This Spirit Helm Breaker seized a clear opening, leaving the Nerscylla with no way to evade.
The lightning-sparked blade swung down in a vertical cleave, striking the Nerscylla's head with surgical precision.
With the Eager Cleaver's natural sharpness (green), it would normally be difficult to deal a crippling blow to a Nerscylla in a single strike. However, with the downward gravitational momentum of the Spirit Helm Breaker, the swirling Spirit energy, and the explosive discharge of electricity, the factors stacked.
A large section of the armor on the Nerscylla's face shattered, and several eyes on one side were crushed into pulp. Thick, dark green fluid erupted from the wound.
Electrical arcs surged through the highly conductive carapace into the Nerscylla's body, further ravaging its nerves and causing its usually coordinated legs to twitch spasmodically.
It suddenly leaped backward, its mangled mandibles dripping with green blood as it pulled open its mouthparts to let out a piercing screech like metal grinding against metal.
"Skreeeeeeeeee–!!!"
Though the sound made his ears throb with pain, Altaïr pushed through the monster's shriek and continued his forward charge.
Before it could adapt to that agonizing pain, a severely wounded monster was more likely to leave openings than usual; he couldn't afford to miss such a perfect opportunity to attack.
As he sprinted, Altaïr deliberately approached from the side where he had blinded the Nerscylla, aiming for its blind spot where its judgment of his movements would be slightly delayed.
Reaching the Nerscylla's front-quarter, Altaïr performed a Draw Step Slash, the fastest-hitting move among the Long Sword's basic techniques.
Yet, at the very moment he drew his blade, the Nerscylla actually skittered back half a step with lightning speed, dodging his Draw Slash.
It was a pity the surprise attack missed, but such things were not uncommon. Altaïr's movements didn't falter for a second as he kept the sword leveled and followed up with a Thrust aimed straight at the Nerscylla's head.
To his surprise, the Nerscylla swung its sharp claws simultaneously, parrying his blade tip aside.
This didn't look like a creature whose head had just been savaged or whose vision was severely impaired; its evasions remained fluid, its reactions fast and precise.
Altaïr suddenly realized he had fallen into a rigid way of thinking.
For the vast majority of monsters, the head was the most obvious weak point; a heavy blow there would inevitably affect their condition. But that might not apply to a Nerscylla.
He had heard that some insects could live for days after having their heads removed, only dying eventually because they couldn't eat.
While a Nerscylla wasn't an insect, it belonged to the broader category of arthropods. The head might not be its true vital spot, and vision might not even be its primary sense.
So, where was its real weakness?
Altaïr paused his offensive, parrying the counterattacking claws with his sword while his eyes darted across the Nerscylla's body, searching.
His gaze soon landed on the bloated abdomen, which lacked the protection of thick armor plating.
That was it! It was the same when dealing with the Vespoid Queen — in arthropods, the internal organs seemed to be concentrated in the abdomen. This had to be the Nerscylla's weakness!
Lifting his sword to ward off an incoming claw, Altaïr surged his bloodlust and directly entered Demon Mode.
Leveraging the extraordinary mobility granted by the demonization state, he rapidly circled to the Nerscylla's flank and took a risk, diving between its two pairs of legs.
"Squelch! Squelch!"
A Rising Slash tore through the weak chitin of the Nerscylla's abdomen, followed immediately by a Vertical Chop that traced the same path deep into the wound; two fierce strikes unleashed in an instant.
The sensation of the blade sinking into flesh was almost soft — the Nerscylla's weakness was right here!
Following the inertia of the Crimson Blade Slash, Altaïr followed up immediately with a Spirit Fade Slash, the blade crossing the previous two strikes to carve a cross-shaped wound.
He then continued to repeat this short combo, a sequence Master Amos called "unorthodox" but remained Altaïr's favorite to employ.
Stung by the pain, the Nerscylla shifted its legs rapidly, spinning at full speed as its scythe-like chelicerae swung out in a horizontal sweep.
Swish!
The whistle of tearing air betrayed the formidable power of the strike; a direct hit would inflict heavy trauma even on a hunter wearing high-performance armor.
Altaïr, mid-way through his third rotation of the combo, noticed the shift in the Nerscylla's legs. He instantly aborted his practice routine and sprang backward, letting the limb sweep past just in front of him.
Immediately after, he converted the momentum of his retreat into forward thrust, brandishing the Eager Cleaver in a Rising Slash.
Simultaneously, the Nerscylla arched its abdomen, thrusting the venom stinger at its tail toward the hunter.
