The Fang specimen hovered in the air for a moment, tense, her barrier of swirling, freezing mana still raging around her to guard her against any physical attack. She stared at the glacier she had forged, and it utterly dwarfed her, the top of its wave-like structure reaching far into the sky.

The scale of the attack had been enormous enough that the Fang was confident she had finally frozen the disgusting false dragon, the one who Valtr had dared to choose over her. Anything frozen in here would never escape from its boundaries, and it was only a matter of shattering the glacier with her magic to completely destroy all living creatures within.

Yet, the Fang specimen could not shake off a sense of unease. Her animalistic combat instincts telling her the fight was not yet over. She waited for a few seconds, projecting faint blue tendrils of mana outwards. Lighter colored strands that were meant to scout areas where they touched.

In her near vicinity, at least, nothing was there. The false dragon had no way to turn invisible, it seemed.

Feeling more confident, she flew down to the ground, to the base of the glacier, and touched it with her hand and focused, seeping in her scouting tendrils of magical energy to see behold her prize: the frozen form of the false dragon ready to be shattered into oblivion.

The Fang waited and waited, her scouting mana permeating throughout the entire glacier, making it glow from within with a ghostly blue light, and then realized: the false dragon was not here. The moment she realized this, the ground behind her broke apart.

The Collector emerged from underground, shooting forwards and stabbing directly into the heart of the Fang specimen with its monomolecular blade. Because the Fang specimen had been extending her mana far out from her body, the personal barrier she possessed was thinner, and this surprise attack, it calculated over a ninety percent chance to secure a fatal blow.

The Collector knew immediately that it could not evade the enhanced ice breath, not with the small amount of time it had, so instead, as it tidal wave of freezing energy bore down on it, it had drilled down into the ground, using Sapia to create a spiral of excavating force to burrow it.

Then, the Collector had merely bided its time underground, waiting for the Fang specimen to confirm her kill. When the Collector sensed her movements above, it had emerged to strike her. It aimed directly at her heart to secure as lethal a blow as possible while the Fang specimen’s ice barrier was as thin as it could get.

The Collector felt its blade easily slice through the Fang specimen’s white scales as if they were made of paper, but the Collector’s calculations were proven inaccurate.

The monomolecular blade, exposed to sudden intensely cold temperatures, lost the full capability of its peerless edge, and though it was still supremely sharp, it lessened the speed at which the Collector could penetrate the Fang specimen and reach into her heart.

That miniscule delay had allowed the Fang specimen to perform a move wherein right before the blade pierced her core, her body shifted into a form of pure moving ice similar to that of the [Mistborn] spell of the Frostborn Thrall.

Except, however, this was different in that where the thrall’s spell was one of continuous, sustained intangibility, the Fang specimen performed a short range, instantaneously quick dash wherein she broke herself down into particles of ice and phased backwards a distance of ten meters.

The dash allowed her to evade the monomolecular blade from killing her right then and there, and the Collector immediately flew backwards and into the air, rubble from being underground falling off of its body.

The arm it had used to try and stab the Fang specimen’s heart was frozen solid even from that split instant of contact with her barrier. The level of freezing was severe for the Collector’s carapace had not had time to adequately adapt against it.

Thus, the Collector simply shattered its own arm by smashing down on it with a fist. Chunks of frozen carapace, muscle, and bone scattered down to the ground, and then, blue magical energy explosively wreathed around the stump of its arm before simulating explosive regenerative growth, creating an entire new arm within a second.

“You hurt me! The only one allowed to hurt me is the him!” screeched the Fang, her voice booming through the air.

“Your vocalizations are loud but utterly simplistic in their variety,” said the Collector. “Why expend the effort to speak at all if your words are meaningless?”

“I will shatter you!” shouted the Fang specimen as she stood atop the ground dotted with ice shards from her prior attack. As she moved, her barrier of ice broke apart the shards around her and reconsolidated them back into the structure.

She turned and pointed a claw at the Collector, firing multiple arcing beams of ice.

The Collector dodged in the air, predicting the easily read trajectory of the beams with ease. It analyzed the Fang specimen for weaknesses and noted a few elements it could capitalize upon.

Firstly, the Fang specimen did not fly as of now, likely because her core had been minorly damaged by the Collector’s monomolecular claw. Its explosive regeneration, too, was severely hampered, limited down to a slow, continuous tissue repair that would take ten seconds to fully patch the laceration in its heart. In addition, her ice barrier was not as thick and protective for the same reason, but still strong enough to render any physical attack highly dangerous.

This was when the fighter known as ‘Kui’ emerged, leaping through the air with his air walking ability until he came to the Collector’s side in mid-air, swerving to dodge an ice beam also. His eyes were encased in green mana to analyze the Fang specimen, and he nodded when he saw her.

“You have managed to disrupt the flow of her mana, but not for long,” said Kui. “We must end this within the next few seconds. Come, I have an idea.”

“Die! Die! Die!” The Fang specimen continuously fired beam after beam after beam towards them, and though they could easily dodge the beams, it was still difficult to get close, not to mention her barrier.

The Collector had initially reasoned that this Fang specimen’s inefficient usage of her mana would lead her to bleed out quickly, but it was not so. She drew upon vast mana reserves, a large portion of which was not her own, likely belonging to the Old God she had assimilated.

A war of attrition was not going to be possible, for it seemed the Old Gods could rapidly regenerate their mana reserves in this environment they were native to.

“Speak your method of action,” said the Collector, and Kui nodded before pushing off the air and leaping down to ground level.

“Stay there!” shouted Kui as he landed on the ground. “And set me aflame! As much intensity as you can muster!”