Alien Evolution System

by Stayrr

Consume and evolve to become the strongest. The Collector, an alien warrior on a mission to absorb all life, transmigrates to a world of fantasy and magic. However, a battle with a god forces it to begin its journey as nothing more than a weak grub. Used to fighting against spaceships and machines, the Collector must now navigate its strange new world where instead of dealing wi

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Read Alien Evolution System Chapter 1 - The Beginning Of The End online for free - AllNovelFull

The Collector hurtled through the unending darkness of deep space at blinding speeds, pulverizing any stray asteroid or debris in its way into dust. It was encased in a ball of durable organic-hyperalloy more capable than any Dreadnought-class ship hull in the entire sector.

Like a planetoid bowling ball of segmented, ashen white, chitinous carapace, it traveled as a relativistic phantom of blurred white that promised nothing but death and destruction.

The tinkering races that needed life support systems to brave the void of space and firearms to compensate for their weak limbs and all manner of trinkets to cover for their biological weaknesses might have conquered the ecosystems of their home planets and perhaps, as their individualistic, selfish tendencies were wont to do, even exploited them to destruction, but the Collector symbolized a side of nature that could never be tamed.

It was pure evolutionary progress honed to a razor edge sharper than that belonging to any plasmoid blade known in the galaxy.

For the Collectors were the premiere heralds of the Collective, a hivemind species that consumed all life, adapting their biological structures into its own to produce hyper-efficient, hyper-deadly organisms without equal throughout the stars, painting the vast, dark canvas of space with the blood and tears of billions.

And for all the complexities involved in the so very many tools the tinkering species used, the Collective's methods were rather simple.

The Collective, once consuming an interstellar species, would find more targets in their memories.

It would track these targets, finding any weaknesses it could in the memories it absorbed and, over several years tinkering with the best genetic material possible, morph a Collector - an almost indestructible, unstoppable force of raw biological power - and send it onwards to harvest to the helpless civilization.

It was nothing short of ironic that the greatest marvel of the tinkering species would lead to their downfall.

With the advent of warp-link technology that could generate wormholes that connected the farthest ends of the galaxy together, interstellar commerce and interaction became commonplace, but with it came the rise of the Collective.

Once, the Collective was an isolated species that had extended its tendrils only across its home solar system over the course of millennia.

Over a century ago, the very first strange tinkering ships warped into the Collective's then unknown home system. The Collective consumed these adventuresome stragglers, and with their knowledge, accessed the warp gates they left behind.

As it consumed more and more tinkering species, the Collective eventually devised its own way of generating warp gates, and soon enough, it used the very same interconnected routes of gates meant for trade and peace to wage war and consumption.

To any spacefaring onlooker, the Collector would have raised immediate alarm.

Any ship witnessing the Collector's balled figure speeding through the starry void would have alerted every single nearby civilization it could.

There were very few times a Collector fell in battle, and it had always been through the united effort of several races, for no single civilization could best a Collector with its many evolutionary adaptations tailor made against the likes of weakling tinkerers.

But unlike the missions granted to its past brethren, this Collector knew not what it would face.

A warp gate had opened strangely close to the Collective's home solar system.

The Collective's solar system had long since been closed to space-travel, deemed far too dangerous to ever traverse, and so this wormhole's appearance so close to the Collective home world was all too strange.

Perhaps an attack.

Perhaps an accident.

But the Collective did not like uncertainties. It thrived on knowledge, and so it sent a Collector to this wormhole to face any potential threat on the other end.

The Collector felt pride in being able to serve the Collective. Though it retained a mental independence crucial in allowing it to adapt to the high-intensity, high-uncertainty challenges of battle, it still had an undying loyalty to the Collective.

Its purpose was to defend the Collective at all costs and destroy and consume all its foes, bringing back their genetic material as spoils of war.

Nothing less, nothing more.

It was an extension of the Collective, utilizing only the best parts of free will the tinkering species had evolved while trimming the excess - the rebellious, unproductive tendencies that so often led to infighting.

This was the mindset the Collector held as it neared the wormhole, a pulsating mass of blinding light almost as large as a small planet. Waves of undulating gravity and space wreathed its horizon, drawing in the Collector as it neared.

When the Collector touched the horizon, it felt itself drawing into the wormhole, its body warping every this way and that as the realities of space and time became fluid.

Its body, hardened by countless evolutions and perfected by the Collective, could survive the rigors of warp travel, and soon enough, it passed through without issue.

It was an interesting process, warp travel was. The feeling of having every atom of its existence warped at the seams of spatial and temporal limitation managed to make the Collector feel nausea – a feeling that no weapon in the galaxy, biological or munitions based, was capable of.

At the other end, the Collector found itself floating above a vibrant planet. It did not take utilizing the Collector's massive array of senses to know that this was a planet full of life.

Even from high orbit, it could see that the planet, blue and green, had countless life signatures worth consuming. Seven rings, each a different shade of light, circled the verdant planet, glowing with a strange yet alluring intensity that promised life.

Alarmingly, the warp gate behind the Collector closed away, leaving it stranded.

It did not panic, however, for that was not part of its evolutionary development. It merely recalibrated its goals.

It did not have the capacity to open a warp gate - the Collective alone had the combined psionic power for that - so it would instead savage this planet to accumulate enough biomass for another burst of deep space travel to the nearest warp gate.

Where exactly that gate was, the Collector could not ascertain. It looked into system of memories embedded, built upon by Collector after Collector that came before it, to map out a path, but this star system was entirely foreign, this planet utterly unknown.

Odd. All warp gates had to be built within a certain degree of proximity to each other, each gate forming a supportive node in a much greater system. Any warp gate that existed far beyond the reach of the greater whole would not maintain itself.

The Collector emitted a psionic pulse, mentally attempting to establish connection with the Collective.

For so long as any member of its kind, no matter whether it was a lowly drone or another Collector, was within distance of it, it could essentially pinball and amplify this mental message and reach the Collective.

The effective range of the Collective's psionic communication network spanned many light years and cross dozens of warp gates.

And yet, though the Collector could feel the pulse reaching out, it could not find a signal returning to it.

The possibility existed that the Collector was stranded far, far from home, but that did not induce panic within it, nor was it biologically capable of feeling such an inefficient emotion to a high degree.

The greatest likelihood existed that some life form on this world had created the aberrant warp gate.

All the Collector had to do then was to consume all life on this planet and, through extracted memories, find a method back to the Collective.

The Collector unfurled out of its balled cocoon state. Suited for hyperspace travel as the compact form was, it was not suited for combat.

Its appearance could now best be described as bestial, appearing like an armored, infinitely more monstrous kind of crocodile. It looked like something crocodiles would worship as a god.

It was quadrupedal, supporting its enormous, six thousand plus ton weight on skyscraper-like legs muscled with the densest, most efficient ultrafibers and sheathed in ashen carapace impervious to even the strongest of blasters.

Flexible spikes emerged across its back and through seams in its armor, acting as tools of war that could scythe through entire cities.

Its neck, long but thickly muscled, stretched forwards eagerly, its carapace-helmeted head opening a set of monstrous jaws in expectant hunger.

Its multiple tails, prehensile and dexterous like arms, flitted about it, morphing between acid spitters, blades, bulbous electromagnetic pulse emitters, and any other variant of destructive weapon it required for assimilation.

With a grunt of exertion unheard in the soundless void of space, the Collector sprouted enormous wings bat-like in structure but dotted with pulsating tubules which emitted bursts of raw, blue plasmoid energy like jet engines, surging it towards the planet.

But as the Collector neared, there came forth a challenger unlike any it had ever known.

A towering being of brilliant light.

Twelve feathered, energy-wreathed wings sprouted from its back, fluttering gently to propel it forwards. It was a good deal smaller than the Collector, but still as large as any capitol-class ship.

It was bipedal.

Humanoid and armored in platinum white with a blazing helmet of sterling silver that shone ever the more brighter in the contrasting dark of space. The Collector reached into the psionic link it had with the Collective to access the shared memory database of tinkering species wired into its brain.

However, the humanoid structure's armor did not match any ship covering that the Collector held in its memory bank. Especially not any belonging to the human race, one of the three tinkering species that comprised the United Front against the Collective.

An entirely new species, perhaps? Or perhaps a strange new device that the other races had devised in order to try and kill the Collective?

It was not unheard of. One Collector had even fallen to a similar humanoid machine titan of war created by the vast alliance that comprised the United Front.

Either way, the Collector had to destroy it, whether for defense or consumption it did not matter. It stood in the way of this planet.

"Halt!" shouted the being. Its voice resonated throughout even the soundless expanse of space, powered by a strange phenomenon that the Collector did not understand. "I am Solarion, the high-king of the gods, defender of the seven realms, lord of Aetheria, keeper of the Eternal Light!

On the authority vested unto me, I command you to stay your advance, monster!"

The Collector did not recognize the being's language and continued forwards, its tails armed with acid spitters, its jaws bared, and its claws extended.

"So be it," said the being. It materialized a blade almost as large as itself from light it generated out of nowhere.

Solid-light constructs were a phenomenon that the Collector had witnessed before in its memory bank, but this was entirely different. It could not sense any of the regular energy signatures that accommodated the construction of such weapons.

"To think that the prophesied End was no Undeath, no star stone, even, but a beast from the void itself."

The being held the sword above its head. It flashed with all the brilliance of a sun, its white-hot blade generating a radiance that drove the cold of space away.

"Come, foul creature of the stars!" shouted the being. "You will be reduced to ashes just as the countless demons and monsters I have slain before you."

The Collector did not recognize the being's language, but aggression was an universal indicator.

It surged forwards, spitting acid and electricity as it barreled towards the strange organism or ship.

The battle was fierce and on a scale the Collector had never believed possible.

It lasted for an entire day and night cycle, the humanoid being restoring its acid-ridden, electricity burned, claw-gouged flesh seemingly out of nowhere and the Collector regenerating its own flesh with its advanced genetic traits.

Organic-hyperalloy claws the size of megastructures clashed with a heavenly sword of light.

Streams of acid and blasts of condensed electric energy were countered with beams of burning, fiery, radiance.

But eventually, there was a winner in sight.

The Collector.

It was missing two limbs, its tails shaved off, its body littered with scorch marks and cuts that refused to heal, but the being was in an even worse state.

It floated weakly with one remaining wing out of twelve. Its armor had melted, burnt, cracked, or sheared, leaving a bloody, beaten humanoid figure heaving with exhaustion underneath. The being did not heal anymore, nor did it generate scorching blasts of light.

It had run out of whatever energy was fueling it, the aura of radiance dimming down all about it as its power escaped it, dooming it to death.

The only thing that remained pristine was its blade, but the Collector cared little of any tinkerer's construct.

The Collector felt excitement instead for the flesh of this being, for instead of being some kind of mechanical titan, it was instead a being of flesh and blood underneath its armor.

In a way, the Collector felt a sense of respect for the beaten entity, for it was with its own strength alone that it challenged the Collector.

The Collector would show its respect by consuming the being. It would regenerate all of its wounds by consuming this strange and powerful new creature and also attain heights of power never before seen.

It would destroy the blade – useless as it was as an inorganic piece of metal – to prevent it from falling to any errant hands and then lay havoc upon the denizens of this planet.

Judging by how nothing aided the being, it was apparent that it was the planet's most powerful line of defense, and all that lay behind it was free for consumption.

The Collector surged forwards, slower and weaker than before, but all the being could do in response was attempt to hold its blade with arms barely functional with how badly they were bruised, burned and cut.

"Forgive me, my brethren," the being said, looking back at the planet behind it, faintly glowing strands of white hair floating around its bloody head. "Forgive me, all the mortals that believed in me. The chaos my death will cause…I hope you will all find it in your hearts to forgive me for it. But it will be nothing compared to the chaos this beast will wreak should I not do this."

With a sudden burst of energy, the being raised the blade high above its head. "O Dawnrise, blade of infinity, bringer of light, I will entrust to you my life, and so in return, create strength for me as you have created life.

To that which is worthy to receive your strength after my passing, I grant all my blessings."

The Collector did not care about this theatrical show. Any analysis of the being's physical form indicated it had no real energy to fight with.

But surprisingly, the being did not try to run, it met the Collector head on.

The being enveloped itself in a halo of power so bright that it seared all of the Collector's optical capabilities out, and in the moment of blindness, the being charged forwards, driving the blade deep into the Collector's chest.

The Collector felt white-hot energy comparable to the sun liquefy and instantly evaporate its flesh.

A moment later, an explosion rocked the orbit of the planet. It was a blast of light so bright and expansive that every being on the planet could witness it.

Those on the day witnessed their world grow infinitely white while those on the other side of the planet saw night become day for just an instant.

And so came the end of Solarion, High-King of the gods, and the Collector, herald of the Collective.

Or so the peoples and gods of the world would have been fortunate to believe.

For the Collector had survived, a single, small shard of its body surviving incineration and entry into the planet's atmosphere. It landed indiscriminately in the thick of a wild, overgrown forest, burning out a small clearing among towering trees that twisted high into the sky.

From the crater emerged a grub no larger than a dog – all that the once mighty Collector had been reduced to.

But it had survived, and so it could still fulfill its purpose.

This planet was dangerous, the Collector determined. It had to be neutralized for the sake of the Collective. Then, it would find its way back home.

First thing was first, though.

The Collector had to survive, consume, adapt, and evolve to become the strongest being there was on this strange new planet.

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The Collector squirmed its way around the jungle floor.

It had lost almost all of its adaptations, but perhaps most distressingly, it lost its connection to the greater Collective hive mind. This was unacceptable, and it could not understand how this had happened.

There was not a single weapon throughout the known galaxy capable of severing the psionic link that Collectors had with the Collective.

And yet, the reality did not change that the link was gone. The Collector adjusted to its disadvantages. Without the psionic link it held with the Collective mind, it could not signal its location and its access to the Collective database of shared knowledge became extremely limited.

However, it still retained some basic functions that allowed it to survive.

It was still composed of segments of ultrafiber muscle, though far less dense and powerful than in its original state as it could not possibly sustain such organic material with how little energy it had now.

However, the muscle still allowed for quick, undulating movement reminiscent of a snake slithering across the leafed soil.

The Collector still retained basic senses that came with reducing itself to a larva. It had lost its sight, but fine hairs dotting its body were sensitive to all motion, allowing it to conjure up detailed, 360-degree imagery of its environment.

Sound also registered through these vibration-sensitive hairs, allowing it to realize that as of now, its immediate surroundings were safe.

Likely, the crash-landing had scared off local fauna.

This also indicated that there was little intelligent life in the area.

Perfect to consume and regain strength. However, this planet was incredibly different. The Collector could not match any of the plants or small animals it encountered with equivalents in its memory bank.

This was truly a wholly new and foreign planet, and with it came dangers just as novel that put it on constant guard.

Until it could develop its strength, it had to lie low. It checked its status for now, nothing how much it had degraded in strength:

Metamorphosis Level 1001

Biomass Level: 0/100

Stored Genetic Material:

*CRITICAL LOSS OF STORED GENETIC MATERIAL DETECTED*

-NONE

Adaptations:

Internal Systems

*CRITICAL LOSS OF ADAPTATIONS DETECTED. REMAINING ADAPTATIONS*

-Ultrafiber Musculature Rank 1

External Systems

*CRITICAL LOSS OF ADAPTATIONS DETECTED. REMAINING ADAPTATIONS*

-Sensitive Hairs Rank 1

Weapons Systems

*CRITICAL LOSS OF ADAPTATIONS DETECTED. REMAINING ADAPTATIONS*

-NONE

Current Form:

-Grub

The Collector did not feel any panic, nor was it ever programmed to do so in any degree that would severely cripple its functions.

This level of functions loss was within its observed calculations. It focused its mental and physical efforts instead on building up biomass to reach the next metamorphosis level.

The Collector spent its initial time feasting on plant-life, chewing dead leaves fallen from the trees high above. Its once proud, building-sized jaws were reduced to a circular mouth lined with small, stubby teeth.

*Biomass gained (5)*

Biomass Level: 05/100

The Collector kept eating leaves, branches, whatever it could gets its mouth on. The voice in its head was the memory bank of the Collective – a repository of information implanted in every Collector at birth and useful for recognizing new species and developing new abilities.

Though losing the psionic link meant that the Collective memory system was limited, the basics were still the same.

Evolution centered around two elements: biomass and genetic material.

Biomass meant the consumption of raw organic material. The more complex the biomass and the more of it there was, the better, though quality certainly took precedence over quantity. In this case, it was plant matter.

Maxing out on biomass would allow the Collector to metamorphose to increase its strength and potentially change its form based on what it had eaten and thereby gain new adaptations.

Metamorphosis would also allow it to redevelop an adaptation from the Collective's vast evolutionary arsenal, though at its current state that ability would be at a much, much weaker version just like how its ultrafiber muscles were significantly atrophied compared to the sinews padding its original, towering form that could support thousands of tons.

The adaptations themselves fell under the categories of internal, external, and weapons based systems. Internal and external systems generally indicated adaptations that would help, as their titles indicated, internal and external parts of the Collector's body.

Weapons systems were offensive bio-weapons the Collector could develop, but many of them required first a solidly built up base of internal and external systems to support them.

Genetic material was any new genetic material it could consume that would grant it new forms and, by extension, the powers associated with those forms.

As of now, these plants were nothing special, providing nothing new.

Plant-life tended to develop similarly across planets with water, so it was no surprise that their genetic structure was not sufficiently distinct or special enough to produce abilities with.

Were they poisonous plants, then the matter would be different, but the Collector encountered none.

In a pinch, the Collector could also sacrifice biomass to heal itself by entering into a restorative stasis, though this was ill-advised because it rendered the Collector immobile and wasted biomass at high rates which, especially in later levels of metamorphosis, would require increasingly larger volumes to replenish.

Ultimately, though, to gain any kind of new form and power, the Collector would have to metamorphose first.

Right now, the Collector wanted to focus on gaining enough biomass to metamorphose and redevelop the hardened carapace over its currently soft body regardless of what form it needed to assume.

Survival was its top priority and it felt too exposed right now.

Any good blaster or rail rifle could punch a hole through it.

So the Collector kept eating, munching a decent clearing across the crater it had landed in.

Along the way, it gobbled up insects of various kinds here and there.

*Biomass gained (10)*

Biomass Level: 15/100

*New genetic material gained*

Stored Genetic Material:

-Jungle Spider

-Black Ant

-Striped Centipede

The Collector took a moment to analyze its options but found them lacking.

Certainly, these insectoid forms were interesting, but they did not hold particularly unique powers. Weak venom and small wings, mainly, but perhaps when enhanced and spliced with its own ultrafiber muscles and soon to be developed organic-hyperalloy carapace, these forms would be more useful.

The environmental temperature started to lower.

Though the Collector lacked ocular systems in its grub form, it did possess sensitive hairs and a mind capable of creating a general visual map of its surroundings based on vibrational input.

It sensed that little light would penetrate the thick canopy of tree leaves above it, explaining the cool temperatures on the forest floor, but now it sensed an even more gradual yet marked drop in warmth.

The Collector judged it was nearing night, and from a few basic calculations, deduced that this planet had a 24-hour daily cycle, so any creatures it encountered now were likely to be nocturnal.

By now, local fauna had started to gain courage and re-populate the area.

The Collector could feel the stirs and heat of small mammals scurrying about, the rustle of creatures in the tree branches, and in the far distance, the thud of some sizable creature that the Collector knew not to near until it was far stronger.

The Collector did not indiscriminately chew on plant matter anymore now. It did not want to attract too much attention.

Yet it did need to quickly gain biomass to metamorphose.

Metamorphosing would also allow it to change its form to something a little more efficient than a worm, so it had to eat. It decided to be riskier and attempt hunting some of the small mammals scurrying about.

They would be far more complex and laden with higher quality biomass.

The Collector crawled into a patch of thick grass and flattened its pliable body so that it was concealed.

Then it waited, feeling with its hairs for something to near.

A short while later, something did.

A rabbit, small and hungry. Its fur was midnight black and perfectly camouflaged in the darkness, but the camouflage was useless against the Collector which saw not with eyes, but feeling.

It hopped forwards to the Collector's hiding spot, wanting to munch on the tall, nourishing grass.

The Collector was absolutely still and patient. It had the collective knowledge of countless predatory species across many planets, so waiting and ambushing like this was a familiar tactic ingrained into every cell of its body.

The rabbit made one little hop too close, and the Collector surged forwards, its ultrafiber muscles straining as its maw opened up, clasping on the rabbit's leg.

The rabbit mewled as it kicked and tried to escape, but the Collector's grip was unbreakable by such a weak creature. The Collector sucked in, its segmented body undulating as it forced the rabbit further and further into its mouth, swallowing it bit by bit whole.

When it drew in the rabbit completely, slurping in its ears like noodles, it checked its status.

*Biomass gained (35)*

Biomass level: 50/100

The Collector was pleased.

The rabbit had provided a good amount of biomass, but it also held something even more precious: memories.

Non-sentient, dumber creatures such as the rabbit had scarcely few memories to retrieve, but there were some tied with strong instincts that the Collector could easily pluck out.

Not that it was possible to truly extract accurate memories from more sentient, intelligent species. Individually, cut off from the support of the Collective, it did not have the processing power to extract full memories from sentient beings.

Memories from sentient beings tended to be a jumble, a sea of remembered and forgotten thoughts laced with hidden knowledge and emotions and any other manner of variable that could diminish the accuracy of the memories.

But the Collector would deal with that issue when it came to it. For now, it sifted through the rabbit's simpler mind.

Among the rabbit's memories included awareness of some of the predators in this jungle and also the location to the rabbit's den where its offspring lay.

The den was not far.

The Collector slithered its way over, wary not to alert any dangerous presences. It knew now there were large felines and short, white-skinned humanoids in the jungle that lay in wait to ambush just as it had done to the rabbit.

Thankfully, it did not encounter any such creatures as it found the den – a little dugout concealed by taller grasses and foliage a small way from the crash site.

The Collector forced its way into the den. Though it was larger than the rabbit, its worm-like form was malleable, able to squeeze into most surfaces.

Inside the den was a golden treasure: a litter of twelve rabbits squealing in a terror enforced by instinct as they gazed at the hideous, saw-like mouth of the Collector.

The Collector swallowed them whole. It did not want to lose any biomass to stray bleeding.

And as it consumed the babies, another boon came.

With its 360-degree range of sensory vision, it sensed the aggressive approach of another rabbit, likely the male counterpart of the female it consumed, attempting to bite the Collector's tail outside the den in defense of his offspring.

While the Collector's mouth ground up the babies, its tail lashed backwards like a club as the rabbit leaped forwards to bite, striking the small creature on the head and breaking its neck.

Without wasting time, the Collector withdrew from the burrow and went to consuming the father. With the whole family in its stomach, it checked its status once more.

*Biomass gained (50)*

Biomass level 100/100

*Metamorphosis available*

*New genetic material available*

Stored Genetic Material:

-Midnight Rabbit

-Jungle Spider

-Black Ant

-Striped Centipede

Excellent.

Now the Collector could finally change out its form to something more agile and suitable to the forest and also gain a carapace to defend itself with.

However, with each metamorphosis level it gained, it knew that undergoing further metamorphoses would become increasingly difficult, requiring more and more biomass.

To reach its original state as a 200,000-ton paragon of annihilation would likely require consuming most of this planet.

But a start was a start.

And so, the Collector underwent its metamorphosis, hiding in a thicket of grass as a cocoon of soft, beating flesh morphed around it. Its larval body melted into pure, primordial genetic ooze.

From here, creation was its plaything.

First off, it had to decide on a new form.

It could choose to consume a maximum of three stored genetic samples and splice them together to create a new form or go with just one or two.

Had the Collector still been linked to the Collective hive mind, it could have done so much more.

It would have been able to process more than three genetic samples. It could have redeveloped adaptations that did not originally belong to its initial warrior form strain, instead opting to spread parasitic devastation or disease through infector or dominator strains.

For now, though, it was limited to restoring only what it originally came to this planet with.

Regardless, it was inefficient to waste mental energy on hypotheticals.

Either way, its next form would be what it would be stuck with until it reached its second metamorphosis, so it had to choose wisely.

Unfortunately, it only had one mammal and various insects to choose from.

The rabbit, as a mammal, would grant a warm-blooded body that could more efficiently use the ultrafiber musculature adaptation the Collector already had. Not to mention that the rabbit already possessed fur which was compatible with the sensitive hairs adaptation.

Compatibility was important for the Collector could not infinitely grow its adaptations atop its body. They had to match the creature bases it utilized to some degree lest their manifestation cost too much biomass to manifest.

The insectoid forms would provide extra limbs and a familiarity with carapaces that it could use later to more efficiently re-develop its organic-hyperalloy carapace.

From the beginning, the Collective formed the organic-hyperalloy through the study and melding of hundreds of different insectoid species across countless planets.

Making sure to take forms that could easily interface with the Collector's existing adaptations also had the benefit of speeding up the metamorphosis process.

A crucial factor to consider as right now, mid-metamorphosis, the Collector was absolutely defenseless, easily killed if anything or anyone popped the soft, fleshy cocoon it evolved itself in.

In a rush, the Collector morphed together the rabbit, spider, and centipede genes.

The metamorphosis was quick. The Collector was not working with difficult or complicated genetic material, after all.

In the span of ten minutes, the Collector went from primordial goo into a fully formed...thing. If the denizens of this world could witness it, they would surely scream in terror.

It fused what it believed to be all the useful traits of a rabbit, spider, and centipede together, and the resulting amalgamation paid no heed to conventional senses of aesthetics.

Metamorphosis Level 12

Biomass Level: 100/1000/100

Stored Genetic Material:

-Black Ant

Adaptations:

Internal Systems

-Ultrafiber Muscles Rank 12

External Systems

-Sensitive Hairs Rank 12

-*NEW* Organic-Hyperalloy Carapace Rank 1

Weapons Systems

-NONE

Current Form:

Jungle Spider/Striped Centipede/Midnight Rabbit

To any of the sentient species on this world, it would have been an abomination.

The Collector's legs and body were that of a rabbit's for it believed the rabbit's legs most suited to extensive movement. It also assumed the rabbit's body in order to have a more developed, warm-blooded circulatory system so as to fuel its muscles better.

However, its skin was covered with a gleaming, white-plated carapace that looked like a full suit of bony armor. In the seams of the armor, where the joints were exposed to maximize mobility, fur poked out, standing straight and sensitive to all manner of vibrations in the air and land.

Though its general body was that of a rabbit's, small front legs included, its head was all but.

It had assumed a centipede's head, armored and patterned in the red and black bands of the Striped Centipede.

Twin pincers lined either side of its flat, hardened head, acting like cleavers with which to slice apart or crush anything unlucky to near it.

Multiple eyes dotted its head - a trait from the spider - providing heightened compound vision to pick out small details.

Its rabbit feet ended in hideously curved claws dripping with centipede venom. Its tail was long and bulbed at the end, forming into a spined spinneret that could eject powerful webbing.

Four arachnid limbs sprouted from its back, becoming versatile tools with which to stab, slash, balance upon, climb, and grab with.

All in all, this monstrosity of nature stood a meter tall, far larger than any insect or rabbit.

The Collector clicked its centipede mandibles in satisfaction. This form would be competent in the jungle, capable of competing even with the jungle felines that roamed these wilds.

Knowing this, the Collector set to hunting for real now. It now had the power and durability to hunt larger and stronger creatures for biomass.

And it needed to - each successive metamorphosis level needed significantly more biomass than the one before to fuel it.

But every level would make things easier, ranking up all adaptations, increasing their efficacy to minor degrees until at ranks in multiples of five, they could develop sub-adaptations to significantly boost their capabilities.

In time, the Collector would once more reign over this world, heralding its end.

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The Collector hunted, and it was efficient, making maximal use of its new body and the heightened capabilities it afforded.

One thing that the Collector retained that made it supreme above most of the jungle fauna was its intellect. It could still think and strategize, drawing upon predatory instincts wired into its very genetic code to ensure that its movements were absolutely efficient, deadly, and quiet.

Over the next few hours of the night, the Collector slew a few more rabbits, found a small pond to slake its thirst, and even took down an entire deer.

It had even setup a massive web between the shade of two tree trunks, invisible to those not wary to provide another source of potential biomass.

Little bugs such as spiders and centipedes do not strike fear at their size, but when they are expanded to a meter, they become horrifying predators.

Normally, the Collector would not have been able to retain such a large size while utilizing insect genetic material unless it roamed a particularly oxygen dense world, but somehow, something in this world's atmosphere made it possible to retain its mass.

The Collector stuffed the last of the slain deer's red flesh into its jaws, its four arachnid arms picking apart even the bones of the creature clean. Then it dismantled the skeleton, consuming it piecemeal like crunchy snacks.

At this level of biological complexity, the Collector could recognize what tasted good or bad, and this deer most certainly tasted nice, as did most flesh at this point.

The more complex the Collector became, the more its appetite would become predatory and carnivorous, seeking out larger, stronger, and denser lifeforms.

*Biomass gained (10)*

Biomass Level 10/100

The Collector clicked its mandibles in irritation. It would take a while to reach the next level. Progress was slow now. It needed more.

Intelligent life would help the most considering that intelligence was perhaps the most complex of evolutionary developments, but it could not risk fighting intelligent species.

If they had even one-thousandth of the power that being of light had, then the Collector stood no chance in its current state. Any insignificant tinkerer with even small munitions arms could destroy the Collector.

As it contemplated its future struggles, the Collector made its way back to its spiderweb. Before the web was even visible, it knew it had caught something. It could feel desperate vibrations in the air as something thrashed against the powerful silk.

The Collector scurried into leafy cover, nearing the trapped prey with stealth. It was best to kill whatever was trapped quickly and stealthily so as to prevent as much retaliation as possible. It did not want to waste any biomass on regenerating its wounds.

In the cover of a particularly thick overgrowth of vines that drooped down from a low branch, the Collector could make out the web it placed. In the middle thrashed a small, humanoid creature. Its skin was a black that glistened with sweat as it exerted itself, trying to break the silk.

However, it was too weak, being a measly meter tall with pitiful musculature and bone density.

It was bald with a large nose and beady eyes that glowed yellow in the dark, indicating nocturnal vision. Its mouth was lined with sharp teeth visible as it shouted gibberish in a high-pitched snarl.

The Collector recognized this thing was somewhat intelligent. First, it covered its privates with a ragged loincloth. Second, it wore a belt upon which lay tied a rudimentary stone knife.

It kept squealing out the same set of vocal intonations, indicating an intelligible word to others of its kind. It also indicated that there were likely more in the vicinity.

The Collector, however, did not give the creature a chance to further vocalize its distress.

It took this moment to silence the creature before its cries could draw its brethren nearer. With a pounce, the Collector leaped through the vines and landed just in front of the bound humanoid.

The humanoid's eyes widened in a moment of fear before the Collector thrust one of its arachnid back limbs through the humanoid's throat, tearing apart its jugular vein.

The humanoid gurgled out a stream of blood, eyes even wider in death as it fell limp, tongue lolling out its mouth.

The Collector unraveled the humanoid from the web and savagely tore it apart, its four arachnid limbs extending claws that utterly massacred the body. It stuffed in chunks of meat and organs in its mouth as quick as it could, slurping off blood from its claws as it did so.

The humanoid was utterly delicious. Truly, this was an intelligent lifeform - its wondrous taste was evident enough of that. However, it was not nearly as intelligent as most of the species the Collector knew of.

The humanoid was a barbaric, simple-minded creature capable of little more than crafting rudimentary stone tools and shouting basic commands and requests.

The Collector froze.

It could sense additional presences nearing by. They were of similar size and build to this humanoid. Its brethren.

The Collector did not have time to consume all of its slaughtered prey's remains, so it took what remained of the mangled corpse and ran up a tree, using its spider limbs like picks to crawl across the bark.

From high above, the Collector looked down, eagerly assessing the situation.

The Collector witnessed with interest as the humanoids roamed below, their stone daggers drawn in alarm. There were only three.

One of them knelt by a bloody patch of grass - the only remnant of their companion. The other two circled around, wary for attack. They grunted to each other, and the Collector with its sharp hearing could barely make out their intonations.

It seemed that these humanoids were a little more intelligent than the Collector gave them credit for. They were engaging in a good amount of conversation, their faces animated with fear or concern as they squabbled with each other.

The Collector was curious. It checked its status.

