I flew away from the approaching dragons as quickly as I could. To my surprise, I was able to outpace them without too much difficulty. Unsurprisingly, the dragons chased after me.

The dragons were not as massive as I would have expected. Perhaps because they were only level 39. They were each somewhere between 25 and 50 feet, including their very long tails.

With Mana Sensing, I could tell that they were chalk-full of mana, and each dragon had a different affinity—Air, Earth, Void, Time, and Space.

I paused when I identified the last one. Samantha, true to her task-master self, had made me memorize as many different Mana attunements as I could. Most of them were intuitive. Space was an attunement that I didn’t encounter all that much, with the exception of Teleportation Circles.

I could only imagine that Space-attuned mana would allow the dragon to teleport.

But so far, it hadn’t. It seemed the other dragons were content to fly after me, chasing me around this endless prairie.

Are you there? I had been checking in with Samantha on semi-regular intervals. I was part worried for her, part glad to be left alone in my head, part worried for myself since I couldn’t rely on her advice or skills, but also part suspicious that she was still there, in the back of my head, taking everything in, or testing me to see how I would cope without her.

The bullseye that showed up on my window was line-of-sight, which meant I didn’t know how to use Mana Sensing to aim and fire a Mana Cannon behind me, and I didn’t want to always be flying with my neck craned, looking over my shoulder.

Fortunately, since I didn’t have to worry about crashing into anything, I had some leeway to experiment.

I cut my engines, spun the Aviaton around 180 degrees, and then continued flying away, backwards.

Now, I could easily practice targeting my Mana Cannon.

Fortunately, they were flying in a straight line.

I targeted the Air-attuned dragon first, firing a Void Bolt towards it.

The Void Bolt clipped the dragon’s wings, leaving a bleeding hole in the dragon’s leathery wings, but the dragon didn’t seem to care very much.

I fired a Void Bolt again, this time at the Earth Dragon, the largest of the five.

It was a solid hit—the bolt traveled directly through the chest of the Earth Dragon, and the dragon fell to the ground.

It felt anticlimactic, really, watching one of the five dragons fall so easily, with no buildup.

I heard an angry roar, first distant, and then uncannily close.

Mana Sensing showed me that the Space-attuned dragon had vanished, and then appeared directly on top of me.

I tried to react, but I was too slow. The dragon whacked the rim of my Aviaton, hard, with its tail, with enough force to send my Aviaton spinning upside down.

The tail hadn’t cracked the shield, though.

I felt like vomiting as the rapid spins finally slowed down, and the Aviaton automatically stabilized itself, only for the dragon to slap a rim again so that my whole ship was upside down, and then ram me again, directly towards the quickly approaching ground.

I found myself falling towards the ground, unable to stabilize myself before a brutal crash landing into a nearby hill.

I barely had time to put 50 points into Physical Defense before taking a rough landing, plowing through the hill and burying my Aviaton in the dirt.

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The Space-attuned dragon followed behind me, before I could regain control of my Aviaton, it rammed into me again, this time pressing its whole body against me, and then opening its gigantic mouth and breathing a continuous stream of fire on my Mana Shield.

Shit.

I tried not to panic. I was hanging upside-down in my harness, buried in a pit several yards deep, being breathed on by a dragon.

Forcing my hands to stay calm, I spun the mana cannon towards where I knew the dragon was, and fired.

Once, twice, three times, until the stream of fire stopped, and the Space-attuned dragon was dead in front of me.

The challenging next step was to figure out how to flip my Aviaton right-side up. If Samantha were here, she could do this in a heartbeat.

At least, I knew which way was forward, and so did my Aviaton. I had the Aviaton move backward slowly, letting it rise up a slight incline that my collision had created, until I was upside-down on the open prairie.

Then, just as the built-in stabilizers flipped the Aviaton over, another dragon rammed into me, driving me into my own little hole again and making my Mana Shield flicker.

But I was ok with that. I trusted my shield, spun my Mana Cannon, and fired, point blank, killing the Air-attuned dragon.

A Void Bolt hit my shield, but I tanked it, turning my own Mana Cannons towards the Void dragon, and firing.

But I was suddenly aware that both remaining dragons were moving at double, or triple, my own speed. They were already dodging by the time I fired, and the Void dragon was easily able to avoid my attacks.

Dense, highly concentrated streams of fire were cascading over my Mana Shield.

Then the full weight of a dragon pressed down against my Aviaton, frantically trying to break the shield that I had.

If this were a Personal Mana Shield, it would have given way long ago. If I were short on Mana Crystals, I would have been toast. If these dragons were higher leveled, I would have been toast.

Technically, these dragons were C-rank. But they were also level 39, which meant they were far weaker than a C-rank dragon at level 89. In other words, their attacks were certainly not peak C-rank attacks, and my abundance of Mana Crystals meant as long as an attack didn’t short out the shield, my Aviaton wouldn’t run out of power.

I was still upside-down, but I wasn’t going to let that stop me. I turned my Mana Cannon, and fired again, and again, this time, directly onto the Void Dragon’s exposed underbelly.

The hardest part, next, was figuring out how to get out of here.

It took some finagling, but soon enough, I was free of the dragon corpse.

If I were Samantha, I would probably try to bag each corpse before killing the last dragon, but I didn’t want to leave anything to chance—that would require getting out of the Aviaton.

The Time-attuned dragon was moving incredibly quickly around me, but I wasn’t too worried. Nothing the other dragons had done had been able to crack my shield.

The dragon flew in tight circles around me, breathing fire every once in a while.

Once I was right-side-up, though, I just focused on flying away, and eventually, I was able to escape the dragon’s Time Dilation Skill.

Then it was only a matter of time and target practice before I killed the last dragon.

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Please don’t be 25 dragons. Please don’t be 25 dragons…

When the next green prairie appeared, I saw to my delight that it was five teams of 5 people each. Elves, dwarves, Metans, humans, and Fey.

The battle was a piece of cake. None of my opponents had true flight capabilities. I felt a little guilty, as I took my time, essentially using them as target practice.

They’re not real. It’s like a video game.

Previously, against the dragons, I had only been able to move and shoot at the same time because I was moving in a straight line, and so were the dragons that were chasing me. But now, I practiced moving more erratically, tracking individual soldiers with my Mana Cannon in the process.

Of course, these people did their best to attack me, too. Archers, mages, sorcerers, even some martial energy, all flew towards me.

But nothing was able to crack my Mana Shield. Victory through overwhelming firepower. It left a bitter taste in my mouth, killing humanoids in the Infinite Tower, but I would be crazy to let that stop me. I could hear Petra in the back of my head. “Alright, fine. You can leave the Infinite Tower. Turn down the chance to gain several items that are guaranteed to be top-tier on Earth. You’ll just have to admit to me that you couldn’t stomach a bloody video game.”

I could see the tears and wide-eyed fear in the eyes of the last Metan soldier, but I swallowed the saliva that had been building in my throat, and I wished to God that the next floor’s opponents would be less humanoid.

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One hundred monsters. Many land-based, but about a quarter of them flying. I could make out Wyverns, Manticores, and Dragons in the air, with Hydras, Cerberuses, Chimeras, and more on the ground.

I took off immediately, flying away from the flying creatures and ranged attacks, and then started picking them off one by one.

I knew what to watch out for, now—I wouldn’t let anyone touch my Aviaton. I could fly faster than everyone in the air, so it wasn’t too tall of an order.

I fled in a straight line towards the boundless horizon, flying backwards so that I could easily target any pursuing flying creatures. Then, I continued my target practice.