considering turning around to fight. Its instincts were screaming, assuring it that there was absolutely no chance of victory. Thus, it ran without a shred of hesitation.
Meanwhile, Asterion, who had just burst out from the sea, did not care in the slightest about his old friend fleeing in panic in the distance. At this moment, he hadn't even noticed that Nergigante had come and gone, much less that the creature had managed to squeeze in a bloody battle with his own old buddies.
Asterion was currently immersed in a brand-new state of perception. A higher life form naturally granted him a grander perspective. Suspended in midair, Asterion felt as though the entire New World's vast and intricate bio-energy veins—including the currents of leyline energy buried deep beneath the dark seabed surrounding the continent—had become an extension of his own senses and touch.
Simply by closing his eyes, which seemed to burn with eerie blue flames, he could clearly perceive a faintly shimmering energy network. The nexus of this network was Asterion himself, spreading out toward the farthest reaches in all directions—uh, to be precise, it wasn't spreading out right then; rather, Asterion was sensing things that had already existed all along.
Without even needing to consciously concentrate, a cursory scan revealed that this network enveloped almost the entire southern region of the New World. However, the range of this perception seemed to decay with distance; the further out it went, the hazier it became, eventually dissolving into a blurry halo at the fringes.
From this macro perspective encompassing nearly half the continent's energy cycle, the minor physical destruction and commotion caused by the Bazelgeuse brothers and Nergigante on the ground earlier were utterly negligible. They couldn't even scratch the leyline itself.
And the massive bio-energy contained within their bodies was nothing more than tiny, faintly flickering specks of light within this network of endless leylines. There were countless such specks of light scattered across the New World. Had he not already possessed prior knowledge or focused his attention to filter them out, Asterion would have barely noticed their existence in this energy vision.
The Zorah Magdaros loot drop had been picked clean; Asterion had consumed everything thoroughly, without a single bit of waste.
Just as he had anticipated, the massive lifetime of bio-energy accumulated by the old codger over countless ages became the key force allowing him to break through his physical limitations. It enabled Asterion to successfully cross that insurmountable chasm—evolving entirely from an Elder Dragon into a Forbidden Monster.
Now, feeling the majestic power surging within his body, Asterion could proudly declare to the world that he stood at the absolute apex of the natural ecology!
The threats that had terrified and unnerved him during his weak, dormant days, and the schemes he had been forced to plot just to survive, had vanished like passing smoke in the wake of his physical evolution.
"ROAR!!!" (From this day forth, I shall stand above the heavens!!)
With a sky-rending roar, Asterion emulated that incredibly edgy character from his memories to deliver his own inaugural address. Then, he could not wait to begin experiencing this completely matured body of his.
I'm rich!
Oh, wait, I mean I'm rich in energy!!
The energy inside him now could be squandered completely at whim. It felt as though an infinite ocean of energy resided within his body, with no end in sight and no possibility of running dry.
It almost brought tears to Asterion's eyes—it really had been too miserable. Do you have any idea what I've been through these past few decades?!
He had spent decades living a scraping, tightly-budgeted, miserable existence. He never had the luxury like other regional apex predators to just eat his fill, sleep, and live a peaceful life. He didn't even have much time to enjoy the company of the pack of cats he raised to cook for him. Instead, he spent his days constantly on the move, searching for prey overflowing with bio-energy.
Ha! Even when he finally managed to eat something decent, it wouldn't last long. The lion's share of the energy gained from eating was always funneled into physical evolution, to the point where hunting from the moment he opened his eyes every day couldn't even make up for the deficit.
Every single day was spent agonizing over how to ingest enough energy and how to restrict his energy expenditures. He had to calculate the cost-benefit ratio of even a single extra battle.
By contrast, the actual process of evolution had been the most relaxing part. At least he didn't have to run around foraging and could get a peaceful night's sleep... if one excluded racking his brains to draft the evolution blueprints, that is.
But everything was different now. Asterion felt a seemingly infinite reservoir of energy within him. Even if he recklessly spread his wings right now and wantonly blasted high concentrations of Xeno-energy radiation outward through his wing-bones without any restraint, he felt absolutely no signs of energy decay or physical exhaustion.
He was even too lazy to mix air into the erupting Xeno-energy anymore. So what if he just blasted pure, unadulterated energy?!
Not only was there zero fatigue, but under the constant nourishment of that endless energy, Asterion felt absolutely fantastic!
As the saying goes, "brute force breeds miracles." Back when Asterion was limited by his physical capabilities, he relied precisely on this crude, straightforward philosophy. By continuously ramping up the output of his internal fire blasts to force out enough thrust, he had managed to get himself airborne.
Even so, it came at the cost of extreme stamina depletion, making it impossible to sustain long-distance or long-duration flights.
But what about now?
Asterion didn't even need to consciously build up energy anymore. With just a single thought, he could crank his flight speed to the absolute maximum. Now, the bottleneck limiting his flight speed wasn't even the amount of energy contained in his body, but whether the heat-dissipation pathways inside his physical form could withstand the extreme temperatures.
