Alex jumped off the ground using his incredible strength and landed directly onto the beast's back, 200 metres in the air.
The beast tried to shake him off at first, but failed to do so.
The two of them got entangled in the air as they rapidly rose, then fell over and over again as the beast kept trying to fight back against Alex.
But it wasn't flexible enough to reach its back where Alex was located, hence it tried to use momentum to lose him instead.
In the end, that wasn't enough to shake him off either.
Alex was like a bug stuck to its skin with glue.
There was nothing it could do to shake him off.
Seeing that it couldn't get rid of him, it decided to take a new approach.
Roarrrr!
It roared as it started to rapidly accelerate.
Upwards...
It started flying directly up, as high as it could.
"Shit, this thing's trying to suffocate me!"
Alex realised what it was trying to do immediately, but the skin of the beast was so much tougher than it was as a C rank.
It was taking him much longer to penetrate it, even with his full power.
If he couldn't break through the scales in time before they reached the edge of the atmosphere, then he would be in some deep shit.
However, things continued to not go his way.
He only made it halfway through the thick scales by the time the beast flew above the clouds, then even higher until the sky eventually started to fade from light blue to black, as it reached the farthest edges of Ceres-9's atmosphere.
However, it didn't expect that Alex would use this tactic to conserve oxygen against it.
The beast's mouth was a cavernous, dark expanse, its foul breath a mixture of rotting flesh and acrid fumes.
Alex stood on its tongue, feeling the beast's entire body tremble with rage and frustration. He knew he had one shot at this, and he had to make it count.
"Fuck it," Alex muttered under his breath.
He concentrated the remainder of his energy into one final, desperate attack.
The Phoenix flames, already intense, flared up around his body, becoming a blazing inferno.
With the injection of literally all the energy he had left, they became much, much more intense.
Their power instantly rose, matching that of the Variant class C+ rank beast he was currently in the maw of.
The beast could feel the sheer amount of energy concentrated in its mouth, but it couldn't do anything about it. It had to keep its mouth open if it wanted to stay conscious, and if it closed it, then Alex would be able to remain conscious by using the air that the beast had left its body.
The beast was frustrated and anxious; no matter what method it thought of, it always ended up with it being on the losing side.
And after just a few milliseconds had passed, its worst fears had come true.
Alex's body became a blindingly bright beacon of light, as he was covered from head to toe in Phoenix flames.
Underneath all that light, Alex was in agony. His muscles screamed, his bones felt like they were on fire, and his mind was in a haze of pain. He was barely hanging on to consciousness anymore, and right before he passed out, he issued two last commands to his body.
His first command was to disregard the Regenerative heat aspect of his Phoenix flames, which was why he was in so much agony.
This enabled the destructive aspect of them to become even more potent as the energy reserved for regeneration was syphoned towards the destruction.
And his last command before he passed out was simple.
'Jump!'
His body listened to him, but Alex was no longer conscious enough to see the results.