*Biomass gained (10)*

Biomass Level 20/100

*Genetic Material Gained*

Stored Genetic Material:

-*NEW*Black Goblin

-Black Ant

10 per humanoid it consumed. Not a bad rate. Far better than even the deer. The three blissfully unaware humanoids beneath became all the more appetizing, but the Collector did not move yet.

It instead searched the black goblin it had just killed for knowledge.

When creatures became intelligent, it became far harder to extract their knowledge and memories.

Basic instincts were programmed with biology, but higher thoughts and memories were more delicate, harder to maintain within a body after death and even harder to absorb.

The great Collective Hivemind with its immense scale and power had the capacity to extract knowledge from entire species with its unparalleled psionic processing power, but the Collector itself, now cut off from the Hivemind, was limited to absorbing one key memory or fragment of knowledge from an intelligent creature.

However, this was enough. It decided to learn the language of these primitive creatures.

The unintelligible squabbling below became understandable, albeit a little faint with how high up the tree the Collector was.

"We get out now," said one of the two goblins guarding their friend still checking the bloodstains.

"No beast here," replied the goblin kneeling in the blood. "Strange. Very strange. Humans close, so no beast. So how Friki die?"

"No important," said the other goblin. It was shaking a little, its hold on the dagger unsteady. "Important is danger near. We leave to den. We tell Draug."

"We tell Draug," said the goblins in unison, nodding in agreement at the idea.

The Collector was pleased. So, there was a den of these creatures. Enough of them, and it could evolve straight to the next Metamorphosis Level.

But for now, it would claim the feast standing before its eyes already.

With a swift motion, it scurried downwards.

"Up! Up!" one of the goblins screamed, but it was too late.

The Collector had landed on the goblin having launched itself down from ten meters up. The sheer weight of the Collector's dense musculature and carapace was enough to splatter the goblin on the forest floor, shattering its each and every bone.

The other two goblins took a look at the Collector, at its powerfully muscled, clawed and bloodstained hind legs, its six arachnid limbs protruding from the back like prehensile spines, and its insectoid head clicking with mandibles like axe-heads, all eight, beady black eyes poised with hunger at their defenseless forms, and froze.

The sight of the Collector, a repulsive amalgamation of mammal and insect oversized to hideous proportions, overloaded the goblins' fear instincts, and kept them still for a second.

That second was easily enough for the Collector to extend two of its arachnid limbs forwards, thrusting them through both goblins' heads simultaneously. With a slick pop, the limbs withdrew, leaving two neat, circular holes in the goblins' skulls.

Over in a few seconds.

The goblins were aided by their primal instincts, but they were also slowed down by them.

Fear had caught them, seized them by their throats, rendered their minds to mush and their feet to putty for a second, and that spelt the end of their lives.

In contrast, the Collector was not driven by instinct, no, it used instinct, used it as as an efficient part of its body just as it used its claws or limbs or tails.

It felt no fear, no hesitation, no mercy.

The Collector wasted no time in devouring the goblins. Even the fastest butcher in all the realm would have marveled at the Collector's speed in dissecting and consuming them.

The Collector had an in-depth understanding of the goblins' anatomies now, having consumed one and cross-referenced its biological structure across the Collective memories it retained, allowing the Collector to accurately predict where each and every one of the goblin's vitals were, where the joints were easiest to pop, the tendons easiest to slice, the flesh easiest to tear.

*Biomass gained (30)*

Biomass Level: 50/100

A horde of these goblins would face no challenge to the Collector now, not because of strength - ten or so of these would have the manpower to injure the Collector - but because the Collector knew their behaviors, instincts, and vitals now and could exploit these to systematically execute them.

From the goblins it had just consumed, the Collector also absorbed key bits of knowledge: the location of their den, their numbers, and the being they called 'Draug'.

The den was not far from here. A little ways further in the jungle. In a safer area where no larger predators roamed. It was an underground network of tunnels and burrows that had been previously made by a different creature.

There were quite a few of these goblins. Twenty in total led by a much larger, stronger variant of the species called a Hobgoblin whose name was evidently 'Draug'

The Collector made its way towards by treetop, scurrying up a tree trunk and leaping from branch to branch. The goblins lived underground and did not pay much attention to the trees, so this would grant the Collector the highest amount of stealth in approaching.

As the Collector moved, it calculated its chances.

This 'Draug' could definitely challenge it in a test of strength, and when aided by his goblins, would have an upper hand. It was confident that should it face Draug in single combat, it could win provided it had the benefit of an ambush.

At the same time, the twenty goblins by themselves proved no threat either.

It was only when Draug and his goblins were together that they became a significant threat.

Then the solution was to eliminate one or the other.

Divide and conquer. Isolate and consume.

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The Collector watched from above, keeping absolutely still as it watched the den. It hid itself in a thicket of leaves amidst a tree overlooking the den, and it had watched for an entire day, from last night to this night, moving only to track the den's denizens.

It could regulate its metabolic processes to a slowed state such that it almost never had to eat or drink, and its bodily processes were absolutely efficient to the point where nothing it consumed was excreted as waste.

These combined traits were what originally allowed it to traverse the vast, empty reaches of space unafflicted by weaknesses such as hunger or thirst.

The Collector observed there was a large pit in the ground from where the goblins routinely went in and out, carrying food, sticks, rocks, and leaves.

Every so often, 'Draug' would emerge.

He was two meters tall, heavily muscled, and more built for combat than the goblins. A quick visual analysis indicated dense bones, thick limbs, and elongated tusks that jutted from his mouth.

His overall structure, however, was similar to that of his goblin kin, with the same yellow, beady eyes and blackened skin.

Presumably, his vitals were the same as well, for it seemed that they were all part of the same evolutionary branch of creatures.

The Collector memorized Draug and the goblins' patterns of movement.

The goblins made routine trips out to secure food and Draug occasionally came with them to hunt larger prey.

The movement of the goblins was relatively random, which was expected considering there were twenty of them. There would always be variables as to where they were.

However, there were two important details of note worth.

Draug himself had set patterns to his movement. Every so often, he would isolate himself from the goblins to go to his own personal watering hole with clearer water than that the common goblins drank from.

Here, he would drink and then expel excretions before returning to the den.

In addition, the goblins were nocturnal, sleeping during the day, but Draug was active both day and night.

The Collector clicked its mandibles as it settled on its ambush plan. It would ambush Draug when he left for water at noon, when daylight was bright, and his goblin entourage was sleeping.

Early the next morning, the Collector laid its ambush. It went to Draug's watering hole and extracted as much Striped Centipede and Jungle Spider venom as it could from its jaws, pooling it into the water and mixing it.

The toxic liquid, iridescent blue with hints of green, dripped into the clear pond, clouding it just a little.

The venom from both insects was not particularly strong, unable to kill even a goblin in normal doses, but at the mass quantities the Collector could produce significantly larger than any little bug, it was enough to kill a goblin or slow down Draug.

Then the Collector weaved spots of thick webbing around the watering hole, being careful to avoid the well-worn path that Draug used and ensuring they were not noticeable.

In the chaos of battle, Draug would have to move away from this path, and here he would find webbing to tangle his feet.

The Collector laid in wait, high up in a tree above the watering hole. This next victim would prove to be a challenge, but a worthy one.

No doubt it would provide enough biomass to ascend to the next Metamorphosis Level.

Just ten minutes shy of noon, when the sun hung low in the sky, Draug came.

The Collector tensed its muscles, readying to pounce as it tracked Draug's every move.

Draug stumbled forwards, yawning as he absent-mindedly scratched his genitals through a dirt-brown loincloth. Alarmingly, he dragged a wooden club behind him – this was outside the Collector's calculations.

The club was brutish, roughly carved from a tree trunk with splintering spikes left at the end to gore any unlucky victims. It was no gravitron mace, but at the Collector's current state, it was still a threat.

Draug's muscles rippled as he knelt by the pond, cupping some of the water and greedily shoving it in his mouth. He took a single gulp of water before he started coughing, spitting out the rest.

The Collector took note. By its calculations, it determined that Draug had taken in a dosage of venom not strong enough to immobilize him, but still potent enough to give him a general sense of numbness and slow down his movements.

It waited now for an opportunity to strike. It had to make sure everything went perfectly to compensate for Draug's club.

Draug took an angry look at the water and punched it. A great splash of water erupted upwards – a testament to his strength. Having vented enough immediate rage, he turned around with intent to order his goblins to find more water.

However, the precise second Draug turned his back, the Collector struck, using its powerful rabbit legs to eject itself down from the trees like a missile. It had its spider-limbs stuck forwards like blades, aiming to impale through the hobgoblin's heart to end things in an instant.

Surprisingly, Draug had the reactions to turn around.

However, he did not have time to swat the Collector away, only to cross his arms to defend against impact.

The Collector adjusted its angle of attack mid-air to adjust for the sudden defense for now Draug protected his heart with his burly arms.

The Collector twisted, angling its descent a little further downwards, and pierced straight through Draug's right thigh, aiming for maximal immobilization if it could not ensure a lethal initial blow.

Before Draug could retaliate, the Collector withdrew its spider-limbs and leaped backwards by pushing off the hobgoblin's body.

The Collector flicked blood on its claws away and onto the grass, eyeing the hobgoblin intently, analyzing, hunting.

Draug roared in pain, one hand clutching at his now useless right leg and another wildly swinging the club, swatting at empty air.

The Collector had severed exactly the tendons and muscles required for leg movement in one fell, surgical swoop.

"Curse you!" said Draug, spittle frothing from his mouth. He tried to stand, but the best he could do was awkwardly limp, unable to put any weight on his right side.

The Collector did not respond, nor could it due to a lack of vocal cords. Its eight eyes focused on Draug, looking only for any weaknesses to exploit. His right side was open.

Any attacks from there would be difficult for the hobgoblin to retaliate against. It would also force him to put more pressure on his right leg, speeding up his already profuse bleeding.

"What are you!?" said Draug through heavy breaths. "You…monster? No, you not monster I see before. You must be human's pet. Human's monster!"

The Collector used Draug's wasted effort in shouting as a moment to attack, pouncing to Draug's right side and striking at his throat with a clawed spider limb.

It felt a surge of anger to even be considered the pet of a lowly tinkering race such as a human, but the anger, like any of the emotions it could feel, did not cloud it, but honed its movements.

Draug, however, was surprisingly quick, using his one good leg to push backwards to narrowly dodge the swipe. It was evident that he was used to combat, his movements sharpened and trained.

The Collector recalculated the movements necessary to hit Draug.

An expression of surprise came upon Draug's face as he moved back, past his familiar trail, and stepped on a mass of webbing with his one good foot. He lost balance, toppling over backwards.

The Collector leaped into the air and landed on Draug's chest, aiming to use its powerful mandibles to sever his throat entirely.

Draug, however, was quick and devastatingly strong. He reacted to the Collector's bite, quickly using his free hand to grab one of the Collector's mandibles before it could close on his throat.

With a guttural grunt, Drag ripped off the mandible entirely.

The Collector did not flinch or react. Such movements were inefficient.

It registered damage and took to a more wary approach. It moved downwards a bit, dodging an attempt by Draug to grab it, and placed its sizable, full weight on the hobgoblin's damaged leg to keep him on the ground.

Then the Collector's six arachnid arms, their sharp, clawed tips exposed, savagely began tearing into Draug.

Death by a thousand cuts.

Draug screamed in pain as he covered his face and chest with his arms, trying to preserve his vitals.

However, the Collector was a surgeon, and this was its operating table.

Its attacks, fast and savage as they were, were not wild.

They were precise, every single one meant calculated and meant to inflict as much damage as possible, cutting at tendons and major blood vessels.

One swipe punctured a lung, finding the soft tissue through ribs. Draug shifted his arms instinctively lower to defend himself, leaving one half of his face open for a split second.

Enough time for a limb to skewer out his left eye.

Every single tiny movement the hobgoblin wasted and every single instance of pain that slowed it were openings for the Collector to abuse.

With a final burst of strength reserved only to those knowing death was near, Draug roared and abandoned his defense, reaching for his club and swinging it. The Collector immediately swerved backwards, but Draug's attack inflicted some measure of damage.

Following a sickening crunch, three of the Collector's arachnid limbs sailed through the air, landing on the forest floor still twitching and oozing blackish-green blood from their dismembered tips.

The Collector could feel pain, but not enough to adversely affect it. Just enough to let it know that damage had been inflicted. Any more pain would have been useless, and anything useless biologically had long been cut away from it.

Draug groaned weakly. He was bleeding from dozens of cuts, all of them arguably lethal, and sprays of arterial red spurted from his thigh and several ruptured blood vessels.

The Collector circled Draug's prone and weak body. It was cautious, not willing to enter his attack range.

Even though Draug was soon to bleed to death, it did not want to risk any form of retaliation that might have injured it. That was one of the primary laws of a predator – take no risk.

Among predators and prey, if prey could inflict even a single crippling wound, then the meal was not worth it.

Draug made several attempts to attack, weakly lunging forwards or trying to swing its club.

Each time, the Collector simply leaped backwards just enough to dodge before circling again like a vulture waiting for its weakened carrion to slump over.

Eventually, Draug knelt in grass drenched in his blood, breath wheezing from his damaged lung. He struggled to keep his eyes open and his body shook, resisting shock from blood-loss.

"Kill me," gurgled out Draug.

The Collector kept circling.

"Kill me!"

The Collector ignored Draug. It wondered why the creature was so eager for death. All it had to do was be patient.

Draug grunted in defeat and acceptance of death, letting go of his club and using both arms to try and turn to his side to bleed out with a little more comfort.

The Collector saw Draug give up the club and struck once more, knowing that it was now risk free to attack. It skewered a spider limb through the oversized goblin's empty eye socket, scrambling the soft brain beneath it.

The Collector was impressed. Draug had been a worthy foe to its current state.

Collectors were created with a combat-oriented mindset that found value in battle and consuming strong opponents. This was the most compatible independent personality for a life of endless battle, of fighting and consuming the strongest and best genetic material across the cosmos.

In contrast, a biological robot programmed only to consume would not have the independent thought to adapt to battle situations and find itself outmaneuvered by the ingenuity of tinkering, spacefaring races.

That was why when the Collector consumed Draug, it did so relatively slowly, cutting into the hobgoblin's body with slow, measured slices to enjoy the flavor. It wished to savor the taste of an enemy that had managed to wound it.

*Biomass gained (50)*

Biomass Level: 100/100

*Genetic Material Gained*

-Black Goblin

-Black Hobgoblin

-Black Ant

As predicted, the Black Hobgoblin, being powerful, large, and somewhat intelligent, granted an immense amount of biomass capable of allowing the Collector to reach its next stage of evolution.

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By this point, Draug had been reduced to a few bones – all that was once left of the proud warrior hobgoblin.

The Collector leaped up a tree. It did so awkwardly, having lost three of its spider limbs, but it knew how to compensate for the lost limbs with expert ease, shifting its weight from side to side so that it could rappel up the tree at a speed that would have been hard to believe it was injured.

There, it curled up and began its evolution. At lower metamorphosis levels, it could not afford to be picky with the genetic material it had as growing stronger at any cost was its prime directive.

It would use what it had.

The Collector's body began melting, secreting a slimy ooze that formed a cocoon over it. It was more monstrous than before, with large, beating veins streaking across its glossy surface.

The Collector also did not melt into complete primordial liquid this time, instead condensing into a sphere that pulsated like a heart at the center of the flesh cocoon.

In its current state, the Collector could not construct a form utilizing more than three genetic bases. As it reached higher metamorphosis levels and gained more capacity to process the material, this would increase, but for now, it would have to make do with what it had.

There were two new pieces of genetic material: the black goblin and the black hobgoblin. However, the hobgoblin was simply superior in every aspect and so the Collector chose to switch out its rabbit genes with that of the hobgoblin.

Although it did not like assuming a humanoid form because bipedal humanoids evolved through a reliance on tools and not biological might, it was still the strongest base form it could achieve.

It retained its spider and centipede genes, useful as they were for extra limbs, compound-vision, webbing, and minor venom.

The metamorphosis would take close to thirty minutes this time as the Collector was undergoing significant physiological changes.

During this time, it searched the hobgoblin's memories using the keyword of "human".

Although the Collector had ignored the hobgoblin's angry bleating during combat, it had remembered his words.

Judging from the way the hobgoblin spoke about humans, it would seem they were an intelligent species, perhaps in direct conflict with these primitives.

If they were anything like the humans the Collector was familiar with, then this world would be a significant challenge to assimilate.

Humans were one of the spacefaring races that resisted the Collective, and though they had lost planet after planet to the Hivemind, they still survived and fought with a tenacity that belied the weakness of their fleshy forms.

By now, after nearly a century of warring against the Collective, the humans had developed weapons of war easily capable of wiping out the Collector in its current state.

Finding out more information about these humans was imperative.

The memories came. It was obvious that the hobgoblin held powerful emotions of humans, with many of his memories tied to that keyword.

They came like hazy recollections or half-remembered dreams, murky and almost surreal, lacking in many details, but still understandable.

A memory.

The hobgoblin running. It was young and small, no larger than the goblins it lorded over now. It was injured, with burns and cuts littering its body. Behind it stood the entryway to a cave, smoke curling out from within.

Powerful emotions of sadness and rage.

The humans had come and exterminated the hobgoblin and his kin. Their swords and spears had skewered many friends, decapitated his parents, and dealt him many painful wounds.

A vow of revenge against the humans.

Later.

The hobgoblin was grown, leading a large tribe of goblins and hobgoblins to a human village.

He rallied his kind, raising his club into the air. He promised death and destruction to the humans. Their food and women would be the spoils of war.

A cheer.

Later.

The hobgoblin lay bleeding under a tree, arrows skewered in his side. The battle had failed.

Strong humans had appeared.

Another vow of vengeance. He would find more goblins to his cause in the jungles, build up his strength and attack once more.

Though the memories were exceptionally unclear, fogged over by emotion and other useless baggage that the Collector did not have the capacity to adequately even feel or perceive, the Collector could still tell that the humans on this world were far different than those the Collective had encountered elsewhere.

They were far, far more primitive, wielding sticks and chunks of iron and little else more. It would not have to worry about blaster bolts that could tear apart its carapace.

Exosuits that had the strength to tear it in its current state from limb to limb.

Seeker drones that would track its unique biological signatures and dispatch it with arrays of invasive explosives too fast and too small to defend against.

Perhaps the humans of this world were a subspecies of human cut off from the main body. Or maybe they were a divergent but similar evolutionary line, for it was a fact that bipedal tinkerers seemed to evolve similarly throughout the stars.

No matter. The Collector would consume them all in due time. That they were weak and primitive would only hasten their ends.

The Collector burst from its cocoon and immediately fell from the tree. It had grown far too large to scurry about on treetops, being almost two and a half meters tall. It oriented itself before it crashed into the forest floor, making sure to land on its two feet.

The Collector grunted as it moved its body, flexing its muscle and wriggling its extremities to improve blood flow that had been stemmed during metamorphosis.

It did not like assuming a bipedal form. All the races the Collective had destroyed had been bipedal tinkerers too weak to use their natural strength. Bipedalism came to be a symbol of relying on tools over biological might.

But no matter. It could easily discard this current form following its next evolution.

As of now, the Collector looked far less hideous. It was a towering mass of muscle plated with smooth, bony carapace tinted black from hobgoblin's genes.

Once more, six arachnid arms ripped out from its back. They were stronger now, thicker and padded with more muscle underneath the sleek, black carapace.

This, coupled with the innate hydraulic movement system inherent to arachnid legs, would mean that these six limbs were far faster than its regular mammalian arms, though to maintaining the efficiency of the blood based hydraulics meant sacrificing some muscular mass.

A plus about this hobgoblin genetic base was that it was extremely compatible with the Collector's natural ultrafiber muscle adaptation as the main reason the hobgoblin was so much more muscular and stronger than the normal goblin was due to a mutation that affected its muscular hypertrophy and bone density.

It was simply a matter of assimilating that gene into its ultrafiber muscle adaptation. In this manner, it was possible to upgrade and enhance adaptations the Collector already had.

This was the sort of continuous evolution and improvement that the Collective did, though on a far smaller scale.

The Collector's head was a mix of insect and humanoid, being humanoid in shape but armored entirely in black carapace. Two long, black antennae emerged from its forehead, dotted with its sensitive hairs adaptation.

It retained its mandibles which sloped down from its temples to its proper mouth, acting like chin-guards.

It checked its status.

Metamorphosis Level 23

Biomass Level: 100/1000/100

Stored Genetic Material:

-Black Goblin

-Black Ant

Adaptations:

Internal Systems

-Ultrafiber Muscles Rank 23

External Systems

-Sensitive Hairs Rank 23

-Organic-Hyperalloy Carapace Rank 12

Weapons Systems

-*NEW* Monomolecular Claws Rank 1

Current Form:

Jungle Spider/Striped Centipede/Black Hobgoblin

The Collector was pleased with its new adaptation. It would console the fact that it had to assume a humanoid form with the opportunity to develop one of its natural abilities that it had missed the most: monomolecular claws.

It watched as almost metallic-white claws curved like scythes emerged from its fingertips and protruded from its feet.

It generated larger spikes on its elbows to use as stabbing and slicing weapons, compensating for the inefficiency of having so many frail and tiny bones in its hand – a common trait among tinkering species.

Monomolecular claws were one of the crowning evolutions of the Collective, being extraordinarily powerful tools and yet incredibly genetically efficient.

To put it simply, they were composed of the same durable organic-hyperalloy base as Collector's carapace, but their edges had adapted to a different structure sourced through an unique predatory species on a harsh, metal dense planet where metal and flesh melded together.

The result was that the claws thinned to a razor sharp, monomolecular edge capable of splitting apart substances at the molecular level, resulting in a sharpness unparalleled across the cosmos, capable of matching any superheated plasmoid blade or vibrosaber.

As of now, the Collector's offensive capabilities with its claws was devastating.

Even at the height of its power, the sharpness of its claws was the same, making it one of the most efficient adaptations it could have obtained.

The only reason it had not obtained it before was because it had prioritized the carapace for survival.

The biggest flaw of these claws right now, however, was the fact that their durability was tied to their rank level, meaning that though they could slice through any known matter, they were brittle, capable of breaking apart by sufficient or appropriately applied force at the correct angles.

In celebration of regaining one of its prized adaptations, the Collector decided that it would feast, and there was no better feast waiting for him than at the now defenseless goblin den now that Draug was dead.

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The entry to the den was quiet. It was a sizable pit in the ground, easily enough for the hobgoblin to have went in and out of, and covered with piles of sticks and a layer of leaves to camouflage it with the grassy environment around it.

Presumably, the goblins did not want any unwanted visitors during the day when they slept.

By now, afternoon had barely dawned. The temperature was still on the colder side, however, even at the peak of day when sunlight exposure should have been at its maximum.

The Collector looked up, peering at the sun through gaps in the canopy of branches and leaves above. It stared at the sun in questioning.

Now that the Collector had developed a sufficiently complex ocular system, it could take in wavelengths of colors that matched what the hobgoblin itself could.

This also included the ability to perceive shapes and outlines clearly in the dark, but, as the Collector understood, these evolutions still did not explain the aberrant nature of the sun's visual appearance in this world.

The sun was entirely black, covered as if in eclipse, and yet, light still shone from it as if it was entirely unobscured.

There were certain tinkering races that could construct great spheres around their suns to harvest its energy, and for a moment, the Collector wondered whether such a class of civilization existed here independent of the primitive humans, but the possibility seemed vanishingly low.

From orbit, the planet looked largely undeveloped, still covered in vast swathes of undisturbed nature.

It decided to attribute the unnatural state of the sun as a visual anomaly created through light wavelengths interacting with properties in this world's atmosphere, though exactly what those properties were it did not know.

Nor did it particularly care so long as they did not pose a threat to it or provide a resource for any tinkering species here.

Yet any civilization here would be pitifully primitive, unable even to fight against and dominate the ecosystem of its home planet, let alone harbor extraplanetary or interstellar capabilities.

This made the Collector more confident in its hunting, and yet, it still knew to be careful, to lay low until it had further knowledge of this world.

After all, there was that thing.

That great construct or creature of light that could match the Collector even when it was in its prime battle ready state.

Remembering that threat steadied the Collector's focus. It trained its mind on the hunt at hand, listening.

Insects and birds alike chirped aplenty, not knowing they were singing to a scene of impending massacre.

Earthy scents lingered in the air. The smell of green flora and musky traces of goblins dominated the air, but there were no other scents.

There would be no interference.

The Collector was thorough as it approached the entrance of the goblin nest.

It hunched over the den and extended its burly arm with a silent, gliding motion that utterly belied its brawn. There was not a single rustle or crackle as the Collector picked apart the sticks and leaves that made up the entrance, uncovering the den.

With the den bare, the Collector observed that it sloped downwards, into the earth and, using its night vision, saw that it led to a much larger cavern sufficient in size for twenty goblins to rest.

The Collector crawled in with a measure of difficulty as it was larger than the hobgoblin, and the den itself was made to accommodate at maximum capacity the hobgoblin's size, probably to deter entry by any larger predator.

However, the Collector had control over its musculature at a fine level that no ordinary species possessed, and it twitched and undulated and condensed its muscle fibers so that it seemed to shrink and warp, twisting its way into the den while making a bare minimum of sound.

Now inside, the Collector felt that the air underground was even colder, almost frigid. Each of its warm blooded breaths left a trail of fog to mark it. It took its hand, now humanoid in shape, and extended an index finger.

Fine lines of spider-silk emerged from the fingertip, glinting in the few errant rays of sunlight that draped into the dark of the pit's entrance. It used its finger to draw up a web, sealing the entrance shut.

The pit became darker, the webbing blotting out the sunlight.

Nothing would come in. Nothing would leave.

There would be no survivors. No wasted biomass.

The goblin den was simple in structure. One large cavern where all twenty goblins slept, sprawled about and snoring.

Underground, it was dark, but the Collector's night-vision and antennae could sense each and every one of these little creatures, their minute movements, the quick rhythm of their breathing, the beating of their small and fragile hearts.

It was a testament to the Collector's silence that it could stalk its way to the middle of all of them without alerting them at all. Or perhaps it was a testament to their laziness.

Either way, it was weakness.

Prey should always be on the alert. The Collector was disappointed. This was what happened when animals gained unrefined intelligence – they lost touch with their most basic instincts, the very same primal instincts that had let them live and evolve to what they were now.

It was only mercy to end their paltry evolutionary lines and make them part of something far bigger, far worthier.

The Collector knelt by one of the sleeping goblins. It rustled a little, perhaps sensing its impending doom, but instead of waking up in alert, it rolled over on its stomach, snoring and snorting.

The Collector decapitated the goblin with one clean swipe of its clawed hand.

Blood spurted from the goblin's empty neck, spattering onto a companion sleeping nearby. This other goblin woke up, rubbing its eyes. They glowed yellow in the dark, but with how wide they became, the glow accentuated his utter terror.

"Monster! Monster!" shouted the goblin, scrambling up.

The Collector punched its claws into the goblin's stomach and expanded its fingers from within, slicing the creature in two.

By now, all the goblins had roused from sleep and started screaming a symphony of terror and alarm.

One brave goblin attempted to bite at the Collector's leg but instead shattered its teeth on blackened carapace.

The Collector raised its foot and squashed the goblin, grinding the creature's skull under its heel.

The goblins, their eyes adapted to darkness, saw everything clearly, and knew at a deeply fundamental level that every ounce of their instincts screamed at them, telling them that they had no chance against this monstrous intruder.

"Draug! Draug!" they shouted in unison.

With mass hysteria gripping them, they collectively moved further into the cavern, into a secondary, smaller chamber.

The Collector took its time, following them with slow, almost lazy steps. It did not have to waste energy after all. The goblins had no way to escape. No way to fight back.

"Where Draug!?"

The goblins looked around in confusion. The Collector also looked. This cavern was cozier than the one before.

There was a semblance of privacy to it with a curtain of leaves and branches. Behind it, instead of cold hard earth for bedding, there was a rug of sufficiently complicated embroidery to indicate construction from a more advanced species with a basket filled with fruit by it.

Draug's quarters, presumably.

"I killed Draug," said the Collector with newfound vocal chords. Its voice was deep and raspy, a clicking undertone emphasizing its every word with an unnatural, skin-crawling intonation. The side effects of producing vocal cords mixed with insectoid genetic material.

"I butchered him wholesale at his watering hole. There is nothing left of him now. But none of you should feel any sorrow for his passing. He has become something more now, serving a purpose far nobler than what his simpleminded brutishness could have ever hoped to conceptualize."

The Collector neared the goblins, and they withdrew even further, huddling together and shaking in fear.

"You strong! You Draug now!" said one of the goblins.

"You Draug! You Draug!" repeated the others.

"I am Draug?" said the Collector. It knelt on the ground to look the goblins in the eye, almost as if it was talking to children. "What does that mean, little creatures? Draug is dead. I slew him personally. Consumed his flesh. Devoured his bones. Left not even an errant drop of blood staining the grass."

The Collector was no fool. Although it would have liked to simply annihilate all these goblins and consume them, if it could, it would still try to obtain some information from them, for memory extraction through consumption, especially with more intelligent species such as this goblin, was limited.

Until the Collector was at the height of its power, it was still in a strange, unknown world of potential dangers, and every bit of information mattered.

Report chapter

Thus, the Collector realized, it would have to make more thorough use of language to extract information, though it had to admit that it did not like trying to navigate the nuances of tinkering speech and its decorum.

These goblins were simple minded and likely, their speech patterns too would be equally predictable, but having to engage with even slightly more advanced tinkerers such as humans, to know when they lied or hid the truth, would be a challenge it had never encountered before.

None others of its its kind before it had had any experience attempting to communicate with tinkering species for either they razed them all or succumbed to their weapons - the very concept of parlaying was unthinkable.

Destroy or be destroyed was all the Collector had known. Obvious, really, a straightforward evolution of the primary directive imbued in all life: consume or be consumed.

Certainly, there did exist other Collector strains such as the infector or dominator variants that specialized in creating spores, parasites, and symbiotes focused on taking over a world through disease and manipulation, but unfortunately, the current Collector, cut off from the greater database system of the Collective, could not regrow any adaptations from other Collector strains.

It was limited to restoring its own warrior type strain abilities, and though those adaptations were certainly fearsome and exceedingly diverse, there was precious little in the means of enslaving and bending wills.

To be sure, consuming the goblins to gain their memories was also possible, but the Collector needed keywords about things it wanted to know first for that to be effective, and interrogating these goblins enough might give the Collector some idea of what to search for.

Optimally, it would be best to communicate and learn many things from the goblins instead of consuming them and learning only about one topic.

Provided, of course, these addlepated primitives could even engage in meaningful discourse.

"Draug mean strong, very strong! Strong one. You are strong one!"

"Draug mean you leader. We follow!"

"You Draug! You Draug!"

The Collector remained motionless.

It would seem that 'Draug' was not a name, but a title of leadership. It was amused that these lowly lifeforms wished to follow it, but it could see that this was simply a desperate plea for their lives.

The greatest honor the Collector could grant these primitives was to absorb them, placing their genetic material into the Collective database where they would be immortalized.

But for now, the Collector humored them, using its newfound position of authority to ask about what it was most curious about.

"Tell me, since I am leader of your pack now, do you know of humans?"

The goblins jumped up and down, excited to be able to tell the Collector of things they knew about, hoping that by being useful, they could save themselves.

"Humans tall and mean. They kill us, so we kill them. Take food and women," said a goblin.

"Many, many humans. They outside jungle. We want kill them," said another. "Humans outside forest weak. We hungry, so we take from them."

"Here, here!" said a goblin from behind the crowd. It grunted and heaved. "Here human we capture!"

The goblin crowd parted, and one of them pushed forwards a limp humanoid.

The Collector analyzed it.

Judging from the memories it had absorbed from the hobgoblin, this was a female of the human species. She was curled up in a ball, shivering with her unprotected body bare to the distressingly cold environment of the den. She was bloody and bruised, her auburn hair torn in many places.

The Collector clicked its mandibles in ponderance. An equivalent of muttering a 'hm' or 'I see'.

"If you want, you use," said one of the goblins. The other goblins nodded in agreement.

"Use?" the Collector asked. It pressed one of its claws gently on the human's arm. The skin easily yielded to the monomolecular edges of the claw and started to bleed.

There was nothing exceptional about this specimen. In many ways, it was very much like the humans it had known, comprised of weak and imperfect flesh and blood, but this specimen was even weaker.

She did not even possess any of the genetic enhancements and bodily implants that made the spacefaring humans it was familiar with just a bit sturdier than what their enfeebled, evolutionary stunted flesh and blood bodies would allow for.

