No one had anticipated the scene unfolding before their eyes.
Generally speaking, creatures possessing high intelligence and sapience rarely commit acts of violence against their own kind, especially against the young of their own species.
But the Apex Estrellian seemed to care nothing for that.
After absorbing sufficient energy from that pitiful Estrellian, it discarded the now-faded corpse and turned its head to face the encircling Hunters.
Isis wore a look of pure fury. Her heart burned with both anger and relief.
She had grown rather fond of these ordinary Estrellians, who had shown no signs of aggression from beginning to end. The best possible outcome, once all this was over, was to send them back to Esther Lake together with Clawdia.
And then, in the blink of an eye, the Apex Estrellian had bitten one to death.
Earlier, before it charged over to this side, it had glanced in Clawdia's direction. Thinking back now, the creature had clearly marked Clawdia as one of its targets as well.
If Clawdia hadn't been positioned farther away, with Fabius blocking the path between them and making a breakthrough far more difficult, the one lying dead now would almost certainly have been Clawdia.
Even now, Clawdia's situation remained precarious.
The Apex Estrellian's sheer size was overwhelming. If it truly set its mind on biting a particular Estrellian to death, not even Lord Fabius and herself, two heavily armored hunters, could possibly stop it.
Which was precisely why she wanted nothing more than to kill this bastard right now!
"Isis! You're pushing too far forward!"
"Fall back!"
From behind came Altaïr's shout and Fabius's sharp reprimand.
Realizing that she was not meant to be the main frontliner in this fight, Isis immediately halted her advance and began to retreat. But that brief moment of overextension was enough to catch the Apex Estrellian's attention.
This one's attacks stung quite a bit. Before, when that golden, glittering fellow was occupying her head-on, she had no time to spare. Now, however, this seemed like a fine opportunity.
The Apex Estrellian's four limbs surged with power, launching its colossal body into the air. Then, it displayed an agility wholly disproportionate to its bulk.
Its twenty-meter-long body coiled in midair, performing what resembled a forward somersault.
As its body flipped and curled, two blazing Star Butterflies were hurled free, streaking forward like a pair of arrows and sealing off Isis's path of evasion.
Simultaneously, its body unfurled just before landing, and its long tail came crashing down with the full rotational force of the somersault.
Even a spinning strong pressure attack executed by Hammer users exploiting differences in terrain elevation could knock Monsters unconscious, let alone one delivered by an Apex Estrellian weighing dozens of tons.
To call the power of this strike earth-shattering would be no exaggeration. Hit head-on, not just a person, but even a Diablos would have its skull crushed.
Fortunately, Isis was no longer the reckless, brash young Hunter of two or three years ago, armed with nothing but brute strength.
Faced with this devastating blow, she made an instant judgment. Pivoting into a lateral leap, she pulled the trigger repeatedly, using the recoil from her Gunlance's shots to extend her Evade Extender distance.
Dodging in this direction meant entering the Star Butterflies' attack range. But compared to being flattened into paste by the Apex Estrellian's somersault tail attack, taking a hit from a Star Butterfly was completely acceptable. Nymera reacted just as swiftly. The instant those two Star Butterflies were launched, she dropped into a single-knee sliding kneel, braced her bowgun, and opened fire repeatedly before her body had even come to a full stop.
Spread ammo shrapnel wove a barrage over Isis's head. Due to the distance, Nymera couldn't precisely control the shrapnel's coverage zone, so a few fragments pinged off Isis's armor, kicking up scattered sparks.
The diving Star Butterflies were also caught within the barrage, blown apart in midair. Isis raised her shield high, blocking the dissipating energy from the explosions.
"BOOM!"
The massive tail slammed into the ground less than two meters from Isis, shaking the earth in a small localized tremor.
The Apex Estrellian once again displayed its extraordinary agility. The moment it landed it didn't pause for an instant, it pivoted, swinging a claw in a sweeping strike toward Isis.
With the ground trembling and the aftershock of the Star Butterfly explosions rippling through her, Isis could barely keep her footing. Facing the Apex Estrellian's relentless follow-up, she only had time to raise her shield in a desperate block.
Such a loose, unstable defensive stance could never stop the Apex Estrellian's attack. In this critical moment, Fabius roared and accelerated.
The Lance in his hand was not held forward in the typical charge stance, but angled back behind him. Storm-like currents of air coiled around his brass-yellow Large Shield.
This charging posture was something Altaïr had truly never seen before. The explosive speed the Old Hunter unleashed in that instant shocked even him, a guy who spent all day recklessly activating Demon Mode.
