Faced with the swarm of Pariapuria juveniles, Altaïr tensed for a moment.
It was not unheard of for Monsters to use their own kind, even their young, in combat. A classic example was the Gigginox, which could lay egg sacs in the middle of a fight. The hatchlings emerged quickly and helped their parent swarm the Hunters, a particularly troublesome tactic for inexperienced Hunters.
But the relationship between the Pariapuria and its juveniles was clearly nothing like that.
The juveniles had no intention of helping the adult. They were simply after the chunks of meat.
The highly corrosive slime had almost no effect on them. In fact, the soft, half-digested flesh was the easiest kind of food for them to digest.
"Ignore the little ones! Keep attacking!"
As soon as the rain of acidic meat ceased, Altaïr charged out from behind the Large Shield Isis had raised.
He nimbly wove through the packed juveniles and smaller Monsters, keeping his sights on the Pariapuria. It lowered its head, coughed, and finally spat out the large skull of some unknown Monster.
A thunderous bang erupted behind him. Isis shot past him like a cannonball and reached the Pariapuria in the blink of an eye.
Carrying all that momentum, Isis swung her Gunlance in a sweeping arc and cleanly severed one of the Pariapuria's horns.
Although the Pariapuria's horns had a cartilaginous texture, the power behind that strike was still astonishing.
Altaïr was momentarily speechless.
After this, no one could ever call her slow again. The explosive bang that launched her forward was only slightly slower than a Bowgun round...
The technique worked only because she was strong enough to control the impact and possessed exceptional reflexes and coordination. A less capable Gunlance user would probably have sent themselves straight into the Monster's mouth.
Clicking his tongue softly, Altaïr increased his speed another notch.
"Grrrooooar!"
Just as Isis was about to press her attack, the one-horned Pariapuria suddenly raised its head. It shoved against her weapon and Large Shield with its skull, forcing her back several steps.
Its usually dull, witless eyes were now bloodshot. It panted heavily, its racing heartbeat clearly audible. As its muscles swelled and its veins bulged, even its dark brown hide took on a reddish tint.
The creature was enraged.
Isis raised her Large Shield and Gunlance, warily retreating two paces.
Even a Bulldrome became far more dangerous when enraged, let alone a Large Flying Wyvern of the Pariapuria's caliber.
Altaïr had reached her side, but he did not attack immediately, either. He leveled his Long Sword, focused his Spirit on the Monster, and prepared to counter with Instant Slash at any moment.
"ROOOAR!"
The Pariapuria opened its enormous maw and charged with a ferocious roar, as though intent on devouring everything in its path.
This was not an attack Isis could meet head-on. She had no room to build momentum for a charge, and even Blast Dash was impractical at such close range. Her only choice was to dodge sideways.
Altaïr, on the other hand, darted forward. The instant the Pariapuria lifted a foreleg to take its next step, he seized the opening and slipped beneath it.
As they passed each other, his sharp blade sliced open the Pariapuria's side, leaving an exceptionally long gash.
The Pariapuria charged on as though it felt no pain. It did not slow until it swallowed a juvenile that had failed to dodge in time. Only then did its charge slacken. It turned its head and began snatching up the gathered juveniles left and right, devouring them while crushing some of the smaller ones into pulp beneath its feet as they tried to escape.
The Hunters were stunned by the sight.
So the thing had not been enraged at all? It had just finished spitting out one meal and was already hungry again?
As Altaïr watched the Pariapuria grow even more frenzied from the scent of blood while the juveniles swarmed around it, an idea suddenly struck him.
"Sajji! Shock Trap!" he shouted.
"Meow?" Sajji paused halfway through aiming the Rathian Model-1 Rocket Launcher, but immediately dropped it, pulled out a Shock Trap, and ran forward.
According to Ms. Meow-It-All, the slippery body fluid coating a Pariapuria made it difficult for sticky nets to get a firm hold on it, rendering conventional Pitfall Traps useless. Only a Shock Trap, which used a powerful electric current to paralyze the Monster, could hold one in place.
But the Pariapuria was busy "feeding," and ordinary methods of drawing a Monster's attention, such as shouting or using bait, were useless. They needed an irresistible lure.
Altaïr first considered using the corpses of the Pariapuria juveniles, but then he spotted something even more suitable nearby.
The tail he had severed earlier...
Drawn by the bloody scent of the stump, two juveniles were already gnawing eagerly on it.
Altaïr sprinted over and swiftly finished them off with two sword strikes. Then, gripping a juvenile's corpse in one hand and the tip of the severed tail in the other, he dragged both as fast as he could toward the spot where Sajji was setting the trap.
When Isis saw what Altaïr was doing, she immediately realized that he intended to use the Pariapuria's own tail as bait.
It sounded absurd, but only a Pariapuria would fall for it.
There was a rumor that a hungry Deviljho would eat its own severed tail after a Hunter cut it off.
That rumor had never been confirmed, and whether a Deviljho would truly eat its own tail remained a mystery. But to a Pariapuria, which fed on the young of its own kind, its severed tail was merely a vaguely familiar piece of meat.
As Altaïr dragged the tail within range of the Shock Trap, Isis threw a Flash Pod toward the Pariapuria chasing the juveniles.
The Pariapuria's unusual eye structure meant that bright light could neither blind nor stun it, but the flash was still conspicuous in the dim cavern.
The Pariapuria instinctively turned its head, and its gaze landed on the severed tail, round and just the right shape and size to swallow whole.
It stopped its rampage almost immediately and charged straight toward them.
"Tear more wounds into it! Nothing deep, just enough to make it bleed!" With that, Altaïr dropped the severed tail and ran off, dragging the half-eaten corpse of a Pariapuria juvenile.
