In the real world, so-called Tempered Monsters possess more than just physically stronger bodies and more potent special abilities than their kin; they have mastered something that could be called technique, born from the experience of surviving countless battles.
Being able to learn from experience and apply it to the next encounter—this in itself is a manifestation of intelligence.
Furthermore, Tempered Monsters often master new attack patterns. Their strikes are swifter and more fluid than those of ordinary individuals, and they leave fewer openings when they attack.
The emergence of a Tempered Monster requires not only surviving innumerable arduous battles but also an abundance of bioenergy. Only with sufficient energy can they fully recover from repeated injuries, making their bodies tougher in the process.
And in the New World, bioenergy is the one thing that is never in short supply.
This implies that there are far more Tempered Monsters here than in the Old World—truly embodying the phrase: danger lurks everywhere.
As the iconic representative of the Flying Wyverns and an indispensable part of every generation, the Rathian possesses the standard wyvern skeletal structure: two wings and two legs. Her forelimbs have completely evolved into wings, with a wing claw at the apex and a row of sharp spikes protruding from the sides.
Similar spikes cover almost her entire body, from head to back, and from back to tail—especially at the tip of the tail, where the spikes are particularly dense and venomous.
There is also a large, protruding spike on her chin, facilitating the feeding of chewed food to her young.
However, many of these spikes were currently broken. Judging by the degree of breakage and wear, this wasn't the result of just one or two fights. Scars, large and small, covered almost every part of this Rathian's front that Asterion could see. In particular, there was a long scar slashing across her head, right over her eye.
She was practically covered in wounds. This was why Asterion had instantly recognized her as a Tempered Monster.
He suspected the scar over her eye might have been left by a Glavenus, as the wound was too clean, long, and thin—ordinary dragon claws or jaws couldn't leave such a mark.
Well, there was actually another piece of evidence: upon seeing him, this Rathian had immediately flown into a rage. Asterion was certain he hadn't met her before... moreover, her reactions to the movements of a Glavenus were far too practiced.
She's a tricky opponent.
Asterion held his ground and waited. As a dragon, his opponent clearly had more combat experience than he did. Rashly attacking would likely lead to a miserable death.
His advantage, however, was that compared to an ordinary young Glavenus, he already possessed knowledge of the Rathian's habitual attack patterns and related intelligence.
Compared to the Rathalos, although the Rathian could fly, she was more of a terrestrial wyvern. Not only could she not stay airborne as long as a Rathalos, but her habit of moving on the ground had also developed a pair of powerful hind legs.
To hunt effectively on the ground, the Rathian had even evolved green scales for camouflage.
Also, compared to the Rathalos, the Rathian's poison sacs were more developed. Both her back and tail could secrete venom, which was then discharged through those spikes. The spikes were hollow, like hypodermic needles, capable of injecting venom directly into prey.
In the coming battle, he absolutely could not get hit by that thing.
After all, even without the poison, the Rathian's tail was essentially a spiked mace. Getting smacked by it would be agonizing.
He didn't plan to run away—at least not yet.
For the sake of his dream of flight, Asterion would have to face the Rath family sooner or later—because in the New World, their numbers were simply too great, and they were the apex predators of the Ancient Forest.
Lots of them, lots of wings... might as well deal with it.
A Rathian that ended up in the Wildspire Waste was likely a loser in the competition for a "main wife" position among the Rathalos of the Ancient Forest. Forced into exile, she had to build a nest in the neighboring Wildspire Waste and raise her young alone.
This meant she had no accompanying Rathalos to act as a sentry and protector around the nest. Once she left to hunt, the nest lost its protection, which was why egg thieves like the Kulu-Ya-Ku could succeed so easily.
To be honest, thinking about this made Asterion feel that the Ancient Forest was a bit too cutthroat. Even a Tempered Rathian, who was in the process of molting toward becoming a Gold Rathian, was considered a loser there?
Absolutely terrifying.
For a moment, the young Glavenus filled his mind with dreadful fantasies about the Ancient Forest region.
The Rathian displayed unexpected patience. Sensing that Asterion wasn't making a move, she forcibly suppressed her rage over the stolen egg and waited, choosing not to attack blindly in her fury.
Asterion thought the Rathian was a difficult opponent, but in reality, in the Rathian's eyes, Asterion wasn't someone to be trifled with either.
His heavy sword-tail, gleaming with metallic red and blue hues in the sunlight, combined with his thick, heavy shell, made the dragon look incredibly imposing.
The situation reached a stalemate.
But that didn't matter. Asterion had a plan.
"Roar!" (Throw the egg over here!)
Perhaps because they had lived together for so long, Sparky accurately understood Asterion's meaning despite the cross-species communication. He hadn't run far; he was hiding behind a rock on the inner side of the canyon.
Hearing Asterion's call, Sparky didn't show any reluctance and immediately threw the egg in his claws toward Asterion.
In that instant, the Rathian moved.
She leaped down from the high cliff, but her target wasn't her egg—it was Asterion. Performing a violent vertical somersault in mid-air, right there on the inner side of the canyon, the Rathian smashed her spiked tail toward Asterion's body!
The force was so great it created a whistling sound in the air.
Bang!!
"Screeeeee!!!"
"Roar!!!"
Two roars erupted almost simultaneously. One was a high-frequency shriek filled with rage—the Rathian's cry.
The other was deep and heavy, filled with anger but also pain—Asterion's roar.
He was injured.
In a sense, the real world was also a turn-based game. Within a unit of time, you could only make one choice—a binary decision.
