Uhtred barely had the time to blink before the daemon was suddenly upon him. The daemon moved with a savage, explosive aggression, lunging directly into close combat.

His immediate target was the star-metal battleaxe in Uhtred’s hand, clearly deeming the weapon a massive threat as if he could instinctively sense the metal magic Uhtred had been cycling through it.

An absolute, crushing chill accompanied the daemon’s sudden approach. The frost radiating from his grey skin spread across Uhtred’s body in an instant, nearly snuffing out the heat barrier covering him.

Uhtred’s core flared as he was forced to violently pump way more cosmic essence into his heat magic just to maintain its stability and keep his defenses from being completely snuffed out.

However, this heat barrier did not carry across to the star-metal weapon in his hands.

The moment the daemon’s freezing fingers made first contact with the star metal, Uhtred felt his connection to the battleaxe cease entirely.

The Frost Daemon flash-froze the weapon’s structure with the rapid chill surrounding his body. The extreme drop in temperature locked the already rigid, difficult-to-control star metal into a state of further rigidity, the atoms locking completely in place.

Uhtred could not move or budge the internal metallic skeleton of his weapon whatsoever, meaning his metal magic manipulation was entirely out of commission for the meantime.

Despite the sudden setback, Uhtred reacted very quickly. He swung the battleaxe anyway.

He had already spent a long period of time fighting with the heavy battleaxe exactly as it was, without needing to alter its shape mid-swing. Stifling his metal control was a massive letdown, but it was not severely detrimental to his combat capability.

Abandoning the metal element for now, he focused entirely on the heat magic that was rapidly consuming more of his cosmic essence.

He smoothly channeled the raw energy he would have otherwise spent maintaining his metal magic, dumping it straight into his heat magic instead.

The air around his body hissed and erupted into a dense cloud of steam immediately. The sudden reaction further limited his vision as he swung the battleaxe in a wide, punishing arc, hoping to score a hit on the Frost Daemon through the haze...

However, his battleaxe caught nothing but empty air.

Uhtred snarled, immediately spreading his senses out to the maximum, trying to pick up the traces of the Frost Daemon’s movements now that his vision was also out of commission.

But the moment his awareness expanded, all he could feel was an equal, undisturbed cloud of snowy mist pressing against him from all sides.

In every single direction, there wasn’t even the slightest trace of movement from the daemon.

What type of bloody technique is this?!

Uhtred barely had time to finish the thought before he felt a sharp disturbance in the air.

He braced his body just as two consecutive waves of frigid, concussive cold chill slammed directly into his heat barrier.

The impacts rattled his bones, making him pour another heavy stream of cosmic essence into maintaining the defensive structure yet again.

He could see exactly what this Frost Daemon was trying to do now.

Unlike his previous brute-force clash against the Level 19 beasts on the floor above, this Frost Daemon was functioning on a completely different level of intelligence.

The alien knew exactly what he was doing. He was fully aware that Uhtred and Zara were Pathfinders, and seemed to have an in-depth understanding of how powerful they were. He didn’t for a second underestimate them at all.

So right from the onset, he had gone completely all out with his attack, specifically targeting what he perceived to be the most immediate threats.

He had taken Uhtred’s main weapon out of commission in one targeted, opening strike. He had successfully blinded him. Even the stone ground under Uhtred’s feet had caked over into a slick layer of icy glass.

If not for the intense heat coating his body constantly melting the surface layer, his legs would have slipped entirely, skidding helplessly over the icy floor.

And the daemon was still not done.

He kept up the pressure, bombarding Uhtred with successive concussive bursts of frigid cold energy that forced him to continuously expend more cosmic essence just to keep his heat barrier active.

Essentially, this Frost Daemon wanted to wear him out through pure attrition.

The alien was well aware that Uhtred, as a Pathfinder, possessed a Unique grade talent or higher, meaning his cosmic essence reserves were incredibly deep.

Forcing him to expend and burn through that deep reserve as quickly and rapidly as possible was a brilliant, tactical move.

However, it seemed the Frost Daemon had forgotten one vital factor...

Uhtred wasn’t alone.

Uhtred couldn’t sense a single thing outside of the blinding screen of white, frigid cold that surrounded his body, but he could very well guess that to maintain such a limiting screen, the Frost Daemon had to focus his entire attention on him.

Zara was still standing unmoving, completely unbothered way behind them. All Uhtred needed was a single action that would break the rhythm of this trap, a sudden disruption to stop the rapid whittling of his reserves.

The Frost Daemon was entirely right in his strategy to drain his enemy’s cosmic essence, but Uhtred was not just any standard Pathfinder. He wasn’t a Unique grade. He wasn’t even a Legendary grade, which sat even higher than that...

Rather, he was a Primordial grade existence, a tier the System itself had formed to account for his entirely peculiar situation.

His cosmic essence core was not like any other. It was greedy. Extremely greedy.

The moment he had stepped onto Floor 20, the lingering weariness in his muscles had begun to lessen at a dramatic pace because of the immense, raw cosmic essence pouring out of the regional dungeon core hovering at the center of the chamber.

The Frost Daemon likely thought Uhtred’s reserves were dwindling down to nothing, but his primordial core’s passive draw was so insanely high that right now, while his reserves were in truth technically depleting, his core was passively drinking in massive amounts of cosmic essence from the environment at the exact same time.

The rate of his depletion was reduced so significantly that Uhtred could comfortably continue maintaining this high-output defense for a terrifyingly long amount of time.

He didn’t need to panic. All he needed was a single gap to invert the situation. A small window where he could spot the physical body of the daemon for a split second, and he would capitalize on it so furiously that the alien wouldn’t even know what hit him.

Without hesitation, Uhtred opened his mouth and yelled, his voice cutting sharply through the frigid, whistling air surrounding him:

"Zara!"

He didn’t even need to say anything more than that. Her name was enough to trigger her out of her calm observation.

She jumped into the fray in an instant, her weird magic kicking into gear.

To Uhtred, who was trapped within the thick of the white mist, it was impossible to tell his direction from left or right.

He couldn’t sense anything at all. The mist and frigid cold domain that had surrounded him felt completely all-encompassing, blinding his vision and choking his senses.

But to Zara, who was charging from outside of it, the perspective was entirely different...