TitoVillar
patreon
MHD Chapter 115: Symbiosis
🕑 Added 2025-08-12 05:04:15 +0000 UTCWhile Logan wondered what could have caused the changes in the panel, near the Great Ravine at the edge of the Ancient Forest… The scorching
While Logan wondered what could have caused the changes in the panel, near the Great Ravine at the edge of the Ancient Forest…
The scorching heat warped the very air, and countless limp carcasses of small animals gave off the stench of decay under the high temperatures. There wasn’t the slightest trace of effluvium in the air.
Even the creatures that made their homes in the Great Ravine had fled this area, steering clear of the two Elder Dragons engaged in a relentless game of predator and prey.
The Blackveil Vaal Hazak was utterly miserable—truly miserable.
Ever since it had been caught by this Teostra that day, the other had hounded it like a great cat that had locked onto its prey, refusing to let go.
Time and again, just as the Blackveil managed to catch its breath, the other would close in again. With no choice, it would have to gather its effluvium once more and fight.
But this great cat was nothing like the Teostra pair from years past—it was an intelligent great cat!
Its fighting style was completely different from those two youngsters. Whether it was combat experience, mastery over energy, or reserves of life force, this one far surpassed the male Teostra from back then.
And the most infuriating part was that after only a single battle, it had pinpointed the area of its body where the “armor” had been damaged earlier by that strange Fire Wyvern—and recognized it as a weak point.
Every strike was aimed there, hammering away at the same spot without relent.
It was maddening for the Blackveil Vaal Hazak.
Although none of the injuries were serious and it could siphon life force from effluvium-corrupted creatures to heal them, the blows still hurt.
This wasn’t a desperate fight to the death—it was being suppressed and worn down, and the whole situation was humiliating.
And so, one kept fleeing and patching itself up, while the other seized every chance to strike that weakened spot. The fights were nowhere near as fierce as their first encounter.
Eventually, as time passed, the Blackveil grew fed up. It no longer had time to properly repair its spore sacs, and the “armor” it had built up over many years was now in tatters.
The good mood it had been in while coming out for a bit of air was gone, and now it had been chased all the way to the Great Ravine.
No longer willing to play this game, the Blackveil Vaal Hazak simply left the Ancient Forest, crossed the Great Ravine, and leapt straight down from the Coral Highlands, trailing its effluvium back into the Rotten Vale.
Under the deathly, effluvium-laden atmosphere of the Rotten Vale, the Teostra could no longer sense the Blackveil’s presence. The urge that had been gnawing at it finally faded.
Its task complete, and disliking the Coral Highlands’ damp climate, the Teostra yawned, reined in its aura, and lazily flew toward the other side of the Highlands—toward the Elder’s Recess, the highest place in the New World.
With that, the source of the Ancient Forest’s effluvium crisis was gone. The now-masterless effluvium began to lose its potency, and once it finished breaking down the remaining corpses, it would fade away with time.
And those white spores capable of reproduction and releasing effluvium would, with the changing climate, begin to disperse once they lost the environment they depended on to propagate.
By then, with the Ancient Forest’s fearsome self-purification ability, everything in the forest would return to its original state.
In this catastrophe, aside from a few areas where battles between Elder Dragons had caused massive destruction to the vegetation, the rest of the forest would actually grow more lush, nourished by the abundance of organic matter.
Herbivorous creatures would be the first monsters to return, followed by carnivorous and omnivorous species once the population of organisms at the lower levels of the food chain had recovered to a certain point.
This process would take two to three years.
And during that time, the Ancient Tree Fire Wyvern group would face a period of hardship they would have to endure.
What had happened in the forest was known only to the monsters atop the Great Ravine who had witnessed the Elder Dragons’ chase—no other creatures were aware of it.
...
At the Ancient Tree Fire Wyverns’ settlement near the border between the Wildspire Waste and the forest, many changes had also taken place.
First was the food problem. The shortage originally expected to appear after a year had unexpectedly begun in just seven months.
The wyverns, Logan included, now spent noticeably more time hunting each day. This wasn’t due to lack of ability—rather, the hunting grounds nearby simply no longer had enough surplus prey to sustain them.
Even when they did encounter prey, it was usually just a small group of Kestodon, most of them juveniles.
If they hunted the adult Kestodon in such a small group, the remaining young would have no chance of survival.
Whether it was instinct or intelligence, the fact remained that these small herds had not been attacked by any large monsters—none had chosen to exhaust the resource entirely.
Instead, the focus had shifted to hunting grounds farther away and deeper within the wilds.
The wyverns, with their advantage of ample flight endurance, could manage. When the forest yielded no prey, they could travel deeper into the Wildspire Waste and head for certain special regions to hunt.
