[Chapter 311. Effective Level]

As the dragon dove directly at him, Searanox flexed his muscles and sprang into a full sprint toward the center of the platform. The stone cracked and shattered beneath his boots from the explosive movement. In less than a second, he stood dead center, while the dragon crashed—open maw first—into the position near the rim of the platform where he had just been standing.

The impact was deafening—a thunderous crack that echoed through the caldera as the beast's massive skull slammed into the volcanic floor. Its teeth scraped against the stone, sending sparks flying in every direction. The sheer kinetic force of its momentum created a shockwave that rippled across the platform, making the very ground tremble beneath Searanox's feet. The dragon's snarl of frustration was muffled by its own impact, its one good eye rolling wildly as it dislodged itself from the crater it had created, chunks of broken rock falling from its jaws.

Iris, meanwhile, was flying on top of the travel drone along the caldera's outer wall before it began to rise even higher, bringing her up toward the very edge. The drone's ascent was smooth and swift, its anti-gravity field humming softly as it navigated the vertical terrain. Iris's silver eyes narrowed, her grip tightening on the hilt of her Eldritch Zweihänder as she scanned the battlefield below, calculating angles of attack and potential vulnerabilities.

The Greater Drake pushed its maw out from the stone and fixed its eyes onto Searanox, who was standing with his rifle raised tens of meters away. The beast's movements were sluggish, its massive body protesting with each shift, but its eyes burned with unrelenting fury. Blood dripped from its jaws, sizzling as it hit the scorching stone.

A violet beam shot out from the rifle, blasting the beast right in the head and leaving cracked scales in its wake. The impact was precise. The energy beam struck the exact spot between the dragon's remaining functional eye and its nasal cavity, causing the beast to recoil violently.

His remaining offensive drones continued to blast away at it, but the beast didn't spare them more than a passing glance before beating its massive wings once again, creating a strong gust of wind that pushed them away. The drones struggled against the sudden gale, their stabilization systems whining in protest as they were buffeted by the turbulent air. Some were knocked off course, their energy beams going wide as they tried to compensate, while others were pushed back several meters, their firing positions entirely compromised. The dragon's wings, though tattered and bleeding, still generated enough force to disrupt the coordinated attack, each beat sending waves of hot air that warped the very space around them.

The Drake's tail whipped through the space where the drones had been moments before, carving a deep gouge into the stone floor with its barbed tip. The miss was deliberate—a warning rather than a genuine attempt to destroy the drones, a display of the beast's growing frustration and tactical adaptability as it reassessed its approach to the battle.

Its maw began to glow with a deep orange radiance that traveled down its throat, illuminating its esophagus with the light of a miniature sun. Unlike its previous attacks, this one was thinner and more concentrated. The fiery stream coalesced into a laser-like beam of pure destruction aimed solely at Searanox. The air around the jet of flame warped and shimmered, distorting the very fabric of space as the temperature skyrocketed to impossible levels.

D2 positioned itself directly between Searanox and the oncoming inferno. Its enhanced barrier flared to life with a brilliant blue-white light that momentarily pushed back against the orange torrent. For a precious couple of seconds, the drone held its ground, its systems screaming in protest as it absorbed the full force of the dragon's wrath. The barrier shimmered and distorted under the extreme thermal assault, fractures beginning to spiderweb across its surface. The cracking of glass was barely audible under the roaring of the flames.

When it finally shattered, the sound was lost in the inferno. Shards of blue light and drifting energy embers were swallowed by the orange flames within a heartbeat. D2 spun wildly, its outer hull blackening and warping from the residual heat before it plummeted toward the lava below.

Searanox didn't watch his drone fall—he was already moving. His body coiled and uncoiled with explosive speed, sidestepping the jet of flames that now scoured the platform where he had stood moments before. The stone beneath his boots glowed cherry red, then began to melt and bubble as the concentrated beam swept across it.

Even with his Ring of Intermediate Fire Resistance, the proximity to the attack made his skin prickle with heat. The air around him tasted of burnt stone, acrid and suffocating. Despite the danger, his aim remained steady. His magitech rifle spat out violet energy beams with rhythmic precision. Each shot struck the dragon's face—sometimes hitting an already damaged scale, sometimes finding new weaknesses to exploit. The more seconds passed, the more the dragon became fixated on him alone, its remaining eye burning with an intensity that bordered on madness.

It was ignoring the drones, ignoring the tactical disadvantage, ignoring everything except the irritating insect that refused to die.

In the next moment, the dragon broke through its own flames with a thunderous roar that shook the very foundations of the caldera. Its massive maw was just a meter away from Searanox—so close that he could count the individual teeth lining its jaws, each one the size of a dagger, serrated and dripping with saliva.

Searanox had a grin on his face as he watched the dragon's scarlet scales push through its own flames, the beast's entire body a furnace of barely contained fury. Its slitted pupils, already narrow from the intensity of its focus, widened before contracting in rapid succession—a clear sign of confusion and rage as it processed the unexpected, eerie calm of its prey.

Before it could react to whatever trap he had set, there was a bellowing noise coming from above. The sound was unlike anything the dragon had heard before—not a roar, not a cry, not the crackle of flames, but something sharp and charged with immense magical energy.

