The Collector continued to chase the fighter as he scaled down the verticals slope of the mountain with rapid grace.
The fighter disappeared into the foggy depths below, his extreme speed parting out a puff of fog as he entered the thick veil of white. This was likely to limit the Collector's range of vision and therefore its ranged combat capabilities.
No matter, however.
The fighter's kinetic-muscular vision was dependent on establishing a clear line of sight, and in this fog, that would be limited, though the Collector did estimate that a fighter of such a caliber would not be entirely crippled by this fog either.
Regardless, the Collector had an advantage in a direct melee confrontation because it did not need sight, for it was capable of relying on its sensitive hairs adaptation to compensate more than adequately enough.
The Collector flew downwards, also breaking through the fog, and its ocular systems only saw blinding white. It started to rely upon its sensitive hairs adaptation with a minor application of Sense, extending the reach of the hairs to a fifty meter radius around it.
Using its superior hearing as well, the Collector could track exactly where the fighter was moving from the heavy footsteps he cracked into the mountain side.
The Collector pursued and continued to fire volleys of light shards, and the fighter managed to dodge them, zig-zagging, decelerating and accelerating his flow in irregular intervals to throw off the Collector's timing.
It was evident then that the fighter too possessed hearing and tactile senses great enough to be unperturbed by the fog.
The Collector fired another Spine Spitter shot, and this time, the fighter adapted, dodging it narrowly enough that the spine only carved out a small cut across his face.
By now, the fighter and the Collector had scaled thousands of meters down the mountain, reaching to its middle where there was far more flat and solid ground to stand on.
The fighter dodged another volley of purifying light shards, this time by landing on flat ground and hiding behind a glacier easily the size of a fifty-meter class star ship. The shards embedded into the ice, etching out countless cracks into it, but did not pierce through it for it was comprised of Everfrost – a common substance on these mountains.
The fighter was behind the glacier, using it as further cover, and the Collector started to circle around for a better angle to rain down projectiles, for even though the fighter could change his rhythm of movement to evade, the Collector could keep up with its processing ability, and soon enough, the Collector would have read every single possible permutation of movement from the fighter until he could no longer evade the Collector's ranged onslaught.
The glacier shook, and massive lines of cracks lined its base. Like a great oak being felled, the glacier tipped over towards the side of the fighter, and the Collector realized that the fighter had struck it to break it.
When the glacier fell atop the fighter, he performed a spinning kick that sent it hurtling towards the Collector as an oversized projectile.
The fighter used his explosive burst of power for this, and the fifty-meter glacier sped forwards with the speed of a bullet.
The Collector crossed its arms in front of it in the form of a [Guard] to take the initial, heavy impact as the glacier slammed into it and drove it back through the air.
The fighter's physical strength was immense.
Unlike the four-star adventurer with the Flow affinity who used agility, this fighter known as 'Kui' favored power. Efficiently regulated power, of course, but still power nonetheless.
In terms of absolute strength, the Collector calculated that the fighter was equal to it, and, in short bursts, superior.
An extremely impressive feat considering that in terms of raw, brute strength and physique, the Collector had never before known a match upon this world.
The Collector weathered the initial glacier impact and then used its arms to push itself up above the glacier.
This was when the Collector saw that the fighter had not used the glacier as a warding projectile to make further distance, but had used it as both a cover and mode of transportation, hitching a ride on it the moment he had struck it towards the Collector.
Now, the fighter was rapidly closing in on the Collector, sprinting across the length of the glacier with his arms held forwards, ready to grab and throw the Collector in a dedicated offense.
The Collector had thought the fighter primarily one that relied upon counters, but it would seem that the fighter possessed strong confidence in constructing his own offense as well.
The Collector opened up its stomach maw and fired off its Pyrocatalytic Glands, specifically triggering the Volcanite infused upon it to cause the flame to expand outwards in a more expansive and explosive impact.
A massive tidal wave of blue-white flame washed over the glacier, completely engulfing the fighter, but he parted the crashing wave of fire with a chop, projecting out slicing force that split the wave of heat into two.
However, the Collector had merely been using the flame as a smoke screen.
Its Superacid Bilespitter was already aimed at the fighter, and the bulbous green sac condensed and clenched as the contracticle muscle tissues lining it flexed to their maximum.
A stream of bright green acid shot forward at accelerated speeds, and the fighter reacted by thrusting his palm forwards, projecting out a burst of pressurized air that split the acid stream apart.
However, a little too late with aim that was sub-optimal on account of the fighter having less time to react due to the distraction of the flames.
Splotches of the acid caught on the fighter's left forearm, and even a few drops were capable of causing severe damage, for the Collective's Superacid had nothing it could not eat away at. The acid sizzled into the fighter's skin, melting away scales and flesh until the bone of his forearm was visible.
The fighter stared down at the exposed bone for a moment before resuming his charge, his face still completely unfazed. His arms were still extended forwards, and by his posture, the Collector determined that the fighter was moving as if he had no injuries to weigh him down, indicating further that the fighter possessed some means to circumvent disabling injuries like this.
The distance between the Collector and the fighter was too small for the Collector to attempt a quick escape. Instead, it braced itself for the correct timing.
Getting thrown was a foregone conclusion.
The fighter's individual strikes and movements were exceptionally fast, especially when coupled with his explosive mana bursts, but his throws were on another dimension of speed entirely. It was such that the disparity between his throws and all other movements was almost utterly unnatural.
If the fighter's ordinary dodge or strike moved at the numerical rate of a '5', then his throws were executed at the speed of a '50'.
Far beyond the Collector's capacity to perceive and react to ordinarily, but it had already seen it happen in slowed time perception once. Its calculative systems processed the timing of the throw, extrapolating how much faster it would be in ordinary time, and the Collector prepared itself.
The fighter went into range, and the moment he did, the Collector found the world around it spinning.
In the next instant, the Collector was outside of the fog, having been thrown upwards at extreme velocities that parted the fog entirely.
It sped through the air at such speed that friction against the air itself caused its carapace to heat up to a molten white before it slammed into the side of another mountain.
The Collector braced for impact, enveloping its entire body in a powerful [Guard], and it tumbled through the mountain, drilling through the rock for several seconds until it finally broke into a large cavern.
Here, the Collector landed heavily upon rocky ground, shattering out a sizable impact crater, but that was where the throw ended.
Through more than five hundred meters into the air and a hundred meters through solid, dense rock.
The Collector registered severe damage across its entire body. Pieces of its carapace fell off around it like rain.
The Smartshock carapace had altered its structure to best weather direct impact, but even then, with it reducing the damage of the throw by nearly 50%, the Collector still weathered the damage of dozens of fractured bones, muscle tears, and internal bleeding from concussive impact.
This throw was strong enough that the Collector had significantly impaired movement, and it immediately expended its magical energy to explosively regenerate the damage it had taken.
A few seconds later, and the fighter broke through the same path that the Collector had carved out in the mountain, landing in the cavern.
"You are the very first in all realms across a century to have ever countered my [Circling Storm]," said the fighter.
He was a dozen meters away from the Collector, and his right arm was mangled.
It hung limp at his side, the flesh across the upper arm and shoulder having been blown off, leaving nothing but charred chunks of uneven, exposed muscle and burnt, blackened bone.
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