Logan had always harbored a doubt: according to the game lore, packs of Jagras consisted entirely of females and immature males. Once a male approached maturity, it would be driven out of the group, only returning to the territory after growing into a Great Jagras.
In other words, adult male Jagras all became Great Jagras, with an average body length of around 13 meters. Some long-lived individuals that absorbed enough energy could even exceed an astonishing 18 meters.
Yet ordinary female Jagras averaged only a bit over three meters, with the largest around five meters.
This meant that adult males and females of this species had a body length difference of over 10 meters and a weight disparity of more than 20 times. So how exactly did they reproduce? Wouldn't reversing the genders make far more sense?
...
Watching the Great Jagras charge toward him like a tank, Logan felt no tension at all—in fact, he even had the leisure to let his mind wander to such random thoughts. After all, his agile reflexes and high-speed mobility gave him plenty of confidence. If not for worrying about leaving Zhu Peiniang behind, he would have turned tail and run long ago.
Soon, the Great Jagras reached him. Its mouth dislocated like a snake's, opening impossibly wide to reveal rows of triangular, razor-sharp teeth.
Facing that maw large enough to swallow him whole, Logan remained calm. He leaped sideways to dodge its lunge and slapped a paw against its hind leg.
By now, his body length approached 7 meters. Even excluding the tail, his torso was over two meters long—the size of a large tiger—and his weight neared two tons, four to five times that of a tiger of similar length.
The force of that slap exceeded three tons. On a normal creature, it would pulverize bones and muscle. The scales on the Great Jagras's hind leg shattered instantly, leaving several ferocious bloody gashes.
But it seemed utterly unfazed. Its massive size meant thicker, denser bones and muscles. It whipped its tail fiercely—the appendage thicker than a man's waist—straight at Logan.
His high-speed reflexes allowed him to react in time, but the tail tip still grazed his chest, cracking the enamel-like scales there. Fortunately, it didn't pierce the flesh.
Electricity began flickering across his body. Fine arcs danced over his pristine white scales. His arm blades extended, and his speed surged dramatically. In a few flashes, he appeared beside the Great Jagras's head and clawed at its eyes.
The Great Jagras jerked its head upward to dodge, but its massive throat fan couldn't escape. Logan hooked it with his claws and yanked hard.
Riiip!!
Like tearing apart ragged cloth, a large swath of skin—along with the fine scales on it—was ripped clean off. Blood quickly seeped out and dripped down, gradually staining the exposed yellow fat red.
Roar!!
The pain was evidently excruciating; the Great Jagras's yellow slit pupils trembled. It suddenly reared up on its hind legs and brought its massive claws down in a swift strike at Logan. Even after he dodged, it refused to relent, swinging its powerful forelimbs left and right in relentless pursuit.
The humus-rich ground boomed with each impact—bang! bang!—sending soft soil and dead leaves flying, leaving deep paw prints behind.
Lunging bites, claw swipes, tail whips, charges—simple and direct, yet highly effective.
Logan dodged nimbly. Despite his near-two-ton weight, his movements resembled those of a lightweight tabby cat. His hooked claws, lined with sharp serrations, coursed with powerful electricity. Whenever an opening appeared in the opponent's attacks, he seized it to land blows, inflicting gruesome wounds and brief paralysis.
Soon, the Great Jagras was covered in blood. The high-temperature current scorched the injuries, filling the air with a bloody, charred smell.
...
While Logan battled intensely with the Great Jagras, Zhu Peiniang had charged at the remaining smaller Jagras. They were all just over three meters long, but her torso and limbs were noticeably stockier, her weight greater.
Combined with her powerful electrical abilities, she held a clear advantage in one-on-one fights against them. Mimicking Logan, she darted left and right, biting agilely. Even facing several at once, she held her ground.
...
Logan, who had been keeping an eye on Zhu Peiniang, finally breathed a sigh of relief at the sight and focused entirely on his fight with the Great Jagras.
Their sizes were wildly mismatched—from afar, it looked like a fierce tiger leaping and darting around a gigantic dinosaur.
But in reality, Logan held the upper hand. The Great Jagras lacked his dual respiratory system and energy-recycling tendons.
The intense exertion left it panting. It swung a claw to force Logan back, then reared its upper body and inhaled deeply. Its belly began to swell rapidly, along with its elastic throat, soon ballooning into a round sphere.
The next moment, it opened its mouth wide and unleashed a violent regurgitation at Logan. A massive spray of undigested meat chunks and bone fragments, mixed with yellowish, murky stomach acid, gushed out like a torrential downpour, enveloping him head-on.
Logan was assaulted by a wave of sour stench that rushed straight to his nostrils, making his head spin. His entire field of vision filled with the nauseating fluid. He hastily retreated, not wanting to touch that filth at all.
While his sight was obscured, the Great Jagras lowered its head, dislocating its jaws wide open, and charged ferociously.
Its nearly 13-meter body barreled forward like an out-of-control truck, carrying immense momentum. Logan sidestepped desperately, intending to repeat his tactic of attacking the hind legs, but it anticipated him with a swift tail swing. He only had time to raise a foreclaw to block before the thick tail struck.
The yellow-green scales on the tail collided with his extended arm blade, instantly tearing and slicing through muscle, severing blood vessels, until it slammed into the hard caudal vertebrae.
The keratin, calcium, and enamel-formed arm blade ultimately wasn't tough enough. Its surface coating quickly cracked and bent until it snapped clean in two. The bloody tail didn't slow, pressing against his foreclaw and flipping him onto the ground.
By the time he rolled and sprang back up, the Great Jagras was already limping away on its nearly severed tail, over a dozen meters distant.
Logan didn't pursue. He turned immediately to Zhu Peiniang's battlefield. The young Thunder Wolf Dragon's body wasn't fully developed yet; under the pack's assault, she had sustained multiple scratches.
But with Logan's arrival, the Jagras instantly sensed danger. They wheeled around, scrambled up a nearby large tree with flying claws, and soon vanished into the dense canopy.
(End of Chapter 28)