Perhaps the Collector had worried about these so called humans for nothing.

It was becoming increasingly likely that the 'humans' of this world were a divergent but similar evolution of bipedal species. Such similar evolutionary paths were not unheard of, after all, especially among tinkerers that all tended to evolve similarly.

"Make babies, feel good," said the goblins.

"Ah, procreation," said the Collector.

It had no need to procreate. Reproduction as these primitive species understood it was a highly impractical and inefficient process that paled in comparison to the Collective's process of assimilation and pure creation.

Sex was useless to the Collector. It was immune to unnecessary and exploitable instincts such as the drive to reproduce.

"Pro-?" asked the goblins, confused at the difficult word.

"Interesting." The Collector stood up. "Your language is sufficiently complex, and yet all of you are too simple-minded to utilize it fully. Curious. Perhaps there are more intelligent subspecies of yourselves roaming about. I assume they will be far more useful than you."

The goblins looked at each other, trying to see if one of them had understood what the Collector meant.

"Do not worry yourselves over my rambling," said the Collector. "You will not have to worry at all anymore."

The goblins sighed in relief.

"Your intelligence is too lacking for me to gain information through conversation. Your lack of neural complexity and adequate grasp over communicative language will be a time-consuming challenge to navigate that I would rather not endure.

Consumption will tell me more than your primitive babbling."

The Collector slashed forwards, taking wide, arcing swings with its deadly claws extended. It was a slaughter. Each swipe cleaved multiple goblins into multiple pieces, their body parts flying in the air and their blood splattering everywhere.

The goblins screamed, each swipe thinning their numbers and lowering the volume of their collective cries, but one had the wits to remain calm and dart through the Collector's legs and attempt escape.

The Collector did not pay heed to it.

It would find no way out.

The Collector retracted its claws. Blood had made its entire body slick and reeking of iron. It opened up its pores, draining the liquid biomass into its skin. The blood faded almost immediately, sinking into the Collector's hungry cells.

There was now the matter of the human.

The Collector grabbed her head in its palm and shook her ever so slightly. The human shivered. Goblin blood had drenched her, painting her pale skin red.

"Human," said the Collector in the goblin's language.

"Please," the human whispered.

The Collector could not understand the human's weak vocalization. It was evident the human did not speak the language of the goblins, nor did it speak the language of the humans that the Collector was familiar with.

"Save me, adventurer, save me," said the human in a weak voice no louder than a whisper. Her eyes were glazed over, her breathing shallow and cracked, straining against cracked ribs and internal bleeding.

The Collector sensed the human's vitals and registered a slowing heartbeat and internal hemorrhaging that had forced her into a state of delirious shock. She would be useless for providing information and soon to die anyway.

With a quick jab, the Collector stabbed its hand into the female's heart, ending her life in a merciful instant.

The Collector set about consuming everything it could in that den, devouring all the dismembered goblin bodies, the human female, and the lone goblin that had attempted to escape only to find itself ensnared by webbing.

*Biomass gained (25)*

Biomass level 25/100

Disappointing. The goblins provided a meager 1 point of biomass at this point and the human a pitiful 5. However, this was to be expected. Higher levels of metamorphosis required exponentially higher levels of complex biomass, after all.

More useful, however, were the memories and knowledge.

Report chapter

The Collector observed the webbing it had drawn up over the den. There were bloody stains on it from the goblin that been trapped there in a final attempt to escape. The Collector ran its hands and arachnid limbs across the stains, absorbing the blood through its skin.

The last drops of red draining into the Collector's integumentary system heralded the complete assimilation of all noteworthy living beings inside the den.

The Collector's next target was to scope out the more intelligent civilizations on this planet, and though it reasoned that the humans were highly primitive and not a threat, it still had not made any extensive contact with them.

For there was still the matter of that thing that had reduced the Collector's once mighty state into its current, pitiful form.

Was it the creation of these lowly humans? No, it did not seem so. Then another civilization? And yet, there were no signs of any such advanced tinkering race.

That left the Collector only with the lead of finding information about humans, for it seemed the goblins had no other contact with more intelligent species. Thus it had extracted all the information it could about a nearby human settlement from the goblins.

From the goblins' memories, it would seem that they, under the leadership of the hobgoblin, were intending on rallying their forces, calling from other dens further in the forest, and overrunning the village for their supplies and females.

They did not normally clash with the militarily superior humans, but necessity drove them due to the presence of a fierce predator deeper within the forest that pushed them out. The exact nature of this predator was unknown - it would require further investigation on part of the Collector.

There were more hobgoblins as well, and they made better use of their mental faculties than their average goblin brethren, sending them out to scout the human settlement.

A few of the goblins in the den had been part of these scouting missions, and from their memories tied to the keyword of 'human', the Collector perceived in greater clarity the nature of the humans in this world.

The humans of the settlement were at the very early stages of development as a tinkering civilization, just past the stage when they were hunter gatherers to cultivating the land, living off of harvests instead of migratory hunts.

There was some semblance of hierarchy and division of labor among the humans, with there being an appointed leader and various laborers, farmers, gatherers, hunters, and warriors.

Their level of technology was, as predicted, low. They worked with pliable plant matter such as wood, building homes and tools with the substance. They had some measure of metalworking, but they did not have the technological means to produce refined alloys, let alone infinitely complicated alloys such as smartsteel.

In fact, there simply was no complicated or advanced technology to speak of. Though these humans utilized tools, they still merely utilized them as an extension of their basic bodily strength, not relying on engines or artificial intelligences or anything that remotely reached that caliber of tinkering.

There was one thing that confused the Collector, however.

It was the presence of a substance called magic. One of the goblins had a vivid memory of it. A robed human waving its hands and unleashing a torrent of flame from seemingly nowhere.

The Collector had searched its memory banks long and hard for any technology that the Collective might have encountered that was similar, but in all instances where tinkering species created fire, it was through the aid of devices.

To simply wave one's extremities and generate flames was not recorded.

Certainly, the Collector itself knew of an adaptation that involved igniting a chemical solution with a friction inducing organ to generate gouts of flame hot enough to melt even smartsteel, but the human from the memory did not have anything resembling such an adaptation.

Some humans underwent significant bodily changes and artificial adaptations themselves, padding their skeletal and muscular systems with alloys and wiring and plating and whatever else they needed to compensate for their inherent weakness, and among some of these false adaptations was a flame generating structure in the palm, but this was not that either.

Perhaps, had the Collector been connected to the Collective and its much broader database, then it could have found more relevant information, but for now, it would have to figure out this 'magic' by itself.

As of now, it was not particularly worried.

If this 'magic' only had the power to generate fire, then it was useless.

Regular fire and its temperatures, especially in this atmosphere, would prove to be nothing of a threat to the Collector's current level of organic hyperalloy carapace.

The Collector decided it would head to the human settlement the goblins had planned to attack for more information. It lay an hour run due south from the den, but it would wait around the settlement outskirts until night came to conduct its hunting and investigations.

The problem with tinkering species, and one of the traits that allowed them to surpass the limitations of nature, was that they were social, sticking closely together and grouping their efforts when needed.

The Collector could not recklessly hunt down humans without expecting some form of group retribution.

Thus, it would prowl at night, capturing and interrogating lone humans. It would not be odd for these weaklings to have members of their society disappear due to a forest predator or even goblins.

In the time between capturing humans, it would see to investigating the other hobgoblins as well, consuming them for efficient biomass harvesting and, perhaps, as additional sources of information.

But for now, the humans posed the greatest potential threat as an intelligent species, and so the Collector would focus on obtaining information about them.

The Collector had already used its consumption memory extraction to learn the human language from the human specimen in the den, meaning it would require more humans to learn of additional topics.

The acquisition of the human language, also known as 'Terran', also gave further credence to the Collector's hypothesis that these were not the humans it knew.

Their language was utterly different. Similar in some faint ways, but only in a capacity to confirm that their evolutionary developments were similar, requiring similar vocalizing structures to utter the intonations required for the language.

Good.

Then the Collector would not have to worry about the presence of armored vehicles or autonomous weapons systems or seeker drones and the like. Though the Collector craved battle and consumption, it recognized that there was never such a thing as too much information.

The only issue was now how to approach the humans for it.

The Collector only knew of one way, and it was simple, really.

The Collector would appeal to the base, primal instincts that the humans still had embedded within them.

The fear of death.

It would interrogate them, threatening their demise, and if that proved useless, then it would not hesitate to consume them.

With a plan in mind, the Collector used its claws to tear down the webbing at the den's entrance.

The blood-soaked silk wafted gently to the ground, letting in rays of light once more. With a swift motion, it hoisted itself up and over the den's entrance and onto the forest floor.

There, a surprise awaited. A welcome surprise, in light of all the thinking the Collector had done.

Humans.

Three of them. Two males and one female. Two of them were grouped together standing a few meters away from the Collector, while another, the female, stood further back.

The Collector emitted a low growl in instinctive response to the scents and body language the humans emitted.

It could smell their aggression and fear, the sweat forming on their foreheads, the stench of adrenaline starting to reek from within their bodies. It extended its claws until they were like small daggers – the maximal length rank 1 of monomolecular claws could create.

Its antennae stood up straight and alert, sensing every single minute movement from the humans.

"What in the name of Aetheria is this? The hobgoblin? A variant, maybe?" said one of the humans.

The Collector conducted a sweeping and quick analysis.

The human was male judging by sexually dimorphic traits such as its wider build, facial hair, and vocal intonations. He wielded what the Collector identified as a sword, made of steel, a basic iron alloy. Good musculature.

Tall and proportionally built. Garbed in hardened animal skins that protected his vitals. Movements rigid with alarm but relaxed enough to fight if needed.

"Perhaps your eyes would benefit from a trip to the temple if you mistake this…thing as anything resembling a goblin," said his companion. Another male. He was shorter, but more muscled.

He wore metal armor all over his body with a plated, interlocked thickness that far surpassed the protection the other male wore. Wielded what the Collector identified as a spear, extending the male's damaging reach significantly.

"But this is the hobgoblin's den. According to the contract's details, that is, but gods know that the average farmer and frontier bumpkin cannot distinguish a goblin from a demon," said the sword-wielding male. "Gunther, stay in front of me and try and see if the thing's aggressive."

"Feeling a little cowardly, are we Dale?" said the spear-wielder. He inched forwards; spear extended.

"You know as an adventurer that there's nothing I love more in this world than tearing apart a rare monster. We'll be paid handsomely by the Sorcerer's Order for anything new their grubby old hands can experiment on," said the sword-wielder, baring a toothy smile.

He stood behind the spear wielder and spoke words of caution. "If only us one stars got to keep the cores. But can't complain about coin either."

The sword wielding male known as Dale jutted his chin forward, signaling the shorter male, Gunther, forward. "But we won't be enjoying our coin as corpses, and you're the one wearing full-plate. Stay forwards. Soak the damage."

"And don't forget," said the female in the back. She grasped with both hands a stick that lengthwise ran approximately equal to her height.

The Collector did not see any sharpened tip or metal point like with the spear, nor had the wood been tempered any to harden it as a sufficient bludgeoning weapon. It did not understand the purpose of the tool, but if it posed no threat, it did not care.

"Even though I have your backs with my healing, it does not mean you two are as invincible as you would like to think," said the woman. "I do not sense any mana from the monster, but you two still should not let your guards down."

Gunther nodded. "Yeah, I can't count how many times I would have been dead without you. What say you to a round of drinks afterwards? Token of my appreciation, y'know? Plus, I know a pretty nice place back in town. Gods know I won't have any of the filthy swill that the village tavern can dredge up."

"Flirting on the job again, are we?" said Dale as he circled the Collector, sword glinting under the sun.

"No, just raised with the knowhow to treat a lady when I see one," replied Gunther.

"More like harass one," said Dale. "And you wonder why we never can seem to have women stay in our party."

The Collector observed the humans' exchange with some interest. They seemed to be a highly social species, communicating with each other well.

Their language was complex, more so than that of the goblin's, and it seemed that even the average member of the species had adequate mastery over it. Their ideas were of a relative higher-order, capable of tactical planning under pressure.

At a first glance, it would seem they would be good to interrogate. At the least, they would be more articulate than the goblins.

"Humans," said the Collector.

All the humans froze.

All the humans froze.

"It…talks?" said the woman. "The thing talks? The Terran tongue, too?"

"Quiet, Bea," said Dale. "Intelligent monsters shouldn't be insulted. They can be reasoned with. Gunther, back off."

Gunther hesitantly withdrew from the Collector, but his spear was still raised.

"What is your name, good creature?" asked Dale.

"I require no such thing as a name," said the Collector. "Names are weakness. They signify individuality. The Collective is all that truly matters."

Dale nodded slowly. "I see. Then, good monster-"

"Neither am I monster," replied the Collector. "I sense that in this language, 'monster' connotes a being of inferiority and savagery. However, I am evolutionarily far beyond your primitive kind."

"A mere monster dares to lord over us?" said Gunther.

The Collector sensed heightened aggression. It stretched out its claws.

"Quiet, Gunther, you bumbling oaf," said Dale. "My apologies, good…creature," he said to the Collector. "We only wish to know why you are here. You see, we were tasked with exterminating the goblins in this very den."

"They are gone. I have consumed all of them," said the Collector.

"The hobgoblin too?" asked Dale.

"The larger variant of the species too."

"Then we have no quarrel with you, good creature," said Dale. "We are merely curious as to where you are going from here."

"A settlement of your kind due south of here."

Gunther grasped his spear in both hands. "Enough! We are adventurers. We slay monsters, not parlay with them. This beast has made its intentions clear. It wishes to lay waste to a village. What more must we hear!?"

"Gunther, wait, you impulsive fool!" shouted Dale, but it was too late.

Gunther roared as he sprinted, thrusting the spear outwards to the Collector's stomach.

The Collector did not react. It had assessed the tensile durability of the weapon and determined it held zero threat. An object of mere wood and soft metal would do nothing. The spear thumped on the Collector's hardened carapace, sliding off of it and screeching out sparks.

Gunther cried out in surprise as he slipped forwards. He had not expected the spear to simply slide off the Collector's armor and his reckless forward momentum, so abruptly halted, ruined his balance.

Strangely, the Collector had miscalculated. The strength of the spear and its sharpness were a good bit beyond what its material qualities would suggest, managing to carve out a small chunk in its carapace.

Odd. But no matter.

The Collector grabbed Gunther's helmeted head in its hand. At two and a half meters of raw muscle, the Collector's hand was large enough to wrap around Gunther's helmet and keep it in a vice-like grip.

The Collector raised Gunther off the ground with ease. The human flailed, kicking uselessly at the Collector.

"Bea! Spell! Cast a spell!" shouted Dale.

Bea hastily aimed her staff the Collector and began chanting.

Too late.

The Collector crushed Gunther's helmet like a tin can, turning the soft head within into complete mush. Blood and brains flowed from its fingertips, dripping on the grass. It tossed Gunther's limp body aside.

It would have liked to question this human, but its aggression proved to be too much.

The other humans, however, seemed more open to negotiation.

The Collector began walking forwards with slow steps.

"Let loose the sparks of chaos. [Fireball]!" shouted Bea as she pointed the stick at the Collector. Sparks whirled around the tip of the stick for a second before coalescing into a ball of fire that ejected forwards.

The Collector stuck out its arm and blocked the fireball. It exploded violently, bursting out a torrent of thick flame that momentarily blotted out the Collector's figure in an orange blaze.

"Fuck!" shouted Dale. He pointed at Gunther's body, still twitching, and said to Bea, "Bea, heal him! Quick!"

Bea bit her lip, tears welling in her eyes. "I…you know I can't heal something like that."

Dale roared in rage, stomping the ground. "Gods above," he said. "This was supposed to be easy. A quest for goblins, they said. Those fucking villagers."

"What was that?" said the Collector as it emerged from the pillar of flame burning behind it. Fires licked its whole body, but they were growing smaller by the moment, unable to burn a single inch of the Collector's durable form. "You, female human, how did you generate this fire? The explosive force? I do not see a flamethrower on you, nor any combustion engine to speak of, no hum or electrical charge of machinery.

And the language you spoke just now. That language, is that not the tongue of the humans in the United Front?

Tell me, how do you know of it?"

It began walking towards the female.

Dale stepped in, sword drawn. "No, you don't, you damned monster."

"You tinkering species are so unpredictable. First, you extend me pleasantries, and just seconds later, you are pure aggression. Did you not see that your fellow human attacked me first? I allow you to strike me not only to show your weakness, but to show that it is in defense that I strike back." The Collector waved the human male away impatiently. "Move. I have no use for you, and your biomass will provide me little. I must question the female."

"Over my bloody corpse," said Dale through gritted teeth.

"If that is what you desire. First, the hobgoblin, and now you. Why is it that you simplistic tinkerers wish so strongly for death? Did your evolutionary foray into higher order thinking erase your basic survival instincts?"

Dale rushed into the Collector, aiming up and slashing at the Collector's head.

The Collector's antennae twitched as it sensed the attack almost before it happened, the sensitive hairs knowing how each and every single one of the human's muscles were twitching and how they would propel, calculating the exact trajectory and arc of its swing.

It tilted its head back ever so slightly and caught the blade between its mandibles.

Dale heaved as he tried to get his blade back, but the Collector's grip was too tight. The Collector exerted force in its mandibles and split the blade into two with a sharp crack of metal.

"You are useless. Not a threat nor are you open to giving me any information." The Collector spit the blade from its mandibles and swiped at the male's head, slicing it into five neat chunks.

One of the chunks still held Dale's eyes, still screwed in an angry expression as it landed onto the ground with a bloody squelch.

Had these humans fought the Collector when it was at its previous metamorphosis level, then they would have defeated it. They were actually surprisingly fast and strong, more so than their simple musculatures and builds would indicate, but not to the point they challenged the Collector.

They would not even have individually been able to beat Draug, though as a group, they certainly could have, especially with the fire creating capabilities of the female specimen.

But now, to the Collector, having consumed and far surpassed Draug, they were weak.

Nothing but creatures that the Collector would either ask or beat information out from, whichever was more efficient.

"Now, for my questions," said the Collector as it stepped over the male corpse, towards the female.

Bea pointed her staff at the Collector again. "[Fireball]!"

Another fireball emerged, hitting the Collector straight on. Once more, the Collector walked past the blazing inferno, now much closer to the female.

"Do not run, human," said the Collector. "Your leg muscles are weak. Your adrenaline will pass, and then the buildup of waste chemicals from anaerobic respiration will slow you to a halt.

My musculature, on the other hand, produces no chemicals that hinder its movement – its ultrafibers possess an efficiency that has been honed through genetic advancements sourced from countless species far stronger, faster, and better than you.

Any attempt at escape will only prolong your suffering."

The Collector was now right in front of the female, towering over her. It was almost twice her size.

She shivered in fright.

"Tell me, human," said the Collector. "Was it 'magic' you utilized just now?"

The female dropped her staff and clutched at a pendant around her neck. "I will never give up the secrets of the Order, beast," she said weakly.

The Collector bent over, its mandibles grazing her soft, yielding neck. She was pale with fright and shaking so hard her teeth could be heard chattering.

"I am merely asking for information. You tinkering species value sharing information, no?"

"I pledge myself to the Order, and so shall order come to be. I pledge myself against chaos, and so shall order come to be. I pledge myself to the realms of life, and so shall order come to be."

"What are you saying, human?" said the Collector. "These words, they mean nothing to me. Explain."

"I pledge myself to the Order…" said Bea, her eyes wild with fear. She chanted out the one thing that gave some small measure of comfort to her fear-riddled mind: the oath she had taken to join the Order of Sorcerers.

The Collector stopped her, grasping its index and thumb fingers around her neck. "Your pulse is dangerously high. Your vitals are out of control. You are in shock, babbling nonsense. It will take for too long to question information out of you. I do not have time for this.

Perhaps I should re-assess how I approach your kind for information. But for now-,"

The Collector crushed her neck and tossed her away, by the corpses of her two companions to line them up for easier consumption.

"Consumption will do."

The Collector started with the woman, knowing that she had the most direct experience with this phenomenon known as 'magic'. After all, she had utilized it herself, spitting out balls of flame that, though useless, had mechanisms of functioning that entirely eluded the Collector.

It inspected the woman's corpse, her attire, and the stick she held, and confirmed to itself that there was nothing anomalous about any of it.

The female specimen did not utilize any tools of noteworthy advancement. Her clothes were comprised of a weave of soft plant fibers that did not even provide the pithy protection her male brethren wore with their clunky metal and animal skin paddings.

And the stick -

The Collector knelt down and picked up the stick, eyeing it from top to bottom. A simple stick of wood. Its many gleaming yellow compound eyes noted tiny inscriptions lining the stick, but this written language's meaning eluded the Collector.

Was it possible then that another civilization had crafted this tool? This fire creating weapon that seemed intrinsically linked to 'magic'?

And why was it that this 'magic' seemed to be tied to the utterance of the language of the spacefaring human variant? Was it perhaps that 'magic' was technology passed from the spacefaring humans to this more primitive variant?

The mere presence of that language gave the Collector a cause for concern. It scrapped its previous hypothesis that the humans of this world were a divergent but similar evolution entirely separate from the spacefaring humans.

Not to mention that with the presence of the language, there arose again caution for the presence of the spacefaring humans themselves, and they were a dangerous threat the Collector could never surpass in its current state.

Yet, nothing would indicate that the spacefaring humans had any presence here aside from the utterance of their language. The Collector had already reasoned that through with the complete absence of signs of advanced civilization upon this planet.

The most likely conclusion the Collector reached was that the humans of this world were a subspecies split off from the main spacefaring group of humans.

The Collector knew that the spacefaring humans had experienced an era of interstellar colonizing, and that some of these colonies were lost when warp technology was yet new and unstable.

It was entirely possible that this world held humans that had degenerated in advancement from the original spacefarers once they were cut off from the main body of the species and their support.

This would explain how far away this world was, far enough such that the Collector could not establish any connection with the Collective, for a faulty warp was easily capable of sending errant groups of humans to the far flung edges of space.

Yet that still did not explain this 'magic' and how it did not match any technology profile that the Collector had in its memory bank.

The Collector bit down on the stick, chewing and swallowing the wood, but found that there was nothing useful about it.

As the Collector had expected, it was simply wood. Simple plant matter just as mundane and of the same nature as that comprising the countless trees surrounding it.

Useless even for gaining a point of biomass. The Collector threw the stick away in disappointment, though it did note that a tinge of warmth pricked the Collector's stomach as it digested the wood.

The nature of the warmth eluded the Collector also, as it was unlike it to face any kind of biological reaction to consumption, its innards and digestive fluids bioengineered to fend against any manner of toxin known throughout the cosmos.

Odd. Was this also tied to 'magic'?

The Collector would know once it consumed the female specimen.

It picked the female's corpse up in one hand, its thick hand wrapping around her slim waist almost entirely.

It opened its jaw and mandibles grotesquely wide, its jaw bones unhinging and its mouth muscles contracting, and shoveled the female's form into its throat, and within a single second, she was gone, flesh and blood and bones and all.

It was as if she had never existed at all.

*Biomass gained (10)*

Biomass level 35/100

The Collector cocked its head in muted surprise. Unlike the other human female specimen from within the goblin den that provided a measly five biomass points, this one provided ten.

Yet the female herself possessed nothing different about her. Searching her genetic code found no aberrations or mutations that set her aside from her brethren.

Where did the additional biomass come from?

And strangely, that warm feeling permeating throughout the Collector's being from consuming the stick now intensified as the female was broken down, though it did not develop into anything that caused discomfort.

Too many questions.

The Collector would find answers soon enough by searching the female specimen's memories before the short timeframe in which her memories were accessible after consumption expired.

It stood still as its mind focused on the keyword of 'magic'.

The Collector's mind blanked out, and it temporarily saw a flash of white and heard a dull, droning buzz hum in its auditory systems: signs that indicated a failure to extract memories.

Why?

The Collector knew only of two instances where it could not extract any memories at all.

One: the consumed species was far too intellectually and evolutionarily complex. This was unlikely to a probability greatly hugging at zero.

The human was indeed a relatively intelligent species and the Collector's processing power was dampened from being severed from the Collective, but the human was not nearly evolved as either a species or potentially aberrant individual to hamper the Collector.

She was just as primitive as the rest of her kind, ruled by an unnatural mixture of budding but underdeveloped higher thought and base instincts.

Two: the consumed species held a psionic connection to a far greater whole that could create a mental structure complex enough to resist extraction. In essence, the very same mind to matter mechanism that linked the Collector to the greater hive mind of the Collective.

This did not seem likely, and yet, it was more likely than the first.

The Collector did not waste any time on doubt. It settled on this explanation and immediately geared its mind towards the potential threats this hypothesis would generate.

There was one tinkering species known as the Klaxia that the Collector knew of that did possess the rare adaptation to produce psionic links, but they were weak ones that only linked their thoughts and emotions to each other among small groups.

Not at all on the level of the Collective hivemind that could unite billions of lifeforms into a greater, perfected whole. No, it was a grave insult to even begin to compare the two.

The Collective hivemind was an evolutionary marvel that developed alone and unique in its sheer scale and complexity among countless star systems.

The probability that anything similar had developed here, especially with these primitive humans, was exceedingly low.

But it was possible that potentially this subspecies of human did possess psionic links with each other, and if enough were linked together, it could comprise a mental body sufficiently complicated enough to repel the Collector's individual extraction effort.

The Collector hastened its movements.

That meant that there was potential that other humans, particularly those in the nearby settlement, were linked to this human, and that meant they might already be raising an alarm against the Collector.

The Collector quickly consumed the two males.

Again, there was nothing of note worth on their bodies. The only commonality that existed among all three humans was the presence of a patch on their clothing that had a rudimentary weave representing the crude visage of a single star.

What that meant, the Collector did not know, though it did recall one of the males referring to the group as a whole as "one stars".

Possibly a term of classification that indicated humans that were psionically connected for again, as with the 'magic' familiar female the Collector consumed, these males had memories it could not extract.

Further investigation was needed.

*Biomass gained (20)*

Biomass level: 55/100

*Genetic material gained*

Stored Genetic Material:

-Black Ant

-Black Goblin

-Human

-Frostboar

Again, these two males provided double the amount of biomass as the female specimen in the den. The animal skins that one of the males wore also provided the genetic material for a species known as a Frostboar as well.

The Collector clicked its mandibles.

The frostboar possessed a thick layer of blubber and insulating skin that would provide strong resistance to the cold. Useful.

And an indicator that these humans were widespread across this world, for the male could not have obtained the frostboar's hide without a significant degree of travel or trade pre-established by the human species as a whole.

As it thought to itself, the Collector moved, wasting not a single moment of time.

It sprinted out of the den's clearing and into the woods, shrinking its muscles so that it could weave across thickets of tree trunks with graceful agility.

Its compound eyes, ultra-sensitive hairs, quick mind, and untiring musculature meant that it could cross through the heavily forested woods with a speed that made it almost seem that there was nothing blocking its way.

It headed north, deeper into the forest and away from the settlement, for it had changed its mind. It would not near the human settlement now, not when there was the possibility that the humans had raised an alarm.

No, it instead utilized the few bits of dialogue and memories it extracted from the goblins to head towards their other nests where there would be more hobgoblins that were part of the plan to overrun the human settlement.

The Collector mapped out the approximate locations of a total of five more hobgoblins spread across five more dens that would provide an enticing amount of biomass.

The Collector ran a quick calculation.

Five hobgoblins, if they were similar to Draug, plus a number of goblins to accompany each, would provide easily enough biomass to reach its fourth level of metamorphosis.

The Collector clicked its mandibles in anticipation as it leaped across a bush, swerving its body so that it slipped past two tree trunks before resuming its quick sprint.

Even with how quick it was, it created little to no sound, every single on of its many steps carefully calculated and placed in spots with the least dead and dried foliage to minimize sound.

Once it reached the fifth level of metamorphosis, it could begin to keep single adaptations it harvested from creatures native to this world even if the Collector discarded their forms. It would also be able to increase the number of genetic samples it could splice together to create a new form from three to four.

Not to mention that if the humans had raised an alarm, then the Collector had to become stronger to face them.

It was confident that if the humans it had just consumed were the extent of threat that the humans could muster up at their primitive level of technology in this world, then even in its current state, it could annihilate dozens of them with utter ease.

But it erred on the side of caution, for it knew the humans could breed and populate and gather themselves in even greater numbers like the swarms of pests they were.

STATUS RECAP

Metamorphosis Level 2

Biomass Level: 55/100

Stored Genetic Material:

-Black Ant

-Black Goblin

-Human

-Frostboar

Current Adaptations:

-Ultrafiber Muscles Rank 3

-Sensitive Hairs Rank 2

-Organic-Hyperalloy Carapace Rank 2

-Monomolecular Claws Rank 1

Current Form:

Black Hobgoblin/Striped Centipede/Jungle Spider

---

Read Alien Evolution System Chapter 11 - Hobgoblin Massacre online for free - AllNovelFull

The Collector spent a good hour sprinting through the woods, its sensitive hair adaptation picking up any changes in temperature and wind current around it to ensure that nothing escaped its spatial awareness.

Small animals, mostly mammalians of little worth such as the rabbit it had consumed before, made way for the Collector's charging yet deathly silent figure, scampering into burrows or deep undergrowth like retainers parting in fear fueled hurry before the descent of an almighty tyrant.

Good.

That meant that the Collector was not wasting its time. It would seem that the best sources of biomass in this forest biosphere would be the goblins, more specifically the larger hobgoblin variants.

The Collector knew that in terms of spatial orientation, the goblin den it had consumed was the one furthest positioned south, closest in proximity to the human settlement.

The other four were more remote, with two of them located in what seemed to be a darker, harsher part of the forest biome located far north.

The memories the Collector extracted were hazy, sufficient enough to map out where it needed to go but not clear enough for it to be completely confident of what it would face.

It could recall distinct emotions of fear and wariness from both the hobgoblin and the goblins it had consumed when they roamed the darker zone of the forest, but nothing in detail as to what exactly they faced.

The northern part of this forest biome might house hobgoblin variants that were even stronger than the 'Draug' the Collector faced. It seemed likely, in fact, if these northern hobgoblins were adapted to a suitably harsher environment.

The Collector clicked its mandibles as it slowed down, sensing that it neared the approximate location of the second den it would consume.

This den, however, still sat within the warmer zone of the forest, just a small distance north of where the Collector had initially crash landed.

It stood to reason then that the hobgoblin here would be of the same variant as the 'Draug' the Collector had already consumed.

Indicating that there would be no threat.

Yet the Collector still moved with caution. By now, its once breakneck sprint had eased down into a sauntering walk focused on complete obscuration of presence.

Each of its steps were soft, evading any breakable debris that could cause sound, and it utilized the thicket of trunks around it to its advantage, hiding its figure behind them as it advanced.

The Collector's olfactory system alerted its brain. The scent of the goblins was faint here, but sufficiently strong enough to follow. It paid attention to the forest floor, keeping its many bulbous eyes alert for tracks, but did not find any.

A minute passed as the Collector stalked its way forward.

Then it tensed up. The scent of the goblins continued to intensify, but it quickly realized from a minor calculation that the scent was increasing at a rate near double to what it expected.

Which meant that the goblins were on the move and headed directly towards the Collector. It hid behind a tree trunk thick enough to cover its whole frame and waited, keeping all of its vast sensory array alert.

All of its internal functions slowed down to a near halt, its heartbeat nearly deadening and its muscles freezing to an absolute stillness, preventing any sound from escaping it.

It could not hide in treetops anymore as it did in its previous metamorphosis level due to its now significantly increased bulk, but it still had more than enough programmed skill in stalking and hunting to minimize its presence to a level far, far beyond what any evolutionarily backwards hunter was capable of in this world.

It did not take long for the goblins to near.

The Collector sensed that up ahead, twenty meters ahead, an entourage of goblins moved through the forest. They did not care much at all to obscure their presences, obviously believing themselves apex predators in this specific zone of the forest biome.

Their footsteps were heavy, crushing apart dead and brittle foliage, and their voices filled the air in conversation.

The Collector's vibration sensitive airs were not effective at this range, but its hearing was developed enough for it to calculate that there was one heavier pair of footsteps accompanied by the faster, lighter scampers of six other bipeds.

An entourage consisting of one hobgoblin and six goblins.

Encounter approximately due in ten seconds.

The Collector began to restart its heart, pumping blood back into its body to ready for battle. Its monomolecular blades slowly unsheathed from its fingertips and elbows.

