Chapter 250

The harassment squad. The mobile squad. The Eater squad.

Tatsuro and the others began operating divided into these three teams.

From the dragon monster's perspective, until now everyone had stayed together in one place, so it barely needed to think about where to attack.

But as a result of them dispersing, it began swaying its long body back and forth indecisively, sending gazes in various directions while wondering which area it should prioritize attacking.

In the midst of this, Jeanne with Leah and Athena riding on her back approached while attacking from afar.

So the monster fixed its gaze in Jeanne's direction, deciding to prioritize them first.

While the mobile squad was drawing its attention, Tatsuro and Ai stuck together and floated in the sky on their board.

Cardina and Nana also flew using dragon flight, beginning to move to surround the monster in an isosceles triangle formation.

Though the monster seemed concerned about the other members, its closest enemies were still its highest priority for caution, and having absolute confidence in its defense, the dragon ignored the rest.

So while Jeanne carrying the two moved as flashily as possible to gather attention, Cardina and Nana who had moved into the blind spot created and fired a maximum output mixed magic of magic bullets and life magic.

It was easy to hit that bullet against the massive body that was seventy meters long.

Even without particularly concentrating on aiming, it hit slightly closer to the tail end than the middle.

At that moment, the dragon's movement stopped completely.

"--Kiii!?"

Raising a short, grating cry like scratching glass, it kept turning back to check the spot where it felt an unpleasant sensation like earthworms crawling on its skin surface if compared to humans.

But realizing there was nothing there, the dragon tilted its head in confusion and turned to face Jeanne's group who had been provoking it with weak attacks.

However, once again, that same chill began running through various parts of its body.

The dragon, thoroughly disgusted by this, began desperately searching for the source.

And when its attention became scattered like this, Jeanne's group tried firing stronger attacks simultaneously.

"Kiiyuurururuuuuuuuu!"

As if saying 'Shut up!', it used [Dragon Scale Whirlwind] to block the attacks, and finally spotted the two enemies moving through the sky.

The dragon entered its charging stance to fire [Dragon Power Super Convergence Cannon] at Cardina's group.

During that time, Jeanne closed in rapidly and swung her massive long halberd from outside the whirlwind, delivering a wave-imbued strike to its face.

The scales dancing in the whirlwind were blown away by the wave-imbued halberd, allowing her to land the hit with almost no loss of power.

However, even though the axe blade made contact, the layers of scales were so thick that it literally only felt like being punched.

But the impact of being hit in the face, though dealing almost no damage, caused the converged energy to dissipate.

This raised the dragon's anger gauge, having maintained its own pace until now.

However, a part of it still remained calm, and without raging, it glared at Jeanne who had quickly escaped to the sky.

But as if mocking that, life magic bullets began raining down again.

"Kiiiiiiiiiiyuuuuu!"

Cardina and Nana watched with smirks as it clearly showed signs of irritation.

The dragon felt it was being toyed with, and while grinding its teeth, it restrained itself and deployed [Dragon Scale Whirlwind].

This is what the dragon thought:

Jeanne's strikes couldn't be stopped by [Dragon Scale Whirlwind], so it wanted to focus on that.

But Cardina's attacks were just unpleasant without any real power.

So if it kept [Dragon Scale Whirlwind] constantly deployed, it should be able to defend against just those bullets.

That's why the dragon decided to forget about Cardina while keeping track of when the whirlwind might dissipate.

The dragon, feeling somewhat relieved, kept its gaze on Jeanne while maintaining just the last ten meters of its tail in the seawater as it ascended into the sky.

Then it began chasing after Jeanne's group to deliver [Flame Heat Dragon Claw Attack] and [Scratch] with [Flame Heat Claw].

"Cardina-oneesama. The magic bullets will be blocked at this rate."

"Peewee--"

"Eh?"

While Nana voiced her concern about the dragon now constantly maintaining [Dragon Scale Whirlwind], Cardina indicated that it would be fine.

Though wondering how it could be fine, Nana continued generating life force to mix into the magic bullets.

And while generating magic bullets, Cardina sent out Dispel magic to analyze the raging storm of scales.

The positions of the scales remained exactly the same even after regenerating. And the whirlwind's power was always constant.

That skill, mechanically performed with scales flying from the same positions with the same wind power.