In the absence of instruments to make precise measurements, even Asterion himself had no idea just how fast his all-out speed was now. All he knew was that the howling wind in his ears had vanished, replaced by a flat, white noise.
His speed had long since broken the sound barrier, though he couldn't tell exactly how many times faster than sound he was going. He could only see a succession of vapor cones and sonic rings expanding vertically behind him, accompanied by a continuous chain of sonic booms.
But raw numbers didn't matter. What mattered was this exhilarating sensation of flying at full throttle with zero inhibitions! No longer did he have to worry about a pitiful battery life. Just charge straight ahead and... launch!!
Flying at supersonic speeds completely invisible to the naked eye, the intense friction between Asterion's body surface and the air was inevitable. The heat unleashed dyed his entire body bright red, like dry firewood doused in gasoline.
The Xeno-crystal carapace covering his entire body, which originally gleamed with an eerie blue hue, was heated by the extreme temperature into a deep wine-red. A prominent orange-red glow tinged his brilliant crystalline surface. As he maintained his speed, the redness born of this intense heat deepened continuously, spreading further and further along the pathways of his spine.
Simultaneously, the sharp crystal spikes growing along Asterion's shoulders and various joints began to melt, unable to withstand the sustained, extreme heat. Under the combined force of his velocity and the blade-like howling wind, these semi-molten crystals were violently sheared off his body.
These crystals, carrying lethal temperatures, plummeted like a meteor shower. Asterion had no idea where they would eventually land on the surface below, or what unlucky flora, fauna, or wyverns they might smash into.
But who cared? Anyone hit by them could just curse their own bad luck. At this moment, Asterion only wanted to go higher! Faster!
Upward! Through the thick layers of clouds!
As he flew, Asterion resembled a moving mountain. When his massive body violently plowed through the dense storm clouds, his sheer kinetic energy forcibly dragged along a diagonal wake of vapor, carving a colossal scar through the cloudscape.
When Asterion completely broke through the grey fog obstructing his vision and ascended far above the cloud line, unobstructed sunlight poured down without restraint, illuminating the boundless sea of clouds into a magnificent, glittering expanse of gold.
Such a view, no matter how many times Asterion witnessed it, would never grow tired of it. The grandeur of the heavens and earth was far beyond anything a single creature's roar could ever match.
Creatures bound to the earth could never imagine that when they looked up at gloomy, oppressive storm clouds, the world behind that very shroud was so breathtakingly radiant and divine.
Asterion was like a giant flying fish, constantly breaching out of an ocean of energy and diving back down under the pull of gravity. He cruised freely through the cloud layers, occasionally rolling his body to adjust his flight posture.
Closing his eyes, he didn't need to worry about colliding with anything ahead. He simply relished the pure thrill of slicing through the airflow and atmosphere at extreme speeds, letting the whipped-up gales peel away along his smooth body surface toward the rear, like a zipper being violently undone.
At this extreme velocity, even Asterion's field of vision stretched into bizarre, elongated streaks, making it almost impossible to discern the scenery ahead or below... Uh, considering Asterion's high-altitude dynamic visual acuity, he couldn't make out fine details on the ground while flying anyway, so a little blurriness didn't really matter.
Through this unreserved, long-distance, full-throttle flight, Asterion actually gained a deeper understanding and mastery over his newly reshaped body. Flying like this, shattering the sound barrier, was merely the most superficial and basic ability of his physical form—as fundamental as breathing, and hardly anything to marvel at.
Every dragon classified at the level of a Forbidden Monster possessed its own signature ultimate trick. Feats like altering a local environment or a whole continent's ecosystem were child's play to them, a caliber of power rarely seen in other monsters.
For instance, Alatreon's signature ability to simultaneously control five basic elemental energies. Not only was the sheer volume immense, but the quality was also extraordinarily high, and it could even stack them together for synchronized use—uh, is it just an illusion? He couldn't help but feel that this description sounded a bit like a certain Hokage from a neighboring franchise, instantly making Alatreon feel a lot less cool. Cough, cough!
In short, what allowed Asterion to completely transcend the echelon of Elder Dragons was, naturally, his unique Xeno-attribute energy.
Although this special energy originally stemmed from the pale blue energy unique to Xeno'jiiva, once Asterion devoured and digested it, the energy that once belonged solely to Xeno'jiiva and Safi'jiiva became tinged with Asterion's own essence. It underwent a qualitative mutation, transforming into something entirely different from its original form.
Now, this Xeno-energy possessed superb shaping capabilities and was highly corrosive. Once any living creature was tainted by this energy, it was incredibly difficult to shake off its adherence.
Naturally, aside from its destructive applications, this Xeno-energy possessed a core characteristic: evolution.
It could force any target deeply corroded by this energy—whether animal or plant—to break through genetic limitations and forcefully evolve into a superior, more robust form... provided Asterion didn't intentionally sabotage the process when unleashing the energy.
This was precisely what set his Xeno-energy completely apart from any other form of energy. It could carry Asterion's thoughts and intentions, functioning normally even after leaving his physical body.
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