Chapter 104: Lightning Orb

The ursine grunted as it slipped backwards from the punch, but before falling, righted itself, standing on its two hind legs.

The Collector's cut had been shallow, piercing through the lower jaw of the ursine and into the upper roof of the mouth, but not enough to reach the cranial center and brain.

The ursine, too, had reacted at the last movement, jutting it head back to try and minimize damage.

However, now the Collector would be able to analyze the effects of the Firefly Shinchu's solidified light.

Purifying light, as it was denoted.

The thin, clean hole in the ursine's lower jaw began to grow bright, the blood rimming it superheating and sizzling.

Then, the heating effect extended to the flesh surrounding the wound, turning the ice-tinged fur and flesh underneath a shade of bright, molten orange that bubbled and rippled.

The ursine loosed a gargling roar of pain as its lower jaw exploded in a burst of heat, flying teeth, singed chunks of flesh, and melting bone.

Already, however, the horrifically damaged flesh was repairing itself, a new jaw stating to grow in rapid pace as the dungeon's energies flowed into the beat.

So this was the power of the purifying light. Massive internal damage that scaled higher the more primal density the specimen possessed. The Collector had calculated this ursine specimen possessed ten percent primal density.

The Collector filed the battle data for use.

The Collector leaped forwards, pushing off with its tail to finish the ursine off with a strike to the forehead. This was a test. If the ursine could not even avoid this, then it was no longer worthy of further experimentation.

The ursine recognized its impending doom and initiated an attack. Its fur stood on end, the icy ends prickling into vibrating spikes as beast's entire body began to glow with pale blue.

A massive reading of magical energy. The Collector unleashed its four insectoid wings and fluttered backwards, stopping its charge and avoiding an omni-directional blast wave of erupted from the ursine's body.

The wave of blue energy surged outwards, layering everything it touched in a thick tomb of spiked frost, and the Collector pushed in magical energy into its wings to enhance their speed, outracing the incoming wave until it began to slow down and dissipate after thirty meters.

The Collector perched down on the stone, right in front of the field of sizable chunks of spiked ice surrounding the ursine from its sudden outburst. The ice glittered under the glow of the mana crystals in the dungeon, lending a ghostly blue sheen to the pit.

The Collector analyzed the specimen further now that they had clashed once and provided some battle data.

Attempting to strike the vitals was difficult. The creature possessed the necessary reflexes to avoid a strike to its eyes and cranium while its neck was covered in a thick layer of fur that seemed to possess a unique property to turn into a hardened, icicle-like structure akin to spiked armor.

At the very least, the spiked fur would render the brittle monomolecular claws from the Collector dangerous to utilize, for the claws would shatter on the ice spikes before making contact with the bare flesh.

However, the Collector noted that the ursine's fur, normally raised at the ends as if electrified and stiffened by a layer of ice, now hang flat on its body.

Whenever the specimen shunted out the freezing magical properties layering its coat outwards, it lost them on its own body, though with the dungeon's mana regeneration, the creature would soon regain this anyway.

Yet, the Collector ascertained that its probability to obtain victory was ninety nine percent. The ursine was simply too much of an unrefined brute, its moves too telegraphed and predictable.

The Collector positioned its four hands in front of it, their palms open, and they glowed purple as the thel on one of the Collector's skulls gleamed with energy.

Now, the Collector would determine how much more powerful its Sapia had become now that it had lined the thel with Abyssium.

A massive chunk of ice from in front of the Collector shattered and raised in the air before breaking apart into a dozen smaller chunks. The Collector closed its fists, and the chunks condensed down into sharp points with a cracking sound.

The ursine noted this development, narrowing its glowing blue eyes. The Collector shot forward a series of four icicles that were almost a meter long. They spiraled in the air for maximum aerodynamical flight and whistled as they struck true into the ursine.

The Ursine, hunkered down and covered its face its paws, hunching its body so that its belly was not exposed.

Although its fur's defensive frost layer was still recharging, it possessed enough dense musculature and fat that the icicles, though they pierced the creature and sank into its body, could not gouge out lethal wounds.

The Collector noted that its Sapia was not as developed as its physical power. It never had been.

The female daemon specimen's Sapia had been multitudes beyond her pitiful physical capabilities, and though the Collector possessed the same genetic material, it could not replicate that same ratio.

Was it due to a lack of repetitive use meant to fine tune application and work out any imperfections? 'Training' as the female daemon specimen would have called it?

