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A minute later, I was standing outside the gate of the village, watching the flying object in the distance get closer by the second.
Dragons having excellent vision, Thryz obviously saw me standing between him and the village, and started monologuing at me.
He started with a growling laugh before saying, [This must be a village of cowards. Instead of sending all their warriors, they send only one. They must have gone mad with despair. I almost felt insulted.]
My god… Professor Sageira was right about young dragons. He is going full-on power-trip mode. He is spouting third-rate villain lines at me while thinking I do not understand what he is saying. I am glad my helmet is covering my face. Otherwise, my cringing face would be on full display.
[Be honored, warrior, for your bravery in facing me alone. I will end you quickly!] Thryz said as he started making a dive toward me, maw open and ready to devour me.
As the dragon got closer to me, I was deciding what to do for my opening move, and after running through all the non-lethal things I could do, I decided on ye olde punch.
I waited until Thryz was just upon me, and unable to change his trajectory, before skipping Aura and going straight to Primal Aura. I then spun out of the way and used the momentum of the spin to throw a haymaker.
As my fist connected with the side of Thryz's jaw, it made a booming sound as his head snapped to the side, causing his body to follow.
This diverted Thryz's bulk from crashing into the village gate, but his crashing body did take out around ten meters of the log wall and a shed behind it.
Before Thryz could recover from his crash, I gathered mana in my foot, raised it, and stomped the ground. I used the mana in my foot to project my mana into the earth, and with instinctive magic, I loosened a section of earth below Thryz.
Using the movement of my body to help me visualize what I wanted the earth below Thryz to do, I heaved my body and punched both my hands out in the direction away from the village. This caused two thick pillars to punch out of the ground at a 45° angle, hitting the dragon in the chest and belly, launching him into the distance.
As the dragon tumbled through the air, flailing his wings around to try to regain some control midair, I was sprinting along the ground just after him. When Thryz was falling in the descending phase of his launch, I dug both my feet into the ground and pushed off in a mighty jump to appear just above Thryz, flipped my spear around to use the butt in a downward staff strike.
Unlike the first blow I delivered while my feet were firmly on the ground, with both of us midair, the vast disparity in our mass would make any strike I land on the dragon vastly weaker, but I was holding a surprise at the butt of my spear.
Gathered at the butt of my spear was an invisible ball of hydrogen I have been collecting from the vast amount of snow in the surrounding area. And as I struck Thryz's back, I ignited it with a spark, causing an explosion that I directed away from myself.
This drastically altered Thryz's trajectory straight into the ground. As for myself, even with the blast directed away from me, it was impossible to mitigate all the explosive force, and I was thrown up in the air.
After about three seconds of ascending to the apex of my airtime, I started falling and used air instinctive magic to give myself small nudges while correcting my descent, straight at Thryz.
And as the poor dragon was once again trying to get his legs under him, I came down and cracked him over the head. As my strike slid off his head, I fell to the ground and broke my fall with a roll. When I got to my feet, I jumped out of striking range while expecting a retaliatory strike. But when I look back, I only saw a dragon rubbing his head with one arm and trying to reach for his back with the other. All while letting out a growling whine.
Knowing this to be a beatdown in order to teach the young dragon the dangers of "little mortals" I could not finish the fight so fast. So I just stood there while looking at the somewhat comical scene of a dragon unsuccessfully trying to reach for the spot on his back, and I smacked him with an explosion.
When Thryz was done rubbing his head, he looked at me with rage in his eyes. [Puny mortal. That will be the first and last lucky strike you will ever get on me… I changed my mind. There will be no quick death for you, I will freeze and break you apart piece by piece until you are a half-frozen stump!]
Thryz the reared his head back as he inhaled, which told me what he was going to do next, a breath attack. I took a ready stance as he exhaled in my direction, but unlike the fabled dragon's fire that was so popular, a white cloud spewed forth.
From what I learned while speaking with Professor Sageira, I would not be able to evade the cone of the breath attack at the distance I was at. That left me with two options. Block it or meet it with an AOE attack of my own, and I was not confident of meeting the raw power of a breath attack with my human amounts of mana.
That pretty much left me with one option. I stomped the ground with earth instinctive magic, causing a chunk of stone shaped like the sharp bow of a ship to jut up in front of me, just in time for the white breath attack to hit it. This caused the breath attack to be diverted to the sides of me.
As I observed the white breath attack flow around and above me. Part of the breath attack seemed to have hit the stone at a weird angle and splashed on my gauntlet, and when I looked at it, I saw it bubbling away as I saw ice crystals form in its place. This reminded me of something I saw in my previous world. "Do Frost Dragons spit liquid nitrogen as their breath attacks?"
I moved closer into the cover of the rock as I observed my surroundings more closely. It may really be true. I am going to have to explore this after I beat the crap out of him.