*Chomp*

Tch, that's the fourth pill already. Did it take so long to travel through the lower-level tunnels? Not knowing the time came back to bite me, big time.

There have been more quakes while I was going down the tunnels. The good news is that the interval between each blast gets longer by each shot. This must mean the dragon is getting more and more exhausted for each shot.

The bad news is, one or more pillar must have been shot down by now. That's gonna increase the time it takes to slay the dragon. I hope the pills hold till then.

=====================================================================

SYSTEM MESSAGE

Proficiency has reached the required amount:

Skill [Poison Resistance LV49] has become [Poison Resistance LV50]

=====================================================================

And another piece of bad news! Shouldn't it be good news this time!? How reaching LV50 with [Poison Resistance] is bad news? I reached the max level, and didn't get any evolutions for the skill!

Sure, level max sounds good on paper, but looking at it from a different view, my strongest poison resistance ain't enough to endure the Emperor Poison terrain effect! And I can't improve it anymore now either! I need to kill the dragon before the pills run out! 

And finally, I 've reached the lake! The whole place has turned to a poison lake, purple and stinky. There are just 9 pipes that remain open, so three more pillars must have been taken down by the time I arrived. 

And there's the dragon. He's looking up to the ceiling, which has turned to cheesy since the last time I came here. The Swiss-type. Isn't the dragon afraid of having the ceiling collapse on him? Isn't that a bad thing for me as well!? The dungeon core will be buried in tons of rubble!

OK, that is bad! And the stupid dragon is charging up for a new shot! His mouth is giving off a blue light, which gets stronger and stronger by the second. If [Ghost Step] could teleport me for real, then I could have sicked a Flashbang at its head, forcing it to blow the breath in its mouth. 

Since I can't do that, I'll go for the next best thing. I put my arm into my shadow, looking for the items I've prepared just for this moment. There you go, one crossbow, plus one metal arrow, dipped in Emperor Poison. 

This arrow is my trump card amongst all my trump cards. While aiming with the crossbow, loaded with the Emperor Arrow (tentative name), I invoked my [Shooting] skill, and fired the arrow towards the dragon, with some extra MP used to boost the power of it.

"GRRAAAWWHH?!" - Glavras

*DOOOONNN!*

Bull's-eye! No, wait, Dragon's-eye! I hit the dragon straight in its left eye! The shock and pain of having its eye punctured by the Emperor Arrow (tentative name) made the dragon close its mouth in surprise, making the dragon breath detonate in its mouth! Not that water-attribute damage would normally harm the Disaster of Water, but this guy's own attack must do the trick. Thinking about it, being able to weaken the dragon to this level was also because of his powers, or more specifically, his own dungeon's power. 

Oh yeah, how much weaker did he become? I also have to check if he's got some new skills (which would be typical at this point):

=====================================================================

Name: Glavras   | Ultimate Disaster of Water

Race: [Pure Lake Dragon]   | Level: 88

Karma Value: ---

Skills: 15

Titles: 2

Skill Points: 0.0

Status: Heavily Poisoned

 

HP: 371/3671 -3012   | MP: 517/5512  - 2833  | SP: 238/3419 - 3022

STR: 3112 - 2774   | VIT: 3001 - 2881   | MAG: 4562 - 4126

RES: 557 - 501   | SPD: 2954 - 2612   | DEX: 2853 - 2705

INT: 44   | LUC: 131

=====================================================================

=====================================================================

SKILL LIST

Ability Skills: [HP Auto-Recovery LV10] NEW

Attack Skills: [Hydrokinesis LV50 (MAX)]

Magic Skills:  [Purification Magic LV50 (MAX)] 

Active Skills: [Shooting LV20] NEW

Passive Skills: [Magic Talent LV1] NEW [Swimming LV50 (MAX)] [Calm Mind LV50 (MAX)]

Resistance Skills: [Greater Water Resistance LV99 (MAX)] [Poison Resistance LV25] NEW 

Perception Skills: [Sense Threat LV50 (MAX)] 

Leadership Skills: [Ruler LV10]

Racial Skills: [Dragon Breath LV50 (MAX)] [Dragon Armor LV50 (MAX)] [Pure Water Dependency LV99 (MAX)]

Elements: [Water Divinity]

====================================================================

And I was right. And one of them is, as expected, [Poison Resistance]. He even boosted it all the way to LV25. And he got [HP Auto-Recovery] to get back the lost HP, [Shooting] to help him with the dragon breath, and [Magic Talent] for his purification spells.

To think it would use all of its 100+ skill points to buy and boost those skills. He must be desperate to survive. Not that he's smart enough to prioritize boosting his recovery skill, or the talent skill. Even if he used all those skill points to get a high-level resistance to poison, it won't change the fact that [Poison Resistance] doesn't cut out for the task. I've experienced that myself, so I know what I'm talking about.

I didn't see last time that his karma value was grayed out like that. Is it due to him being an Ultimate Disaster? Strange thing. 

"GRRAAAAWWW!" - Glavras

He managed to collect himself from the pain of losing his eye now and made an angry roar. A little too late, I'm afraid. I didn't just stand and daze around when I appraised him. I've got [Parallel Minds] after all. Some multitasking ain't gonna slow me down.

I made two threads, one that I tied to one of the rocks down here at the ground floor, while I threw the second thread towards the ceiling. After making sure it was secured, I climbed up. When I reached the ceiling, I took out lots of webs I from my storage, and made a network with them, and connected it to the ceiling.

No, I'm serious. I made a network. Not the digital kind that most are familiar with, but a real network of several nets. I covered the whole ceiling with the non-sticky types of threads, for then climbing up to the space between, and readied myself for phase two of my plan.

