Hanna POV

The weeks flew by, a blur of hunting and scrounging for new traits. I had managed to find a few small monsters called kestodon, which gave me the horn-plate trait, but I chose not to evolve it since I found the ridge of bone that would have been covering my forehead to be extremely ugly. 

Oh, that's right. I did figure out that the system could show me what I'd look like after undergoing a physical mutation. Apparently I can't change what those horns would look like until after I gain another, different horn trait. Well, whatever. After my feast in the vale. I had plenty of bioenergy to spare. Evolving horns right off the bat was merely a drop from a very big bucket. My horns were very tough! Apparently they fell under the boost of my strengthened body trait, so that's nice. 

In other news, the stupid system patched my feasting on the corpse in the Rotten Vale.  This damned thing just did not want me to have an easy time. Oh well, my reserves after that first - and only feast - had reached almost fifty thousand. It seemed that it had to wait until I wasn't mad with hunger before doing anything about it. It had also given me five more free mutations, which I had ever-so-wisely chose to use one after the other instead of all at once. 

I decided to try and shore up my weaker traits. My wings are at Rank seven, the highest among all my traits, and to upgrade it would take ten thousands years worth of bioenergy. I'm getting diminishing returns on the creatures I hunt, too.  The Rathian and Rathalos pair now only gives me twenty years of bioenergy together. Not to say I didn't gain anything new. I found a monster called a Jyuratodus which gave me a trait called Gunk Sac. 

Don't like that name. 

Basically it let's me eat mud and store it into a second stomach, not for digesting, but to spit back out at enemies to bog them down. It also had the water breathing ability, so that was cool! 

But I digress. I had spent a healthy chunk of my bioenergy to bring all my traits that weren't at level four to that point. I noticed that after that was when things started to get really expensive. Using my tail, and new Gunk Sac and Water Breathing traits as a baseline the expenses went like this. 

From Ranks one to four, the necessary bioenery Doubles with each purchase. 

From unranked to Rank one (thanks Flash) is five years. 

From Rank one to two is ten. 

Two to Three is twenty.

Three to Four is forty. 

So a double of bioenergy for each level, but there's an exception to this. Alpha Aura. It would take a thousand years of bioenergy to push that from Rank one to Rank two, which, Fine. Whatever. It's pretty esoteric in nature and kinda strong. 

But! The energy needed quadrouples from then on! I mean, with my metaphorical wallet, I can do that all day, every day, but come on!! They're trying to starve me here. 

So, doing the math. To push all my below Rank four to that rank would cost me 430 years of bioenergy, not including what I already spent on Flash, Gunk Sac (so gross), and Water Breathing. 

I paid that no problem, and it didn't even make me hard, much to my annoyances.  Am I a degenerate? No, it must be the systems fault for making mutating feel so damn good! 

So now all my traits are at level four, and I could feel the qualitative change in my body. I felt much better, like I was breathing cleaner air or soaking in a near scalding hot tub of water. 

Iña was a delight during these times. She had confessed that she had something of a fetish around humanoid depictions of monsters, which is why she was so open to being in this relationship. I'd be lying if I said I didn't play into the whole 'monster' aspect of my girlfriends monsterfucker kinkery. Any chance I could get to roll in the sheets with her. The cutie that she was could only take so much of my natural power. I had to find a way to change that, and the system was as vague as ever about it. I needed to kill and eat something called Xeno'Jiiva, but the System could not, or refused to, tell me where it was! 

Damn thing. 

Well, whatever. I'll have to look around for it. 

As I stretch my wings after stepping outside, a satisfied, and very pregnant, chubby elf laying deliriously on my bed, I notice people are rushing about, and not in their usual way.

Many people were making their way to the docks, and with my improved vision I can see way out in the horizon a group of ships making their way here. So more people, cool. 

But then my nose catches the scent. 

The smell of hot brine on the air. Brimstone. The rumble in my throat catches even me off guard. 

And even from my place a few dozen feet above the bottom of Astera, people can hear me,  stopping and staring. 

I get tunnel vision, my eyes locked on a spot between a pair of ships, where the sea is roiling. Before I'm aware of it, I'm flying at breakneck speed to the sea. I can hear people shouting, but I don't care. Something has me pissed. 

Shai POV 

This isn't good. This really is not good! Something has set Inperialis off. Never before has the humanoid Elder Dragon reacted like this, not even during hunting periods. This is territorial behavior, but the fifth fleet shouldn't have anything that can set it off! The Commander is shouting orders to hunters, preparing for the worst, but we all knew that Imperialis was faster than us. Whatever it was going to do, we could only clean up after it. 

Narrator POV

As Hanna rocketed towards the fifth fleet, a mountain broke the surface of the sea, carrying two of the ships onto it as a giant draconic face roared out. 

Zorah Magdaros has made itself known. 

ItsQuarters

And we're back! This and my two other stories, World-Ender and Wyrd, will be on daily rotation, with the exception of saturday and sunday. Also! For those wondering the significance of trait ranks are, low rank monsters drop materials ranked one to four. High rank monsters drop materials 5 to eight. Master rank monsters drop materoals from rank nine to twelve!