After tracking down the dragon, he immediately uses the powerful beam that he took from the dragon to his target. Everything happens so fast that the dragon does not have any time to reach and before it knows it, its head has been vaporized by his attack.
Splat. BOOM.
Upon accurately hitting the dragon's head, the blast continues to travel and explodes once hitting a wall. He then lands his griffin form in front of the headless dragon before it collapses to the floor with a loud thud. As usual, he goes straight to its chest and harvests its magic core with his tongue while still in his gryphon form.
(Am I this strong or is this dragon just significantly weaker than the last one?)
Surprised by his current strength, he asks himself. He raises the massive twelve inch long royal blue crystal in his tongue. He stares at it for a few seconds, before he pulls his tongue in and crushes it with only his tongue strength.
(Hm. This one is actually not as powerful as the previous one, probably around eighty percent.)
From that moment, he realizes that every individual in a monster race is not equally as powerful as one another. Before, he did not notice any difference due to their relatively small mana reservoir. With a larger sample, like the two big dragons, he is able to tell how big the gap of power between them is.
For now, he will base the strength of a monster by how powerful and big this magic crystal is. But that is only for raw power as there are other factors their physical size and build and skill set that he needs to consider.
Since he has eaten a similar dragon, which is actually a greater dragon, he decides to leave it there. His only purpose is the magic core and he does not mind if other monsters scavenge this massive feast. He does not know how the ecosystem of this place works, so he is trying to go with the flow.
Checking on his radar, he detects another greater dragon several hundreds of meters away, leaving the dragon's corpse behind.
◆◇◆◇◆◇
Hours have passed and he hunted a couple of those greater dragons scattered on this floor. He encounters every other monster he has seen so far, but he chooses to only hunt those greater dragons as they have the most amount of upgrade he receives. Also, hunting one is more energy and time efficient than taking down dozens of inferior monsters.
Every magic core he consumes powers him up even more to the point that he considers himself as powerful as that massive deep red dragon. However, in his opinion, he is not satisfied with his current growth and craves for more. He will fight that dragon if there is a massive gap between them.
As he is roaming the place, he memorizes as many hallways and paths as possible, creating a vague map in his mind. In the end, he ends up finding another flight of stairs, which also leads to the upper level.
(This one also leads the same. Does it mean that the floor behind is probably not the lowest floor. No, there's no such special room on this floor. It does not matter right now. Let's see what lies above.)
He then transforms into an assassin theraphosid and begins his ascend.
◆◇◆◇◆◇
(Nothing else changes.)
Upon reaching the end of the stairs, he is disappointed that the next floor is not so different from the previous ones. He still has to activate night vision just to see the spacious hallways.
Looking at his radar, see finds more monsters than he can find in the same radius on the other floors. The variety of monsters found on this floor are still the same as the floors below.
What confuses him is that he cannot find a single greater dragon, his favorite meal and source of power. He tries moving to other places several times but he fails to find a greater dragon. He begins to think that those dragons can be only found on the floors below.
Aside from greater dragons, the monsters he prefers to eat are the true dragons. Wyverns actually have toxic flesh so it tastes too bitter for him in spite of the fact that he can actually tolerate poison.
There are other dragonic monsters like drakes, amphipteres, and lindwyrms, but he prefers not to. Drakes are just too tough and gamey while the rest offers little meat. Their value part is just the magic core.
He travels through the maze looking for a greater dragon. He checks on his radar every time just to see the presence of inferior monsters. Wherever he goes, he cannot find something stronger than a dragon.
Even though he already knows that there would be weaker monsters on the next floor, he still decides to go up. However, as he is about to reach the stairs, half a kilometer afar, he suddenly senses a powerful being that is descending through the stairs.
He stops his wings and observes it thoroughly. Upon further inspection, the being apparently possesses a humongous amount of mana, he confirms it around the same as that massive dragon.
(So much power... and mana.)
Aside from its sheer power, he notices that all of it is highly concentrated in a small body. He does not think he ever encountered such a powerful being that size. When he tries to inspect its size and shape, he is shocked that it is suspiciously shaped like something he knows well.
(A human?)
With a small body consisting of two arms and standing on two legs, he immediately suspects that it is undoubtedly a human, or something very similar. In addition, he notices that it is injured and hurriedly descending through the stairs.
However, his excitement about possibly meeting a human instantly gets suppressed by his monstrous body. He speculates that the human would probably attack him the moment they see his appearance. But deep within, his mind has another idea.
(If our meeting goes south, I would make them into my nourishment. Fuck my human side, I am fulfilling my role as a monster.)
In such a whimsical decision, he quickly soars through the maze. Upon reaching the stairs, he hides his dragonic form's presence by activating the mantis's camouflage before waiting for his target to fall into his trap.