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

4. 91

Read Alien Evolution System Chapter 91 - Pied Piper online for free - AllNovelFull

The Collector listened to the frostborn hobgoblin exposit information as they traveled towards the goblin settlement.

Through the hobgoblin, the Collector came to know several pieces of information regarding their behavior and social organization.

There were five hobgoblin tribes, each numbering around one hundred, though the tribe this one hailed from, the so called 'Frostskull' tribe, had whittled down to below fifty in attempting to support the goblin lord.

The thrall that the Collector consumed had also originated from this tribe, and the elder that the hobgoblin spoke of was the thrall's mentor.

This raised possibilities that there was potential for this 'elder' to possess the advanced form of bone binding necessary to replicate the Burial Tusks. This, on top of the elder's significant probability of possessing considerable breadths of knowledge regarding this biome.

The elder was decrepit and required assistance to perform even basic survival actions. So long as the rest of the tribe was disabled, then the elder would never have the chance to escape.

As for the tribe itself, the Collector learned that the goblins of this biome were highly nomadic as a species. They primarily hunted, scavenged, and gathered, for when storms passed, the snow and ice thawed to a degree to expose edible flora and fauna attracted to them.

Yet, the monsters of this area were significantly stronger than those in the Darkwoods.

The Collector could sense this from the very moment it had warped into frigid snowscape.

The atmosphere here was different. In the beginning, when the Collector first began evolving in its prior forest biome, the Collector could only vaguely perceive it, but now it knew that the concentration of mana in this biome was much higher than in the Darkwoods.

This allowed some, but not all species to attain higher thresholds of strength. For example, the goblins of the Frostborn variant were a degree stronger than the black skinned variants in the forest biome, but the difference was not extreme.

Species in this biome such as the goblins, then, that did not find significant enhancements to their spirit roots, cores, and bone and muscle density among many other quantifiers for strength became scavengers due to their inherent weakness.

The goblins tracked stronger monsters and picked apart the remains of prey they hunted.

Sometimes, they themselves hunted prey, though rarely any with magical potential. Often, they finished off prey injured by other predators.

Thus, in scavenging and gathering, the goblins did not ever settle in one spot for long, and even if they could, they could not build permanent shelters for themselves due to the lack of building materials.

The presence of forests with wood, a common material for tinkerers to use as building material in early signs of civilization did exist, but far south from the Collector's location, and it was primarily a resource guarded and utilized by humans.

Humans, the Collector would have to avoid for now. The Collector had a far better grasp of the strength the tinkerers possessed and the relative degree of communicative connection they had with each other.

Assessing from their responses to the Collector and threats to their settlements from monsters such as the goblin lord, it did not seem that humanoid forces were united to any degree remotely nearing the high-speed and advanced communications of spacefaring tinkerers.

But the risk still remained that any attention the Collector brought to a human settlement would bring forth powerful counter-responses such as higher starred adventurers or potentially the winged humanoids.

Thus, until the Collector fully believed itself powerful enough, it would not attempt to engage with human settlements anymore unless there was a completely minimal risk of the Collector's presence becoming exposed.

At the very least, the Collector desired to rival the strength of the winged humanoid. It was difficult to approximate how many metamorphosis levels that would take, for calculations became nebulous when incorporating the highly fluctuating and unpredictable element of magical energy into the equation.

Thus, if the Collector was to obtain information about the tinkering species of this world, it would have to do so with specimen that were tangentially related to them.

For example, these goblins that knew of humans, feared them, attacked them, and yet were entirely separate from them.

The Collector clicked the mandibles of its main skull as it perceived that it was nearing the coordinates for the settlement it had memorized. It knew now that the goblins were currently settled in a structure called a Snowmound.

When sufficient levels of snow and ice built up over single spots, spots presumably concentrated with mana that altered the space in some manner, they formed Snowmounds: large, dome-like protrusions in the environment that became highly resistant to natural melting.

Within these, the goblins dug out temporary burrows to weather storms, though their hunting, gathering, and scavenging behaviors would always require them to move.

This was a rare occurrence where the entire Frostskull tribe was holed up in a Snowmound due to a storm.

The Collector stopped two hundred meters before the goblin gathering's coordinates. The frostborn hobgoblin under its control kept moving forwards, for the Collector had already unraveled the details of its minor plan to the specimen.

Unlike the goblin lord, the Collector possessed greater mana reserves to constantly utilize Higher Calling, but beyond a difference in capacity, the Collector possessed an exceptionally more honed understanding and fine utilization of mana, allowing it to more efficiently and effectively use the primal magic.

As the hobgoblin trudged forwards, out of sight, the Collector's back carapace clicked, splitting apart to unravel four white-capped firefly wings, the latticed structures gleaming with a faint, golden glow.

The Collector put strength into its tail, and then sailed up into the air, its four wings vibrating and flapping rapidly.

Rogg moved towards the location the lord had bid him to. He did so because he needed to. Because it was what he was meant to do, no matter what. He ignored the three days of hunger and thirst and cold. He did not even feel any of that anymore, not when the lord's words rang in his mind.

His body knew what it had to do, and it shut out the useless things like the pain or hunger that could stop him.

He trudged forwards with even, unnaturally mechanical steps, his posture straight and his arms dangling at his sides. When he started to see the Snowmound, that was when life began to spring back into his movements.

Mechanical steps became a hurried sprint. Blue eyes that only stared straight ahead began darting from side to side in excitement. Even breathing became hurried and deep. An expressionless face became twisted into one showcasing urgency.

As soon as Rogg neared the Snowmound, two warriors poked their heads out of a tunnel entrance. Rogg knew the two as the brothers Ogni and Ognu. They were young and quickly becoming strong. They looked up to Rogg.

They would listen to Rogg. They would listen to the lord.

"Out! Out! Monster coming!" shouted Rogg as he waved the brothers forward.

The two hobgoblins came out when they heard Rogg's voice, rushing through the snowy wind to support Rogg's shoulders once they saw how weakened he was.

"I not hurt much. But monster coming! Get others, we fight now!" said Rogg.

"Monster? What monster? Strong one? Do we run?" said one of the brothers. Both brothers looked to Rogg expectantly, knowing that Rogg was a good warrior whose words could be trusted.

A brave warrior, too. After all, Rogg was the only one willing to go into the storm to chase the Frostboar that had gutted Wun.

Rogg never did catch the boar, and the storm almost killed him, but he was thankful that it led him to the lord.

"No, no run!" said Rogg with a snarl. "It is big Frostbear. Wounded. We can kill! Tell champion. Give me club. We fight now, take bear's head. Then, we feast for days!"

Ogni and Ognu nodded, crawling back into the Snowmound. Ten minutes later, they came out with all the male hobgoblins charging behind them. The stronger ones had weapons. Clubs made out of the strong ice. The weaker ones used fists.

Ogni handed Rogg a club of strong ice. Rogg grunted in thanks as he gripped it.

"We hungry, take bear! Kill bear!" said the hobgoblins in a chant.

Rogg shouted in agreement and raised his club in the air, and as he did so, took note of how many there were. Twenty-three. All of them except the champion.

But soon, the champion came.

The champion struggled to leave out of the tunnel the rest of the hobgoblin came from, and it was clear why. The champion was two heads taller than them all, even Rogg, and much wider too. Much more muscle. Strong.

The champion grunted as he pushed himself out of the tunnel and then stood up, a sword of strong ice, one taken from the humans, in his big, scarred white hands. His tusks jutted out as he stared down at Rogg.

"You say there is Frostbear?" said the champion.

Rogg bowed his head and pretended to tremble. Once, he did fear the champion. Now, he knew the lord's words were far, far beyond the champion.

Soon, Rogg would lead them all to their true calling.

"Yes. Big bear, leg wounded. I lead us. Will feed us for days," said Rogg.

"I take half meat," said Gobb, the champion. "Because I fight bear alone. Rest of you, watch. I follow now. Go, Rogg."

Rogg nodded, baring his teeth in anticipation, and the rest of the goblins too bared their teeth and tensed their bodies for the hunt.

Though Rogg did not anticipate the hunt. He only felt eager for the praise that was to come his way from bringing his brethren to the lord's warm side.

Report chapter

Rogg led the whole tribe out, running ahead of all of them to show them the way. Their eyes and noses were sharp, but the winds were still snowy enough that it was hard for them to see much. Thus, they followed Rogg.

Thus, Rogg would deliver them to true service.

Rogg ran and ran, faster than everyone else even though just an hour before he had felt weak and hungry, because now that he knew his body acted in service to the lord, there was no need to hold back. If he died in service, he died with his purpose fulfilled.

Some distance away from the Snowmound, Rogg stopped, and so did his brethren. Gobb shoved Rogg backwards with his burly arm and grunted.

"So, where the bear?" said Gobb as he poised his huge Everfrost blade in front of him. His tusks jutted from the gap of his horned helm, a trinket he had taken from an adventurer some a year ago.

The adventurers were scary humans, but over the years, the tribe had learned that the weak ones, none of the humans cared for. If the weak adventurers died, nobody came seeking vengeance for them. And the strong ones, the tribe avoided anyway.

But now, Rogg knew that there was no need to be scared anymore. Not of Gobb, not of adventurers, not of anything.

Such was the lord's light and warmth.

"No bear," said Rogg as he knelt into the snow. He looked up into the air with craned neck, his arms outstretched upwards, hands cupped as if to receive glorious blessing from the heavens, and soon, he saw a glimmer of gold shine through the white noise of snowy wind.

"Only lord."

"What!?" Gobb swiveled around to Rogg with a snarl, his tusks rattling as they jutted from his lips. Gobb grabbed Rogg's neck, his massive, scarred hand wrapping around Rogg's own sizably muscular neck in a comfortable grip.

"What you mean? You waste our time!?" shouted Gobb, spittle flying from his mouth as his blue eyes narrowed in a leer.

"The lord comes," Rogg managed to choke out through Gobb's grip.

The Collector, wreathed in an aura of light and flames that spiraled around it, descended upon the group of gathered hobgoblins like a falling meteorite. Its sheer weight caused sheets of snow to churn up around its landing point, though as soon as the snow flew up, it sizzled and melted.

Before the hobgoblins could process more than just startled looks, the Collector projected its voice.

"Stop. Be still. Be quiet."

The voice echoed out in resonating peals, and as soon as those enchanted sound waves washed over the hobgoblins, they no longer became independent entities. They became units. All of the tribe grew still and quiet, their arms hanging limp by their sides as they faced straight forwards with blank expressions.

All of the tribe except a specimen the Collector could immediately realize from his bulk and density of magical energy as the champion.

The champion remained still, but his body trembled as he strained against the Dominus-type magic.

Curious. The Collector slithered over to the champion and wreathed one of its ocular systems in magical energy, allowing it to better perceive the flow of mana to check for irregularities.

"So it is this," said the Collector as it put a finger on the champion's helmet. The flames raging from the Collector singed the champion's skin, but the champion could do nothing but remain still and face the burning heat.

The Collector could immediately note that there was a marking on the helmet packed with patterns of mana that formulated a spell. In essence, magic stored in certain symbols.

A common occurrence, it seemed in this world among tinkerers. Tinkerers engraved mundane objects with certain symbols, thereby granting them magical properties.

Here, the champion seemed to gain some measure of mental resistance, though not much. Regardless, the helmet was useless to the Collector for it could not process such sigils within its own body.