In this space without any natural wind, it could only follow certain patterns.

After predicting and confirming this, Cardina began targeting the small gaps that appeared in the same pattern among the many dancing scales.

Nana, understanding the intention, silently watched over this.

And after reading all the timing perfectly, Cardina grabbed Nana and began flying.

Then while dancing through the air, she confirmed with detection magic and fired life bullets one after another with perfect timing.

All those life bullets passed through the momentarily appearing gaps and hit various parts of the dragon's body.

"--Kiii!?"

"--Kiii!?"

This was something only Cardina, with her magic-constructed brain, could accomplish.

If a normal human tried to do this, they would have given up partway as their thoughts couldn't keep up.

That's how high-level a technique was needed to land hits.

That's precisely why.

Shocked at feeling throughout its body a terror it thought it would never experience again, the dragon began spinning around horizontally checking everywhere, wondering if its [Dragon Scale Whirlwind] had failed despite being visible, or if there was a hole somewhere.

However, during this time it continued to be showered with merciless harassing shots, and if it focused on those, it would get hit by Jeanne.

If it focused on Jeanne, they would escape while it was trembling in fear.

After this was repeated over and over and over again, persistently and tenaciously.

"Kyuurururorororooruruuuuuu!"

Finally casting aside even its dragon dignity in rage, it became completely absorbed with Cardina's group and Jeanne's group.

"Oh. For a monster, that took quite a while."

"Well then. Since it seems to have forgotten about us, shall we prepare to make our move?"

"Yeah. Here, hold onto this."

"Okay~"

As for where Tatsuro was now - somewhat behind and away from the dragon and Cardina's group.

He was lying down on an ice board floating there, wearing water camouflage robes.

From a distance, it was so expertly hidden that it couldn't be detected.

Moreover, despite lying directly on the ice, thanks to their title effects, both of them quickly adapted and felt the cold as pleasant rather than getting frostbite while they observed.

Though the dragon seemed to vaguely sense their presence, this time its consciousness was completely cut off thanks to Cardina and Jeanne's group.

So first, Tatsuro used fire magic on the sea surface to generate water vapor.

Then simultaneously lighting fires on trees created with tree magic to make smoke, he used wind to mix it with the water vapor.

Then after using ice magic to rapidly cool the water vapor and create clouds, he kept raising them up into the sky.

Though this place should have been completely cloudless, now thanks to Tatsuro clouds were floating everywhere.

But the carefree dragon, having lost itself in anger chasing after Cardina's group, barely paid attention to the presence of clouds even when they caught its eye.

"Hehehe. It's going well, isn't it?"

"First time I've heard 'hehehe' in person. --Hm. This should be enough. Well then, Ai. Let's wrap this around."

"Okie dokie"

Next what he took out was cloud camouflage fur. Though there was only one, it was long enough for them to wrap around together.

Then after securing the board to their feet on the ice, they put away the water camouflage robes and activated the cloud camouflage.

Then Tatsuro and Ai, as well as the board treated as their equipment, were wrapped in cloud camouflage.

Then using wind magic to create an updraft from directly below, the two rose into the sky.

If one looked carefully, it was a cloud moving oddly distinctly among the many floating clouds.

Though it seemed like it would be immediately obvious, the dragon that had now completely forgotten about Tatsuro's group showed no sign of noticing.

So they slowly approached the busy dragon that was either running on the water with its twenty legs or flying through the sky releasing attacks recklessly.

"Still, Cardina-chan and Jeanne-chan are really good at provoking it."

"They're landing their attacks at just the perfect timing to irritate the dragon. If humans got stung like that repeatedly, they'd probably get angry too."

Tatsuro gave a wry smile at Cardina's group who had even started adding unnecessary victory poses after landing attacks in addition to taunting cries.

While thinking about such things, they approached the tail end that was kept in the water, carefully waiting for the [Dragon Scale Whirlwind] to stop to avoid getting caught in it.

That long body was the dragon's misfortune and Tatsuro's group's fortune, as they could easily approach the tail end where its consciousness didn't reach while Cardina's group drew its attention to the head.

So they tried to quickly land [Level Eater] by pulling alongside with the board to shoot out the black sphere.

However, at that moment specifically, it extended bone spikes from its entire body, covering its whole form.

"--!?"

