The wind rose!
The Fire Wyverns, highly attuned to shifts in atmospheric currents, immediately sensed something was wrong.
Within the vortex of fire formed by a breath attack, flickering specks of blinding bluish-violet flames surged skyward with the spiraling inferno.
Scattered embers struck the ground and continued to burn, soon scorching a hole into the earth.
While the Flame Rathalos’s fire was certainly powerful, it never lasted long. Moreover, those bluish-violet flames clearly did not belong to him.
The breath ceased—yet instead of dissipating, the flaming tornado grew even more intense, spiraling higher into the sky!
The entire twister was now enveloped in bluish-violet flames, consuming everything caught within.
With the Fire Wyverns’ exceptional vision, a faint silhouette of a Flying Wyvern could be seen gradually emerging at the center of the flames.
A sudden burst of dazzling light flashed—then a pair of wings pierced through the fire, trailing brilliant azure plumes.
Like a monarch of flame, a savage and imposing wyvern calmly raised its head from within the blaze.
The raging fire, capable of reducing all to ash, brushed gently across his body, while his icy vertical pupils gazed emotionlessly up at the Flame Rathalos.
With a deafening roar, the vortex of fire erupted violently.
Scattered sparks shot out in all directions—even the nearby Fire Wyverns scrambled to dodge them.
Those that fell into puddles sent steam billowing into the air.
Amidst the sparks bursting like fireworks, a silver wyvern soared skyward—and only then did the surrounding Fire Wyverns notice that the spot where Logan had stood was still engulfed in roaring flames.
Soil and rock had fused into a crimson magma, roiling with intense heat, bubbling up in bursts.
Logan had never experienced a moment so sublime.
Blazing fire-aligned energy surged through his body; every muscle, every scale, rejoiced in unison.
The bluish flames fluttered in response to his will, boundless energy flooding every corner of his being.
It was as if the world itself was rejoicing—the blazing sun high in the heavens radiated in tandem with him!
Under the watchful gaze of all the Fire Wyverns, Logan stepped into the sunlight. His half-red, half-silver carapace shimmered with dazzling brilliance.
Azure fire, hot enough to distort the air, danced across his shell with wild abandon.
In this moment, Logan radiated endless light and heat, as if he were the incarnation of the sun itself.
This was—
[Silver Sun!!]
Half the forest saw its temperature spike rapidly due to his presence alone.
...
Atop the Ancient Tree, the Admiral—gazing out into the distance—retreated into the shade of the canopy. Waving a massive palm to cool his neck, his dark eyes were filled with confusion.
“Has Teostra shown up again?”
...
In the forests surrounding the hunting grounds, creatures of all kinds began fleeing, desperately escaping that region.
Large monsters, reacting to the rising heat, felt as though something immense was pressing down on them. A high-level ecological pressure—an alien, oppressive force from a superior lifeform—kept prodding at their nerves.
They responded the same way they had countless times before:
Flee!
On the forest’s outer edge, a Chameleos shimmered into visibility, gazing toward the Ancient Tree with puzzled eyes. After burying its freshly laid eggs in the soil and covering them with rotting vegetation, it silently vanished once more.
In the Wildspire Waste, a Nergigante that had just hunted down a Barroth reared up, its burning gaze fixed in the direction of the forest.
At the highest peak of the Coral Highlands, the Namielle awakened from slumber. Spreading its dazzling wings that blotted out the sky, it unleashed a torrent of water like a bursting dam—rushing down in waves, cascading like a stepped waterfall toward the base of the plateau.
Throughout the New World, hidden Elder Dragons were jolted awake, carefully sensing this unfamiliar life force radiating through the land.
“A newly born Elder Dragon?”
At that moment, the Fire Wyverns—both from the Old and New Worlds, and closest in proximity to Logan—halted their battles under the crushing pressure of this overwhelming lifeform disparity. Dumbfounded, they stared at the “silver sun” in the sky.
Logan stood with his eyes gently closed, savoring the utterly foreign sensation coursing through him. It was as if the entire world lay beneath his feet. The leyline energies were visible in perfect clarity; one by one, the nodes of the land's life force emerged within his awareness.
