Letting himself go completely, Asterion's words had even taken on a touch of chuunibyou theatrics.
Feeling satisfied that he had injected his old dragon acquaintance with enough "positive energy" to trigger an evolution, Asterion finally released his bite, letting Kushala Daora's limp neck drop to the ground like a dead dog.
Spreading his eight wing-bones, accompanied by the overlapping, piercing screeches of energy jets, Asterion's colossal, mountain-sized body soared into the air just above the ground. Hovering directly over Kushala Daora's head, he delivered his parting threats in a thoroughly arrogant posture.
This was exactly the right vibe!
When you leave something behind for someone, you have to talk like this!
At this moment, Asterion was so thrilled that he wished he possessed the power of time travel. He wanted to fly back fifty years immediately, grab his naive, past self—the one who was still struggling to survive in the cracks, worrying himself sick over the petty friction between monsters and humans—and drag him forcibly to this exact moment.
He wanted that weak, aggrieved past self to open his eyes wide, take a good look, and thoroughly enjoy the absolute thrill of it all!
So what if it's a Kushala Daora? So what if it's an Elder Dragon!
Back then, these arrogant bastards could conjure a single storm and force you to scramble for cover, leaving you to look up at them from a filthy mud pit. But now? Before yours truly, they can only sprawl on the ground, twitching helplessly like a dog with a broken spine!
To survive, he needs you—and more than that, he actually has to rely on your mercy to inject power into him, giving him a boost just so he can keep up with the pace of the new era!
Could anything be more ironic, or more deeply satisfying, than this?
This is true power! This is something only an absolute powerhouse—one who has completely transcended the ecosystem—can achieve!!
True freedom was never about eating, drinking, and fooling around at one's whim; it was about imposing one's will—even a twisted, mischievous will—down to the absolute limit!
Stretching his body with immense satisfaction, Asterion cast a contemptuous glance at the other Kushala Daora not far away. This unlucky bastard had been slapped upside the head by Asterion's wing in the very first second of the battle, sent flying like a torn sack, and now finally seemed to be recovering from his concussion.
While an iron-clad dragon face couldn't manage complex expressions, the sheer terror radiating from him was unmistakable. The effortless composure typical of an Elder Dragon had long since been crushed into fertilizer for growing panic. Shrouded in a pitch-black storm, he stood on high alert, looking as if he would fight to the death to protect his companion while staring fixedly at Asterion in mid-air.
Heh, ridiculous. Asterion snorted a puff of blue smoke from his nostrils, thoroughly amused. What are you so guarded against?
Just like those Teostras, ordinary Elder Dragons were no longer worth Asterion's attention. Unless it was an old friend he had crossed paths with before, Asterion wouldn't even bother to give them a second look—and yes, that even included Nergigante!
A windfall like a forced evolution wasn't meant for boring randoms; that was a special privilege reserved exclusively for old friends.
Ignoring the two Kushala Daoras, Asterion executed a jet-propelled burst, drawing a sharp blue line through the sky as he returned to his previous "workstation."
Uh, calling it a "workstation" felt a bit uncool. Let's call it an altar—a place where great things happen.
The pleasantries were over. All that was left to do now was to continuously pump Bioenergy into the Leylines.
Currently, Asterion was absolutely fearless, having forgotten what it even meant to be afraid. So what if Fatalis showed up? At worst, they'd just throw down; it wasn't like he was scared of the thing.
The furtive anxiety he felt back when he killed Xeno'jiiva had long since vanished. Back then, Asterion worried that Safi'jiiva would sense Xeno'jiiva's disappearance and come knocking for revenge. But now? Heh... if it came, it would just be an extra meal.
As Asterion's terrifying, godlike silhouette—which exerted a crushing pressure on other monsters—finally departed, the cluster of light at the Leyline node flared up once more like a giant lightbulb. The Kushala Daora who had bravely shielded his companion finally let out a sigh of relief; his nerves had been right on the verge of snapping.
Not daring to dispel even a fraction of the storm protecting him, the still-mobile Kushala Daora anxiously turned around to check on his companion's condition.
