"Emi!" Furio screamed as he immediately forgot about the gleaming entrance of the dungeon in front of him, at all the gold and glory it promised.

He ran towards her, and his whole world became only his sister, at the blood starting to arc from her severed legs, but even this was not enough to fully dull his instincts.

Almost automatically, he registered several things, the world almost slowing down as his mind raced.

No enemies in near sight capable of doing this damage. A sudden blur of movement and the sound of solid physical impact. And, as he saw Emi's legless body start to fall, an expression of surprise still on her face before it could register the pain, he saw shards of shattered rock behind her.

A projectile attack. Someone or something was throwing rocks.

We are what we train ourselves daily to be. We are our habits.

Furio knew these words well from his master, and without a secondary thought, he projected his magical energy out in a sense field around him, all the while still running to Emi's side.

Something registered in his field.

Projectiles.

Large rocks headed towards himself and Vera with another one following close behind to finish off Emi.

Not even a second had passed since Emi first got hit.

Whatever had thrown these objects could do so in mass volleys at pinpoint accuracies far beyond any vineswinger goblin, and those monsters were known for their throwing arm.

Furio reacted.

He whirled around, reducing the range of his sense to move mana flow accelerating through his body, strengthening it. He had memorized the trajectory of the incoming projectiles, and in a quick motion, batted the air in front of him with his wrench.

As predicted, a rock the size of a man's head crashed into the wrench, and Furio shaped the mana flowing through his wrench- his ethera and therefore extension of his body- into a spin that countered the ball's own and deflected it.

With a pinging crack of impact, the deflected rock sailed backwards and crashed into the second stone meant for Emi. Both rocks exploded out into a shower of pulverized rock pieces, such was the speed they had flown at.

The rock meant for Vera smashed against her head, but it simply broke upon it like it was an indestructible surface.

A flicker of rainbow light shimmered throughout Vera's body as her [Refraction] spell, a spell cast on the body to negate the blow of one strong strike, faded.

"Behind me!" said Furio as he stood in front of Vera and Emi. He heard Emi's body hit the floor, and expected to hear her cries, but instead, she just breathed heavy, holding in her pain, trying to not make Furio worry.

She could not speak, only gasp, and though she did not scream, every single heavy breath she took felt just like a scream to Furio.

Furio gritted his teeth as he tried to figure out where the rocks had come from, his grey eyes darting from side to side as they saw only the endless expanse of bugs and shadowy forest trees.

"Emi, just hold on, okay? Big brother will make sure you get through this fine like I always do." He kept his hands tight on his wrench, eyes alight with mana as he projected his sense field again, ready to bat down any projectile.

"It's okay dear, it's okay," said Vera in a soothing voice as she used [Withdraw] to pull out a vial of green liquid from a ripple in space. She popped open the cork with her thumb and held Emi's shaking, paling face firm, opening her mouth and pouring in the liquid.

Within moments, Emi stopped her gasping, her breathing growing even as she fell asleep to prevent shock and reduce blood loss.

"Vera, withdraw something to stop her bleeding," said Furio. An edge of anger sharpened his normally smooth voice. "And portal yourselves back to the safe zone. I am going to deal with this."

"No-," began Vera.

"Yes." Furio's voice was firm. "You can channel to port us out one at a time, and you have to leave yourself for last. What do you think happens once I get ported out? You'll die. Vera, please, my love."

He turned around to her to give her a smile. "I'll come back, I-,"

In that moment, Furio swerved around, the hairs on his neck standing on end as he sensed another projectile speeding into the range of his sense aura. He shaped mana into his wrench again, predicted where the rock would be, and batted it away as well.

With the correct amount of spinning mana wreathed on his wrench, he could prevent the rock from splintering and hitting Vera and Emi behind him, instead knocking it high into the sky.

"Just go!" Furio batted away another rock.

Imperfectly this time.