When Sparky threw the egg, Asterion chose to attack the space between the Rathian and the egg. He twisted his hips, charged power, and swung his heavy iron tail toward the space in front of the egg.
But Asterion never expected that a brooding Rathian—one who should have been driven by maternal and reproductive instincts at this stage—would, in such a critical moment, watch helplessly as her egg was thrown into the air, destined to shatter upon hitting the ground.
Wrong choice.
In that split second of lightning-fast action, the Rathian didn't choose to protect her dragon egg; she chose to seize the opportunity to attack Asterion!
Driven by immense force, the sharp spikes pierced Asterion's shell, causing him to stumble to the side. At the same time, dark purple venom was injected into his flesh.
His breathing became heavy. Asterion hastily turned his head to bite at the Rathian, and his gaping maw successfully clamped down on the wing membrane of her right wing. To be honest, the sensation of landing the bite felt unreal, because logically, he shouldn't have been able to land a hit in that moment.
Even Asterion was confused. With this Rathian's combat experience, she should have retreated the moment she hit him—whether flying upward or landing back on the cliff, she had options.
But—
These lethal decisions and clashes happened in an instant. It takes time to describe, but in reality, to Sparky's eyes, it looked like the two dragons crossed paths in the blink of an eye and then separated.
The Rathian was injured.
Unexpectedly injured. Sparky couldn't even understand how the Rathian got hurt.
It wasn't from the hasty counter-bite Asterion made after getting hit. She had been injured the very instant she struck her target.
Enduring the pain caused by the venom entering his body, Asterion forcibly suppressed the agony. He quickly adjusted his position to brace for the Rathian's follow-up attack—only to discover, when he finally had the bandwidth to observe her, that she looked pretty miserable too.
Aside from the chunk Asterion had just bitten off, there were several new holes in her wing membrane—the drafty kind. There were also three or four blue shards stuck in the scales of her chest. But the worst injury was to her right eye, which was now tightly shut and continuously leaking a semi-transparent fluid mixed with dragon blood.
Was she... blind?!
Asterion stared in astonishment at the Rathian, who was roaring in pain.
Why?
He clearly hadn't made any significant counterattack just then.
What on earth happened?
And those blue shards... why did they look so much like the mineral secretions covering his own shell?
turning his head slightly in realization, Asterion looked at the spot where the Rathian had struck him—the shell there had shattered. And it wasn't just the outer air-sac shell; the underlying carapace had broken too, revealing a small patch of raw flesh.
It really was just a small patch, less damage than he'd inflicted on himself when tearing off his shell to make a vest for Sparky. The intense pain he felt wasn't from massive physical trauma, but from the venom the Rathian had injected through that small wound.
A few broken spikes were even stuck in it, with purple-black venom dripping from the fractures, staining the surrounding muscle a deep, poisoned purple.
But that wasn't the main point. The main point was his shell—those air-sac shells. They had shattered, of course. And the objects stuck in the Rathian looked exactly like the material that had covered those air-sac shells, as well as the shell fragments themselves.
His brain recalled the events rapidly. What just happened wasn't easily forgotten. Asterion finally remembered that in the instant the two dragons clashed—excluding his and the Rathian's roars—there had been an explosion sound that occurred almost simultaneously.
It seemed these air-sac shells had a function he hadn't known about?
Interesting. But none of that mattered now. What mattered was that the Rathian was injured, blinded in one eye, and had holes in her flight membrane.
"I have a chance."
"I can kill her!"
Chanting this internally, Asterion fixed a deadly stare on the Rathian. He extended his sword-tail from behind him, positioning it obliquely in front of his eyes. The scorching magma stored in his Flame Sac surged out as a breath attack. Very quickly, the Great Sword he had meticulously forged was heated until it glowed a bright, golden-yellow hue.
Just looking at it, one could feel the intense heat.
Heated State.
Asterion actually didn't like using this move. Even though a Glavenus's attack power reached its peak when the tail blade was heated, this was also the state where the sword-tail became most fragile and susceptible to being severed.
Asterion didn't want his tail cut, so this was the first time since birth he had used this technique.
The opponent before him wasn't one he could defeat while holding back. Even though the Rathian looked miserable and was blind in one eye, a Tempered Monster was defined by its ability to turn the impossible into the possible.
The Rathian had already taught him a lesson on what it meant to be a Tempered Monster, and what implied intelligence came with being an apex predator of the ecosystem.
Unlike small fry like the Jyuratodus or Paolumu, who had some intelligence but not much, the Rathian clearly possessed higher intellect. She could even go against her instincts to make calculated trade-offs, seeing through his plan and seizing the opportunity to attack.
"Gyaaaah!!!"
The Rathian roared again. She finally steadied her mind against the pain in her body, locking a hateful gaze onto Asterion.
Her egg was smashed. The only thing she wanted to do now was avenge her offspring.
Whoosh—BOOM!!!
Without any wind-up warning, the Rathian spat a fireball at Asterion in the blink of an eye!
The scorching fireball tore through the air, but faster than its explosion was a crimson flash!
Even the air was sliced apart. The fireball spat by the Rathian was cut cleanly in half. Amidst the ensuing explosion, what swept through the air was the Glavenus's scorching sword-tail!
Slash!!
A mere fireball breath—Asterion broke it with brute force!
And with his deliberate aim, this swing was also directed at the Rathian perched on the cliff wall!
However, this Rathian indeed possessed ample experience fighting Glavenus. The moment she spat that fireball, she had already hopped backward and flapped her wings to take to the sky, thereby dodging Asterion's slash.
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