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MHD Chapter 143: Cats, Claws, and Cleaning Duty
🕑 Added 2025-08-26 16:18:08 +0000 UTCWhen Logan returned to the Ancient Tree, the battle here was already drawing to a close. Those Fire Wyverns whose strength was clearly lacking slunk away in defeat, while the few tempered Fire Wyverns and that Azure Rathalos were visibly unwilling to concede. Yet, with Logan’s return, they yielded their current dwellings with reluctant resignation rather than continue the fight.
Still, none of them left outright. After all, the earlier battle had been brought to an end by Logan’s Pressure, and once they had witnessed how he crushed that tempered Azure Rathalos with overwhelming force, any desire to continue fighting had vanished. Instead, they settled temporarily on the far side of the Ancient Tree, in more secluded places.
The Fire Wyvern group of the Ancient Tree did not drive them out. At this stage, the fighting had only been to reestablish the core of the Fire Wyvern pack. Once everything belonging to them was reclaimed, there would be time later to settle accounts.
By defeating the tempered Azure Rathalos, Logan had once again made clear who held the upper levels of the Ancient Tree. Since the others had shown such tact, the Fire Wyverns were in no rush. There was still much to be done.
One by one, great baskets were lowered, and the cats leapt out eagerly, carrying all manner of tools. With tasks divided, they began cleaning the wyverns’ nests from the top down.
Some nests, long abandoned, had fallen into ruin. Others had been occupied by the expelled Fire Wyverns, so it was necessary to quickly erase every trace they had left behind.
When the Grimalkynes saw that Logan’s own nest was still filled with marks left by the Azure Rathalos, they were furious, yowling their insistence that it be renovated at once.
Loose scales were swept away, everything carrying a foreign scent was scrubbed clean with water, and the bedding once used by the Azure Rathalos was dismantled and thrown down through a small passage leading to the lower levels of the Ancient Tree.
Claw marks and bite gouges that could be patched were quickly filled in; those that could not be mended were scraped away with small knives.
In an instant, the nest was a whirl of activity, a swarm of cats working themselves ragged. The Grimalkyne leader personally oversaw the effort, not even tending to their own dwellings, determined to restore the nest to its former state in the shortest possible time.
While the cats were hard at work, the Fire Wyverns themselves were far from idle.
No sooner had they settled their hatchlings than they rushed back outside to fight again.
During the two years in the Wildspire Waste, with living space so limited, the cats could still keep them managed, and with cooperation among the group, no new hierarchy challenges had been fought in all that time.
Now, back on the upper reaches of the Ancient Tree, with such vast territory and not enough cats to tend to every wyvern, the battles flared again—driven both by the desire to rise in rank and by the wish to secure a dwelling better tended by the cats. The challenge that had lain dormant for two years resumed at once.
The strongest Fire Wyverns, secure in their standing, lounged as they ate from the stores, watching with great interest as mated pairs clashed violently in the skies. Meanwhile, the hatchlings howled in delight, cheering for their parents above.
Even though the fights were not to the death, dozens—if not hundreds—of Fire Wyverns brawling near the Ancient Tree created a tremendous uproar. Many monsters that had returned early to the area were startled, and in that moment, all of them realized—the once-dominant force of the Ancient Tree, the Fire Wyvern pack, had returned.
Their survival strategies and priorities would once again have to change.
Logan, too, was among the onlookers—though unlike the other Fire Wyverns watching idly, he was busy analyzing the acceleration technique he had just used.
First of all, he should not have attempted such acceleration without any preparation. The pressure that rebounded the instant he broke the sound barrier struck him off guard, leaving his chest tight for a moment and nearly throwing him off course. It could be said that Logan had relied entirely on the sheer resilience of his body to force himself steady. Even now, parts of his muscles still ached with soreness.
Secondly, his control of the airflow had been far from precise. The massive thrust had even damaged his wing membranes—a dangerous injury for a Flying Wyvern in battle.
Beyond that, there were a number of smaller details he had failed to handle properly.
Here, Logan carried out a deep self-reflection, while Aki quietly stayed at his side, gently licking his wounds.
