Alicia:
Height: 168 cm
Weapon type: LBG
Preferred Weapon: Khezu Syringe
Armour: Nerscylla
Monster: Pink Rathian
Age: 22
Place of origin: Yukumo Village
Hair colour: Light pink
Hairstyle: Long
Eye colour: Brown
Trivia: Has a slight gambling addiction
The mountains of the Ancestral Steppe were silent, with the exception of the two large wyverns who came crashing into it.
The wyvern currently winning was an Astalos, pinning a Rathalos to the floor.
The Rathalos suddenly shot out a fireball, taking the Astalos off guard.
The Astalos stumbled back but instead of being able to take the chance to attack the Rathalos had to back off to get his footing steady.
In anger, the Astalos charged up to maximum, ready to fight.
The Astalos soared forward, aggressively roaring before being hit from the side by a unseeable unstoppable force.
He was unable to process what happened, his head already crushed against the rocks in the same instant.
The Rathalos felt every instinct in his body scream to run, which it had no reason to disobey.
The wyvern took off from the ground, attempting to gain distance, but this was closed before it could properly begin.
He was grabbed by the tail and dragged back into hell by gravity.
The ground caused damage, but not enough to kill him, what killed the former King was his head exploding.
The mountains of the Ancestral Steppe were silent, with the exception of the sound of crunching bones.
There was a large amount of commotion in the Guild hall today.
"Huh? What's all this about?" Zach wondered aloud, hoping some exposition would appear to explain the commotion.
Eventually after making his way through the crowd he read the quest paper for it.
Urgent quest: Help free the Ancestral Steppe!
Quest reward: 4000 zeni
Recently, many monsters have been seen fleeing from the Ancestral Steppe. While the cause of this is unknown, it is presumably the result of a large wyvern. Until the wyvern in question has been identified, the Guild is unable to justify sending any professional hunting teams in, so your job is to investigate the cause of these problems. While there is a reward for hunting it, should the problem be anything 6 star threat level and above, engaging it in combat will be strictly punished in most circumstances.
After gathering everyone else and showing them the reward, they hastily agreed and set out.
Multiple other teams of hunters have set out, in hopes of identifying the cause and getting that reward, as well as potentially eliminating the cause and getting recognition.
In total, the amount of people in the Ancestral Steppe, including the main characters, neared 50.
All of the different hunters hurriedly split off to cover as much ground as possible. Some were lone wolves, some were dynamic duos, some were your standard teams of four and some were larger groups. A reward of riches and fame brought out all different types of people, it would've been interesting to observe the diversity if you weren't there for any reason other than said riches and fame.
They made their way into area 4, and were about to go up the mountain like everyone else, when suddenly they saw a shadow fly overhead.
The shadow spotted them, and swooped downwards.
The nine hunters all scattered to try and dodge the impact that the flying wyvern left.
The golden-scaled wyvern stood up before them, flicking its tail at them.
From the tail shot out scales which hit the surroundings, leaving visible scratches.
The wyvern then finally raised upwards towards the sky, letting out a scream that caused the hunters to cover their ears.
When they could finally hear safely again, Ben yelled "What the hell is that thing!?"
"Hell if I know! I've never seen it before!" Riko yelled back.
No one here had ever encountered the monster before, and there was no idea of what it was until Alexandra spoke up "I think that I might know it. I've heard of it a few times in passing…"
She continued with "The Thousand Blade Wyvern: Seregios. They say that it's an aggressive force of destruction, with golden scales sharper than anything else. While I doubt parts of that, there's no denying the similarities here."
"What threat level is it?"
"Well it's been spotted sometimes fighting equally against Rathalos, so I'd guess a 5 star."
Sean pulled out his bowgun, charging forward. "That's good then!"
It was pretty obvious what was going on here.
The Seregios had suddenly made its appearance, disrupting the Ancestral Steppe and its ecosystem.
It had chased the other wyverns out, attempting to claim the mountains for itself.
Since the Seregios was only a 5 star, they could take it down without many worries, so once they did that they would be able to claim the reward as well as the reward for eliminating the cause.
Everyone else charged forward, getting ready for the fight.
The first to appear was surprisingly Joseph and Daimyo.
Daimyo took a wide swing at the Seregios, which was quickly leapt around.
Joseph pulled back an arrow and shot through the air.
While it did connect, it hardly had an effect and the Seregios pounced through the air towards Joseph, but was unable to connect due to Daimyo blocking the attack.
Joseph shot some arrows overhead from behind, raining down on the Seregios.