He saw dozens of prominent, gruesome puncture wounds gouged across his companion's relatively slender neck—the marks left by Asterion's teeth piercing through steel carapace and scales. If it were an ordinary monster—no, even for a Kushala Daora itself—a neck injury of this caliber normally meant dying of rapid blood loss.
Yet, this Kushala Daora noticed to his astonishment that these horrifying wounds seemed to be on the verge of healing. Not only had the Elder Dragon blood stopped spurting, but a layer of hard, eerie blue crystals was actively condensing and growing over the torn flesh surrounding the wounds at a visible rate.
These crystals formed a perfectly interlocking shield over the wounds, as if they were rooting themselves into his companion's flesh like soil. It looked profoundly bizarre, yet these crystal shards miraculously staunched the bleeding, even causing the wounds to appear gradually mended.
Growing stones out of living flesh might sound terrifying to humans—akin to some terminal disease—but to a monster, it hardly mattered. This was especially true for Kushala Daora, whose physiological structure was highly unique even among Elder Dragons.
Two-thirds of their entire bodies were composed of mineral essences ingested and absorbed over vast spans of time, which was exactly how their metallic carapaces formed.
To a Kushala Daora, growing a few rocks on the skin's surface was completely normal. That outer metallic shell lacked pain receptors entirely; even if it were sliced open, they wouldn't feel a thing.
He wasn't dead.
His companion's survival allowed the Kushala Daora to finally breathe easy. This meant that terrifying dragon truly hadn't acted with intent to kill, and he didn't need to stay so guarded, keeping his storm raging around him.
Not only that, but he discovered his friend's vital aura, far from waning due to severe injury, was roaring like a fire doused in oil. He could distinctly feel a wave of utterly tyrannical energy rampaging inside his companion's body.
Yet this internal rampage didn't weaken him; instead, his presence grew increasingly potent, faintly exuding a crushing pressure that made even his fellow Kushala Daora's heart tremble.
What did this mean?
Why was this happening? It defied all logic.
That terrifying dragon possessed the power to instantly kill them, yet instead of executing a completely subdued foe, he used an incredibly brutal method to make his enemy stronger?
This relatively younger Kushala Daora turned his head in utter confusion to stare at the massive figure in the distance, who was currently sprawled over the Leyline node, furiously channeling energy. His gaze was filled with deep incomprehension... along with a trace of awe and reverence that he himself hadn't yet realized.
Only one thing was certain: no matter what that dragon was trying to achieve, any desire this Kushala Daora had initially possessed to stop the anomalies in the Elder's Recess had completely evaporated.
Lesson learned. Please just spare us.
The Teostra and Lunastra couple had chosen to flee at the very first opportunity, while the Kushala Daoras—the lords of the skies—were instantly defeated and subdued. And there were two of them, no less!
Both apex species, who had long stood at the pinnacle of the Elder's Recess ecosystem, had been brought low in less than a few minutes. Seeing this, the other bold monsters lurking in the distance to watch wouldn't dare be foolish enough to disturb Asterion.
Boundless energy was being continuously funneled into the Leylines. The sheer scale of this energy expenditure alone was enough to suffocate weaker monsters; it was an amount that far exceeded the collective life energy of their entire bodies. Even Elder Dragons would bow in submission before such an absurd consumption rate.
But for Asterion, who had evolved a perfect internal energy circulation system, functioning like a perpetual motion machine was incredibly convenient. Energy expenditure wasn't an issue at all; it was as simple as eating or drinking. What"* bothered him far more was the sheer boredom of the process.
It felt like being forced into a timeout, obligated to lie flat here without moving an inch.
Not to mention, Asterion wasn't just unilaterally draining himself. While injecting energy, he was also continuously siphoning power from the crystals naturally present throughout the Elder's Recess.
After all, the reason the Elder's Recess possessed such a bizarre landscape was precisely because it had accumulated the bioenergy of countless deceased Elder Dragons and powerful organisms over millions of years.
This hyper-concentrated bioenergy had nowhere to vent and couldn't circulate quickly enough. When it finally exceeded the environmental threshold, it gradually precipitated, ultimately forming the massive clusters of blue-white crystals seen everywhere.
