TitoVillar
patreon
MHD Chapter 76: The Last Roar of the Forest
🕑 Added 2025-07-31 21:11:27 +0000 UTCAs the shockwave from the explosion spread outward, the searing flames devoured all vegetation in the clearing. The Ebony Odogaron—barely clinging to life beside the Deviljho—was the first to be consumed, its final breath extinguished the instant the flames touched it. Within moments, its corpse was reduced to charred remains.
This breath attack hadn't lasted long, but it was the one Logan had charged up for the longest. It was also the one that burned the hottest.
Flames of this caliber—comparable to divine judgment—were something even an Elder Dragon couldn’t withstand without consequence. How could a Deviljho possibly come out unscathed?
Yet at that moment, a black mist laced with streaks of red lightning began to rapidly spread. Because the breath attack had drained so much of his stamina, Logan was unable to fully pull away in time and was touched by a trace of it.
The instant the mist clung to him, the flames surrounding Logan—already significantly diminished from his earlier attack—were snuffed out completely. Even his flame sacs convulsed violently, and the circulation of his flame energy stuttered and stalled.
Fortunately, the contamination wasn’t severe. After a brief disruption, his system slowly began to recover.
“Dragonseal, huh...?”
Dragon-elemental energy was the only force in this world that didn’t manifest in any specific, visible form. It was an extraordinarily high-level energy—possessing a powerful suppressive effect over all other elemental energies.
Hunters referred to this suppressive force as Dragonseal. Even Elder Dragons were not immune to its effects.
In practical terms, weapons afflicted by Dragonseal would lose their elemental attributes, functioning only as sharpened, reinforced tools of raw physical damage until the effect wore off.
And the emergence of Dragon-elemental black mist could mean only one thing—
The Deviljho was not dead yet.
Sure enough, the black mist quickly dispersed. The Deviljho stood amidst the smoke, its body covered in large-scale burns. Its previously engorged muscles had significantly atrophied, and only half its face remained intact—one of its eyes gouged out entirely. Corrosive drool dripped from the corner of its mouth as it glared at the monsters around it.
“Still not dead? Just how strong is this thing’s vitality…?”
With burns this extensive, any normal creature would have long since perished.
And yet, judging by its posture, this Deviljho looked like it could still keep fighting.
Is this the vitality of an Elder Dragon?
No—this was the vitality that belonged solely to the Deviljho!
With a roar from the Glavenus, the battle reignited once more.
By now, the Deviljho had reached the end of its rope. Even with its staggering vitality, after enduring such relentless attacks and sustaining this level of flame damage—not to mention maintaining its Dragon-elemental state for so long—its body was now like a candle flickering in the wind.
Staring down the charging monsters, it prepared for a final, desperate struggle.
Its muscles, scorched and badly burned, had become incredibly fragile. Each strike from the Glavenus easily tore through, cutting deep into its flesh.
The brute strength it once possessed had already diminished—without the support of intact muscle mass, even the Fulgur Anjanath could now go head-to-head with it.
While the chaos continued below, Logan focused on the dwindling fire energy left in his flame sacs. Gritting his teeth, he began to forcefully draw out every last bit.
Flames surged around him once more. He no longer had the strength to unleash a charged breath, but his body remained intact—unwounded and whole.
Logan began to ascend higher into the sky. His Acceleration Trait had long since reached its limit, and though his stamina was nearly depleted, it was still enough for one final strike.
The flames around his body began to swirl. Logan transformed into a blazing fireball.
Accelerate. Dive. Ignite.
The overwhelming force granted by the Powerhouse Trait—
The added momentum from acceleration—
The explosive flames of his burning body—
The Charred Body Trait reinforcing his scale armor, allowing him to recklessly maximize his dive without being crippled by the resulting backlash—
And finally, the Mind’s Eye guiding him to lock onto his target with perfect precision!
This was Logan’s most powerful technique aside from his flame breath—
A dive like a meteor falling from the heavens!
Logan, transformed into a blazing comet, collided head-on with the Deviljho.
The resulting explosion hurled the Tempered Anjanath—whose stamina was already nearly spent—clear off its feet.
The Fulgur Anjanath and Glavenus, relying on their own sheer weight, managed to barely withstand the shockwave and stay grounded.
...
The flames dispersed. Logan beat his wings, hovering just above the ground. Even with the defensive reinforcement of his Charred Body, such unrestricted acceleration had caused several of his scales to crack and shatter. But that was all—just cracked scales.
The damage he’d truly suffered wasn’t nearly as terrible as it looked on the surface. After all, during this battle, his flames had reached a level approaching Calamity Fire itself, and Charred Body scaled its defense with the heat of his own flames.
Struck by this attack, the Deviljho now lay sprawled in the massive crater. Much of its body had been crushed, its ribs shattered.
And yet… it still clung to life.
The Deviljho stared up at Logan with its lone, lifeless eye, as if looking at a piece of meat. Hunger gnawed at it—intense, unbearable.
To a Deviljho, even on the verge of death, the torment of unending hunger never ceased.
Perhaps death wasn’t something it feared. Perhaps… it was the only release from the hellish agony of hunger it had always known.
[Clang!]
A cold flash swept like a full moon across the Deviljho’s neck. The blade shattered just as the monster’s head was cleaved from its body.
With clenched jaws, Glavenus stared hard at the decapitated corpse of the Deviljho, then raised her head and let out a mournful roar.
She had avenged her child!
She had crossed more than half the forest, broken into one monster’s territory after another, braved the elements day and night without rest—just to find this Deviljho that had slaughtered her young.
And now, the Deviljho was truly dead. Not even the pain of her broken blade-tail could suppress the grief flooding through her.
