Having already scouted the nearby terrain, Asterion selected a suitable battlefield for himself.
Running. His strong legs kicked up clouds of dust as he sprinted. Asterion constantly changed direction, using erratic, zig-zagging turns to dodge the blade scales shot down from the sky behind him by the Seregios.
This was the first time Asterion had seen a Seregios in the real world. Thus, he didn't know if this attack method—shooting from high above without approaching—was the Seregios's normal hunting method. After all, if one were to calculate combat power, the Seregios's talons were powerful weapons not inferior to its blade scales, and the species was accustomed to using its feet to attack.
Hmmm, it was a pity. Aside from that very first strike, Asterion hadn't seen such habits from this Seregios... Could it be that it had suffered losses before? Or perhaps it was experienced?
Thinking while running, Asterion knew that if his guess was correct, it meant this Seregios had fought a Glavenus before, perhaps even killed one... A Tempered Seregios?
Interesting.
The enemy's strength did not make Asterion feel fear; quite the opposite. The stronger this Seregios was, the happier Asterion became. Strength meant that even within the Seregios species, this guy was an individual with outstanding abilities.
Living long enough and possessing great strength meant this Seregios possessed evolutionary traits superior to its kin—if he could hunt such a Seregios, it would satisfy his evolutionary information needs. Asterion wouldn't have to painstakingly look for the next Seregios.
It would save a lot of trouble.
Asterion looked ashen-faced; Asterion's movements were sloppy; Asterion was hit again; Asterion fought while retreating; Asterion was in a dilemma; Asterion had no way to escape—Asterion dove into the canyon!!
It was as if someone had cleaved the earth with an axe. This great canyon was the product of two massive rock plates colliding and squeezing against each other under the flow of leyline energy.
High enough, deep enough, and wide enough. At the very least, it was no problem for Asterion to perform a giant spinning tail attack inside.
The Seregios flying in the sky naturally noticed Asterion's escape direction. As a Flying Wyvern—one with exceptionally rich combat experience—it naturally understood how its flight capabilities would be affected in terrain like a canyon.
But—to the Seregios, this wasn't an issue at all.
It just wanted to fight! It just wanted to kill this fleeing wyvern! Knowing the strength of a Glavenus, being able to defeat a Glavenus again and take the life of a strong foe was a particularly delightful thing for a dragon.
Battle is exhilarating!
Without even the slightest hesitation, the Seregios tucked its spread wings back against its body, and the whole dragon shot downward like an arrow released from the string.
Even fighting in a canyon brought no fear. The Seregios possessed the strongest explosive power and coordination among all Flying Wyverns. Even though it didn't have special abilities to manipulate wind, it knew how to physically utilize wind or rising air currents to adjust its posture and launch attacks in aerial combat.
Compared to a Seregios, a Rathian flew like a fledgling just leaving the nest; touching the opponent was a pipe dream.
Dive! Spin! Blade Scale Shot!!
Having just dived into the canyon, the Seregios fired countless sharp blade scales forward in a magnificent display.
Boom!!
Explosion. Several more air-sac shells detonated because of this, but Asterion couldn't care less about the pain right now. He tanked these incoming blade scales.
Now was not the time to heartache over the air-sac shells. Even in such intense running, his massive sword-tail maintained a posture pointing toward the left side of his body. Asterion was running along the left side of the canyon.
He was cutting.
Even inside the canyon, this Seregios was flying in the sky. It had absolutely no intention of engaging in close-quarters combat with a Glavenus, intending instead to bleed him out with blade scales.
Uh, in a sense, it and Asterion were birds of a feather.
But flying in mid-air meant it lacked vision of the ground level. Looking down from the Seregios's perspective, the scenery inside the canyon looked mostly the same—all stone or yellowish-green low vegetation. There was no clear boundary between the ground the Glavenus ran on and the stone walls on either side; it looked like one piece.
