The dragon dashed forward raising his right paw as he tried to slash the arcadian hunter with his sharp claws, but the hunter just sidestepped out of the way of his attack and instead of hitting the hunter it hit the corpse of the guardian of the dungeon, a hydra whose body was so mangled one wouldn't think it was a hydra.

The dragon's claw hit the flesh of the hydra and tore open five lacerations in its path. The hunter raised one of his legs as the dragon moved to pull back his paw from the hydra's corpse and gave a powerful kick, with enough force to throw the dragon flying and spinning sideways and landing with his belly on the floor, much to the jellyfish, that was still attached to the dragon's head, relief because if the dragon had landed upside-down, it would be smashed between the floor and the dragon.

The hunter waved his hand and a magical circuit appeared in front of him, and with another wave of his hand the circuit disappeared and a wave of energy came from the place where the circuit was shot towards the dragon. The wave was as tall as the room and had a width that was essentially zero. Everything in front of the wave was being cut like a hot knife through butter.

The dragon had got up in the time the wave took to reach him, and seeing the wave, the dragon moved his left paw to slash at the wave, but all it did was to cut his own paw off.

Superheated plasma leaked out from where the dragon's paw should be, immediately igniting the air around it. The dragon roared in pain as he trashed his arm around looking like an oversized welder. The dragon looked at the hunter with raging eyes as energy began to build up in the back of his throat.

The hunter sensed the energy inside of the dragon building up to terrifying amounts by Earth's humans standards and moved its body for an easier form to evade the attack that was surely coming its way, at the same time he began preparing a magical circuit.

The dragon released its breaths attack, a beam of plasma with so much energy that it ignited the very air around it as it came in contact with, it could melt through almost anything instantly, the only things that could withstand were metals that took a lot of energy to melt, beings with fire resistance or those who could use a self-cooling version of the [Heat Ray] magic. The beam shot through the air with such incredible speed that no low level person would be able to evade at all, but the hunter easily sidestepped the beam as it came, passing right by his side, but the dragon wouldn't just let it evade his most powerful attack that had been filled with rage, no. The dragon turned his head in the direction of the hunter, and the moment it did, the hunter noticed the beam changing direction and moving towards him once more.

This time he jumped to the side, but the dragon wouldn't let him escape that easily and kept aiming at the hunter, he had only a limited amount of mana saved up to transform his magicules into a plasma breath before needing to enter a long period to recharge it and he wasn't planning on wasting a single ounce of it.

The hunter placed both his hands in front of him as he moved his feet in a way to support the punch as a shield made out of fractals appeared in front of him just as the breath attack of the dragon connected. It had the same energy of a raging sun, but the shield held true. All the energy contained in the plasma beam was being absorbed by the shield and being redirected and released in a perpendicular trajectory of the first beam, digging several holes in the walls, ceiling and floor of the room.

The hunter moved his hand to his back and a rifle-looking weapon materialized in his hand and he positioned it right in front of the plasma beam, behind his shield, that was starting to show signs of cracking. The shield breaking would be a shame as he would lose his secondary line of defense, a perpetual energy shield around his body being his primary line of defense, but he was fine with it as the shield had already served its purpose, to analyze the dragon's magic. The hunter had found a weakness and was going to fully explore it, he had already uploaded the digital magical diagram to his weapon and was waiting for the moment a dragon is more vulnerable in combat, the exact second its breath attack ends and it needs to recover.

The moment had arrived, the breath attack ended just after a moment and in the fraction of a second where all the magicules in the dragon's system stopped circulating and before it could move again, the hunter shot. An energy sphere flew incredibly fast and almost hit the dragon in the middle of his throat, but by sheer luck the dragon moved his head slightly to the side and the energy sphere hit the inside of his cheek. The moment the sphere connected it froze everything it touched, turning the blue scales in his cheek black and frozen air growing out of it in the form of frozen air spikes.

The frozen air cracked and burst from the inside out as plasma and flames spewed out of a hole in the dragon’s face. He let out a roar of pain as the hunter had stopped in astonishment as he truly thought the dragon would be dead after the shot from his rifle hit him, and if the dragon hadn't moved his head when he did he would be correct as if the magic bullet had hit its target, the base of the dragon's brain, he would be dead as his entire brain would froze and break apart.

[Regeneration] was already at work, reconstructing the damaged parts, his cheek would be easy to reconstruct but his hand was another issue as the missing part was too big for it to be just regenerated with a single activation of a low level skill.

The hunter snapped out of its frozen state when his sensors alerted him of the increasing temperature and radiation inside of this floor thanks to the open wounds on the dragon that were leaking superheated plasma and a wide spectrum of radiation. He wasn't particularly concerned as his personal shield would provide the necessary protection, at least for about 15 minutes as the radiation in the room would be dangerously high even for it. He needed to finish this dragon off quickly.