The Seregios continued to attempt to attack, but was blocked by Daimyo once again, getting shot at by arrows each time, though now it was learning to dodge.
On one of the attempts the Seregios appeared to go for the same tactic as before, but suddenly changed targets to Daimyo, catching him off-guard by swinging its tail vertically.
Daimyo's guard was broken by this and he stumbled backwards slightly.
It was at this moment that the scale lodged took effect, causing Daimyo to fall to the ground and bleed from where he was hit.
Joseph wasn't sure of what had happened exactly, but recognising that Daimyo wasn't able to properly he attempted to step in to get the Seregios' attention.
This didn't work, the Seregios focusing on the weaker target, so Joseph tried to step in between them.
The Seregios seemed almost confused, but attacked anyways.
It effortlessly hit Joseph out of the way, lodging one of its scales in his stomach for good measure.
Joseph clattered to the ground several meters away and looked up.
He got to his feet to stumble forward, but collapsed due to the scale. He struggled some more, but to no avail, only losing more blood for his trouble.
The Seregios struck at Daimyo again, slashing him across the face with its right claw.
Joseph attempted to struggle to his feet and walk forward one more time, throwing everything he had into this one simple action but fell short of doing so.
While this was happening, Daimyo was being attacked.
He started the same motion again, only for Riko to suddenly jump in.
He swung his sword through the air, stopping just short of the Seregios, due to the fact that it had backed off.
The Seregios shot out scales, which were blocked by the sword.
Suddenly the Seregios heard noise from its left, so instead of pressing forward it lept into the air, to dodge a Lagiacrus sliding at it.
Wave wasn't done yet though, he turned its head while spinning to shoot out a ball of electricity.
The Seregios quickly dodged around and attempted to press the attack again.
It was interrupted by a hammer user jumping in from the side, almost connecting with its head.
Wave then lept forward, attempting to hit it with electricity.
The Seregios managed to shoot out some scales, catching the Lagiacrus in the throat and causing him to lose blood, but he continued forwards regardless, taking the Seregios by surprise and knocking it out of the air.
Both fell to the ground, causing dust to raise into the air around them.
Unfortunately due to where Wave was hit, he was unable to get up, as reopening the neck wound could be fatal for him.
On the other hand, despite having been hit with an element it was weak too, the Seregios could still move.
It got up and raised itself to strike downwards, at which point it sensed a presence to its left, but was unable to dodge in time to avoid a blow to the head from Anthony's hammer.
The Seregios was momentarily stunned, giving Anthony another chance to hit it.
Regaining its senses, the golden wyvern jumped backwards, shooting out scales aimed at Anthony's head.
Anthony ducked underneath them and charged forward again, his strike this time missing.
But he wasn't done, swinging around from the side, catching the Seregios off guard, but before he could recover from the attack the Seregios was able to lodge some scales in his stomach.
The Seregios flew backwards again, Anthony attempted to press the attack but fell to his knees, unable to move.
The Seregios saw its chance and flew forward, Anthony unable to move out of the way.
It soared forward, but before it could connect its attack another hunter stepped in.
Riko drew his sword and waited for the wyvern to close in.
When it was close enough he suddenly switched his footing to a defensive position and held his sword in front of him.
The Seregios crashed into the blade, attempting to push forwards but to no avail, as Riko stood planted to the ground.
Despite gaining some slight distance, the Seregios ran out of momentum and stopped before it could take the advantage.
It dropped back to the ground, attempting to recover, Riko doing the same.
The Seregios recovered first.
It swung its entire body around in an attempt to hit Riko with its tail.
Unfortunately this time Riko didn't have the time to properly raise his guard, nor did he have the time to roll around it.
Riko attempted to reduce damage, but still found himself being knocked backwards.
Luckily though, he was able to avoid bleeding.
The Seregios took this chance to attack, but now Riko was ready for the attack and rolled out of the way.
The Seregios was unable to move out of the way of his strike in time and as a result was hit with a strike from the Great Sword, being slammed into the ground.
The Seregios wildly shot scales in a panic, three connecting with Riko's torso.
The Seregios then attempted to get back up, only to find a Zinogre leaping at it.
The Seregios quickly lept into the air, narrowly avoiding the attack.
It flew to the other end of the area, clearly wanting to keep its distance from the lightning wolf.
It was at that moment that Zach, who until now had just been kind of standing around sprung into action in an attempt to bring the Seregios down.
He fired off a shell, connecting with the Seregios' right wing and grabbing its attention.
The Seregios, frustrated by this, attempted to strike Zach with a left hook, but was blocked with some slight difficulty.