The Collector knew from experience dealing with goblins that neither the champion nor his tribe had not created this item. They simply lacked the necessary technological development. Likely, this piece of protective metal headgear had been taken from a tinkering species.

The Collector reached out for the helmet, and the champion managed to eke out words through its imposed stasis.

Through gritted teeth, the champion stared at the Collector and muttered out, "Coward. You…no fight…do this."

The Collector stopped as its hands wrapped around the helmet, the flames wreathing its fingers slowly warping the shape of the weak metal. Then, it withdrew its hand and inched backwards, allowing its aura of heat and flames to stop damaging the champion.

"All of you," said the Collector, its voice projecting again in echoes. "Create a ring around myself and this specimen. Grant us ten meters of space within which to freely move."

All the hobgoblins immediately followed this order. They moved with precision, rushing into a circular formation with a degree of coordination they would never have been able to observe had they all been merely individuals.

Within half a minute, the goblins formed a ring of meat around the Collector and the champion.

"I shall assess now whether you are worthy enough of a specimen to undergo evolution," said the Collector as it moved back, granting the champion three meters of space. With a click of its mandibles on its main skull, the Collector broke the mental dominus on the champion.

"Now, engage in combat with me as you so desire," said the Collector, outstretching its four pairs of arms in welcome invitation.

Now free, the champion's eyes shifted from side to side, and the Collector clicked its mandibles again in disappointment, an emotion it was becoming more and more familiar with. The champion from its body language, the movement of its eyes, and the rushed cadence of its breathing felt fear, seeking only escape.

It would seem that the red-skinned hobgoblin champion possessed far more worthy a mindset than this inferior specimen.

However, when the champion realized there truly was no escape, that the ring of his brethren would push him back no matter, he faced the Collector with his Everfrost blade drawn. The champion snarled, his lips curling up to bare his sharp teeth and tusks.

"Agreeable," said the Collector, its six skulls peering down at the champion from a half meter height advantage.

"I…I fight." The champion eyed the Collector's monstrous form up and down, evidently attempting to assess the Collector's combat capacity. However, the champion had no reference with which to compare the Collector to, no monster or warrior or beast similar at all.

But the champion knew that if he did not act, he would die. Thus, the Collector observed as the champion shot forwards, an aura of red wreathing his body.

A chaos-origin mana type, it seemed. Like the Collector.

The chaotic but powerful bursts of mana empowered the champion, and he accelerated forwards with enhanced speed and strength, swinging his blade to slice the Collector's stomach horizontally.

The Collector blocked the swing with the forearm carapace of one of its arms. The Everfrost blade clanged as it struck hyperalloy carapace, and the champion grit his teeth as he felt shock travel up his arm from hitting an immovable, solid wall.

Yet, the Collector's carapace did not yield. There the faintest hint of a chip from the point of impact, and damage so miniscule smoothed over with regeneration instantly.

The champion opened its mouth in surprise, but before he could utter any words, the Collector thrust out its other arm grabbed the champion's throat, lifting the two-and-a-half-meter giant of a goblin specimen up into the air with complete ease.

"My calculations have already proved as much, but it would seem that my strength now far outstrips that of any potential champion variant," said the Collector. It stared at the champion's gargling face as the Collector's hand choked the life out of it.

The champion thrashed and punched and kicked at the Collector, dropping his blade now that it was useless in such close range. None of the blows did anything. Rather, with how desperate they were, the Collector could only see that they damaged themselves, the skin peeling off and the knuckles beginning to fracture.

"Fight me to the death. Utilize every ounce of strength your meager form possesses," said the Collector, commanding the champion with Higher Calling.

The champion's blows redoubled in effort, but he only damaged himself more. Now, his desperate blows, pushed past their bodily limits, shattered bones and tore chunks of flesh from his feet and hands as he slammed them into the Collector.

None of the blunt force blows dealt any damage to the Collector for its long chain chitinous sublayer was highly shock absorbent. At best, they created small chips in the carapace itself, but again, these healed over with regeneration.

The Collector noted as the champion's bloody strikes grew weaker and more desperate, slower now that his face was turning blue from lack of oxygen.

"You are a champion. Thus, I had assessed you the potential to evolve among your kind. But now, it is difficult to calculate whether you possess the necessary means," said the Collector. "Nevertheless, I shall experiment."

Another of the Collector's arms arched back and balled into a fist. An aura of black-tinged red formed around the first before the Collector slammed it into the champion's stomach.

Report chapter

The champion, however, despite its wound, was not dead. Far from it. If all went well, it would be more alive than it ever had been.

The Collector activated the secondary ability of Higher Calling: the capacity to evolve goblin subspecies into higher variants of themselves. Those forcibly evolved could also be connected to the Collector's mana pool, regenerating infinitely so long as the Collector possessed the mana to sustain it.

However, there were several limitations to this ability. The higher the subspecies of goblin, the more difficult it was to force them to undergo evolution to their next subspecies variant.

It required that the specimen possess an innate magical and biological potential to come close to reaching that evolution by themselves, and the higher the evolution, the more potential was needed from the specimen.

Thus, it was easy to ascend a goblin into a hobgoblin for the gap was not incredibly large in terms of required potential.

Far more difficult to ascend a hobgoblin into a champion.

And now, how difficult would it be to ascend a champion into the next in its line of biological advancement?

The Collector withdrew its fist from the champion's stomach and let the specimen go.

The champion fell onto his knees on the snow, blood pooling from his stomach wound and freezing on the snow. The hole in his stomach quickly sealed, however, as black tendrils began to form from the raw, bloody wound.

The champion's sizable form shuddered rapidly as his blue eyes rolled into his head. His body began to morph and distend every which way, arms and legs twisting in ways they were biomechanically should not be capable of. His muscles swelled and rippled as if ready to crawl out of his skin.

The Collector noted as the champion's magical energy levels began to surge, an aura of red swirling out from his convulsing form, and then, they plummeted.

As the red aura dissipated, the champion's form burst apart at the seams like a popped balloon.

Chunks of flesh scattered everywhere in an explosion of blood that left nothing but skeletal chunks flattened against the snow.

Disappointing, thought the Collector as it hunched its chest over the mass of freezing bones, organs, and flesh. The Collector's detachable maw burst open from its stomach, twin masses of teeth and grinding flesh clamping down on the champion's remains.

The maw could expand to such a degree that when it scooped up the remains, it shoveled up a sizable chunk of snow as well, leaving zero traces of the champion's existence. Only an indent in the snow that acted like a grave marker, though the snow would quickly cover it up.

The maw retracted back into the Collector's stomach, and the split gap sealed shut.

*Biomass gained*

Biomass Level: 0/100 5/100

*Genetic material gained*

Stored Genetic Material:

-Frostborn Hobgoblin Thrall [Core]

-Vineswinger Goblin Champion [Core]

-Windcutter Wildcat

-Shockstripe Eel

-Lurker

-Goblin Lord [Core]

-Frostborn Goblin Champion

*Spirit Roots Gained*

Root Consumption Level: 5/100%

The Collector noted that this champion possessed more raw magical energy than the red-skinned one. But his fine control over it was severely lacking.

As for this failed evolution, the Collector took note, analyzed, and adjusted its calculations. Just as it did with the magical power that allowed for high speed projectiles or the many applications of combat based mana usage it learned, it required data and experience to utilize perfectly.

All the powers it interacted with in this new world were entirely novel, completely out of the bounds of prior calculations and calibrations the Collector was originally created for, thus, it had to adjust, reassess, and adapt.

The Collector took note of the forced evolution's mechanics. It involved injecting a substantial 20% of the Collector's mana into a specimen. This initial burst of mana spread into the specimen's core, and from there, hijacked it and forced a particular set of biological and magical growths.

Like an enzyme locking into a substrate, the initial injection of mana shaped itself under the Higher Calling primal magic into a structure capable of inducing a fit with the core. In this case, this induced fit was only capable of slotting into the structures of goblin cores.

When the injection of mana locked into the core, it catalyzed a reaction of biological and magical modifications that led into the evolution.

The Collector clicked the mandibles on its main skull in understanding. Now that it had observed the general processes of the magic, it could now work on finer tuning.

"Come before me," said the Collector, and its intent was conveyed such that the goblin it spoke to, Rogg, drew forwards, kneeling before the Collector.

"Stand," said the Collector, and the hobgoblin did so.

The Collector enveloped one of its hand in the magical energy signature of the Higher Calling power. Black lined with flickers of red wreathed its fingers as it slammed its hand into the hobgoblin's chest.

Mana Level: 60% 45%

A significant mana cost again.

But this was to be expected.

In skipping a metamorphosis level, the Collector had skipped an entire level within which to obtain spirit roots. Thus, it could be said that while its metamorphosis level was at an eight, its spirit level was still at seven.

Of course, the Collector now had an increased root consumption limit to account for two levels, but it would have to operate on a total mana pool that was only sixty percent of what it should be.

Higher costing abilities such as those of the Firefly Shinchu and the goblin lord's Higher Calling were therefore to be utilized sparingly.

This time with the hobgoblin, the Collector mediated its output and made it more efficient, cutting off five percent of the mana cost. It carefully punched into the hobgoblin's chest only until it could grasp the hobgoblin's heart with surgical precision.

The hobgoblin stood utterly still even as blood began to trickle from his lips due to the lethal wound.

The Collector made adjustments to the flow of mana within the higher calling 'substrate', reducing the rate of forced mana flow to ease burden on the physical body as well as adapting said flow to individually better suit the hobgoblin.

After several seconds, the Collector pulled out its hand and observed.

The hobgoblin shuddered and his body begin to twist and shake, the muscle underneath the skin bulging in odd and unnatural undulations. However, the movements were far less violent than with the champion.

The hobgoblin doubled over as his body and roots were rewritten at a base level, and then, it was over.

The Collector observed as the hobgoblin stood up straight almost half a meter taller. His frame was padded with significantly more muscle, and tusks jutted from his lips. His blue eyes had become dyed a bright red and tendrils of black had sprouted from his back.

A successful evolution into a champion.

The tendrils, the Collector realized were essentially antennae. Organic protrusions that received the Collector's mana. If the Collector willed it, it could stimulate a rapid healing factor by transferring its magical energy into the champion via the tendrils.

Interesting.

Another potential site for modifications. Already, the Collector could theorize multiple improvements in efficiency and effect. Lowered cost of regeneration. Lowered passive cost to maintain the evolved goblin's sustained existence. A potential to induce offensive capabilities in the tendrils.

Everything related to this power and the goblins were quite flexible. The Collector noted now that it had devoured a great many goblin genetic samples that their biological forms were highly adaptable, quickly altering their structures and basic functions to survive in different environments,

Presumably, it was through the imbibement of specific atmospheric mana that induced these changes, and the lord's Higher Calling power interacted heavily with this adaptability to induce its own changes.

The Collector stared at its hand for a moment. With sufficient data in utilizing this power, it could potentially alter it such that it affected itself. The primary factor involved in whether a goblin was successful in its evolution was the idea of potential.

What would occur if the Collector whose goblin elite genes were of prime material induced Higher Calling within itself?

Yet, not now.

Without data, the likelihood of internal injury was significant.

The Collector would continue to adjust and calibrate more once it regained the mana it lost. Pores in its carapace opened as it began to maximally draw in mana flow from the environment, regenerating its mana at the rate of 1% per minute.

