“Well said.” Kui took a step forward and assumed his stance. His arm was essentially healed by now, with the musculature and nerves fully grown with just some skin and scale layer requiring patching. But in exertion of power, he was still in optimal shape.

“I possess little magical energy to maintain any measure of extended confrontation,” stated the Collector, assessing that even with Kui’s technique to continuously gather mana while moving, it was still more inefficient than static gathering and, coupled with the Collector’s enormous mana pool, meant it had restored only up to 15% of its total mana. 

“No problem.” Kui inched forwards with his stance, keeping his legs wide. His toes, driven into the ground with such force that they cracked into it, carved out patterns in the rock as he now settled in front of the Collector.

The Collector clicked its mandibles in analysis. The fighter known as ‘Kui’s’ perception allowed him to understand that the Collector desired to save its abilities for a surefire attack, thus meaning that the fighter specimen was to shoulder the initial attack so as to scope out this draconid specimen’s abilities.

“You-you too, you impure blooded THING!” shouted the draconid as her eye head snaked to Kui’s distraction. “You hurt him, you hurt my mate, you think I have forgotten about that? You will pay too!”

With that, the Fang shunted out an immense burst of her chaotic blue aura, and as she did so, the color of it changed to a pale white, the Unity aura using its compatibility with healing and creation to generate a mass aura of pale, foggy white around it.

The aura shaped into a raging sphere approximately ten meters in radius around her, as if she had enveloped herself in a whirling storm of fog and ice.

The Fang was dozens of meters away, but even from this distance, the Collector could feel the intensely cold temperatures of her aura shield. Anything approaching her would instantly be flash-frozen to a level dangerously close to the point of absolute zero itself.

The freezing capability of this aura was the most potent that the Collector had encountered so far, far exceeding that the environment itself offered.

The Collector flew into the air, attempting to provide air support.

Kui stopped mid-charge, narrowing his blue eyes, his pupils narrowing to reptilian slits as he assessed the aura. He was twenty meters away from the Fang, but her freezing aura shield projected caused the ground underneath him to crack and freeze over in a layer of ice.

The air chilled noticeably throughout the entire cavern, and everyone’s breaths came out in the form of visible fog. 

The Fang saw this hesitation from Kui and pointed a white clawed finger towards Kui. A small orb of pale blue crackled in front of her finger before shooting forwards in an arcing beam. This was the ice beam of the Glaciated Serpent, but on a scale far more deadly. 

Yet, there would be no issue from the fighter specimen. The Glaciated Serpent’s ice beams were volatile in their trajectory, making them difficult to aim, and this was further exacerbated by the Fang specimen’s own chaotically flowing mana that hindered fine-tuned precision. 

Kui readied to dodge, his balance shifting to the side, but then he glanced back at the goblin swarm behind him. If he dodged now, that bolt would strike the goblins, and he did not know they could be restored with the Collector’s Breath of Life.

Instead of dodging, Kui took in a breath and wreathed his arms in a casing of his bright green mana, readying to deflect the beam like he had with the Collector’s own ranged projectiles. 

Kui swatted the bolt at the perfect angle to divert it upwards, sending it streaking into the cavern ceiling in a chaotically fluxing arc. When it struck the ceiling, it created an enormous structure of instantaneously generated ice crystals, all of them capable of flash freezing.

Kui kept his distance as he continued to assess the Fang. His right arm, the injured one, was the one he had used to block the bolt, and despite perfect timing and a [Guard], the bolt had still managed to encase a circular chunk of his forearm in a layer of ice crystals deeply embedded within the muscle, likely causing countless micro-fissures across the fibers and debilitating function.

This was going to be an incredibly difficult battle, the Collector came to realize. By encasing its ocular systems in flow mana, wreathing them in green, and zoning in on the Fang specimen’s physique, the Collector could tell she was not a physically powerful specimen.

Certainly, she far outstripped the average denizen of this world, but compared to specimens that relied on physical might such as the Collector and Kui, there was a world of a difference. Her musculature was not as developed nor suited for flowing mana through them, causing also her scales to be less durable.

But the Fang specimen was a master of projecting her aura outwards, and because it was specialized for creating, she operated purely on a ranged basis, and to cover her melee weakness, she generated her aura-shield of freezing temperatures.

This was an issue of compatibility. This specimen was uniquely suited to beating fighters that engaged in melee combat.

“Fire!” shouted Kai, and the Collector immediately responded by opening its stomach maw and unleashing a concentrated blast of its pyrocatalytic gland flames. The blue-white stream of roaring flame crashed into the sphere of raging white, freezing mana.

The Collector theorized that if it had been frozen oxygen or hydrogen, the flames would generate an explosive effect on contact, but again, it had come to know by now that physical laws did not operate properly when mana and magic were involved, and in this case, the mana sphere was a self-contained field of cold.

Instead, the flames swirled around the ice before soon dying out, all of their energy and heat draining rapidly. But the mana sphere did thin in thickness, and Kui rushed in past it, allowing himself to take in the freezing energy if only for the tiniest of moments required for him to perform his throw.

Kui’s forward right hand latched onto the Fang’s shoulder, and then she disappeared. A huge crater in the ceiling of the cavern and the rumbling  of rock shattering and parting from above indicated to the Collector that the Fang specimen was well on her way out of the mountain.

“My apologies for the hasty attack,” said Kui. He turned to the Collector with a right arm stiff, almost completely frozen over in a cloudy white, icy layer. “But further fighting here, in this tight space, only risked your goblin friends.”

“If saving the goblin swarm was your intention, then you have performed it,” said the Collector as it gazed down at the swarm. They were a suppressive force meant to fan out and deal with targets the Collector did not find worthy to deal with itself.

In the case of high scale battles like this, the Collector knew they were useless. The fighter known as ‘Kui’ had made the right decision on the assumption that the Collector would not have simply sacrificed all of the swarm for a counter-attack.

The Collector knew that compelling the swarm to do so would severely lower loyalty among them, so it did indeed prefer to keep such drastic measures only to when its life was directly threatened.

“My throw was not at full power. The cold halted the full extent of my strength. But she should not emerge from that unscathed,” said Kui. “Go and take care of her. I must heal my arm, then I will rejoin you.”

Kui closed his eyes in meditation, accelerating the flow of mana throughout his veins, nerves, and muscle fibers, shattering the ice crystals imprisoning them bit by bit and rising his body temperature to try and thaw himself.

Countless green streaks of magical energy following the curvature and structure of his muscles and nerves formed around his right arm, gleaming brighter and brighter by the moment, steaming as they melted off ice, but even then, the Collector estimated an approximate forty seconds of lost combat time.

“We can fight, Sovnar, while he is resting!” shouted Thokk as he eagerly stepped forwards with his gleaming golden longsword.

Goromir and Kandak both dragged Thokk back by the shoulder.

“Ah, the fiery blood of youth and the impulsiveness it brings,” said Goromir.

“Yes,” said Kandak.

“Young one, this fight is beyond our scale. Far beyond it. If we intervene, we will only slow the Sovnar down,” said Goromir. “There is no shame in allowing the Sovnar free reign to fight.”

“The elite is correct,” said the Collector. “Stay within this area and allow the fighter specimen known as ‘Kui’ to provide protection for you. I will engage the hostile draconid.”

With that, the Collector sped forwards, loosing a sonic shockwave as its red wings flared and it traveled through the tunnel the Fang specimen had drilled out from Kui’s throw.