"--buna"

Just as the bone spikes were about to pierce Tatsuro, Ai, who had been standing in front of him as if being embraced, jumped through the air and kicked off mid-air while using shield techniques bare-handed to deflect and avoid them.

"Did it notice us?"

"--Nn-nn. Seems okay."

By the way. Because they didn't want to be revealed by unintended activation and because Ai was nearby, Tatsuro had intentionally turned off the automatic defense of the slime-type magic tool Secom-kun, so it didn't activate.

But since Ai had touched the bones, they observed from a distance for a while, wondering if it had sensed something near its tail.

However, perhaps thanks to Cardina quickly diverting its attention after detecting Tatsuro's group's movements with detection magic, the monster showed no sign of concern.

Relieved by this, Tatsuro and Ai waited for the bones to retract and for the reused [Dragon Scale Whirlwind] to stop -- and.

After about ten minutes of observation, finally, another opening appeared.

Tatsuro's group successfully approached and landed the black sphere while the dragon was firing flame heat dragon claw attack at Jeanne.

While holding his jaw which had started hurting from being kept open in preparation to shoot, he backed away to the absolute limit where [Level Eater] could still be used stably and began the absorption.

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Level: 96

Skills: [Super Self-Regeneration] [Super Scale Generation] [Dragon Power Conversion - Water]

[Dragon Water Walk Lv.5] [Dragon Flight Lv.5] [Bite Lv.6]

[Scratch Lv.10] [Dragon Power Super Convergence Cannon Lv.15]

[Dragon Scale Whirlwind Lv.12] [Heavy Scale Armor Lv.12] [Flame Heat Claw Lv.11]

[Flame Heat Dragon Claw Attack Lv.7] [Dragon Bone Spikes Lv.7]

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(Looking just at the level, the former boss we fought before was higher, but this one's a dragon. It's completely different from a regular level 96. Still, as expected, all its skill levels are remarkably high. Five skills above level 10... I've never seen that before except among our own group...)

First were the skills that would be troublesome if activated where Tatsuro's group was now.

He prioritized absorbing [Dragon Scale Whirlwind] and [Dragon Bone Spikes].

But during this, around when he had lowered [Dragon Scale Whirlwind] to level 6, it activated that skill.

However, now that they were using [Level Eater], they couldn't move away.

So Ai created a turtle shell using shield art's Ki-beast technique and completely covered themselves for protection.

With its level lowered, the whirlwind's force had weakened and was easy to guard against.

However, their position had definitely been revealed.

"Kyuurururorororooruruuuuuu!"

As if saying 'What are you doing there!', it tried to fire it still Lv.15 [Dragon Power Super Convergence Cannon] at Tatsuro's group protected by the green Ki force shell.

"I remember the timing. Now we just need to dodge. Can you maintain this distance while moving?"

"I can!"

"Then I'm counting on you! --3, 2, 1--Here it comes!"

"--tou tou tou!"

In the instant before the convergence cannon was fired, Ai kicked off the air while sliding the flying board, trying to circle around to the other side along the dragon's thick body.

But noticing this, the dragon tried to skewer them by extending bone spikes from its entire body.

--However.

"Kyuiroruruuu--?"

The skill that usually activated immediately wouldn't activate at all anymore.

Then it tried to use [Dragon Scale Whirlwind], attempting to activate that skill instead.

"--Kiii!?"

But that one also wouldn't activate anymore.

While it was dumbfounded by this, Tatsuro started working on [Heavy Scale Armor Lv.12].

As he worked on that, the scales covering the dragon's body in multiple layers began falling into the sea.

"OH! MOTTAINAI! Ai, collect as much as you can in your [Item Box]!"

"Geez. Such a penny-pincher."

"Hurry--! They're going to sink--!"

"Yes yes. I got it--"

While saying this. These might become armor to protect someone, or weapons to defeat enemies.

Ai collected them into her [Item Box] so Tatsuro could concentrate on [Level Eater].

Though Tatsuro's group was this carefree, the dragon began to panic, not understanding what was happening to its body.

Its anger had completely disappeared somewhere, and it stopped moving, watching with eyes filled with shock as its scales fell off.

"Let's take everything while we can--!"

"Leave it to me!"

And so Tatsuro focused on [Level Eater] to take all the remaining skills in one go.