The Collector knew its loud heartbeat would give it away within a second, but in a battle as high scale in power as this, where both fighters moved at unfathomable speeds, even a single heartbeat’s worth of time was enough time for a surprise. 

The Collector rushed in with its monomolecular blades, aiming at the fighter’s heart and head simultaneously, flying forwards with its arms extended. 

Now that the Collector was now fully engaged in battle. It could feel its heart pumping wildly not only due to the Amorak power of the Heart Burst, but also because its primary core of desire, of desire for battle, was fully opened, spreading heat around its body that roused it for this glorious combat.

A battle that truly was worthy. A true battle that occupied a scale that the Collector had never before perceived upon this world. Nor one that it had ever perceived in the entirety of its existence and stored memories.

When the Collector was in its original form, it was certainly stronger than it was now, but largely through sheer scale of size and the heightened physical adaptations that came with it. But right now, even though its form was so compact, it moved with strength and speed unrivaled.

No living organism could manage to outpace the speed of a rail assisted bolter that fired hypersonic armor piercing slugs. React to, yes, but fully outpace? No. 

But the Collector was fully confident it could react to and deflect such bolts through its sheer martial and physical prowess alone. 

The fights on this world were thus more personal in scale. It was not large armies crashing against the Collector’s nigh invulnerable hide, shelling it with bombardment and energy weapons that it simply ignored, but they were duels.

Proper fights between mighty individuals. There was a face to each fighter that the Collector deemed worthy, and behind that face, there were vast years of training, dedication, and natural talent compiled to create that worth. 

These fights, these duels, these were far more rewarding, far more nourishing than any conflict against a star fleet. 

The Collector was now within the fighter’s striking range, a mere meter away, and he still looked away. Yet the Collector knew that very likely, the fighter would just easily counter the Collector’s dive with another throw, but this time, emboldened by the desire for battle flowing hot through its hyper efficient veins, the Collector was willing to make sacrifices.

It activated its Chronostasis adaptation, its four glowing red eyes gleaming even brighter as its brain and reflexes were simulated to their absolute maximum extent with psionic power.

The Collector knew how the fighter could control its power flow, but how it managed to perform its counter attacks at a speed beyond the Collector’s perception was one it needed to figure out early in the fight rather than later when it sustained too much damage to fight back.

It was willing to use any amount of mana to explosively regenerate itself to take the full brunt of this throw and a continued onslaught taking advantage of its slowed reactions post-chronostasis so as to properly analyze it.

It would shell up defensively, analyze, calculate, then – dismantle. 

In the next instant, right as the Collector’s monomolecular blades were a mere inch away from the fighter’s back and head, ready to carve both heart and processing organ out, the Collector observed everything that occurred, its perception of time slowing down to a crawl.

The fighter’s magical energy flow, which usually was kept at a minimal level, suddenly explosively surged, a massive pillar of towering green magical energy cascading out of him, its sheer quantity exceeding even that of the Collector’s in that concentrated single moment. 

The fighter had essentially been keeping his flow of mana nigh-imperceptible so as to store it for one powerful burst, thus mimicking the way Chaos mana could explosively exert itself.

However, the fighter did not just explosively and inefficiently exert its mana.

Chaos mana by nature was inefficient. In exchange for a sudden burst of sheer power, there was some ‘leakage’. A punch thrown with chaos mana did not efficiently utilize 100% of the mana used to empower it.

The average trained tinkerer that utilized it, the Collector observed, could extract about 50%, with training potentially honing it up to the 70% threshold barring anomalous prodigies.

The Collector with fine tuning and calibration could exert 84%, and that number would only continue to grow over time, likely when it observed higher caliber martial artists attuned with Chaos mana. 

In this case, however, the fighter’s simulated chaos burst was efficient to zero fault, for it was simply controlled flow loosed in a controlled manner, like a planned demolition of a dam to release a tidal surge to power a generator.

The fighter’s sudden accelerated flow lasted for the barest of instants, and in that mere shade of an instant, he utilized every little piece of the explosively generated energy perfectly into the movement of a throw.

The execution of the throw was marvelous, without a single shred of lost efficiency, as if the fighter itself were a machine, or, perhaps, like the Collector itself. 

The fighter twisted and grabbed the Collector’s extended blade, the one that reached for his heart, between two fingers. He swiveled his head to the side to dodge the blade that sought his brain.

The moment the fighter made these evasions and obtained a hold of the Collector’s blade, he exerted his own control of power flow over the Collector, completely redirecting the trajectory of the Collector’s attack with the point of contact simply being his two fingers.

The Collector found itself directed to the fighter’s front before he used his other hand to grab the Collector’s shoulder and then execute a full throw, this time tossing the Collector over his shoulder and into the distance.

Because he could control the Collector’s flow of power, he redirected the force of the Collector’s charge into his own throw, thus essentially exponentially increasing its power.

This was very similar in principle to the Collector’s technique of taking in an attack, letting the energy flow through it, and then redirecting it into an empowered counter.

Except with several more components added to make it significantly more complex as a movement. 

The Collector’s time perception steadied, and its vision blurred due to the side effects of Chronostasis and because it had been sent hurtling through the air at speeds that easily broke the sound barrier, turning into a living, booming projectile that traveled hundreds of meters in a a mere few seconds, blasting through clouds and parting them before finally stopping when it slammed into the side of another mountain.

The Collector was like a living meteorite, and the impact of the throw carved out an enormous crater in the mountain face, lining it with hundred-meter-wide cracks that caused yet again another chain of avalanches below as it shook the enormous landmark of rock.

The damage to the Collector, however, was minimal, for though the Collector had not been able to react to the throw itself as its body was simply too slow, it had been able to adjust to being thrown, allowing it to break its ‘fall’ by shooting out a Seismic Shock enhanced punch right before it hit the mountain face, allowing it to counteract some of the force of the throw.

Huge chunks of rock shattered off the mountain face and fell, hurtling down to the foggy depths hundreds, no, thousands of meters below.

The Collector mitigated its Chronostasis drawbacks by using explosive draconid regeneration to repair fried neurons in its two brains, but even then, it would take a few more seconds before its reflexes were back up to par.

But now, the Collector understood the mechanisms of the fighter’s abilities, and from here on out, it was only a matter of adapting to them and devising a means to dismantle, and, perhaps, utilize them for itself.

The fighter appeared from the distance. He was taking great leaps in the air, sheathing his feet in green mana to create temporary platforms to jump off of to simulate flight.

Finally, he stopped when he landed at the top of the mountain the Collector had been thrown into.

“You are holding back,” said the fighter known as ‘Kui’ as he peered down at the Collector with arms hanging limp by his sides. “You are unused to fighting at this level. This power you have, it has been recently obtained, has it not?”

The Collector obliged the fighter in conversation to wait out its Chronostasis drawbacks.

“Indeed,” stated the Collector, and it knew that the fighter was correct. Its body was not entirely used its own full capabilities, for there had not been a single enemy unit capable of challenging the Collector to its maximum threshold yet.

Thus, it did not have perfected calculations and analytics run on the full extent of its power. “Yet, it is observable that you too are withholding your strength.”

“True,” said the fighter. “I could have killed you on the first throw. Thrown you straight through the entire mountain. But that is no test, and I do not kill for no reason. You are also not at your full strength. You have barely half your mana.

It is no fair test unless I too am withholding my power.”