The lightning-wreathed blade clashed with the dripping tail stinger. Neither side's primary attack hit its mark, but the hunter came out on top in this exchange.
Altaïr tilted his head, dodging the pale green sleep venom spraying from the Nerscylla's stinger; the few drops that splashed onto his armor had no effect.
However, the electricity erupting from the blade surged through the hollow stinger, invading the Nerscylla's abdomen where its internal organs were concentrated. The shock left the Nerscylla twitching, its legs curling inward as it recoiled two steps.
Without hesitation, Altaïr braced his Long Sword diagonally behind him, entering a charging stance. He advanced with slow, deliberate steps, constantly adjusting his angle of attack as he pressed his opponent.
Shaking its bulbous abdomen, the recovered Nerscylla reared its sharp claws high and slammed them down toward the encroaching hunter.
Altaïr completed his charge at that exact moment. The instant the claws were about to descend upon his head, he transformed into a blurred afterimage and surged forward.
The lightning-drenched blade traced a brilliant arc across the night sky as the hunter vanished past the Nerscylla's flank. A second later, a narrow gash over a meter long manifested on the Nerscylla's side, followed by a violent spray of green blood.
The damage dealt by this single strike was in no way inferior to the previous Spirit Helm Breaker. The Nerscylla's legs buckled, and it nearly collapsed onto the ground.
Yet it ultimately held its ground, coiling the legs on both sides of its body to build power before suddenly leaping away.
Altaïr had assumed the Nerscylla was about to counterattack. After performing a Spirit Roundslash, he immediately flicked the blade to clear away the foul blood and mucus, then broke into a fast run to prepare for the coming assault.
To his surprise, the Nerscylla did not pounce toward him. Instead, it leaped onto a giant tree twenty to thirty meters behind, gasping as it attempted to recover its state.
Lacking long-range options, Altaïr glanced at the Slinger on his left arm, intending to fire a Flash Pod to knock the Nerscylla out of the tree.
However, the three Flash Pods he had pre-loaded during the earlier combat had all been expended, and reloading would take too much time.
He had no choice but to pull a Flash Pod from his waist and hurl it by hand.
An unexpected sight unfolded before him: the Nerscylla, still suspended from the massive tree, raised its abdomen and fired several clumps of spider silk in rapid succession.
Whether it was sheer luck or the Nerscylla's timing was truly that precise, one of the silk clumps met the flying Flash Pod mid-air, enveloping it the exact moment it was supposed to detonate.
The Flash Pod was rendered useless, and Altaïr was forced to roll to the side, dodging the silk clumps that were absolutely fatal to touch.
At the same time, he remained wary.
The Nerscylla wouldn't have gone through the trouble of leaping onto the tree just to spit a few webs; the purpose of these silk clumps was likely to wall off his movement, and the real killing blow was undoubtedly still to come.
Dodging the silk that had landed on the ground, Altaïr scrambled to his feet and immediately began to Sheathe Weapon, preparing for an Iai technique.
Just as he had anticipated, even as he rolled to dodge, the Nerscylla spat a strand of silk to anchor itself to the giant tree's canopy, swinging back and forth like a pendulum.
This served both to build kinetic energy and to disrupt the hunter's ability to predict its attack path.
Suddenly, the Nerscylla severed the silk tether, its massive body flipping through the air in a parabolic arc as it hurtled down toward the hunter.
With the venomous crystalline spikes concentrated on its back, the monster looked like a giant flail; if hit by this strike, not just a hunter, but even a large Flying Wyvern would be instantly and severely wounded.
At the final moment before the monster crashed down, Altaïr let his blade fly from its scabbard. Using the momentum of the swing to propel his body forward, he narrowly lunged out of the Nerscylla's impact zone. Simultaneously, a flurry of Spirit Blade energy erupted behind him, carving a series of small but dense wounds across the Nerscylla's body.
Having narrowly neutralized the Nerscylla's counterattack, Altaïr immediately turned back, ready to continue his assault.
However, the Nerscylla seemed to finally realize the threat the hunter posed and turned to flee toward its den.
(Translated by yourtl.app)
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TL NOTES — LORE SECTION Some terms and creatures referenced in this story may be unfamiliar to readers new to the Monster Hunter universe. The following entries provide additional context.
MONSTERS Vespoid Queen — The matriarch of the Vespoid colony, a large insectoid creature classified as a Neopteron. Like all arthropods, her vital organs are concentrated in her abdomen rather than her head, making the abdomen the primary target for hunters. Altaïr draws on this prior experience to deduce the Nerscylla's own anatomical weakness, recognizing a shared vulnerability common to the arthropod family.