I needed to settle this before the gathering monsters joined the fight.
Right now, I was already at my limit just dodging the fire dragon's attacks. I couldn't afford to deal with anything else.
The poison bullets I fired simultaneously while evading the fire dragon's attack vanished before reaching its body.
The flames of the Flame Cloak incinerated the weakened projectiles after the Reverse Scale's skill effect had interfered with the magic's construction, sapping their power.
Weakened as they were, the poison bullets stood no chance against the Flame Cloak and were simply burned away.
The fire dragon hadn't even taken any countermeasures, yet the poison bullets were rendered completely powerless on their own.
It possessed offensive power that could kill in a single hit, and defensive capabilities so tough that half-hearted attacks couldn't even deal damage.
On top of that, it was faster than me.
If it wanted to, it probably could have dodged even these poison bullets just now using its probability-boosting skill and sheer speed.
This was getting truly hopeless.
The Cursed Evil Eye was gradually wearing down the dragon's HP.
But the only reason it was decreasing at all was because of the HP boost from Overeating.
Unlike me, the fire dragon's boosted HP had been stocked to 1200 — the maximum its skill level allowed.
Its MP was the same.
Its SP hadn't been stocked to the limit, but it still had a considerable amount.
Frankly, wearing it down with Evil Eyes alone was impossible.
I'd run out of steam long before that happened.
I couldn't count on its Status dropping, either.
It was dropping, if only a little.
But compared to other monsters, the rate of decrease was extremely slow.
For the Status reduction to become noticeable enough to matter, it would take an absurdly long time.
And yeah, I'd probably die long before then.
The Paralyzing Evil Eye — which held the potential for a one-shot turnaround.
I probably shouldn't get my hopes up with that, either.
The fire dragon's Status Ailment Resistance had gone up to skill level 2.
If its Proficiency happened to be near its limit, that would be one thing, but if not, the dragon's resistance would increase faster than my paralysis could accumulate.
I didn't think it was completely nullified or anything, but hoping that the fire dragon would become paralyzed felt like wishful thinking.
This was no good, that was no good.
That left me with very limited options.
The most effective method among them was to bombard it with poison at a level that exceeded its resistance.
My Spider Venom was the skill with the highest lethality among all my offensive capabilities.
Even a fire dragon with Status Ailment Resistance couldn't possibly take Spider Venom without a scratch.
But a single hit probably wouldn't kill it.
Even landing a lucky punch wouldn't change that.
I needed to land my attacks more reliably, more thoroughly.
But the Flame Cloak was in the way.
Flames so intense that even a graze would cost me HP.
Without breaking through that, I couldn't even hope to land a proper attack.
And if I failed, any attempt to go on the offensive would just result in me getting burned alive.
While my thoughts raced, my body-dedicated division was desperately dodging the fire dragon's attacks.
I'd completely abandoned offense and focused solely on evasion — and even then I was barely keeping up.
Even if my magic-dedicated division fired counterattack spells, they were effortlessly blown away by the combination of Reverse Scale and Flame Cloak.
The poison mist I'd used to massacre a horde of monsters before was also rendered meaningless against the Flame Cloak.
The fire dragon took to the air.
Seeing this, I hastily adjusted the poison I wanted using Poison Synthesis.
A moment later, fire erupted from the dragon's maw.
An enormous breath attack swept across the ground.
This was the Hellfire Breath, learned at Fire Dragon skill level 10.
That wide-area annihilation breath blasted away the surrounding earth, melted it, and transformed the area into a fresh sea of magma.
I hastily jumped and, at the apex, activated Weak Poison through Poison Synthesis.
I generated the maximum quantity I could synthesize and took refuge inside the massive water droplet.
Since I'd reset my damage-related parameters to minimum, my HP loss wasn't too severe.
My retreat into the Weak Poison droplet and the fire dragon's breath engulfing the earth happened almost simultaneously.
The shockwave alone was causing the Weak Poison to evaporate.
My HP was dropping even without taking a direct hit.
Before the Weak Poison evaporated completely, I extended a thread to the ceiling and hurriedly evacuated.
Without looking back, I fled along the ceiling.
The fire dragon naturally gave chase, but I managed to escape over the newly formed magma before it could catch up.
A fireball hurtled toward me.
I kicked off the ceiling and hurled myself into the air.
The fireball detonated precisely where I'd been moments ago.
My body, thrown out into the open, began to fall under gravity's pull.
As if it had been waiting for exactly that, the fire dragon's fangs lunged at me from above.
I quietly pulled on a thread I'd secretly shot toward the ceiling, staying out of the fire dragon's line of sight.
Simultaneously, I synthesized Spider Venom with a paralytic component.
The fire dragon's body passed directly beneath me.
Its body thrashed wildly in midair.
My enhanced vision witnessed the fire dragon clench its jaws shut, then twist in a panic to avoid swallowing the poison.
The poison decoy strategy that had dispatched every monster in the Middle Layer had failed.
But I exploited that opening and managed to descend to the ground once more.
And that was my mistake.
On the ground, the monsters the fire dragon had summoned earlier had already gathered.
Surrounded by monsters with nowhere to move, I was completely cornered.
And then came the fire dragon's second Hellfire Breath.
My body was swallowed by the flames without any chance of resistance.
And then, unable to even fight back, my body was burned to nothing by the fire — not even leaving ash behind before vanishing completely.