After a brief standoff, the Gendrome was the first to break the stalemate and launch an attack.
It raised its body, opened its bloody maw, and lunged at the hunter.
It was the same simple, even rigid, method of attack, but the presence of its paralysis poison fangs meant the hunter had to be on high alert.
A single mistake, even just a graze from those venom-soaked fangs, could mean his death in the hunting grounds.
Holding the shield before him, he sidestepped the attack. This was the safest way to respond; even if the Gendrome had a follow-up move, he would be able to handle it with ease.
But his caution seemed to be unnecessary.
Having missed its bite, the Gendrome made no further offensive moves. Instead, it hopped backward, creating several meters of distance as if wary of the hunter's counterattack.
A sense of disappointment rose in Altaïr's heart.
Why don't you attack? As the leader of the pack, have you become this timid and hesitant after losing all your subordinates?
Or is this the true extent of the so-called first hurdle for rookie hunters, the Gendrome?
Altaïr pursed his lips, using his reason to suppress the impetuous thoughts that were detrimental to his judgment. He loosely held the shield with his right arm and the Carving Knife with his left, closing in on his target step by step.
The Gendrome shifted its center of gravity backward, its thigh muscles tensing. It was preparing to hop back again to create more distance.
Altaïr suddenly burst forward with explosive speed. In the blink of an eye, the distance of several meters between them vanished. The Carving Knife in his hand, carrying the force of his forward momentum, slashed diagonally at his opponent.
Advancing Slash!
The Gendrome, which had been preparing to leap back, was half a beat too slow. The hunter, having closed the distance, swung his blade and struck it in the chest.
"Gaaao!" The Gendrome shrieked in pain, its ferocity finally provoked. It no longer thought of retreating and lowered its head to bite the hunter who was now right in front of it.
Altaïr protected himself with his shield and twisted his body to evade the bite. But the Gendrome's counterattack wasn't over. It spun around, its long, slender tail whipping toward him like a lash.
Altaïr, who had never let his guard down, back-hopped away. The tip of the Gendrome's tail swept across his shield, the considerable force causing him to pause for a moment.
Now you're acting more like it!
Taking advantage of the moment before the Gendrome could turn back around, the muscles in Altaïr's legs and core tensed like a bowstring. After a brief Charge, he rushed forward.
The Gendrome had just turned back around at that exact moment. A sword strike, far heavier than the previous Advancing Slash, landed squarely on top of its head, cutting open a bloody gash and slicing off a piece of its magnificent crest.
Struck by the heavy blow, the Gendrome reeled back, entering a significant stagger.
Altaïr, however, did not rush to press the attack. Instead, he stored the excess 'inertia' from the previous strike and entered a Charge stance once more.
One second, two seconds. The instant his power reached its peak, he lunged forward again, unleashing another heavy horizontal slash that sent the Gendrome's head flying to the side.
This 'Perfect Rush,' modified with the Great Sword's Charge and some of the Hammer's inertia conversion techniques, was already completely unrecognizable. If a veteran Sword and Shield user who had mastered the Perfect Rush were here, the sight would probably make their skin crawl.
The true core of Perfect Rush lies in 'rhythm' and seizing the opponent's openings, not in some kind of charge.
Altaïr's strange move, brute-forcing a miracle by striking the opponent into a stagger, gathering his strength, charging again for over a second before unleashing a full-powered strike to stagger the Monster once more, was less like a Perfect Rush and more like a Great Sword's Charged Slash headlock.
Of course, Great Sword users wouldn't acknowledge this claim. They would say, "Isn't this just a slightly slower and slightly more powerful Perfect Rush?"
How could a Charged Slash be such a flimsy thing!
In fact, Altaïr himself understood that his Perfect Rush, which haphazardly incorporated Great Sword charging techniques, was somewhat stuck in the middle.
It lacked the power of a Great Sword and the flexibility of a Sword and Shield. Its overall rhythm was closer to that of a Hammer, yet it was missing the advantage of a Hammer's heavy attacks.
If used against a larger, more powerful Monster, this move might prove awkward, as failing to cause a stagger would break his offensive rhythm.
But against the Gendrome, it was just right.
Before the Gendrome could regain its footing, a charged shield bash slammed into its head, leaving it dizzy and dazed. A few of its venomous fangs were knocked out, and it staggered backward, head thrown back again.
Altaïr naturally wanted to maintain this rhythm and continue pressing his advantage, but even the most exceptional Great Sword user couldn't charge indefinitely.
Not to mention, charging with a Sword and Shield was inherently more difficult than with a Great Sword. With his current technique and physical condition, he could only perform three such heavy strikes in a row at most.
If he forced himself to continue charging, his muscles would likely be strained from the sustained tension.
Did that mean he had to give up this perfect opportunity to attack, pull back, and give his muscles a few seconds to relax?
Of course not.
The weapons he had mastered weren't limited to the Great Sword, Hammer, and his foundational Sword and Shield, all of which could draw from one another.
There were also the Dual Blades, with their completely different combat style!
Initially, he had tried to fuse the Dual Blades' Demon Mode with the Great Sword's Charged Slash technique. If he could retain both the high speed of Demon Mode and the immense power of a Charged Slash, wouldn't that be incredibly strong?
However, after numerous personal experiments, he discovered that the two were almost as incompatible as fire and water.
The principle behind Demon Mode was to agitate one's fighting spirit, forcing the body into a hyperactive state. In this state, one's heart rate soared, blood flowed extremely fast, and muscles became highly unstable, even twitching one's fingers could feel like a convulsive spasm.
Not many hunters could adapt to this state. Only this small fraction could activate Demon Mode in actual combat and become Dual Blades users.
But even a highly skilled Dual Blades user couldn't perfectly control their body in Demon Mode; they could only rely on countless hours of training to build muscle memory.
A typical example was that during a Demon Dance, the movements were almost impossible to stop and could only be forcibly interrupted by a dive or a roll.
A Great Sword's Charged Slash, on the other hand, demanded absolute control over every single muscle in the body.
To use herding sheep as an analogy, only by making every sheep obediently gather into a flock could one successfully drive them in a certain direction.
But in Demon Mode, every 'sheep' was crazed, running wild in all directions, and there was almost no way to force them to gather together.
Therefore, every attempt he made to initiate a Charge while in Demon Mode was a failure, a thorough, complete, and utter failure. In the end, he had no choice but to give up.
He had once taken this problem to Lady Marydan for advice.
Although the latter was neither a Great Sword user nor a Dual Blades user, she was the strongest hunter he knew, and her insight was far beyond that of an ordinary hunter.
After hearing his problem, Marydan found a 'solution' for him from a different perspective.
"If you force a flock of sheep together for too long, they'll grow agitated and refuse to be herded for a while. This is the same as how a Great Sword cannot be charged indefinitely."
"So, why not let the sheep run wild? Once they've had their fun, won't they be ready to be herded again?"
Altaïr slammed his sword and shield together, activating Demon Mode.
With a bright flash of red light, his fighting spirit surged rampantly through his body. The young hunter's figure flickered, appearing before the Gendrome, his sword and shield blurring into afterimages.
Demon Dance!
In just a few short seconds, Altaïr carved more than a dozen new wounds into the Gendrome's chest, neck, and head before deactivating Demon Mode.
The muscles that had been tensed from continuous exertion were now thoroughly loosened up.
Before the Gendrome could recover from the torrential flurry of blows, Altaïr tensed his core muscles once more and entered a Charge stance.