It felt as though, should he will it, he could effortlessly dismantle the entire ecosystem of this continent.
Within the bluish-violet flames enveloping his body, a translucent panel flickered faintly in and out of view.
A cluster of garbled characters rapidly shifted. In less than a second, the panel stabilized—appearing as suddenly as it vanished.
Had Logan opened his eyes in that instant, he would’ve seen the newly revealed content:
[Sunlight (Pseudo): Become the Daystar, illuminating the world. (Countdown: 4:59)]
It took quite a while for Logan to pull himself out of the overwhelming sensation of “I am the heavens, I am nature itself.” He understood perfectly well—this was nothing more than a delusion brought on by the sudden surge of power.
Perhaps in this moment he truly did possess the ability to dismantle ecosystems. But having once perceived the malice of the world through his Mind’s Eye, Logan knew all too well—should he even entertain such a thought, and begin to act on it, that would be the moment the countdown to his own annihilation would begin.
Looking down, Logan saw the blazing figure of the Flame Rathalos reflected in his vertical pupils.
His lips parted slightly, and flames spilled from the corners of his mouth as he pulled into a sinister grin.
“Had your fun spitting flames, huh? Guess it’s my turn now.”
A blaring alarm rang in the Flame Rathalos’s mind. It instinctively twisted its body to the side.
A bluish-violet fireball brushed right past it—and even that brief graze caused a faint sting!
But it was the Flame Rathalos!
The eternal blaze that never dies! A Flame Wyvern whose fire still burns even in death!
The fireball hit the ground a moment later, exploding with a thunderous boom. A scalding gale surged outward in its wake.
Leaves nearby were whipped into a frenzy by the furious wind, their moisture instantly evaporating, edges turning dry and yellow.
The spot where the fireball landed glowed red-hot—flames continued to burn atop the dirt itself.
The other Fire Wyverns quickly retreated, leaving only the stunned Flame Rathalos and Logan facing off mid-air.
The Flame Rathalos couldn’t understand. It couldn’t make sense of what had just happened.
What was going on?
Just moments ago, Logan had been flailing around, dodging its flames in desperation—how had he become this in the blink of an eye?
Something had clearly gone wrong.
Something had happened beyond its comprehension.
But now… there was no more time to think.
Logan shot forward like a meteor.
The Flame Rathalos instinctively unleashed a barrage of explosive fireballs to intercept.
But Logan was already at full speed. He didn’t even try to dodge. Blazing straight through the incoming fireballs—each one no more than a tickling nuisance—he dove directly at the Flame Rathalos’s face.
There was nowhere to run. The two clashed in mid-air.
At that moment, the Flame Rathalos realized something terrifying:
Its claws could barely scratch those silver-gray scales streaked with red—they couldn't pierce through to the flesh beneath at all.
But every strike from Logan ignored the fire cloaking its body, tearing through its carapace, and forcing it to truly feel the searing pain of the flames as his blows connected.
How laughable.
As a Fire Wyvern, ever since its body mutated and the fire sacs within underwent unknown changes, it had lost control over the fire that constantly overflowed from its body. At the same time, its resistance to fire had reached an unprecedented, exaggerated level.
Even when strolling on the surface of magma, covered by churning lava, letting it slide down its body, it felt no heat at all. Yet today, it once again felt the temperature of flames.
As a flame-specialized variant, the majority of the Flame Rathalos’ attacks relied on fire damage.
But now, in front of Logan, the fire upon which the Flame Rathalos depended to survive had lost all effect. To Logan, this Flame Rathalos was nothing more than a regular Fire Wyvern barely qualifying as tempered.
And because it had relied on flames for so long, its close-combat capabilities were actually inferior to that of an ordinary Fire Wyvern.
All of its attacks, seen through Logan’s Mind’s Eye, were childish and laughable.
At this moment, with the Charred Body trait activated, Logan’s defensive capabilities had also reached an unprecedented extreme. To him, the Flame Rathalos' attacks weren’t even worth dodging.
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