TitoVillar
patreon
MHD Chapter 102: Burning the Blackveil
🕑 Added 2025-08-10 06:19:16 +0000 UTCIn the air, blue-violet fireballs and orange-yellow miasma orbs collided and broke apart, their movements so swift they seemed like twin sph
In the air, blue-violet fireballs and orange-yellow miasma orbs collided and broke apart, their movements so swift they seemed like twin spheres of light, merging and separating in a ceaseless dance.
Fireballs rained down from time to time, bursting in the forest and sending mushroom-shaped clouds billowing into the air.
In this relentless clash, the miasma’s activity was gradually compressed, forcing the Vaal Hazak to draw it back into its body, reactivating it with its own life energy before releasing it again.
Even so, in the exchange over the battlefield, the miasma began to fall into disadvantage.
It often took twice—sometimes even three times—the amount of miasma to snuff out the strength of a single measure of flame.
With the Flame Rathalos looping back and rejoining the fight, even though its flames had lost some of their force, its teamwork with Logan caused the miasma around the Vaal Hazak to shrink rapidly. The elder dragon finally found itself at a complete disadvantage.
It no longer tried to meet the fire breath head-on, nor did it let the miasma drift freely; instead, it gathered the toxic cloud tightly around itself, using it to offset Logan’s and the Flame Rathalos’s flames.
As time went on, the balance tipped further—until the spores in the area were burned away completely under the searing heat, like under a blazing sun.
The once-dense miasma on all sides now remained only in a small patch around the Vaal Hazak.
At this point, it was surviving solely on the spores it had deliberately kept protected in its own spore sacs, using them to maintain the density of miasma around it.
In just a few minutes of battle, its living environment had been drastically compressed.
And yet, this last layer of miasma, infused heavily with its life energy, stubbornly resisted Logan’s attempts to burn it away.
Seeing the countdown tick to its final minute, Logan gritted his teeth and, under the Flame Rathalos’s covering fire, managed to leap onto the Vaal Hazak’s back. As the elder dragon writhed in resistance, he unleashed an enormous explosive fireball at point-blank range.
With a thunderous blast, the Vaal Hazak crashed to the ground. Logan’s entire body erupted in flames—he roared at the Flame Rathalos, then his form blazed into a fireball.
He spun once through the air, locking tightly onto the Vaal Hazak in the forest below, then dove with all his might.
“So fast!”
Just as it began to rise, the Vaal Hazak stared at the incoming blue-violet meteor of fire. At that speed, it wasn’t certain it could avoid it.
Without a second thought, the Vaal Hazak, after a brief moment of charging, drew all the surrounding miasma into the gill-like organs along its body. From its mouth erupted a miasma breath more potent than any it had unleashed before.
The tremendous recoil even forced it to hunch low, claws digging hard into the ground.
In the next instant, the blazing meteor of flame collided with the miasma breath. The blast of wind from the impact flattened trees, while waves of heat tore through the area and rolled outward into the distance.
The force of Logan’s Lovely Star Skies Strike began to falter under the backlash.
The massive surge of miasma frantically smothered the flames cloaking his body.
On the intangible panel, the countdown began to tick down faster.
At that moment, the Flame Rathalos appeared directly above, unleashing the breath it had been holding. It cut through the air pressure and poured straight into Logan’s meteor of flame.
The countdown on the panel halted.
The fire that had been suppressed by the miasma breath roared back to life.
Only when Logan felt a sharp, stabbing pain in his blast sacs did the meteor of flame finally break through the miasma breath’s blockade—and in the Vaal Hazak’s disbelieving gaze, slam home.
[Boom!!!]
The violent explosion shook the ground, and the resulting shockwave even flung the exhausted Flame Rathalos away through the sky.
Nearby trees were snapped in half, and wide swathes of land were scorched black.
Logan’s crimson body, streaked with silver, burst out from the explosion, crashing heavily to the ground and carving a deep furrow in the earth.
Forcing down the pain in his guts, Logan pushed himself up quickly, his eyes blazing as he stared toward the Vaal Hazak.
When the smoke cleared, it was no longer the Blackveil Vaal Hazak—now it was simply the Vaal Hazak.
The mantle of white spore sacs it had worn was completely burned away in the blast.
The monster hide draped over its right side and wing was blasted to shreds, many of the barbs on that side broken off, revealing scorched silver-white scales beneath.
Its wing drooped, clearly bearing a significant injury.
Seeing the Vaal Hazak in that state, the tension in Logan’s chest finally eased.
“We did it!”
From the very start, Logan’s goal was never to slay the Blackveil Vaal Hazak, but to completely strip away the spore sacs on its body. Combined with his Sunlight Trait, he could purge every spore and every trace of miasma from the area, depriving the Blackveil Vaal Hazak of the environment it depended on, and thus force it to leave the forest.
Elder Dragons—monsters whose every attribute exceeds the limits of ordinary life—possess vitality and endurance beyond imagination. Wounds that would be fatal to most creatures are often little more than inconveniences to them.
Even for a predator of Elder Dragons like the Nergigante, it often takes months, sometimes even a full year of relentless pursuit and repeated hunts to bring one down.
Because of his Flash Fire Trait, Logan had briefly transcended his normal life level, gaining attack power on par with an Elder Dragon.
But the time was simply too short.
Five minutes—against the Blackveil Vaal Hazak—was enough only to suppress it, not to crush it.