It theorized that there was even potential to alter this Higher Calling ability such that it could affect races that were not goblins.

It had memorized the approximate structures of human cores via analyzing their hearts, but it would need a fresh sample to constantly experiment with Higher Calling and ensure successful alterations.

For now, it moved on, slithering towards the Snowmound.

"Come," said the Collector as it passed through the ring of hobgoblins. The hobgoblins broke their formation and immediately began to file behind the Collector. "Advance ahead. Circle the Snowmound. Do not let any specimen within leave."

Report chapter

The Collector watched from outside as the hobgoblins circled the Snowmound and began to file in and out, bringing out females, hobgoblin children, and a sparse few of the smaller goblin variants.

It was interesting to analyze the Snowmound and its structure. By encasing its ocular systems with magical energy, the Collector could perceive the exact mechanics by which the flow of magical energy created such a geographic anomaly.

It would seem that just as mana flowed within the body of living beings with analogous physical vessels such as the core to the heart and spirit roots to blood vessels and nerves, so too did mana flow through the world.

With the world, however, the analogous physical vessels were parts of its physical terrain.

Thus, the 'spirit roots' of the world could be perceived within the wind, growths of flora, the running of water bodies, and so on and so forth.

All of these also indicated degrees of flow.

A particularly healthy forest biome, for example, should indicate the presence of particularly strong mana flow.

The Snowmounds were concentrations of mana flow. An intersection of various points of mana lines traveling across the terrain. Here, snow and winds, the physical vessels of mana, congregated, forming into large mounds that could easily house this tribe of hobgoblins.

At a certain point of development, the Snowmounds also became charged with enough magical energy that they came to defy certain natural processes, becoming self-sustaining and resistant to melting.

These hills of magically charged snow were therefore both physical and magical shelters, providing insulating warmth and also strong wellsprings of mana.

The Collector could utilize the Snowmound to imbibe more atmospheric mana, for until it reached the cap of its root consumption limit, consuming creatures would not restore its reserves.

In the Snowmound, the Collector calculated that it could increase the regeneration rate of its mana pool from one percent per minute to five percent per minute.

But first, there was to subjugate the rest of the tribe.

By now, the Collector saw that the whole tribe had assembled. The male specimen held down the females and children, keeping them corralled in a cage of bodies that once were meant to protect them.

The Collector slithered over to the ring of packed females and young. All of them shrieked and shied away from it, and many of the hobgoblin males snarled, taking offense to such a reaction to their 'lord.'

The Collector spoke with Higher Calling. "Be still."

Its voice resonated outwards, and as the echoing peals washed over the rest of the goblins, they came under its eternal servitude.

The Collector had theorized about what it would do with these specimens. It depended on a variety of factors, but the greatest was in whether they were self-sustainable and capable of moving unnoticed by tinkerers.

This, the Collector would glean from the elder.

"Where is the specimen you designate as an 'elder'?" said the Collector. "Bring the specimen forth."

"Take time. Elder slow and weak," said one of the hobgoblins.

The Collector waited.

A minute later, the elder emerged from the tunnel entrance of the Snowmound.

As expected of its title, the elder was an aged specimen. At the twilight of his biological lifespan, quite likely. Potentially nearing sixty years.

He hobbled forwards on a rough stick fashioned to support failing legs. His limbs were thoroughly atrophied by age and lack of usage, thin strands of muscle lying weak under wrinkled white skin.

His head was hunched over with a large, hooked nose dotted with warts, and thin grey wisps of hair speckled the top of his balding head. In size, vertebral compression along with accompanying muscle loss caused him to be less than half the bulk of the average hobgoblin.

A hobgoblin had to continually assist the elder as he walked, hobbling with some difficulty through the thick snow towards the Collector.

From the elder's dulled pupils and the way the hobgoblin assisting him had to nudge him this way and that, the Collector could discern the elder was blind, or at the very least, lacked sight to such a degree he was functionally sightless.

"Hrunt…is that you, child?" said the elder as his wrinkled, pointed ears pricked up. He adjusted his weak gait towards the Collector, picking up likely on the Collector's magical energy.

Likely, the elder picked up on a magical energy signature within the Collector that was foreign. The Collector surmised it was due to the fact that it had slotted in the Frostborn Hobgoblin Thrall's core.

"Something…something about you has changed," said the elder as he ambled forwards, one hand on his walking stick, the other stuck out in front of him, towards the Collector.

"You are now to heed my words," said the Collector, its voice echoing with the power of Higher Calling. It had decided to save the elder for last, noting from the others that the elder possessed higher levels of magical energy than the rest and therefore potentially more resistance to mental interference.

The Collector inputted in more magical energy with this command, and as the elder heard the words, he stiffened, then nodded.

"Ah, I see now. You are here, my lord. Lord…no…this feeling, it is…it is more akin to a king," said the elder. He hobbled on his walking stick. "I would like to kneel, but my body fails me."

Tears began to well up in the sides of the elder's eyes. "To think, to think that even our king rises from the tales of myths and legends. Will you return us to the old age?"

The Collector clicked the mandibles on its main skull.

Higher Calling did work on this elder specimen, but not to the same degree it did on any other goblin species.

Instead of utterly blind devotion, the elder merely was suggested to treat the Collector as a 'king', presumably a title of authority outstripping the 'lord' in rank.

As for why, the Collector could make several theoretical guesses, many of them involving the potential that highly magically sensitive goblins possessed cores that differentiated in structure sufficiently to prevent the highly specific nature of the Higher Calling powers from working at maximum capacity.

However, to test these theories, the Collector would have to directly inspect the elder's heart, and any manner of physical trauma upon a specimen this fragile possessed over a ninety percent chance of leading to death.

Untenable now when the elder was the Collector's greatest potential source of knowledge for this new biome.

At the very least, the elder seemed thoroughly willing to cooperate with the Collector of his own free will.

"I know now of what this 'old age' entails. Yet, I sense it is within your vested interest to ensure the continued safety of this social unit," said the Collector. "Tell me, does this area, this Snowmound, possess enough safety to reside within for extended periods of time?"

The elder put a hand to the air, feeling its billowing currents. The winds were not as strong here as they were in the winter storm that had passed, and the elder noted this with a nod.

"The storm has passed. The Shadows will come back soon to take shelter from the clearing skies and the light of the sun. But I sense that the clouds still gather against the sun. It will take some time. Two hours, yes, that does seem right, my king."

"No other presences threaten this location? No humanoid civilizations?" asked the Collector.

The elder shook his head. "No, my king. Our people are safe here til' the Shadows come. Then, must we leave lest we invoke their ire."

"Agreeable. Then this extraction of information shall continue within the structure of the Snowmound," said the Collector.

Within the Snowmound, the Collector turned off its aura of flames for the space was insulated enough against the cold such that its flames could risk overheating those within or perhaps melting even the magically enhanced structure.

It was of noteworth that the space of the Snowmound was larger within that its external physical dimensions would indicate.

Perhaps another result of mana concentrating in this point.

The difference in space was significant, indicating almost a doubling of space within compared to what could be perceived from the outside, but nothing extreme.

The Collector did not find much surprise at this casual warping of space. It now knew to note the importance of phenomena upon this world of magic not by how they broke conventional natural laws, but instead by the scale of the effects they manifested.

The Collector coiled down within what was essentially a domed room of snow spacious enough for the whole tribe to sit around it. Pores within its carapace drank in the thick concentration of magical energy within this space, accelerating its mana regeneration greatly.

Not five percent per minute. The Collector reassessed its calculations. Ten percent per minute seemed more an accurate deduction.

Here, the Collector could even continue to maintain the existence of the newly evolved champion without worrying about continual mana loss. It would have liked to keep this area as a territory for itself as it provided the necessary magical energy to fuel its experimentation with Higher Calling.

If the Collector could modify Higher Calling's evolutionary function such that it removed the need for the evolved specimen to continually drain the Collector's mana, then it could theoretically evolve the entire tribe and possess a formidable fighting force.

This, however, was contingent upon the information the elder gave it and whether this space could be wrested from these entities known as 'Shadows'.

The elder sat cross-legged in front of the Collector, utterly dwarfed by the Collector's size.

"Explain to me more of these Shadows," said the Collector. "And the nature of threat they pose."

Report chapter

"The Shadows…yes, my king, you would not know of these cold wastes and the dangers that lurk within them," said the elder. He put his wizened hands to his knees as he bowed his head and spoke. "The sun already finds little purchase in these lands where dark clouds and snow choke the life from it. Here, darkness thrives.

The Shadows are creatures of this night. Born from it. Forged from it. Their history is recent, for in the great many records that have been left unto me by my elder and the elders before him, it has only been ten life cycles since their emergence."

The Collector automatically calculated that ten life cycles would be approximately five hundred years in considering the elder's lifespan as a reference point.

"But since their arrival, they have been a plague. A small, contained one, but a terror nonetheless," said the elder. "They have no true form. None that may be seen with the physical eye. Not even with the magical eye. Thus, it may be that they do hold a form and that none have simply grasped it.

Or perhaps they are malevolent entities of the dark that hold no true physical vessel.

All that is known is that they dwell within the shadows.

When there is light, they move from shadow to shadow, whenever points of darkness touch. Thus, in light, when the sun shines, they do not appear.

But in the dark, when there are storms, they hold free reign over the world. They emerge from anywhere, and they grasp at the feet of those with flesh that live within the light and drag them into their darkness.

What happens to their victims, none knows. Merely that they do not return."

The Collector clicked the mandibles on its main skull in understanding. "It can be reasoned then that the most optimal method to prevent the approach of these entities is through the sustained production of light."

"Tis' true, my king, yet hard," said the elder. "The winds here will make quick work of any torch. Lightstones drain of their magical energy in these withering, sapping colds. The Shadows come, and they are relentless.

They will outlast any torch. Any lightstone."

But not the Collector's light, noted the Collector. An infinitely self-sustained form of magical light that burned independent of wind currents or most magical interferences – this is what the Collector possessed.

A natural ward against any of these entities. Whether they were consumable specimen or whether they were like the snow sprites, simply clumps of intangible energy, were to be seen.

"Can these entities be made to expire? What necessary force or conditions are required for their demise or injury?" said the Collector.

"Light they cannot escape from," said the elder. "In the day, the elder before me told me of a tale where the sun broke through a gap between the clouds, and the shadows pursuing him were left illuminated without any other spots of darkness to escape to.

There, they burned and screamed a horrible scream that haunted him to the last of his many days."

A potential for these entities to therefore be specimen, then, thought the Collector. The presence of a scream would indicate physical organs, and if that was the case, the Collector would be eager to devour a sample of this specimen and obtain its ability to traverse the seemingly impossible spaces of darkness within cast shadows.

"Did these entities, when exposed to inescapable sunlight, leave any corpses? Physical signs of their expiration?" said the Collector.

The elder shook his head. "No. Once their screams ended, what arose from the shadows were Snow Sprites. Fitting, in a way.

Shadows that haunt and hunt in the cold and dark burn to become sprites that guide all those in need to warmth."

The elder froze. "Do…do you sense that, my king?"

The Collector noted that the elder's sensitivity to changes in atmospheric pressure, particularly those related to the flow of magic, was quite high, rivaling even that of the Collector's. Possibly a side effect of his lost vision: his magical sensitivity arose to compensate for compromised physical sight.

