Monster Hunter: This Dragon's Built Different-Chapter 430: Chaos in the Rotten Vale

The hunters, fully braced and with every remaining cannon completely loaded, were still waiting for Zorah Magdaros’s next round of impact. Instead, they saw Zorah Magdaros stand in place and pant for a while, then twist its colossal body and slowly turn its head, retreating back toward the entrance of the Everstream behind it.

Discrepancy. Shock. Confusion.

These emotions continuously spread through the hunters’ hearts, and then all of them transformed into joy.

Zorah Magdaros had retreated!

They had not allowed Zorah Magdaros to set foot on a single step of the Everstream behind them, where scorching magma flowed!

Cheers erupted in an instant. Even the Fire Wyverns circling overhead were infected by this surge of emotion and let out resounding, high-pitched roars.

The Commander gazed at Zorah Magdaros’s gradually retreating figure and finally let out a long breath of relief. His whole body felt as if its strength had been instantly drained, and he collapsed to the ground, frightening those beside him into rushing over to support him.

"I’m fine! I’m fine!!"

Bracing himself against the ground, the Commander slowly stood up again. Breathing in the thick sulfurous smell in the air, he announced before everyone’s expectant gazes that in this battle, they had perfectly achieved their objective!!

And as Zorah Magdaros withdrew, little Loren and the young Nergigante that were still locked in combat also noticed the situation.

Watching Zorah Magdaros pass below, the young Nergigante—having already expended far too much energy, yet barely managing to touch little Loren’s body more than a few times—timely regained its clarity.

Its still-clear vertical pupils glared resentfully at little Loren, who hovered at a distance, constantly maintaining a safe gap, with large swarms of Radiant Crystal Butterflies fluttering around him.

It would carve the appearance of that disgusting fellow deep into its memory—

Taking a deep breath, the young Nergigante’s wings shook, and it dove in pursuit of Zorah Magdaros.

Dangerous as it was, at this moment, compared to little Loren—who was visible yet impossible to grasp—it ultimately chose to set its sights back on that original massive target.

As for the young Nergigante’s departure, little Loren had no intention whatsoever of stopping it.

Its Radiant Crystal Butterflies had already suffered losses of more than one-third over the course of this period of fighting.

Yet the young Nergigante was still completely unscathed, showing not the slightest trace of fatigue. Even if it was just a punching bag, getting beaten for too long would still be infuriating! What was more, this "punching bag," the young Nergigante, could bite. In an environment like this, where he could not cut loose, if he were caught by the other side, then he would really be in for suffering.

Therefore, for this battle, little Loren likewise did not want to keep fighting anymore. Since the objective had already been achieved, he simply let the other side leave.

And the hunters who were cheering—when they saw little Loren flying back—found their cheers, which had already begun to subside, surge back to a new peak once again.

...

On the pass, everything was joy, but within the Rotten Vale, it was another kind of atmosphere entirely.

The Vaal Hazaks, who had originally already planned to leave one by one and return to their respective nests, had not even gone a few steps before they sensed—through that miasma that was everywhere—that vast and scorching life energy had once again returned to the Rotten Vale.

Moreover, this energy was no longer as steady as it had been before; it began to become exceedingly active, faintly giving off the momentum of being able to erupt at any moment.

As the masters of the Rotten Vale—having, from ancient times to the present, handled countless Elder Dragon corpses within the Rotten Vale—they knew very well that if they left the returning Zorah Magdaros unattended, then even with the Rotten Vale’s special environment, it would be impossible to suppress the energy eruption at the moment of Zorah Magdaros’s death.

If it exploded here then, the chain reaction it triggered would likely affect the very ecological foundation of the entire New World.

They had no idea what Zorah Magdaros had experienced within the Everstream. It had clearly only been inside for a short time, and presumably could not have gone very far—so how had it ended up in this state, as if it might explode at any moment?

The Vaal Hazaks could not understand it, but they understood that if they did not hurry over, then with every minute they were late, the Rotten Vale gained another minute of risk of being blasted.

Two Vaal Hazaks that had not gone too far yet let out harsh, grating, hoarse dragon roars. Even their tattered wings, which they rarely used, began to flap—afraid that their speed would slow.

At the same time, at the Everstream entrances scattered throughout the Rotten Vale, from piles upon piles of stinking corpse heaps, thick miasma sprayed out at high speed. One Vaal Hazak after another, roused from slumber, spread wings draped with rotting hide. Carrying a heavy, irritated waking temper, they hurried toward the direction where Zorah Magdaros was—while transporting vast quantities of miasma.

Pairs of crimson luminous organs flickered in and out within the dense miasma, like the Vaal Hazaks’ extremely irritable and stifled hearts after having their sleep disturbed. 𝕗𝗿𝕖𝐞𝐰𝗲𝕓𝐧𝕠𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝐨𝚖

The young Nergigante, who was following closely behind Zorah Magdaros while stealthily concealing its presence, suddenly discovered that within an extremely short span of time, the concentration of miasma in the air had abruptly grown much denser.

Even Zorah Magdaros’s body—through which magma flowed—began to blur under the concealment of the massive volume of miasma, leaving only that towering volcanic mass still not yet swallowed by it.

Just as It was about to draw a little closer to ensure that Zorah Magdaros would not slip out of Its sight, a pair of lantern-like luminous organs emerged from the thick fog, carrying with them a powerful stench.

The Vaal Hazak that was transporting miasma and attempting to suppress the continuously leaking, high-temperature life energy of Zorah Magdaros immediately noticed the sneaky young Nergigante hiding behind a gigantic sea-snail shell.

If one were to rank the Elder Dragons that Vaal Hazak hated the most, Nergigante would certainly be on the list—at one point even ranked alongside Nakarkos.

One liked to steal bones; the other liked to stir up trouble right when an Elder Dragon was on the verge of death.

They were, without question, dragons that made things harder for Vaal Hazak.

If not for the Rotten Vale’s special environment—which allowed Vaal Hazak to possess an almost inexhaustible supply of energy—then with their relatively small frames, they truly might not have been able to defeat Nergigante.

Therefore, after spotting the young Nergigante—clearly a dragon that had come to cause trouble—and already sensing that quite a few of Its kin had arrived in this area and begun working together to manipulate the miasma to ease the life energy radiating from Zorah Magdaros, this Vaal Hazak finally felt at ease.

Without the slightest hesitation, It stopped the work at hand and directly unleashed a breath of miasma, sweeping both the young Nergigante and its cover into the attack’s range.

In an environment filled with an enormous volume of miasma jointly transported by multiple Vaal Hazaks, even ordinary Disaster Elder Dragons were something they could contend with—let alone a young Nergigante that was still in its juvenile stage.

With no surprises at all—and without even managing to mount any effective resistance—the young Nergigante, already somewhat fatigued after its battle with little Loren, did not even have time to dodge before being struck head-on by the powerful miasma breath.

The miasma relentlessly stripped away Its vitality, and the exaggerated impact blasted It far into the distance.

Accompanied by repeated sounds of stone shattering, once the massive breath had passed, the young Nergigante could no longer be found at the original spot—the entire dragon had no idea where it had been blown off to by that single blast.

After venting a small portion of the irritation that had been pent up in its chest upon waking, the resentment stirred in Vaal Hazak by Zorah Magdaros’s immense life energy finally subsided somewhat.

Its ferocious lower jaw rose and fell, letting out harsh, grating hisses. Then It once again turned toward the direction of Zorah Magdaros and continued to inject life energy into the miasma in the air, allowing it to remain sufficiently active even under extreme heat.

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