Traversing the Spirit Peaks and heading to the Sea of Clouds to find Midgardsormr to negotiate an end to the Dragonsong War is one of the Warrior(s) of Light's main tasks. The secondary job involves resolving matters with Raubahn Aldynn and the fallout from the Ul'dahn coup. It's safe to say they are incredibly busy. However, there's a shortcut if Huihui cooperates. The Warrior(s) of Light could simply break through the dragon hordes and fly straight to the Sea of Clouds, experiencing the joy of super-high-speed, straight-line aerial travel without even needing to attune to aether currents...
However, Huihui is less than cooperative. Moreover, Huihui's style of flying is so terrifying that even Estinien, a Heavens' Ward dragoon who has seen his fair share of things, was left trembling after one experience. He stated that he would rather take the more troublesome route of crossing the Spirit Peaks. Fighting his way through is no great feat for the dragoon, a dragon slayer through and through, but on the Huihui Express, he's genuinely afraid of falling to his death or just dying in the sky, becoming the first dragoon in the world to be killed by a dragon in such a comical way.
"Crunch, crunch," Huihui nibbled on a small Kuskus carrot like a little squirrel. A large basket of carrots that could feed three chocobos was practically empty. The other large basket of Perfumed Apples and specially baked fish jerky had long been reduced to a pile of scraps. Her enormous appetite was redefining the limits of what everyone in the Forgotten Knight expected.
"Hey, Huihui, why didn't you go with the adventurers to the Gnath territory?" Tataru asked, carrying over a large pot of stew. The baby dragon paid no attention to what she was saying and reached directly for the pot. Tataru slapped her hand away. "This is for the adventurers. You can't eat it, Huihui." "Ooh~" The baby dragon looked at her unhappily, then opened her mouth...
"Let go! Stop biting me!" Tataru cried out, pushing Huihui away. However, the baby dragon stuck to her like a leech, sinking her teeth into Tataru's chubby cheek and making a smacking sound. "Fine, you can have some! Just stop biting me!" Huihui happily released Tataru, whose face now sported a set of teeth marks, pulled the pot of stew in front of her, and began to eat contentedly.
The Rising Stones
"Hey! You're actually alive!" A seasoned hunter looked at the Miqo'te eating at the tavern in surprise. "Weren't you eaten by the Great Wyrm?" "You're the one who got eaten. You two ran off so fast!" The Miqo'te was furious when she talked about it. Those two looked so cool when they showed up. She thought they were reliable partners, but as soon as they encountered a dangerous monster, they just abandoned her and ran off.
"Well, it's not exactly our fault. We stood absolutely no chance against that monster, and we gave you the signal to bug out." The veteran hunter sounded genuinely apologetic. He had given the signal, specifically using smoke grass, but if she was slow to react, it wasn't his or her partners' fault for not being reliable. For hunters, cooperative hunts aren't like adventuring parties in Eorzea. There aren't clear class divisions or role definitions; teamwork is primarily based on unspoken understanding, without a lot of fixed strategies.
Real-world monsters don't just have a few basic moves like in a game. Just as Huihui doesn't only know Wing Slice or Skyward Plunge, she will actually use all sorts of techniques and attack methods based on the situation, including but not limited to bombing and releasing Blue Magic. Plus, there's no obvious telegraphing of attacks like in the games. In other words, a hunter who isn't perceptive isn't a hunter for long. They develop a sense for when to retreat and when to run away through constant brushes with danger and near-death experiences.
"Anyway, regardless, making it back to camp alive is something to celebrate. It's on me." The skilled bowgun hunter sat down next to her. "For a greenhorn on their first hunt like you, it's a pretty good outcome. You should know, most hunters actually... die during their first or second hunt." Generally speaking, most villages have only one hunter, or at most two or three. The entire village guild and the villagers exist to serve the hunters, and they are protected by the hunters.
Only in larger towns, the so-called "hub towns," are there multiple hunters, and even then, the number won't exceed 16. In most Monster Hunter games, the protagonist is a hunter assigned by the Guild to the village to handle hunting and investigate special events. So what happened to the original hunters? Places like Yukumo Village are lucky; their hunters are just out escorting supplies (those two in the CG, the Long Sword user and the Bowgun user). In other villages, the hunters have either disappeared or failed a hunt. The village chief never brings up the consequences of failure—which means: death.
Moreover, compared to the number of villages, the number of hunters is relatively small. So if a village's hunter dies, they are unable to operate normally for an extended period of time and can't get a new hunter from the Guild. Therefore, when a legendary hunter-in-the-making, like the protagonist, arrives, the village chief will say something like, "We haven't had a hunter here for a while," and then introduce you to the facilities that were prepared for your predecessor, and so on...