But if one stood on the ground and looked from Asterion's perspective, one would see a massive hollow existing at the base of the stone wall on the left side of the canyon!!
Asterion... uh, he gnawed it out with his mouth.
Glavenus have their struggles; don't ask.
Cough cough! Aside from the stones at the canyon entrance, Asterion had gnawed up to a position about his own height, which is about six meters high. Then he gnawed about twenty-something meters deep into the left canyon wall—leaving only a rough stone pillar every few meters at the edge as support.
Originally, Asterion just wanted to find some ore to eat to regenerate the air-sac shells consumed in the Rotten Vale, and find a cool place to rest. But as he ate, he had a sudden idea: why not just make a trap?
A massive trap, effective enough against Large Monsters.
Even dragons that eat rocks and minerals can't compare to Asterion in this regard—because the amount of stone they can eat at one time is ultimately limited, and they need time to digest.
But Asterion was different. He could eat non-stop, as if there were a bottomless pit inside his body; no matter how much he stuffed in, it never filled up.
As long as he didn't find this repetitive labor boring and kept his patience... fortunately, Asterion was always full of patience when it came to hunting.
With unremitting effort, and at the cost of two cycles of tooth wear and replacement, Asterion forcibly ate out a long, strip-shaped hollow at the bottom of the left canyon wall. This was his envisioned trap—like a magnified bird trap.
He ate a lot of ore along the way, filling the gaps in his air-sac shells, though he didn't continue following the vein.
And just now, from the moment he entered the canyon, Asterion extended his sword-tail, slashing all the way through those stone pillars left at the edge of the wall.
Asterion didn't know how heavy the protruding part of this massive rock layer was; he only knew it was definitely heavy enough to easily crush a dragon to death.
After losing the stone pillars at the edge that served as support, the protruding part of the rock layer obeyed gravity and collapsed—the hollow at the bottom caused the whole thing to tilt and fall. Asterion could even hear the cracking sound of breaking rock!
Slow, yet so heavy, unstoppable. As the fracture deepened, the speed of the rock layer's collapse accelerated constantly.
At first, it was just the earth trembling, flying dust, fleeing animals; no dragon paid attention.
But immediately after, the earth flipped over.
It was just a figure of speech, but when the tall rock layer protruding from the left side of the canyon fell entirely toward the right side, in the Seregios's eyes, it looked as if the whole earth had flipped over and was crushing down on it.
"Guaaaaaa!!"
Letting out a terrified roar for the first time, the Seregios was so shocked it lost its balance, having to flap its wings rapidly to stabilize. It turned sharply, wanting to rush out of this collapsing canyon at maximum speed. The idea was beautiful, and correct, but—would Asterion give it that chance?
He had been waiting for this moment. Right now, the sky-filling sand and dust from the collapsing cliff made it look like the end of the world, but it didn't affect Asterion at all. He felt no fear, staring excitedly at the figure in the sky instead!
Jump!!
It has been said many times: Glavenus have a pair of muscular thighs. Asterion's legs had even been reinforced with the muscle characteristics of an Anjanath, and the Anjanath itself is a dragon adept at jumping.
With the two combined, it was enough for Asterion to complete an extremely thrilling move right now—he leaped up violently, landing on a protrusion on the right canyon wall, then jumped back to the collapsing cliff wall on the left, and then rebounded again!!
The air seemed to freeze. No, it should be said that time seemed to freeze at this moment; everything became slow.
Stomping forcefully on the stone wall one last time, Asterion leaped fiercely toward the Seregios, which was adjusting its posture to flee toward the open sky—spinning his body, he swung his sword-tail out!!
Slash!
Clang—Squelch—Crraaaack!!
That was the sound of the sharp sword-tail splitting the Seregios's body scales! The sound of breaking skin and flesh, blood gushing out!! The sound of hard dragon bones being chopped through bit by bit!!!
"Guaaaaaa!!!"