To other creatures, these solid energy crystals were incredibly hard and impossible to absorb directly, but in Asterion's eyes, this place was nothing short of an all-you-can-eat buffet.
Leveraging his unique physiology, Asterion could forcibly siphon the bioenergy from these crystals, replenishing himself while continuously discharging it. Honestly, he acted like a middleman; by merely drawing the bioenergy out and routing it through his own body, he passively retained a portion of it. Over time, his total internal energy capacity, instead of dropping from the continuous output, actually increased.
This was a major reason why he had chosen the Elder's Recess to carry out his grand plan. As Asterion continuously pumped massive amounts of Bioenergy into the Leyline corridors, the Leylines of the entire New World gradually began to respond to him.
Meaning, through earthquakes.
Uh, earthquakes in the New World had indeed been far too frequent lately; tremors of all sizes hadn't stopped for a moment.
But there was no helping it; such were the fundamental laws of nature. The Leyline network weaving through the continent was like a living organism's nervous system. While not exactly delicate or fragile, the influx of so much foreign energy was bound to trigger a corresponding reaction.
Especially in a situation like this, where the energy at a single node within an otherwise stable stream suddenly multiplied exponentially, causing a localized pressure imbalance. Under such conditions, the geological feedback became glaringly obvious.
To use an analogy, what Asterion was doing was like drilling an inlet into the side of an old pipe that was already filled to capacity with perfectly balanced water pressure. Instead of letting any water out, he was using a high-power, high-pressure water pump to furiously force an additional stream of high-pressure water inside.
Furthermore, he wasn't just pumping it in; he was using this newly introduced high-pressure flow to brutally shove the originally stable water current, forcing it to change direction and accelerate toward more distant, deeper reaches.
Under such stress, the pipe's pressure merely going off the charts instead of the entire section detonating on the spot was already showing an incredible amount of restraint.
Except now, what was going off the charts was the New World's Leylines. The closer one got to the Elder's Recess, the greater the Leyline pressure became. From the moment he started working until now, the earthquakes Asterion had consciously counted had already reached a staggering fourteen times.
As for the more distant regions outside the Elder's Recess, it went without saying. Asterion had no idea what the outside world looked like now; he only knew that countless lives would inevitably perish in this geological upheaval.
But he... didn't really feel anything about it.
Long before setting out to hunt Zorah Magdaros, Asterion had already warned Kulve Taroth and his own hatchling not to wander off, and he had told the Grimalkynes to prepare for disasters in advance. He just didn't know if the Grimalkynes had passed the message along to the humans in time, or if the humans had managed to react.
As for other forms of life—he wished them luck.
Currently, Asterion was a walking calamity. His every move—even a simple act like hunting—would trigger massive shifts on an ecosystem level. Obviously, Asterion wasn't about to seal himself away or hide in some corner sleeping all day just for the sake of other living things.
RUMBLE!!
Mid-thought, another earthquake rippled through the Elder's Recess. A massive crystal, easily taller than three men combined, tumbled down from a mountain peak, ultimately crashing into the ground and shattering into countless fragments. Milky-white energy could be clearly seen dispersing outward as the crystal burst.
As Asterion continued to pump energy into the Leylines over an extended period, the latent activity of all the energy crystals across the Elder's Recess was gradually awakened. The energy concentration in the Recess had become so suffocatingly high that ordinary creatures could literally choke to death on it. Ordinary monsters who knew they lacked the strength had long since fled to the outside world overnight; some even preferred to dive straight into the Leyline corridors to escape to distant lands rather than stay here.
Very few monsters remained in the Elder's Recess now, mostly consisting of territorial apexes or Elder Dragons. Asterion couldn't be bothered to deal with them, and they had no intention of disturbing him either. Instead, depending on their own tolerance levels, they crouched in various directions centered around Asterion, silently absorbing the overflowing Bioenergy.
For creatures like monsters, nothing was more important than something that could make them stronger. They keenly realized that this Bioenergy was a completely new element capable of helping them scale new heights.
Even Elder Dragons were no exception.
That Kushala Daora—Asterion's old friend—was currently perched atop a cliff closest to Asterion, staring with a complex gaze at the massive form enveloped in radiant light.