The best part in Alex's opinion was that the flame sacs just barely let his [variant pyrosis] trait reach T6. This just went to show how crazy the amount of energy the gem he had eaten was since the trait only needed a small amount of effort to grow to the peak of high rank. Unfortunately this also meant that Alex needed to put in a mammoth amount of effort from now on if he wanted to grow the trait to master rank since it was a qualitative difference. The best way to describe it was that even if ten peak high rank monster attacked a single bottom tier master ranked monster of the same species they would likely lose nine out of ten times.
The sheer amount of resources that it took to raise a monster to master rank was so huge that unless they were lucky or rather unlucky most hunters would never come across a single one in their entire careers. Alex himself was aware that the only reason that Zain in the game was different was because of the basically back to back elder dragon problems that the new world had.
The continent was a hot bed for elder dragons to gather and as a result had a great amount of master rank monsters since elders while destructive also nourished their habitats considerably. None of this had anything to do with Alex for the moment however so he just didn't waste his time focusing on it since this year was bound to be eventful anyway. Zain was given an urgent mission the next day that caught Alex's attention since he recognized it as one of the precursor missions before the first attempt at trapping zorah was done. Apparently a scholar was mia in the wildspire waste and Zain was being sent to look for them.
Alex remembered that there were quite a few thorns from nergigante throughout the area at this time and had a brilliant idea. 'What if I were to eat those thorns?' he wondered and the more he thought about it the more the idea appealed to him. Nergigante was bound to be the most worthwhile monster he would ever hunt due to their similar "functions" as the devourers in the world. Alex devoured anything and everything to grow more powerful and nergigante devoured elder dragons exclusively likely for a similar purpose.
Honestly speaking the two could be mistaken as related with how eerily similar they were in their roles. Some people might also try and throw deviljho into this group but they would be massively wrong because of the simple fact deviljho devours everything because it has no choice. If it stops eating it will rapidly weaken and die from starvation while that is not the case for Alex and nergigante. Alex didn't volunteer for the mission with Zain but rather directly flew into the air and headed to the waste on his own.
A few people mistook this as a show of concern for the missing scholar when in fact it was just a fit of greed on his part. Zain merely shrugged and told the commander that it seemed like he was no longer needed for this mission. The commander nodded in agreement before dismissing Zain with a small smile. 'With sid on it the issue is practically guaranteed to be solved without issue' the commander thought happily. Since he no longer felt the need to worry about the scholar the commander relaxed with a cup of fresh brewed black tea.
Meanwhile Alex reached the edge of the wildspire waste in about thirty minutes but had to stop there as he saw something worrying. In the distant marsh of the waste a large winged creature with dark skin and tan bone spikes all over it's body was in the process of killing a barroth. nergigante was still there and Alex knew without a doubt that he was no match for the elder at the moment. Alex could see the scholar hiding in some tall sawgrass at the edge of the water watching this one sided massacre in terror. Alex was thankful that most monsters had terrible eyesight since the only thing keeping him from getting targeted by the nergigante was how far in the sky he was.
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