The Collector did not hesitate and opened up its stomach maw. It pumped in explosive chaos mana into its volcanite lined pyrocatalytic gland biotrigger and generated a mana-fueled ignition of white hot flames.

The stream of fire engulfed Kui, completely drowning out visibility of his figure in blinding bright white.

The Fang specimen saw what was occurring and started to target fire at Kui, combining three of her ice beam orbs into a triple cluster that fired multiple arcs of freezing energy at Kui, likely to try and overpower the flames instantly and flash freeze him while he remained stationary.

The Collector immediately understood what was happening from the Fang specimen’s body language. Her movements were far too telegraphed and uncontrolled, for she did not possess the fluidity of motion and emotion presented by a proper fighter specimen such as Kui.

The Collector had to remain stationary in the air, however, to fully output its flames, but it diverted some of its magical energy to guard the fighter specimen by using a high output of Sapia. Its thel hovered in the air, the fibrous wires of hair gleaming with bright purple.

Even now, with Royal Daemon blood, the Collector still could not efficiently utilize Sapia, and this was a field within which it would have to perform some investigative experimentation later on, but with enough mana output, inefficiency could be compensated for.

The Collector’s mana reserves were low, but it closed two of its fists, generating a barrier of Sapian energy around the fighter specimen. The purple barrier stood tall as the beams of bright white crashed into it.

Furthermore, the Collector generated the Sapian shield with a level of rotational spin, thus creating a surface by which the ice beams did not so much resist as they bounced off of, shooting out into the air instead of exploding around the shield and encasing the fighter specimen’s surroundings in ice.

Meanwhile, the Collector observed as the fighter specimen breathed in, taking in the flames around him in a massive inhalation.

Kui’s internal body temperature spiked massively, and the Collector noted that he utilized the flow of mana to spread the heat evenly inside of himself and to a fine-tuned degree so as to minimize the damage to himself. 

This, combined with his inherently significant durability that would have allowed him to survive the flames regardless, meant that Kui was now glowing with a white-hot aura, a thin, membrane-like aura of flickering white fire dancing atop his skin and scales.

“Good,” said Kui as he breathed out, super-heated air distorting the space in front of him in ripples. He took his stance against, and this time, as his feet drove into the ground, they carved out molten indents. “Now, let us end this. Grant rest to the Old God she has usurped.”

The Collector flew over the Fang specimen as she prepared another volley of ice beams towards Kui. In turn, the Collector unleashed suppressive fire upon the Fang specimen, bombarding her with purifying light shards.

Because the Fang specimen’s ice barrier was thinner, the light shards, though they still froze over, did not become as brittle, and etched out dents and cracks into her scales. Yet, not enough damage to turn her attention away from Kui who now charged her.

This, the Collector predicted, and primed and shot its Spine Spitter. The spine was sizable, almost half a meter long with an elongated tip suited for armor-piercing while also being over five times faster in velocity than the light shards.

The Fang specimen did not expect the spine, and she found herself screaming and clutching at her now skewered eye, the end of the spiked, grooved spine jutting out from the side of her head.

The spine had frozen over, reducing its sharpness somewhat, and the rotational velocity of her ice barrier had reduced its speed enough to prevent a clean shot straight through her head, but the pain of a skewered eye and very likely some brain damage caused the Fang specimen to stop any attacks on the fighter specimen.

The brain damage did not seem to be enough to compromise her functions, though it seemed that the Fang specimen was not utilizing much of the organ in the first place.

Kui rushed in as the Fang specimen reeled in pain, prevented from countering his advance.

He breathed in, accelerating his flow, and closed his eyes as he pierced the veil of the ice barrier. The heat charged into his body allowed him to move without instantly freezing over. He did not need sight to perform his throw, for he had practiced every single combination of it countless times until they were etched into the memory of his cells themselves.

This was the mightiest technique that Kui knew. The throw that transcended the oceans reached into the stars themselves.

The [Falling Star]. 

In the next instant, Kui performed his throw at the maximum output of his power, and the Collector could see now what the fighter specimen had meant when he had held back with his first throw.

In the moment of the throw, Kui’s mana levels spiked to tremendous levels that caused a raging pillar of green to blast outwards and reach into the sky, parting the low hanging cloud cover. With this instant of spiked mana, he threw down the Fang specimen straight into the ground.

An explosion of fiery red emanated out from Kui not due to the Collector’s flames, but because he moved at such an extreme speed that he ignited the air around him. Following this sudden burst of fire and light, the Fang specimen was no more to be seen, a smoking crater the only trace that she had stood atop the surface of the mountain.

The velocity and force of the throw was such that there was no explosion, no shattering of rubble, but instead, the Fang specimen had carved out a molten hot tunnel down the mountain, for the speed of her descent instantly turned the durable rock into superheated liquid state.

Then, the rumbling began from deeper in the mountain as he Fang specimen continued to drive through the mountain, loosing small earthquakes all across the length of her descent, and her descent was significant indeed.

The Collector calculated she fell downwards several hundred meters, then a thousand, and more and more until she finally stopped, noticeable from the rumbling in the mountain halting. The Collector calculated that she had traveled downwards up to ten thousand meters, and it was a testament to her durability that the initial impact of the throw itself had not reduced her into a splatter.

Regardless, there was going to be no surviving this.

“The deadliest and most revered technique of the Gentle Current,” said Kui. “The [Falling Star]. There has only been one to ever survive it head on. I doubt

“I will confirm the Fang specimen’s death,” said the Collector, intending also on consuming her as well.

“Go ahead,” said Kui as he breathed out. White flames bellowed out of his breath, and his bright white glowing body dimmed down and sizzled as heat rapidly faded from it. His eyes were bloodshot and much of his skin was burnt, some red splotches underneath indicating internal hemorrhaging.

He folded his arms into his robes and closed his eyes, meditating. “I will take some time to rest.”

The Collector flew straight downwards into the tunnel the Fang specimen had carved out. The first few hundred meters of descent were lined with melted rock, but as the Fang specimen continued to travel down, she had lost velocity, and soon, her path of descent was lined with more roughly shattered stone.

The Collector flew down multiple layers of the mountain, past caverns, past a large basin of water, past a nest of Glaciated Serpents, past an area filled with gleaming crystals, and so on, until it reached near to the bottom of the mountain where the Fang specimen was.

Or should have been.

The Collector instead saw at the bottom of the descent a hollowed out sculpture of ice fashioned in the visage of the Fang specimen. She had one more trick to play, it seemed, involving rapidly molting while using her capacity to temporarily render herself into ice particulates.

This allowed for the ability to break out of the fall mid-way. Yet, she had still weathered the initial impact. She should be grievously injured regardless, and her regeneration was slow. She could not be far from here.

The Collector tracked her scent, her mana signature, and began to fly upwards until it stopped at the layer in the mountain that was filled with gleaming crystals. These crystals were highly charged with magical energy and would allow the Collector to easily restore itself to 100% once it consumed them, but for now, it focused on the search.

It zipped through the cavern of crystals to the end where the Fang specimen’s trail ran cold.. There was a swirling warp gate there, one fashioned seemingly from icy, circling winds.