Bear School Astartes

The patience of the Barbaric Jaws Dragon is as elusive as its wild nature.

When hunting, it can endure silently. But now it’s not a hunt, it’s an open revenge.

Thus, no confrontation, no lurking, no... patience!

”Roar!!!”

The famous ferocious jaws of the Barbaric Jaws Dragon plunged into the ground like an iron plow.

Immediately, its disproportionately long legs kicked wildly behind, trampling fiercely.

Until half a second later, when the soil was overturned and its claws stepped on rock, the several-ton body suddenly launched!

The dirt was plowed away like cheese by the jaws of the Barbaric Jaws Dragon, the overturned earth and rocks like waves.

Under the force of the Barbaric Jaws Dragon, these chunks of earth and rock transformed into kinetic weapons powerful enough to wound a Hunter.

To describe it vividly... it’s like a fully powered steamroller coming straight at you!

Monsters rely on their weight and speed, their defense and vitality far exceeding that of humans, to launch reckless, undefended charges at enemies. This simple, effective, and brutal attack is known among Hunters as ’Dragon Car.’

In the past, Lann would likely have taken a more ’prudent’ approach to deal with the fierce and direct onslaught of the Barbaric Jaws Dragon.

But now... he’s learned ’something new.’

And this new thing... it fits well with the current situation.

A faint red battle energy flared and exploded from Lann’s armor and weapons.

The sword [Turbid Stream] left a dark trajectory in the air.

And the body wielding the sword, in the bulldozer-like charging assault of the Barbaric Jaws Dragon, was ’blown aside’ like a lightweight piece of paper by the air currents.

”Ting!”

A faint sound emanated from the fluctuation of battle energy.

[Foresight]!

Lann’s battle energy, or rather his force, was mobilized in this pre-emptively read attack.

The activity of the battle energy surged to the threshold instantly under the pressure of the enemy’s attack.

Thus, the dark blade sliced a full arc across the air.

[Air Blade Grand Spin]!

Due to the position of the Barbaric Jaws Dragon, the slash that Lann ’threw’ with the sword handle didn’t hit its legs but rather its small pair of foreclaws.

Two fingers of one foreclaw were cut off, blood sprayed from the wound, staining the blade of [Turbid Stream].

On the dark sword blade, besides the reflection of blood and sword oil, there was a layer of faint white light.

[White Blade State].

In this state, the base attack power of the entire sword was increased by a notch.

In concrete terms, the high-density battle energy pressed into the blade increased its sharpness, with a slight hint of aggression.

After all, embedding a battle energy-infused blade into a monster’s body is akin to letting your own energy invade the target.

[Foresight] is by no means an invincible move. On the contrary, among Tachi Users, it is an option not easily used against unfamiliar monsters.

Because its flaws are too great, and the price to pay too high.

If [Foresight] fails, the activity of the battle energy will not only fail to spike to threshold but will immediately calm down instead.

And during the process of [Foresight], the actual time window in which the battle energy can sense an outside attack and autonomously respond is very small.

If the time window is not seized by the Hunter to coincide with the enemy’s attack, any injury that could happen will happen.

The reason why Lann dared to use [Foresight] when facing this clearly different Barbaric Jaws Dragon is mainly because his [Spirit Sight] combined with Mentos’s computational power had roughly figured out the action patterns of this monster.

The heat flow within its body and the transfer of force through its muscles... all were seen through by these eyes.

However, the injury of losing two fingers on a foreclaw seemed to not affect the state of the Barbaric Jaws Dragon at all.

If a creature forged in nature gets too impaired in combat because of a lost limb, it wouldn’t survive long.

Thus, this Barbaric Jaws Dragon showed almost no hindrance.

After the Dragon Car missed, those legs immediately pushed into the ground for an emergency stop.

The soil was stomped through like tofu until it reached the rock plate.

It managed to not let itself slip out of attack range, and the Barbaric Jaws Dragon followed up with a sweeping leg attack, repeating its previous trick.

This time, it not only used that disproportionately strong leg to support itself but even crouched it down!

Just to lower its own center of gravity, so its attacks would better match the size of its enemy.

The resultant pressure on its joints wasn’t a concern for it at all.

For an ordinary Barbaric Jaws Dragon to perform such a move, its ankles and ligaments should have splintered out from its flesh!

But that’s not all...

Intense heat transferred through the leg the Barbaric Jaws Dragon used to attack, reaching the air.

Its claws, which should have been covered with thick scales and keratin, turned as if illuminated by a strong flashlight from inside its claw skin, shining outward.

A dangerous red light emitted from beneath the skin.

This red light was the same as the light that shone from its nose and throat when it was about to spew fire from its nasal and oral cavities...

”Boom!!!”

Flames spread through the air.

From the keratin tips and between the flesh of its toes on its claws, a flammable substance was secreted and turned into a mass of flames!

In the sweeping leg move of the Barbaric Jaws Dragon, these flames almost became a wave of fire spreading across the ground!

Though Lann had never seen firsthand the so-called ’excessive massive fire breath’ described in the Monster Encyclopedia from the mouth of a Barbaric Jaws Dragon,

the mass spread from its claw gaps surely belongs to a highly formidable move.

But a formidable move doesn’t dictate the outcome of a battle.

Because a move that can’t hit is as good as none at all.

Ever since the Barbaric Jaws Dragon began its emergency stop, Lann had already flipped up into the air again.

Accompanied by a faint red battle energy glow, after the sweeping leg fiery burst ended, Lann twisted in midair and swung his sword.

In this tension-packed move, [Turbid Stream] carried Lann’s body in a full circle using inertia.

[Aerial Iaijutsu Slash]!

With a ’zip’ sound, the Tachi move launched from midair carried the weight of its user.

The faint red battle energy glow on the blade left a thin, sharp visual residual red line in the air.

The airborne strike hit perfectly on a follow-up tail sweep.

It was about the tail’s middle, avoiding the hard spikes at the tip and not hitting the too thick base.

Stiff body hair and tough skin were cut by the blade.

The Barbaric Jaws Dragon roared in anger from the pain.

But the tail wasn’t severed completely; it had just wounded the tail bone.

Landing, Lann performed another [Air Blade Grand Spin]!

This is the third method besides the ’proper four consecutive slashes of rhythmic exercise to open the blade’ and ’Foresight opening blade.’

By executing [Aerial Iaijutsu Slash], a highly vulnerable but powerful move, the activity of battle energy spiked to the threshold necessary for unleashing [Air Blade Grand Spin].

The howling blade, wielded with Lann’s unnervingly stable control and precision accurate placement.

Now the Barbaric Jaws Dragon was in the moment of stabilizing its body weight after attacking.

It instinctively resisted imbalance, instinctively controlling its tail to tighten and maintain balance.

Thus Lann placed his [Air Blade Grand Spin] on the pre-judged spot.

Again, the middle section of the Barbaric Jaws Dragon’s tail.

’Crunch,’ once more, the cut made by [Turbid Stream] with the high activity battle energy boost of [Air Blade Grand Spin] cleanly severed the tail of this Barbaric Jaws Dragon!

”Wooooowooo!”

The pain of losing its tail caused the Barbaric Jaws Dragon to make a sound other than a roar for the first time—a wail.

Its action to stabilize its center of mass failed as a segment of its tail abruptly disconnected, causing it to stagger and fall to the ground.