There was a distinct change in pressure. A heaviness accompanied by a slight chill.

"Ah…what misfortune," said the elder. "The Shadows are here. But why? They should have left this mound long ago, following the darkness of the storm until it broke apart. I…forgive me, my king, for my error."

"Do not waste time engaging in apologetics. Divert your mind to the tasks before you," said the Collector.

It heightened its awareness of its surroundings but did not project its magical energy out in a field around it, for it understood in dealing with tinkerers that utilized such techniques their limitations.

By spreading magical energy latent within the body to a sufficiently large area around the body, less mana was available to defend to provide defense to the body itself, rendering it less capable of summoning large quantities of mana or leaving it more susceptible to mental manipulation.

"We must flee. The Shadows…they are surrounding us." The elder tried to hobble on to his walking stick and thrust out a hand to the rest of the goblins. "Protect your king with your lives! We must leave!"

The Collector clicked its mandibles loudly, and the elder stopped. "Your brethren understand well already that they are to utilize their lives in my defense. Thus, they are arranged in defensive ring around me. You, stay and continue to identify the movements of these 'Shadows.'

The elder nodded slowly and sat back down in front of the Collector.

"Move backwards. Ten meters," said the Collector.

The elder nodded again and scooted back through the snow, and when he was far enough away, the Collector activated its flames once again.

From the red-feathered tendrils on its back came sparks, and those sparks caught on the tendrils and created a raging conflagration that at first exploded outwards into wild tongues of fire. The light of the Shinchu at the Collector's chest shone, and the flames began to calm, to flicker and swirl around that point as it fed off the light and sustained itself.

Mana Level: 9080

The Collector noted as light illuminated the dark depths of the Snowmound, though not completely. The raging flames around the Collector cast countless shadows all around, and these, the Collector's six pairs of ocular systems kept keen eyes on, noting any irregularities of movement within them.

The Collector itself, if the elder was correct, was completely out of risk due to the unending light and flames wreathing it. So too would the elder and most of the tribe so long as they stayed within the innards of the Snowmound close enough to the Collector.

"Wh-what warmth!" The elder drew nearer, slowly so as not to burn himself, sticking out a tentative and trembling hand towards the Collector's flames. "And such light, I can feel it. Can you maintain this, my king?"

"Without any external interference, it is possible," said the Collector.

"Then-then we can fear the Shadows no more!" said the elder with triumph, baring his decayed and chipped teeth. "These Snowmounds, they are the homes of the Shadows that we take only during storms, when the Shadows leave them to hunt.

But with this light, these can now be our homes."

The elder shivered, pricking his ears up. "The Shadows are displeased. I hear their whispers. They wait at the edge of the light. They wait to take us."

"You are capable of perceiving communications from these specimens?" said the Collector.

"Only…only whispers. Only those that have been touched by the Shadows can hear them. I…I was touched when I was a boy, when one tried to take me under to the land of the dark."

"What do these auditory signals convey to you?" said the Collector.

"Death. They promise my impending doom. I cannot truly understand them, they are of a tongue none know, but I feel their intent," said the elder.

"Continue to convey me additional information regarding these specimen as you can," said the Collector. It decided in the meanwhile to enact some forms of experimentation.

The Collector mentally bid the evolved hobgoblin champion to step out of the light and outside the Frostmound.

Judging from the elder's bodily language that conveyed abject fear, the Collector fully knew such an action would likely cause the champion's demise at the hands of these Shadows. However, the Collector desired data, and an evolved champion was not a rare resource.

There were thirty-seven hobgoblin specimen counting both males and females available to evolve.

The champion would provide useful data to the Collector, for the Collector would be able to see through the champion's eyes and link to his senses. If these Shadows pulled the champion into

The champion turned and trudged out, each of its marching steps leaving it more and more exposed to the dark.

"Who leaves!?" said the elder. "Those heavy steps, Gobb, is that you? Come back, you fool! You cannot beat the Shadows with force!"

"Calm yourself," said the Collector, evoking Higher Calling. The elder fell under the mental suggestion and eased up. "He marches now to provide me data within which I may potentially extract a means to eliminate these specimens."

The Collector sensed that a normal tinkerer controlling a magically bound specimen like this would have to close their eyes and remain still in order to fully attune with their controlled unit, but the Collector had enough mental processing power to do so without any compromise of its own functions.

Thus, even as it looked at the elder and listened to it, it could also fully perceive the sights, sounds, and feelings the champion took in.

The champion stepped outside the boundaries of the Snowmound, crawling his way out of the tunnel.

As soon as his brawny figure stood up in the bare darkness of the outside, there occurred interesting phenomena -

Report chapter

The evolved hobgoblin champion took tentative steps into the darkness, his formidably muscled body tensed and ready to fight of any manner of attack. For the first few seconds, the Collector observed that the unit did not encounter any resistance.

In fact, aside from the ever-increasing aura of heaviness, an atmospheric phenomenon created by a high concentration of a type of magical energy that the Collector had never yet sensed before, the environment seemed normal.

The complete dark of nightfall upon empty winter waste. Pure, solid darkness painting over what should have been reflective white.

From here, the attacks came.

The entire process lasted 0.77 seconds, but in that time, the Collector perceived many stimuli upon the goblin champion unit.

No less than twenty-five appendages grasping the unit from every single direction. Each appendage fashioned entirely out of darkness, jutting out seamlessly from the body of natural dark and shadow surrounding the unit.

The appendages were like those of a tinkerers, but different. The hands upon these appendages possessed three large fingers. The fingers were sharp, tapered to points like claws, but completely featureless due to being blocks of darkness.

The hands did not seem to possess any three-dimensional space. They traveled only upon planes of dimension corresponding with shadows and darkness, and thus it was more accurate to describe that they wrapped around the goblin champion unit more so than they grabbed it.

Yet, the sensation was no different from a three-dimensional hand's grip.

Tight, vice-like grips that easily overpowered the champion unit.

After 0.77 seconds, the champion unit was utterly torn apart, and the hands drew the shorn chunks of the unit down into the darkness where they sank as if drawn underwater.

The Collector could not put an accurate estimate of strength upon these appendages. Their strength was entirely of magical phenomena, but even in terms of magic, it was extremely difficult to gauge anything about them.

The type of energy they emitted had some similarities with the wavelengths of mana, but at the same time, they were noticeably different.

Whatever this entity was, it originated from magic, but it had become something detached from it now.

No normal methods of sensing magical flow or composition would yield any results. Only direct data via visuals and other sensory input.

The Collector continued to perceive as much as it could through the champion unit's still in-tact head, utilizing regeneration to constantly maintain neural functions within the decapitated body part so as to see where exactly this darkness led into.

The Collector did not perceive much of anything.

Pure, utter darkness.

Yet, a much familiar sensation. The feeling of water. Of being submerged.

In some fashion, similar to how the Collector 'floated' in its 'sea' of collected psionic profiles.

And in this depth of darkness, the Collector perceived now its connection with the champion unit's brain becoming hazy, filled with static. This was not a degradation of physical functioning on the champion unit's part, but instead degradation of the very psionic link that chained the Collector to the champion unit.

No, this was more than degradation.

This was infiltration.

The Collector's link severed with the champion unit, indicating that whatever force was initiating this infiltration possessed psionic power eclipsing that which could be outputted from Higher Calling.

And now, by jumping through the link with the champion, it had entered the Collector's psionic profile.

The Collector could choose to immediately sever the link and limit the degree of infiltration it experienced, but it assessed its situation and allowed it to happen.

Whispers.

The Collector understood now what the elder meant when he heard whispers from the darkness.

These whispers, the Collector felt reaching into the core of its being as they attempted to overrun the Collector's psionic profile.

The whispers themselves, the Collector noted were not entirely what the elder had stated. They did not promise death. No, their tone was more of a beckoning.

Come.

Come to us.

This was what the Collector determined the whispers attempted to convey. As these whispers grew in intensity, so too did the infiltration as they attempted to hijack the Collector's psionic profile.

The Collector clicked the mandibles on its main skull. This time, not in understanding or inconvenience, but in anticipation.

[PSIONIC INFILTRATION DETECTED. FOREIGN PSIONIC PROFILE DETECTED.]

[INITIATING ASSIMILATION PROTOCOL…]

The Collector felt the evolutionary system shard within it activate and engage its anti-infiltration procedures.

Among tinkering species that traveled the stars, there existed a few among their populaces that were incredible psions. Those capable of manifesting their mind's will upon matter itself or, if they so desired, upon the minds of others.

Yet, not even the highest grade of psion would ever be capable of dominating the psionic profile of a Collector-class unit, for the shard of the Hivemind within, even when detached from the main body, easily possessed the processing power to effortlessly overpower any individual psion.

Those psions foolish enough to try, particularly in the early stages of the United Front-Collective Conflict, found their minds shattered and assimilated into the Collective instead.

This would be no different.

[ASSIMILATION PROCEEDING…]

There was no psionic force throughout entire star systems capable of dominating the mind of a Collector unit.

Already, the Collector could feel as the whispers lost their beckoning tone and became shrieks of desperation.

Then, as suddenly as the whispers had come, they faded.

[ASSIMILATION HALTED AT 10% COMPLETION]

[FOREIGN INFILTRATION WITHDRAWN]

[CONVERTING PSIONIC DATA TO SHARD HOST…]

Audible shrieks echoed from outside.

Shrill shrieks that sounded like drawn out, mournful sirens. The Collector parsed that potentially such shrieks would be effectively utilized in aquatic biomes for communication, but as of yet could not extrapolate that information to anything directly useful.

The shrieks ended within a few seconds, leaving an empty silence. The heavy atmosphere generated from the shadow entities faded away as they fled the Collector.

The Collector clicked the mandibles of its main skull in understanding as information flowed into its being. Information that the shard had processed from the foreign infiltration.

The infiltrating force was not a single psion. It was a group of multiple minds meshed together to create a single processing unit.

In essence, a miniaturized Collective in terms of psionic functioning.

However, the scale of this unit was infinitesimal compared to the breadth of the Collective. Yet, still far greater than what any one psion could output.

The assimilation procedure also gleaned to the Collector the physical coordinates of where this infiltration had occurred, and it could extrapolate them on this planet utilizing the rough map of the world it possessed from interfacing with the goblin lord's dungeon.

The coordinates lead to an area approximately 10,000 kilometers roughly west of this current location.

Still easily within the same frozen biome, for in terms of sheer scale, this planet was vast, almost nearing the threshold for a gas giant while maintaining the orbital and structural mechanics of a conventionally life-bearing, terrestrial planet.

Attempting any investigation of such an area would take approximately two to three days. Such an investment of time was difficult to consider when such a distance could be littered with any manner of threat or tinkerer.

This was not to mention that the Collector first desired to see if it could optimize its Higher Calling ability to a maximum threshold before attempting movement, and to do so, it would require this Snowmound to constantly replenish its magical energy.

"They have left. The Shadows have left," said the elder in notable disbelief. His hands were in the air, sensing how lighter the atmosphere had become. "My king, you have conquered the Shadows themselves."

The Collector looked at the elder. All of the Collector's plans depended upon what the elder could tell the Collector about this biome, the threats within it, the nature of tinkerers within it, and so on and so forth.

Before the Collector could continue its line of questioning, its system shard inputted one final, but important message into the Collector.