"Draug, draug, we take village now, right!?" said a goblin.

"Yes. If my brother ready," replied a gruff, deeper voice. The hobgoblin. "But be careful. We no move yet. Have to wait for shaman. Then the lord."

Five seconds.

"How long we wait?" said another goblin. "Want to eat. Hungry for days now."

"I know, Kiri. Two nights. Just two nights," said the hobgoblin, its voice very near now. "Then we eat. We take back our land. Make humans pay for stealing. Make goblin kingdom again like lord says."

At precisely the mark of one second remaining before the hobgoblin would pass the tree trunk the Collector hid behind, the Collector moved first. It swerved around the trunk in a single sweeping motion, calculating based on motions its sensitive hairs detected where the hobgoblin would be behind the trunk and slashing at the throat.

The hobgoblin flashed into the Collector's sight, and surprisingly, it managed to move backwards just in the nick of time, evading the claws aiming to shred its jugular by just a hair's breadth.

Yet the Collector was not so unsophisticated that it would botch a planned attack with any sizable margin of error. Its claws might not have slit the hobgoblin's vital parts into pieces, but it did inflict a deep wound.

The hobgoblin stumbled backwards, putting a tawny black hand to its throat where five deep lacerations exposed pumping, soft and vulnerable major arteries to the air.

Still, the Collector did not like that it had managed to err in its calculations. It had done so before with the humans, too, misjudging their speed, strength, and the properties of their weapons.

Though in the end its miscalculations were so minor that they did not affect the outcomes of its battles, such sloppiness was unbecoming of the Collector. Of the Collective and the evolutionary progress it exemplified.

As a representative of the Collective, the Collector had to do better. It would prove itself now.

"Wh-what?" said the hobgoblin as it glanced down at its hand. Blood red smeared its black flesh in contrasting hues. It looked up to the Collector, a snarl half forming at its mouth, but then its yellowed eyes widened.

"Brother?" wondered the hobgoblin aloud, and in that moment of hesitation or recognition or whatever it was that made the creature inefficient, the Collector acted.

The Collector thrust its hand out, pointing its spider silk spinneret topped index finger at the hobgoblin. It contracted its ultrafiber muscles around its finger, and like a spring loaded coil, a thread of spider silk shot forwards, latching onto the hobgoblin's forehead.

The Collector grunted as it grabbed the silk thread with its other hand and pushed down violently at just the precise angle to make the hobgoblin face plant with a heavy crash into the forest floor.

There was an audible thump of impact as a cloud of decayed sticks and leaves fluttered up around the hobgoblin's head. The forest floor was too soft of a surface to cause lethal injuries, but the sudden blow would daze the hobgoblin for a moment, and a moment was all the Collector needed.

It leaped forwards and landed by slamming its carapace encased foot into the hobgoblin's head like a falling sledgehammer, crushing the feeble biped's skull with a sickening, thoroughly audible crunch before the Collector twisted its foot, grinding everything soft and vital under its heel.

It was then, when their leader, the precious 'Draug' was reduced to nothing but a pulped soup of brain matter mixed with cranial shards that the goblins reacted with shrieks.

The entire altercation must have lasted three seconds, if that, and shock had prevented the simple-minded goblins from doing anything in that short timeframe.

The goblins took a single look at their dead 'Draug', then at the Collector's hideous, towering form of musculature and carapace, and turned their backs.

No survivors. The Collector gleaned from the short conversation between the goblins and the hobgoblin that their forces were mobilizing. Any goblins that escaped would alert the other dens.

The Collector shot forward another thread of silk, and it latched onto the nearest fleeing goblin's back, and it fell backwards as the string grew taut from its attempted escape. Like reeling an unruly dog in by leash, the Collector tugged at the string, sailing the goblin back.

The Collector grabbed the silk string like a lasso and started to swing it around above its head with the goblin still attached. The velocity of the revolutions was such that the tethered goblin could not even scream, the air sucked out its lungs.

The other goblins were running now, and all in different directions. The Collector had anticipated this, and there was no better way of dealing with scattering prey than ranged weaponry.

Of course, the Collector did not possess its acid spitters or spine shooters yet, so it made do with this…improvisation. It did not like doing anything that remotely resembled tool usage, scornful of the tinkerers and their reliance on tools as they were, but this barely passed its standards.

The Collector swung down the thread, using the goblin at its end to slam down into another goblin, crushing both into broken and lifeless bodies. It made sure that the impact was not strong enough to completely explode the goblin's body for it had to be used four more times.

And four more times, the Collector used the spider silk tethered goblin corpse as a wrecking ball to bludgeon the rest of its brethren to a broken boned demise before the little things could even dive into cover.

The Collector cut the spider silk from its finger and breathed in the iron scented smell of its victory. It felt less rewarding than before, when it was at its previous metamorphosis stage and it had actually felt injury against the other hobgoblin.

This was far too easy now.

Perhaps the other hobgoblins in the harsher environ of the forest would provide a better challenge for consumption.

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The Collector consumed the spoils of its victory. It swallowed the tiny goblins whole but had to carve up the much larger hobgoblin into pieces.

It sliced apart the hobgoblin corpse with the rote and quick efficiency of a seasoned butcher with its claws, not at all interested in savoring the specimen's taste as the fight it had offered was now beneath the Collector, not worthy of respect nor slow tasting.

As the Collector's digestive system broke down the fresh corpses, it searched their memories utilizing notable keywords that would better uncover the nature of the darker zone of this forest environment.

But in specifically searching the hobgoblin's memories, the Collector utilized the keyword of 'lord.'

The conversation between the overgrown goblin and its lesser kin had not eluded the Collector, and it understood the connotation of a 'lord' as an authoritative figure, very likely the leader of these dens.

Considering the goblins and their kind followed a societal hierarchy that valued strength and size above all else, the Collector surmised that this 'lord' was significantly more powerful than even the hobgoblins.

The memories came, and the Collector immersed itself into them.

Grun took tentative steps forward, looking around himself to see nothing but shadows. He could only follow the heavy footsteps in front of him, the steps of the champion.

Never before had Grun seen a goblin so big, so wide.

He remembered when the champion first showed up.

Out of nowhere, almost, from the dark side where nobody was ever supposed to go, where light never shone and big monsters were everywhere.

At first, Grun thought maybe he had drunk too much of the stolen spicy water from the humans that made him see all fuzzy and gave him headaches afterwards.

There were no other hobgoblins here other than Grun and his younger brother Gron. They had all died ten years ago when the humans killed them and took their land.

But the champion was real. Very real. His punches made sure of that.

The champion told Grun to swear fealty, and although Grun did not know what that big word meant, he could still understand the intention, the challenge, behind it.

Grun was mighty, he knew it, mightier than any of the little ones he protected, mightier than Gron, his younger brother.

Together, Grun thought he and his brother Gron were the mightiest there were, the strongest of the few survivors left from the human attack ten years ago, when the strong humans chased everyone away with swords and fire and built their big buildings and moved in their cows over the dens and grasses that once belonged to the goblins.

But Grun began to understand he knew nothing. He fought the champion, and the champion beat Grun in just three minutes, even without the big armor and axe he brought with him.

Gron, younger and weaker than Grun, did not do much better either.

Now, both of them and the little ones under them were travelling through the dark side their elders, back when they were alive, had told them they were never supposed to go to, all to meet someone the champion called the lord.

Grun shivered, the first time he had done so in many years. He had lived through fifteen cycles of seasons, but never before had he felt such cold before. Never before had he seen such darkness.

His eyes could see at night and in the pits, and he often used his good eyes to sneak up on the humans who could not see so well in the dark, but this darkness was nothing like the night.

It was so dark Grun could see nothing. Just black. Just shadow.

To the point that Gron followed right behind Grun to avoid being lost, putting a hand on his older brother's shoulder to make sure he knew where he was. The little ones did much the same, holding their hands together and huddling around Gron and Grun.

"Do not worry," said the raspy voice of the champion. "Light grows thin here, but all is good. I know the path to avoid the spiders. And do not feel bad about losing to me and falling under the lord.

I was like you two once. Young and thought myself mighty. You will learn as you have now with my fists. The lord is might itself. Under his generosity, you will find new purpose."

Grun felt Gron tap his shoulder in questioning, but Grun could only grunt in response, not knowing anything about this lord, just that he was strong, very strong, if even the champion served him.

--The memories flickered and moved further --

Underground.

But not in something small and cramped like a den. Something far, far bigger. Grun had seen the likes of it. Sometimes, strong monsters lived in holes like the big worm by the river.

But this pit was much bigger than any he had ever seen, hidden away far, far up, deep and deep into the dark place nobody was supposed to go and where nobody did go.

"Kneel, hobgoblins, before lord Zoll, last of the royal blood," came a commanding and aged voice. A hunch backed hobgoblin uttered the command with a flourish of his hand, the rattle of bone bracelets and accessories on his arm and neck accentuating the movement.

His dull blue eyes peered through the sockets of a skull helmet, looking at Grun and Gron with cold contempt. When the bone wreathed goblin approached, Grun and Gron felt a chill settle in their hearts, forcing them to stare down, to not meet those chilling eyes.

The goblin circled the hobgoblin brothers then grunted. "The natives here are pitiful. Though this one," said the goblin as it tapped Grun's shoulder. "Has managed to awaken his roots if even the slightest bit.

But that is it. Even as hobgoblins, they are small and brutish. My brethren to the north will provide you far better stock to be your champions, my lord."

"Quiet yourself, Hrunt. All goblinkind, no matter how little, how backwards they have become in the centuries I have slumbered, will find a place by my side.

How sad a state my people have gone into, our old kingdom once great and tall reduced now to nothing, our people scattered as pests to be hunted down by the humans and their gods.

I will break the humans down, bring forth our numbers back once more with their flesh, and establish our kingdom once more, and under the great shadow it will cast, all of us shall thrive while men and their gods die.

Grun knelt down with Gron by his side, knowing by now that they were facing something far bigger than what they were. The littles ones knelt behind them and trembled as the echoing waves of the lord's voice washed over them.

"Come, look here, my children," said the lord. "And know I bring you a chance to prove yourselves. Fight for me and prove your worth. Bring me human skulls. Bring me the lands they have taken from you.

Find the dull embers hatred and vengeance in your hearts long forgotten by living in contented sloth and stoke them again."

Grun looked up. There was light there. A single source, but just a little bit in so much darkness made Grun want to run over to it, to go under that bit of warmth no matter what it cost.

The light came from the lord. From a big sword in his hand made of shiny metal, the kind that the human adventurers would use. The lord was a big goblin just like Grun and his brother, but even bigger.

Not bigger than the champion, but still, there was something different about the lord.

Something on the lord's face, his red eyes that shone with power that was equal parts threatening and comforting, like being beside a raging wildfire on a cold winter's day, one step away from burning or freezing in the dark.

And if Grun had to choose between the cold dark and the terrifying heat in front of him, he would choose the warmth.

The memories ended.

*Biomass gained (35)*

Biomass Level: 90/100

The Collector clicked its mandibles, pleased at the thirty-five points of biomass the hobgoblin gave.

It processed the significance of the hobgoblin's memories, identifying threats within them.

The goblin champion. A sizable specimen possessing advanced musculature, tusks, white skin, and, curiously, thick, protective metal coverings and a large, crushing and slicing weapon of far better craftsmanship and quality than the roughly carved clubs the hobgoblins wielded.

The other larger goblin, the one with bones decorating its body, seemed thinner and shorter, about as large as the normal hobgoblins, and yet, the hobgoblins deferred to it. Under what metric, the Collector did not know yet.

It did not seem that the bone decorated goblin was a physically superior specimen. Perhaps the hobgoblins deferred to it on basis of age.

The goblin lord. In bulk, between the size of the hobgoblin and the goblin champion, and yet possessing of distinctive authority. Whether that authority sourced itself solely form a strength based superiority the Collector could not confirm, but considering the simple, power focused nature of the goblin society, it seemed likely.

However, the goblin lord and the other variants in the dark zone were more sophisticated than the hobgoblins here, articulating their thoughts and utilizing their language in a much fuller extent. That would indicate a greater probability of higher thinking and tactical acumen.

Troublesome.

The Collector went about extracting other details from the lesser goblins' corpses such as the location of their den for additional clues, further specifications on the locations of the other goblin dens located in this dark zone, the exact nature of threats in the dark zone itself, and, finally, more details of this goblin champion and lord.

The Collector sifted through its thoughts as it moved, heading now to the den of the slaughtered goblins to pick up any additional clues there.

It determined it would have to reach the third metamorphosis level before challenging the darker zone.

Unfortunately, there would not be more goblins there for it seemed the vast majority of them had moved to the other den, and those, the Collector had already consumed.

The Collector would have to find another biomass source.

From the goblins' memories, aside from the goblins, it knew that the primary predator that lived in the darker zone were spiders affected by some gigantification mutation, causing them to become almost as large as humans.

Those, coupled with the new threats of this goblin 'champion' and, more importantly, lord, meant the Collector had to evolve first before challenging this new environment and its threats.

Report chapter

With the Collector's efficient movements, it reached the den within thirty minutes, and there it found the den much the same in structure to that of the other hobgoblin's.

Like the previous den, this one too was comprised of a simple system of tunnels made by a specimen much larger than the goblins, and, judging now by serrations on rock formations within the den, by a creature that did so with hosts of rotating teeth.

Quite likely an annelid-type creature, perhaps the very same as the one the hobgoblin the Collector recently digested, this 'Grun' as he was called, referred to in his memories as a giant worm.

Interesting.

A brief analysis of the rock formation and the mossy vegetation growing within the den indicated that no such specimen had occupied this area for quite some time, not to mention that the goblins themselves would not take up residence here should there have been a risk of encountering such a creature.

A burrowing worm would allow the Collector to easily access subterranean movement and vastly enhance them with adaptations of its own.

This would be extremely useful in evading detection by the primitive humans of this world that lacked any of the advanced sensor systems that their spacefaring counterparts possessed.

It simply needed to track down the worm. Further investigation needed on that end.

For now, the Collector focused on the case of the goblins, for if they were to mobilize soon, within the span of one to two days, then the Collector had to act quickly.

Any significant movement of these goblins clashing with the humans in the southern settlement would generate enormous amounts of attention that the Collector did not wish to be dragged into.

But at the same time, should the goblins and the humans clash, then the Collector would lose its chance to gain easy access to the biomass and genetic samples of the goblins, and though the dull species did not interest the Collector before, the discovery of this 'champion' and 'lord' piqued its interest.

The Collector, like many of its warrior strains, did have a certain degree of embedded personality within it, and unlike the Dominator or Infector strains, the Warrior strains possessed traits that developed from the many predator type genes that comprised them

Thus, the Collector held pride for the fight, for the hunt, and once it set out to hunt a target, it would not easily give up its quarry, especially to lesser specimen such as humans.

And perhaps more importantly, the goblins were an advancing force. They would fight and if they failed, die on human territory. Their genetic samples would be difficult to scavenge there.

Massively increased human surveillance and militarized presence throughout the forest was also inevitable in such an outcome.

The Collector wished for none of those.

The forest was a quiet, remote biome that it could handle on its own with its current, weakened capabilities. It could not risk having to flee from this biome, especially if hostile human territory surrounded it or there were only harsher biomes elsewhere.

The Collector thus searched the den for more information but after a few minutes of thorough investigation, found nothing anomalous about it.

Its layout was almost exactly the same as the other den it had ransacked already with a general living space for the lesser goblins and a private cavern for the hobgoblin.

The only difference lay in the presence of remains in the furthest chamber where in the other den the goblins kept human captives. Instead of live captives, there were instead three skeletons picked clean of flesh and blood, lined up neatly together atop a rough bed of grasses.

The Collector crouched down by the skeletons and analyzed them. Judging by their proportions, they were human in origin.

An oddity.

According to the behavioral habits the Collector knew from consuming goblins and taking their form, the goblins did not consume bone and threw the bones of their prey out.

Usage as a tool, then? No. The Collector took up a skeletal arm and crushed it with ease. Too weak. Too brittle to utilize in any meaningful way.

Perhaps, as the Collector recalled the bone-wearing hobgoblin from Grun's memories, a simple means of gathering accessories for visual differentiation in a rudimentary societal hierarchy?

Whatever it was, the Collector would not pass up on consuming these skeletons. It passed up on biomass beneath its efforts such as plants or, now that it was more developed, some of the smaller creatures scurrying about in the lowest grasses of this forest, but human remains were different.

There stood the chance that certain human biomass samples were special, providing more than they should.

And the Collector found that it did not regret its decision as it scarfed down all the remains.

*Biomass gained 10*

Biomass Level: 100/100

All three skeletons were special.

A coincidence it could not place significance on yet but noted in its mind. It could not extract memories from the skeletons for extraction required fresh biomass from a neural center with sufficient structural integrity that, if expired, had not decayed too significantly.

These bones, however, were still rather fresh, splotches of recently dried blood remaining along their skeletal curves. Along with the live captured woman, these human deaths likely provided the reason the humans had sent three of their kind against the dens.

With the humans further potentially alerted by the Collector causing the demise of their scouts, there was the potential that already the humans were readying themselves in greater numbers.

Soon enough, if the advance of the greater and much more powerful goblin force in the darker zone was left unchecked, there would be quite the large-scale altercation. The Collector would consume the goblins before their movements caused the forest to become too dangerous to inhabit.

And to do that, the Collector had to evolve. It headed outside of the den and found a secluded patch of taller grass to metamorphose under.

The Collector could access its third metamorphosis level from consuming the special skeletons, though it would have spent time to hunt other creatures to reach the third level anyway had the skeletons been mundane.

The warm feeling in its body had steadily intensified with continued consumptions, and as the Collector shrank into the ground, its hulking, musclebound figure breaking apart into a cocoon encased puddle of flesh, it sought not only to adapt itself against the darker zone, but also to try and figure out what this warmth was.

Every successive metamorphosis level meant that the cocoon the Collector formed became larger, more complex, requiring more space, but for now, it still did not attract much attention, being perhaps a meter and a half in diameter.

Now with its form broken down and its consciousness spread throughout primordial, pliable ooze capable of bending the raw essence of creation to its will, the Collector first inspected the genetic materials it had available.

-Black Ant

-Black Goblin

-Human

-Frostboar

The Collector inspected the human material, analyzing it to parse any abnormalities within it that could explain its aberrant levels of biomass.

It found nothing. No mutations. No uniquely expressive genes among the special skeletons or female specimen. Further investigation needed on this subject.

The Collector took to splicing together a new form.

It kept its hobgoblin and black spider genes, useful as they had been so far, but it discarded its striped centipede material for that of the Frostboar, finally ridding itself of this bipedal form.

The metamorphic cocoon housing the Collector pulsed and grew, roots of flesh expanding outwards from its perimeter as it expanded, latching onto vegetation and consuming it.

Within minutes, an embryo formed from within the liquid-filled, flesh colored cocoon, visible as a dark nugget through the cocoon's membranous, vein-dotted skin.

The embryo grew rapidly, and within minutes, was the size and vague shape of a goblin. A minute later, it was the size of a human. A minute later, the size of a hobgoblin.

The Collector incorporated the Frostboar gene now, and the humanoid shaped embryo completely altered in shape, morphing in a pulsing, twisting mass before becoming larger, wider, four-legged.

Here, the Collector also restored one of its previous adaptations: the Pyrocatalytic Glands that would allow it to invoke flaming misery upon this oxygen rich world.

It eagerly awaited as its metamorphosis entered its final stages, feeling the coveted glands -the product of evolution the Collective had carefully selected over a hundred worlds - grow within its half-formed throat.

When the Collector burst forth from its cocoon, warm, viscous liquid steaming and dripping from its furred form, it found to its satisfaction the feeling of land under four stable feet. Yes, this was its structure, the same it had been born with when the Collective initially birthed it.

Metamorphosis Level 34

Biomass Level: 100/1000/100

Stored Genetic Material:

-Black Ant

-Black Goblin

-Human

Adaptations:

Internal Systems

-Ultrafiber Muscles Rank 34

External Systems

-Sensitive Hairs Rank 23

-Organic-Hyperalloy Carapace Rank 23

Weapons Systems:

-Monomolecular Claws Rank 12

-Pyrocatalytic Glands Rank 1 (NEW)

Current Form:

Black Hobgoblin/Frostboar/Jungle Spider

The Collector was as tall as it was before, being about a head taller than a hobgoblin, but were it to stand up on its hind legs, it would tower over any hobgoblin, even the champion from Grun's memories.

Ultrafiber musculature rippled in dense coils all around the Collector's four-legged, barrel shaped body, and though the ordinary frostboar would have looked rounder, softer with blubber, the Collector looked like a giant chunk of bulging sinews weighing close to half a ton.

Much of the cold resistant blubber from the Frostboar had been condensed into marbling and a smaller, thinner layer coating the ultrafiber muscle mostly to maximize total muscle mass and strength for cold alone, unless it reached extreme freezing temperatures, affected the Collector little, and the dark zone did not seem to possess temperatures low to that degree.

If the Collector charged through the forest right now, it had no doubts it would simply smash through trees and rocks alike utterly unimpeded, let alone the fleshy and weak bodies of humans or goblins.

Two massive, curved tusks tipped with monomolecular edges gleamed from its mouth. Thick, coarse light brown bristles and fur lined with ultrasensitive hairs covered its body, with a particularly shaggy mane growing around its neck.

Three glowing yellow compound eyes along with thick, monomolecular edge tipped mandibles dotted either side of its elongated, porcine head.

And finally, six arachnid appendages burst out from its back, each of them tipped with small monomolecular claws with one of them possessing webspinning capabilities.

The Collector could not infinitely manifest certain adaptations or traits. The monomolecular claws, for example, required significant biomass the Collector did not yet have, so it could only tip its tusks and mandibles in them.

Still, the Collector was pleased with its new form.

This was far sturdier, stronger, and faster than its previous one.

In celebration, it stood on its hind legs, towering high and shaking off the last remnants of the embryonic fluid dripping from its fur, and loosed a controlled jet stream of chemically ignited fire from its mouth as it reclaimed once more one of the many prized adaptations the Collective had gifted it with.

Now the Collector was truly ready to hunt.

Report chapter

The Collector ran north to the edge of the forest's light zone. By now, it was simply too large to adequately slink around tree trunks, and though it did avoid obstacles when it could, those that it calculated it could not move by, it simply charged through.

There was a sense of strength in this action that the Collector relished, the feeling of using its body as a bludgeoning gavel to break apart and judge the weakness of this world. It rushed through the thick of the forest like a shooting star of musclebound destruction.

The heat developing within the Collector's being had not settled. Rather, it had intensified upon reaching this next metamorphosis level.

Yet this development did not harm the Collector.

No, it instead made the Collector…feel.

It felt the emotions most strongly programmed within it, the predatory instincts and drive to hunt and to hunger not only for biomass but for battle, for the fight itself, grow in intensity with the heat.

Perhaps this heat was a symptom of something that affected its neural centers in some manner, but it could not sense any infections nor even psionic interferences within itself.

The Collector understood that the current flow of emotions pouring out from its neural systems exceeded the limitations placed by the Collective Hivemind, and had the Collector still been psionically linked to the Hivemind, then surely the Hivemind would have dampened the Collector's mind as it did when tinkering races attempted in rare occasions to psionically infiltrate Collector strains.

Yet, though this was unnatural, against the programmed limits the Collective Hivemind, the most sacred of authorities, the Collector did not mind.

So long as these anomalous neural activities did not hinder its directive to hunt and consume, it would place secondary concern for them.

Fueled by hunger for battle, the Collector sped through the forest.

Its top speed exceeded that of its metamorphosis level even with the occasional tree or boulder it had to smash out of the way, especially with four legs dedicated to locomotion.

There was even a stag it collided with, splattering the unfortunate specimen into an exploded mess of shattered bones and burst organs that split apart around the Collector's speeding body, painting it red for a brief moment.

The Collector did not stop to gather all of the stag's biomass, absorbing only the blood and fleshy pieces stuck to its body from the impact.

*Biomass gained (2)*

Biomass Level: 2/100

By the time the Collector reached the edge of the light zone, the blackened sun's rays had darkened from a golden glimmer to a deep amber, the celestial body beginning to set in the sky.

The Collector looked down at the very literal edge it stood upon, at a deep ravine filled at the bottom of a near hundred meter drop with a raging river current that separated the Collector's side of the forest from the dark zone.

The darker zone of this biome was just as enveloped in shadow as it was in the goblins' memories.

At first, the Collector had thought their memories flawed to a degree, for the darkness in them observed far exceeded any naturally occurring dark.

No, the Collector noted with its yellow compound eyes, a huff escaping its fang and tusk lined mouth, the thick growth of trees in dark zone, wider and taller than those in the lighter zone, were indeed as dark as they were in the memories.

The trees did not just block light with their leaves, they absorbed it.

Absorption to such an extreme degree that there was nearly an entire absence of visible light, the leaves and bodies of trees so black that their dark outlines stood out sorely against even the faintest shade of color or light.

The forest floor, then, would have essentially zero visibility, explaining how even the goblins with their eyes adapted to low visibility environments were blind – there was not enough light even for their sensitive photoreceptors to perceive.

No matter to the Collector.

Sight was simply one of several sensory systems it could utilize to function. Its sensitive hair adaptation as well as its advanced auditory systems would be more than enough to navigate an environment devoid of light.

Likely, the larger spiders inhabiting this zone functioned in much the same manner.

The Collector clicked its mandibles, wishing also to take a sample of their biomass for it was directly superior to the Jungle Spider genes it currently utilized.

It did not waste more time.

It looked ahead at the ravine and calculated how much force it would require to leap across the gap.

The Collector stepped back a few meters, gaining a head start to build up velocity. Then, it charged once more, its staggering bulk bolting forwards in a black blur before it jumped off the very edge of the ravine.

Wind sailed past its form as it contracted its muscles, making itself smoother and more aerodynamic like a living missile.

With surprising grace, the Collector landed right on the edge of the dark zone. It was pleased. Its calculations had not erred, proving that the heat within it was not affecting its mind to any compromising degree.

The Collector entered the dark zone of the forest, slipping into the leafy void of light as it recalled the path the goblins used to reach their camps unharmed by spiders.

Estimated time of arrival to the first goblin camp: one hour.

Estimated distance between the first and second camps: one hour.

Estimated distance between the second and third camps: twenty minutes.

Reinforcements, if there were any, would come slow between the first and second camps. The Collector would find sizable challenge in razing the second and third camps, however, for the risk of reinforcements seemed far likelier.

And, as the Collector clicked its mandibles in anticipation, the third camp held this goblin 'lord'.

The Collector trotted through the darkness, its sensitive hairs upright and alert to any vibration around it while its developed ears twitched back and forth, finding an optimal angle for receiving auditory signals.

It breathed out in anticipation, its warm internal temperatures loosing out a cloud of vapor in this cold, lightless environment.

Here, the Collector would prove to these primitives, these tinkerers that gathered so in such large groups, crowning one among them 'lord' or 'emperor' or 'president' that they were just as worthless and weak as the rest of them, that their titles were constructs granted to them by their societies, not by the infallible hand of evolution.

The Collector traveled the safe path through the dark zone for half an hour. It found that the route was safe because the goblins had placed down chunks of rock that glowed faintly in the presence of heat, shining quite bright when the high internal temperature of the Collector neared them.

Curious. The rocks seemed to emit a spectrum of light that escaped the absorbing properties of the trees around it.

The Collector had already consumed a sample of these trees, curious of whether its light absorption could be a useful adaptation in the future.

These specimens were called deadwoods, and though they provided almost no biomass, their photoabsorbent qualities were indeed present as an anomalous mutation in their bark, allowing the Collector to use it in the future.

The Collector picked up one of the rocks with a long, prehensile tongue, and it glowed a bright blue, sensing the warmth from the appendage.

These were more noteworthy. The type of light that they emitted escaped the Collector's identification, not matching the wavelengths of any light in its memory banks.

At first, the Collector had tried consuming the rocks, but found that they were completely inorganic.

It was not some moss or microorganism within them that emitted this light. It was something inherent in the properties of the stone itself.

A shame.

The Collector could have absorbed the rocks had it evolved an internal systems adaptation known as the Autonomic Neuro-Bodily Matrix which would have granted it access to the Metalloglottic Ossifier, a modification to the throat and digestive system that would let it incorporate inorganic alloys into its carapace and body.

The Collector had skipped the adaptation at first because it did not provide immediate combat benefit, but now that it had enough tools of battle under its disposal to survive, it would focus on restoring its more utility based adaptations, for to ensure maximum efficiency of its weapons systems, it had to build up a strong bodily foundation of internal and external systems adaptations.

The Collector broke off from the lit path at this point, knowing that the closer it neared the first encampment, the higher the chance there was of finding errant goblins that could escape and alert the rest.

The Collector stepped into the darkness, wishing to attempt circling around the first goblin encampment for an ambush attack.

And of course, to also harvest the spider specimen.

Report chapter

Leaving the stone-lit path, the Collector found a marked difference in the atmosphere and environment. Its sensitive hairs quivered as they detected heavy motion on the forest floor.

Several dozens of gigantified insect and arthropod specimen writhing about on the forest floor, fighting against each other in a tightly packed, many-legged battle royale of stingers, pincers, and mandibles.

The Collector waded through the writhing mess of fighting creatures below it, occasionally crushing an unlucky specimen under hoof.

Nearly all of them, though massive compared to their counterparts in the light zone, were still tiny in front of the Collector, and their instincts understood not to try and test their luck on a much larger, stronger being.

Still, there were some, those among the largest of the specimen, that sought to test their mettle against the Collector.

A massive scorpion emerged from the ground in a burst of uncovered earth, lashing out against the Collector with its barbed stinger.

The stinger bounced off the Collector's durable hyperalloy carapace, and the Collector dispatched the scorpion with a quick thrust of it tusks, goring the creature from the head clean through its abdomen.

The Collector swiveled its head back, sliding the scorpion corpse into its mouth as its mandibles chopped down, breaking down the creature in moments.

Not a moment later, and the Collector felt strong vibrations mounting behind it. The incoming presence of a heavy, charging specimen.

A beetle, it seemed, surging forwards with its crown-like horns as sturdy and large as the swords the humans wielded.

The Collector swiveled around, pawed the forest floor once, and met the charge with one of its own.

There was no contest.

The beetle's horns broke apart hitting the Collector's carapaced face, and then the Collector's half-ton mass of brutally quick and dense, armor-plated muscle blew apart the beetle in all directions, spilling a rain of crushed shell and gooey innards everywhere.

The Collector consumed the two challengers, respecting if a little their willingness to hunt that which was far beyond them.

*Biomass gained (10)*

Biomass Level: 13/100

*New genetic material available*

Stored Genetic Material:

-Black Ant

-Black Goblin

-Human

-*NEW*Giant Scorpion

-*NEW*Stonecrusher Beetle

The Collector clicked its mandibles in mild disappointment.

Only ten points for two of what should have been among the largest of specimen here. As far as it could sense with its hairs and hearing, there were no other specimen crawling about on the dirt that remotely came close to the size and complexity of the creatures it had just consumed.

Though their biomass was pitiful, at the least these specimen were sufficiently strong and large enough for the Collector to adequately incorporate their genetic material into a potential metamorphosis without having to sacrifice its size and strength to morph any adaptations they could provide.

Analysis of the beetle and scorpion specimen completed. Analysis of the spiders engaged.

On the forest floor, the beetle and scorpion were creatures that might have reigned at the top, but what about above?

The Collector ignored the crawling chaos of insignificant, mindless lessers around it and instead focused on the treetops as it wandered further into the wilds of the dark zone.

It did not take long for the Collector to feel the presence of a spider.

The trees in this dark zone were three to four times larger than those in the light zone, perhaps growing more thoroughly since they were absorbing light and nutrients at far more efficient rates.

This granted the Collector ample space to move around without crashing into anything, but the actual treetops were far less spacious in their orientation. The gigantified and numerous branches of the trees grew at a volume that outpaced what their trunks should support, and they compensated by intertwining together from tree to tree, weaving together to form what was essentially one enormous web.

The gigantified spiders thus did not inhabit webs of silk, but instead a web carved out from the forest itself.

Yet that did not necessitate a complete lack of silk production. The Collector was quick to sense a thread of thick, rope-like silk dangling down from above, drooping down like a lure to the forest floor.

If anything touched the thread, the vibrations would alert the spiders and cause them to drop down from above.

Still, the spiders would pose no threat to the Collector, for it had readily prepared itself for them and this environment. Its newly developed pyrocatalytic glands would make short work of anything native to this darkened environment.

