Altaïr gritted his teeth, bracing one hand against the hilt and the other against the flat of his Great Sword.
The force behind the bony claws was hardly as weak as Ithra had claimed. In fact, it rivaled that of Tigrex and other large Flying Wyverns famed for their brute strength.
But after going head-to-head with the "Demon King" not long ago, Altaïr found himself thinking, Is that all?
With a low shout, he pivoted at the waist and angled his blade, knocking the attacker's talons aside before carrying the motion into a horizontal Great Sword slash.
Vortex Slash!
His opponent reacted just as quickly, leaping back like an agile cat before the blade could land.
Under the dim lamplight, Altaïr finally got a clear look at the creature in its entirety.
Living bones. The words sprang into the Hunter's mind.
It was a bizarre creature with no scales or carapace and almost no visible flesh or tissue. Its body, more than twenty meters long, seemed to consist entirely of bone.
Only on closer inspection could he make out an extremely thin layer of dark blue-green skin stretched over its skeleton, with muscle present only around the joints.
Where its eyes should have been were two enormous, pitch-black hollows with no eyeballs at all, suggesting that its vision had completely degenerated.
Patches of long, dark fur sprouted from its lower jaw, wing claws, back, and several other areas.
The strangely colored fur did nothing to diminish the eerie impression that this was no living creature. Instead, it called to mind the hair-covered, mummified corpses found in ancient tombs.
Looking upon the creature from those terrifying legends with his own eyes, Altaïr felt a strange sense of absurdity.
He could not even stop himself from muttering, "That's it?"
Almost every child raised in the Great Desert had heard the horror stories about Gilkuza: reassembled bones brought back to life, an emissary from the netherworld, death and fear made manifest.
But to Altaïr, the being before him was merely a powerful Monster with a peculiar ecology. It had nothing to do with any of those mystical or supernatural tales.
The disconnect left him feeling like someone who had heard of a miraculous resurrection, only to investigate and discover that the supposed victim had merely fainted from shock and had never died at all. (That was how sensational mystery documentaries always ended.)
Absurd and utterly dull.
As though sensing the Hunter's contempt, the Ghost Dragon spread its wing claws and reared onto its hind legs. From the massive, fleshless maw of its skeletal form came a near-silent roar.
The roar was far from deafening, yet some power within it made Altaïr's bones and internal organs vibrate with the sound.
His mind went blank for an instant. A splitting headache struck, accompanied by waves of dull, oppressive pain through his chest and abdomen, as though the vibrations had injured him internally.
Gritting his teeth, Altaïr raised his Slinger, ready to fire the Sonic Bomb he had prepared in advance and interrupt the Ghost Dragon's roar.
This was the countermeasure Ithra had recommended.
She suspected that the roar, which could directly injure the internal organs, might be a form of ultrasound. A Sonic Bomb's high-frequency noise might interfere with the attack.
However, just as he was about to fire, a thunderous "Boom!" erupted behind him and off to one side.
The violent shockwave nearly knocked Altaïr to the ground. Masonry of every size flew in all directions, and tiny fragments of gravel rattled against his armor.
The thunderous blast also cut off the Ghost Dragon's roar. It dropped back onto all fours, lowered its body slightly, and warily "watched" the area shrouded in dust.
The other Hunter strode out of the dust cloud, trampling broken bricks underfoot with an air of menace.
Altaïr switched Tyrant Blade [Heaven Swallower] back to its Long Sword form and spoke with exasperation. "Blasting open a wall may be the quickest and most efficient way through a maze, but did you really have to use Wyvern's Fire? Weren't you worried about blowing me up too?"
Isis swung her Gunlance through a Quick Reload and even found time to glance back over her shoulder with a mischievous chuckle. "That's why I deliberately moved a few meters to the side. This wall isn't thin. Without Wyvern's Fire, who knows how long it would've taken to blast through?"
"...Fine."
Her methods had been reckless, but she had gotten him out of a tight spot. More importantly, the two had regrouped quickly.
That would save them a great deal of trouble in the fight ahead.
A Monster would not give Hunters much time for idle chatter. After observing them briefly, the Ghost Dragon leaped without a sound.
Its massive body, more than twenty meters long, tore through the air with barely a whisper. The gaunt creature lunged at a speed far beyond that of an ordinary Monster, its bony claws ripping toward the Hunters.
If they had lost focus for even a second, they might already have been hit. But Isis had never taken her attention off their opponent.
She raised her shield in time and drove her shoulder forward to meet the impact.
Insta-Block!
Brute strength was not the Ghost Dragon's greatest asset, and Isis held firm against its sudden swipe. Its stark-white bone claws were exceptionally sharp, however. What looked like a casual scratch left several conspicuous marks across the Large Shield of her Glavenus Gunlance.
Isis was not one to take a hit without retaliating. With a low shout, she followed the block's momentum into a downward Gunlance smash, ready to answer with a Full Burst.
But the Ghost Dragon's speed and agility were astonishing. When its surprise attack failed, it twisted aside and evaded Isis's heavy downward smash.
Without pausing, it rolled its body with the momentum of its lunge. Its already long, bony tail extended even farther, curling around like a flexible whip to stab at Isis's back from the flank.
Less than a second separated the two attacks. A less experienced Tank would have been unable to handle the combination, but Isis reacted in time.
With a sharp whoosh, she turned and raised her shield behind her, executing another Perfect Guard against the Ghost Dragon's tail spike.
But the assault was still not over. Even as it lashed out with its long tail, the Ghost Dragon swung its other sharp claw.
No known Monster could launch three attacks in less than two seconds, two of them simultaneously. Even Nargacuga, famed for its agility, could not perform such a maneuver.
But the Ghost Dragon could.
Its skeletal structure and lack of muscle came with obvious drawbacks, including poor defense and reduced strength, but they also gave its limbs extraordinary flexibility.
Muscle was, after all, the main obstacle limiting a joint's range of motion.
With almost no muscle tissue and the ability to dislocate its own joints at will, the Ghost Dragon could perform movements that would be "anatomically impossible" for any other vertebrate.
This was precisely why Ithra's team, despite being composed entirely of seasoned elites, had failed to escape unscathed from an opponent with such an obvious weakness.
Now Isis found herself in the same predicament. As the claw was about to plunge into her back, Altaïr flashed to her side, thrust his blade upward, and forcibly knocked the razor-sharp bone claw away.
He immediately reversed the blade and brought it down in a vertical slash. The strike opened a gash in the Ghost Dragon's shoulder, and Dragon Element energy erupted from the wound. The creature shrieked in pain, its movements faltering for an instant.
The Dragon Element was highly effective!
Standing back-to-back with Altaïr, Isis spotted the opening. She turned with a roar and surged out from behind him, ready to put the Ghost Dragon through a full "Gymnastic" combo.
At the same moment, Altaïr leveled his sword in a thrust to help Isis pin down their target.
The Ghost Dragon clearly had no intention of fighting the Hunters head-on. Faced with their counterattack, it nimbly sprang back again, kicked off a stone pillar, and launched itself onto the ceiling. It hung upside down like a bat and scuttled across the ceiling at frantic speed.
Isis raised her Gunlance overhead and fired repeatedly.
Unfortunately, Wide-type shells were practically powerless at that range and could not even draw their opponent's attention. Furious, Isis shouted, "Hey! Get down here!"
The Ghost Dragon had no intention of surrendering its advantage so easily. Clinging to the rocky dome nearly a hundred meters above the ground, it drew a deep breath.
The next instant, a vast cloud of black haze erupted from its maw and engulfed the Hunters below.