*Blessing extracted*

-Blessing of the Deep [INCOMPLETE]

From assimilating a small portion of the hivemind entity, the system shard had managed to take from it a Blessing – a power that was etched not merely into genetic expression but the psionic profile itself, the 'soul' as the female daemon would have called it.

This Blessing, the Collector noted would be extraordinarily useful. It allowed for the Collector to access in small measure the shadow traversing abilities of the entities the elder called the 'Shadows'.

With this, the Collector could enter its form, regardless of the size, into a shadow. However, the Blessing was highly incomplete, and its functions significantly compromised.

The Collector could only enter into shadows anchored to living beings, and even there, it could not freely traverse the darkness. It could only stay in one shadow at a time, thus, it could not freely travel through areas of dark as the entities did.

Curiously, this ability did cost magical energy. A flat 10% expenditure despite the fact that the power did not seem detectable or interactable by normal magical means.

This would act to the Collector's great benefit, however, for so long as it stayed within a shadow, it could never be detected by anyone, not even those with extremely high magic sensitivity.

The only telling of the Collector's presence would be the quality of heaviness in the atmosphere, but this would not nearly be as noticeable as it had been with the hivemind of 'Shadows' itself.

Report chapter

Still, the Collector did note, it would have to further experiment with this Blessing, for though it could grasp a basic understanding of what the ability was capable of, the exact parameters of its functioning had to be parsed with direct experimentation.

For now, there was the matter of understanding the nature of this biome and its threats.

"Gobb…Gobb, is he safe? Did he make it back from the Shadows?" said the elder with worry.

The Collector surmised that 'Gobb' was the name of the champion that existed in the tribe prior to the Collector's arrival. The one that had foolishly challenged the Collector while being unworthy to evolve.

"Gobb fell in ignoble altercation against myself," said the Collector.

"Ah, treason, then," said the elder. He nodded and bowed his head. "None should challenge the will of the king. Forgive me, my king, it has been so very long since any of our old blood, our old royalty, let alone a king, has emerged.

Gobb disrespected the call of the lord, and I tried to tell him of the error of his ways, but it seems he was stubborn enough to vie against your will too."

The elder shook his head. "You must be disappointed in us. Even I know so little of the old age when the kings and lords of our kind still ruled. All I have heard are tales from my elder, and he from the elder before him.

But even I know that we pale in comparison to the old age.

None of us alive know anything of the old age, and we have grown so very far apart from it. Those that are not elders learn nothing of the old age and care not of it.

They cannot even speak our tongue properly. They only care for their next meal and warmth and safety, and I cannot blame them.

We have no power as a people. We are nothing. Scattered and weak and hunted."

The elder hung his head in shame.

"Survival is one of the primary goals of evolution. That this social unit has continued on despite continual surrounding turmoil is a sign of adaptability. Take note of this survival and find pride within it, for no matter the degradation of culture or peoples or larger social organization, that there is survival is what alone matters," said the Collector.

"Yes, my king," said the elder with a nod. By now, the Collector had gained a greater grasp of what Higher Calling was doing to the mental processes of the elder.

The elder might not have fallen into the effects of Higher Calling completely, losing all sense of self, but in effect, he might as well have. His mind was conditioned to perceive of the Collector as a 'king' essentially no matter what, regardless of any potential inconsistences with a true goblin king and the Collector.

As a result, the elder would still exhibit unyielding loyalty, merely in a more individualized manner than the rest of the tribe.

"Then…if it is not Gobb that stepped outside, then who among us was it?" said the elder.

The Collector did not know the evolved champion's name. It did not see the use of names, nor did it care to ever learn them. It remembered the evolved champion and any distinguishing features about him.

"A specimen possessing a healed laceration over the left eye," said the Collector.

"Ah, Rogg. I remember when he was a boy. Always a fighter. He must have found the will within himself to become a champion. When will he return?"

"This 'Rogg' will not return, for he has expired on account of engaging with these 'Shadows'."

The elder nodded simply. He sighed heavily, his ribs poking through his thin, wrinkled flesh with the movement. "Death is never far here. I am sure Rogg was ready for it, and I am sure his death will serve a greater good."

"Yes," said the Collector.

A pause. A pause the Collector would not have given even just a day prior. But a pause that felt right in the same way that it had felt right to grant the female daemon specimen her time.

But a pause the Collector broke after three seconds, for information was of urgent importance.

"Now, tell me of this land-," began the Collector, and from there, it imbibed information from the elder.

The next three hours involved the Collector assimilating information from the elder. The elder was not as efficient an information provider as the female daemon was for his information was that learned primarily through experience and with a mind that was not as gifted as the female daemon's was in sheer memorization.

Yet, there were some benefits to the elder's information sharing process as well. Because the elder had lived and thoroughly understood the information it possessed, he was able to better answer any questioning on part of the Collector and provide his own thoughts and opinions on certain matters.

Regardless, the information sharing process ended when the elder became too tired to stay awake, for age had rendered his attention and energy limited in their spans.

As the elder slept upon a bed of skin blankets and rags, none of which possessed genetic samples of note worth in terms of power or physicality, the Collector pondered the information it possessed and formulated a course of action.

The Collector desired primarily two short term objectives.

The first was to become stronger. Strong enough at the very least to ensure that the Collector could survive through escalating responses from tinkerers when they came to recognize the Collector's existence and threat to their way of being.

To accomplish this goal, the Collector had to hunt powerful quarry without evoking the notice of tinkerers.

The second was to master this Higher Calling power and potentially render it into something akin to what the Dominator-class Collectors were capable of. First, improving it in such a way that the Collector could remove the mana cost restrictions that made harnessing a multitude of units untenable and then further tuning it so that it could work on species other than goblins.

To accomplish these tasks, the Collector had to spend time utilizing its power on the goblin tribe to tune it and then obtain samples from different sapient species to work with cross-species application.

The long-term goal of the Collector was to still bring the Collective upon this world, for it had not yet found beyond a reasonable doubt that the Collective was not present. Already, it could be that the Collective had received its signal and was on its way.

Or it could be that the Collector simply did not possess a vessel sufficiently powerful enough to process the Collector's connection to the Collective or project a powerful enough signal.

Regardless, the Collector still had to set out on what it was created for: to bring upon the Great Purpose of the Collective.

Some stray, foreign feelings, doubt, worry – a feeling the Collector had felt intensely when it had linked with the female daemon specimen in the moments before her expiry, stirred within the Collector, influencing its mind inefficiently into stray thoughts.

What if the Collective did not possess any measurable level of existence within this area? Perhaps this truly was an entirely new universe, in which case, the Collector would never establish a connection with the Collective again.

These thoughts and feelings, the Collector suppressed, for it knew that without the Great Purpose, the purpose that it had solely been created for, there was no meaning to its existence.

The Collector clicked the mandibles on its main skull and fluxed mana throughout its being, imbibing it and releasing it in a manner similar to the processes of inhalation and exhalation. This made it far easier to clear the mental processing unit of any of these stray thoughts and suppress them.

The Collector did not know it, but it had grasped the rudimentary basics of mana-based meditation meant to regulate the emotions and render the volatile self more capable of channeling the emotion heavy nature of magic.

Regardless of what was or could be, the Collector knew that it had to focus on the tangible goals in front of it.

The entities known as the 'Shadows' were exceedingly unlikely to appear before the Collector again, for the hivemind entity that controlled these 'shadows' now knew the Collector's psionic energy signature and would never test it again.

This meant that the Collector's access to this mana rich Snowmound was, as of now, uncontested.

However, the elder had noted a few threats that could emerge in times to come.

Report chapter

Firstly, regarding tinkerers, the Collector gleaned from the elder that there was minimal risk so long as it did not travel too far south.

Sufficiently far south, the temperatures became increasingly less extreme, allowing certain species of evergreen trees more resistant to the cold to sprout and flourish. These conditions induced the growth of a sprawling forest stretched as a thick band across the southern boundary of this land, and here, the majority of tinkerers made their residence.

Regarding the number of the tinkerers: there were ten tribes of native tinkerers in total in this area, this land titled as "Fjall".

These tribes possessed adherence to warrior culture and simpler ways than most tinkering civilizations, and this in turn along with their harsh environment caused their individual numbers to be low but every individual to be of a higher grade than the average human specimen.

From what the Collector could estimate based off the elder's experience with humans, the average human adapted to this biome was capable of contending with a champion. That meant on average, they were far weaker than the Collector.

However, the Collector knew well that tinkerers varied wildly in innate power.

It would do well to avoid them for the high end extremes of these tribes could prove highly troublesome, and it was likely to encounter them if it made overt movement against the humans.

Of the ten tribes, however, only three traveled further north than the forest.

It would seem that the remaining seven tribes had consolidated under one larger city called Middir, and this city lay at the very southern border of Fjall considerably far from the Collector.

However, the elder had noted that his information of Middir and the forests could be hazy for he had no true direct experience ever approaching those areas, for heavily populated human spaces meant adventurers, and adventurers meant death.

Thus, only three tribes – those that inhabited areas north of the forest and in reasonable proximity to the Collector, remained as threats.

The Boar clan.

The Kraken clan.

And the Faceless clan.

Of these, the Boar clan was the closest, possessing an encampment a day's worth of travel southwest of the Collector's current location.

The Kraken clan lay even further south, nestled between the forest and a ridge of mountains leading into a sizable water body titled Gioll.

The Faceless clan lay far west, almost a week's worth of travel from the Collector's current position. They were the most isolated of human clans, rarely ever making contact with the rest of their kind.

Of these three clans, the Boar clan posed the most immediate threat due to its proximity to the Collector, but regardless, there was the possibility of encountering members from any of the three clans through the Great Storm.

It would seem that there was a highly unique meteorological phenomenon that regularly occurred within this land wherein a 'storm' would sweep through the area in a regular and consistent pattern spanning a week every month.

The nature of the storm itself was no truly natural phenomenon. It was highly magical in nature and therefore, though its pattern of movement could be predicted, the manner of creature or environmental conditions within it could not.

At its base level, the 'Great Storm' consisted of an enormous sphere of ice, the 'core' of the storm, within which a miniature sea of frigid waters floated.

From this icy core, intense winds and rainfall buffeted outwards, meaning that any entity that attempted to stay on the core would face hurricane force winds and intense cold driving against them.

The storm originated from far north, beyond a series of mountain ranges that demarcated the boundary from a location known as the 'Rift' from the greater 'Fjall'.

The elder possessed absolutely no direct experience of the 'Rift', for none from Fjall, whether they be tinkerer or even monster, had ever traversed into those lands and stepped back alive.

There were countless stories of the Rift and the threats it could possess, but the elder's account of it grew questionable in accuracy for most of his knowledge involved what seemed to be orally passed down traditions heavily steeped in superstitions more so than lived or observed data.

Still, the Collector felt eager desire to battle against these monsters the elder spoke of that lived in the Rift.

Enormous, bestial humanoids named Jotun that could rival the size of mountains on their own.

Great serpents whose coils could shake the earth for kilometers around.

Living embodiments of snow and storm that could lay waste to entire populaces with thunder and avalanches.

Regardless, the Collector understood not to approach this area, this 'Rift', until it had ascended to higher metamorphosis levels, for it seemed that although there were no tinkerers in the area, the weather conditions and threat of monsters was extreme enough to warrant evasion.

