The shining humanoid continued to exercise his strength over the female daemon specimen.

"Oh…oh, someone else has shown you their love," said the humanoid as he hunched over, inspecting the daemon specimen's handless arm.

She gasped breathlessly as the humanoid pressed his weight down on her chest, spit starting to drool from her forcibly opened, tongueless mouth.

With a gentle, caring touch completely in contrast with the brutal force he put on her chest, he stroked her clear forehead. "And you have lost your brand.

The mark that was proof of your salvation from the ignoble darkness. You were broken and worthless as all your kind are, but with my love and with that mark, you regained some of your dignity.

Why did you throw it away? Oh, my dear, why?"

The humanoid shook his head several times with deep, exaggerated sways. His masked face settled upon the stump of her handless arm. "I will break you down and make you whole again, I promise you, I promise you with all my heart and love."

He pointed a golden claw-tipped finger at the daemon female's arm, and then with a swift flick of his finger, completely severed the arm at the shoulder with a clean cut.

The Collector's sensitive ocular systems could perceive that a faint thread of gold had unspooled from the humanoid's finger in an instant, and this thread was sharp and quick enough to immediately sever a limb while also being covered in an intensive field of heat that instantly cauterized the daemon's wound.

Flesh sizzled and burned as the daemon could only widen her eyes at the sudden pain while the humanoid's foot was still pressed into her stomach, stopping her tongueless mouth from even gasping.

The humanoid flicked his finger up, and the golden thread tied around the severed arm and brought it to his face. It seemed the thread could move independently from how the humanoid's fingers actually manipulated it.

The humanoid grasped the arm in his hand and then with his other hand, carefully raised only the most lower edge of his mask, baring his mouth.

But from even this small display of facial features, much was notable. His skin was pale and scarred beyond measure to the point where discolored, warped scar tissue was the majority and normal smooth skin a rarity.

His lips were cracked and twisted in odd angles from burns and scars, and his teeth were sharp, far sharper than any ordinary humanoid's, looking much more like those of a canid beast's. He brought the stump of the arm to his mouth and bit down on it, his teeth crunching through flesh and bone with ease.

"Ahh," exclaimed the humanoid in highly audible ecstasy as he chewed and sloshed the flesh and broken down bone between his cheeks before swallowing it with a large, exaggerated gulp.

His tongue, an unnaturally long sliver of deeply red flesh dotted with aberrant, tumorous growths, swept along his lips and chin, lapping up blood. "The taste of a night child. The taste of evil. How I long for it so.

And you, my dear, have the most wondrous taste of them all. Among all your kind that I have split apart and sampled, you, you, oh, none have ever matched your taste."

The humanoid chomped down on the arm, speaking in gurgles between ravenous mouthfuls as saliva and blood drooled down from his chin. "You…you are pathetically worthless, all your kind are, for they were born without light to cause nothing but misery and evil.

But-but among the paladins of Judica, among even the Nine Rays, I alone truly know the taste of evil. No, those fools curse me behind their backs for my ways, I know it, but they are ignorant.

They too believe your kind, my lovely night child, are worthless. And I once was in great agreement until I became Warden, and after all those years branding and tearing apart, I came to know that your kind are not bereft of value.

You are worthless were it not for your taste and how wondrously seductive it is.

Taste that they do not know and would never even begin to think of sampling. All they do is turn their noses up and close their hearts and kill and burn.

But it is not hate that brings forth your taste. Hate drives the simpletons to kill your kind and simply be done with it.

No, it is slow, passionate love that will truly bring worth to you, to your taste."

The humanoid let his foot off the female as he convulsed in shivers of joy.

Before the daemon could draw even a single breath, the humanoid brought his foot down again, this time on the daemon female's one remaining hand.

A grinding crunch resounded through the air as the humanoid ground his foot, crushing the hand into a pulp and squishing it into the stone. "Love like this!"

The daemon girl squirmed and shuddered, convulsing on the ground in futile resistance.

The humanoid crammed the rest of the arm into his mouth and then stomped on the daemon girl's foot now, crushing it into a bloody and bone shard filled pulp. "Or this! Pain is love, and only in pain does your taste truly come through!

The whole lot of you are utterly worthless maggots crawling in the darkness, but in taste, you are exquisite, and it is only this love that brings this taste forth.

Hate brings only quick and painless deaths, but where is the worth in that? Death is so cold and so final, why would anyone desire that? No, it is only in eternal pain that you have taste, and it is only in your taste that you have value."

The daemon girl grew still, her wide eyes starting to flit down as likely shock and blood loss overtook her. Her heavy and erratic breathing grew calmer and quieter.

"No, no, do not leave me, my lovely night child," said the humanoid as he put his mask back on and stared down at the female daemon with gleaming golden eyes.

He stiffened up and grew serious and still with a jarring transition. "Though it does not matter much. My jailers are outside this dungeon. They will restore you yet. Come, let us go home, back to where you belong."

The humanoid dropped down to a knee and slung the bloody body of the female daemon over his shoulder, and in this moment, the Collector initiated its own movements.

The Collector blasted forwards with as much speed as it could muster, engaging its mana into a {Dash} while activating its coilboosters.

But it had sustained too much damage, compromising its movement speed by thirty five percent.

This delay was enough for the Collector to stop three meters away from the water's edge, caught again by the humanoid.

Not by the humanoid's physical form, however.

The Collector saw as five golden threads bound its upper body, entwining around it in burning lines that sank through its carapace, but not so hot that they melted straight through its body. The heat was being regulated.

The five threads extended two dozen meters from the humanoid's hand, unspooling from his fingertips.

"Ah…I almost forgot about you. Another night child. You, too, will come with me. I have never seen a night child like you, but perhaps, with my love, you will taste just as exquisite as my dearest here." The humanoid nodded gently down to the daemon female's figure. "Stay strong, my dear. I will take your friend and soon, we will all be back home."

The Collector's arms were bound to its side, but its hands were not. It curled up the finger with the arakka thread attached to it.

From behind the humanoid, a thread of arakka silk string, grown so thin it was barely visible, pulled taut, reeling back towards the Collector.

At the end of this string was a monomolecular edge claw, and with Sapia, the Collector guided the claw right to the humanoid's head.

The humanoid reacted with superb senses. He had been thoroughly distracted in immersing himself in the female daemon's flesh, missing the thin thread, but now he adjusted, immediately thrusting his other arm out to intercept the claw.

The claw pierced straight through the humanoid's gauntleted and immensely durable hand, slicing out through the other side of his hand and gaining rapid distance to his head.

An aura of gold flashed from the humanoid's head, and as soon as the waves of gold hit the claw, it disintegrated, melting away under heat so intense it turned the brittle material into ash in an instant.

The Collector knew that there was a strong chance that the humanoid would evade this attack.

Thus, while the humanoid distracted himself dealing with the claw, the Collector took that time to act.

Using Sapia, the Collector snapped off another of its brittle claws and levitated it up, slicing off all five threads binding it, for in trying to capture the Collector alive, these threads had regulated their heat down to levels that would not immediately destroy the claws when it came into contact with them.

Now free, the Collector reached into the dimensional waters, its hand slipping in and causing darkness to fill up its vision as it began interfacing with the hyperspace-accessible liquid.