The only other living thing in the room with those two was the last surviving member of the Mind-Devouring Jellyfish hive mind, and it was already dying for multiple reasons, its body wasn't made to stay out of water for so long, the high temperature was drying what little was left of water in its body and cooking it alive, and finally the radiation in the room was doing a better job at cooking its body than the heat. It saw the destruction the two fighting causes, and it hoped it could at least get the dragon killed if it managed to bring back the dragon's mind, it was sure the momentary confusion would lead to his death, and so, without hesitation as it was going to die either way, it pulled every little bit of power it still had and dived deep inside the dragon's kind. One second later and its dead body fell to the floor beginning to burn, he had failed his task.

The dragon jumped in the hunter's direction, but was met with a barrage of magical bullets coming from the hunter's rifle. The dragon had managed to avoid some of the bullets that were going to his vital parts, but the rest of the bullets hit various parts of his body, freezing. With each bullet that hit his body, a new hole was open in his scales, plasma leaking and igniting the air around it. [Regeneration] and [Automatic HP Recovery] were already overloaded with the damage and the plasma loss that was akin to blood loss, but more violent, yet the dragon continued.

With each moment passed several new bullet holes were torn open, and with each new hole, more and more plasma was leaked to the room that was getting so hot humans wouldn't be able to last ten seconds inside of it. 

His vision was becoming blurred as his colors changed from blue to yellow-redish. He couldn't muster the strength to jump at the hunter again as his movement grew more and more sluggish as he tried to avoid the magical bullets that were flying at him, but with each new bullet that hit him a new wound would from, and his strength would leave his body even more, cascading in a spiral where the end result would be his death.

Eventually he couldn't hold his own weight and dropped to his knees. The hunter noticed that a few more shots were going to finish him off and without a moment's notice shot three more bullets in quick succession, but what happened next was so out of the norm that he froze on the spot. With a roar tinged with pain and anger, a ball of fire appeared right above the dragon's head and flew towards the bullet. against all natural laws, a being dominated by the [Instincts Overdrive] used magic, something that shouldn't be possible considering the mindless nature of those with [Instincts Overdrive] and the sharp mind any magic requires. The dragon had used what some would call an "exploit", he couldn't control the spells like Denaru could, but he didn't care about that, all he needed to do was divert his magicules to the [Fire Magic] skill and it would automatically cast the most basic spell Denaru had access to, in other words, all the dragon had to do was throw a bunch of magicules into the [Fire Magic] skill and it would cast [Fireball] automatically.

Upon impact, the [Fireball] and the magical bullets canceled each other with a burst of energy that was enough to cause major damages if the room wasn't already cracked like a glass pane and on the verge of collapse.

Seeing how the attacks had canceled each other, their dragon poured more magicules in the skill, which in turn casted more and more [Fireballs] and began shooting them at the hunter. Finally snapping out of the unresponsive state he was in, the hunter saw the incoming [Fireballs] and quickly countered them with various shots of his cold magic bullets.

Once again, spell encountered spell and an energy explosion shook the room. The ceiling was starting to gave in and small pieces of rock were starting to fall down, being easily avoided by the hunter as they fell to the ground and hitting the back of the dragon as he didn't have enough stamina or energy to avoid them, as he had already lost so much plasma his vision was starting to grow blurred.

The hunter noticed the dragon wasn't trying to avoid the falling debris like he was avoiding his magical bullets and had an idea. He stopped shooting the dragon and the [Fireballs] he was throwing at him and started to avoid them as he loaded another spell in his rifle.

After a few moments the rifle had been reconfigured from shooting a cold bullet spell to shooting a concussive bullet spell, a magic spell that would make the rifle shoot a bullet that contained kinetic energy in the form of the bullet itself and release it whenever it hit a target, causing pure physical damage to it. The hunter aimed at the ceiling on top of the dragon while jumping above a [Fireball] coming at him and pulled the trigger.

The bullet flew and hit the ceiling, right above the dragon, and the effect was immediate. The ceiling collapsed right on top of him, bringing dust and large boulders down right on the dragon’s back and head. The dragon fell to the ground with the boulders hitting his back and head, his vision blurred and spinning, he was completely helpless at the moment, and the hunter took advantage of that by approaching as he loaded the cold bullet spell to his rifle again.

The hunter stopped right in front of the dragon’s head and aimed it right between his eyes, but the moment he was going to pull the trigger he stopped.

“Sotobro effect detected…” The hunter said, as he looked at the dragon and released his grip of the trigger. The dragon was starting to come back to himself and when he noticed the hunter right in front of him he tried to roar, but only a weak growl came out.

The dragon tried to cast more [Fireballs] and attack the hunter, but before he had the chance, the hunter moved his hand that had the rifle to his back, causing the rifle to dismantle into energy and move back inside the hunter’s body, and pulling a small metal sphere and he dropped it just next to the dragon’s face. The sphere activated and the dragon’s vision became white, disrupting the casting of the [Fire Magic]’s spell [Fireball].