What's worse for the white tiger was that it didn't have a worm to enhance its power. So it could only take the lightning head on.
The white tiger was also at the peak of the fourth mortal coil, but its power output was less than half of what it was producing, so when the lightning net submerged it, the white tiger was quickly burned.
The tiger roared in pain and anguish, but it was to no avail. The lightning bolts in the lightning net bombarded it until it became a charcoal corpse. Even the corpse was further bombarded until it turned into ashes. Only its golden core survived the ordeal.
The tortoise also didn't fare better. The shell of the tortoise was very strong, and it could resist the burning and shocking damage from the lightning bolts that she used to block, but the structural integrity of the shell couldn't withstand the physical impact of the lightning bolts smashing into it, so it cracked and was quickly incinerated too.
As for the porcupine, it was able to do well for a time. The porcupine was far away from him and safe. Then it began shooting sharp projectiles at Arthur from a distance.
The sharp projectiles that the porcupine was shooting weren't powerful enough to breach the defense of his energy shield, so they weren't dangerous to him. But he was unwilling to let the porcupine continue to harass him, so he instructed the storm of blades to attack it.
His instructions made some of the small and sharp blades attacking the golden core cultivator switch their focus to the porcupine. They quickly swarmed the porcupine and attacked it from every direction.
Unlike the tortoise, the porcupine didn't have incredible defense and was just soft. The porcupine also didn't have great strength and speed like the white tiger. So it could neither escape from the storm of blades nor block them.
The storm of blades was able to make short work of the porcupine after swarming it. They cut into it, entered its body, and tore it to pieces. In no time, the golden core beast was shredded like one would shred paper.
The formation breaker informed him that the porcupine was truly dead and wasn't pretending to die. It provided him with real-time analysis of the situation and even gave him advice on how to deal with certain problems, so he always knew how to respond to a threat.
Unfortunately for the formation breaker, there isn't much to do in this fight because his enemy isn't much of a threat. So its goal isn't to fight for his life or eke out a meagre victory, it is to find the quickest way to kill her.
She released three pets at the peak of the golden core realm to save her life, but the best that they could do was buy her a few seconds of reprieve.
This was why she didn't want to release her pets in the first place. They weren't strong enough to affect this battle in a meaningful way.
After the three pets died, she kept the golden core of the tortoise, while Arthur kept the golden core of the white tiger and that of the porcupine. Then he refocused all of his attention on her in order to get her golden core and the golden core of the tortoise.
As he renewed his attacks against her, he smiled to himself and said, "This is why I chose to target someone from the Beast Training sect. They are always carrying extra golden cores around everywhere."
He was in a good mood, and she had made him happy, but his good mood wasn't a good thing for her at all. His good mood only wanted him to kill her and see what else he could loot from her. So she is doomed because she made him happy by being a good prey.
The portion of the storm of blades that had left her earlier soon returned to join the portion attacking her. The lightning bolts also kept coming from Arthur, one after the other. He even began pursuing her in order to get close to her and fry her with the net of lightning.
For now, she was still safe because the worm had done a good job of preserving her life. But the worm itself was not in good shape. All of the attacks that it had endured had taken their toll on it.
It was clear to both Arthur and her that the worm wouldn't be able to last much longer. What's worse is that even if the worm was completely fine, she wouldn't be able to continue supporting it for much longer, either.
The fact is that the protection of the worm didn't come for free. Arthur can't tell much about how the worm became so strong, but he can tell that the worm is a symbiote of some sort that feeds on her mana and uses her as its foundation to copy itself.
In a way, the worm is doing something similar to an armament. Unfortunately, it is doing a poor job of it.
Not only is the energy expenditure of the worm too high and unsustainable, but it is also damaging and weakening its host by siphoning so much internal energy and life force from her. This is the main reason why she won't be able to last much longer.
She is running out of time to kill him. Even if he doesn't manage to kill her, the worm will kill her if she lets it continue to eat away at her life like that. So either she allows the worm to kill her, or she puts away the worm and lets him kill her.
None of her choices was a good one. And it is clear by now that releasing more pets won't change the situation.
So she said, "Let's end this here. It won't be good if you push me too far."
What she said made Arthur laugh out loud and say, "Weren't you being cocky earlier?"