At that moment, Zappy jumped up from behind it, attempting to tackle it.
The Seregios was caught unaware by this, having been focusing its attention on its previous attacker.
It crashed to the ground, while being hit by some mucus which limited its movement.
The Seregios attempted to get up from the ground, to no avail. It noticed the space near its head growing warmer. Realising what this was, the Seregios twisted its body around frantically, attempting to escape the potential damage.
A fully charged wyvern's fire scorched through the air, hitting the Seregios' neck and upper back but missing the head, just about.
The Seregios stood up again, now injured and attempted to press forward despite its burns.
Suddenly, it saw a hunter with a switch axe running towards it. As the hunter closed in, they swung forwards wildly, still in axe mode.
The Seregios lept backwards, dodging the strikes.
It then swept forward, striking out with its claws and inflicting bleeding on the hunter, however as it tried to back off again it was slashed across the tail with the axe. It wasn't enough to sever it, but the Seregios flinched from the pain of it.
The Seregios attempted to take off into the air, only to be cut off by two flying wyverns.
Azure shot out a fireball, the Seregios flying around it.
It tried to make a break for the sky, only to be hit in the face by Ayano's tail, getting poisoned and falling back to the ground.
Luckily, the impact wasn't too bad and the Seregios was able to stop itself before taking too much damage, but it could already feel the poison starting to take effect.
The Seregios then heard the sound of charging behind it and turned to see a Zinogre running at it full speed.
Unfortunately, this time, it was unable to move out the way in time and was pinned to the ground by Zino.
Zino repeatedly hit the Seregios, beating it into the ground.
The Seregios retaliated with a tail strike upwards.
While it didn't do much, it at least got lodged in Zino's stomach, causing it to stop in an attempt to heal.
The Seregios took this chance to break free and knocked Zino over.
It charged in for another attack but was quickly blocked by Alexandra, now stepping in to defend her partner.
It now turned to once again search for a means of escape, knowing that it couldn't win this fight.
It heard a noise behind it and quickly moved to the side, dodging some bullets shot from above.
The Seregios continued to move rapidly, dodging more bullets and arrows that Joseph was shooting from the side.
The Seregios stopped to face a dual blades user running at it, but was able to quickly sweep him aside with a tail swipe.
From the other side, Sanchez pounced at it furiously, attempting to take advantage of the opening that the attack had left, but was blocked by the Seregios' wing.
Sanchez dropped to the ground to attack again, but by now the gap had closed and the Seregios was able to counter with a claw strike, hitting him square in the chest and inflicting bleeding.
The others were previously unable to shoot for fear of hitting Callum and Sanchez, but now that they were out of the way, the attacks resumed, though the Seregios had made use of a couple of seconds in between to recover slightly.
However, as the Seregios began to dodge rapidly again, it noticed itself start to get hit more frequently. Not only that, but most of those hit by the scales had recovered and were now starting to get up.
The Seregios, realising that at this rate it would die, changed from the defensive to the offensive.
The Seregios ran towards Azure and Ayano.
The two Raths took this opportunity to shoot out fireballs.
The Seregios was able to avoid the one from Azure, but took Ayano's on the right wing, damaging it but not slowing it down.
It flew straight up to them both, the hunters on their backs shooting at them.
First, the Seregios targeted Ayano, likely out of desire for revenge of the damage just inflicted.
The Seregios swung its body completely around with its tail before Ayano could react, slashing her straight across the chest and getting multiple scales lodged.
Even though Ayano was downed, the Seregios had no time to rest, but luckily was able facing the next opponent.
Azure attempted to do an attack of his own, charging forwards.
The Seregios dodged around it by taking off slightly.
Normally, Azure would've been open from behind at this point, but Sean's cover fire was enough to stop an attack from occurring.
Azure turned around and flew into the air to follow it, shooting out a fireball as he took off.
The Seregios flew around the fireball and charged to meet him.
The two wyverns danced ferociously through the air, Azure being careful not to make any moves too elaborate or get grabbed due to Sean still clinging on to his back.
This caution is what led to his downfall, when Azure found himself in a corner. He couldn't back off, and there was nowhere to dodge to horizontally.
As the Seregios charged in, Azure dived below it.
Sean normally would've fired, but at the speed they were going at he had no chance of being able to do that.
The Seregios caught up despite this speed.
Azure turned, now with better positioning to fight it but didn't realise this left him open.
The Seregios struck forwards with its claws, catching Azure off guard.
Azure attempted to recover, only to be hit with a tail strike, sending him plummeting to the ground.
