His body listened to him, and with a final, Herculean effort, Alex launched himself upward from the beast's tongue.
His body rocketed through the air, a blazing comet of Phoenix flames.
The heat and light were so intense that the beast's flesh began to sizzle and char.
The beast roared in agony, its body convulsing as the flames tore through its insides.
It tried to close its mouth, but it was too late.
The destructive force of Alex's attack was too difficult to handle.
His body had charred right through the roof of its mouth, and had shot right up, coming out on the other side.
He had essentially used his own body as a projectile.
The beast's massive form stopped all movements in an instant. Its wings stopped flapping, and it started to plummet back to the planet's surface.
The once mighty creature, bringing fear to the people of Ceres-9 the moment it stepped out of the Floodgate, now a burning wreck, crashing down to the ground with a thunderous impact.
The descent lasted a whole 9 minutes as it plummeted from orbit right down to the ground.
Dust and debris flew in all directions, and the earth shook from the force of the collision.
***
The military base was a flurry of activity, with soldiers, mercenaries and students alike all glued to their screens. The tension was palpable, and the air crackled with anticipation.
When the fight with the beast first began, a student had seen a potential money making opportunity and started a livestream, capturing the epic battle between Alex and the Variant class beast on camera, live for any viewers to see.
The title of the stream, "D Tier Student Takes on C Tier Beast Solo and Holds his own!" had initially drawn in viewers who thought it was a hoax.
However as the fight progressed and Alex toppled the beast by hacking at its ankle and Achilles tendon, the stream's viewership skyrocketed.
The comments came flooding in, with some people who were familiar with Alex's feats, likely being students of Capital Prime university themselves, revealing even more information about Alex.
Alex quickly started to become a popular name among the viewers of the livestream, and they even started chanting his name in the chat!
All of this without his knowledge as well...
The base fell silent though, as they watched Alex approach the beast.
He had just hacked at the thing's feet and eyes with those unique looking flames of his, and it looked like he was going in to finish the job now.
However, things quickly started taking a very different turn than everyone expected.
The beast started to writhe and wriggle around, until it eventually started to transform.
"C+ rank..." A nearby awakened muttered.
This revelation sent chills down the spines of everyone who was actually on Ceres-9.
Such a rank was too much for even someone like Alex to deal with, surely?
This transformation was unlike anything any of them had seen before, as it clearly wasn't normal by the fact the thing had gone up in rank.
The appearance of wings only deepened their dread.
For a moment, despair settled over the military base. Many began to silently sob, fearing the beast would soon dominate and slaughter everyone on Ceres-9 with no one strong enough to put a stop to it.
Only the B tier awakened, in other words higher life forms, could match the beast now.
Humans only gained the ability to fly when they became higher life forms, with there being a few exceptions who could do this at a lower rank due to a special talent etc.
But there was no one present on Ceres-9 who could do that.
And even if they could fly, would they be strong enough to kill the beast?