Welcome to Hell!

and spiritual power were enormous, and considering it merely being a juvenile, then it would have become an unstoppable monster when fully grown.
It could have easily destroyed not just an arena, but an entire country with the aftermath of its battles.

However, the dragon species had simply been too powerful as a biological entity.
As a result, any creature that was not of its kind was considered a mere insignificant insect in its eyes.
It had already shrugged off attacks from the beast demon, and accidental stabs to vital points from synthetic beasts had not been fatal.
Furthermore, It had even smashed the warrior crab with brute force despite the latter’s relentless attacks.

Therefore, it did not hone its combat skills because it could handle anything with innate strength alone.
Even when its vision was impaired, it stood still and let enemies attack its body without flinching.
Anyway, this guy’s fighting style was clumsy.

(What a shame to waste such incredible talents of fighting spirit and spiritual power.
I will take advantage of that arrogance to the fullest.)

Taking advantage of the rock dragon’s distraction, I made my move.
I climbed onto its back from its legs and ran towards my destination on its shaking body.
There was only one place I aimed for: the reverse scale that the synthetic beast had inadvertently revealed—the rock dragon’s rare weakness.

When I finally reached my destination, I used my claws to grab onto the scales around it and immobilized its body.
Without any hesitation, I plunged my tail into the vulnerable reverse scale.
Although the wound from the synthetic beast’s fang had healed, I remembered its location perfectly.
My poisonous stinger easily pierced through the soft reverse scale, reaching the flesh beneath it.

“Guuuaaaaahhh!?”

From the tip of my poisonous stinger, I injected a potent venom inside the rock dragon’s body.
It howled in agony, unable to endure the poison that threatened its life after being stabbed from within its reverse scale.
Ugh, I am injecting several times the amount of venom that I previously injected into the scarlet-eyed dog, yet it still won’t die.
This resilience is vexing.
I must inject even more poison.

However, the rock dragon was not a fool.
It fell on its back to crush me with its own weight, just like what it did to the synthetic beast.
I didn’t want to be crushed, so I jumped off its back abandoning my previous attack with my poisonous stinger.

“Grrr…Goooooaaarrrr!!”

It seemed to feel unwell from the effects of the poison, but its eyes were ablaze with fierce anger.
It opened its mouth wide while glaring straight at me, and from the depths of its throat, a dazzling light…a breath was released.

Honestly, I didn’t think it would use it anymore.
However, I remained calm and used spiritual power to construct a wall of sand to intercept its breath without panicking.
Its power was tremendous, enough to break through the wall even if I maintained it with all my might.
I was so focused on maintaining the sand wall that the sand pincers, which were holding down its neck, fell apart.
This was the so called difference in pure strength!

Moreover, the breath of the rock dragon was not just a one-time attack.
It fired repeatedly, seemingly endlessly, using its boundless spiritual power to continuously shoot at me.
Even though it seemed like the poison was working, it could still move like this.
Dragon species were just too sturdy beyond imagination!

“Gaah! Gaah! Gaah! Gaaaah!”

The rock dragon ran towards me while firing its breath.
It seemed like it was going to engage me in close combat along with its breath attacks.
I couldn’t win this by just defending.
I released the sand wall in between the breath attacks and ran along the wall of the arena.

The rock dragon noticed me and stopped, continuing to shoot its breath while chasing after me.
The accuracy of its attacks was not good, so it could not hit me while I was running at high speed.

“(Guuh! Is my reinforced exoskeleton creaking just from the shockwave of the near miss…? What power!)”

However, even if it didn’t hit me directly, it didn’t mean I wasn’t taking any damage.
Sometimes, because of its poor accuracy, the breath attacks unexpectedly hit me in a place I couldn’t dodge.
The shockwave of the impact hit my whole body as the exoskeleton got burnt by the breath that just passed by.
My body was gradually, but surely getting injured.

I was running around and dodging while continuously bothering the rock dragon with my spiritual art attacks.
I kept attacking and interfering by shooting sand bullets, trying to impale it with sand spikes under its feet, and creating another sandstorm.

However, both attacks and interference were futile.
The sand bullets and spikes I fired while running away lacked the power to penetrate its scales, and the sandstorm I created for interference was cancelled out by the explosion caused by the breath landing at its feet.
It was cheating, that defense power!

“Grurururu…”

After running around the arena for about three laps while continuing to evade, the rock dragon stopped its breath barrage and growled lowly.
Had it finally started to tire? I thought so, but I stopped being optimistic when the rock dragon’s spiritual power suddenly expanded.
Instead of getting tired, was it going to unleash an attack that would be incomparable to what it had done so far…!?

“Gaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh!!!”

Immediately after that, a breath was released from the rock dragon’s mouth.
However, it was not a large ball of light like before.
Instead, it came as a heat ray with the same diameter as the dragon’s mouth.

The heat ray followed me while melting the ground into a gooey mess.
It seemed that the dragon planned to mow me down with a thick beam of light instead of repeating the same ineffective shots.
This was an excessively forceful approach, attempting to solve the problem with brute strength despite the skyrocketing consumption of spiritual power.

(Oh no! Will it catch up to me… wah!)

In desperation, I constructed a wall of sand while running away.
The moment the heat ray touched the wall, a violent explosion turned my vision pure white.