Facing the encroaching Black Haze, the Hunters had no choice but to stand back-to-back, constantly swinging their weapons to disperse the tiny creatures, each no larger than a grain of sand, and protect themselves.
Altaïr fired a Flash Pod at the Ghost Dragon hanging from the ceiling, testing whether the burst might knock it down.
As it turned out, the Ghost Dragon's sight had long since degenerated after so many years in the underground labyrinth. The Flash Pod did nothing beyond blasting the living Black Haze apart for a few seconds.
The Ghost Dragon remained securely suspended upside down from the ceiling, "watching" them with pure malice. It was content to let the Black Haze steadily sap their stamina, ready to deliver a fatal blow once they weakened.
They could not let this continue.
Seizing the opening while the Black Haze recoiled from the Flash Pod's blinding burst and had yet to close in again, Altaïr said urgently, "Slow your movements little by little. Pretend we're exhausted and lure it down to attack!"
"Got it!"
The two slowed their weapons, and the Black Haze they had kept five or six meters away began pressing closer.
After more than a minute of this standoff, Altaïr's knee suddenly buckled. He dropped into a half-kneel and slid his Long Sword back into the scabbard on his back.
Startled, Isis was about to ask what was wrong when Altaïr whispered, "I'm faking it. Cover me. It's about to lose patience."
"Oh, got it!"
Isis immediately adjusted the sweep of her Gunlance, making a show of struggling alone against the Black Haze.
Altaïr silently rotated the hilt, locking the blade and scabbard together to transform the weapon into Great Sword form. Still half-crouched, he began charging from a posture that would have been extremely awkward for an ordinary Great Sword user.
First stage, second stage, third stage... Only when the seething fighting spirit within him was on the verge of slipping beyond his control did he bring the Great Sword down, driving the approaching Black Haze back slightly while seamlessly shifting into the next charging stance.
The change in the Hunters' behavior naturally caught the attention of the Ghost Dragon overhead. Maintaining the Black Haze's relentless siege was exhausting for it as well, and it decided to test them.
It released the claws anchoring its body and dove from the ceiling.
Isis narrowed her eyes, preparing to raise the muzzle and show this disgusting creature the meaning of AA Flare.
Altaïr stopped her with a quiet warning. "Defend. Pretend we're too weak to fight back."
As he spoke, he shifted into the True Charged Slash stance.
At his warning, Isis wrenched her attack to a halt and made a show of laboriously raising her Large Shield overhead.
Just as the Ghost Dragon was about to pounce on the Hunters, it suddenly beat its wings. The tattered membranes, ragged as rotting flesh, stirred up a foul-smelling gust as the creature pulled out of its dive with five or six meters still between it and the Hunters.
"Tch." Isis tightened her grip on her weapon.
So it had been a feint... The creature truly was wary of their counterattack.
If she had used AA Flare just then, she could certainly have damaged the Ghost Dragon, but she was not confident she could bring it down in one shot. She had used Wyvern's Fire to break through a wall only moments ago, and it was still cooling down.
The Ghost Dragon screeched strangely in midair. The Hunters' reluctance to fight back had emboldened it.
As it swooped over their heads, it provocatively whipped its bony tail downward. The tail struck the Large Shield Isis held aloft with a resounding bang.
By Isis's standards, the blow was hardly powerful. She held firm against it.
Remembering Altaïr's instructions, however, she pretended her strength was failing. She staggered and nearly fell, then drove the butt of her Gunlance into the ground as though bracing herself, completing a full reload in the same motion.
The Hunters' feeble response made the Ghost Dragon lower its guard completely.
Poor flyer that it was, it glided to a rock wall dozens of meters away. It braced all four limbs against the stone, then its gaunt yet massive body blurred into an afterimage as it lunged fiercely toward the Hunters.
Altaïr, who had been charging in silence, raised his head.
A brilliant golden light flashed around him and vanished, a sign that his fighting spirit had condensed to its limit.
To deny his opponent any chance to react, he waited until the Monster's claws were almost upon him before giving a low shout and bringing down his Great Sword.
The first blow carried little weight. To the Ghost Dragon, it seemed almost leisurely and even missed its mark entirely, posing virtually no threat.
Just as it prepared to tear the Hunter apart in a single attack, he planted the Great Sword for support and vaulted upward, evading its claws and rising in front of its head.
At that instant, the Ghost Dragon finally sensed the danger, but it was already too late. The blade, blazing with fighting spirit, came crashing down toward its head with a wind-tearing roar.
"Boom!"
Dragon Element energy detonated in an instant, bathing almost the entire underground labyrinth in red. Together with the erupting fighting spirit, it drove the Ghost Dragon's head into the ground like an invisible sledgehammer.
The abrupt "braking" of its head threw the tremendous momentum of its full-force lunge completely out of control. Its body pitched forward helplessly as bone fragments and shattered masonry sprayed outward, kicking up a vast cloud of dust.
Isis, who had been holding back long enough, gave a cheer. She rushed to the head of the fallen, struggling Ghost Dragon and laid into it with a barrage of chops and crushing blows.
Altaïr swiftly switched his weapon back to its more precise and agile Long Sword form, targeting the vital points in the Ghost Dragon's chest and neck.
Ordinarily, when facing a fast and agile Monster, a Hunter should prioritize its limb joints to impair its mobility.
The Ghost Dragon's anatomy, however, was far from ordinary. Altaïr suspected that even if he severed one of its claws, it might simply reattach it. Better to strike directly at its core vitals.
Let's see you reattach your head.
The Ghost Dragon's skin and muscle were extremely thin, with neither shell nor scales to protect them. Under the High Rank Hunters' all-out assault, wounds rapidly accumulated across its body.
Yet that same lack of muscle meant their weapons struck the extraordinarily hard bone after biting only a short way into the Monster's body, making every impact feel deeply unpleasant.
More disturbing still, no blood flowed from the wounds. Only small amounts of thick, pitch-black fluid with the consistency of tar slowly seeped out.
The strange color and texture would have been unsettling enough, but what truly sent a chill down the Hunters' spines was that this "blood" seemed alive. The fluid that fell to the ground even crawled back toward the wounds, trying to return to the Ghost Dragon's body.
The sight reminded Altaïr of the unidentified Black Haze. Could this so-called "blood" also be made up of those organisms?
No wonder the Dragon Element had reacted so violently. In a sense, the Ghost Dragon and those organisms were a single entity, joined in a symbiotic relationship even closer than the one between Thunderbugs and Zinogre.
Thunderbugs, at least, only inhabited the gaps in Zinogre's shell. These organisms had entered the Ghost Dragon's flesh, replaced some of its tissue, and become part of the host's body.
Under the Hunters' fierce assault, the heavily wounded Ghost Dragon twisted its head aside to evade another of Isis's brutal smashes and released a shrill cry at a frequency beyond human hearing.
Great swaths of Black Haze surged from its mouth and the wounds covering its body, forcing the Hunters to retreat temporarily.
The Ghost Dragon seized the opportunity to rise. It bounded between the rock walls and stone pillars, preparing to escape using its superior speed.
Altaïr quickly threw a Paintball to mark it, unwilling to lose the quarry's trail in the underground labyrinth's complex terrain.
Just as the Ghost Dragon was about to get away, a furious roar erupted beside him.
"Did I say you could leave?!"
With a thunderous boom, Isis shot forward like a cannonball and slammed into the Ghost Dragon as it maneuvered nimbly through the terrain.
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