Theoretically, the Collector understood that it could hunt the numerous gigantified spiders in the treetops and any larger insectoid specimen on the forest floor, and with enough time, it could accumulate enough biomass to reach the next metamorphosis level.

The issue was that it could not easily find a place here to metamorphose. The forest floor was far too busy, far too competitive, crawling with hungry creatures.

The Collector would store genetic material samples for now and think about evolving later. Analysis of how it would conduct an extended hunt to accumulate enough biomass indicated a significant probability of drawing the attention of the goblins, not to mention that it would take up several hours.

The goblins might already have begun an advance down to the human settlement by then.

And yet, the Collector would not pass up the opportunity to consume the genetic material of what was considered an apex predator in this environment, and it reached out with its head to tap the hanging thread of web with its tusk, taking care not to use the monomolecular tip to cut the strand.

The Collector wanted the spider manning this thread to sense vibrations and come down from its treetop hiding spot.

As expected, a rustle of movement sounded high up, and the Collector's sensitive hairs stood on their ends as they felt rustling from large leaves, patter of several legs on wood, and the creak of branches moving under weight: the advance of the spider.

The Collector looked up, directly at where the spider would drop, and unleashed a small burst of fire.

A controlled, miniscule burst emitted not to burn but instead to generate light to prevent the entire forest from burning down.

But even that small blaze lit up the entirety of the Collector's surroundings in blue-tinted, blinding bright white light. Though the light-absorbent darkwoods hungrily dimmed the light within a moment, a mere second of exposure to that intense light was enough to generate intense movement across the forest floor.

Every crawling creature in the vicinity of the flash halted their hunting and fighting and fled, digging underground or skittering away to thicker undergrowths.

And in the midst of the clearing their retreat carved out, a giant spider writhed and rattled in pain, its eight legs seized up, paralyzing it and putting it on its back.

The Collector ended the giant spider's life in an instant by stomping down right below its head, where its ganglia nerve center would be located. Its hoof crushed through the carapace with a crunch before punching through softer, fleshier meat with a squelch.

From memories extracted through the goblins and the presence of the glowing stones, the Collector accurately hypothesized that all the life forms in this forest had an intense aversion to light.

This was the primary reason why the Collector had evolved its pyrocatalytic glands, as in the unlikely advent that there were creatures here that could overwhelm the Collector, likely through numbers, it could ward them off by simply generating light.

The Collector reached down and flicked the spider corpse in the air its teeth, unhinging its jaw wide with a crack and pop as it swallowed the creature down as a quick snack.

*Biomass gained (6)*

Biomass Level: 19/100

*New genetic material available*

Stored Genetic Material:

-Black Ant

-Black Goblin

-Human

-Giant Scorpion

-Stonecrusher Beetle

-*NEW* Jumping Arakka

The Collector clicked its mandibles in understanding.

The gigantified spider, the Jumping Arakka as it was noted in this world, was indeed the apex predator in this biome.

The arakka could not produce too much webbing, but in exchange, the material was extremely durable, created in an efficiently chained weave that made it several times stronger than the webbing the Collector currently had access to.

The arakka's limbs were also far more efficient and powerful than those of the jungle spider's that the Collector utilized now, capable of building up great hydraulic pressure in their joints which could rapidly accelerate their movements in short bursts.

In all ways, the jumping arakka's genes would be an upgrade.

The jumping arakka were not the apex predators of this biome, however, simply on merit of their size and strength. Those traits, some of the larger insectoids on the forest floor could match such as the stonecrusher beetle.

No, it was the arakka's social behavior that set them apart.

The arakka observed some level of communal behavior, nesting together in a massive, interconnected community in the treetops, making them a small army of sorts.

Their neural systems were also surprisingly complex, incapable of higher order thinking but still possessing enough instinctual programming to employ basic tactics.

At the least, it was probable that the arakka had developed some level of tribe mentality, meaning they would cooperate and gather to face larger threats such as the Collector.

The Collector realized then that the jumping arakka would make any ambush against the goblins impossible.

In the brief flash of light the Collector manifested with its fire, it had seen countless other web strands dangling down, spanning throughout the whole length of the forest.

There was a veritable sea of arakka lying in wait above.

It was only because the Collector had been so precise in executing this jumping araka that none of the others were alerted.

If the Collector wanted to stray from the stone-lit path, it would have to wade through countless jumping araka ambushing it, and one stray movement might mean setting off a chain reaction of raining spiders.

Though the Collector did not mind dealing with the arakka, knowing that they relied on powerful venom administered through jaws that could not breach the Collector's carapace, a mass swarm of them could potentially find a chink in the Collector's armor.

For now, though the Collector was resistant to the vast majority of minor poisons, sufficiently strong ones could affect it for it had yet to evolve the necessary internal system adaptation to grant it true immunity.

Beyond the basic risk of bodily harm as well, the noise of the altercation would very likely alert the goblin encampment, especially if the Collector had to generate constant, intense light with its pyrocatalytic glands.

Though the darkwoods quickly snuffed out light, it was paradoxically this trait that made the presence of any light that much more noticeable.

This meant that attempting to circumvent the path dotted with glowing stones would be difficult.

The Collector calculated that its chances to create a successful ambush dwindled drastically.

No, the Collector realized as it headed back to the lit path, it looked increasingly likely that it would have to attack the goblins head on. It would have to face every single defense the goblins had erected, every single one of their fighters, their warriors, and their tricks without the cover of an ambush.

So be it, then.

The Collector bared its fangs as it stared ahead to the rest of the path, spittle dripping from its carapace covered lips in anticipatory hunger.

The Collector would not be hiding, waiting, stalking. All of those, it knew, utilizing when necessary for survival, but those traits were not what it was primarily bred for in the first place.

The Collector's true form towered over the mightiest of Dreadnought-class ships, casting shadows over planets visible from orbit. It was not like the Infector-strains that burrowed into worlds, birthing parasites and drones from seclusion. Nor was it a Dominator-strain that hid from afar, utilizing strong psionics to drive deep madness into tinkerers.

The Collector did not hide at all, for though it was in tune with its primal instincts, it still was no mere animal. It was better than the countless, brutish fauna that comprised its genetic code.

The sum of the many parts sourced over a thousand worlds that built up the Collector did not produce yet another simple creature, another thing that hid in the dark and ate and lived and died solely for survival- it produced a warrior, and warriors lived for battle.

The Collector clashed with the tinkerers head on without fear, without hesitation, without care to their numbers or their trinkets. It brought them devastation and destruction and misery not through the impersonal means of disease and parasites, but with its own claws, its own fangs, its own muscles.

It brought them battle. It brought them war.

For the past few days, the Collector had been weak, hiding, scurrying about on the dirt indistinguishable from the unevolved weakness at the bottom of this backwater planet's food chain, but no more.

For the first time since it reached this world, the Collector came to realize with hunger burning in its being that it would not engage in a hunt.

This would be a battle.

THIS was what it was born for, what it lived for.

Report chapter

"Why we keep watch?" said Ganth. The white-skinned hobgoblin stood in front of the goblin camp's entrance, an open space of a few meters in a perimeter of sharpened deadwood trunks.

The stakes were positioned outwards in even, tightly packed intervals, ensuring that no bugs could come charging in without risking skewering themselves.

"Nobody come," continued Ganth, his breath forming an outline of fog visible under dim light cast by torches using lightstones as their tinder.

"You do not know that," said Shun, a red-skinned hobgoblin smaller in height by a head and lighter in weight by a dozen kilograms compared to Ganth. "At any moment, the adventurers might strike us. If the native goblins are right, then there is even tell of a gold ring sorcerer in this forest. We as the stronger in our respective tribes have a duty to keep watch when such danger may befall us so."

Ganth grunted absent-mindedly tugged at his jutting tusks. "You speak well. Like our thrall." Ganth took in Shun's form with a dull blue eye. "All goblins from Xin like you?"

"Oni," said Shun in a corrective tone. "Where I am from, we are called oni. And we have kept more of our ancestral tongue than you have here in Terra," said Shun. "A shame, really. I see precious few humans where I hail from, but it does irk my heart to know that the humans in this realm look down upon our kind so.

Should they hear our poetry, what our language is truly capable of, they would not think our tongue one brutish and simple."

"Hah, poetry!" Ganth slapped his musclebound thigh with a grunting laugh. He slung an enormous club fashioned out of ice over his broad shoulder. "You funny. Poetry makes you sit down and think, makes you weak and soft. Maybe that's why you so skinny."

"Well, we already know who is the stronger between us," said Shun with a smirk of confidence.

"Hmph." Ganth grunted in annoyance. "One day, I figure out how you move like that. But you strong for sure. Respect that."

"Martial arts."

"Huh?"

"Martial arts. That is what I use," said Shun. He pointed down to his waist where a lengthy sword of blackened, glossy rock lined with heated cracks hung by string to a skirt-like leg garment fashioned with thick, black cloth.

"Instead of swinging clubs mindlessly, I focus my qi, or mana as you call it, and make every single one of my swings and movements something I grace with the full breadth of my focus and devotion.

Your kind in those cold northern wastes beyond the mountains might have thicker skin and bigger muscles, but without focus, what is the use of all that power?"

"Argh, too many words," said Ganth. "You sound like the thrall now. Always talking about this and that. I only care about being strong."

The hobgoblin flexed his arm muscles, letting them bulge through his thick, icy skin. "And taking with strength. You know, I excited for this war. Lord seems serious. Many of us united now. We can take human lands. Human women."

"I still do not understand your kind's obsession with these human girls. They are so fragile, "said Shun with a shake of his head.

"Hah, easy for you to say!" Ganth pointed a stubby, big finger at Shun's face. "Look at you. Sharp nose. Small face. Big eyes. Look almost as pretty as human girls."

Ganth pointed a thumb back to his own face, at his comparatively wide, blocky head, his shaggy red, greasy and unkempt hair, small eyes, and tusked, bestial mouth. "I am big ugly. And you see women of my tribe in this camp? Some of them uglier than me."

"Fair enough. The few women of your northern tribes I have seen do put quite the icy touch to my passions," Shun put a hand to his chin. "You know, Ganth, perhaps when this war is over, when the lord has united our kind across the five, no, four realms now of life, I can show you to my home.

You mentioned you were bored of the cold wastes, no? Well, there is so much to see where I am from."

"Good food?" questioned Ganth.

Shun nodded.

"Pretty girls?"

"Certainly," said Shun.

"Okay then!" Ganth said, beating his chest with a fist.

"Although first you may have to catch up with some basic cleanliness. And those clothes-," Shun froze, red eyes narrowing as he put a hand to the handle of his sheathed blade.

"Huh?" Ganth picked at his tattered loincloth of icebear skin – the only article of clothing he wore. "I thought this looked good."

"I sense something," said Shun, his voice quiet, serious. His black clawed hand wrapped around his sword handle. "Ready yourself."

"You funny. No human ever come here. Too dark. And humans here weak and scared. Weak black goblins said so already." Ganth turned to Shun with a smile, but the smile faded as he sensed a stern gravity emanating from Shun.

Ganth stood up, holding his oversized club in front of him.

A few seconds later, and the sound of falling and crashing trees echoed through the forest.

"Something big coming," said Ganth. "Very big." The crackle of shattering tree trunks accompanied by the thuds of heavy footsteps became louder. "Very quick."

"Head back to the war tents," said Shun as he kept his hand on the blade but did not unsheathe it. "Tell the champion that we are being attacked. The weight behind these steps do not match any human. Either a monster or a sorcerer's familiar."

"No, I stay here. I fight. I strong." Ganth went up to the edge of the light cast from the lightstone torches, a few meters back from thick growths of darkwood trees. He roared to the vast darkness in front of him. "Face me! I, Ganth of the Frostskulls, am ready!"

The Collector burst out of the trees as a raging pinball of musclebound white carapace, charging right into the hobgoblin that had foolishly shouted out its location.

Having built up to its top, maximal speed, the Collector moved fast enough to appear as a blur to the average human eye, and that velocity compounded with its immense weight meant that when it hit the hobgoblin, it eviscerated the specimen, splitting it apart in a shattered mess of caved in bones and torn flesh.

Or that was what the Collector had calculated based on the hobgoblin's density of muscle mass, height, and approximate sturdiness of bone structure – all details it had parsed mid charge through its sensitive hairs.

The hobgoblin did fly backwards a dozen meters, breaking through the darkwood stake wall entirely and tumbling several times, but it did not die, skidding to a halt in the dirt as an intact, living, breathing specimen, though it did groan in audible pain, clutching at his side where blood began to flower from internal bleeding and shattered ribs.

The Collector clicked its mandibles. Loudly, this time, for never before in its life had it been this disappointed, this wrong with its calculations. It brought shame upon the name of the Collective, it–

Shun slashed at the Collector, unsheathing his blade in a quickdraw arc meant to gut the Collector from the side.

The Collector did not react to the attack. It had assessed the red-skinned hobgoblin variant's physique and estimated its physical capabilities, but this attack was approximately 3.66 times faster than what its musculature could muster, even with considering efficient movements.

The blade clanked into a shower of sparks as it skidded across the Collector's immensely durable carapace.

Shun's eyes widened as he felt impact against a surface harder than any he had felt before ring up his hand, jarring his very bones.

The Collector capitalized on the moment of hesitation and swiveled its head to the hobgoblin, opening its maw and activating its pyrocatalytic glands.

Its tongue retracted and a bulb shaped, muscle powered organ at the back of its throat jutted out in its place, pulsing once in an intense contraction that launched a thin burst of highly pressurized white chemicals.

The chemicals struck against a vibrating, friction inducing piece of faceted bone lined up in front of the glands, the biotrigger, as it was called, and when the chemical jetstream hit the biotrigger, it lit up once more into a beam of brilliant white, blue tinted flame that washed over the hobgoblin's entire body.

The intense light bathed the entire forest once more, and the Collector's compound eyes and sensitive hairs twitched, allowing it to dodge back from another swipe from the red hobgoblin, this time one aimed at its softer, unarmored eyes.

"A fire-breather are you?" said the red hobgoblin variant. He stood with blueish white flames flickering on his skin, staring at the Collector as if utterly unharmed.

The Collector glimpsed at the red variant's surroundings. An acrid, bitter smell of chemical fire and burnt grass rose up through the air from the smoking black patches of devastated earth around it, and yet, at the center of this path of desolation, the hobgoblin remained unharmed.

"Sorry, but I am a bad matchup for you, then," said the red variant. "The tribes of mount Oe have been blessed under its volcanic touch for centuries. Flame alone, lest they hail from the gods themselves, will not harm us."

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Gods.

The Collector began to circle around the red hobgoblin, its tusks aimed down, ready to gore the variant in a charge. The Collector knew what the concept of gods were. Worshipped, fancifully constructed entities from tinkerer species during primitive stages of their development.

Usually created in their image, vain as these tinkerers often tended to be. A socially constructed fantasy to explain the decisions of nature, the fires that might destroy their crops or the lightning strikes that might kill their young when the tinkerers were yet too primitive to truly grasp the nature of these phenomena.

The Collector recognized that species of this advancement would likely be at a stage where they did worship these imaginary entities. It thus filed what the hobgoblin had just said under nonsensical, primitive babble.

The Collector had more useful topics to devote its mental processing to.

This red variant of hobgoblin did indeed possess an uncanny resistance to heat that reached well past the melting point of many metals. It was a property that was not immediately apparent from its innate biology, for nothing about its skin or musculature indicated heat resistant properties.

"Ganth, pull back. Using [guard] at the last minute saved you from dying, but if this creature can smash through even that-,"

The Collector swiped at the red hobgoblin with one of its arachnid arms while it distracted itself speaking to its companion.

The red variant, however, despite not even looking directly at the Collector, managed to evade the sweeping slice by jumping backwards with an agile flip, landing on the ground almost as if in slow motion.

"I…fight," muttered Ganth as he managed to raise himself to a knee, though his deep wheezing indicated a soon to be mortal wound from the severity of his internal bleeding. Likely, judging by the rattling cadence of the breaths, a broken rib had punctured a lung.

"Just go!" said Shun. "Alert Juzo but try to get your thrall Hrunt here too. I can stall, but I cannot hold this creature for long."

Ganth grunted, took a look at the battle, then at his bleeding side, and turned, limping back further into he camp.

The Collector surged forwards again, this time calculating a series of attacks to minimize evasive maneuvers. It first swung its head forward, striking with its long, bladed tusks, and then its arachnid arms splayed out, ready to catch the red hobgoblin from any angle if it dodged the initial strike.

Shun evaded the tusks with remarkable agility and then raised his blade against the onslaught of arachnid spider legs.

The Collector's monomolecular claw tipped legs sliced through the blade as cleanly as if nothing was there at all. Two of its arachnid claws struck true, sinking deep into the red hobgoblin's sword arm shoulder.

The red hobgoblin moved back in a burst of immensely quick movement that the Collector did not expect. Such movement bordering on small-scale warping did not seem at all within the red variant's muscular capacities.

The Collector grew increasingly confused and, for the first time since it entered this world, frustrated.

Miscalculation after miscalculation, and yet why? It had perfectly perceived and analyzed the physical abilities of both hobgoblins, and though they were certainly taller and bigger than the black ones, particularly the white skinned variant, that alone would not explain these inexplicable movements.

The Collector growled and clanked its mandibles together, eyeing the red hobgoblin. At the least, it would seem this one would soon fall.

The twin strikes the Collector inflicted upon the red variant had severed major tendons and muscles, causing blood to spurt form open gashes that exposed lacerated bone.

"Well then," said Shun as he eyed his right shoulder. His arm hung limp, completely useless. His volcanite odachi lay in two, cleanly sliced pieces on the ground. "To cut through reinforced volcanite, those claws are truly exceptional.

Adamantite, is it? No, even sharper than that."

"Cease your incessant babbling, primitive," said the Collector as it lunged forwards, scything its arachnid arms to break the red hobgoblin into pieces.

Shun dodged the incoming strikes, his qi focused entirely into his eyes to utilize sense. He did not have the luxury to react to the fact that the creature could speak their language, for he had to spend every ounce of his thoughts on survival.

At the very least, this creature did not seem magical in nature. He could not sense that it was projecting any mana, making it so that without opposing magical aura to throw off his [sense, he could read every single one of the creature's movements before they even happened.

Shun saw the creature lower its center of gravity, and immediately his vision flashed red. Mortal danger. He leaped backwards, making distance between himself for the ensuing charge.

"Judging from your facial expressions and body language, you are capable of perceiving my actions the moment I begin processing them. You move before I move. I calculate a high probability of psionic capabilities, and yet, I cannot sense any psionic charge from within you," said the Collector. "Curious."

"I…have no idea what that means, nor who sent you, monster," said Shun as he breathed in deep, focusing his qi, focusing his will. He had to stand his ground here. Stall for time. "But you best give up and go crawling back to whatever human sorcerer created you, for he did a bad job. Without any mana, I can read you as clearly as a springside stream. You will never strike me."

= (This will indicate PoV shifts)

Shun narrowed his eyes.

This was a bluff.

He kept his qi projected outwards from his body and circling around the monster with the [sense] skill. This meant he could perceive the creature's movements and aggressions, but constantly projecting his qi outwards accelerated qi expenditure drastically, and without qi to reinforce his movements, it did not matter if he could see the attacks coming if he was too slow to dodge them.

And this creature was immensely strong in terms of sheer physical power, speed, and durability.

As if to prove this point, the monster sped forwards, once more striking first with its tusks. Shun swerved to the side and then ducked under a row of sweeping arachnid legs. He put qi into his legs and then leaped away as the monster swiveled its body, sending its armored tail into Shun's side like a club.

Though Shun perceived the attack, he was a little slow. He reduced the damage with his qi empowered backstep, but he could still feel a large bruise welling up from shorn and bloody skin where the club-like end of the monster's tail barely grazed him.

In purely physical strength and speed, this monster was easily on par with a three-star adventurer, far beyond any of the hobgoblins and matching or surpassing even Juzo, the champion.

Though the monster lacked magic, it possessed claws sharper than reinforced adamantite, making any ordinary defense utterly useless against it, though it seemed skills like [guard] could work.

If the beast managed to surprise Juzo or even lord Zoll as it had surprised Shun when it sliced through his volcanite odachi, then it was entirely possible for the monster to instantly kill either of them if they were not being cautious.

Hrunt was best suited to kill this creature with his ranged magic.

Shun grimaced, steeling his resolve. Hrunt was on his way to this camp from the inner one, but he was still quite some time away.

If Shun could not hold this monster here, then he had no doubt it would devastate the vast majority of hobgoblins and goblins in the camp for none of them were Awakened to any high degree, relying only on the strength of their flesh and bone.

"I will hold you here," declared Shun as he took in a deep breath, spreading his stance wide to allow for larger ranges of movement. "Whether I live or perish. Soon, you will come to know the might of the tribes of Oe."

"Does your tribe specialize in fleeing like vermin?" said the Collector. "I am unimpressed, primitive. I will enjoy tearing your flesh from the bone."

"Go ahead and try," said Shun. He held in a breath; his senses tuned to the max. He could feel and hear his rising heartbeat, he could smell the bitter, foul scent of burned grass, and he could feel the tiniest breeze of wind touch against his skin.

With [sense] like this, he would evade everything this monster could muster.

The monster moved, rushing in towards him.

Shun readied himself, his muscles tensing as he ascertained the creature's intent.

Would it swipe at him with its spider claws? Strike at him with its long tusks? Whip at him with its tails? So many possibilities, and yet, [sense] meant out of all those countless paths, he would perceive only the one the monster decided on.

Shun froze. He had never felt anything like this. He saw what the monster decided on, but-

The Collector rushed past the red hobgoblin's body, its body low and its six arachnid claws stuck out in front of it, a breath of victory escaping its maw as a cloud of fog.

A moment later, the red variant's severed head landed in front of the Collector, blood spilling out onto the darkened grass, an expression of utter surprise still etched into its red eyes.

The Collector clicked its mandibles as it looked down at the expression on the hobgoblin's severed head.

Once the Collector knew the primitive had the capacity to read its movements and foresee them, it devised a strategy against it.

Certain tinkerers with psionic charges possessed the same ability. Collector variants at their full power never really had to deal with them as they possessed an innate psionic defense sourced from their link to the Collective that rendered anything possible by an individual tinkerer ineffective.

But it seemed that in its current weakened and disconnected state, the Collector was susceptible. It had improvised, however.

If the hobgoblin primed its movements based on a precognitive perception of what the Collector decided upon, then the Collector would simply overwhelm the hobgoblin with a surplus of options.

With superior mental processing systems, the Collector could commit itself to dozens of attack paths at once in equal intensity.

The red hobgoblin had likely been swamped by the sheer density of attacks it predicted, and its primitive mental systems simply could not keep up, freezing it in place.

The Collector's muscular, prehensile tongue lashed out and gobbled up the hobgoblin's head. It heard the hobgoblin's decapitated body fall behind it with a thump.

The Collector turned and consumed the rest of the goblin. It would have liked to savor the red variant's taste for though its erratic movements had irked the Collector, it had still challenged the Collector as a warrior.

*Biomass gained (15)*

Biomass Level: 34/100

*New genetic material availale*

Stored Genetic Material:

-Black Ant

-Black Hobgoblin

-Human

-Giant Scorpion

-Stonecrusher Beetle

-Jumping Arakka

-*NEW* Lesser Oni

There was no time to fully savor the meal, however. The Collector had to continue its attack and catch up with the white skinned variant before it could fully alert the rest of the camp.

Pushing with its bulked up hind legs, the Collector surged forwards, continuing its charge in the direction of the white skinned variant's escape.

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The Collector galloped its way further into the encampment, a speeding, half-ton mass of bristles and carapace and claws and bloodlust. Yet, despite its dizzyingly fast pace, throughout each of its many steps, it kept its senses open, analyzing the battlefield and its enemies.

The camp was large, far larger than the dens the black hobgoblins could manage.

The level of technology present in the camps far exceeded that present in the dens as well. There were several tents created from the dried skins of hunted prey and propped up with wood frames. Skin-wrapped barrels of roughly carved wood containing mostly liquids and meat stood by each camp.

The presence of fire, a common evolutionary development among budding tinkerer species, was also evident in rings of black, smudged ash and wood nearby the tents.

From these camps, there emerged hobgoblins and normal, smaller goblins poking their heads out of the tents at first in curiosity, then in terror.

The Collector slaughtered them all, using its tusks to gore them, its armor-plated weight to bludgeon them, its tail to bash them, its hooves to stomp underfoot the little goblins, and its many arachnid claws to sweep around like a reaper's scythe, lopping off heads and limbs left and right.

Where the Collector went, it left a trail of limbless, battered, and decapitated bodies littering torn apart and smashed tents. As it razed them, it felt its biomass levels accumulating in the moments it stopped to consume hobgoblin corpses, not even bothering with the smaller ones.

*Biomass gained (3)*

*Biomass gained (3)*

*Biomass gained (3)*

Biomass Level: 64/100

*New genetic material gained*

Stored Genetic Material:

-Black Ant

-Black Hobgoblin

-Human

-Giant Scorpion

-Stonecrusher Beetle

-Jumping Arakka

-Lesser Oni

-*NEW* Frostborn Hobgoblin

The Collector noted that none of the goblins here were of the black-skinned variant.

Neither of these variants seemed native to this environment, either.

The white-skinned variants were adapted to harsh colds.

The red-skinned variants did possess a waxy layer to their skin along with innately lower body temperatures to prevent water loss – yet none of these explained a resistance to flames the stronger red variant guarding the gate had spoken of.

There were patterns to the distribution of the goblins as well.

In larger tents marked by skins with shaggier fur, white-skinned variants dwelled. In tents marked by sleeker skins, the red-skinned variants dwelled.

None of them were anywhere close to the strength of the red and white-skinned variants guarding the camp.

The Collector had even adjusted its strength, accounting for the possibility that these specimen could move two to three times faster than what their biological capabilities could suggest, but it found it had grossly overestimated their abilities.

Strange, thought the Collector as it now rapidly reached the center of the encampment, the scent of the escaped, white-skinned hobgoblin drawing near.

Then what was it that allowed those two specific individuals to possess such unnatural physical capabilities? The red variant, too, possessed five times the amount of biomass compared to its peers despite no apparent physical differences.

The Collector thought of the new words it had heard.

The red hobgoblin had spoken of mana and volcanite and adamantite, all words the Collector was unfamiliar with.

Volcanite and adamantite, the Collector could easily reason were types of ores based on its etymology in the goblin tongue and the context in which the words were utilized.

But mana? The red variant had noted the Collector possessed an absence of it which allowed the specimen to predict the Collector's movements.

The Collector's stored memories could only approximate 'mana' in this context to a psionic charge, and yet, all other contextual clues indicated that the red variant was not speaking of psionics.

There was the possibility that this 'mana' was connected to 'magic', the other unknown phenomena that the Collector had encountered in this world, and yet, it still did not have more information to sufficiently establish strong links between them.

The Collector knew 'magic' could create flames. 'Mana' involved some relation with the Collector's mental processing. Both these words were tied to organisms that seemed unnaturally charged with biomass when consumed.

In addition, 'mana' had some additional relation to the humans for the red hobgoblin had surmised that the Collector was, insultingly so, a creation of a human sorcerer, the same class of human as the female specimen the Collector consumed beforehand.

The strongest thread of connection between the two words therefore were human sorcerers. What this 'sorcerer' class did and was, the Collector did not know, but soon, it would find out.

Further investigation needed. But the Collector could instinctively tell that it was close to connecting these seemingly isolated threads together.

Just one or two more leads.

For now, though, there was the battle, the slaughter.

The Collector reached the escaping Frostborn Hobgoblin at the center of the encampment.

The white-skinned hobgoblin breathed heavy, wheezing breaths, his hand clutched to his bruised and bloody side. His steps dragged together, coordination deteriorating from blood loss.

By now, the Collector had slaughtered ten hobgoblin and destroyed four tents. It estimated that if the goblin populace was spread in even density throughout the circular area, then there could be anywhere from thirty to fifty hobgoblins, but if the vast majority of them were ordinary, then they posed no threat.

"Your attempts to delay your inevitable demise end now, feeble little creature," said the Collector as it approached the hobgoblin.

The white-skinned variant stopped, his blue eyes locking onto a particularly large tent a dozen meters in front of it. It took in a breath before facing the Collector with a tusked smile and roar. "You think I weak!? I show you!"

The white variant hefted its club, almost as large as it was, in one hand and swung it sideways to the Collector's head.

The Collector was still accounting for the variant being two to three times stronger and faster, and this time, its caution paid off.

The Collector countered the enhanced swing and slammed against the swing with most of its weight and might, might that it usually held back for efficiency's sake.

Hyperalloy carapace and Everfrost clashed together in a loud, clanging impact. The club of ice sailed backwards, landing behind the white skinned variant before breaking apart into chunks that rapidly began melting.

A few thin cracks lined a series of bony white carapace plates at the Collector's side – the results of the impact. It could have dodged the attack, but it decided to grant this specimen a final clash of strength for its willingness to face its own death through unhesitant combat.

The white skinned hobgoblin stared at its empty hands, then at the Collector.

"Heh. You strong." The hobgoblin nodded in recognition to the Collector. He held his arms out to the sides, laying bare his body for death. "I die to strong. Good."

The Collector obliged the hobgoblin's desire, running forwards and goring through the creature's heart with its tusks. The hobgoblin seized up, coughing up a spurt of blood before it grew limp, its head hanging backwards.

The Collector jerked its head up, bisecting the hobgoblin from the chest up, and then consumed the creature.

*Biomass consumed (10)*

Biomass Level: 74/100

The Collector clicked its mandibles.

It had expected this particular specimen, much like the other one guarding the encampment's entrance, to have dense biomass. It possessed five points less than the red variant despite having even more physical mass, indicating that the property supercharging the biomass of certain creatures on this world was not directly tied to physical properties.

"I thought I told none to disturb my meditation."

The Collector looked to the larger tent that the white skinned variant had stared at before death. From its entrance flaps there emerged a red skinned variant significantly larger than all his peers. Even larger than the white-skinned ones that possessed denser, more developed musculatures and thicker skins against the cold.

Thick black, glossy armor padded the larger red variant's body in plates of rocky looking material, the very same material that the red variant guarding the gate used in its sword. Volcanite, as it was called.

In the larger red variant's hand, it dragged a one-sided axe with a dull, metallic handle and a head fashioned from volcanite, the roughly carved edges almost looking like the ends of serrated teeth.

"Ah, you must be the so called 'champion'," said the Collector, its tone lingering on the title in a savoring, eager manner. "Good. Your brethren die and ascend to the Collective through my jaws. As their representative, it is only fitting that you join them."

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Juzo stared at the monster before it. He had never seen the likes of such a creature before. A strange mixture of insect and boar. But he did not let an ounce of surprise sway his internal balance, the delicate flow of qi through his meridians and core.

He was far too experienced, far too traveled.

He trimmed away everything that was useless and focused. He did not care where this monster came from. He only cared about how to kill this thing.

In his early youth, when he left Mount Oe on a warrior's pilgrimage, he traveled the realms, and one of them, Faorese, the realm of elves and fairies, could have a half-bug, half-beast monster like this.

But that did not seem like it.

Faorese was dense with qi, with magic, and almost all its creatures were sensitive to it. This monster, on the other hand, as it circled Juzo, its tusks and bone white plating glistening in the faint glow of lightstone shine, did not emit any noticeable aura of qi, of mana.

Juzo gripped his axe in both hands, circling to the opposite direction of the monster, keeping his distance, keeping apace of the creature as it too analyzed him.

Juzo was no fool, and unlike many of his kind, through twenty years of travel, he had long since cut prejudice from his beliefs.

Thus, he knew to determine that this monster was not some brute.

Even apart from the monster speaking to him, he knew that it was highly intelligent despite its twisted, bestial appearance. It was in its eyes, for though their compound structure would have ordinarily been impossible to read, the glint of a trained warrior's gaze was universal; it transcended the boundaries of realm and race.

This, Juzo knew well from fighting the vastly different beastkin of his own realm, the fiery, feathered Karasi, the stripe-furred, sturdy Hwaran, and the scaled, water wielding Yinlong.

Juzo felt the monster's gleaming yellow eyes meet his, and he felt the few, smooth hairs on his body stand on end. He could feel even the slightest breeze flowing through the camp as intensely as if they were gusts of polar wind, cutting into his skin like ice.