This was, after all, a creature that required the combined might of a Teostra and Lunastra to drive it away.
That was why Logan, in the final moments, had gone all in—using his most explosive technique to erase its last means of survival.
Without miasma, the Blackveil Vaal Hazak was like a fish out of water.
Of course, it wasn’t actually a fish; the lack of miasma would at most make it extremely uncomfortable.
But coupled with its injuries, Logan figured that, knowing the Blackveil Vaal Hazak’s temperament, it might very well choose to leave.
The Elder Dragon’s scarlet eyes glared coldly at Logan, the luminous organ above them flickering with an amber glow.
The gill-like organs along its flanks opened and closed, releasing only thin traces of miasma.
It seemed that last breath attack had nearly drained its stored miasma reserves.
Seeing this, Logan slowly beat his wings and took to the air. Had he… actually succeeded in driving it off?
That sense of accomplishment dulled the pain radiating through his body.
The Blackveil Vaal Hazak let out a chilling roar. Even as unease prickled at Logan’s heart, a mass of dark clouds rolled in from above.
“No… not clouds—Wingdrakes!”
Logan’s pupils contracted as he recognized the vast flock approaching through the sky.
At the same time, from within the forest, Jagras and other environmental creatures began appearing in the area.
Though they were of different species, at that moment they all shared one thing: their bodies were covered in thick, fungus-laden miasma spore sacs.
At the Blackveil Vaal Hazak’s roar, the Wyverns in the sky began plummeting, while the small monsters on the ground convulsed violently, wailing in agony.
The miasma, carrying their very life force, was devoured in great gulps by the Blackveil Vaal Hazak, as if it were a whale feeding.
Logan tried to stop it, spitting out fireball after fireball, but the Blackveil Vaal Hazak, keeping a constant watch on him, dodged every single one.
The wounds on its wings healed at a frightening pace, and the once-thin miasma grew dense again.
From above, the Flame Rathalos, its flames dimmed, let out a mighty roar.
From the sky, it was clear: across this vast forest, countless small monsters—completely parasitized by spores and their minds enslaved by miasma—were surging forward like a tide of the undead, all converging toward this place.
They were the Blackveil Vaal Hazak’s reserve energy.
Unless one could grievously wound the Blackveil Vaal Hazak or purge the forest of every spore, in a battle of attrition, it feared no monster.
It had no devastating, explosive attack, nor any instant-kill ability.
What it did have was the physique of an Elder Dragon, an unending supply of backup energy, and the miasma’s life-stealing power—enough to outlast its foes through sheer endurance.
Put simply, it was a standard tank with a built-in, massive regeneration rate.
“Tch!”
Logan fixed his gaze on the Blackveil Vaal Hazak, still draining the life force from the spore-infested monsters, and roared again to the Flame Rathalos.
“Huh? Again?”
The Flame Rathalos could already feel its Conflagrant sac aching.
Earlier, in order to quickly charge Logan, it had been overstraining its Conflagrant sac, leaving its internal fire-element energy unable to recover.
But Logan’s orders had to be obeyed—otherwise, what if he was kicked out of the Ancient Tree?
With no choice, the Flame Rathalos once more flew over Logan’s position, preparing to charge its breath.
Yet, just as it began, the Blackveil Vaal Hazak suddenly spewed a dense wave of miasma toward the ground, cloaking its entire form from view.
The Flame Rathalos’s heart tightened, and without a second thought, it unleashed its breath.
Flames once again enveloped Logan, but as he absorbed the massive influx of fire-element energy, his Conflagrant sac began to throb and twitch in pain. It was bearable—but the torment was almost too much.
As Logan endured the pain of charging up, the miasma shrouding the Blackveil Vaal Hazak slowly dispersed with the wind.
By then, there was no trace of the Blackveil Vaal Hazak left.
“…Huh?”
Logan froze. Had it… run off?
Before he could dwell on it, another jolt of pain shot through his Conflagrant sac.
The Blackveil Vaal Hazak was gone, but the Flame Rathalos was still diligently blasting him with fire.
“Enough! Stop breathing!”
Logan roared, cutting off the Flame Rathalos’s breath attack.
It stared at him blankly, completely lost on what had happened.
That vacant, university-student-like look only made Logan’s temper flare.
Even wrapped in flames, he had noticed the Blackveil Vaal Hazak was gone—yet this one, perched high above spewing fire, hadn’t realized a thing.
How had he never seen before that this was the kind of wyvern it was?
Then again… it made sense. If this wyvern wasn’t like this, how would a Flame Rathalos have been sweet-talked by the Old World Rathalos into becoming their tireless, overworked leader?
A pure, big-hearted fool, through and through.
With his Regeneration kicking in, the discomfort in his Conflagrant sac began to ease.
Logan rose higher into the sky. Looking down, he saw the monsters had stopped converging toward him, and let out a slow breath.
“Forget it. A temporary retreat is fine. At least before the migration, there shouldn’t be any extra trouble.”
He glanced around. As far as the eye could see, apart from the area where he’d just fought—where the miasma had thinned slightly—the rest of the forest remained shrouded in thick miasma and spores.
No wonder that, most of the time, disasters caused by Elder Dragons could only be resolved by other Elder Dragons.
Letting out a low growl toward the Flame Rathalos, Logan turned back toward the Ancient Tree.
This battle had drained too much of his strength; he needed to make the most of his time to rest.