The inspiration for this move comes from the bridges in the rat-tunnels. While on top of those, I can attack whatever that's below me, without getting noticed. The light from the crystals here ruins that plan, so I wanted a back-up plan, in case something was able to notice the network. The idea was nice, but it's impossible to utilize it under normal circumstances.

However, here I'm able to do that! The lighting which in this cave comes from the crystals at ground level, my shadow is spread out over the ceiling while I'm on the network. Meaning, I can access more of my storage at once now!

And that's what I aimed for. After securing myself with a new thread connected to the ceiling, I detached the network with [Thread Control] and used the now free threads to access the storage, taking out tons of self-made throwing daggers, knives, and simple sharp rocks.

I used a whopping 25 slots to store all this junk, which needed 1 slot for 10 items each. By the way, at LV20, my [Demonic Storage] have 125 slots available. 50 of them are for my Item Bag (which holds the T-Rex now), 35 of them for the stuff I stole from the bandits, and the rest is for miscellaneous stuff, like the shrapnel junk, and medicine.

Much of the shrapnel is coated with Emperor Poison. I had some time after finding the dungeon entrance. Virt and the others took their sweet time, but I'm not gonna complain this time.

The terrain effect poison is worse since it's been compressed, in other words, concentrated, by the dungeon. Not that it makes the shrapnel's poison any weaker.

The dragon noticed me now. I'm glad he's taking his time, letting the poison take out more of his HP, but I want to finish this before the pills run out. Having his resistance- and recovery-skill level up because I'm taking too much time won't be a joke either. Therefore, fire the web grenade!

By using [Shooting] and [Thread Control], I fired the bundle of threads and junk towards the dragon. As a bonus, I used another Flashbang, and folded the web-mess around it, ready to explode like a real grenade.

Since I'm in the grenades blast-range, I made the thread I had connected to the ground-level elastic like a bungee-rope and jumped down. Time to skedaddle! I quickly hid behind some huge boulders that would be good as shields. The dragon twisted his head, turning the right side of his face towards the web grenade while trying to keep an eye on me. Bingo.

*BANG!*

"GRRYYYAAAAHH!?" - Glavras

Whoa, some of the shrapnel flew all the way to here. Glad I took cover, or else I would have been killed by my own attack. Adding [Shooting]'s MP power-throw effect, with the force of the Flashbang, created a powerful blast, especially in the direction of the dragon. The dragon lost its right eye with that grenade right now. His HP is,

=====================================================================

HP: 203/3671 -3012   | MP: 502/5512  - 2833  | SP: 201/3419 - 3022

=====================================================================

Sweet! I shaved off more than a hundred points! Even his SP was lowered, even the MP as well, just a little. Is the poison affecting even those stats?

"RROOOOAAAAAHH!" - Glavras

And what are you roaring about now?

*RUMBLE, RUMBLE, RUMBLE, RUMBLE, RUMBLE...*

Wait, what?! The cave is changing shape? Before it was shaped like a doughnut, with the ground being the dough, and the water was the hole. Now, the only ground on the water-level is some parts around the entrance, while the rest has turned to 26 rock platforms, each who could hold 6 persons easily.

All the platforms are on top of pillars sticking out of the lake, all of them with different heights. All the platforms are connected with bridges. The size of the cave is the same as before, around the size of a professional baseball court. You know, those courts are shown on TV all the time. I didn't watch too much sport back on Earth, but I think I got the idea of the size right.

There are also 13 platforms made of water, in the same style as the pillars in the area just above us. They look solid enough, but I don't wanna try standing on them. The water platforms ain't connected to any bridges anyway.

It's like one of those battlefields in games, where you jump from platform to platform while fighting the giant monster. Is this some kind of boss-battle field? Skelly didn't write anything about this! But yeah, this is fitting for the last battle of the dungeon, with all the elements of the dungeon assembled here, and all that.

In a normal case, this would be preferable for both parties, as Adventurers can fight the dragon on different levels of height, while the dragon can attack any platforms it wants. Under normal circumstances, I mean.

This time, the dragon had climbed on top of the platforms during their constructions, taking up 15 normal ones, and 7 water types. Hey, they can support someone's weight. I thought they were trick platforms or something like that. It's a clever move since the dragon won't get damaged from the poison lake anymore.

Huh, the dragon's mouth is glowing again? But it can't aim with both its eyes crushed, can it? I took some precautions and jumped to a free platform, since the dragon knows where I was, before the grenade detonated, crushing the dragon's last eye. The first platform I was on, is the one in the middle of the half-circle of the unoccupied platform. The platform I'm currently on is the third rock-type platform from the left.

*CRASH!*

Hey, why are you aiming at the right-most platform? It's the one closest to his head, but why aim at that? Did he think I would challenge him straight on, like an honest idiot?

*CRASH!* *SPLASH!* *CRASH!*

Huh, hey wait! You can sweep with that breath?! Oh crap, he wants to crush all the free platforms, and throw me into the lake! Even the water platforms ain't spared!

*CRASH!* *SPLASH!* *SPLASH!*

Crap, crap, crap! I need to escape! But all the platforms are gonna get crushed, so that's a no go!

*CRASH!* *SPLASH!* *CRASH!*

The exit is, behind the dragon! And there's no way it will let me climb over his body! Should I go under it, no, wait. The platforms are wet by poison. My threads can't be attached to too moist surfaces!

*CRASH!* *SPLASH!*

Damn, there's no more time! I need to-!

*CRASH!*