His survival instincts were flaring, telling him that this monster was a match for him. Whoever came out of this battle would not emerge unscathed.

Perhaps not even alive.

Juzo's senses heightened.

He could smell the stench of iron in the air, and he knew then that this monster had killed many, many of his brethren.

Rage started to bud within him for his lost people, for in a way, it was his fault they had been left defenseless and dead.

He had wanted to isolate himself to meditate and charge his qi for the coming conflicts with the humans, not believing that any threat would find their encampments hidden so deep in these accursed woods.

Rage at not only the monster but also at himself formed a fuel, and he did not let that emotion go to waste.

He channeled it, letting it flow through his body, and he bound that emotion into his qi, molding it into the [sheathe] skill. He held his axe in front of him, and in a flash, it burst into flames, his qi infusing into the magic-sensitive volcanite.

"By what mechanism did you ignite your weapon?" said the monster as it continued to circle Juzo, continuing to look for an opening.

Juzo grunted and did not respond, for he could sense if he let his guard down even the slightest, the monster would attack, and his honed battle instincts told him that any attack from the beast was dangerous.

"A silent one. Rare, for how gratingly talkative and loud your species has been so far. Yet, preferable." The monster made the first move, charging forwards with its lengthy tusks.

Juzo narrowed his red eyes and stepped backwards, dodging the goring strike. He kept his qi flowing through his body in consistent [flow, keeping his physical abilities raised while having enough invested in projecting his magical energy outwards in [sense] to read the monster's intent.

The monster was not committing deeply to an attack, and so he did not either, for it seemed the creature was baiting him into a counter.

No, Juzo noted as the creature immediately changed its intent, flashing red in pure aggression, it had decided on offense again.

The sudden switch in intent was so jarring that he scrambled to adjust to it, breaking his even flow of qi and driving as much of it into his legs to perform a retreating back step at high speeds.

He made a distance of ten meters between himself and the monster in a flash, his high-speed movement ripping apart the dirt and grass in smoky trails. He exhaled. He had not even had half a second before the monster had so suddenly switched its intent.

There was not a single monster or warrior or adventurer he had faced so far that had the ability to change their intents, their decisions, so quickly and seamlessly.

Juzo realized he would have to focus deeply on analyzing the monster's intent if he wanted to get a read on it in time to react, so he pushed more qi into his [sense, keeping his sight trained on the monster to ensure that he would be able to read the shift in intent the moment it happened the next time, regardless of how quick it was.

The monster clicked its mandibles in some sort of gesture to itself before it lowered its center of gravity, preparing for a full speed charge. On its back, six spider legs were curled forwards, their glinting and sharp claws ready to slice at Juzo should the enormous tusks fail.

Juzo readied himself. He would read the monster's intent with [sense, dodge its attack, then counter with a fatal blow.

He did not know exactly how strong the monster's armored hide was, but he did spot a few small cracks on its side, likely from a [reinforce] boosted blow by Ganth.

It was extremely impressive that the beast's hide could take a blow like that, a blow that would have even sent Juzo flying with broken bones, so easily, but Juzo's offensive capabilities far outweighed his defensive ones.

With his fiery [sheathe] superheating the edge of his volcanite axe and his own qi boosting his power with [reinforce, a [reinforce] superior to that of Ganth's, he was confident he could slice through the monster's hide, though he likely would not be able to land a lethal blow through the thick, metallic bone carapace and dense musculature.

Then he would aim to cripple.

The monster' front hoof dragged across the forest floor once, digging out a deep indent in the dirt as it tensed up its muscles. It seemingly swelled in size, its muscles rippling and flexing in a display of overwhelming physical might.

Then, it charged.

"Come!" shouted Juzo, his long fangs baring as he gripped his axe tight and held it back, ready to swing it to slice off the monster's legs and ground it.

The monster kicked up clouds of dirt as it smashed its hooves into the forest floor, propelling itself with swelling muscles.

The creature was fast. Horrifyingly fast, considering how freakishly big and strong it was, but Juzo could deal with this.

All he had to do was maximize his [sense, and then he would be able to read the monster-

Or so he thought.

Juzo saw as the monster neared his attacking range that its original intent, a simple, frontal charge with its tusks, changed. There was a tail whip. A dozen combinations of slashing attacks with its many legs. A leaping strike. Even an attack that generated flame.

All at once.

The sheer number of intents would have overwhelmed Juzo, but he was battle experienced. Some sorcerers could utilize mind control type spells, and overreaching on [sense, projecting qi far away from one's own body, would leave the unguarded mind susceptible to mental domination.

Thus, the moment he felt his mind becoming overwhelmed, he stopped projecting his qi with [sense, and without even thinking, reactively slammed his axe into the ground, unleashing the volcanite axe's imbued property of explosively amplifying qi poured into it.

An eruption of lava and flame burst outwards in a ground shaking tremor.

The impact of the blow was like a bomb, blowing up a towering cloud of dirt, bright red molten rock, and flaming pieces of foliage, sending both combatants flying backwards from a shockwave of heated power.

The Collector twisted in the air and landed perfectly balanced on all fours, clicking its mandibles in surprise. It had thought its strategy to deal with these red variant goblins, even the special ones, sufficient enough.

The champion was likely a special red variant possessing the same abilities as the smaller specimen guarding this camp.

That meant that the champion likely possessed the same capability to read into the Collector and precognitively determine its movements on top of possessing fire-resistant skin.

The Collector had confirmed from the start of this battle that the champion did possess predictive abilities by reading subtle twitches of understanding in the champion's facial expressions and body language whenever the Collector readied to attack.

Then, it manipulated the champion into sinking deeper and deeper into focusing on reading the Collector by increasing the rate of thought put into its movements but shying away from the Collector's maximal mental processing speed.

That way, the Collector could maximally shock at the moment of true attack by unleashing its capacity to commit to several attacks simultaneously. The champion's mind would have faltered its feeble neurons attempted to keep up with simultaneously processed thoughts.

But the champion, unlike his smaller brethren, had subverted this strategy, likely with a pre-programmed reaction to drive down his tool and cause an explosion.

That too, the Collector wished to analyze.

This volcanite material did not seem to be processed in any complex manner, roughly carved up into sharp shapes functioning as rudimentary weapons much like the sticks of steel the humans used.

There was no engine. No circuitry. No moving parts. No chambers.

But the champion's axe could generate an explosive blowback of force and heat on par with the 40-millimeter ordinance of the human empire's B10 Incendiary Launcher, leaving a steaming, molten red hole five meters wide in the point of impact.

The Collector felt the damage from heat and splashed lava burning on its face and body, leaving smoldering, small holes in its hyperalloy carapace.

No, the B10 would have easily blown apart the Collector's rank 4 carapace. This level of damage was more akin to the B5 generation of launchers, the type the empire wielded in the very beginning of their conflict with the Collective half a century ago.

Still far beyond anything the Collector thought the champion and its primitive brethren were capable of.

Again, as the smoke cleared and the Collector stared at the unharmed, heat-resistant champion, there were no biological indicators that the champion was capable of this. Did the alloys and ores of this world also follow this strange principle?

The Collector made further adjustments to its calculations, classifying the volcanite axe as something more than a chunk of rock to be swung around with brutish force into the category of tinkering tools to eliminate as a threat.

Juzo took the brief reprieve he carved out for himself by fully unloading his volcanite axe's stored power to think. The volcanite axe's once fiery black body started to dim, the fire blazing from using [sheathe] to coat it in his qi now gone.

The volcanite now had to enter a cooldown period. It would take some time before the axe was ready to take in more qi again.

He breathed in deep, the qi expenditure leaving him increasingly tired.

Think, Juzo, think.

Without using [sense, how would he deal with this monster? This paragon of physical power and armor and claws and tusks and teeth?

He did not have time to think more before the monstrosity made another move, rushing in with blitzing speed, its six spider legs curled down around its sides to provide extra armored protection.

With a growling grunt, Juzo got into battle stance again, driving his bare, clawed feet shoulder-width apart and holding his axe in front of him, the thick handle of beast blood tempered steel set diagonally across his chest to protect his heart.

The ensuing clash started off even.

Juzo pumped his qi all throughout his body with [flow, empowering himself enough to match the beast. His martial prowess shone as he used his footwork to dodge about, evading first a thrusting strike from tusks and then, when he was behind the monster, ducked under a swerving tail whip.

His breaths became heavier, his vision becoming blurry at the edges. Though it seemed like he was doing well, he was burning through his qi at a massive rate to keep up physically with this monster and its many tools specialized for war.

Juzo had honed his martial skills for years and years. He had gone on entire pilgrimages to test his strength against all manner of enemies.

He did not consider himself at all the strongest out there, his journeys made him too worldly to be that arrogant, but as a warrior, he did not expect to get outclassed to this degree.

He had faced monsters stronger and faster than himself before. He could deal with that. But this was different.

He backed away from a leaping stomp and gripped his axe, eyeing for a counter. He only saw arachnid legs curled around the beast's exposed side that would counter his every move.

This monster was an adept at fighting in a way that transcended the ferocity of mere bestial and monster instinct.

It did not utilize martial arts, but Juzo felt overwhelmingly so that he was not fighting a monster, but instead a trained adept of the martial path.

Martial arts were ultimately made to bridge the gap between the weak and monsterkind, but if there ever was a "monster style" martial arts, then this creature would have been its sole grandmaster.

The monster understood footwork, pacing, reading the opponent, checking blows, everything.

Juzo stepped back again as the monster took a step forward, but this was a feint. The monster suddenly swerved its body around, extending the carapace clubbed tail out in a whipping arc, maximizing its range to strike him.

The speed of the tail was blindingly fast, whistling as it cut through the air like a knife.

A crack resounded through the camp as Juzo stumbled backwards, rolling once on the ground before righting himself and gritting his teeth, ignoring the pain welling up in his right shoulder. He did not even bother checking it.

It was entirely numb from the shoulder down. The heavy blow had probably shattered every important bone and then some there. He gripped his axe in his still working left hand and realized something.

Throughout this entire fight, he had feared the monster's claws, specifically the ones that sprouted from the white-plated spider legs on its back.

His instincts had told him that they were dangerous, supremely so, and that understanding had severely compromised his movements, eliminating many chances for him to counter attack or defend himself.

But the monster did not use actively use those claws to attack now. Instead, it kept them down, curling them along its flanks more for defense than to strike.

Perhaps a weakness? Did the claws deteriorate in strength over time? Or was this a lure?

Juzo could not know, but he could not play this game of chase either, for he would lose sooner rather than later. His pointed ears perked up as he heard the rest of the hobgoblins in the camp starting to circle around the battle.

All of them were now armed, the Frostskull tribesmen holding their everfrost weapons. His own tribe of oni were here too, armed with their swords and spears.

"We here! For the champion! Kill monster!" A shout resonated among the Frostskulls, and they cheered.

One of their few bowmen loosed an arrow that shattered on the monster's armored side.

The monster stopped and emitted a low, rumbling growl, its four compound eyes gleaming with intense yellow in the dim light of the forest. The growl immediately sent a wave of fear outwards, stopping the hobgoblins, though they numbered well into the twenties, to freeze in their tracks.

"Are you okay, my dear?"

Juzo nodded stiffly as his two concubines neared him.

"When you left the tent, we gathered everyone," said one of them.

"You are hurt, dear, you should let your men deal with this…thing for you."

Juzo thrust out his muscular arm, bidding his wives back. "No. Everyone here is useless. They will only slow me down. My loves, take the other women and children of this camp to the inner stronghold."

"All of you!" shouted Juzo, his thick neck muscles bulging as he projected his voice in a booming blast. "Get out of here! None of you will take this fight from me, nor are any of you worthy of it! Go! Back to the stronghold! Tell Hrunt and Zoll to come with haste to witness my victory!"

"Are you sure, my dear?" said one of his concubines as she reached out to touch his back with her hand.

Juzo shook it off. "Of course. Now go. I will not repeat myself."

The Collector clicked its mandibles as it saw the horde of hobgoblins and lesser goblins leave, funneling out of the camp.

Within a minute, they were gone, this champion's authority evidently enough to compel them to move with considerable haste.

This left the Collector and the champion alone once more.

"A foolish decision, primitive," said the Collector. "As a social species, you forsake one of the greatest strengths you undeveloped bipeds possess – your numbers."

"I know," said the champion. He wielded his axe in his one remaining arm. "I know I could have used them. Even if they could not harm you, they could distract you. I could have found an opening to strike.

But you would have killed many of them, perhaps all of them.

I cannot do that. Half of them are my own tribesmen. And the other half do not deserve to die for my sake either.

So come, let us continue."

"Curious." The Collector began to circle the champion specimen again, but this time, at a more leisurely pace, giving the specimen some breathing time. "You forsake advantage to value their lives, and yet, you are a special variant in possession of a title of authority.

Your life by all metrics should be worth drastically more than theirs.

Perhaps you are lacking in calculative ability.

And victory? Does your mind truly believe you have sufficient capacity to grasp it in this compromised state? Major fractures bordering on absolute destruction litter your right scapula, humerus, acromion, clavicle-,"

"I know I will lose." The champion smiled, an expression of happiness, and yet there was no joy to be derived from this, this inevitable demise and soon, the demise of his brethren. "I spoke of victory for I did not want to dampen their hearts knowing my death is to come.

And though I may fall here, I know the others will stop you."

The champion paused and took in a breath before staring at the Collector with resolute eyes.

"One strike," said the champion as he pointed at the Collector with his axe. "I will inflict upon you one strike. And I will make sure you remember it."

"A fanciful proposition. One unfounded by rationale or quantification." The Collector clicked its mandibles and began to pace around the champion for real, finding an angle to end its life. "Yet, your kind does confound such principles.

We shall see."

Juzo saw the monster pick up its pace, its posture immediately becoming focused entirely on killing him, and he gripped his axe tight and poured the final dregs of his qi into it.

With the arrival of his people and this talk, he had stalled enough time to let the volcanite axe to cooldown, allowing him to store qi in it again.

Using [sheathe, he engulfed the black axe in an aura of flickering fire once more, just as strong as it had been the first time for he was not holding back anything, willing to burn through qi until he dropped dead. The teeth of the volcanite axe began to whiten as it gathered intense heat, distorting the air around it in waves.

His volcanite armor, too, even though its purity was low, responded to the sudden outpouring of qi, taking it in, red lines of magical heat lining their breadth.

Juzo narrowed his eyes in focus, saving the last pieces of his qi to empower himself with [flow] for an attack.

Before his people had intervened, he had thought that maybe the monster could not use its claws to their max strength anymore.

He had also thought that the monster might have been luring him in.

In the end, it did not matter. He had to bank on the hope that the monster's claws did not work because either way, he was going to die.

The only difference being whether he left any lasting damage or not.

The monster struck again, and it came forwards faster than it ever had, obviously with the intent to end this fight now.

Juzo roared as he met the charge with his own, blasting his whole body with qi, reaching far past his reserves and breaking his limits. He could feel his muscles tearing and his bones groaning as power surged within him, intense heat and pain rising from within.

Emotion blurred together and hit his mind in a whirling hurricane.

The despair of seeing his mother bleeding out on the grass, the love he felt for his teacher, how her wings and arms and legs moved so gracefully, so elegantly, heartbreak that his love could never reach her, the thrill of his first victory, the humiliation of his first near-death battle, the determination to journey and grow strong, the sheer wonder of seeing the endless forests and sky-reaching trees of Faorese, the solemnity of becoming a champion for the first time, of feeling lives depend upon him

All the strongest feelings he had ever felt coursed through him as he drew on every last bit of qi within him.

Now the monster was near, almost right in front of him. He raised his axe up and side stepped the tusks, getting the creature's flank. He did not worry about the spider legs and the claws anymore, for he had made up his mind – he would take any blow to land a strike.

Even if the claws were as sharp as adamantite, he knew his armor, reinforced with so much qi as it was now, could still let him get in one hit.

One hit.

That was all he wanted.

With a final, guttural scream, he slammed his axe down into the beast's side.

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The Collector clicked its mandibles as it looked up at the champion.

The last of its three left arachnid legs was embedded right into the champion's heart, the bony white limb pushing past the sizable bulk of the champion, the gleaming monomolecular claw sticking out straight through to the other side.

The champion's life blood, sourced straight from its heart, dripped down from the curved, glinting monomolecular claw, the droplets splitting in two as they cut themselves on the edge.

The first two of the Collector's spider legs had melted away into nothing but stubs. The ends of the stubs were twisted into molten, warped strips of white hyperalloy carapace holding in burnt and useless flesh.

The Collector used its remaining legs to scythe off the stubs to prevent them from compromising its movements.

Blood spurted from the two empty leg sockets on its back, but the Collector tensed up its ultrafiber muscles, and the internally applied pressure halted the blood flow.

A severed axe head lay embedded in the Collector's back, melting through the carapace and slicing deep enough into ultrafiber musculature underneath to moderately compromise movement of the front left leg.

The Collector had lured the champion in by withholding use of its claws.

Yet, as the battle went on, the Collector had perhaps sensed the champion had seen through these intentions.

But in the end, the champion charged in anyway.

It was foolishness. But not entirely unfounded.

Once the champion charged in, the Collector had tried to use the first two of its three arachnid legs on its left side to slice the axe apart, but it had underestimated the speed of the champion even with calculative adjustments for it enhancing its physical abilities to a multiplicative factor of three, for the champion had drastically exceeded any past strength or speed it exhibited before.

The end result was that though the Collector did sever the axe head, the sheer velocity of the swing and the remaining heat within the head created a sharp, superheated projectile that managed to wound the Collector and melt off the front two spider legs moments after they made contact with it.

"One strike. That was what you promised. You fulfill your promise," said the Collector to the champion's limp corpse. Why it spoke to a lifeless husk, it did not know. A waste of time. Yet, it felt appropriate.

The Collector squeezed its ultrafiber muscles, popping the axe head out of its side. There was no bleeding for the wound had cauterized from the intense heat.

The smoldering axe clunked on the dirt, rapidly losing heat and light and turning dull before shattering into chunks of brittle black rock.

The Collector drew in the champion's body with its remaining arachnid limb. It stared at the lifeless body with a small, half formed feeling it could not quite place.

Yes, the champion had thrown away its advantages and its life, but it had observed a willingness to fight through inevitable demise, to fight and fight as a warrior should.

The Collector took a moment to place a word to the feeling processing within it.

"Admirable," decided the Collector. It drew the corpse near to its tusked maw. "Your lesser brethren flee to alert their superiors. I could pursue them now, but I will not pass upon the chance to savor your flesh.

Perhaps they will reach this inner stronghold.

Perhaps my tireless legs, even with this wound you inflict upon me, will catch hold of them.

Regardless, may your flesh find greater purpose within the Collective."

The Collector stretched open its mouth and snapped down on the specimen's head, the trophy part of the creature, and devoured it. As expected of a special specimen, the Collector could not extract memories from it.

From there, the Collector worked its way down with surgical precision, using its remaining four arachnid arms to strip off pieces of flesh bit by bit.

When there was nothing but a bare skeleton, this too, the Collector savored, devouring first the mangled and broken pieces of bone in its shoulder – a memory of a battle between warriors - and then the rest until not a crumb of bone nor drop of blood was left behind.

*Biomass consumed (50)*

Biomass Level: 124/100

*New genetic material gained*

Stored Genetic Material:

-Black Ant

-Black Hobgoblin

-Human

-Giant Scorpion

-Stonecrusher Beetle

-Jumping Arakka

-Lesser Oni

-Frostborn Hobgoblin

-*NEW* Greater Oni

The Collector clicked its mandibles, pleased. It could easily reach its next metamorphosis level. At 124/100 of its biomass bar, it could even spill over the surplus to the next level.

However, when considering completing each successive metamorphosis level required more and more biomass to satisfy, the surplus of 24 points would degrade down to a far lower number.

But the prospect of reaching the fifth metamorphosis level was quite the alluring one. It would allow the Collector to grow even stronger and larger, though it would have to consider at this point moderating its size in order to maintain some level of stealth.

Already, its current form pushed the physical dimensions required to adequately traverse this forest biome without generating too much noise.

Beyond gaining raw power, the Collector could more importantly enhance the evolutionary system embedded within itself by the Collective, fort the system embodied the evolutionary nature of the Collective, being itself a changing, adapting construct.

With the fifth level, the Collector could increase the number of species it could merge to gain a new form from three to four and also extract any unique adaptation inherent to the natives of this world to permanently keep.

This would prove highly useful such as the unnatural level of fire resistance present among the red skinned variants or, if possible, the very property that allowed some of these specimen to become special.

The Collector clicked its mandibles in contemplation, staring out into the other side of the encampment where the rest of the hobgoblin had fled. It had been exactly nine minutes and thirty seven seconds since they had left.

The issue remained that ascending to the next metamorphosis level would take time. A time span ranging from thirty minutes to an hour depending on the complexity and compatibility of genes comprising the new form.

Far too much time to spend if the Collector wanted to continue this battle.

Yet, the Collector could not deny it was injured.

It paced forwards, testing weight on its damaged front left leg. There was some hobble in its steps. It calculated the damage done to the leg, which specific bundles of ultrafiber musculature were damaged and their mobility functions, and compromised, finding within seconds the most efficient way to distribute its weight again.

Minimal loss of speed when charging. Noticeable to significant deterioration of reactive fast twitch muscle capabilities.

In conclusion: traveling capabilities operating at almost maximal efficiency. Combat capabilities reduced by approximately fifteen percent with a standard deviation of eight percent depending on whether the Collector faced a single enemy or multiple at once.

Indeed, the champion had inflicted a blow to be remembered. It was a viable option to consider retreating at this point to evolve and recover damage in exchange for allowing this lord and thrall to ready proper defenses against the Collector.

There was a case to be made for both a retreat and a continued offensive, and certainly, the Collector could run the mental processes and fine tune its calculations to determine what it perceived as the more efficient option.

But remembering that attack, that final, reckless, yet admirable charge, the Collector could only click its mandibles in determination as familiar heat surged within it, turning into a veritable fire that pushed it to charge forwards, ever forwards, building up rapid speed as it made mechanical adjustments to its sprinting to compensate for its damaged leg.

Would the Collector retreat now against these primitives when the champion, a warrior far lesser than it, had not retreated before the Collector?

No, the Collector would continue onwards, recalling in its very being one of the primary directives implanted within it: that against its enemies, it should fight and fight, to kill and destroy and rip and tear until the battle was done.

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The Collector galloped across the cleared and light lit path in the darkwoods, shoulder bashing trees that came into its way to bulldoze them.

As it traveled the path, following the strong stench of an entire horde of goblin kind, it noted that the path became wider with fewer trees to block it the further it traveled in.

There were more of the light generating rocks lining the path here. Bigger rocks, too.

Indicated the inner stronghold possessed more resources than the camps. From extracting the memories of the various normal hobgoblin specimen the Collector had consumed in the camp, it knew that the stronghold was no temporary encampment either.

It was a natural landmark. A yawning pit in the ground, its edges lined with a blue light. Deep. Possessed five layers. The lord occupied the deepest layer. Each layer possessed half an encampment's number of hobgoblins.

Then at minimum, seventy hobgoblins total. However, none, or at the least, only an exceeding few, were special.

The thrall and the lord, this Zoll were of particular interest.

There was exceptionally little information regarding them even among the memories of the hobgoblins. Both goblin variants seemed to lead isolated lives, rarely if ever interacting with the normal specimen.

Seventy mundane hobgoblins was a sufficiently large enough force to be wary of, for though the Collector possessed durable carapace, powerful muscles, and exceptional reflexes with the mental processing power to utilize them, when there were enough enemies, there were too many variables to sufficiently account for all possibilities.

So be it.

Warrior strain collectors were no strangers to battles of uncertainty, of variables.

The Collector welcomed the challenge.

The Collector came upon the fleeing horde of hobgoblins and goblins within five minutes.

Five minutes. That was the extent of time the goblin champion bought for his people.

Not enough, evidently, for they were only barely halfway to the stronghold at this point.

Cries of alarm rose from the hobgoblins straggling in the back as the Collector closed the distance between them with each of its gliding strides, strides so agile and graceful while carrying a payload of half a ton of biological weapons systems, muscle, and armor.

"Here! Here! It is here!"

"Has champion Juzo fallen!?"

"No run anymore! Fight big monster!"

"No, retreat, back to the stronghold!"

The Collector's porcine ears twitched as it picked up the sounds of discord among the white and red skinned variants. A weakness of the tinkerers, this was. Chaos bound to occur from the troublesome traits of individuality.

So many different purposes clashing with each other. Whereas now, the Collector devoted itself to only one: extermination.

The Collector aimed to spear the closest target to it. A running red variant hobgoblin female who held an offspring in her arms, compromising her ability to engage in combat. The female variant shrieked at her imminent demise.

"No!" In response to the Collector's rapid approach, red variant male rushed back to cover her instead, wielding a broad blade of volcanite.

Though, as the Collector noted while stabbing right through the male's stomach and tossing it away, the volcanite did not glow or hum and had distinctively less of a glossy sheen on its surface than that wielded by the champion and special red variant.

Perhaps a difference in the mineral's extraction and processing procedure. Regardless, it meant that there was a high likelihood that the duller volcanite possessed no explosive or heat producing capabilities within them.

"Protect the women and children!" A shout rose across the ranks of goblins, and this unified both the red and white variants.

The female and her offspring disappeared as a throng of white and red skinned male hobgoblins halted their running and rushed to meet the Collector in battle.

"Good. Do not flee. Meet your inevitable end with some shred of pride, primitives." The Collector clicked its mandibles and analyzed the situation, the sensitive hairs on its back rising to detect the rapid rush of movements from the incoming hobgoblins.

A change in air pressure.

The Collector stepped back a meter, and where it was, a projectile, an arrow as it was called, lay embedded in the dirt. Sharpened head of metal attached to a lengthened wood base. Barbed head to prevent removal from flesh. Feathered at the end for aerodynamic performance.

Primitive. Would not penetrate hyperalloy carapace.

Yet, judging from the angle of descent and landing zone, meant to skewer an eye.

The Collector made some distance, leaping backwards to dodge errant sweeps with ice clubs and volcanite swords. While it soared in the air, its hairs twitched, sensing arrows, and it twisted its body and ducked its head to ensure that six arrows crashed against its hyperalloy carapace.

The arrows clanked off its carapace in showers of little sparks.

"It running! We winning!" shouted the deep timber of one of the white variants.

Utter foolishness. In taking briefly to the air, the Collector had assessed their numbers and combat capabilities. Most importantly, from the higher vantage point, it spotted four white variants and two red variants behind the group wielding tools of wood and twine – bows, it recalled from extracted memories - meant to be pulled taut to unleash projectiles.

The Collector would prioritize them, for with its injury hampering its ability to react to multiple enemies at once, especially projectiles, their ability to strike the Collector's eyes presented a confounding variable more significant than the slow, uncoordinated mess of melee hobgoblins trying to swamp it.

The Collector took in a breath and pumped blood and strength into all its muscles. It swelled up in size, towering over the hobgoblins, and their confidence wavered.

They paused.

The Collector pawed the ground with its good front hoof, drawing a deep, thick line across the dirt.

The hobgoblins understood what was to come. Some of them shivered.

"Hold fast!" shouted a red variant, and that shout kept the more cowardly among them from fleeing.

They held up their weapons, tensed up their bodies, dug their feet into the dirt -everything to try and get them to stand up against the Collector's charge.

The Collector charged, the enormous muscles in its hind legs bursting into a flexion of power that drove sprays of dirt and foliage back like miniature explosions. It blurred in a bone white, bone shattering battering ram.

Red and white skinned hobgoblin bodies flew into the air with major fractures to their skeletal systems as the Collector bowled past them, reaching within seconds into the backline of bow wielders.

A final volley of arrows clanked on the Collector as it angled its carapace helmeted head down, only giving the arrows hardened hyperalloy carapace to bounce off of.

"Annoying little creatures with your little imitations of firearms." The Collector whipped around, brutalizing one hobgoblin square in the stomach with its clubbed tail. The continued momentum of the tail carried the hobgoblin and crashed it into two others, knocking them breathless or unconscious to the ground.

The Collector zigged and zagged around the other three, its remaining four arachnid arms moving like surgical clockwork to sever their heads from their bodies.

Blood sprayed and sputtered, marking out contrasting splotches of red on the Collector's white carapace before pores within it opened up, draining it all.

The Collector turned to meet the rest of the hobgoblin and saw that they no longer approached it.

When it stepped forwards, they stepped back.

"Pathetic. In engaging with your champion, I had thought your primitive species infinitesimally less savage than before. Yet, disappointing. None of you are even worthy of joining the Collective, though your flesh, I will still take," said the Collector.

Then, the unexpected.

The Collector did not sense anything with its sensitive hairs adaption. It was its compound eyes, capable of a wide field of vision, that perceived it first: a circle of pale blue light spanning underneath it.

The Collector did not sense anything aberrant about the light, or anything at all, and this absence of sensory input caused it to immediately become wary and cease its attack, leaping backwards.

In a flash of light and chilled air, a pillar of ice manifested, its dimensions large enough to have encased more than half of the Collector's body. A wispy aura of chilled air wafted from the pillar, though not cold enough to affect the Collector through the layer of Frostboar blubber on its ultrafiber musculature.

Yet a flash freeze like that, if placed properly, would have immobilized the Collector.

"A mere beast, not even a magical one, can escape the clutches of my ice prison?"

The Collector recognized this raspy voice from the memories it had extracted. This was Hrunt, the so called 'thrall', one of the three superiors in a position of authority among this populace. It located where the voice projected.

Approximately eighty-seven meters down the lit path, towards the direction of the stronghold.

Outside of the ten meter range of the sensitive hairs adaptation. Further attempts to extrapolate this 'thrall's location through optical systems proved futile. Interference from trees and the path curving to block line of sight.

How was it, then, that this 'thrall' possessed the means to not only accurately determine the Collector's location, but also to generate ice in localized flash freezes? The means to project its voice to such an extent?

By now, the Collector did not expect any of these species to wield sufficiently advanced technology such as coolant lasers.

No, this 'thrall' was one of the special types. Like the champion.

Another high priority target for consumption.

The Collector tensed up again, its muscles swelling, and then it charged, explosively releasing power out of its hyper-flexed ultrafibers to shoot it right into this 'thrall's' direction at top speed.

"Wh-what!? Such haste!" came the thrall's voice.

The Collector ignored the curving, light lit path leading to this 'thrall', instead taking a shorter, diagonal path through the lightless darkwoods. When it left the path, its figure disappearing in the darkwoods, the thrall's voice rang in the air again.

"Where did it go!?""

The Collector smashed through trees a plenty as it barreled onwards. Within ten seconds, it was out the other side, right where it calculated this 'thrall' would be.

Report chapter

There it was, the unmistakable appearance of the white-skinned thrall.

It stood alone at the center of the cleared path and stared at the Collector with mouth open, baring yellowed, chipped teeth. In its right hand was a stick fashioned out of bones and topped with the skull of a human.

The thrall jolted backwards in surprise, its tattered, rough cloak of animal hides clattering as the many skeletal adornments decorating it moved. The specimen raised a wrinkled white hand to the Collector, but too late.

The Collector was too fast. Charging in at top speed, a speed that even the champion, a prime physical specimen among this kind, found difficult to perceive, it speared its tusks straight through this 'thrall.'

Yet, its calculated scenario of events did not manifest into reality. Instead of the Collector's tusks and flesh piercing and breaking a body far weaker and aged than that of the champion or even compared to the other hobgoblins, the Collector instead passed straight through the specimen.

The Collector clicked its mandibles in muted surprise as it whirled around, ready to strike again. The thrall's form was misty, almost transparent as it seemed that its body wavered between states of solid and gaseous matter.

"I-I am alive?" remarked the thrall with shaky voice. It stumbled backwards again when the Collector rushed in, swiping with its monomolecular edged claws to scythe off the specimen's head.

The thrall flinched, but when the claw passed by its neck once more, it opened a beady blue eye and reveled with a broken-toothed grin. "So, I was not wrong. You do lack mana, you foul, imperfect creation.

Without it, I may as well be like the gods to you, untouchable in the genius of my mistborn spell. You only have your maker and his incompetence to curse for your end."

The Collector growled, insulted that this creature, this mere, primitive thing, would talk to it so lowly. It continued an onslaught of attacks, slicing dozens of times at the thrall only to find all of its claws simply phasing through the fog-like form, finding no yielding flesh nor bone.

"What...is this?" uttered the Collector in confounded surprise. It opened up its jaws, brought out its pyrocatalytic glands, and activated the biotrigger, shooting out a stream of chemicals that ignited into a stream of burning blue and white fire.