Sean fell off, less harmed than he could be, and raised his gun in case the Seregios took this chance to attack.
But, the Seregios took off into the sky, having achieved what it needed to.
It flew south-east.
Those who could still move followed it into area 8, but found that it had no intention of stopping there, as it flew straight over the area and was now above the fields stretching out across the landscape, where the hunters had no way of reaching it.
At least, that's how it looked, until Joseph noticed a large rock sitting close by.
The rock was now set up so that it was leaning on a large amount of barrel bombs.
Daimyo was sitting on the rock, Joseph on his back.
"Okay," Joseph announced "So the plan is that Zach will wyvern's fire the barrel bombs, at which point me and Daimyo will be sent flying into the air, straight into the Seregios."
"Got it." Zach replied, beginning to charge his gunlance, which was no longer overheated.
"Wait a minute! Can't you see everything wrong with that?" Alexandra yelled
"Whatcha mean?" Joseph responded.
"Well first off, there's a very low chance of you actually hitting the Seregios. There's also the risk of the rock not making it through the explosion and you just getting caught in the blast instead of being launched. Plus, assuming this somehow works, what's your game plan after hitting the Seregios? You have no way down other than falling!"
"Holy shit, ya have a point! I dunno why I didn't think of that before!" Joseph turned around "Cancel the plan, Zach, cancel it!"
They say that a picture is worth a thousand words.
Had you taken a picture of Zach's face at that moment, the heavily shortened version of those thousand words would've been something like "Joseph I can't stop it and it's too late to pull away because it'll go off in like two seconds ya need to get off that rock right now because you're about to go flying through the air and ya will probably die Joseph I know that we fight sometimes okay a lot of the time but I don't want ya to die dude ya know so like seriously get off that rock because that will happen"
However, by the time Joseph was done translating his expression into words, he was already flying through the air.
Miraculously it had worked and they were now falling towards the Seregios.
Joseph noticed that they weren't going to hit at the rate at which they were going, instead they would just fall behind it and crash into the ground, probably dying, so while Daimyo held onto him he shot off an arrow which completely missed the Seregios.
The Seregios noticed the arrow though, and anticipating more attacks stopped to look up.
Which worked against it as it was now directly in the path of the falling Daimyo and Joseph.
The Seregios would've dodged under normal circumstances, but found it difficult to move as a result of its damage.
So it was hit.
The Seregios fell towards the ground, weighed down by an armoured defense crab.
"Yes!" Joseph thought "We got it! Now to work out a way of avoiding hitting the ground at our current speed…"
Joseph couldn't really look around, but the only thing near him other than the ground was the open sky.
There was nothing to grab onto or latch onto to slow their descent.
"Ah… shit."
The three of them crashed into the ground, though luckily enough the Seregios hit the ground first and slightly softened the landing, though not by much.
Joseph was first up, followed by Daimyo, who both attempted to gain as much distance from the Seregios as possible.
The Seregios got up and accidentally revealed the most vital part of its collected damage in the process.
Its wings were broken.
It could no longer fly.
If it could fight off Joseph and Daimyo, then it'd probably be able to escape before the others showed up.
If Joseph and Daimyo could kill it, it would be dead.
This was the final act of the fight.
The Seregios screamed, attempting to ignore its pain through sheer anger so that it could survive.
The Seregios instantly took the offensive, attempting to land a hipcheck on Daimyo and catch him off guard.
However, Daimyo had already recovered from the roar, blocking the attack.
The Seregios was now open to attack, which Joseph took advantage of, running around Daimyo to shoot some arrows at its left.
The Seregios, seeing the weapon leave the shield rushed forwards.
It swung once at Joseph, a strike which he jumped underneath.
Joseph continued running to attempt to gain some distance.
The Seregios continued to pursue, fighting with everything it had.
In doing so, it managed to further separate Daimyo and Joseph.
Daimyo attempted to catch up to the fight, but it continued to move further away.
While normally, Joseph would've attacked, he didn't want to risk losing stamina, as in order to avoid getting hit he needed that at the minute.
The Seregios took a horizontal swing with its tail, which was its undoing.
Because of its positioning, after the tailspin the Seregios was facing away from Joseph.
It twisted its body around to go for another attack, but by now Joseph had moved towards Daimyo.
The Seregios went for a claw strike, but Joseph wasn't cut off by this, in fact, the only option the Seregios gave him was to dodge towards Daimyo, which he gladly accepted.
Now that things were back to the way they were before, Daimyo took this chance to rush forward.
