[Skills obtained: Advanced Fire Gland, Reinforced Thermal Plating, Enhanced Lung Capacity, Wyvern Vision, Hardened Membranes, Venomous HeelAccept: YES/NO]
The sensation fades as quickly as it comes, but it leaves several changes in my body.
The most noticeable—though disappointing—is the appearance of a membrane that goes from my wrists down to my waist on both arms.
And disappointing because I expected to get wings.
"They're way too small… I don't think I could even glide with these." I look at the membranes with annoyance, truly expecting proper wings.
"Still… why didn't the Rathian give me membranes too?" I pause at my own question.
"The Rathalos is more adapted for flight… I guess that's why?" I can only shrug and continue with what I was doing.
…
POV Narrator
A day had passed since Chryssia killed and devoured the Rathalos. She wandered through the forest with no clear destination.
Until high-rank monsters appeared, she had no more prey left in the Ancient Forest.
She was searching for the path toward the ravine where Zorah Magdaros had been ambushed for the first time.
Until the path to the Coral Highlands and the Rotten Vale opened, Chryssia would have no new prey.
Or so she thought.
Chryssia tilted her head, dodging a small projectile—a simple stone.
She looked toward the direction it came from and narrowed her eyes. The hunter was aiming at her with his left arm, where his slinger was mounted.
The two stared at each other.
Chryssia didn't move. She didn't understand why the hunter would waste such a good surprise attack.
Meanwhile, the hunter calmly reloaded his slinger with another stone. Once the cord tightened, he didn't hesitate and fired.
Chryssia didn't even bother to move. The stone hit her abdomen and simply shattered.
The hunter didn't bother reloading again; he slowly began stepping back. Chryssia just watched him walk away.
The hunter moved his lips as if saying something, and even though he and Chryssia didn't speak the same language, she understood him.
"Follow me."
Chryssia watched him disappear into the foliage without moving.
From leagues away she could tell this was a trap.
She snorted in amusement and turned around.
"Running away as always."
She froze upon hearing the voice. Even with her three-hundred-seventy-degree vision, she still turned her head to look at the woman who had spoken.
And she saw them—those eyes that always looked at her with disdain.
Without realizing it, she activated both [Demonic Blood] and [Thunder Cores].
She leapt with such force that she tore up the ground beneath her feet.
And when she landed, the power of [Meteoric Fall] was added.
She destroyed the spot she landed on, leaving a small crater as a sign of her fury.
She didn't see the woman's remains, so she uselessly began turning her head in every direction—despite already seeing all directions at once.
It didn't take long for her to realize the truth.
… She had never been there.
Chryssia roared with such fury that the air trembled, birds fled, and the forest fell silent after her cry.
The hunter—who had stopped to see why she wasn't following him—took a step back when he heard the roar.
And when he heard the foliage moving—not rustling, but being ripped out along with dirt, rocks, and other vegetation—he didn't hesitate and started running with everything he had.
He wasn't wearing armor, just tough fabric clothing, and his only weapons were his knife and slinger, so he could run faster than usual.
Even so, he could hear Chryssia getting closer, so he took advantage of the terrain.
He saw a fallen trunk elevated by stones and slid underneath it. Chryssia knocked it aside with a single swipe.
He ran through a cluster of roots without losing momentum; Chryssia had to rip them out to pass.
From the hunter's perspective, it felt like a chase that lasted days—but only minutes had passed.
Chryssia, for her part, had used [Alternate Form] to reduce her body size. She still had trouble passing through certain places, but far less than before.
She had lost sense of time—if someone told her she had been chasing him for minutes, she would believe them; if they told her it had been a week, she would believe that too.
But everything must end.
When the ground began sloping upward, the hunter smiled.
He passed between some trees and, to Chryssia's confusion, jumped to the side instead of continuing forward.
But when she caught up, she understood why.
"Now!"
She heard someone shout, followed by the sound of metal mechanisms moving.
The entrance behind her was now blocked by a metal gate, but she didn't have time to focus on it.
Because she also heard the sound of cannons firing.
She rolled to the left to avoid a volley of five cannon shots—if any of them hit her, she knew she wouldn't live to tell the tale.
Avoiding the shots, she finally took in her surroundings.
She was in a huge pit in the Ancient Forest that had been reinforced into a small fortress.
Filled with hunters who didn't even dare approach her.
She thought fast: first, she'd go for the cannons that were still reloading, but fifteen bolts from mounted ballistas made her reconsider.
Even while dodging the ballista fire, she noticed both the ballistas and cannons were on a natural stone platform.
She tried getting closer, but as she passed some bushes—
*BOOM!*
Someone shot the bushes, which had explosive barrels hidden underneath.
She wasn't too close, but the blast still knocked her off balance, which the ballista gunners took advantage of.
Chryssia growled as three bolts pierced her back.
She didn't have time to complain; the cannons had finished reloading.
She dodged their shots as best she could.
"Don't all shoot directly at her! Aim around her!"
She heard the shout, but as always, she didn't understand the meaning.
She moved, trying to make herself a harder target for the ballistae, but ended up within range of another explosion.
{Well… this chapter took longer to come out than I'd like to admit.}