novelraw Chapter 498 498: Let’s Die Together!
Chapter 498 498: Let’s Die Together!
Outside the Secluded Valley, because Mother Chameleos had fled, most of the hunters did not receive further treatment. They could only hastily drink Potions and wait for their injuries to recover.
Darren and the other elites with stronger constitutions, however, attempted to reenter the Secluded Valley once their stamina had recovered.
Unfortunately, the Secluded Valley was now filled with high-temperature gases comparable to Calamity Flame. Even the friction produced by simple movement was enough to ignite flames out of thin air.
Such an environment was no longer one in which ordinary life could survive, nor was it a temperature that could be temporarily resisted with Cool Drinks.
Even Darren, equipped with Terastal armor and with his energy resistance maximized, could only remain five minutes longer than the others. Without wingdrakes to assist his movement, relying solely on his own two feet made it impossible for him to push deeper into the Secluded Valley, let alone descend into the battlefield to participate in the fight.
With no alternative, after discussion, the hunters could only steel themselves and, forcing their exhausted bodies onward, hasten to establish defenses outside the Secluded Valley, doing their utmost to intercept Safi'jiiva again when It appeared.
Time passed swiftly. The moon set and rose again. The oppressive heat in the air forced many hunters—already exhausted to the point of collapse or bearing serious injuries—to withdraw early and return to the camp in the Guiding Lands.
Inside the tent, the Commander looked at the compiled figures laid out on the wooden table. His face was like frost. Within his clenched fist, his fingernails dug deep into his flesh, yet he felt nothing.
The usually forthright Admiral also remained silent. The composed Wyverian hunter even closed his eyes, unable to bear looking any longer.
In this battle alone, more than fifty hunters could not even have their bodies recovered.
More than one hundred were so gravely injured that they could no longer continue the profession of a hunter.
Another hundred were receiving treatment in the rear. In all likelihood, they would suffer lasting sequelae, their lifespans and future strength permanently affected.
Such staggering losses had occurred even with Mother Chameleos providing emergency treatment. Without her, the Research Commission's losses this time would have been even greater.
Most crucially of all, the majority of the hunters lost were young men with boundless potential. They were meant to be the backbone of the New World's hunters for decades to come.
Such losses truly made the upper ranks ache to the deepest part of their bodies.
"How is the battle going? Still unable to enter the valley?"
The Commander's hoarse voice sounded. The scribe beside him shook his head and said, somewhat hesitantly, "We still haven't been able to break through the Sunblaze Dragon's high-temperature field, but according to reports from the frontline hunters, the temperature inside the Secluded Valley seems to be starting to drop. The Fifth Fleet Master has already been able to push a bit deeper."
The Commander let out a long breath. At least things had not deteriorated to the worst possible outcome. The Sunblaze Dragon was still, as always, powerful and reliable. After fighting such a prolonged battle, It was still keeping that monster firmly suppressed within the valley.
This way, even if the Sunblaze Dragon failed to claim final victory, the Research Commission would at least have a greater chance of completing this slaying battle.
…
Inside the Secluded Valley.
At this moment, the battle between the two sides was no longer the same as at the very beginning, where they could recklessly squander their own energy.
In this fight with no chance to catch its breath, Safi'jiiva's energy expenditure had already become an unimaginably staggering figure. Converted out, it was likely the full amount of Everstream energy contained within an entire Everstream tributary.
Thrown into the New World, it could even trigger the kind of activation that would affect the entire continent.
And with no external energy supply arriving for so long—able only to rely on its own internal energy circulation to replenish—while its vitality was continuously being whittled away, its energy recovery had already fallen far below its energy loss.
It understood that its probability of victory had already become vanishingly small.
Out of the corner of its eye, through eyes covered by a membrane, it saw those shattered cocoons reduced to ash in the extreme heat—charred black all over—along with the sloughed skin that could be scattered with a single breath. Every one of these was telling of its defeat.
At this moment, even Safi'jiiva, with its muted emotions, could not help but have a trace of regret surge up from deep within.
Back then, in order to seize this hidden valley, It had gone to tremendous lengths to wrest ownership of it from the siblings born alongside it, and had driven those failed young Xeno'jiiva out of the Secluded Valley.
Those shattered cocoons were the trophies it had deliberately left behind for itself as a display of honor!
But under Logan's young forbidden high-temperature flames—flames for which there was not even a single record in its genes—those past glories all turned to ash and scattered away.
It had no path of retreat!
The complex emotions surfaced for only an instant before Safi'jiiva returned to that state of absolute rationality.
Rapidly calculating the remaining energy within its body, it looked at the crimson dragon charging toward it through the flames, while sensing the mysterious crystals surging up from underground, tightly wrapping around its limbs and delaying its evasion.
It understood that the other side believed the time was ripe—that the best opportunity to eliminate it had been found.
The wound on its chest, torn open by Precipice Blades, had left its faintly visible heart without its greatest protection. If it were in the opponent's place, it would likely not let such an excellent opportunity slip by either.
Dodge?
It certainly could dodge!
But Safi'jiiva did not want to dodge. After fighting to this point, it was tired.
This battle, already devoid of any hope, was one it no longer wished to continue. So…
"Roar!"
Logan turned into a streak of red light and closed in on Safi'jiiva. Reflected in his crimson eyes were the opponent's tattered scales and those eyes devoid of any emotion—eyes that even death could not make afraid.
Hidden within his heart all along, nurtured by that perpetual-motion core, the purest Terastal energy—also uniquely his own—rapidly gathered under Logan's control.
Every divine beast had its own exclusive ultimate move, the manifestation most perfectly aligned with its own power. After completing his transformation, Logan had likewise sensed this.
Precipice Blades was indeed useful, but the strongest killing move was still this power that belonged solely to himself.
A pure white crystal needle shot out from Logan's mouth, tearing through the air at a speed the naked eye could not lock onto. Wherever it passed, all Terastal energy was drawn in and absorbed by it. The convergence of vast Terastal energy resembled a brilliantly colored meteor, which in an instant surged toward Safi'jiiva's chest.
It easily pierced through the opponent's energy barrier and, at the very moment it touched the scales, abruptly vanished.
Safi'jiiva's eyes widened in disbelief. The bioenergy within its body was converging toward its chest at an inconceivable speed. What was terrifying was that this was not energy it had mobilized!
In a sudden realization of the true effect of Logan's strike, it did not hesitate in the slightest. It directly released the energy that had been maintaining the wound in its chest. As its blood gushed out in great quantities, the region of its heart exerted force in an instant, mobilizing the energy it had long secretly accumulated. Through the wound in its chest, it forcibly condensed a single drop of blue liquid.
"Then let's die together—roar!!"