The mysterious Elder Dragon that had fallen through the rift twisted in midair, barely regained its balance, and beat its wings to hover dozens of meters above the ground.
At that moment, two more figures leaped through the rift in the ceiling torn open by the high-energy breath attack and landed one after the other on the hovering Elder Dragon's back.
Another anguished howl rang out. The hovering Elder Dragon looked as though an invisible giant foot had kicked it viciously, instantly throwing its once-steady flight into disarray.
It thrashed and struggled, but ultimately lost its balance completely and crashed headfirst into the ground.
Altaïr and Isis exchanged a glance, then quickened their pace and ran toward the Elder Dragon that had fallen nearby.
Compared with its utterly domineering appearance a minute earlier, the mysterious Elder Dragon now looked thoroughly bedraggled.
A bloody gash ran across its head. The shell atop its skull had been split apart, exposing the stark white bone beneath.
An equally long wound ran down its back, as though a sharp blade had been driven into its shoulder blade and dragged all the way to its spine.
The wound had severely torn through the core muscle groups that powered its wings, undoubtedly the main reason for the mysterious Elder Dragon's fall.
A Blademaster clad in pitch-black heavy armor leaped down from the Elder Dragon's body, carrying a blood-drenched Great Sword that seemed to have been forged from solid gold.
His gaze settled on Isis and Altaïr as they ran toward him, and he visibly breathed a sigh of relief.
Gordon raised his visor. The terrifying, almost suffocating presence surrounding him faded considerably, leaving him relaxed enough to joke.
"Good, you're both all right. The labyrinth entrance marked on the map had collapsed and was completely blocked. We spent ages searching up there. I was this close to getting hacked to death by your mother."
"I'll settle the score with you when we get back."
Wielding an oddly shaped golden Long Sword whose materials appeared to come from the same Monster as the golden Great Sword, Hayata walked down the mysterious Elder Dragon's drooping wing, her expression icy.
She glanced back at the mysterious Elder Dragon, which had crashed hard and was still struggling even to stand.
"So this is the legendary 'Ghost Dragon'? An Elder Dragon that hasn't fully matured? It seems somewhat different from the earlier reports."
"No!" Isis hurriedly explained. "We hunted the Ghost Dragon! Its body is over there. This one crawled out of the Ghost Dragon's corpse, just as the Ancient Wyverian's prophecy described!"
"I see..." Gordon murmured thoughtfully.
Behind him, the mysterious Elder Dragon shook its head violently, trying to clear the dizziness caused by taking a heavy blow to the head and then crashing headfirst into the ground. The limb structure unique to Elder Dragons helped it steady its body quickly and push itself upright.
Its bloodshot eyes blazed with a ferocious desire to destroy everything. Its bloody maw gaped open, and a frenzied roar sent a visible pressure wave sweeping out in every direction.
"Haaah..."
Standing closest to the mysterious Elder Dragon, Gordon sighed. "Couldn't you just lie there quietly for a while? At least give us time to discuss whether or not to kill you."
Despite his grumbling, he lowered his visor and turned around without any visible preparation, not even the slightest hint of a charging motion.
As Altaïr and Isis stared in utter disbelief, Gordon opened with a True Charged Slash, bringing it crashing down and smashing the enormous head roaring at him into the ground.
The floor beneath the dragon's skull shattered with a boom, as though struck by shelling.
The roar cut off abruptly once more, just as it had when the mysterious Elder Dragon first crawled out of the fissure leading to the surface...
"Tell us exactly what happened." Gordon shouldered his bloodstained Great Sword once more and turned back to them.
Altaïr opened his mouth. Of course he knew Mr. Gordon was strong. Hero, Hunter Master, mentor to the White Wind, the strongest active Hunter... dazzling titles and accolades piled one upon another.
But in truth, before witnessing it himself, he had found it difficult to grasp what those titles actually meant.
Only now had he finally glimpsed what "the strongest" truly meant, and even then, he had seen only the tip of the iceberg.
Altaïr swallowed quietly, gathered his thoughts, and described everything they had just experienced as concisely as possible.
"A morphological transformation during development? Or parasitism?" Gordon mused aloud. He had faced opponents of both types before, and either could be an enormous problem.
The Black Haze was especially troubling. It had formed part of the Ghost Dragon's flesh before gathering and solidifying into part of this mysterious Elder Dragon's body.
It sounded exactly like a fusion of Frenzy Virus spores and the Qurio...
"I think it would be best to bury it right here," Gordon said. Filtered through his visor, his voice took on an unnaturally hollow, icy resonance.
Hayata flicked the blood from her Long Sword and faced the mysterious Elder Dragon as it growled low and struggled without pause. "You two, get back–"
"Look out!" Isis cried.
The mysterious Elder Dragon had just taken another vicious blow to the head and still could not stand, yet it suddenly lashed out with one wing claw, striking at the two figures before it with lightning speed.
Before the wing claw could touch either of them, however, it was repelled as though it had struck an invisible barrier. A gaping wound tore open across the wing bone, spraying blood.
Isis could not even see what had happened. Only Altaïr, himself a Long Sword user, barely glimpsed the faintest trace of the blade's path.
Tempered Spirit Blade?!
During a sparring session with Lady Hayata a few months earlier, he had seen her use Tempered Spirit Blade, but the speed and power of the strike she had just delivered were on an entirely different level.
The mysterious Elder Dragon's counterattack seemed to serve as a signal. Gordon and Hayata stepped forward in unison.
Altaïr and Isis, who had retreated several dozen meters away, expected to witness an intense battle: a swift, high-speed exchange, dazzling and tremendously powerful Hunter Arts, all manner of two-person tactics, seamless coordination, and more.
None of that happened.
Gordon planted himself in front of the mysterious Elder Dragon's head and hacked at it as though it were a training dummy. Blow after blow, each heavier than the last, he brought his Great Sword down relentlessly. Blood and scraps of flesh spattered across his weapon and armor throughout the ceaseless onslaught.
Hayata focused entirely on parrying the mysterious Elder Dragon's increasingly feeble counterattacks. Whether it struck with wing, claw, or its long tail studded with sharp crystal clusters, she neutralized every attack by alternating fluidly between Tempered Spirit Blade and Iai Slash.
The mysterious Elder Dragon never found a chance to rise from the ground before its head was hacked apart.
Thus ended the life of this mysterious and powerful Elder Dragon, here in an unknown, lightless underground labyrinth.
An ecological catastrophe that could have brought calamity to a vast region was snuffed out deep underground before it could show even the first signs of emerging.
Watching Gordon and Hayata's utterly accustomed expressions, Altaïr did not know what to say for a moment.
Perhaps saving the world had simply become routine for them...
"Hey! Are you all right down there?!" Not long after the dust settled, shouts echoed from the fissure in the ceiling above.
It was Mr. Alva, who had remained on the surface.
"I brought the Knowledge Seeker over. Do you need any..." His words cut off mid-sentence, interrupted by his own curse. "What the hell! Look what you've done?!"
"An unknown species of Elder Dragon with no previous record, and it didn't even have a name yet! You just hacked it to death?!"