"You can speak? Good." The thrall loosed a cackle as the fire parted its form almost entirely, reducing it into a few wisps that floated a dozen meters away and reformed. "Then you will tell me all you know."

It pointed its bone stick at the Collector and shouted, "Winter winds, reduce this thing into nothingness!"

Bright blue lines manifested around the thrall's arm, streaking up from its fingers to its shoulder in a slanted criss-cross that looked, as the Collector noted, like circuitry.

The bone staff rattled for a second before glowing blue. A cone of howling winds propelled countless shards of sharpened ice towards the Collector.

The Collector lowered its head and weathered the storm of projectiles. The ice shattered on its carapace, and the frostboar blubber ensured that its body and musculature would not freeze from the winds.

The Collector analyzed the attack.

Winds at sufficient velocity to knock back the average human of this world. Temperatures low, nearing freezing point. Shards of ice fueled by wind. Ice of regular structure. Unlike that of the clubs and weapons the other white skinned variants wielded.

Unremarkable.

The thrall continued, pride and gloating beginning to leech into his voice as the fear of death started to ooze away from the initial scare against the Collector. "This hideous form of yours, no doubt it suits the tastes of that miserable human sorcerer that cowers even from his own kind.

Rejected by even his own kin, he said he would not raise a finger against our invasion, but look, it appears he has some compassion for his own in spite of his twisted tastes.

When I get to him, I will carve his bones from his body and take the magic from them, and you will be mine to control."

As the thrall prattled on and on, the Collector thoroughly analyzed this 'thrall.'

This 'thrall' was no exceptional specimen. Hunched spine. Atrophied muscles. Eyes lightly cloudy with cataracts. Aged.

Unremarkable.

Weak.

Yet, still evidently special. But not in the same way as the champion which possessed strength and speed beyond its physical means.

Possessed the ability to manifest ice without the usage of any technology.

Possessed the means to shift its state of matter from solid to gas interchangeably without deconstruction of the consciousness, and the gaseous state itself, though reminiscent of fog, did not dissipate from intense heat.

The capability to utilize lowered temperatures as a weapon was rare even among tinkerers, with the only available weapon corresponding with such a capability being industrial scale laser coolants largely impractical for combat.

The capacity to freely shift states of matter like this, however, held almost no correspondence to anything the Collector knew of throughout its stored memory database.

No warrior strain Collector had ever encountered anything remotely even similar to this.

The only thing that came close to this was the existence of certain clouds of microbes that possessed the psionic capability to maintain a hivemind consciousness. This adaptation formed the basis of the Collective itself, but again, this was entirely different.

"The winds of the north will not work, it seems" said the thrall, narrowing its eyes and snarling as it realized its spell could not harm the Collector. "But my magic does not hold dominion over the cold alone. I thought to preserve you, to keep you as my own familiar in time, but you are too much a threat.

Burn away."

The thrall kept the blast of wind and ice going with its staff, and with its free hand, ripped off a few finger bones dangling from its mantle. With a grunt, it tossed the bones at the Collector.

The Collector did not sense anything aberrant about the bones, but when they neared it, they lit first with intense red light, then exploded into roaring balls of fire.

The Collector remained unharmed through the blaze, closing its eyes and letting the fire douse down as it found the Collector's durable flesh and carapace far too difficult a surface to burn.

Also unimpressive. Also weak.

Yet, the fundamental nature of this ability was incredibly dangerous.

The thrall seemed to bend reality itself to its will, flouting conventional physical laws to a far greater extent than any other special specimen among its kind.

But, having now received this fire generating attack, the Collector remembered the human female sorcerer could do something similar in much the same manner. Even the heat of their flames were nearly identical.

The mechanisms through which specimen performed these tricks was much the same as well: through a stick-like receptacle utilizing certain words.

Combined with the thrall's babbling providing new context clues, the Collector tied the threads together.

All this was 'magic'.

It clicked its mandibles. It had severely underestimated the nature and scope of this 'magic'.

Its initial theory was that this 'magic' was a simple tool of war akin to the firearms tinkerers wielded, but even more primitive in scope. That these specimen, human and goblin alike, all seemed to possess not even a shred of threatening technology had also fueled this miscalculation.

That this 'magic' possessed the capability to manipulate the states of matter itself was a threat the Collector could not have fathomed. Such manipulation of raw atomic structures and the transfer of energy between them would likely be the most dangerous capability throughout the known galaxy.

As if wielding the essence of creation itself.

Yet, there were limitations. The thrall did not simply turn the Collector into air. It relied on its fire and ice and equally meaningless and pitiful tricks to try and harm the Collector.

Though the thrall boasted, it was evident that this altercation would go nowhere. The thrall did not have the means to eliminate the Collector and-

The Collector leaped backwards as it noticed blue light under its feet again. Another ice pillar rose up where it had been.

"Curses, you are quick. He must have found a way to sacrifice mana into pure power in his familiars," said the thrall.

The thrall was too slow to encase the Collector in the ice it could create. Soon enough, the lord would arrive with reinforcements from the stronghold.

The situation became highly disadvantageous for the Collector. It had been willing to face risk to continue the battle and the fight, but this, this prancing around and weathering attacks that did nothing whilst it too could do nothing, was no battle, no fight.

It was meaningless. Risk for no gain.

Boring.

The Collector felt the heat within it quell as it realized this was no longer anything resembling a battle like that held between itself and the champion or even the lesser but still special variants.

With the heat fading, the Collector did not hesitate and charged away, ignoring hails of ice and projectiles from the thrall breaking against its carapace with about as much care as it would give raindrops.

It sunk into the thick of the darkwoods where without the aid of the light generating stones, the goblins could not follow it.

Report chapter

Lord Zoll gazed upon the pile of red and white hobgoblin bodies and body parts stacked high. The crushed bodies of smaller goblins peppered the pile and a film of blood formed underneath it, trickling ever outwards.

"Give it to me," said Zoll, his voice grating. At a level tone, but with a force bubbling underneath it that made it obvious that he was ready to explode into a shout at any given moment. "Now."

"O-of course, my lord," said Hrunt as he shuffled to Zoll's towering side, hunching his back even more and lowering his head in a bow as he held out a torch. Its flickering head of flame shone bright despite the light dulling darkwoods, magically created as it was by the thrall himself.

Zoll snatched the torch from Hrunt. The wood cracked in his grip as he tossed it to the pile, igniting the bodies. The bugs of this forest did not venture into light, but the few times they did, it was when the scent of corpses overpowered their instinctive fear of the light.

The fire took to the corpses quick, spreading its heated tongues across the many bodies until it crackled and roared in a swirling blaze. In the light fueled by his dead men, Zoll gazed across the encampment he had spent weeks building up.

Utter ruin.

Half the camp's tents and forces destroyed, the food and water supply shattered and trampled upon.

The champion himself, the strongest military force among them, stronger in direct combat than even Zoll himself, gone.

Shun, the second strongest, gone.

Ganth, the secondary leader of the Frostskull tribe contingent, gone.

Not even a corpse remaining from them for Hrunt to try and reanimate.

"My lord," came Hrunt's aged yet higher pitched voice. "You should have seen the devastation the sorcerer's familiar wreaked upon us. The champion you respected fell so.

Yet, yet I, with the magics I have learned over many years, felled the beast. I know it is not my place, but perhaps you may consider granting me higher position?"

Zoll did not give Hrunt even a glance before he sent the thrall writhing on the ground with a backhand to the face. Hrunt groaned in pain as he covered his bleeding mouth with his withered hands.

"The beast still lives. The sorcerer whom you were supposed to parlay with strikes us. You were supposed to have been in this encampment an hour earlier. Had you followed your orders, perhaps we would not have thirty dead hobgoblins and a fallen champion.

Still you, you pitiful, groveling, miserable old thing, desire a reward? I have one in mind for you." Zoll took the greatsword in his left arm and raised it high, a dull shadow of death casting over Hrunt.

"Please forgive me, my lord," mumbled Hrunt through bleeding lips as he scrambled down to a prostrate position.

Zoll lowered the greatsword. He could not afford more losses. "The humans will come for us. They know we are here now. Their village to the south is a tiny, weak thing meant to be conquered, but now that they know our numbers, they will rally their forces.

The Adventurer's League will rear its ugly head in our direction."

"Should we not retreat?" said Hrunt. Zoll gave him a look, and Hrunt shivered and held his hands up in pleading.

"I mean no disrespect," said Hrunt. "Only…only that with our numbers like this and the loss of our stronger warriors, would it not be safer? We can even head north, beyond the mountains. To my home. There are far fewer humans there."

"No." Zoll stabbed the greatsword into the ground. "I have slumbered far too long to run now. The spirits themselves bless my cause. It is they who grant us a dungeon for a stronghold, and their will is clear: we must strike the humans down, then the gods themselves."

"But our forces-," began Hrunt.

"Call for more of your northern tribesmen," said Zoll. "Draw from our brethren across all the realms. I do not care if you die from spending your mana. Tap into the dungeon and summon as many of us as you can.

If you do not replenish those you have lost today, you will face suffering at my hands that will have you begging for the merciful release of death.

Now go."

"Yes, my lord!" Hrunt bowed several times before scrambling off as fast as he could, his bone ornaments and staff clattering behind him and making his shivering fear ever more evident.

Zoll looked at his right hand. Completely blackened, like a mass of shadow standing in stark contrast with his green skin. Glowing red lines streaked the dark, concentrating most in a circular pattern on his palm.

He heard the quiet and small footsteps of a little goblin behind him.

"Little one," said Zoll.

The smaller goblin squeaked to attention and rushed to kneel in front of him.

"Yes?" said the goblin, voice trembling and beady yellow eyes wide apart in fear.

"You wish to serve, do you not? To become one of my champions?" said Zoll.

"Of course!" said the goblin. "Always!"

"I did not wish to use this but hearing your devotion does ease my heart." Zoll wrapped his large, darkness inked hand over the goblin's head, smothering it entirely. The red lines on his hand glowed for a moment, and he released his grip.

The goblin looked dazed for a moment. Red arcs of energy started to crackle around him, and the goblin attempted to scream in pain. His voice did not manage to escape his throat as his body began to change, bones breaking apart in cracks and muscles tearing and rippling.

The goblin started to grow, its limbs and body stretching and morphing in hideous proportions as its form reconstructed itself.

In a few seconds, where before there was a little goblin, there now was a hobgoblin, eyes reddened, yet empty, whatever vestige of the goblin it had spawned from utterly gone.

If the humans wanted war, thought Zoll as he gazed to the south. Then war, they would have.

The Collector stalked the light zone of the forest with some measure of difficulty. Unlike the darkwoods which had trees thrice the size, the lighter zone had smaller trees packed closer together, making the Collector's bulked up boar form unsuited to easily wading through it.

The Collector did manage, somehow, by using its flexible ultrafiber muscles and exceptional control over them to deflate itself to shrink past tighter gaps, but its movement through the forest was definitively slower than before.

Efficiency decay of approximately twenty seven percent.

That was why when the Collector decided upon a quiet spot to evolve, it decided to keep its size the same. It would still tower over almost any creature here, but it would compromise some level of strength gain if it meant maintaining a capacity for stealth.

Initially, it had been confident that there was little to nothing that could start challenging it, but the nature of this 'magic' had made it more wary.

Once it was done evolving, it would stop at nothing to investigate and better understand the mechanics of this 'magic', this anomalous force that seemed to bend creation itself to its will. It was heresy to even begin thinking this, but such a force would be even superior to the Collective's capability to bend organic evolution to its will.

It was a threat, a massive one, and the probability of the immense entity the Collector had first fought being one tied to 'magic' reached nearly one hundred percent.

The thrall's capacity to utilize this 'magic' was utterly pitiful, but if at its greater heights it could manifest such entities, then this world, despite its absence of development and civilization, would still prove a great threat to the Collective.

The Collector clicked its mandibles in knowing as it curled down on the ground, beginning its metamorphosis process by melting down its body into primordial ooze that weaved a cocoon around it.

This world and all those upon it had to be destroyed. Preferably assimilated, their special properties and 'magic' incorporated into the Collective. If the Collective obtained such a power, it would become the premiere force in the entire galaxy.

For now, however, the Collector had to grow stronger to fulfill its purpose.

As the Collector reduced itself into a beating, embryonic egg encased in a liquid filled chamber of transparent, vein-lined flesh, it decided how to evolve itself, bringing up its stored genetic material.

Stored Genetic Material:

-Black Ant

-Black Goblin

-Human

-Giant Scorpion

-Stonecrusher Beetle

-Jumping Arakka

-Lesser Oni

-Frostborn Hobgoblin

-Greater Oni

By reaching the fifth level of metamorphosis, the Collector could splice together four independent specimen together.

The first was obvious: the Greater Oni that called itself a champion, and the only one among the goblin primitives that deserved its title. This would serve as an apt warm-blooded base suitable for growing musculature and strong bones upon.

The Collector discarded its jungle spider base and replaced it with the far superior Jumping Arakka.

The others were more variable.

The Collector mixed in the Stonecrusher Beetle genes for it possessed great physical strength for an insectoid as well as thick carapace suited for the hyperalloy carapace adaptation. Its pincer like horns capable of shattering stone would grow to monstrous proportions on the Collector, and it possessed limited flight capabilities.

Now then, there was the matter of whether the Collector would keep its frostboar genes or discard it for something else. The lesser oni gene was strictly inferior to that of the greater oni.

The Collector pondered utilizing the frostborn hobgoblin genes, but if it desired cold resistance, then the frostboar was superior in every way.

The giant scorpion was the only thing to consider. It too provided a base to grow hyperalloy carapace, but its main draw was the stinger it possessed that stored a deadly neurotoxin that would rapidly seize muscular functions in most of the creatures the Collector had encountered so far.

The Collector analyzed for a brief moment and settled upon discarding the frostboar gene for the giant scorpion.

With the greater oni as a muscle and bone base, it would have to take a bipedal form, but it did not feel as revulsed considering that this specific specimen had been a suitable warrior to the Collector's standards.

And, with some measure of anticipation, the Collector wished to try and extract the property that made the champion so special. Now that it would reach the fifth metamorphosis level, it could extract and permanently keep an adaptation from one of its bases for itself.

If this special property, one very likely linked to 'magic', was an adaptation, then it was feasible that the Collector could take such an exceptional capability for itself. If not, then it would still be pleased to possess the extraordinary fire resistance that red variant goblins such as the champion possessed.

The Collector made its decisions and evolved.

Report chapter

Throughout the better part of an hour, the Collector's evolutionary cocoon swelled to a size greater than it had ever been before.

An eruption of fleshy tendrils burst from the beating cocoon, hungrily latching onto any remnant biomass around it, pouring over grass, roots, trees, and any creatures left in the undergrowth.

The web of pulsating flesh roots tethered the cocoon to the trees surrounding it, and these trees rapidly faded in color, their green leaves going through their cycle of life in an instant, turning red then orange then finally decaying into shriveled gray.

The nutrients were unneeded but could still aid in the metamorphosis process.

The embryonic egg visible through the cocoon had now grown to the Collector's new form, huddled up and curled into a compact ball with its knees drawn up to its chest and its arms hugging itself.

The cocoon rippled for one last time and burst with a squelching pop. With a torrent of viscous, steaming amniotic fluid, the Collector landed to the ground on a knee, its carapace-plated body squelching with its every movement as it finished its solidification process.

[METAMORPHOSIS LEVEL 5 REACHED. UNLOCKING FURTHER CAPABILITIES OF THE EVOLUTIONARY SYSTEM.]

[-GENE BOOST RESTORED]

[-CAPACITY TO SPLICE TOGETHER UNIQUE GENETIC MATERIALS INCREASED FROM 3 TO 4]

[-CAPABILITY TO PERMANENTLY EXTRACT FOREIGN ADAPTATIONS GAINED. SENSING FOREIGN PLANET AND BIOMASS. NATIVE ADAPTATIONS SUBMENU UNLOCKED.]

Metamorphosis Level 45

Biomass Level: 124/100 12/100

Stored Genetic Material:

-Black Ant

-Black Hobgoblin

-Human

-Lesser Oni

-Frostborn Hobgoblin

Adaptations:

Internal Systems

-Ultrafiber Muscles Rank 45

*Sub-adaptation gained*

--Coilboosters

External Systems

-Sensitive Hairs Rank 34

-Organic Hyperalloy Carapace Rank 34

Weapons Systems

-Monomolecular Claws Rank 23

-Pyrocatalytic Glands Rank 12

Native Adaptations*NEW*

Current Form:

Greater Oni/Jumping Arakka/Stonecrusher Beetle/Giant Scorpion

The Collector returned to a bipedal base utilizing the goblin champion's form.

Where the champion stood a little over two meters tall, the Collector stood close to three meters tall, utterly dwarfing any human or goblin specimen.

However, in total mass, it weighed slightly less than its comparatively larger boar form. A tradeoff of physicals strength and size for a more mobile and hide-able form.

The sheer number of carapace-plated creatures incorporated in the Collector's new form influenced its appearance.

Bone white, metallic hyperalloy carapace covered every single inch of its body in thick plates. The thickest hyperalloy plates wrapped around its head in a dome that fused down into the ends of its broad shoulders, almost making it seem like the Collector wore a huge, hooded helmet.

Under this helm, its four compound eyes glowed in the dark, deep within the folds of the helm – an adaptation of the beetle so that it could resist light for short excursions though, of course, the Collector itself had no such weakness to light.

The carapace helmet could also retract, revealing a smooth, red-skinned face with mandibles, prehensile ultrafiber tongue, and antennae.

From the top of this organic helm, the stonecrusher beetle's rock shattering, pincir-shaped horn emerged.

The stonecrusher beetle's horn already had the capability to withstand high-speed, high-impact charges, and combined with the Collector's hyperalloy carapace, this horn became an immensely durable battering ram.

The Collector did not tip the horn with a monomolecular edge for the structure did not suit it. The horn was meant for slamming and, if the pincers got a hold of something, crushing.

A monomolecular edge would thin the horn's ends and make it brittle.

Instead, the monomolecular claws burst out from the Collector's fingers with small spikes emerging from its elbows. When the claws reached rank 5, the Collector could fashion them into longer structures to increase the effective range of their deadliness.

And that would be soon, considering that the Collector had restored Gene Boosting.

With gene boosting, whenever it assumed a new form, if the bases it utilized were compatible with adaptations it already had, then it could add bonus points to their ranks.

For example, if the next form it took used insect bases, then it could add bonus points to its hyperalloy carapace rank.

A white-plated, five-segmented metasoma emerged as a new tail for the Collector. The scorpion's tail had enough length to stretch around the Collector and as it curled the tail around itself, it gazed at the black-tinted stinger the size of a man's head.

Satisfactory.

Boosted by the Collector's physiology, the neurotoxin became a potent paralyzing agent that could collapse lungs, stop hearts, and induce a rapid onset of neurological decay to even hobgoblin sized creatures. At this dosage, it might as well have been an instant death sentence for non-special humans.

The Collector retained its six arachnid legs it utilized as extra limbs, but replaced now with the arakka gene, these legs possessed a special 'jumping' ability generated from the hydraulic pressure systems in the arakka legs that would allow for bursts of high speed movement or an explosive jump.

Theoretically, the Collector could also now scale cliffs using these arms.

The six legs sprouted not from the Collector's back this time, but from the sides of its ribs and lower back. This meant that the Collector could switch between bipedalism or eight legged crawling depending on what was more appropriate.

Bipedalism was more combat oriented while eight-legged movement was faster and more defensive with the Collector lying lower to the ground, covering the thinner plating on its chest and front.

The positioning of the legs being more forwards also allowed the Collector enough space on its back to produce wings.

The Collector stretched its form, allowing blood to flow, and then unfurled its beetle wings. The elliptical dome of carapace covering its back split in half and unfolded as four sets of enormous insectoid wings fluttered, buzzing and flicking off the rest of the amniotic fluid away.

And, as the Collector realized in surprise when it moved, it realized that its strength had not been compromised by reducing its weight.

In fact, as it slammed a muscled, armored hand to a nearby tree trunk with a half-hearted effort and splitting it almost in half, it might have even been stronger.

Then had it successfully extracted the property that made the creatures here special? The property that allowed them to defy physical laws and maintain mass and strength beyond their natural means?

The Collector realized it did not know.

On its evolutionary status, there was indeed an abnormality. An adaptation marked as completely unknown under the native adaptations submenu.

The native adaptations submenu was meant to list all the adpatations it extracted from species of this world, but it appeared it could not sufficiently analyze the nature of what it had extracted from the champion.

In intent, the Collector desired to extract this special property. In effect, it knew not what this was.

The Collector clicked its mandibles in contemplation. This was unheard of.

The Collective's evolutionary system possessed an intricate knowledge of the fundamental bases comprising all life, allowing it to assess and understand anything once it was consumed.

But of course, the Collector reminded itself again, this world was aberrant. Anomalous at its core, its species possessing capabilities circumventing physical and biological rules.

It did not know how to uncover the nature of this adaptation, but at the least, it had extracted something, indicating that at some level, these special properties were biological.

Soon, the Collector would learn. It would know everything there was to this world. These special properties and, especially, this 'magic'.

The night was dark, the single moon orbiting this world shrouded in heavy, rain filled clouds. The Collector clicked its mandibles.

Good. In the dark, the humans would not see it coming.

The Collector began its investigation into 'magic'.

The Collector traveled through the forest, investigating in order the two black goblin dens. For due to the disappearance of the three humans, one of which was special, capable of utilizing this 'magic', the Collector was sure that more would follow to find them.

The first den, nearest to the darkwoods, remained empty, just as the Collector had left it.

The other one, however, closer to human settlement, was littered with the stench and movement of humans.

Under the cover of night, the Collector, even with its current size, could stalk humans through these woods, especially if they knew not of its presence.

Behind a thicket of trees, the Collector stared at the clearing housing the goblin den.

It analyzed the situation.

Six humans. Slightly different in appearance to the others it consumed. Darker skin. All wore uniform armor. Primitive steel fashioned into linked scales. More flexible chain link vests underneath. Round helmets of uniform design. Pointed at the ends with tassels of hair attached.

Five humans with brown tassels. One with green.

Six four-legged beasts lay tethered to a log by ropes. Harnesses on them indicated domestication. Judging by design of harnesses and seats, beasts of burden meant for facilitating travel.

Analysis indicated the humans belonged to a military structure. Same armor. Slight differentiation via helm tassels to indicate chain of command, likely.

The humans gathered around the entrance of the den and talked among themselves, likely having already explored it.

The Collector listened intently.

Was it possible that the militaristic humans of this world all possessed the means to utilize 'magic?'

That they were all special?

Exactly what level of threat could the average military force of the humans residing within this anomalous world muster?

The Collector would know soon enough.

Report chapter

Among a squadron of soldiers investigating the disappearance of three adventurers sent to exterminate a reported goblin den -

"Well, this is the den, captain" said a soldier, narrowing his eyes as he scrutinized a map in his hands.

"Are you absolutely sure?" said the captain.

The soldier looked back down at the map. "Yes, I'm sure of it, sir. Villagers reported small men taking their chickens and cows. The hunters tracked these suspects to around here and confirmed they were goblins. And I am no adventurer, but this does seem like a den goblins would hide in."

"Then tell me, where are the goblins?" The captain paced up to the den, peering in, then back in, hands behind his back. "Hm? Where are they?"

The soldiers looked at each other, not sure what to say.

"Maybe the adventurers killed them and left," said another soldier.

"Without returning to the village for their pay?" The captain scoffed. "I am no adventurer, but from rumors, I hear that the one stars make even less than us, thank the empire for its benefits.

You truly believe they would skip out on coin when they may not even have the coin to fill their stomachs?"

"Nothing ever happens here, I doubt they are truly dead," remarked a soldier. When he saw the captain glare at him, he added, "Respectfully speaking, sir."

The captain rubbed his forehead. "Then where. Are. They."

The soldiers looked at each other in confusion again.

"I should not have expected anything from soldiers so lowly the empire throws them out to guard this miserable frontier village in the middle of absolutely fucking nowhere. By Ajna, what I would give to be back in the greater cities where the arts and music and magic and, most importantly, bare common-sense flourish."

The captain pointed at the den. "Look, you fools. Nothing in the den. No goblin bodies. No adventurer bodies. What do we tell the Adventurer's League?"

"I thought the League did not really care for their one stars," said a soldier.

"They do not care if they know how they died. If there is a proper report. Another thing this barbaric place sorely lacks – records and reports. No working toilets, just pits to squat on, let alone paper and ink." The sergeant shook his head. "The League, the Order, and practically every single important group there is in all the realms are on watch for Undeath.

One undead can make a thousand more." He snapped his fingers. "Just like that. Did your mothers not tell you tales of the undead when you sucked on her teats?

If we do not give them a proper report, they will send more adventurers to investigate, and they will tear through this village and forest until they find corpses."

"That is not so bad, is it?" said a soldier. He coughed and added on a "sir."

The captain stepped up to the younger soldier. "Not so bad? Tell me, why is this not so bad?"

The soldier wavered for a bit. "The adventurers fought for this village. They may get proper sendoff to Aetheria if their bodies are found."

"Oh, yes, I would not deny them the sacred rite to have their bodies burned," said the captain. "But let me put it in a way all of you can understand.

We are taking bribes, yes?"

The soldiers nodded.

"Bribes from a sorcerer, yes?"

The soldiers nodded.

"A sorcerer with a fucking sealing order on him, yes?"

The soldiers nodded a little slower this time.

"You know what that means, no?"

The soldiers looked at each other, hints of confusion on their faces.

The captain sighed. "Did all of you grow upon farms? Oh wait, yes you did. You did not have tutors, you learned from pigs and chickens," he said sarcastically. "The Sorcerer's Order does not designate sealing orders lightly.

They place it upon heretics of the highest degree, those who with their twisted mystic arts have broken the laws of the gods and the sanctity of life, and the Order works closely with the League – the two might as well be the same damn thing, as far as we are concerned.

Say the League investigates us, you think they will not find out about this very same sorcerer lining our pockets? Then they call their friends in the Order that strap us up, interrogate us, and then toss us behind bars.

And because we are all lowly soldier-castes, we will rot there for a decade. Perhaps my father can bail me out, but all of you will end up as skeletons picked clean by rats."

The soldiers shuffled uncomfortably. One of them raised a suggestion. "We can turn the sorcerer in. I never liked him in the first place, foreign snake he is."

"Oh, marvelous idea," said the captain, throwing his hands in the air. "And then he can turn us in when the Order questions him."

"We could forge a report," came another suggestion.

"Now we are getting somewhere." The captain raised a hand to his moustache. "But not until we search further. If we can find their bodies, good. It would leave a bad taste on my tongue also if they were not given proper passage rites.

But if not, then start conjuring up some creative ideas for me to put into this 'report'. Something that will get the League off our backs." The sergeant thrust out a hand towards the edges of the clearing. "Think while you move. Light your torches, fan out and search the surroundings. Anendara is a large forest, untamed by man.

Take your time, avoid getting eaten by sloth bears, and reconvene here in an hour."

"Yes sir!"

The captain watched as his men funneled out, the lights of their torches disappearing as they faded out of the clearing, and himself picked up his torch and headed out. He wondered whether sloth bears even lived in this forest, but mentally shrugged.

It was not his job to strut around in the muck of this wild forest, to know what ever happened here. All he had to do was keep watch over the village for a year, then he could get back to Dwarka where in a real city, he could take a real bath, eat some real food, and listen to some real music.

But he would not get there rotting in a Sundan jail cell. Born without the capacity to awaken spirit roots and with no mind for business, all he could do was be a soldier. Well, until his bloated father croaked and died to leave him a merchant's fortune.

He did not expect to find the adventurers. He had little idea what could have actually happened, nor did he truly care much. The soldiers were right: nothing ever happened here, this far from the eastern warfront or the southern borders by the World Dungeons.

This place was a safe haven. A lazy place where villagers from the labor-caste lived their little lives and died in their mud huts.

That was what he thought as he stepped out of the clearing, and not ten steps in, something yanked him off balance, covering his mouth in hard metal that scraped his skin. His torch fell out of his grip and snuffed out of existence, leaving him blind in the night.

The Collector dragged the squirming human further into the forest, away from his men who grew ever more distant by the second. It pinned the human's arms down with its own massive arm and kept a hand wrapped around his head.

The Collector's hand alone was large enough to wrap entirely around the man's head, preventing him from uttering a noise. Like this, the Collector held the man, and his squirming offered as much resistance to the Collector as the nightly breeze would.

Several minutes passed, and the Collector confirmed this human's allies were far enough away. It uncovered a hand from the human's mouth.

"Me-," began the human in a half-formed shout to try and call for his soldiers.

The Collector reacted instantaneously and slammed the human into a tree, monitoring its force such that it simply knocked the breath out of him while minimizing noise.

Armor clanked against tree bark, and the human slumped down to the forest floor, wheezing as he looked up, trying to get a read of the Collector.

"You will not call for assistance, primitive little creature. When your fragile lungs recover breath, I will ask you questions. You will answer them."

Report chapter

The human sucked in a few more empty breaths before the impact of the blow began to wear off. He looked up at the Collector but in the dark, could only see the white carapace.

"White armor…you are from Judica?" said the human with a cough. He held up his hands in surrender and pleading. "There are no daemons here, I swear upon my life. That is all I know, and that is all my men know."

"You will wait until you are addressed. Then, you will speak." The Collector wrapped its hand around the whole length of the human's head.

"I will speak! I will!" came the human's muffled voice.

"Agreeable." The Collector let go of the human's head and hovered its hand beside his neck. Its monomolecular claws unsheathed from its fingers with a metallic click.

It held the claws close to the human's face as a reminder of its imminent demise. "Were you here to investigate the deaths of these…adventurers?"

The human nodded, and the Collector focused its senses on the human's reactions, paying close attention to his subtle twitches of facial expression, pace of breathing, and heartrate.

It did not know how these humans operated when they spoke to each other, but it did know that tinkering species possessed the capacity to lie and twist the truth of things.

This, the Collector, as a warrior strain unequipped to deal with the minds of tinkerers or even to talk in any capacity other than battle cries and taunts, was entirely unused to, and it needed data to determine if this primitive and others like it were indeed speaking truth.

"Another question." The Collector clicked its mandibles, assessing what question would drive the human most likely to lie. "Are you receiving bribes from a sorcerer?"

The Collector analyzed the human. It noted a further widening of the eyes. Slightly increased heartbeat. An involuntary twitch of movement. A shift of the pupil in slightly averted gaze.

Data collected.

"There is no sorcerer here in these backwards woods," said the human. "Good sir from Judica, if you are here to hunt daemons, again, I truly do not know."

"You lie to me." The Collector clicked its mandibles. It did not have enough data to have a perfect reading of truth and falsity for every human, it was certain, but at the least, for this specific one, it did.

The Collector grabbed the man's face, its brawny, armor-plated fingers squishing the flesh, the seams in the carapace catching on the skin and tearing it. This was a gesture to cause pain and induce fear to invoke survival instincts.

"Yes! Yes! I am taking bribes! And so are the rest of my men!" said the human in a muffled shout. "Spare me, good sir. I have no quarrel with you or your holy city, and truly, I know nothing. Nothing of daemons or anything of that foul kind."

"Hm. Your underdeveloped ocular systems are yet to adjust their photoreceptors to this dark, it seems. But do not make this mistake again." The Collector knelt down low and retracted its carapace helmet, revealing its monstrous red oni and insect hybrid face.

It chomped down its mandibles dangerously close to the human's neck. "I am not one of you feeble, dirt-crawling, babbling, incoherent pests.

And if even one more primitive of this world designates me as a creation of you humans, I will ensure their consumption shall be optimized to terrorize their pain receptors."

"A…a monster," said the human, his eyes turning wide and his skin growing a shade paler. A tremble ran through his body.

"Nor am I monster," said the Collector, tired by now of having to correct these overgrown simians that it was not some ordinary beast as lowly as the fauna that ran about this forest. "I sense you are entering into preliminary stages of panic capable of compromising your mental functions.

Reconsider this, for the moment your mind proves too feeble for me to extract information from, I will crush your skull."

The human gulped in a breath and nodded several times. "I-I can talk, I can."

"Agreeable." The Collector began to ask questions it truly was curious about. "Can you utilize this phenomenon known among your kind as 'magic'?"

"O-of course. If you are asking if I am Connected-" The human slowly raised up a gloved hand. Bright green lines in the shape of wires present in circuitry lit up across the palm. "Then I am."

