Zorah obviously didn't just stand there and let Alex devour it and raised it left claw to swipe him off. Alex of course saw this coming from a mile away and leapt off the opposite side of zorah's neck into the air and headed towards it's mountainous back. Zorah shot another glob of lava at him angrily but missed entirely as he landed on the flat part of its back behind it's neck. Scaling the mountain next to him took Alex very little time since he could just ignore the lava that spewed down it.
In the center of the mountain was the hollow that contained a magma core but Alex was surprised to see one of the fifth fleet hunters chipping away at it with a pair of dual blades. Alex dropped down the hollow onto the core 'you can go now that I've got this' he said to the hunter calmly. The hunter nodded and started their climb out of the hollow only to flinch when they heard a loud "CRUNCH!" coming from the core as Alex bit into it. It was public knowledge that Alex had devoured the cores during the last siege on zorah but this particular hunter hadn't gotten the opportunity to witness it at the time.
They were NOT prepared for how savage Alex looked doing this however as the core spurted blood but he ignored it and continued to take one bite after another. Alex ignored the notifications popping up as he ate the core until the flow of energy was cut off to it by zorah. A quick glance told Alex that his [variant pyrosis} trait had hit T7 as well as the other two traits he had gotten from zorah having leveled up a couple of times.
Alex grabbed the stunned hunter and climbed out of the hollow before leaving them at the top of the mountain as he headed towards another core. much like last time however Alex was intercepted by nergigante , though this time he avoided the flying tackle. Dodging to the left Alex swiped his tail at nergigante as it missed him leaving a shallow cut along it's flank. Wasting no time at all he then dug his right claws into the elders tail and pulled with his full body strength. "ROAAAR!" Nergigante howled in pain as its tail was ripped off thanks to it's momentum as well as Alex's very sharp claws.
The tail fell onto zorah's back and Alex yelled at the nearby hunter to retrieve it for him. It was at this point that nergigante realized that the gap between it and Alex had grown much smaller. It hesitated slightly at this knowledge but still flared it's spikes defensively before much more cautiously circling Alex. When it thought it was in the best position it leapt forward to try and get ahold of Alex. But he had played it from the start as he jumped into the air using his wings before smash down with his full weight on one of it's horns as it passed below him.
"CRACK!" The horn snapped off and nergigante roared in pain while thrashing about to get Alex off of it. The elder succeeded due to it's spikes digging into Alex and weakening his grip as it thrashed about letting it fling him off it. The people of astera cheered as they saw Alex manhandling nergigante unlike last time where he could only inflict minor injuries. Clearly his increased size and strength in addition to his intelligence made him more than capable of hunting nergigante now.
Each of his attacks had a clear level of savagery in addition to grace that made them watch in awe while still focusing on zorah with their cannon fire. Nergigante apparently decided that it was not worth it to stick around and immediately fled much like in the game. Alex didn't chase it since he needed it to advance the story into the elders recess as the admiral tried to track it down. This didn't mean he wasn't going to give it a nasty parting gift in the form of highly condensed poison sprayed on it's tail stump that was still raw and sensitive.
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