If you consider what kind of tasks the new hunters are assigned to handle, you'll quickly realize that many of the rookies sent to villages often end up dying at the hands of things like Velocidrome or Great Jaggi. This forces the village to request a replacement to solve the problem. Well, there are exceptions like Yukumo Village; Bai Feng (White Gale) was just a hunter passing through to enjoy the hot springs, doing it for the sheer fun of it...
"Speaking of which, was that monster really scary?" the Miqo'te asked curiously. It wasn't her first encounter, but now that she thought about it, she hadn't been attacked, and had even benefited in some ways, making her feel like it wasn't so terrifying. "I don't think it's a particularly aggressive creature." "Are you talking about the Great Wyrm?" the veteran hunter countered. "Yeah, that's right. I think it just looks a little scary, but it isn't actually that terrifying."
"Then have you seen the shipwreck debris over by the bay?" The veteran hunter pointed to the large chunks of ship wreckage near the harbor and the workers constantly diving underwater to recover supplies. "That's all the Great Wyrm's doing. It's only recently that it hasn't attacked. The number of people who have died at its hands is in the double digits, and the injured are countless. As for why you think it's not very aggressive..."
"That's because we encountered it when it was already full and in a good mood." After all, even the most unobservant hunter could tell that a creature rolling around on the ground, frolicking, and sunbathing was definitely in a good mood.
"But I heard that you were the ones who started trying to capture it, right?" "Yeah, well, we were forced to. Didn't you notice that it's a female dragon?" the veteran hunter said. "And recently, she was in heat, constantly attracting male dragons. In the end..."
"We also knew it was an unusually mild-tempered Elder Dragon, so we only needed to repel or drive it away, pushing it out of the area to prevent it from staying too long and causing ecological collapse due to over-predation."
Normally, if a Valstrax's hunting was spread out over its entire maximum flight radius, it would have almost no impact. Especially since most Valstrax dwell in mountainous or forested areas, where food is abundant.
But...this Valstrax was living in the Wildspire Waste, and was known as the Great Wyrm. The ecology of the Wildspire Waste is incredibly fragile, almost to the point where a 10% increase in the number of herbivores that feed on cacti, moss, and lichen could be enough to disrupt the entire ecosystem's balance.
Keep in mind that the plants in the Wildspire Waste aren't like those in the Ancient Forest or the ever-growing plants in the Rotten Vale. It might take years, or even decades, for a plant eaten by an herbivore to grow back, let alone with an Elder Dragon with an insatiable appetite that eats everything.
So, those who say that the New World is big enough, that the Wildspire Waste is large and not as small as it appears in the game, and that it won't disrupt the ecological balance, clearly didn't pay attention in high school geography. The Wildspire Waste is a typical arid landscape with annual rainfall below 200mm. It's also near the coast, and most of the land is saline-alkali soil and sand. Only a small number of oases and drought-resistant plants support herbivores.
Many of the creatures living in this environment are small. Add to that the presence of large creatures like Rathian and Diablos, and its ecological stability is extremely fragile. So fragile that, if a Diablos becomes pregnant and enters a period of overeating to replenish nutrients, the hunters may even need to drive them out of the area. In this situation, adding a Valstrax with a huge appetite that also demands gourmet food, and NOT disrupting the ecosystem? That's just plain impossible!
Even just a slight increase in the population of those endemic deer or herbivores could cause devastating consequences, similar to the desertification process in northwestern China. Therefore, if an Elder Dragon, more terrifying than a normal Valstrax and unwilling to move because it's an Ancient One, appears in the Wildspire Waste and starts hunting indiscriminately, the hunters have to repel or drive it out.
Otherwise, as Huihui eats all the cacti and Ironhide Berries, the starving herbivores will lose their food and die off in droves or migrate to other oases. This will eventually cause the herbivore population in each oasis to exceed the threshold – and the oases will disappear along with the plants, ultimately turning the Great Ravine Wildspire Waste into the Great Ravine Desert!
Since the real Wildspire Waste isn't as small as it is in the game, even though the Great Wyrm is highly mobile, it won't fly too far to hunt in the Ancient Forest to conserve energy, at least not for every meal. They don't have the awareness that over-hunting will starve themselves. Or rather, for a Valstrax, even if the Wildspire Waste is completely devastated, it can simply migrate to another place with plenty of food. It won't be affected, so it won't be alerted or restrained.