He swung the corpse in one hand and shouted at the top of his lungs.
Scattered as they fled the Pariapuria's crushing rampage, the juveniles were drawn to the bloody meat in his hand and began converging on him.
At the same moment, the Pariapuria charged headlong into the Shock Trap.
The viscous slime coating its body provided excellent cushioning against slashing and piercing attacks and even fire, but it offered no protection whatsoever against lightning.
The powerful current surged unimpeded through its body. Its muscles convulsed violently, leaving it completely paralyzed and helpless.
Following Altaïr's earlier instructions, Isis raised her Gunlance and fired several shells point-blank at the Pariapuria caught in the trap.
To maximize the destructive output of a Wide-type Gunlance, point-blank shelling was the best choice. If she backed away by even a few meters, the shrapnel would spread far too widely, much like the Spread Ammo used by Gunners.
But that was exactly what they needed at that moment.
The fine shrapnel opened countless tiny, bleeding wounds across the Pariapuria's hide. They might not even have counted as scratches to the Monster, but they made the scent of blood around it even stronger.
Altaïr charged back with the juveniles in pursuit. He hurled the bloody chunk of meat against the Pariapuria's body, then raised his arm and fired his Clutch Claw at a stalactite on the cavern ceiling, sending himself soaring upward and out of the juveniles' sight.
The juveniles gathered around the Pariapuria and pounced without a moment's hesitation. Even when the residual electricity left their bodies stiff and numb, they clamped onto its exposed flesh and refused to let go.
There had not been many large juveniles to begin with. Altaïr had worried that the smaller ones alone might not cause the Pariapuria enough trouble.
Yet to the Hunters' surprise, the juveniles barely longer than an adult's arm were the ones that dealt the most lethal blow to the Pariapuria.
They clung to its wounds, sucking blood and tearing at its flesh before burrowing inside.
Without the wounds covering its entire body, the juveniles could never have breached the thick slime and tough hide of an adult Pariapuria.
Even a gravely wounded, dying Pariapuria should have been prey far beyond their reach. It could have flung them off with a simple shake of its body.
But the Shock Trap gave them their chance.
Once they had burrowed into the adult's body, even the mighty Pariapuria had no way to deal with them, much like a Zamite burrowing inside a Popo, feeding and growing without pause until it burst back out.
Ten or twenty seconds passed. The overloaded Shock Trap broke down, and the Pariapuria, covered in wounds, finally struggled free from the paralysis.
Blood dripped from its maw. Countless bloody holes of every size had been gnawed into the wounds covering its body. Some of the wounds presented a grisly sight, with juveniles hanging halfway out while their heads continued desperately burrowing deeper.
The Pariapuria twisted its head, bit open its own wounds, and tore away its own flesh along with the juveniles that had not burrowed too deeply. It crunched them up and swallowed them, but it was useless.
Drawn by the scent of blood, more and more juveniles swarmed in without pause and hurled themselves at the Pariapuria, which could barely stand.
The Pariapuria was on its last legs. One more assault might have finished it for good, yet the sight made the Hunters' skin crawl, and none of them dared approach.
"It's done for, meow! While the juveniles are focused on it, we should retreat, meow!" Ms. Meow-It-All waved a claw and shouted from where she was hiding in the distance.
"We didn't get to carve the materials," Isis murmured regretfully.
Altaïr sheathed his blade. "All right, would you really want to wear armor made from that sticky, stinking mess?"
"...You've got a point! Let's get out of here!" Isis replied.
P.S. Pariapuria armor is both ugly and has terrible stats, so I will not be using it. The protagonists' new armor has already been more or less decided. Altaïr's is easy to guess, but Isis's will definitely stump you. Either way, both the stats and appearance are excellent! Once I step outside the main storyline, there are far too many details to consider, including whether the equipment suits each character's design. Isis wearing Kirin armor might just work, for example, but Kulve Taroth armor would be a much harder fit...
Author's Note: Self-reflection and thoughts on the story ahead
Yes, I'm back with another round of self-reflection. Honestly, this is more of a personal rant, so feel free to skip ahead if you aren't interested.
The chapters have been difficult to write lately. After thinking about why, I realized I had become somewhat stuck on the whole Tidal Island exploration arc.
In the games, Tidal Island is not exactly a central locale. Only a handful of Monster species live there, and there simply is not enough material to stretch it into two or three years of story. I ended up splitting different individuals of the same Monster into separate arcs, such as the Lolo Gougarf and Taikun Zamuza, adding Monsters that did not originally inhabit Tidal Island, such as Pariapuria, and exploring each Monster's ecology in greater detail. I tried to weave established lore together with my own additions, but this made the overall pace rather sluggish. The earlier Lagiacrus chapter that felt padded was a different matter; that one genuinely took a lot out of me.
Tidal Island is not the New World, after all. Its background is limited, and there is only so much room to expand it. Rather than constantly racking my brains for new ways to rework the island, I would rather pick up the pace, finish covering its distinctive features, and then venture beyond it to explore more unknown lands and stranger Monsters outside the main storyline. That fits the theme of this arc, "Hunt," much better than focusing endlessly on developing the island until the story turns into "farming."
The Tidal Island arc is not over yet, and there are still a few genuinely interesting Monsters left to cover, but I will tighten the pacing from this point onward instead of expanding the map without end and dragging the arc out for another two or three years.
The main purpose of the Tidal Island arc was to give the protagonists some time to settle down. Once they complete this round of skill and equipment upgrades, they should be about ready for promotion to High Rank. Then it will finally be time for them to run wild all over the world!
In any case, thank you all for your continued support.
(Translated by yourtl.app)