Alex didn't do any hunting in the next three days but helped the people make preparations for the upcoming siege. this mostly involved him moving the cannons into place and stocking the area with cannon balls. the hunters made sure that alex was paid for his work with food so he wasn't just wasting his time. much like in the game on the dawn of the fourth day during the final checks of the equipment the scout flies all turned blue and flew towards the distance of the canyon. zorah rose from the ground mountain first and the commander began to yell orders.
Alex wasted no time flying out to meet zorah head on as the adrenaline pumped through his veins. alex knew the magma cores on zorah's back were the fastest way to weaken it and targeted those first. the heat coming off zorah didn't bother alex at all thanks to his water element countering zorah's fire element. the first three cores shattered under a barrage of blows from alex's claws fairly easily but the core on the dragons head was hard to get at safely. unlike in the game zorah actively tried to attack alex as he destroyed the cores with huge gobs of lava from it's mouth.
The massive dragon was not flexible enough to use any other type of attack against alex thanks to the literal mountain of stone on its back. the core on it's head though put alex in range of it's snapping turtle like mouth and alex didn't want to experience being bisected. alex instead pestered the core with jets of condensed water from afar which eventually caused the core to shatter. really hot materials don't like it when you rapidly cool them off as it makes them brittle.
Alex was glad that the cores followed this rule even in this world since it made it easy to deal with them. since zorah could cross the ocean obviously using water alone wasn't enough to do damage but add a cutting effect to that water and its a whole new thing. that was what alex did by pressurizing the water into a thin stream. once zorah got close enough a high pitched whistle sounded out and alex flew up high just as the cannon balls began to explode against zorah's hide. the whistle was meant to warn alex of their bombardment ahead of time so he didn't accidentally get hit.
Zorah was already considerably weakened after alex destroyed the magma cores so getting nailed by the cannons made it very unhappy. it wasn't even close to weakened enough to be stopped however as it soon got restrained and broke free before crashing through the first barricade. this started the second half of the operation or rather it would have had nergigante show up early. apparently the spiky bastard didn't like how close to stopping zorah they were getting and decided to intervene. nergigante didn't target the hunters themselves but the cannons and ballistae of the second barrier.
This was a clever action since by the time alex got close enough to engage nergigante had already made capturing zorah an impossible task by destroying close to seventy percent of the artillery. alex roared as he dove at the other dragon giving the hunter enough time to vacate the surroundings before he struck nergigante. those spikes all over the dragons back weren't for show as they pierced into alex's scaled claws slightly when he impacted into it. the force made nergigante stumble but it wasted no time at all retaliating with it's own claws.
The two dragons roared and hissed as they matched the other blow for blow gaining plenty of injuries in the process. alex gouged out deep slashes and holes in nergigante's spiked hide while receiving serious injuries in turn. it was a brutal clash as both dragons literally tore the other apart piece by piece as blood flowed freely from them. alex and nergigante were surprisingly enough evenly matched in brute force but alex was on the winning side due to a single fact. he had the very element that nergigante had a weakness to , thunder. the electricity sparking off of alex into nergigante made the dragon desperate as it began to fight fiercely.
It was only after zorah broke through the second barrier and sent alex off balance from the trembling that nergigante took the opportunity to flee. alex didn't want to use his once every three months life saving ability just to kill nergigante when he would be better prepared for it in the future. even though zorah got past no one was really upset since they had gotten to see alex fight all out proving without a doubt his elder status.
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