The Collector clicked its mandibles as it recognized the circuitry-type lighting across the flesh from the thrall. And, as it searched its memory banks, from the female sorcerer, though hers were initially hidden by clothing, located on the skin atop her sternum.

"Connected? Explain further. What do these light-emitting lines signify? Are they biological adaptations? They appear to mimic circuitry. Is there machinery you connect yourselves to through these circuits?

No, I have not encountered any sufficiently developed technology. Then is there a remote signal that you receive through these circuits?"

"I…I do not know," said the human in rising fear fueled by confusion, knowing that if he could not answer the Collector's question adequately, he would die, and yet, he could not.

The Collector growled. "Your mind is too primitive to understand me, and I am too unused to this world's anomalous properties. I shall give you the chance to speak.

Tell me all that you know of this 'connection' and 'magic'."

"Magic is...magic is…an art. Art of the gods." The human waved its circuit-crossed hand desperately in the Collector's face. "This is proof we are connected to Ajna."

"An art? Tell me, human, what specifically is this 'magic' capable of?"

"A-anything. Anything under the grace of Ajna."

"Anything? Difficult to believe. If so, you would have splintered my molecular structure into base compounds already," said the Collector. "No, there are limitations. Presumably deriving from these 'gods', of whom this 'Ajna' is presumably one.

Tell me, what are these 'gods?'"

"What are the gods?" the human repeated to himself in confusion. "They are, well, they are everything."

"Do not begin to babble nonsense," said the Collector as it neared its claws to the human's neck.

"The gods control it all! All the gates! Elements. Fire, wind, water, earth. Hate and love. Life and death. Everything!"

"Define 'control'," said the Collector. "And these 'gates'."

"They hold dominion over these gates. Gates are, they are what is everything. All around us. Power. Fire or water or wind or life. We connect to them, worship the gods, draw power from them through the gates, then, then –," The human fumbled with his words, panicked but unable to fully articulate knowledge he did not have.

"I-I do not know for sure, I know no secrets to the arcane arts. I am not a sorcerer. I have read only one tome on the general arcane arts, and that was for beginners, and even that, I could not fully grasp. I am just a lowly man of the soldier-castes, I know nothing of the mystic arts."

"The exact mechanics of the relationship between these concepts and their function still confound me," said the Collector. "But I am able perceive a basic concept of it, even from your nigh incoherent babbling.

It is exceptionally hard to believe, but these circuits allow you to connect to entities known as 'gods' that control 'gates' representing a specific force."

"Yes, yes, that is exactly right!" said the human in relief that the Collector could piece together and articulate what it had said in a more concise manner. "Please, I know so little of magic. I have never truly practiced it, only the few limited spells I know from military training.

There…there is a sorcerer in these woods, you know of him. He can tell you all you wish to know and more."

"I see." The Collector clicked its mandibles, ignoring the human's plea for now. It had chosen to interrogate this human for it seemed to possess authority and knowledge, but it began to realize this specimen was just as lowly as the others.

If it truly desired knowledge, it needed to interrogate a specimen that was more familiar with 'magic'. A 'sorcerer', as it was called.

For now, it continued to speak its thoughts. "Then these 'gods' must be a higher species that has enslaved your kind.

They wield sufficiently advanced technology, technology as of yet unknown to any tinkering species, that allows them to signal down manipulations of matter such as manifestations of flame and even free control over shifts in matter states.

Yet, this hypothesis remains tenuous.

What use would such a species have for your primitive kind?

To leave you still so primitive?

Why would they share such specific aspects of their technology without either uplifting the rest of your species or colonizing them entirely?

Why are there no traces of their own civilization upon this world?"

The human blinked, lost.

"It seems this topic escapes the grasp of your bare neural functions. Very well then. I will move on to further questions.

Tell me, what are you and your brethren capable of with this 'magic'? 'Spells' I presume are applications of this 'magic'."

"These-these are military secrets I cannot-," began the human, but he gulped and continued when he saw the Collector's claws draw near.

"Together, we can cast barriers. Relay battle commands and movements. But in the end, we are all mere soldier-castes, lowly and living batteries for the sorcerer-castes in the battlefield," said the human nervously, though this was not anxiety induced by lying. "It is the sorcerer-caste you should question, they hold all the knowledge of magic.

More fear, not of the Collector, but likely of retribution from his fellow brethren that comprised the greater military unit that he was part of.

The Collector spoke. "And these 'sorcerers', I presume then they are utilizers of this 'magic' more proficient than yourselves?"

The human nodded vigorously. He began to back away a little, his weight shifting to the back of his boots.

"Please, I cannot reveal more military secrets of Sunda's great empire. The Unseen will have my head, and I know so little to begin with.

The sorcerer in the woods, yes, he will tell you far, far more than us. My men can lead you to him, they know more than I."

The human bit his lip and tensed up. "You…you will let me live, yes? At the end of all this, you will let me go?"

"I will keep my secrecy longer, and you cannot live for that. When this questioning ceases, you will die, and your death will be enshrined in the Collective as a high honor for the meager information I extort from you."

The human blinked several times as he grew silent.

The Collector sensed the human's escape before it even happened.

The Collector reacted the moment the human swerved backwards to try and run, knocking the human onto his face in the dirt. A plated foot crashed onto the human's legs, crushing bones and obliterating its mobility. Before the human could utter a scream of pain, the Collector once more muffled its mouth.

"Why would you deny yourself the high honor of entering the Collective? Foolishness." The Collector started to let go of the human's mouth, but it immediately began to scream again.

"Hrm." The Collector slammed the human's face into the dirt, breaking a nose in a gesture meant to hurt, not kill, for in terms of questioning, it began to realize, all it knew was how to inflict pain and hurt and desperation. "Does that bring you to your senses?"

"I…no, I can't-," said the human with a desperate, choking voice. "I can't die here."

The Collector slammed the human in the dirt again before it could scream, and this time, when it pulled the human's face back, he came up missing several teeth. Blood streamed from his lips and nose, but still, the human tried to scream.

The Collector mashed the human's head into the dirt again with irritation.

Invoking merely the base and primal instinct to survive alone was insufficient to bend these human wills to the Collector. Perhaps, it pondered, the humans would respond more positively if it allowed them to live, but there was no point to this.

The Collector did not lie like these tinkerers did. If the information it received was not sufficiently useful, then it would not twist its words and tell these primitives they were to continue living their worthless lives.

In the end, the Collector would destroy all life upon this rock anyway.

In addition, allowing them to leave now would endanger the Collector for a gain of information that simply was not worth their lives.

"You are becoming increasingly useless. Increasingly uncooperative. The Collective is a unified purpose spanning entire star systems. Countless species far greater than yours have entered it, elevating it into an entity closest to the ideal concept of perfection.

Far greater than any of these 'gods' you idolize, I should theorize. Yet you would not submit yourself to the honor of entering its fold, transcending your limited, primitive flesh and becoming something more?"

The human continued to struggle, limbs thrashing slowly in the dirt as it tried to run with its head pinned down.

The Collector clicked its mandibles in irritation. "Then so be it. You lack the knowledge I seek. Your men know the location of this 'sorcerer'. You, an ingrate who rejects the Collective, I hold no more use for."

The Collector pressed down on the human's head with its palm. A pop echoed as the human's skull, flesh, and brain matter all squished down into one flat pile of gore.

The Collector grabbed the human's torso like a snack and swallowed him with two bloody bites and made a note that when it returned to the Collective, it would erase the human's genetic material from its database.

*Biomass gained (2)*

Biomass Level: 14/100

Pitiful.

As expected, the human did not possess any appreciable amount of biomass, indicating that it lacked much of the special property that the Collector sought out. However, even this small amount thwarted the Collector's memory extraction process.

The Collector reconsidered its prior hypothesis that the humans were psionically connected together.

No, it was likely that by channeling themselves through these 'gates' to cast 'magic', they linked themselves to higher entities known as 'gods' that provided the necessary psionic defense against extraction.

Then the greatest threats upon this world would be these 'gods', though their capabilities were as of yet unknown to the Collector. Still, it could extrapolate that these beings were not all-powerful. They had not tracked it down yet nor did they show any sign of their existence so far.

The degree of connection between these 'magic' utilizing humans and the 'gates' that connected them to the gods did not seem strong either, for if it was, then the gods would have known of the Collector's presence.

It was possible that this entire connection process was merely the remnants of a higher species' technology that these primitives inefficiently utilized and mistakenly believed as being supernatural.

Considering the presence of unitan, the language of the human empire, upon this world, and how it was linked to magic, it may even have been that this technology came from them.

Regardless, the Collector did not have enough evidence and knowledge to formulate exact theories yet.

It had to find more information, and the human might not have been exceptionally useful, but he did give the Collector a far better lead to pursue: the sorcerer.

Report chapter

The Collector waited for an hour by the clearing, lying down in its eight-legged form to minimize its visibility. Its carapace might have been white, but it did not reflect light strongly, meaning that in the dark, especially shrouded by thick undergrowth and bushes, it could still remain hidden.

The soldiers began to return one by one, their torchlights highly visible in the night. The Collector listened to them.

"All of us are here now. Where'd the captain go?"

"Think he got lost? You know, I wouldn't mind if he did."

"Cut that out. If he disappears, we're in deep shit. His father has enough coin to make sure we never see the light of day. Think he'll take his son's disappearance lightly?"

Some quiet.

"Let's head out to find him," decided a soldier, and the others nodded with him. "Stick together in case there's a real threat out there."

"You trying to scare us? You know nothing happens here. What's going to happen? A half-man goblin tries to crawl up our legs? Even we can handle that."

"I wouldn't be so sure. Lately, I've been having these bad dreams, don't make fun of me for it, but…they feel like omens."

"I understand. And the sun, too, the black sun. They say that the world ends when the eye of Ajna closes. Maybe this is it?"

"Stop. We are from Sunda, land of magic. The greatest philosophers and thinkers and astronomers hail from us.

All other realms and kingdoms have squabbled and worried about the end times for the past two hundred years since the Undying, but our kingdom has grown out of it.

All of us might be from the lowly soldier-class, but our great libraries allow all but the lowest labor-class citizens access to knowledge.

You know, some of you should read a tome or two. I've read that a black sun happens quit often. Every five hundred years when the great gods ascend into the Beyond, it is said. This-," The soldier put a gloved finger up to the black sun. "Is normal. Now, instead of panicking for a superstitious future, we should focus on the now. Come on, let's find the captain so we can keep our heads on our necks."

The soldiers began to shuffle out. The Collector made its move.

It blitzed out of the undergrowth, its eight legs skittering at rapid speeds as it shot towards the soldiers as an enormous dome of carapace and legs.

Most humans possessed an innate fear of the insectoid, of many legs and shells, and when these soldiers saw a beetle larger than three of them put together speeding towards them, they screamed.

The Collector used its beetle horn to slam into one soldier, breaking his kneecaps, then swiveled around, knocking all the others flat to the ground in a sweeping impact. One by one, the Collector used its arachnid legs to sever tendons in their heels before they could get up.

"All of you are now fully immobilized," said the Collector as it stood up, sheathing its arakka legs back into its sides.

The five soldiers screamed in fright and pain.

The Collector crushed one of their heads underfoot. "Continue screaming, and that is your fate."

"M-monster?" remarked a soldier as he gazed upon the Collector's form.

The Collector strode over to the soldier and crushed his head also. "And if you designate me with that disgraceful term, then that too will be your fate."

The soldiers began to hush up, though even now, they trembled in terror.

The Collector knew this from before when it interrogated their leader, but even the military might of this world did not possess much of the special properties and 'magic' that made certain specimen dangerous.

The human leader did possess 'magic', yes, but not in any capacity that was useful. In even less a capacity than the female human sorcerer, the 'adventurer' as she was called.

The logical conclusion followed that the vast majority of specimen in this world did not possess this special property in any appreciable amount. It was only rare specimen among the already special ones that could pose a threat to the Collector.

Thus, the Collector moved with more confidence, assessing that the total risk of confronting these soldiers was low. It stared at the soldiers, at their eyes glazed in terror and their bodies releasing adrenaline that reeked of fear and desperation.

The Collector knew that if it hounded these primitives for hours, it could extract information from them even through their panic-stricken and inefficient mental states. But it did not desire to sit through their jumbled thought processes.

It already knew what it wanted from these primitives.

"One of you possesses a map. A cartographic outline of this area. Give it to me," said the Collector.

"In his satchel!" shouted a soldier as he pointed to a bag tied to the hip of one of the crushed ones.

The Collector tore the satchel from the corpse and inspected how it worked. The clasps holding it shut were too small for its fingers, so it ripped the leather holding apparatus open.

Its contents spilled out. A gourd holding water. Dried flesh for food. An amber colored stone emitting a dull light. A scroll of dried and processed plant matter marked with scribbles: the map.

The Collector consumed the dried flesh and found it the same as that of the deer present in the forest. In other words: completely unremarkable. It inspected the amber stone between its thumb and index finger.

"What is this?" asked the Collector.

"A sparkstone," said one of the remaining three soldiers through pained breaths, for all of the humans had had their tendons severed.

The Collector sensed through the hairs lining the seams of its carapace armor that they were shuffling back, aiming to escape. "Do not move. Even if I do not train my sight upon you, I can sense your each and every movement. Now tell me, what is this 'sparkstone' utilized for?"

"For starting fires," said a soldier. "We-we strike them on metal such as our swords. The sparks will light dry tinder."

"Hrm." The Collector scraped the stone against its carapace, and indeed, a small shower of sparks alighted from the point of contact. This rock, like the other light generating stone the goblins utilized, had a special property to it.

The Collector took the map in one hand strode towards one of the soldiers, and the human shrieked. "I will tell you anything! Let me go, I have a family waiting for me!"

"Ah yes, if you are indeed evolutionarily similar to humans, then you would arrange yourselves into social units dependent on blood relation. But that information provides nothing for me, so I question why you mention it. I doubt members of your family unit possess knowledge you do not." The Collector knelt by the soldier, utterly dwarfing him, and ripped off a sheathed sword attached to a belt on his hip.

The Collector inspected the sword, analyzing its design.

Different in design from the sword the human male adventurer utilized. Longer. The point was broader, less sharp. A strengthening plate of metal ran along one side of the blade, giving it weight on its swings. Handle comprised of metal wrapped in boiled leathers. Curved guard of dull golden metal.

Nothing aberrant about this weapon. It was simply a primitive tool of limited metalworking capability.

The Collector snapped the blade in half in its hand with minimal effort.

"Unimpressive." The Collector dropped the broken halves of the blade down in front of the soldier's terrified eyes.

The soldier scrambled backwards, his hands gouging out desperate paths in the dirt while his legs refused to move properly.

"Stay still," commanded the Collector, and the soldier did not move. The Collector stared at the comparatively tiny map in its hand, scrutinizing its details.

"Tell me, human," said the Collector as it knelt down to show the soldier the map. "Where are we upon this?"

The soldier raised a trembling finger to a spot to a forest spot of the map.

"And the human settlement? I do not intend to make my presence known there now, if you hold concern over this."

The soldier lowered its finger down to the lowest part of the map where small drawings of living structures indicated settlement. The Collector clicked its mandibles in understanding. It knew the distance from the den to the settlement, and knowing this, it could extrapolate the scale of the map.

"I have been made aware by your leader that there is a certain 'sorcerer' in this area you are familiar with. Lead me to the direction of this individual, for it is this specimen that I wish to engage with," said the Collector.

The soldier tapped to the center of the map, to the left of a wide river. The Collector clicked its mandibles, calculating the distance needed to reach the area.

"Tell me, is this 'sorcerer' familiar with 'magic'?"

The soldiers nodded – all they were capable of in their fright and pain at this point. The Collector again wondered if there was perhaps a more efficient way to interrogate these individuals, but all it knew was to appeal to their primal instinct that feared death and pain.

"What is this sorcerer's 'magic' capable of? Combat wise?"

The soldiers looked at each other blankly. They did not know.

"None of you know. Your usefulness has ended to me. Perhaps, had I much more time, I would have asked of this world you live in, this 'empire' you are part of and believe 'enlightened', but more humans will come soon, and I must move and find answers.

You have served your purpose. May you find true enlightenment in the Collective."

The Collector took the soldier in front of him by the head and dashed the skull against the forest floor, shattering it and smearing pink brain mass across the dirt. It stood up and walked towards the remaining two soldiers.

"We-we told you what we knew! Spare us, please!" The two remaining soldiers shrieked and tried to crawl away, dragging their useless legs with their hands through the dirt.

"I am sparing you," said the Collector as it neared them. "Sparing you from this pitiful, miserable existence trapped on this little rock when you could be so much more within the glorious expanse of the Collective."

Report chapter

The Collector consumed everything. The bodies of the remaining five soldiers, their equipment, armor and swords and all, the map, and their steeds. This, it did to erase all traces of their movement, making it more difficult for future human investigations to piece together the Collector's existence.

All of the soldiers possessed as their leader did minute traces of the special property inherent to this anomalous world, but in such trace amounts that their biomass was no different from that of a normal human's.

*Biomass gained (16)*

Biomass level: 30/100

*New genetic material gained*

Stored Genetic Material:

-Black Ant

-Black Hobgoblin

-Human

-Lesser Oni

-Frostborn Hobgoblin

-Blacktail Horse

The Collector clicked its mandibles.

The leader of these humans had provided two points of biomass, just as the rest of his underlings did now. The leader's dialogue had indicated a possibility that it was superior to the rest, but in the end, they were all the same: weak, groveling creatures to be devoured.

Would this be the standard of primitive spanning the vast majority of this anomalous world? Would there lie no challenges, no warriors worthy of true consumption?

The Collector knew that it should find relief at the prospect that this world was largely defenseless other than the question of these 'gods', but it could not help feel a twinge of…disappointment.

The admiration it had began to feel towards the 'champion' had long faded with these recent displays of pitiful weakness, the heat within its being simmered down without the prospect of battle to entice it.

The development of this native, unknown adaptation, too, seemed to be correlated with better regulation of this heat, though how and why, it did not understand yet.

The answers would come when it could question a 'sorcerer' more familiar with this topic. From contextual clues, it could parse that these 'sorcerers' possessed more knowledge of 'magic' but did not necessarily hold noteworthy combat capability.

In fact, if past evidence indicated anything, no 'sorcerer' was capable of effectively harming the Collector, though the goblin which styled itself as a 'thrall' did hold troublesome capabilities.

By now, the Collector could understand that not all familiar with 'magic' were equal, but this 'sorcerer' in the forest might possess equally difficult abilities to fight against. However, it was willing to undertake the risk to subdue this specimen.

The Collector started off towards its new goal, returning to its eight-legged form and skittering through the forest floor.

The Collector traveled two hours and twenty-five minutes. It could travel through the forest at a far faster rate than it could with its boar base as the jumping arakka was specialized for speed. And with its efficient processing systems, it could weave through the thick of the forest as if nothing stood in its way at all, and yet, an hour's worth of movement only allowed it to cover just shy of half this forest biome's length.

In conclusion: this forest biome was sizable, and there was much, much more of it the Collector had yet to explore farther to the north and, behind them as the soldier's map indicated, a mountain range and an entirely separate, colder biome.

Where the Collector stopped, it noted that the tree line ended, revealing a vast mud bank lined with craters. The rush of water flowing through a river echoed nearby – the source of moisture for this mud bank.

The river itself was wide enough that it determined that the humans of this world would require vessels to adequately travel across.

Judging from the strength and flow of the current, the Collector surmised that the ravine separating the lighter zone of the forest from the darker led to this larger river, and, remembering the map, it knew too that this river flowed down to the human settlement, likely providing it necessary water to subsist upon.

The map itself only largely laid out the expanse of this forest, Anendara as the humans called it, and this area along with the darkwoods was demarcated with a shade of darker coloring indicating a zone of danger.

The Collector could understand why as it felt the sensitive hairs lining the seams of its hyperalloy armor raise up.

Underneath the mud, giant scorpions lay dormant, ready to snatch up prey that neared them. These, the Collector did not invest much attention to, for they were beneath it as a threat.

No, it instead gazed up to the sky, its gleaming yellow eyes cutting through the dark of night to set upon the form of a pillar floating atop the wide river.

The Collector analyzed it.

Made by a tinkering civilization judging by intricate patterns of bones and skeletal systems marked upon dull rock. Cylindrical in construction. Dimensions of the structure sizable. Twenty-five meters high. Eight meters in diameter. Three segmentations in the rock indicating three floors.

Cloaked. An anomalous property refracted wavelengths of light visible to human ocular systems.

However, the Collector could see through it as its brethren had seen through countless different variations of cloaking devices from the spacefaring tinkerers. It understood that beneath this cloaking ability, the very top floor of the pillar glowed with light and heat.

Mechanisms of the cloaking capability: unknown.

Mechanisms by which it floated: unknown.

Both likely related to anomalous, special property tied to 'magic'.

High probability bordering on certainty of this being the 'sorcerer's territory.

Attempting to extrapolate this specimen and its construct's combat capabilities…

Unknown until direct contact made.

The Collector clicked its mandibles. The pillar floated at a height that it could reach.

Its beetle wings could not sustain long term flight, but it could, combined with the hydraulic pump of the arakka legs and its new coilbooster sub-adaptation that allowed for immense bursts of muscular power to perform a flying leap capable of reaching it.

For now, though, there were too many unknowns. It did not even know if the pillar was occupied in the moment, all it knew was that at this range, the pillar did not possess any anomalous capabilities able to sense the Collector.

So, the Collector waited and observed in the undergrowth, its form absolutely still as its eyes stared unmoving and unblinking at the pillar.

Ekur paced back and forth with his withered hands behind his back. His sunken eyes darted from side to side as he breathed heavy breaths through yellowed and broken teeth. The wrinkles of his face showed not just the wear of years, but also stress and, perhaps, a sprinkle of insanity here and there.

His sandaled footsteps echoed through the confines of his atelier, but for the first time in twenty years, another human other than himself would enter this sacred study space of his.

Where he had spent so much time defying the chains of the Sorcerer's Order in pursuit of a cure to Undeath, and finally, he would have it.

Yes, yes, all that time humiliated and running and hiding would finally come to an end with this. He would show those stuck-up fools of the council that he was right all along, that all he had done and sacrificed was for this greater good.

The footsteps belonged to a young man that ascended the spiral stone staircase leading into Ekur's chambers at the top-most floor of his floating atelier.

"Gods above, this place absolutely reeks," said the man as he put a black gloved hand to his hooded face. He stared at Ekur with hints of disgust, looking up and down at the sorcerer's stained, wrinkled brown robes. "When was the last time you bathed? A decade ago?"

"Fifteen years. The pursuit of the truth has long since caused me to transcend my physical needs."

"Evidently not," remarked the man as he pinched his nose. He scanned his surroundings.

Looked like a sorcerer's atelier. He could see the mana crystal suspended in the air above an upraised stone pillar at the center of the room. Judging from the color of the crystal, a pale, blue tinted white, it seemed to have pretty high purity.

Whiter the better, as he recalled back when he thought he would end up a scholar.

There was a small, stained mat in one end of the circular room with huge piles of dirty bowls standing at attention nearby. The sorcerer's living space. Small, comparatively speaking to the rest of the atelier.

The rest of the room's space was dominated with an alchemical laboratory, its tables full of colorful vials tubes bubbling with background noise. Surgical instruments lay scattered about the tables as did a few remnants of dried blood.

There was a smaller workstation for stone shaping. One table holding a pile of smoothed rocks and a sigilus, the favored tool for sorcerers to carve spells into stones via sigils.

The sigilus looked like a lengthy stylus of clay with a magnifying glass attached to the side, and judging by the dull blue aurichalcite bands circling the stylus, it was a pretty expensive model.

Good. Meant that this sorcerer probably had the coin to pay up.

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"Welcome to my grand atelier," said Ekur, ignoring the man and instead looking behind him. "Where? Where is it?"

When Ekur caught a glimpse of what the man carried behind him, the sorcerer rushed forwards with all the enthusiasm of a zealot meeting their god.

"Woah, stop right there," said the man as he held up a warning hand to the sorcerer. The man finished coming up the stairs, dragging a large trunk of chained wood behind him. With a sigh, he set the trunk down roughly, dropping the chain he dragged it with.

The trunk was rectangular in shape and almost the size of a man. It was a testament to the man's strength that he could lug something like that around with relative ease, just a few drops of sweat forming on his brow.

"No, you cannot damage it, is-is it damaged?" said Ekur as he tried to circle around the man. "If you have damaged it, I will unleash such mystic wrath upon you that Samas the Worldwind herself will bear witness to the destruction!"

"Look, I am not here to deal with this bullshit. The merchandise is fine, these holders are sturdy, magically reinforced on the insides." said the man. "And Samas? You are from Utu, then.

Far, far, far east. What are you doing here on the opposite side of the world? Actually, never mind, I don't really care.

Let's talk payment."

Ekur ignored the man completely. "I am here because the Order in all their prideful and misguided arrogance believes me, my wondrous research, wrong. Heretical, even. How? How can it be that they see me in the wrong when I have made such headway against the Undeath?"

"Woah," said the man without an ounce of enthusiasm. "Now let's talk about my payment. I lugged this over three country borders, one of which would have burned me alive if they caught me. You better have made this worth my while."

"Payment? Of course, a simpleton such as yourself would care so much for coin." Ekur shambled over towards a thick chest at the corner of his quarters, and the man raised a hungry brow at it.

The chest was a massive box of aurichalcite, already a valuable ore by itself, and it was larger than the sorcerer himself. Its dark blue, almost black surface was embedded with what must have been twenty sigilstones.

The sigil-carved stones glowed as they responded to the sorcerer touching the box, shutting down the security spells that guarded the box. The chest unlocked itself and opened with an invisible force, revealing several compartments, one of which was utterly packed with glittering gold coins.

"Now we're fucking talking," said the man with a whistle. "How in the undeath did you ever get so much coin? I mean, I can kind of see your pockets were packed, ateliers like this, floating and invisible ones especially, don't come cheap, but heh, looks like I doubted you for nothing."

Ekur responded positively to the praise and began to monologue about himself. "I have never been a sorcerer of much merit. My roots are subpar, limiting my ability to work with it.

But my knowledge and mind have always been sharp, far sharper and far more innovative than anyone else's, and that has allowed me to thrive where to so many have faltered.

Always, I have wished to help the common masses. In my youth, I devised a means for the common man to control the very elements himself, sheltering his home with a single sigilstone that bent the winds to his will."

"Shit, you invented wind conditioning," said the man with a nod. "I've even read about you in my textbooks.

Fore' I dropped out of the academy, of course, but still, you were a case study in arcane economics. How it doesn't matter how shitty your raw power is, if you can figure out a smart and cheap way to mass produce the right spells in the right sigil stones, you could get rich."

"I am NOT 'shitty'," said Ekur with an indignant shake of his senile fist. "I was blessed with the mind of gods! But cursed with the body of the common masses. In weaving the grand epic that is my life, I have had to rise above my lot and surpass every manner of challenge!"

"Okay, sure." The man shrugged. "Funny how life is. Rich entrepreneur like you turns into a crazy sorcerer hiding out at the edge of the world. I study economics and that lets me know when a market's ripe for the takin'. Ends up with me as a slaver.

Fate's a funny thing. Oh wait, there's a goddess for that

But whatever, enough about that. I'm just about dying to get back home with my pockets a lot heavier."

The man kicked the trunk with his boot, and it opened up, revealing an unconscious young girl inside, her sackcloth covered body trussed up tight by threaded bonds of black fabric. The insides of the trunk were padded with cushioned fabric, keeping the girl sheltered from outside impact.

The man pointed at the girl with the tip of his boot. She did not respond, instead lying in the trunk pale and still, almost motionless, only the shallow movement of her breathing indicating she was alive at all.

"These slave holders are custom made for Zerulians," he said, tapping at the trunk with his boot. "Helps with the vampyrs, mostly, but daemons don't like light either," said the man as he recited his common product pitch to convince customers their products were not damaged in transit. "Cushioning is lined with marsh rabbit fur – softer than a baby's bottom. Shock resistant and ventilated. Holder comes in different designs, don't raise eyebrows at border gates, well, most of them, anyhow.

The bonds are also fabric, not chains, so no tears on their skin, keeping them in pristine condition. They also come imbued with a sleeping curse that keeps your purchase docile. Oh, and the bonds come with the purchase, though you've gotta replenish them with mana every five or six days."

"Oh…how…how wonderful," said Ekur as he shoved past the man to stare at the girl.

"You can inspect the product, I guess," said the man as he looked at the greasy spot on his cloak where the sorcerer had touched him and patted it down. "Make sure there's nothing wrong with her. Price is still the same though. Two thousand gold.

Add two more to that for my horses -you didn't tell me there were flesh hungry giant fucking scorpions on the way here."

"Done, done," said Ekur as he waved the man away, focusing the entirety of his attention upon the wonderful specimen before him.

Lavender skin. Dark, fibrous hair. Goat-like ears. Small black nubs of horns just beginning to sprout from the forehead.

He took a bony finger and pried open her sleeping eyelid. Deep amethyst eyes. Yes. This was a genuine daemon.

"I nabbed her straight from Judica and let me tell you they don't fucking play around. There's a bit of an underground slave market there, but it's real, real underground. Moment one of their Executors sniffs a slaver out-," The man made a slicing motion with his hand across his neck. "Dead fucking meat. But I'm a professional."

The man noticed the sorcerer running his hands across the girl's body, inspecting her flesh with a zealous, almost worshipping intensity. "She's yet to be bled too. I'm assuming that's why you wanted her? Grey bearded sorcerer shut-ins like you tend to like them younger."

"Yes!" Ekur said fiercely. "She must be whole and pure. That is the only she will fit into the grand schematics of my ritual." He turned the girl around and narrowed his beady green eyes when he saw that her ponytail had been hacked off at the bottom. "She is not whole!"

"This is standard procedure," said the man as he put a hand to his hip, ready to draw his sword. At close range like this, even if this sorcerer with a cog or two loose in his head got aggressive, he would have the advantage. "We have to cut off the spikes in daemon hair. Otherwise, they can use their mind magic, and nobody wants that."

"This is not what I was promised!" shouted Ekur, spittle frothing from his mouth.

"Gods above, alright, calm down. Let's talk about this." The man put a hand to his head and rubbed his forehead. He could not afford this mad man to back out of this deal now, not when he had put so much expense into carrying the product.

If he got anywhere near the field of two thousand gold, he could quit his work and live off his wealth forever, black sun and ensuing supposed apocalypse be damned. If the world did start to end, he'd happily watch the desperate peasants try and swim past the moat of his new castle estate with a smile on his face.

But not if this idiot did not pay him. "I can lower my price by a hundred gold for damaged goods."

"Gold does not matter to me!" said the sorcerer as he shook his fist.

"Alright, then. Looks like you don't want her to warm your bed or anything like that. You want her for some kind of ritual." The man sighed. "Well, this might be good news. She's special. Judican cell she was taken out of was separate from the rest."

The man had wanted to withhold this information because it could mean the Judicans would send their executors after special prisoners taken from them, and nobody wanted an executor tailing them.

They were ruthless bloodhounds that would make sure anybody and anything that stood against them burned.

"Special?" The sorcerer grew even more interested.

The man sighed. "Yes. Means she probably had some kind of magical potential to her. And if you're going to make me stay here and talk, can you open a damned window so I can talk without breathing through my mouth?"

"Of course, of course," said Ekur as he waved stepped to the center of his quarters where a small altar of rock rose up, its tip a smooth surface lined with circuit carvings. He put his hand on the control conduit, tapping into his atelier's systems, and bid one of the stone walls to slide open.

The stone of the wall creaked as it parted, the bricks sliding into each other and baring half the tower to the outside world. Cool and dry night wind flowed in, and thank the gods, took out the sorcerer's stench.

"Always impresses me what sorcerers can do," said the man as he stepped to the edge of the open tower. He looked down at the rushing river and the mudbanks, then at the vast expanse of shadow shrouded trees. "Great view. I'd make sure my own castle keep had something like this."

"Tell me more! More!" said the sorcerer.

"Alright, just sit yourself down and calm-," the man stopped as he raised a brow. He was staring down at the riverbank, and did his eyes deceive him?

Something was skittering across it. A black blur, it seemed, barely visible from this distance. He thought maybe it was a floater in his eye, maybe something he got from lacking sleep, but no, this thing was real.

Right by the edge of the riverbank and underneath the atelier, it jumped up, getting much, much closer very, very quickly.

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