The base plan was simple: lead the lesser dragon to a dead end at the end of a very long straight corridor at the edge of its territory by having it chase a line of birds.

There was a very nice T-shaped place she had found. She would block two sides of it with moving walls. This created an L-shaped shaped dead end to lead the monster into.

When the dragon was in place, she would step in to bait the mowing wall at the right side of the T a few meters back, thus blocking the lesser stone dragon in a long straight corridor. Then she would go around the maze to reach the other side of the dead end. Its moving wall had been carved with a simple straight hole, barely large enough for Sofia to crawl through if needed. She would shoot her bolts in a straight line at the massive beast from the other side of that hole. It wouldn’t be able to dodge.

Just in case the lizard could break through the walls or still attack her from the other side, she had one rune in place. She also had escape routes mapped out to hopefully lose the monster if it chased her or to return to the exit room and bail off.

This is as safe as I can make it. The feasibility of the kill all rests on the lesser stone Dragon being unable to do anything about the hard stone. Doesn’t sound right, considering it has stone magic much stronger than even the Alpha stone Ogre had, but I couldn’t even scrape the damned thing. Even the strongest bolt I could afford to launch didn’t leave any burn marks despite melting all the stone bricks. And it’s trapped here with me, which has to count for something.

---

 

The birds were the bait for the monster. Everything went to plan, the lizard didn’t seem too bright, and it walked right into the trap. Sofia closed the path behind it and ran to her post on the other side.

She began to cast the angel’s bolt through her scepter.

At the other side of the wall, the lesser Dragon noticed. It sent magical attacks toward Sofia. She felt the ripples of magic washing over her, and then… Nothing.

And this is why I took the time to remove all the stone bricks from this section’s walls, ceiling, and floor. What are you going to control to attack me? The only stone bricks left nearby were those of the fake wall between her and the lesser Dragon. She couldn’t remove them, or the fake wall would turn into a giant gaping hole to let the monster through the second no one was looking at it. So instead, she had sealed the brick layer with an ultra-thick blessed marrow bone construct that borrowed structural integrity from the whole intersection with supporting bone pillars.

The blessed construct cracked and shook, the bricks behind controlled by the beast’s magic, but the protection held, its self-healing properties ensuring it lasted through the continuous assault.

Not so strong when there’s no stone for you to use, eh? This is like the Orvod fight all over again.

The monster roared and rampaged from the other side of the five hundred meters long fake wall. The whole maze shook, but the moving wall separating them was holding up perfectly fine, thanks to the hard stone.

The monster calmed down. It sent another wave of magic. Sofia saw the wave of stone teeth rushing toward her through the hole in the wall. Since there was no usable stone on Sofia’s side, it had started using what was on its side.

The bolt was only at thirty-five thousand mana, but Sofia had to let it go to counter the attack. The recoil sent her back a few meters, and the bolt met the stone inside the hole and exploded. The force of the explosion, blocked by the hard rock, had nowhere to go but back at her. A column of bright blue energy shot out of the hole and beamed right through Sofia’s torso, finishing its course and crashing against the wall behind her. She was cooked inside her armor and died instantly.

The dispersed fragments of the Orichalcum armor gathered together, flying back to the armor to their original place. The bone armor only reformed over it when Sofia regained some control of her body after the rune did its magic.

Well, shit, I knew it would come back, but I didn't think it'd be that bad…

Good that I had the rune; now I need to get out of here before it sends another stone attack through the hole.

Back on her feet and fully armored as if nothing had happened, Sofia left this section of the maze.

---

 

“Now what?”

That was a bit more dangerous than expected, but a good reminder about the dangers of using explosive weapons in tight spaces... How many times has it been now? Soon I'll become an explosion expert.

I wonder if the lizard got its own column of fire to deal with. I’d say probably so unless its attack held. But who knows?

“I can always keep doing this until it runs out of stone to send my way? Hmm… The stone it used for the attack probably didn’t disappear, though; it’s molten, but it’ll cool back down to another kind of stone, won’t it? So it’s like an endless supply…”

No bolting then, but I can think of some other way…

Sofia summoned the plant mage from the book; it was the one given to her by the emperor as payment for information. That was only the second time she ever summoned him, the first one being when training with Zerei; she had tested all the summons she could.

