Chapter 284 Defeated?

[Third Person POV],

Ace had observed a habit from the dragon phantom.

He observed that the dragon always roars when it is hurt or about to strike. Although this habit of the dragon phantom appeared to be quite normal and was in fact normal, Ace had an idea because of it.

For one, Ace was the only person in the group who was still unranked, so his attacks were unexceptional and carried no real damage that could reasonably injure the dragon phantom. In addition, he was unable to engage the dragon phantom in close combat.

Ace had no confidence in even penetrating the dragon phantom's shell, despite the fact that it was not any weaker than when it first materialised.

Ace was certain that approaching the dragon phantom at any moment would be a suicide attempt. The risk involved in accepting this risk was simply too great.

Therefore, even if Ace intended to use the explode runic explosive to harm the dragon phantom, he would need to get near it in order for the explosion to have a chance of making direct contact with the phantom figure.

Ace had to get very close to the dragon phantom in order to decrease the distance at which it would be ready to defend against the explosives because if he attempted to hurl the explosives from a great distance, the dragon phantom would be able to defend against it or dodge it with ease.

There was also the issue that, despite the damage that Ace had seen from the explode runic explosive, it was still unclear how much damage it could cause that would actually matter in the battle.

Ace wanted to abandon every plan of getting too near to the dragon phantom because of the high risk it represented when a thought occurred to him.

Although the dragon phantom had no flesh and a real body and was more of a vessel in some ways, it nonetheless had a body, and most species also had to be concerned about internal damage to their bodies when battling because it could potentially compromise them.

In some cases, being injured internally during a struggle posed a greater risk than having a crippled limb because the former could render the victim incapable of moving their body to avoid harm or flee.

Of course, one's adversaries would first have to get past their external protection before one could even cause an internal injury, but this was not the point.

The point is that even though the dragon phantom had a body devoid of flesh and blood, Ace wondered whether it would still sustain a severe blow if it were struck from the inside, where its exterior body's defences were ineffective.

How was Ace doing to even land an attack on the inside of the dragon phantom, even if this concept seemed plausible to work?

Ace only remembered the dragon phantom's roaring behaviour at the precise moment he had this thought.

He recalled that the dragon always roars when it is in pain or about to attack, but even with this memory, Ace still had to approach the dragon phantom and toss the explosives into its mouth, which came with its own set of dangers.

But had Ace ever been reluctant to take a chance that might threaten his life before?

Ace has never shied away from a task because he thought it might endanger his life. The only time Ace would not try to take a risk is if there was a specific obstacle or if Ace did not believe the risk was worthwhile.

If Ace was ever scared of taking risks, he would never have tried to join in this battle against the dragon phantom.

When Ace realised he would have to approach the dragon phantom in order to have a chance of harming it, he only gave it some thought before deciding to take the risk. If one were to rank all the risks Ace had taken, one could say that this particular one was at the very top of the list.

After doing some calculations and making a decision, Ace immediately ran in the direction of the dragon phantom as soon as he saw Andrew Dawn unleash his final attack. When the dust had cleared from Andrew Dawn's attack, the dragon phantom had opened its mouth to roar, but before it could do so, two metallic balls had been thrown into its mouth by a certain someone.

Because it was caught off guard by someone suddenly throwing an object in its mouth, The dragon phantom was slow to react as it even close his mouth to turn and look at Ace who was already running as fast as his legs could carry him but before it could complete its action to turn and look at Ace completely, it suddenly felt its mouth increase in size as a terrifying sound escaped from its mouth.

BOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!

As both explosives exploded together, the gust of wind that came with it was so compressed that even after coming out of the dragon's phantom mouth, it still reached Ace's location as he carried him into the air to throw him in another direction.

"Ugh", Ace groaned as he landed roughly on the ground as his body rolled by several metres before stopping.

Due to the exhaustion that has been caused by fighting dozens of mutated rats that even the basic stamina pill could not completely extinguish, Ace struggled to reposition his body to get on his feet and when he turned to look at the location of the dragon phantom, all he saw was a cloud of dust and nothing else as it was hard to see through the dust and observe what was happening in it.

Andrew Dawn and his men were also in different locations as they were all already prepared and left their location when they saw Ace throw two metallic balls into the dragon phantom's mouth before madly running away from his location.

Andrew Dawn had no idea what the metallic balls were but his men knew as they had seen Ace take out similar metallic balls that act as explosives to throw at mutated rats.

What they were puzzled about is that from the damage they've seen the explosives cause whenever they were put into action, they were still able to tell that despite the explosive being very destructive in its own right, it was going to cause a limited amount of damage to the dragon phantom.

If even they could know this, then Ace who was using the explosives several times should be aware of this as well.

What they were not aware of was that the explosives they thought were already destructive enough were the far lesser version of the real deal as Ace hadn't used any of the four explode runic explosives he had in his storage ring. He had used two now so there were only two remaining but Ace wasn't concerned about this as he was more concerned about whether his attack was effective or not but after waiting for a few more seconds, there was no reaction coming from the cloud of dust.

"I-is it over?" Ace muttered when he saw that there was no reaction whatsoever from the dragon phantom but when he recalled the effect of the explosion just now that was indeed very violent, Ace thought his attack should have been more effective than he thought.

When Ace thought of this, he relaxed his guard a little as his legs started to shake a little from exhaustion but just before he could release a sigh, Ace heard a familiar roar and before he could react he saw a gigantic figure suddenly appear in front of him.

It was the dragon of course and although his figure was now very transparent to the point that it appeared it would soon become impossible, Ace had other things to worry about as he saw the huge claw of the dragon slowly descend on him from above.

It was as if time had stopped itself as the only thing Ace could see was the dragon phantom claw descending on his head as his bone started cracking from the air pressure that came with the claw even before the claw fully descended.

While Ace's brain was working at full speed, he could not move his body as his speed was far lesser than the dragon phantom. Ace thought that it was finally time for him to die and while he felt it was unfortunate since he hadn't even evolved yet now that all his job requirements were complete. Ace was still able to react as he decided to drop one last attack on the dragon phantom before leaving.

Due to the fact that it was only a single thought that was needed to remove an item from the storage ring, two metallic balls which were the last explode runic explosives suddenly appeared in Ace's hand as he quickly infused his mana into the explosives to activate them before he was fully crushed.

After just before the dragon phantom claw could descend fully and before Ace could confirm that he had indeed activated the explode runic explosives, he suddenly felt his vision shift as the environment in front of his eyes changed and just before he could fully understand what was going on, a loud sound interrupted his thought process.

BOOM!!!!!