Once the Collector had sufficiently grown strong enough, it would move to the Rift to consume worthy foes, and in doing so, it would coincide its movements with the cycle of the Great Storm.

The Great Storm obtained much of its magical energy, ice mass, and wind force from the Rift, and from there, it traveled in a circular orbit that led it down into the western edges of Fjall before crossing across and then circling back around to the Rift again.

As the storm traveled through the warmer, less magically charged land of Fjall, it lost much of its intensity, allowing tribesmen of the human clans to latch onto the storm and fish for food and scrounge for resources.

For now, the storm had just passed by the Collector's current coordinates located near the eastern edge of Fjall.

After warping in, the Collector had not directly encountered the storm, only the tail end of its orbit when it was at its weakest, but even then, it had been harsh enough to cause the Collector's expiry within an hour when it was at its prior metamorphosis level.

To latch onto the storm and explore it, or even further to accompany it to the Rift, would require significant enhancements to general bodily functions, magical energy levels, and a hardier form.

Knowing all this, the Collector decided upon a rudimentary course of action, though this was highly adaptable.

There were two main locations the Collector found of note worth.

The first was Eljudnir, a so called "black mountain of spirits" nestled on the far eastern reaches of Fjall. The elder seemed to know this location to some degree even though he had never truly been here in the flesh, nor had any goblin for what the elder claimed had been two millennia.

This mountain was said to be the center point at which countless 'spirits' – seemingly entities whose psionic profiles had obtained additional physical vessels after leaving their original bodies – would congregate.

And at the heart of the mountain, there nested a specimen known as a Facestealer.

This specimen, the Collector remembered in passing from the female daemon specimen. The Facestealer was the originator of all bone binding, passing down its knowledge to the goblins from untold centuries ago.

The specimen was said to be able to harvest the 'souls' of beings, to warp them to its will and to wear the identities that belonged to them.

If the Collector devoured this specimen, it theorized it would be able to manifest the capability to not only obtain advanced bone binding, but to also modify its Higher Calling to affect all species.

However, if the elder was correct, then this 'Facestealer' was an exceptionally aged, powerful specimen far beyond the Collector's current grasp.

Yet, not for long. The Collector was always evolving, always growing stronger.

In the week's worth of journey between the Collector's current location and Eljudnir, the Collector would no doubt encounter many prey specimen to devour and obtain strength with. There were countless depressions in the earth – dungeons of a smaller scale than the goblin lord's – that provided a warm and nourishing environment for powerful monsters.

These, the Collector would challenge and consume one by one.

At the center of Fjall, between the Collector's current location and Eljudnir, the coordinates of the shadow entity hivemind also lay.

This, the Collector would investigate also.

The second location that caught the Collector's interest was a lake called Vimur that lay close from its current location. Eight hundred kilometers northeast.

Here, the elder stated that a colossally sized hand emerged from the water.

This was the hand of from the corpse of a particularly powerful Jotun. If the Collector was able to obtain a genetic sample from the corpse, it could begin its westward journey with far more might.

Such a genetic sample from a powerful native specimen would also grant the Collector an additional layer of resistance to the cold, not to mention that it would prime the Collector later for when it would traverse into the Rift where the weather conditions grew to extremes that would render what it currently faced infinitesimal in comparison.

The Collector decided. It would head westward first. The sockets of its many skulls glowed yellow as it peered at the many subjugated goblin around it.

Beforehand, it would experiment further with Higher Calling.

With just a little more trial and error, it theorized there was potential to turn this entire social unit of weak specimen into evolved versions of themselves capable of being valuable units to the Collector's endeavors.

Report chapter

The Collector pointed down to the sleeping elder's crumpled, prone form. "Take this specimen elsewhere. Ensure his continued warmth."

One of the hobgoblins nodded and came up, picking the comparatively small elder up in his arms and carrying the aged specimen away to the corner of the Snowmound.

There, the other goblins draped the elder with fur blankets, a cloak, and rags that seemed to belong to the elder precisely for the purpose of keeping him warm.

The elder was the navigator of this tribe. Through his knowledge, the tribe traveled and maintained their survival, for he alone possessed the necessary, passed-down knowledge capable of traversing this harsh biome with reliable survival rates.

Thus, the tribe was already familiar with a routine of caring for the elder.

Good.

The Collector could then spend less time on needless instructions and more on experimentation.

"You. Step forwards." The Collector pointed at a random male hobgoblin. The hobgoblin nodded and stepped forwards obediently, kneeling before the Collector.

The Collector utilized Higher Calling's evolutionary power again, wrapping its hand in red and black waves of magical energy. Its ocular systems focused on those waves of energy, allowing it to better discern the minute movements of their flow and adjust them accordingly.

What the Collector primarily desired for now was to remove the continual drain on mana that the evolved specimen posed.

This, the Collector began to understand was due to the forced evolution completely overwriting the core which, though it did allow for goblin specimen to vastly alter their physiology, possessed the side effect of rendering their mental faculties completely inert unless commanded by Higher Calling.

Thus, Higher Calling was in essence a two-part power. Ordinarily, a lord goblin variant would force evolution and then utilize Higher Calling's commands to ensure that the mindless evolved followed orders.

However, because the evolved was mindless, at a basic level, it drained continual mana to ensure that even without Higher Calling commands, it retained enough mental faculties to not simply collapse and expire from brain death.

Then the solution was simple: allow for enough mental independence to nullify the passive cost.

The Collector was beginning to understand that unique manifestations of powers were no more than countless collections of interwoven ripples and patterns of magical energy flow.

Sufficiently complex enough that not even the Collector could directly create unique powers, but understandable enough that when given a power to directly work with and experiment upon, it could identify certain paths of flow and alter them such that the effects they manifested changed.

The red and black surges of mana around the Collector's hand rippled for a second, fluxing with a shade of green as the Collector altered the flow of mana. After five seconds, the Collector deemed that it had made sufficient modifications.

The Collector slammed the energy wreathed hand into the hobgoblin's chest, once more making sure to directly apply it to the specimen's heart.

Again, the hobgoblin convulsed, body rippling and swelling before in a burst of new flesh and cracking and regrown bones, there stood a champion.

This time, there was no discernable sign other than red eyes that the champion specimen had been artificially evolved. No tendrils on the specimen's back, for these, the Collector had made smaller and modified such that they formed a more compact network underneath the skin.

Those tendril antennae did not need to be as large and mana intensive anymore for as antennae, they would receive the Collector's magical energy to ensure they stayed alive, but with heightened independence, they required less of a direct connection.

"Return back to formation," said the Collector, utilizing higher calling.

"Yes, strong king," said the evolved champion, nodding with his grown tusks as he stepped back into the ring of hobgoblins.

However, the Collector would still exert influence over the specimen to the same degree as it did with the elder.

With a simple strong suggestion that would make all the evolved specimen subconsciously believe the Collector a 'king' and alter their worldviews, speech, and loyalties accordingly.

The Collector waited for a minute, pores in its ashen carapace wide and imbibing as much of the dense magical energy within the Snowmound as possible.

By now, there were almost seventy Snow Sprites dancing around the Collector's aura of flames.

However, the Collector let them be. They posed no real threat.

This, the Collector had confirmed with the elder. And it seemed now in sufficient quantity, they even provided an additional flow of environmental magical energy to aid the Collector's mana regeneration.

Once the minute passed, the Collector beckoned another hobgoblin forwards and evolved it also.

Like this, the Collector continued to evolve and evolve the lesser specimen around it.

The smaller goblin specimens became hobgoblins, and then further into champions once the Collector refined the evolutionary process such that it was less taxing on the subject's core.

The remainder of the hobgoblins all became champions.

One exception.

A younger hobgoblin that the Collector estimated was merely of eight years age and still stood as tall and physically sturdy as those ten years his senior, possessed not only the potential to ascend into a champion strain, but even into an elite.

The Collector noted the evolved elite's figure. Two and a half meters tall. Four limbs. Long tusks. Red eyes. Solid cords of durable muscle padding sturdy bones.

Yet, still inferior to the twin elites stored within the Collector's burial tusks jutting from one of its six skulls.

It would seem that among goblin elites, there was quite the variance in power ranges. This elite was approximately 70% as combat capable as either of the burial tusk elites. A similarity in extreme power ranges could be observed among tinkerers in this world as well, though it seemed that such extremity was not as pronounced among goblins.

Still, the elite was far stronger than the rest of the evolved.

"You shall be a Carrier unit," said the Collector. Within the Collective, carrier units were those that controlled a variety of parasitic, mindless units beneath them. They were the only units that could control other units aside from the Queens and other Collectors.

This goblin elite specimen did not warrant the worthy strength to be either a Queen or Collector, but a Carrier, it could be.

The Collector's meaning flowed into the goblin elite's head, and he bowed his head and nodded.

"Thank you, king. I lead us good for you," said the elite as he stepped back and entered the ranks of his fellow evolved brethren.

A total of thirty-three evolved champions and one taller elite stood in white-skinned, red-eyed ring around the Collector.

The Collector clicked the mandibles on its main skull in satisfaction. Highly agreeable.

With these numbers, even this gathering of weaker specimen would prove quite dangerous to most, not to mention that the Collector could regenerate their wounds by expending its magical energy so long as they were not utterly torn apart.

The Collector heard the elder's snoring at the edge of the Snowmound.

The elder, it hesitated to evolve. The frailty of the elder's form coupled with a unique core that channeled more magical energy would make Higher Calling a risky procedure to force upon him.

By now, the Collector had understood the mechanics of how a core defended the body against foreign magical interference.

The core and spirit roots could be likened to an eye within a storm. The storm raging outside the calm eye was the flow of magical energy emitted throughout the roots. This storm would buffer out any attempted outwards interference, hence why Dominus-magic that affected the mind directly was difficult to utilize.

Hence why attempting to directly hold a creature with Sapia was far more taxing than levitating inanimate matter around.

However, if the storm was spread out thin, perhaps in utilizing extensive magical energy or techniques that required mana to be ejected in large areas out of the physical body itself, then it was easier to infiltrate the eye, the core.

Higher Calling allowed the Collector to essentially inject magical energy that knew the path of the storm and would follow its currents right into the eye.

However, for spirit roots and cores that were even slightly different from those of an ordinary goblin's, Higher Calling became more difficult to utilize.

As was the case with the elder. It would seem he along with the thrall possessed unique mutations that rendered their bodies frail, but their cores altered to be more magically sensitive and capable. This also heavily enhanced their intelligence.

The Collector calculated a forty percent chance of failure in ascending the elder. Too high a risk to lose an information source familiar with this biome.

"Carrier unit," said the Collector.

"Yes, king," said the elite.

"Have one of the female specimens among you that has cared for the elder's needs to carry him and secure his physical integrity. Once my magical energy reserves have fully restored, I will mobilize towards this body of water known as 'Vimur'," said the Collector.

"From the elder's knowledge, I glean that it is likely we shall encounter a predatory specimen making a home within a dungeon along the way.

There, you and your brethren will prove your military worth to me," continued the Collector.

"We fight," said the elite with a sharp-toothed grin. It was evident he had been a battle-hungry specimen prior to his evolution.

He turned to his champions and raised two of his arms into the air. "We fight! Fight well! Fight strong for king!"

"Fight strong! For king!" roused a shout throughout the circle of champions.

The Collector clicked the mandibles of its main skull in appreciation and anticipation.