He hit the Seregios with a left hook, briefly stunning it.
Joseph, of course, took this chance to hit it from behind with arrows.
The Seregios attempted to back away from Daimyo, but was unable to get around his lunging grab, being dragged to the ground.
Daimyo pinned the Seregios, continuing to damage it while it was unable to escape.
Finally, the attacks momentarily stopped and the Seregios was able to escape.
It took it a few seconds to back off, but when it looked back Daimyo was gone, leaving only Joseph.
It took another second to scan the environment, looking for where Daimyo could be hiding.
Suddenly, Joseph grabbed its attention by shooting an arrow at it.
The arrow connected, not causing much damage, but that wasn't the idea.
The arrow had a sonic bomb attached to it.
The sonic bomb set off, startling the Seregios and momentarily freezing it with shock.
But, that wasn't all the attack was for, as the Seregios was soon to learn.
Daimyo suddenly burst out of the ground from beneath the Seregios, taking it off guard and knocking it off of its feet and onto the ground.
Joseph then rushed in and fired a volley of arrows into the air.
He got closer and directly slashed at the Seregios, leaving one off the arrows buried in its hide for good measure.
Joseph then jumped back and Daimyo shot off a beam of pressurised water.
If the Seregios wasn't dead before that last hit, it certainly was afterwards.
Joseph celebrated with Daimyo over successfully hunting the Seregios, and about midway through this celebration the others showed up.
They called over the felynes that were organising the quest, and upon inspecting the body they came to the same conclusion of "The Seregios did it."
The lead felyne briefly spoke, informing them that for this they'd get a star added to their hunter ID and would get their temporary ban on hunting high-level monsters like elder dragons lifted.
There was some celebration until Zach got handed a quest paper by the felyne.
He didn't read the full paper, but the top part read
Urgent quest: Go tell the others the quest is over.
Quest reward: I'll buy you a drink or something.
"Oh…" Zach thought "Guess we're still not getting that much recognition…"
They walked up the mountain, unable to find anyone.
It was on the path between area 6 and area 5 that they finally heard a noise.
It was the sound of crunching bones.
They quickly turned the corner to witness a horrific sight.
Blood was lazily painted across the path, covering the walls and floor.
Occasionally, the odd limb or two could be spotted mixed in, but that wasn't what was taking the hunter's attention.
The sole living being in the middle of this destruction that caught everyone's attention.
It was a large, quadrupedal wyvern with striking red scales solely interrupted by its blue spines and claws.
Molten Tigrex: The Great Roaring Wyvern
Threat Level: 6 stars
They had heard of this wyvern only in passing beforehand. Even more elusive than the Seregios, it was rumoured to be a variant of Tigrex even more powerful than the Grimclaw. Wyverns capable of destroying something, then disappearing, never being seen until they chose too.
But there was something else about this wyvern.
Its eyes.
They were coloured purple, with large black slits for pupils running down the middle.
Just like the immortal monsters from Tanzia.
There was a silence broken by Zach saying "W-we need to run."
But he was cut off by one of the hunters running forward, followed by a monster.
An arrow was shot out, catching the Tigrex off guard and grabbing its attention.
The monster retaliated by digging up some rocks and aimlessly launching them.
One of them was about to hit the hunter. While it wouldn't have been fatal, it would've certainly done damage, especially with the armour he was wearing.
But just before the second of connection, a blue aura seemed to appear surrounding the hunter and the second the rock connected with the aura he rolled straight beneath it, hopped to his feet and ran to the point where he was directly out of the radius of the blast caused by the rocks exploding.
The hunter then quickly shot off another arrow, connecting directly with the Tigrex's face.
The monster ran up to join him.
Finally the hunter spoke "It's been… 16 years, huh? This time… there's no way in hell that I'll back down!"
The beast appeared to smile.
TO BE CONTINUED
Yep, cliffhanger endings, surprising, isn't it?
So unlike me.
Um… I haven't really got that much to talk about this time.
I mean, like seriously, I haven't finished anything.
I'm caught up on Little Witch Academia but that doesn't really count as it's ongoing (though it's really good), I've only just started Persona 3 (on May) and I'm near the end of AA: Justice For All, but I'd rather talk about that once I've finished the whole trilogy.
I'm not even at the end of a NDRV3 chapter, only on chapter 4's abnormal days (though now the next 3 deaths are obvious, as well as who the mastermind is, so I'm hoping something'll happen to catch me off guard)
So that was a author's notes about not having anything to talk about in my author's notes.
I'm the meta now I guess.