It bounced off his wrench and curved behind him, dangerously reaching close to Vera and Emi before just missing them and slamming into the earth with a cracking impact.

Whatever was throwing these could also fine tune and adjust the spin on the projectiles with incredible accuracy.

Throwing skill beyond even any vineswinger champion. This was a monster among monsters that an experienced four-star adventurer should be dealing with, not Furio who had been four stars for three days now.

Furio took in a breath, calming himself.

Breathe. Flow your mana.

Thirty seconds per port channel. One minute to hold out.

He nodded to himself.

Manageable.

==

The Collector clicked its mandibles as it held a rock between its hands, purple mana infusing into its two daemon eyes and four compound eyes as it extended its range of vision.

It stayed behind the cover of several darkwood trees and thick undergrowth, using spin on its projectiles to swerve them past the trees to make their trajectory both unpredictable and to hide its location.

The female daemon specimen next to him plopped down three more rocks by his side, levitating them with her Sapia. Whenever the Collector threw a projectile, she had also assisted by infusing some of her own Sapian force into it.

With both their powers empowering the projectiles, the Collector had expected to easily punch through these humanoids with thrown rocks, and indeed, it had made direct contact with two of them, fatally injuring one while the other seemingly possessed a means to mitigate the damage almost entirely even when struck at the head.

The other one was troublesome. The male specimen.

He possessed the speed, coordination, and grasp of spin to negate the Collector's throws, though his grasp of spin was not so advanced that he could completely reverse-engineer the throw and send it right back at the Collector.

A fortunate thing, in all likelihood, for if the male specimen had done so, the Collector would have reflected the rock back again until one of them made a miscalculation, and in exceedingly high probability, it would not have been the Collector.

From observational analysis, the Collector determined that the male specimen's eyes did not track the projectiles coming towards it.

Instead, it seemed to be able to predict the trajectory of the projectile and strike at where it was to be.

In that case-

"Bring me another stone," said the Collector as it opened a palm.

'Okay.' The female daemon floated a rock into its palm. 'Do you want me to boost it?'

"No. This will be beyond your computational capacity for now," the Collector wrapped the rock in its hands and applied crushing force, breaking the stone into many smaller pieces.

It infused mana into them, drew its arm back, and then unleashed a concussive volley of spin-infused stone shards.

The intent was to overwhelm the male specimen's capacity to react with a mass amount of projectiles.

The male specimen reacted accordingly.

This time, sensing a mass amount of smaller projectiles, he did not focus on batting them away but instead caused the sharpened chunk of metal, this 'sword' atop what the Collector recognized from other tinkerers as a wrench, to emit bolts of electrical output.

The electricity arced into a field that destroyed the vast majority of the projectiles, for smaller as they were now, the electricity could immediately disintegrate them.

Yet, not sufficient.

One of the stone shards bypassed the male and struck true into the leg of the veiled female specimen. This time, she did not resist the projectile, and reacted in signs of physiological distress, clutching at her bloodying leg.

The Collector had another rock ready in its hands, seeing if the male specimen would distract itself to attend to the female, but the male still faced forwards.

Highly trained. The Collector clicked its mandibles. Strong. If this male specimen were to fight the Collector directly, the fight would be a desirable challenge.

The Collector felt desire tugging at its heart to face the specimen in direct combat.

Yet, its prime directive to bring upon the dawn of the Collective tugged back against its desire.

'Are you okay?' said the daemon.

"A momentary error in processing," said the Collector as it realized it had paused for a second. A second of wasted time. It clicked its mandibles, breaking apart another rock into small shards.

It put in one half of each pile into both its hands and drew the pile of stone back, ready to throw it, and this time, it infused within the two volleys a strong spin aiming to create a trajectory consisting of an extreme curve meant to bypass the male entirely, striking the female specimens behind it from the sides.

The spins were opposite, meaning that one half of the volley would break hard to the left, and the other hard to the right.

Unless the male specimen could be in two places at once, this would be fatal.