Roaring due to this sudden pain, the Seregios could not imagine why the massive stone pillar constituting one side of the canyon cliff would suddenly collapse like this. Nor could it understand why the collapse happened exactly when the Glavenus fled into the canyon and it chased in. Even less could it imagine that the Glavenus didn't take the chance to escape during this natural disaster, but instead turned back to attack it!!
Because this wasn't a natural disaster at all, but a Dragon Calamity!
A Dragon Calamity orchestrated by Asterion's mouth!
The heavy, broad, sharp sword-tail slashed impressively into the left half of the Seregios's rump. This weight, this impact, and this heart-piercing pain caused it to lose the balance needed to continue flying upward, turning instead to plummet downward like a bird with broken wings.
"Guaaaaaa!!"
Roaring in terror and fear, the Seregios didn't want to die. Because it didn't want to die, it flapped its wings with extra madness, trying to fly up again—it wanted even more to escape the stone wall covering it face-on with an unstoppable force, as if to bury it deep underground!!
Boom!!
It collapsed.
The half of the rock layer protruding from the ground on the left side completely collapsed. If viewed from the high sky outside, it looked like an incomparably huge coffin lid, forcibly slamming shut over another rock layer protruding from the ground on the right.
As for the bottom hollow Asterion had dug earlier, it had long since been filled by the bending and fracturing rocks.
The rising dust submerged the entire air like an ocean. Visibility was almost zero, not just because of the kicked-up sand and dust, but because the collapsed rock layer completely covered what was once the top of the canyon, blocking out the sunlight.
Only at the entrance of the canyon could a sliver of light faintly shine through. But across such a distance, that bit of light couldn't penetrate the currently turbid air; only a blurry, brownish-yellow glow could be seen.
"Guaaaaaa!!"
The Seregios roared as if it had gone mad. It was indeed nearly scared out of its wits—why did that Glavenus show no intention of fleeing under such an earth-shattering disaster, and even took the opportunity to attack it?!
That lunatic!!
The pain from its rump stimulated the Seregios's wild nature. It too had lost vision in this dim and turbid air. Coupled with the fear that it would be crushed to death by the earth, the Seregios frantically attacked everything around it.
Kicking with its claws, flinging out its blade scales in all directions—it didn't know how long this crazed attacking lasted until it finally realized, with hindsight, that it wasn't dead yet.
The fallen rock layer had been propped up by the rock layer protruding from the ground on the other side. It was still alive, in a space approximating a triangular prism.
As for Asterion... after slashing the Seregios out of the sky with one cut just now, he hadn't looked back, sprinting to a hollow he had pre-dug in the stone wall on the right side of the canyon, hiding perfectly safely.
Compared to the Seregios, who knew nothing about the source of this disaster-like commotion, Asterion, who had single-handedly created all of this, had long estimated to what extent the left rock layer would collapse. He wasn't digging blindly.
But actually, the Seregios's panic was unnecessary. The degree of the canyon's splitting was far from enough. Even if Asterion dug the bottom of the left rock layer deeper and hollower, there wasn't enough space for it to completely collapse and cover the entire canyon flat.
And the facts were just as Asterion predicted. The collapsed rock layer on the left ultimately propped up against the rock layer protruding from the right, leaving a massive gap within the canyon.
However, just to be safe, Asterion had prepared a retreat for himself when setting the trap: the cave where he was currently hiding.
Once the entire canyon was filled by fractured rocks, he would eat a path all the way up from here—at that point, he wouldn't even need to consider how to kill the Seregios. He'd just need to dig out the Seregios that had been crushed or buried by rocks and eat it.
It was just that considering the oxygen reserves in a closed space and various unexpected situations, it was better not to reach that step if possible.
Mmm, plus our dear Seregios might lose too many nutrients.
Asterion was waiting.
Waiting for the Seregios, driven mad by fear and shock into attacking everything around it, to exhaust its strength. Waiting until it felt fatigue, until reason returned to its brain, and it had to stop this meaningless attacking behavior.
That moment would be the time for him to strike.
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