The other wyverns had noticed nothing unusual about Logan, but Aki could never be fooled. Still, she also knew how formidable his Regeneration was, so she showed no excessive reaction.
The Fire Wyverns’ ranking battles dragged on until nightfall. The prolonged clashes gave those wyverns who had stayed in the Ancient Tree after losing earlier a full view of the current strength of the Fire Wyvern pack.
During this time, some wyverns ultimately chose to leave. They had a clear grasp of their own limits. Though at first they had been indignant, believing they lost only because they were ganged up on, after seeing these battles and making the comparison, they wisely took wing and flew away.
Those who remained quietly picked out their targets, waiting for the Ancient Tree Fire Wyverns to recover their strength—ready to launch their challenges the very moment they did.
As for the humiliation of once occupying the upper reaches of the Ancient Tree only to be driven from their nests again, they hardly gave it any thought.
A week had passed since their return to the Ancient Tree. All the necessary challenges had been fought, and the new members had successfully joined the pack. Still, having never been disciplined under the cats’ ways, they had yet to adapt to the living habits of the Ancient Tree Fire Wyvern group.
Over this week, Logan also learned about these tempered Fire Wyverns and the Azure Rathalos. Just as he had suspected, they had indeed come from the Elder’s Recess. It was said that in a place near the Great Ravine, a massive earthquake had struck for reasons unknown, and a tremendous aura of Pressure lingered there for a long time, as though searching for something.
The disturbance had even caused the activity of the Elder Dragons in the Elder’s Recess to diminish for a time.
Later, when the source of that Pressure departed, these tempered Fire Wyverns—already old—found themselves unable to withstand the strain of life in the Elder’s Recess. So they chose to leave and return to live within the Ancient Tree.
Indeed, these tempered Fire Wyverns had once been members of the Ancient Tree long ago. To put it plainly, they had left in their youth to wander the wider world, only to return in old age to spend their twilight years at home.
The pair of Pink Rathian and Azure Rathalos, however, were different. They had come back intending to raise offspring in the safer environment of the Ancient Tree.
As for the lone Azure Rathalos, it had simply failed to find a suitable mate in the Coral Highlands, and the abnormal disturbances there had forced it to flee. It planned to stay in the Ancient Tree for a while, waiting to see if a Pink Rathian would come here this year in search of a partner.
The rest were simply Fire Wyvern couples who wished to complete their challenges and settle permanently in the Ancient Tree. They had not expected Logan to return with the Ancient Tree Fire Wyvern pack so late, and thus had gone ahead and taken up residence directly.
Alright, Logan could understand all those reasons. What made him curious, however, was that some kind of anomaly had erupted in the Coral Highlands—so dangerous that even an Azure Rathalos, a Flying Wyvern ranked among the highest of ordinary monsters, had been forced to flee.
It had to be the work of an Elder Dragon!
When anomalies appear, looking to an Elder Dragon is never wrong.
Of course, Logan’s curiosity went no further than that. Between the Coral Highlands and the Ancient Forest lay the vast Great Ravine, and under normal circumstances, any anomaly there would never affect this side. So he had no real worries.
As for that Azure Rathalos, it had truly been unlucky. Arrogant and proud as it was, when it chose a rival, it did not pick another Azure Rathalos from the Ancient Forest Fire Wyvern group, but instead set its sights on the Flame Rathalos.
The Flame Rathalos had been stunned at the challenge. Whether it was because the Flame Rathalos, restraining its fire, gave off an aura of danger, or because the Azure Rathalos simply thought it might be an easier opponent—it hardly mattered.
The battle ended swiftly, and brutally. The Azure Rathalos, which could normally soar freely in volcanic zones and withstand the searing heat of magma, for the first time experienced what true firepower was. Before the Flame Rathalos, with its absolute specialization in flames, the Azure Rathalos was blasted again and again by torrents of fire breath until it began to doubt its very existence.
In the end, with a winning hand played into ruin, it could only drag itself in humiliation to the mid-canopy of the Ancient Tree, scrape together a makeshift nest, and quietly lick its wounds. Only when it had healed would it seek out another opponent.