For example—the territory of the Diablos!
That’s right, the monster as renowned as the Fire Wyvern itself, known as the “Tyrant of the Desert.” Despite being a Flying Wyvern, it was utterly unsuited to flight and instead possessed unmatched burrowing ability.
It boasted one of the largest bodies among Flying Wyverns, with adults often exceeding 24 meters in length, and it had absolute strength to match that massive frame.
Even the Tigrex, famed for its raw power, generally avoided direct contests of strength with a Diablos.
What didn’t match its terrifying appearance—like a demon of the earth—its hair-trigger temper, and its extreme territoriality that drove it to hunt intruders to the death, was the fact that it was actually a herbivore!
Because Diablos spent most of its life in the underground hollows of the Wastes, its hearing had become highly developed while its vision had been somewhat diminished.
This behavior had led some Kestodon herds to choose the outskirts of Diablos territory as their breeding grounds.
Land-based monsters avoided hunting them for fear of making noise that might draw the Diablos’s attention—but for the airborne Rathalos, there was far less to fear.
Even if they occasionally failed, at worst it just meant losing that particular prey—there was no real risk of serious injury.
...
At dusk, Logan stood at the edge of a cliff, watching the returning Fire Wyverns in the distance. Even when hunting in groups, not many of them managed to bring prey back.
Most of it consisted of Kestodon or Noios—creatures that didn’t yield much meat.
Fortunately, after receiving training from the Research Commission’s wilderness survival experts, some of the cats had learned fishing and small-environment-creature trapping techniques. Combined with the first batch of newly harvested bred animals, they had managed to achieve self-sufficiency just in time to avert a food shortage.
This allowed Fire Wyvern families with hatchlings to breathe a sigh of relief—they could now dedicate all the prey they caught entirely to feeding their young.
On the cat side, herbivorous monster breeding had finally gotten on track, several months behind the other breeding projects.
The delay was entirely due to the greatest challenge in breeding Aptonoth—not other monsters in the area, but rather the Ancient Tree Fire Wyverns themselves, which made finding a suitable location extremely difficult.
Unlike the Jagras, which bore identity scales from the wyverns, even if multiple scales were attached to an Aptonoth, the Fire Wyverns refused to acknowledge them. In their view, the concept of “breeding” simply didn’t exist.
Jagras were not a primary food source for Fire Wyverns, and since they were also used as mounts by the cats, they could still be accepted after receiving identity scales.
Aptonoth, however, were nothing but food. Once marked with identity scales, they were seen as offerings from the cats.
At first, there was the thought that if there were only a few Aptonoth, perhaps they wouldn’t be hunted to extinction—but once they bore identity scales, it became a different matter entirely, and the Fire Wyverns showed no restraint.
This caused great headaches for both the Commission and the cats. Eventually, during an expedition, they discovered a hidden cavern behind a waterfall. After some renovations, it was finally suitable for keeping a small number of Aptonoth.
Although the number was somewhat below expectations, for the cats right now, having any at all was already a good thing—they couldn’t afford to be picky.
...
The illusory panel slowly emerged before his eyes, and as the progress bar reached its final one hundred percent, a new trait appeared once more.
However, upon seeing this trait, Logan felt a bit puzzled. Compared to the patterns he had observed in how traits usually manifested, this one seemed different, and it didn’t appear to offer much improvement to his strength.
[Symbiosis: When weaker creatures spend extended periods in the same environment as a strong one, they often undergo unexpected changes. Everything about them will begin to align with the stronger being.]
[Slot One; Slot Two; Slot Three]
Unlike the straightforward descriptions of past traits, the Symbiosis trait’s explanation was vague, showing only three empty slots beneath it.
Curious, Logan opened one of the empty slots and found there was only a single option.
[Option One: Fire Wyvern Grimalkyne]
Yes—the option was “Fire Wyvern Grimalkyne,” not “Ancient Tree Fire Wyvern clan,” and it did not include Aki or any other individual.
Logan speculated that this Symbiosis trait might establish a link on a group basis, influenced by the level of closeness and the connection between both parties.
Otherwise, if it were purely based on the group level, the Ancient Tree Fire Wyvern clan should have been included as well.
Since there was only one option, Logan didn’t overthink it and directly filled in “Fire Wyvern Grimalkyne.” Immediately afterward, the slot simply turned grey, and nothing else happened.
This left Logan somewhat baffled.
“That’s it?”
Driven by curiosity, Logan called over a Fire Wyvern Grimalkyne and asked if it noticed anything different.
But after searching for quite some time, it found nothing unusual about itself. In the end, it simply looked at Logan with wide, confused eyes, a hint of grievance in its expression.
Comments
Abzolute
Ty for the chapters