“You can make plants that produce poison gas, right?”

This guy’s magic is all about flowers. Poison flowers, thorn flowers, trap flowers. Surely there are poison gas flowers?

The skeleton looked around. It seemed lost.

“Something wrong?”

The skeleton pointed at the stone floor. Oh. No soil. That would be troublesome to grow flowers. This guy’s abilities are pretty limited… Typically, soil is much easier to produce than skeletons, so necromancers are worse.

Sofia thought she could probably have the guy grow flowers from her food, but that was a waste, so she unsummoned him.

Dumb idea anyway; the lizard can plug the hole, as it demonstrated.

Just how do I kill it, then? Hmmm… Is it time to give up? It's not as if it'd undo my training of the bolt anyway. But that would be an annoying missed possibility.

Plugged the hole... If the hole is blocked, it’s in a completely sealed environment…

Sealed.

Do I have skills that can take advantage of that?

I sure do! Let’s drown the damned thing!

“But summon blood’s range is only 199 meters. And the wall is five hundred… What about…”

Sofia used [Graveyard of the righteous] and moved into the ground before trying to use her other skills while in the spirit realm. Two of them worked, [Heal undead] and [Summon blood].

There we have it. Wait, no, the math is wrong…

Summon blood’s range is 199 meters, and the graveyard's radius is 295.5 meters from the casting point. That’s 497.5 meters of range at best. I’m missing two and a half meters. Do I climb into the hole?

But I want to seal the hole with a full bone construct to make sure the lizard can’t drain its room through it. Do I seal it from the inside? Seems dangerous.

Sofia realized that the range was, in fact, not a problem at all. This was a maze. She could come back from the other side, where she had displaced another wall to trap the lizard. She didn’t even have to use the graveyard. She could summon the blood directly in the closed corridor by standing in the right place.

Before that, she sealed the hole as she had devised, and, being as stealthy as she could with the rune masking her mana emissions, she scraped off all the stone near her new standing post. Just to be safe. Because it was definitely in the range of the monster’s magic.

Taking no risk, she waited for her mana to return, put on a rune, and started summoning the blood.

She had done the math; she could calculate the approximate volume of the corridor the monster was trapped in, as well as how much blood she could produce and her regeneration. As well as accounting for the rune.

The result was that she needed about two million liters of blood. Which, if she was diligent about putting on the rune in between every run of summoning blood, would take about 130 rounds of blood summoning.

Considering that right now, it takes about forty minutes for my mana to replenish fully, I can start putting on the rune after half an hour, and it will only cut my regeneration when it’s on. So I’m not wasting time putting it on, just some mana.

If we say five minutes per run plus the regen time… That will only take four days!

---

 

The following days were ripe, with the quakes originating from the maddened monster enclosed within a tunnel that was slowly being inundated. It died before the estimated time, sometime in the middle of the fourth day.

Sofia heard the telltale ding of a system notification.

My first kill by blood o.

“My blood can slay Dragons!”

Almost dragons. It had Dragon in the name, so that counts. I don’t care. I’m Sofia, the Dragonslayer!

‘You have defeated [Lesser Stone Drake - lv. 333]’

‘[Way of the Fool] grants significant bonus experience’

‘[Way of the Fool] reached level 20’

It doesn’t actually have Dragon in the name? I was lied to! Scammed! Give back my money! I paid a lot for that book on rare monsters!

“...”

“I’ll settle for Drakeslayer then…”

Also, what bonus experience? I’m stuck at 199. This doesn’t even go toward paying off the debt!

When Sofia used the graveyard skeletons to go check on the dead monster, there was not even a single bone to be found amidst the mass of blood. It had all faded into nothingness.

Such a disappointment from start to finish… I hope at least Sen is impressed…

You better give bonus rewards for that, you hear me? How many people have killed this thing in the history of the trial? Can’t be many.

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