Alien Evolution System

Chapter 118 - Worthy Challenge III

The monstrosity kept its burly, scaled arms around its stomach, preventing its intestines from spilling out of the burning hole baring them. As it did so, it opened its mouth, the fin on its back charged into a completely azure hue, and unleashed the colossal amounts of magical energy it had built up.

The result was like the beast had ejected a force of nature itself from its body. A massive surge of dark clouds cast outwards at high velocities, possessing tangible physical mass to blow back the snow on the ground and go even further, shattering the ground several meters deep.

Filling the dark clouds were crackling thunderbolts that arced in every direction, providing flashes of eerie blue light in the mass of cloudy dark. Raging currents of wind force tipped with shards of ice howled from within as well.

This was on a level incomparable to the Stormbear that manifested only lightning. The sheer density of magical energy charging this breath attack was almost five times more intensive.

It was as if a piece of an intensely fierce storm had been unleashed unto the earth, and the monster did a perfect job of clearing its surroundings. All the goblins had fled, the champions already having made distance and the elites fast enough to outrun the storm breath.

The monster immediately stopped its breath in a sudden moment before lunging forwards, rolling its body through the blackened, crackling raw, rocky earth it had uncovered before standing up with a grin.

The Collector had landed exactly where the monster had been, its purifying lightblade dug deep into the ground.

"I see that you have begun to enjoy this altercation," stated the Collector as it withdrew the buried blade, small crumbles of shattered rock pattering off the glowing weapon. The Collector faced the beast with all four of its arms out to its sides. Its twin light blades glowed a bright gold, overpowering the aura of flames raging around its body.

"The same can be said of me. Both of us are running upon low reserves of magical energy now," continued the Collector. "If it is so that you can understand me, then you know then this battle will be decided in the next exchange of blows."

The monster loosed a guttural rattle from deep within its throat and nodded once.

The Collector noted this. Despite the fact that the beast had no reason to understand the Collector's goblin language, it still understood the Collector's intent, and it smiled even broader.

"Good. We shall both prove that we are worthy of the strength invested unto us through might borne from both evolution and experience," stated the Collector before it charged forwards, its serpentine lowering body slithering in side to side motions to make its trajectory erratic.

The Collector's flaming, glowing white body marked out a steaming path across the desolate, lightning-razed ground, and in a moment, it was upon the hostile creature with a thrusting stab of its light blade.

The monster immediately sensed this movement, easily keeping up with the Collector's quick and erratic movements. If a martial artist had seen the Collector, they would have remarked that this was footwork meant to confuse.

Yet, the Collector saw as the creature dodged to the side, getting behind the Collector and cocking its arm back for a swipe with its claws.

The Collector sensed this and went low, supporting its weight with its four arms on the ground and using this position to thrust out its Shaker Fish tail in a powerful slamming motion. This was empowered with the Shaker Fish's ability to generate earth shattering shockwaves, and the monster halted its slash to cross its thick, scaled arms over its body to guard itself.

A resounding, deep slam echoed through the snowy wasteland as the monster flew back over a dozen meters, its leg muscles bulging as they dug into the rock, cracking deep into the stone to keep it from flying straight off the cliff face.

A shower of shattered grey scales fell from the beast's arms. Cracks lined both of its limbs, and the monster peered at the Collector with glowing blue eyes of curiosity.

The Collector pushed off of its arms and landed upon its tail once more. It had analyzed the acrobatic movements of the goblin elites and made them its own, modifying them further so that they could work properly with its own vastly different biological structure. 

The Shaker Fish's shockwaves by nature were highly effective against armored structures that lacked shock absorbent properties like the longchain chitinous sublayer in the Collector's own hyperalloy carapace. 

Likely, the Collector had caused both of the creature's arms to suffer fractures to varying degrees.

Yet, the monster healed its wounds once more and charged forwards. 

The Collector had predicted that either the beast would continue to utilize its regeneration even as its magical energy dwindled or it would allow itself to suffer injuries to fight so that it could save mana for other abilities.

This indicated that the creature did not possess notable primal magic abilities with which to utilize its mana in direct combat aside from its regeneration. Its breath ability to replicate meteorological phenomena was certainly powerful, capable of causing grievous wounds to the Collector's form if it hit, but there was a charging wind up required. 

This, the monster knew, and thus, it charged in for close combat. 

The Collector welcomed this. This raw test of might.

The beast's scaled, muscled frame came almost right in front of the Collector, and by how the specimen positioned its weight forwards with its arms stuck out, it was attempting to grasp the Collector again in a grapple.

Then, the beast would likely try to bite down on the Collector with its deadly jaws.

The Collector was disappointed. The same series of movements would not work against the Collector again. And now that there had been enough distance between them, the Collector had ample time to react. 

The Collector knew that the creature was willing to take any amount of damage to make this grapple successful, even a full force beam from the Shinchu orb, and this too was far too costly for the Collector to utilize. 

One more beam of extended usage would render the Collector nearly completely drained of magical energy. 

The Collector instead split apart its stomach, and before the beast could register what was happening, the Collector ejected its detachable stomach.

The mass of crushing, grinding muscle and teeth snapped forwards with sudden movement, aiming to completely ensnare the specimen's head and then subject it to a direct application of flames from the Collector's pyrocatalytic glands.

However, the beast was able to predict this and swerved to the side at the very last moment, dodging the detachable stomach and, because it had dodged so late, prevented the Collector from having time to counter properly.

The beast abandoned its tackle and instead opened its mouth, chomping down on the Collector's head. 

The Collector retracted its stomach and, at the last second, reacted by jamming its fist into the specimen's mouth, ready to eject its monomolecular claw and end the beast at the cost of an arm.

This too, the specimen predicted, and instead, it suddenly closed its jaws and stepped backwards, wary of the Collector.

"I see now," stated the Collector as it took this time to analyze the specimen further, encasing the sockets of its skulls with flow sensitive green mana.

Along the creature's thick, pointed snout and fin were faint arcs of magical electricity that too were colored green.

Extremely sensitive to the flow of mana. Utilizing a physical property to sense electrical fields, including those generated at minute levels by living beings through the firings of their neurons, and combining it with mana, the creature was able to adequately predict the intent of another being the moment the intent was formulated. 

This was how the specimen was able to predict the Collector's attacks despite the fact it should not have had even the slightest beginning of an idea as to the Collector's many weapons systems. Thus, it could evade attacks that it had no idea about such as the Collector's detachable stomach.

"A fine adaptation," stated the Collector. "But I have seen through it. Come, face your demise once more."

The monster circled the Collector, and the Collector remained still. 

There were limitations to this predictive sense. The beast could only read ahead for a single moment. Thus, it could easily be overwhelmed by a chain of attacks or if the blows were simply too fast for the specimen to react to with the small timeframe it was granted. 

But beyond all this, the Collector determined that this ability was simply a cheaper version of the sensing ability martially trained specimen were capable of. It had already dealt with this through the red-skinned goblin champion and hobgoblin in the Darkwoods.

Merely altering the Collector's thoughts with its superior processing systems would obscure the creature's predictive sense.

However, unlike with the goblin specimen, this specimen was not utilizing a great amount of its magical energy and focus to use this ability. It was merely an addition to its senses. Thus, the Collector would not be able to overwhelm the beast's mind.