"Arcane Strike!"

Through the choking dust and acrid smoke, Iris descended like a falling star, her form obscured except for the black edge of her blade. The sword danced with crackling arcs of lightning that pulsed through the intense turquoise glow, illuminating her silhouette in fleeting flashes against the volcanic gloom. She came down on the dragon's massive head, not in a conventional swing, but by positioning her Zweihänder like a spear aimed at the earth.

She had executed the maneuver perfectly—kicking off the inverted travel drone high above the caldera's center, using the hovering machine as a launching pad to gain the perfect angle for maximum penetration. Her boots had cracked the drone's surface, destroying it as she launched herself into her final descent.

The blade pierced through the thick scales and dense bone protecting the dragon's skull with sickening ease. The sound of cracking bone echoed across the platform as the entire length of her weapon vanished into the beast's cranium. Lightning erupted from the point of impact in violent, branching tendrils that illuminated the dragon's pained features and spread across its body in spiderweb patterns.

The beast thrashed wildly in its death throes, its massive wings beating one last time in a desperate attempt to stay airborne before it crashed heavily into the ground right in front of Searanox.

The impact sent a shockwave through the volcanic floor, pushing him back several meters despite his braced stance. Iris was thrown clear by the force of the landing, her body tumbling through the air before landing with surprising grace inside the deep gouge Searanox had blasted into the rock with his opening attack. Her Zweihänder remained embedded in the dragon's skull. Lightning continued to arc from it, the turquoise glow slowly fading as the beast's life force officially extinguished.

Before the final sizzle of magical energy dissipated, a blue window opened in his vision.

Searanox walked forward and placed his heavy boot firmly on the dragon's smoking muzzle, the metal sizzling slightly against the still-hot scales. The gesture was almost ceremonial—a final assertion of dominance over the beast that had nearly turned the caldera into his tomb twice now. He leaned forward, his shadow falling across the reptilian face as he gazed toward the deep gouge where Iris had been thrown by the dragon's death throes.

"Tell me, how is a team of level twenty-fives supposed to deal with something like this?" Searanox asked aloud. "It seems impossible to me. The Salamanders and Turtles... sure, they could kill them. But the boss?"

Iris pushed herself up from the cracked, glass-like surface of the impact crater, obsidian shards clinging to her armor. A few cuts marred her dark armor. She shook her head to clear it before answering.

"They don't. At least not with a team as small as ours. This Dungeon may say it is level twenty-five, but that is just the base level shown by the System. There is something called the effective level..." Her voice shifted subtly, taking on that precise, analytical cadence she used when explaining System mechanics—the exact same tone she had once used as a Guide construct before her awakening.

She sprang from the crater with liquid grace, landing softly on the dragon's corpse, which had slowly begun to dissolve into particles of blue light. "Just like how you and I are operating on a level that is far above our shown level, this dungeon behaves the exact same way."

As she placed her foot on the dragon's massive skull and pulled her Zweihänder free with a sickening squelch of bone and tissue, the turquoise energy around the blade flickered before stabilizing.

Searanox looked up at her, his expression unreadable beneath the caldera's eerie orange glow. "You told me that the levels shown by the System are direct indicators of what level is needed to beat the dungeon."

"That was back then, right as the System freshly integrated this world," Iris explained. "With each stage, the System changes the rules until it is fully established in the way it has been on other worlds. But unlike other worlds, Earth is undergoing a forced evolution. For it is—"

Iris's words cut off abruptly as she stumbled forward, clutching her head with one hand. Her silver eyes screwed shut, a low hiss escaping between her clenched teeth as phantom pressure built intensely behind her temples. "This is... all I can say."

Searanox looked at her, his eyes narrowing into dangerous slits. "Yeah, yeah, I know. Something about a causality event that would have destroyed this planet. But what does that have to do with the dungeons and their wrong levels?" His voice held an edge of frustration, tempered only by the memory of previous instances where the System had violently punished her for revealing too much.

Iris sighed slightly, the sound barely audible above the popping of cooling lava around them. "Just like the beasts that are now respawning inside the dungeons, this specific dungeon does not follow the rules of the first Integration." She pointed with her bloodied sword toward the half-dissolved dragon corpse, which was rapidly breaking down into streams of blue light that swirled and rose toward the sky like ethereal smoke.

"I still don't get it. Does that mean the shown levels are wrong from now on?" Searanox shifted his weight, his armored boots grinding against the cracked obsidian floor as he watched the dragon's form continue to dissipate.

"No, they are not wrong. This..." She gestured with her blade toward the nearly vanished corpse, the turquoise glow around it pulsing weakly. "...is a rare event. A dragon should not be in a dungeon of this level. Levels are indicators of 'power', but you will soon learn that there is far more to power than just a level. I would tell you what else there is, but I can feel the System's influence tightening just by telling you this much."

"Alright, so dragons are bad news. Mostly because they have something about them I don't understand yet, and the level is effectively wrong." Searanox ran a hand through his hair, the gesture betraying his deep irritation. He glanced toward where the four women waited inside the tunnel.

"I'm sorry, Searanox," she said, looking down at the ground. Her voice was just a whisper, barely distinguishable from the bubbling of the lava pools below. Her shoulders slumped slightly.