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MHD Chapter 122: Attrition in the Air
🕑 Added 2025-08-14 07:04:19 +0000 UTCEven though it had been an aerial detonation, it still altered the battlefield in subtle but tangible ways. For the tempered Seregios—accust
Even though it had been an aerial detonation, it still altered the battlefield in subtle but tangible ways.
For the tempered Seregios—accustomed to exploiting air currents in battle—the sudden, overwhelming gale was completely disruptive.
The seamless pressure it and its partner had been applying to Aki faltered, giving her an opening. Gritting through the pain in her injured wing, she rammed one of the tempered Seregios aside and managed to take flight.
A female Fire Wyvern’ flight could not match a Seregios’ in speed or agility, but once airborne, Aki was no longer confined to the killing zone on the ground.
Overall, the coming fight would be far easier for her—at the very least, she could hold out until Logan arrived to support her.
Little did she know, the two tempered Seregios were thinking the exact same thing.
From the very start, instinct told them that Logan’s strength was far beyond what they could handle. Even two against one, they would not be his match—they simply weren’t on the same level.
That was why they had taken it upon themselves to engage Aki instead: to finish off the female Fire Wyvern as quickly as possible so she couldn’t interfere in their leader’s battle.
What they hadn’t expected was that Aki’s strength would be far greater than they imagined. What they thought would be an easy target turned out to be a stubborn, unyielding opponent.
They could survive the fight if they were willing to pay the price, but their kind was already in the middle of a migration due to food shortages. If they sustained injuries far beyond expectations while fighting Aki, there was a real chance their group would abandon them.
For a highly social species like Seregios, that was an unthinkable fate.
It was for this reason that Aki had been able to withstand the attacks of two tempered Seregios, even without aerial freedom and after having her flight interrupted.
In truth, the battle between Logan and the Seregios leader would decide the outcome of the entire fight.
That was why both Aki and her two opponents kept an eye on the high-altitude clash as they fought.
From within the dust cloud left by the explosion, Logan dropped first. He spread his wings wide in the gale to steady himself, then, without pause, unleashed a breath of fire. The blast tore through the incoming hail of blade scales, scattering them as it punched straight through the smoke.
The Seregios leader darted and rolled through the air, the sweeping motion of its broom-like tail constantly shifting the surrounding wind currents. Using those very airflows, it strung together one impossible maneuver after another.
It avoided the fire breath entirely—and even used its path to close the distance on Logan with startling speed.
Even with Logan’s Acceleration Trait pushing his speed to remarkable levels, this berserk-form tempered Seregios, now fully roused, with every muscle in its body supercharged, showed no less speed than he did.
The earlier explosion had inflicted considerable damage. Though the freshly regrown blade scales had absorbed most of the blast, the violent impact had still shaken its body hard.
A wide section of its chest had cracked open, and even the regrowth of the blade scales in that area had slowed.
But so what?
Instead of deterring the frenzied Seregios leader, the injury only drove it into greater excitement. The black mist of berserk form churned wildly across its body, and streams of life force, mixed with life energy, were drawn out in surges—converted into a special energy that reinforced it even further.
This special energy was like a massive dose of stimulants, breaking past the body’s natural limits and driving it into an overclocked state of power.
The joint and muscle pain only made it more violent. And the unknown substance within the black mist, once active, was nearly impossible to stop—continually draining its life force to repair the damage its body sustained under the strain of its berserk rampage.
Seeing that his breath attack couldn’t suppress the Seregios leader and that it was closing in fast, Logan cut the stream off in time, twisting his body and climbing sharply with a powerful beat of his wings. Like a living flame Gatling gun, he unleashed a rapid barrage of fireballs, sealing off the Seregios leader’s possible paths.
He was doing everything he could to gain altitude.
In battles between Flying Wyverns, the one holding the higher ground almost always had the greater advantage.
Clearly, the Seregios leader had the same instinct. Without giving an inch, it fired volley after volley of blade scales. The scales sliced through the fireballs, breaking them apart and pushing back against Logan’s climb.
The sight made Logan’s eyes narrow in disbelief.
The Seregios’ blade scales were incredibly sharp, yes—but that didn’t change the fact they were still lightweight scales.
The heat of the fireballs alone should have been enough to disrupt the air currents and weaken the blade scales’ power. And even if the scales managed to cut through, the explosions from the fireballs should have generated enough shock to cancel out their force.
But in reality, his fireballs weren’t just being cut apart—they weren’t even significantly affecting the blade scales at all.
“What…?”
Something was wrong. Very wrong.
Earlier, he could weaken the scales’ force just by striking them with the wind pressure from his wingbeats—so why was it that now, his fireballs couldn’t achieve the same effect?
Forced to evade, Logan twisted and rolled in the air, his body wreathed in orange-red flame. The flexibility granted by his four wing bones, combined with the keen perception of his Mind’s Eye and the high heat of his Flame Body altering the airflow, allowed him to dodge the blade scales with agility despite the constant pressure.
And he was still able to keep observing.
Then, during a particularly close call where he barely tilted his head to avoid a scale, he caught it—
The trailing edge of each blade scale bore faint black markings, the same substance as the berserk mist swirling around the Seregios leader’s body. And within that mist… Logan could sense the presence of Dragon Element.
The berserk-form mist actually contained Dragon Element?!!
Logan knew well how dangerous Dragon Element was. Back when they had surrounded that Savage Deviljho, just a trace of it had been enough to disrupt the flow of energy within his body—the Dragonseal power had left a deep impression on him.
Although the Ebony Odogaron’s Dragon Element hadn’t been able to fully display its potential under the Savage Deviljho’s suppression, there was no denying that every Dragon Element monster was truly formidable.
What Logan couldn’t figure out was this: apart from Elder Dragons, which could wield it perfectly, most other creatures could only use Dragon Element energy by burning through their life force at an almost suicidal rate.
Yet this Seregios, after fighting for so long, was still maintaining peak performance—as if it possessed limitless stamina.
That black mist absolutely contained something more than just Dragon Element!
Where in the world did this thing come from—what kind of outrageous Elder Dragon could produce it?!
Logan felt a surge of frustration. Only an Elder Dragon could create something so absurd. And judging by the fact that its side effects were far less severe than those of the Frenzy Virus, the Elder Dragon behind this berserk black mist was no ordinary one. It might even be a forbidden -class Elder Dragon.
Using power dispersed by an Elder Dragon always came at a cost. Logan didn’t know exactly what that price was—but right now, the Seregios leader in its berserk state possessed combat strength on par with his own.
In a way, their power now stood on the same tier: the very peak of tempered monsters within the same ecological niche—though still weaker than “enforcer” types like the Rajang or the Bazelgeuse.
Berserk form was strong, but it still fell short of “Apex State,” achieved only by those who had overcome the Frenzy Virus and paid the tremendous price to fully awaken their bodies’ potential.
An Apex Seregios could be as dangerous as an Elder Dragon.
Even with berserk form added to its newly tempered status, the Seregios leader hadn’t reached the level needed to break past its ecological niche—and neither had Logan.
With neither side able to decisively outmatch the other, their clash shifted from an opening exchange aimed at landing a fatal blow into a prolonged war of attrition.
The Seregios leader drew on berserk form for immense stamina, while Logan relied on his Regeneration and the synergy between his traits to greatly reduce his energy consumption.
Above the wasteland, the two darted and collided again and again.
Flame, scales, blood, and flesh became the dominant colors of the battlefield—
And this long, drawn-out battle soon caught the attention of another creature.
