The enemy specimen reacted to the Collector stabbing at it with its monomolecular blade at the very last second. The creature's eyes narrowed as it thrust out its arm to the side, intercepting the Collector's arm at the end of the forearm.

Yet, intercepting the arm that far down was not sufficient. The specimen possessed enough strength to stop the Collector's thrust in its tracks, but the Collector still managed to stab into the specimen's side with a third of the length of the blade, easily slicing through the durable mesh of grey scales.

The beast, no, there was in intelligence in its eyes, the specimen growled in reaction to the blade so easily cleaving through it, though the wound was too shallow to be lethal.

In the time that the specimen used to growl and register surprise, the Collector initiated a flurry of additional attacks. With all four of the Collector's arms, it thrust at the specimen with the rest of its weapons systems. Its other monomolecular blade and both Firefly Shinchu light blades.

The creature had two arms; the Collector had four. The arithmetic was rather simple. The creature, if it stayed in direct melee range, would never be able to properly fend against all four strikes.

The specimen grasped this instinctively and took the optimal course of action, letting go of the Collector and leaping backwards with high-speed movement, stopping to a halt right before it hit the Jotnar arm. It levitated in the air, right above the water, and the Collector could sense it utilized magical energy to do so.

Likely, one of its inherent magical abilities. Primal magic.

The Collector took some distance, fluttering its fiery wings and hovering several meters in the air. When the specimen merely curiously looked up at the Collector instead of pursuing or reacting, the Collector made an offensive move.

The Collector opened up its Firefly Shinchu orb, readying to shower the creature in Shinchu light, for even from a cursory glance, it was possible to tell how charged this specimen was with Primal Density. The energy positively overflowed from each of its cells, tinting its greyed scales in faint white glimmers.

If the Collector was at 20% Primal Density, then it estimated that this specimen was near 60%. Of course, this alone did not indicate power level, merely how environmentally connected a specimen was, as was with the wraiths that possessed upwards of 100% Primal Density simply by being autonomous functions of the environment itself.

Yet, what the Collector did know for certain was that the Shinchu's purifying light would possess devastating effects against this specimen. When the golden light around its chest orb started to glow, the opposing specimen likely understood this as well.

The enemy specimen's back fin stiffened, and it hunched down for a split second before blasting upwards with enormous speed, tackling into the Collector with a shattering crash and sending both of them hurtling high up in the air at speeds that, within four seconds, put them above the cliff face in height.

All the while as they flew, the enemy specimen grasped the Collector tight, pinning the Collector's four arms with its comparatively bulkier ones. It opened up its enormous jaws, readied to bite down on the Collector's series of skulls.

With how massive the specimen's jaw was, it did not matter where it decided to bite down, it would tear off the Collector's main head regardless. The aura of flames around the Collector did nothing to deter the specimen.

But the Collector did not stop charging its Shinchu light beam. Now that the specimen had grappled the Collector, it had locked itself into its own demise. The Collector light fired from its chest, boring into the specimen's own scaled torso.

The specimen still bit down, but the Collector charged mana into its two Shinchu appendages on its shoulders, activating their immense strength and keeping their hands on either end of the creature's jaws, stopping them from clamping down.

Even the Shinchu arms had difficulty opposing the staggering bite force of the specimen, but the Collector's beam was doing grievous damage.

At first, the light merely burned away the scales, but when the thick layer of protection was shorn away and the light interacted with the bare, white flesh underneath, the explosive nature of the Shinchu light came into play.

The white flesh swelled up, becoming engorged with heat, before exploding in fiery bursts.

Yet-

The Collector noticed as the creature's magical energy rapidly condensed around the point of contact with the beam in a manner similar to [Guard].

However, vastly different. Instead of forming a defensive barrier against the beam, which would have been useless regardless because the Shinchu light's effects manifested the moment it touched flesh regardless of whether it was enhanced or not, the mana fueled massively accelerated regeneration.

Even as the beam caused flesh to liquefy and explode, boring deep and dangerously into the innards, white flesh and musculature wrapped their fibrous threads together again only to be blasted apart again in a continuous cycle.

As this went on, the specimen continued to struggle against the Collector, its jaws inching ever slightly forwards to snap against the Collector's head.

The Collector performed a rapid calculation. Utilizing the Shinchu light in a continuous beam like this on top of activating the Shinchu's arms – both mana intensive resources – was rapidly draining the Collector's reserves.

Certainly, the specimen before it was rapidly draining itself as well, but the Collector would succumb sooner.

Thus in response, the Collector swiveled around in mid-air and angled the enemy specimen downwards, getting gravity to aid the Collector by bearing down against the specimen. However, this was only for a slight moment of delay.

By now, both of them were almost a hundred meters above even the cliff face in altitude, but the Collector knew where the goblin swarm was oriented. It activated its Burial Tusks, not so much for the elites, but for the explosive blowback effect they possessed when the tusks were broken down and the elites unleashed.

The tusks on the Collector's goblin skull scattered in a flash of blue light before a cracking shockwave of energy erupted. The blast of energy, combined with a final push from the Shinchu appendages, thrust the specimen away from the Collector, sending it hurtling down into the cliff face below where the goblins were.

The twin elites from the Burial Tusks materialized beside the Collector, but because they were not flight capable, they fell straight down. The elites would be more than capable of surviving such a fall, however, and as they fell, the Collector gave them a command with its now greatly improved Higher Calling.

"Engage the hostile specimen in battle," said the Collector, and the twin elites nodded before flipping in the air and pushing off of it by encasing mana around their feet and using that as a stepping stone to leverage off of.

As the elites sailed down, the Collector analyzed the situation.

The Collector had no illusions about the goblin swarm's combat capacity. Other than the carrier unit, none of them would be able to last more than two seconds against that specimen.

Still, the Collector took a brief moment of reprieve, utilizing the salamander's regeneration to heal minor damage to itself. Unlike the enemy specimen, the Collector could not enhance its own regeneration by infusing more magical energy into it. The salamander's natural regeneration was simply inferior to that possessed by the opposing specimen.

Good. The Collector clenched its fists, repairing cracks in its carapace from where the specimen had pinned its arms.

Finally, in this icy wasteland of a biome, there was a true and worthy challenge. One not a mindless brute of a beast, but a tactically minded creature that understood how to leverage its own strengths and take upon any amount of risk to ensure its victory.

The Collector's mana reserves were running down to forty percent. Utilizing more Shinchu abilities would be dangerous aside from the already manifested blades on two of its arms.

However, the enemy specimen, though it likely would have regenerated its wounds by now, had spend vast amounts of magical energy to keep up with the highly destructive nature of the Shinchu beam.

Likely, considering both the Collector and the specimen possessed roughly equal mana reserves, they were on equally diminished footing.

Where the specimen had more leeway to make mistakes due to its explosive regenerative capacity, the Collector seemingly possessed far greater flexibility in its range of abilities.

This final altercation would come down to a true test of efficiency.