Soon, it would be able to see how efficient this fighting force of units was when given sufficient free will. Always, it had demeaned the thought of free will in terms of efficiency.

Only among Collectors, units of great worth and strength, was any measure of free will effective. For lesser units, there was no need for such an adaptation.

Of course, even now, the elite and champions were not truly free, believing themselves fighting fervently for a 'king' with conjured loyalty, and yet, their basic thoughts, how they would move, their individual emotions, their tolerances for the fight, their bravery or cowardice – all of that would show in the altercations to come.

And these, the Collector would observe.

Report chapter

The Collector exited the Snowmound with its mana fully recharged its force of thirty-three evolved champions, one evolved elite, and elder in tow. A female champion carried the elder on her back, bundling him up in a series of insulating fur layers to ensure the cold environment did not compromise his health.

There were certain limitations imposed upon the Collector's mobility in harnessing this swarm of units. Mostly, these were limitations based upon the evolved specimens' physical needs. They required regular sustenance as well as period of rest within which to sleep and recharge their stamina.

Of course, now that the goblin variants were all evolved, they possessed far greater degrees of stamina and physical ability that would allow them to engage in treks that lasted throughout an entire day, but any longer than this, and their abilities could compromise.

"We shall move now," said the Collector, directing its voice primarily to the Carrier-unit elite. "I will limit my pace such that my flames will provide sufficient warmth to your brethren during night cycles when temperatures may lower to dangerous thresholds.

In maintaining bioluminescence and projection of heat, certain species of prey will no doubt find themselves attracted to our location.

These specimens, you will hunt and consume as sustenance if their genetic material is unworthy."

"Yes, king," said the elite.

"In order such that I may maintain more efficient speed, however, I will move ahead of you. Thus, the defense of the swarm lies vested upon you. Prioritize defense of the elder, for in information and capability to guide, he is invaluable."

"Nothing touch the elder, got it," said the elite.

"Due to allowing for greater freedom of thought and limiting the strength of magical connections between yourselves and this form, I cannot engage in remote psionic communications with you," said the Collector. "However, you will still be able to perceive my general direction across vast stretches of distance. Follow my form at all times.

When you halt for an extended period of time, I will assume that you have engaged in a period of rest for nourishment and sleep and limit my distance accordingly."

The Collector pointed to the Carrier unit elite's head, where at the back of his bald, tusked face, a tendril black jutted out and drooped down like a makeshift ponytail.

"You alone, as designated Carrier-unit, I have evolved with a higher degree of connection to this form. This connection is not to such a degree that it robs you of your independent thought, thereby drastically increasing magical strain upon myself, but it is enough that you are able to send out signals of psionic distress to me."

The elite nodded in understanding.

"Utilize this signal sparingly when you face an enemy of such a scale that the entire swarm is threatened. Do not waste my time. Be efficient.

I shall allow an exception to utilize this signal when you encounter settlements of humans or similar humanoids. In this case, you will not engage with them and alert me.

Likewise, when I signal distress, you are to lead your swarm immediately to my location. Note further that distress alone does not indicate danger. It may be such that I require your presence for experimentation or information from the elder."

"Yes, my king," said the elite with a nodding bow.

"That is the extent of my current instruction. I will now travel towards the location of this 'Vimur' ahead of you. Maintain the integrity of this swarm."

The elite thumped his broad chest with a fist. "I will. With all my strength."

The Collector clicked the mandibles of its main skull and turned around before powering up mana into its carapace plated tail. Red coils of mana swirled around it as the muscles within swelled, engaging their coilboosters.

Melted and steaming snow crashed around the Collector as it leaped up with a burst of power before engaging its Firefly Shinchu wings. Four sets of fiery, rapidly fluttering insectoid wings buzzed around the Collector, loosing sparks and small tongues of flame all around it as it became a flying fireball soaring straight into the sky.

In the air, the Collector could not perceive much at all with its ocular systems. Even though the storm had passed, the weather conditions of this biome in general seemed to be that of perpetual snowfall in sufficient, constant quantities that visibility would always be highly limited.

This was especially true in higher altitudes.

Notably, this biome also scrambled the Collector's magical senses. Even when it expanded its magical energy out into a field in an attempt to extend its sensory perception, it found that the environment possessed a chaotic flow of magical energy that acted as a sort of interference, limiting magical sensing as well.

The Collector calculated that were it to have possessed a lack of Primal Density, this biome would have even begun to directly sap mana from it, leeching its magical energy as it would have its heat. Primal Density, however, allowed it to resist detrimental effects that manifested from the environment to a degree.

It would seem that Primal Density, an attribute that the Collector did not quite grasp the full extent of yet, was at a rudimentary level a sort of field-based energy enriching and surrounding its every cell. This field of invisible magical energy provided a barrier that repelled magical wavelengths that did not originate from natural developments within the body.

As a result, the magic of sorcerers grew less efficient in interacting with cells charged with Primal Density.

In summation, as of now, the Collector determined the utility of Primal Density as an ever active barrier useful against certain detrimental environmental phenomena and humanoid magic known as 'sorcery'.

There was no cost to upkeep Primal Density.

When the Collector had emerged from its magical evolutionary cocoon back in the Darkwoods, Primal Density had infused into its being naturally, likely jumpstarting the Collector's capacity to interact with mana as well by enriching its cells with magic sensitivity.

Where exactly this magical attribute originated from, the Collector could not entirely be sure. For now, it understood that every monster removed from tinkerers possessed Primal Density to some degree.

Regardless, with weather conditions as they were, the Collector could not see the ground from the air, but at the same time, none from the ground could easily perceive the Collector. This fact coupled with the information that there was little population density of tinkerers in this area gave the Collector reasonable confidence to engage in aerial transport.

Of course, the Collector did not move at full speed, for then it would leave its goblin swarm far too behind. It instead kept a pace that approximated to 66% of its top movement speed, utilizing the extra time it possessed to occasionally hover to the ground and investigate.

From these investigations, the Collector found traces of prey animals. Four legged, hooved packs of herbivores with icy droppings that indicated a diet largely comprised of hardy, frozen grasses dug up from underneath the snow.

The occasional tracks of a Frostboar. Small pits in the snow where thickly furred marsupials slept.

However, these prey animals were not worthy of the Collector's time. They possessed no combative capability nor any truly useful adaptations.

These creatures, the Collector noted the goblin tribe would have hunted, even when they were unevolved. Thus, they were weak and magically stunted.

Half a day into travel, the Collector noted the presence of a predator specimen. Large, feline tracks in the snow with blood spatters yet to be covered up. A fresh presence.

The Collector hunched over in the snow, analyzing, and then determined that the tracks belonged to a specimen that would roughly possess the same mass as the Collector, indicating a significant degree of muscular strength.

In addition, there were faint traces of magical energy remaining within the tracks.

All of these details implied a specimen more worthy of attention. The Collector clapped its hands together, and with that motion, the mass gathering of Snow Sprites that by now formed a vortex of blue flakes instantly dissipated around it.

This method of dispersing the Snow Sprites, the Collector had learned from the elder. However, it could only work with those that had been touched by the Shadows, and as the Collector had assimilated a portion of their hivemind, it qualified.

By spending time in the air, the Collector had determined by now that there were few aerial threats in this biome. Thus, when it spent time airborne, it allowed Snow Sprites to accumulate and funnel in mana to the Collector.

However, when the Collector landed, it dispelled them to maintain a minimized presence.

The Collector made sure that the last of the Snow Sprites faded away, catching the whistling winds billowing around the snowy landscape and fading away into the distance.

The Collector followed the tracks, stalking the predator as it slinked down low into the snow, limiting the light from its chest orb into a dull glimmer and turning off its aura of flames.

The Flametongue Salamander's naturally high internal temperature maintained further by the Firefly Shinchu's chest orb circulated enough passive warmth through the Collector to grant it thirty minutes of unimpeded movement without its flame aura.

This would be more than enough time. The predator specimen was no more than five minutes away, judging by a quick calculation of the depth of the tracks, freshness of blood, and the rate of snow and ice accumulation from the weather.

Plated in white that camouflaged in the snow, the Collector became a silent spectre, a phantom that snaked its way through the endless winter land without making a single sound.

Report chapter

---

Read Alien Evolution System Chapter 101 - Bigger Fish online for free - AllNovelFull

Exactly five minutes later, the Collector happened upon the specimen, though it did not notice the Collector.

The predator specimen was, as the Collector had estimated, a sizable one. A feline built for power, wrapped up in thick, shaggy brown fur with a dense mane resistant to teeth and claws.

Even underneath the density of fur, the Collector could perceive highly built musculature specialized for ambush attacks.

The specimen moved slowly, slinking down low into the snow while its saber-toothed jaws dragged a frostboar carcass. It must have weighed nearly five hundred kilograms, most of that being hardened muscle mass.

An interesting detail to note that the specimen was still ambulating while masking its presence despite having succeeded in a hunt. Such behavior indicated the presence of further predators in the area.

Good.

The Collector would make short work of this specimen by itself.

The Collector aimed at the feline as it faced away from the Collector, its ears and whiskers twitching as it tried to sense for any potential intruders.

However, the Collector had masked its presence entirely. It had even diminished its magical presence by decelerating the flow magical energy through its body, almost completely eliminating it, though a complete standstill would be analogous to stopping the heart and therefore untenable.

Right as the feline grew more comfortable with its supposedly assured safety, beginning to put its paws forward again, the Collector moved.

Red energy condensed into the Collector's tail first. Then, the Collector unsheathed a monomolecular blade from one of its arms with a clink.

The feline heard the clink and immediately stiffened up, the hairs on its back raising, but too late.

The Collector unleashed the condensed magical energy in the form of a {Dash} that left it nearly instantaneously in front of the feline specimen in one remarkably quick burst of movement. A straight line drew across the snow marking the Collector's path.

{Dash} left the body rigid and immobile during the actual movement itself, so for most that utilized it, it only functioned as a means of movement. It was difficult to incorporate an attack with the movement itself, but with an appendage or bladed weapon thrust forwards, this issue solved itself.

At the same time, because {Dash} functioned only to create linear movement, any attack utilizing it would be highly predictable despite its speed. However, if the attack was not seen from the beginning, then there was no windup to predict from, causing a {Dash} based strike to be highly effective as an opening strike for an ambush.

The Collector stood up tall as the feline fell to its side, dead, most of its body from the hind legs up to the chest sliced wide open by the peerlessly sharp edge of a monomolecular blade. The boar carcass fell from its mouth. Coils of intestines, organs, and blood pooled out from the massive gash before they started to freeze in the weather.

The Collector stood over the two corpses and then ejected its detachable stomach. The mass of flesh and teeth from its split apart chest surged forwards and sucked in first the boar, then with two large bites, the feline.

*Biomass Gained (6)*

Biomass Level: 5/100 11/100

*Genetic material gained*

Stored Genetic Material:

-Frostborn Hobgoblin Thrall [Core]

-Vineswinger Goblin Champion [Core]

-Windcutter Wildcat

-Shockstripe Eel

-Lurker

-Goblin Lord [Core]

-Frostborn Goblin Champion

-Sabretooth Lion

*Spirit Roots Gained (8%)*

Root Consumption Level : 10/100 18/100

The Collector noted that the predator specimen, this 'Sabretooth Lion', granted approximately equal amounts of roots and biomass as a fully grown frostborn goblin champion.

