Monster Hunter: This Dragon's Built Different

Just as the Chameleos vanished, Aki seized the moment—before the poisonous mist could spread—and shot a fireball toward it.

Unfortunately, the fireball had been launched too hastily, and the Chameleos evaded it with ease.

As the white mist reappeared, Logan sharpened his focus, his mind's eye tracking the Chameleos's movements while urging Aki to retreat immediately.

Unwilling to give up, Aki spread her wings. The pressure from her flight helped slow the diffusion of the toxic mist as she blasted upward into the sky.

Flames once again engulfed Logan's body. The intense heat caused the blood on his skin to solidify, then flake off as scorched dust.

He beat his wings with caution, lifting his body off the ground into a low hover.

That explosion earlier had been a real missed opportunity. At the final moment, the Chameleos had managed to predict the impact point. At such high speeds, Logan had no time to adjust his trajectory and was forced to ram forward blindly.

As a result, the Chameleos escaped the center of the blast and avoided taking the full brunt of the damage. Had it been caught directly, its injuries would have gone far beyond mere superficial wounds.

The Chameleos shifted its position constantly within the mist. But at this range, every movement it made was clearly perceived by Logan through his mind's eye.

The flames he had built up with his ignition technique had been almost entirely depleted during that previous attack. So now, Logan's priority was to increase environmental destruction, luring the Chameleos into attacking him directly and creating the illusion of an ongoing fierce battle.

Thus, after deftly dodging a testing spray of venom, Logan began circling the Chameleos erratically. Like a blind predator flailing for its prey, he occasionally spat bursts of flame around the monster or knocked over small trees with charging sweeps.

This unorthodox behavior puzzled the Chameleos, but it remained on guard in secret.

At one point, Logan's turn seemed off. The Chameleos caught this subtle misstep instantly. Its wings spread wide, and the thick mist around it abruptly thinned.

At that very moment, Logan's mind's eye triggered a warning—and an eerie chill swept down his spine.

He was mid-turn in the air. It was already too late to ascend or dive.

In a split-second decision, Logan folded one wing. His balance broke instantly, sending his entire body spiraling uncontrollably. The wyvern flipped and tumbled through the air in a chaotic dive.

This irregular and preemptive evasive maneuver forcibly altered his flight path—causing the Chameleos's stream of virulent green breath to miss entirely.

The toxic breath tore through the forest behind him, corroding thick trunks and carving a gaping void through the wood. A strange, foul-smelling white smoke billowed from the decay.

Logan crashed to the ground like a plane that had lost balance. He rolled violently across the terrain, gouging out a series of craters before finally skidding to a stop—his body dragged a long, scorched trail across the earth until a large tree halted his momentum.

The impact ignited the tree with the flames still clinging to his body. Gritting his teeth through the searing pain radiating from multiple injuries, Logan forced his eyes open, fixing his gaze on the Chameleos.

Before he could fully rise, the Chameleos lashed out. Its long tongue flicked forward like a whip—flexible, fast, and deadly—striking straight at him.

In that instant, the tongue moved with blistering speed, each crack of the air leaving behind phantom afterimages. The strikes interlaced into a web of motion, completely enveloping Logan.

It was the kind of scene one might expect to see only in an anime or video game—but here it was, happening in brutal reality.

"There's no way I can dodge that!"

The tongue-whip was far too fast, its attack rhythm far too relentless. Even with his acceleration trait, Logan hadn't even managed to get to his feet—dodging was out of the question!

Left with no other choice, Logan instinctively relied on the boost from his mind's eye, shielding the more vulnerable parts of his body as best he could. He braced himself with the sturdier parts—his spines, the protruding edges of his scales, and the hardened exoskeleton along his back.

All around him, trees and stones were caught in the lashing strikes—shattered and blasted apart.

Each hit that landed on his body felt like torture. The pain was sharp and searing, as if his very bones were being flayed alive.

Spines cracked. Scales splintered. His exoskeleton split open.

In five years, Logan had never suffered wounds as severe as these.

And yet—it was all worth it.

He had now confirmed one of the Chameleos's attack patterns. That tongue-whip was part of his plan from the start. What caught him off guard was that, in real combat, the Chameleos's tongue was far more formidable than it had ever been portrayed in the game.

That unexpected power had only deepened his wounds.

Though the objective had been achieved, the price was heavier than he had anticipated.

But the Chameleos wasn't unscathed either. Its tongue was now engulfed in flames—sticky, stubborn flames that refused to be extinguished.

The burning pain was unbearable. It writhed in agony, unable to maintain its attack rhythm.

The Chameleos began thrashing its tongue against branches, scraping it along the ground in frantic desperation—leaving scorched trails everywhere it touched.

But the cursed fire would not go out.

It didn't even dare to retract its tongue, fearing it might bring the burning pain into its own body.

Never before had it encountered such clingy, tormenting fire. Its tongue was both its weapon—and one of its greatest weaknesses.

Even for an Elder Dragon with extraordinary vitality, this kind of sustained damage wasn't fatal—but it was maddening.

For the moment, the Chameleos abandoned its assault on Logan entirely, turning instead to search desperately for a source of water.

With its attention diverted, the toxic mist it had been controlling began to thin and fade.

If everything had gone according to plan, Logan should now be gritting his teeth through the pain, pressing the attack on the Chameleos and causing an even greater commotion.

But his injuries were far worse than expected—he simply didn't have the strength to carry on with the plan.

Logan watched the Chameleos retreat, its body no longer hidden from view. A deep sense of frustration churned within him, but he was powerless to act.

[Boom!]

[Boom! Boom!]

A series of fireballs exploded around the Chameleos. Eager to escape, it was forced to dodge the blasts raining down from above.

The flames still clinging to its tongue made it impossible to vanish completely, no matter how much it tried. Even as the white mist thinned around it, the burning trail left by its tongue stood out starkly in the air.

Logan looked up. Through the lingering haze, he could see wyverns circling high in the sky—fiery shapes gathering in formation, building up flames before unleashing them upon the Chameleos.

These were the fire wyverns that lived in the Ancient Tree.

They had not followed the Black Flame Dragon when it left. Instead, hearing the chaos below, they had rushed to the scene.

With the toxic mist now dissipated and its form exposed, the Chameleos no longer held the same dread power over these sovereigns of the skies.

Especially now—as they saw it flailing like a common monster, desperately trying to extinguish the flames on its tongue—their fear of the Elder Dragon plummeted.

And finally, led by Aki, the fire wyverns, long oppressed by the Chameleos's suffocating presence, surged with defiance.

They turned their fear into fury and launched an all-out assault.

Even ordinary monsters can find the courage to rise against higher beings.

The Bazelgeuse from Logan's original plan never appeared—but instead, an unexpected force emerged: the fire wyvern flock, which he had never even considered.

And among them, the tempered fire wyverns—with a clear target in sight—their flames now posed the greatest threat the Chameleos had ever faced.

...

The Chameleos had never been in such a wretched state.

A deep sense of disgrace welled up within it—but that humiliation didn't turn into rage. Instead, it awakened something primal.

Escape. Retreat!

That was all it wanted now.

The barrage of massive fireballs was far too dense. With every impact, its urge to flee only intensified.

Thanks to the threat of the toxic mist, there remained a sizable distance between the Rathalos and the Chameleos. At such range, the fire's power was significantly reduced, which prevented any fatal damage.

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