In the span of a blink, Fabius thrust himself between Isis and the monster. He spun his body, swinging his shield to brutally smash away the Apex Estrellian's incoming claw, then followed through with a vicious Lance thrust.
Before this, Altaïr would have struggled to imagine that a "thrust," of all attack motions, could carry such overwhelming, crushing force.
The Lance hammered into the underside of the Apex Estrellian's jaw, blasting its head backward. Had he not witnessed it with his own eyes, Altaïr would have thought Fabius had pulled a Hammer from somewhere and smashed the Apex Estrellian with a spinning strong pressure blow.
With Fabius's decisive intervention, the finally safe Isis hurriedly withdrew.
The battle returned to its prior state: Fabius holding the monster's attention at the front, the young Hunters watching for openings to support, the two sides locked in stalemate.
At the battlefield's edge, the cats and dogs had gone through tremendous effort to finally drag the severely wounded, incapacitated defense force knights one by one to safety, handing them over to the first-aid-specialist Kagetsu.
Sajji stared at the center of the battlefield, watching the swift, agile Apex Estrellian for several seconds, then looked up at the sky.
Abruptly, he unbuckled the Item Pouch and Rakna-Kadaki No. 3 from his back and shoved them into Clawdia's paws. "Find an opening to use them, meow."
"Meow?"
Under Clawdia's thoroughly puzzled gaze, Sajji shouldered the Yian Kut-Ku Glider Model-02 and jumped onto Hibiki's back.
"Run, meow!"
Hibiki glanced back at Sajji carrying the glider. Though he had no idea what Sajji was planning, he did as told and broke into a sprint.
As the Palamute's speed steadily increased, Sajji, carrying the glider against the wind, quickly lifted into the air.
His flying technique was still clumsy, his flight posture wobbling unsteadily. Fortunately, with ample test materials in recent days, they had repeatedly refined the glider's structure, and Sajji had also found chances to practice flying a few times.
Add to that the fact that the Airship's flying altitude wasn't very high, and at last, not without a few scares, Sajji landed on the Airship's deck. Seeing the Felyne fly aboard, the Guild Knights stationed at the Cannon and other heavy weapons, waiting for their moment to strike, were momentarily stunned.
Having interacted a few times and knowing Sajji somewhat, Rosso strode quickly over. "Does Lord Fabius have new orders?"
He assumed Sajji had flown up to deliver a message.
"Not nya, but I have an idea nya." Sajji folded up the glider and looked up at Rosso.
Rosso raised a thick, bushy eyebrow, not dismissing the other simply for being a Felyne. To be honest, he had quite a bit of admiration for this Felyne who had built a war wagon with his own paws.
"Let's hear it."
Sajji wasted no words and said rapidly, "I've used all these heavy weapons before nya. The Cannon has the strongest power, but its shot spread is large and accuracy is the worst, while the Heavy Ballista is the opposite, correct nya?"
"Correct," Rosso nodded. "But the One-shot Binder is an exception. When firing it, the rope trailing behind the ballista bolt severely impacts accuracy."
"Let's skip the One-shot Binder for now nya, just use ordinary heavy ballista bolts nya." Sajji spoke briskly. "And there's no need to target specific parts, just plant as many heavy ballista bolts into the target as possible nya."
At this, Sajji paused, and their tone grew measured as they looked at Rosso. "Given our flight altitude, the distance to the target is less than a hundred meters nya.
Less than a hundred meters, using a high-precision Heavy Ballista to shoot at a large target nearly twenty-five meters long, you can't possibly miss nya?"
A vein bulged at Rosso's temple. "Indeed, we can't miss. It's just that before, the defense force knights were clustered around the target, so we didn't fire the Heavy Ballista to avoid friendly fire."
"Now the knights are down nya. Lord Fabius is holding the head, Altaïr is flanking, Nymera is far away; only Isis's position needs a bit of caution nya."
Rosso considered for a moment, then nodded in agreement. "You're right. Better to find a chance to shoot more bolts rather than wait around wasting time. Though the power doesn't match the Cannon, still–"
"The bolts' power isn't the point nya," Sajji interrupted. "That thing jumps around and does somersaults nya.
Using the bolts as anchor points and coordinating with the steel cables of the One-shot Binder later, there might be a chance to make it tie itself up nya.
After what happened before, it won't be so easy to force it to stumble again nya, but if it can be tied up, the effect will be the same nya."
At these words, Rosso's eyes lit up.
"Ballista! Switch to loading heavy ballista bolts! Helmsman! Is there any way to get even closer to that thing?!"