No. The Collector required no such thing as training. Its mind-muscle-psionic connection was absolute, perfected to such a degree that mere observation was as effective as ten years of repetitive training from a less developed tinkerer.

This connection extended to magical phenomena which, largely from a fundamental perspective, were heavily linked to the mind-muscle-psionic network.

Then, if it was not pure biological potential nor skill in usage, the differences in Sapia potential must have been from the only anomaly distinguishing the female daemon specimen from the Collector: her connection to the unknown psionic space within her shard.

Until the Collector could fully attempt to make connection with that space with sufficiently guaranteed safety, however, it would have to settle with its Sapia being more of a utility option than a brute force one, for it would seem that Abyssium, though it minorly enhanced the force based Sapia, focused mostly on enhancing Dominus-type magics that affected the mind.

Had the Collector thrown an icicle manually, it would have been approximately fifty percent more effective, but unless they pierced a critically vital organ like the heart or the brain, both of which were thoroughly covered by the ursine, then the dungeon's regeneration would render them ineffective in the long term.

The Collector continued to fire off the rest of its icicles for suppressive fire until it noted that a surge of magical energy developed localized around the ursine's paw-covered head.

Particles of bright white mana were swirling around its sizable, glowing white cervine horns, and soon, crackling arcs of electricity began to emit from them.

The last volley of three icicles the Collector sent were targeted at the horns, mostly as an experiment to see how the ursine specimen would react.

The electric mana surrounding the ursine's horns crackled outwards violently, shattering the icicles before they made impact. Then, the same mana started to link together from each of the horns, forming an ever-growing orb full of electrical energy.

The Collector encased its ocular systems in green magical energy to discern the flow of the ursine's attack and clicked its mandibles.

Yes, this would prove to be another apt opportunity for experimentation.

The ursine charged its attack while still defensively curled up, but now, with the ball of electricity between its horns grown to a diameter of three meters, it raised its head and snarled at the Collector with almost fully reformed jaw.

The ball of electricity was comprised of a prodigious quantity of magical energy that significantly exceeded the output of any single magical attack the Collector itself was capable of.

The stone under the ursine cracked and shattered, sucking into a vortex of rapidly swirling mana before disintegrating under the heat and force of the electric sphere.

The Collector finished its analysis, its six skeletal eye sockets turning from green back to dull yellow once more.

It did not move.

Instead, it relaxed all the muscles of its body, perceptibly shrinking as the rapid blood and mana flow circulating through its body eased, reducing the pump of the muscles.

All four arms came to the Collector's sides in wide open, inviting gesture.

The ursine growled as it stared down at the Collector from thirty meters away, attempting to discern the Collector's intent. The ursine was not entirely mindless and possessed some inkling of combat instinct, but it was not a tenth as refined as the four-star adventurers from the Darkwoods.

The Collector would have been loathe to admit it when it had first landed upon this world, when it believed evolutionary instinct and animal power pure and supreme, but it could now determine with confidence that it far preferred to engage in thorough combat with a sufficiently powerful tinkerer.

These tinkerers possessed just the right blend of combat knowledge, honed natural instinct, variety of powers and weaponry, and physical competency that could engage the Collector's desire for battle to a far greater degree than the ursine's mere brute, animal strength.

Certainly, the Collector looked down upon their tool usage, but it was their reliance on tools that granted them combat stratagem and technique beyond creatures that relied upon their natural weapons.

The Collector would never take upon tools for itself, but it could understand the tinkerers and accept their usage as a means to provide an adequate and engaging challenge for the Collector itself.

Here, against the urisne, the Collector felt as if it was merely experimenting, secure of its victory. It was not truly challenging itself, truly reveling in a battle where it could push the limitations of the many weapons systems it was not only gifted with from birth, but had hunted and personally grown through its own calculations and experiences.

The Collector desired not only to champion the might of the Collective, but also to prove its own power as an individual against those who had spent their entire lives also honing their own strength as individuals.

The ursine jerked its head towards the Collector, firing the ball of electrical energy.

The ball surged forwards at a speed the Collector could dodge, though it noted that the sheer amount of destructive magical energy laden within the sphere would annihilate half of this pit, meaning it could only dodge forwards.

No, the Collector was not experimenting its evasive capability; it was already secure of that.

Instead, the Collector let the sphere approach it with open arms.

When the incoming ball was right in front of the Collector, crackling and roaring and just as large as the Collector's sizable form, the Collector almost embraced the destructive energy with welcome fervor.