It's like you might occasionally drive for 2 hours or even buy a plane ticket and spend a day flying to another place to enjoy a good meal. However, you wouldn't need to drive back and forth for 4 hours for every meal because if you did, a contradictory situation would arise:
Huihui would return full from eating in the Ancient Forest, and after a bathroom break, she'd have to fly back to the Ancient Forest for her next meal! Even if the food she ate, isn't enough to cover the energy she wasted flying back and forth.
After all, the Ancient Forest isn't a restaurant with food laid out everywhere waiting to be eaten. Even when flying there, a vast amount of energy and time must be spent hunting for adequate food. Only a special species like Huihui, with stored ingredients, would occasionally fly to the Highlands or the Ancient Forest to gather ingredients. A normal Valstrax simply wouldn't leave the Wildspire Waste to hunt.
Dragon that doesn't understand human language, where human hunters haven't provided compensation, even with a human, you could offer hundreds of thousands in relocation funds and still not convince them to move. Expecting an Elder Dragon to voluntarily relocate...
You might as well just give it a good beating, until it thinks that staying here and fighting a bunch of hunters every other day is too exhausting and that it would be more economical to slowly migrate somewhere else. That's a more direct and reliable approach.
"That's true, there's really no other way," the Miqo'te chuckled awkwardly. Making such a massive monster move, whether from a human or animal perspective, seems to require brute force. That's just the way things are in the animal kingdom: if you want my nest, you'll have to beat me into the ground first, then we can talk about moving. And for humans, they can't even convince stubborn homeowners to move. What makes you think they could convince an Elder Dragon? At least you can throw money at a stubborn homeowner, but what do you throw at an Elder Dragon? Sleep Meat?
As for destroying the Wildspire Waste, Elder Dragons don't care. If it becomes a desert and humans can't survive, how is that the Valstrax's problem? They aren't going to restrain their appetite or move to protect humanity's ability to gather resources in the Wildspire Waste, or to protect the environment. Even Elder Dragons like Teostra, who care about their surroundings, are the same.
The reason it clears out monsters is because it's its nest; it protects the environment so it can hunt and live in peace. So, for an Elder Dragon, if the only way to protect the Wildspire Waste's ecosystem is to move to another area, it's a logical paradox:
Protecting the ecosystem is for the sake of its nest. But protecting the ecosystem requires moving the nest. If it has to move the nest, then why bother protecting the ecosystem? Valstrax isn't some kind of sanitation dragon!
"So, regardless of the reason, we have to drive her away or capture her and transport her to another area with a stronger ecological carrying capacity, at least one capable of supporting her and her mate. If that many Valstrax and an Ancient One gathered in the Wildspire Waste..."
"In just a month, the herbivores and other creatures on the Wildspire Waste would be extinct, followed by widespread oasis destruction. The entire Wildspire Waste ecosystem would irreversibly head towards destruction."
As for those male dragons ready to mate, a group of young bucks with their heads full of hormones will only focus on hunting wholeheartedly to please the female or to build up their stamina. As for ecological collapse – "I'll mate and leave, I don't live here, so what's it to me?"
In fact, most of the Elder Dragons that hunters deal with are driven by similar factors. Therefore, the main tactics are to repel and drive them away, occasionally capture them, and rarely kill them, because...for Elder Dragons, many times it's not absolutely necessary for them to be in a specific place. If you beat them up enough, and they weigh the pros and cons, they sometimes just take off on their own.
(For example, the Dire Miralis, because its horns grow in a way that blocks its head and obstructs its vision, preventing it from hunting. If it doesn't break off the horns, it will starve to death. So, it crashes into the rocks on the seabed, causing tsunamis and earthquakes. Therefore, for hunters, you only need to drive it away and let it crash into rocks somewhere uninhabited. Ukanlos and Akantor are the same, because these two like to tunnel underground and love to eat Gravios...so, the hunters' goal is simply to chase them away, so they don't keep taking from the same source and decimating everything in their wake!
And the Amatsu, due to its habits, causes heavy rainfall and floods. So, the hunters actually chase it all the way from the Sacred Pinnacle to the deserted island, so it can go rain wherever it wants at sea! The awkward thing is that these are all necessities for the Elder Dragons, and they don't consider whether humans can survive or if the local ecosystem can handle it – unless it's a Teostra, which has a strong sense of territory and maintains the tranquility of its nest, so his wife can safely lay eggs.
Most Elder Dragons just wreak havoc in one area and then move on to the next...The world is so big, and by the time they've wreaked havoc in a full circle, the ecosystem in the first area has recovered. As for whether humans can survive in this long process lasting hundreds or even thousands of years...Well, what's that to us Elder Dragons?