The Ebony Odogaron looked over the ruined battlefield with cold eyes. Without another glance, it limped off into the forest.
It too had suffered serious injuries in this battle. It needed to find a place to rest—only then could it return to its own territory.
After venting her rage, Glavenus stepped up to the Deviljho’s corpse and tore fiercely at its head, biting and ripping until no flesh remained. Only then did she leave without looking back.
Now, only Logan and the Fulgur Anjanath remained—these two “old friends” who had been entangled for nearly a decade.
In this moment, they mirrored that distant day when Logan had first entered the Ancient Forest and encountered the transforming Fulgur Anjanath once more. Logan flew in the air while the other monster stood on the ground. They stared at each other—no extra emotion in their eyes, only a deep, mutual malice.
At this point, the fire sacs in Logan’s body had been completely depleted. Without the boost from his flames, Charred Body could no longer be maintained.
But he still had his Acceleration trait. He still had the strength to keep fighting. He still had Powerhouse, Mind's Eye, Regeneration, and more.
Most importantly—he still held the advantage of flight.
So… hand-to-hand combat, is it?
Ever since his body had matured, Logan’s strength had already surpassed that of the Fulgur Anjanath. Over the years, he’d tried multiple times to kill it.
But when Aki was around, the Fulgur Anjanath focused solely on escaping.
And when Aki wasn’t present—deep within the Ancient Forest’s lower layers, where the space was so tight and confined it nearly disabled flight, forcing ground-bound close-quarters combat—Logan had never felt confident he could win.
As much as he hated to admit it, deep down, Logan had always carried a powerful psychological shadow cast by this Fulgur Anjanath.
Since coming to this world, every single brush with death had come at the claws of this Fulgur Anjanath.
This left a lingering fear buried deep within Logan’s heart—an instinctive dread of engaging this monster in close combat.
In truth, Logan understood clearly that his heart was not strong.
At this moment, he was like a bloated “fat man,” inflated with stacked traits. A body that looked powerful—yet without the heart of a true warrior.
In his previous life, he was just an ordinary person. Afraid of death. Afraid of pain. That personality had carried over with him into this world, unchanged by reincarnation.
But he also understood one thing very well:
If he didn’t cultivate the mindset to risk life and death in battle—
If he lacked the courage to engage in savage combat with tooth and claw—
If he couldn’t push himself to the brink of life and death and strive to break past his limits—
If all he did was rely on the advantage of flight and the safety of his traits...
If his answer to every threat was always “just a little longer, just grow stronger and it’ll be easy”,
Then the path ahead for him would already be at its end.
This world is a brutal, blood-soaked world of monsters. Creatures that refuse to face danger and fear will inevitably be eliminated.
And if he kept going like this—then one day, when Logan finally met an opponent that even his “cheat” traits couldn’t overpower, when both sides were evenly matched—
That flimsy outer shell of his would be torn apart... and inside would be nothing more than a useless coward, wrapped in the illusion of power granted by traits.
That was the true reason why—when he sensed the opportunity to scheme against the Chameleos—he chose to take the risk, instead of simply walking away.
And now, the choice stood clearly before him.
He had to face the deepest part of himself—and make the final decision:
Option One: Leave. Wait again. Wait until the stack of traits grew strong enough to beat the Fulgur Anjanath even without flight. Or wait until the Thunder Jaw Wyvern left the lower layer of the Ancient Forest before fighting it.
Option Two: Fight now. Right here, right now—through battle, completely cast off the shadow in his heart, and settle things once and for all with the Fulgur Anjanath.
The Fulgur Anjanath raised its head, locking eyes with Logan—just as intensely.
At this very moment, it too was deeply conflicted inside.
Its primal survival instinct told it that clinging to life, no matter how miserable, was better than dying. It should retreat decisively, just as it had for the past few years—disappearing into the woods, hiding in the pitch-black depths of the forest—surviving by relying on Logan’s lingering fear, surviving in cowardice.
But something in its heart whispered otherwise.
It was time—time to put an end to it all.
Living like a fugitive in the dark gutters of the forest... even basking in its beloved sunlight could only be done briefly, before dusk, when the Fire Wyverns no longer hunted. Only then could it sneak out to feel a glimpse of warmth—before crawling back into the blackness, praying that Logan didn’t grow stronger too fast.
But that life... was not the one it wanted.
It was once the forest's brute—the apex predator. It had stood at the top of the ecological ladder. Back when it prowled the outer edges of the forest, even as Logan tormented it day after day, it was still itself.
But once it returned to the Ancient Forest, it had changed completely.
Just as it was the shadow buried in Logan’s heart—Logan had long since become a shadow in its own.
“Fight!”
“Fight!”
At that very instant—they made the same choice.
It was as if fate itself had arranged this moment, following the battle against the Deviljho, bringing both monsters back to the place they belonged in the natural order.
And now, the two beasts—like a common Rathalos and a typical Anjanath—began a new round of brutal combat, one of blood and flesh.
...
The setting sun was crimson, dyeing the sky in streaks of fiery red.
Logan drew on his life energy to mend the wounds on his body.
Beneath his feet, the blood-soaked corpse of the Fulgur Anjanath lay silent. The blood staining its hide was both its own… and Logan’s.
A torn wound across its neck had already bled dry. And now, within the pool of blood, a small Wyvern Gem glistened quietly.
Staring at the sunset, Logan spread his wings and let out a liberating, triumphant roar.
The sound startled flocks of birds from the trees.
In the skies, his roar echoed far and wide—as if declaring to the world:
A new Fire Wyvern—an aberrant reborn—has arrived!!
Comments
Lucas
Tftc