With a weapon, the forstborn goblin champion would likely have bested this Sabretooth Lion in an engagement with 60% reliability. In simpler terms, this specimen was of no threat to the Collector even if it had not engaged in an ambush attack.

Yet the Collector had gleaned much from the specimen's behavior. The Sabretooth Lion's heightened caution had indicated to the Collector that it was wary of another presence, and this, the Collector would investigate.

The Collector began to slither towards the opposite direction from where the lion was headed, further into the danger it attempted to sneak away from.

Soon enough, the Collector began to realize there were anomalous patterns in the flow of mana within the area. The mana flowing through the land swirled, indicating a singularity point that the Collector knew now to be analogous to a dungeon.

The Collector headed to the source of the singularity, recalling information from the elder regarding dungeons.

The dungeons in this biome tended to be lairs that housed singular creatures. Usually sizable or notably powerful predator specimen that took the dungeon as a warm home that would nourish them and heal their wounds. The area surrounding the dungeon became their territory, though they could move away from the dungeon and hunt as they so desired.

Unlike the multi-layered structure of the goblin lord's dungeon, these dungeons tended to comprise merely of a single layer housing the predator specimen, the 'boss', and did not fade once the corresponding 'boss' was killed.

Rather, the dungeons acted largely like burrows in nature, and if a boss was killed by another predator, then the victor would often take the territory from them before it collapsed, receiving the dungeon's benefits for themselves.

What would happen if the Collector slaughtered the predator specimen that lorded over this territory? What would occur should the evolved swarm under its beckon strike down the specimen?

This the Collector would investigate soon, though, perhaps sooner than it had initially calculated.

The Collector felt it coming. The aura of a magically charged monster, and by the density of magical energy, one several grades above the Sabretooth Lion. Then, the Collector heard it.

Heavy, crashing steps that paid no heed to any need to hide for they came from a creature that had long grown comfortable with its strength.

The Collector clicked the mandibles of its main skull in eager anticipation.

Whatever this creature was, in terms of sheer physical mass, it far surpassed the Collector, though in terms of magical energy reserves, they were comparable.

As the steps grew even closer and the presence became even stronger, the Collector noted that the boss's trajectory was not directly zoned in on the Collector.

The boss was instead on course to where the Sabretooth Lion had been, quite likely having picked up on the lion's residual scent. The Collector, however, could control the output of its own scent and usually maintained a complete lack of odor.

Thus, if the Collector did not know draw the creature's attention to it, there would be some amount of time before they clashed in battle.

The Collector did not actively draw the creature's attention, and all the Collector perceived of the beast was its deep, guttural roar in the distance that crashed through the howling of the wind with piercing clarity, though soon, the roar faded as the monster headed further out to where the Collector and Sabretooth Lion had been.

The Collector did not know how long it would take for the specimen to make its way back to its lair, but it did know that it inevitably would return. In that meanwhile, the Collector would investigate the dungeon and scan the surroundings for any anomalies and external threats.

The Collector also signaled for the swarm to travel to its coordinates, though not particularly for its own self-defense.

The swarm was an hour behind the Collector, and quite likely, the boss would return to its lair before the swarm caught up with the Collector, but no matter.

The Collector was eager to test the might of its new form. It would face this 'boss' creature by itself first, and if it proved too meager a challenge, leave it to test the swarm's own combat capability.

For as of now, the swarm had not encountered any significant threat to itself. None, at the least, that had required the carrier unit to signal for assistance.

In any case, the Collector would soon obtain valuable data.

Report chapter

The Collector snaked its way towards the source of the swirling mana flow in the environment: the boss creature's dungeon. It did not move at its maximum pace, instead taking a rather slow one in order to perceive as much of the area as possible. It also did not take a linear path to the dungeon, instead opting for a circular one so as to ensure the perimeter was secured.

Ten minutes of travel allowed the Collector to glean a few details. The density of magical energy swirling towards the dungeon was significantly less than that which gathered around the dungeon of the goblin lord.

Yet, the Collector could not equate this with the boss specimen being weaker. No, in terms of sheer size and magical energy pressure given from the boss creature's secondary presence, it was significantly more powerful than the lord.

Instead, then, the Collector surmised the lack of magical energy indicated a lack of complexity within the dungeon itself, extrapolating this hypothesis from the elder's knowledge of dungeons.

Dungeons in this biome tended to merely be lairs. They did not possess complicated series of layers nor did they seem to host a variety of creatures within them. Thus, it stood to reason that they were of a lesser magical density than the lord's multi-layered dungeon.

External threat wise, the Collector sensed nothing anomalous from a thorough scanning of magical energy in the environment. This, the Collector had learned to do well once prompted by the female daemon specimen and her particularly exceptional sensitivity to flow.

With green energy covering the Collector's ocular systems, it scanned for even the faintest traces of magical energy that belonged to those that did not belong to this biome.

Every living creature with sufficient magical energy left traces behind them that remained for small periods of time before expiring.

The amount of time correlated directly with the amount of magical energy, and the Collector could only sense the magical tracks of the boss specimen. Deep red marks of mana around the snow and in the air visible only to the Collector's eyes when it opted to wreathe them in magical energy.

Mana traces tended to disappear faster than tracks or scent, but in this biome where raging winds and constant snowfall obscured both, sensing for mana was the most efficient method of scouting out foreign presences.

There did not seem to be any, however.

As for physical traces of potential external threats, the Collector also found none, though it did observe the carcasses of various prey and predator specimen. These corpses were stripped of their meat down to the bone and jutted out from the snow.

Analysis with magical sight indicated the same wavelength of red mana wreathing them, indicating they were simply recent victims of the boss creature.

With potential for external intervention minimized, the Collector stood before the entrance of the dungeon.

The dungeon itself seemed to be a sizable construct of ice not dissimilar to the Snowmound, but where the Snowmound was comprised of more pliable flakes, the dungeon was fashioned from solid, frozen and magically charged ice.

The structure mimicked the round, icicle wreathed entrance of a massive cavern. Faint blue light flickered across the surface of the ice, dimly lighting the shadowy cavern entrance. The cavern would lead down further into presumably a wider living space for the boss specimen.

The Collector theorized how this specimen and essentially any living specimen escaped the grasp of the 'Shadows' during nightfall or low visibility environments.

The elder had stated that the 'Shadows' resided only in Snowmounds, places of concentrated magical energy and darkness, and exited only when there were storms, tending to follow concentrations of inclement weather and, when those dissipated, returning to the Snowmounds.

Thus, the 'Shadows' did not indiscriminately attack all specimen during nightfalls. They only exhibited hostile behavior to those that stood in their paths.

The nature of the 'Shadows' and their movement was difficult to glean for they could not be physically consumed, and they intentionally avoided the Collector now.

But it could add on to the elder's information that these 'Shadows' did not inhabit dungeons even when they too seemed to be environments with darkness and charged magical energy.

The 'Shadows' would be a point to investigate later. For now, the dungeon.

The Collector slithered into the icy cavern's maw. Here, the temperature rose considerably, likely due to insulation from the outside. Stone, not ice, comprised the innards of the structure.

The layout, as the Collector had hypothesized, angled downwards, and after thirty meters, expanded vastly outwards into a sizable pit approximately one hundred meters across in diameter.

Contrary to what the Collector had initially hypothesized, the pit was quite well lit by the presence of several crystal formations that jutted upwards, some in clusters, some in singular, large shards.

All of these crystals emitted magical energy, and they acted like channeling points where mana from the environment swirled around them.

Thus, the crystals supercharged the pit with magical energy, and, analyzing the nature of mana's flow, the Collector determined it roughly similar to that present within the throne room of the goblin lord's dungeon.

In essence, the pit would provide both physical and mana restoration, though physical repair would be at a third of the rate of mana restoration. Both of these benefits were 'keyed in' to only apply to the boss's core.

The Collector spent a minute investigating the pit and found more bones of prey specimen. There was no warp-capable vessel here. The specimens were not useful, comprising largely of herd-based quadrupeds similar to the deer of the Collector's prior biome.

Yet, one useful specimen.

The Collector found a portion of the skeletal remains of a human. A sizable one. Two meters tall based on the remaining skeletal upper body. The remains possessed remnants of tattered, furred clothing speckled across the curves of bone, and nestled by the shattered pelvis was a holding vessel of some kind fashioned from dried skins.

The Collector tore open the vessel and emptied it of its contents. A smaller vessel of dried skins for holding water. A pouch containing small circles of bronze, silver, and gold. All metals unenhanced by magical energy. A few circular chunks of Everfrost marked with linguistic inscriptions that held stored magical power within them.

Again, however, like the tinkering tools with inscriptions etched in them, the Collector could not assimilate the magic stored within them into its form.

What was useful, however, was the presence of a scrolled-up map and a curious, thin stick of metal fashioned down to a pointed nub. The nub was not sharp enough to indicate the stick possessed any merit as a weapon. Its usage seemed to be linguistic in purpose, meant to fit to the manipulation of human finger digits.

The Collector took the map, unraveled it, and saw that it outlined this area known as 'Fjall'. It memorized the map and then put it into its crystal skull, storing the map for later for potential use by the goblin swarm.

The metal stick, the Collector devoured for its Metalloglottic ossifier.

*Metalloglottic Ossifier Sample Obtained [1/5*

--Mithril

The Collector noted that this metal, this 'Mithril', was quite useful. It was highly reactive to mana, and much like the Volcanite and Everfrost, it could change its physical properties when mana was infused into it, growing significantly more durable.

However, more notable was the metal's ability to 'interact' physically with mana.

Thus, the Collector theorized that if a tinkerer fashioned a blade made of this alloy, they could cut or bat away normally intangible phenomena such as gouts of flame so long as the phenomena was magically created.

Aside from these, the Collector found no further details to investigate in the pit.

For now, then, the Collector would simply wait for this specimen, this 'boss' creature, to return. It signaled again for the goblin swarm to zone in on its location.

Judging from the strength of psionic link between the Collector and the elite carrier unit, it determined they would arrive in thirty minutes.

Then, the Collector would experiment with its Blessing of the Deep. It slithered under the shade of a particularly large mana crystal. Within the angular shadow, the Collector bent down and put its hand into the darkness.

The Collector felt as its hand sink into the shadow and completely meld into it, phasing through as if it was conducting its matter through a warp-gate.

Yet, what was even more notable was the sensation of water around the part of the Collector's hand that was submerged within the shadow. Cool water with a slight numbing property.

The Collector could feel warp based psionic energy, this Blessing of the Deep, and it determined that the ability allowed it to utilize shadows as gateway points to warp into an alternate space. The nature of this space, however, remained utterly unknown to the Collector.

The Collector did not desire to undertake needless risk by submerging its entire body within. It withdrew its hand and cupped one of its six skulls, specifically the Flametongue Salamander's skull.

It popped the skull out, and with Sapia, maintained a flow of magical energy within the skull to keep its ocular systems working even when separated from the Collector's body and its blood flow.

Using this temporary conduit for the Collector's senses, it dipped the skull into the shadows and observed.

Report chapter

Again, the sensation of water with a minor numbing property. Then, the ocular systems of the Flametongue Salamander skull adjusted to the small-scale warp.

The Collector clicked the mandibles of its main skull in interest.

As it had perceived through its tactile senses, the environment the shadow-based warp led to was indeed one aquatic.

However, visual stimuli feeding into the skull's ocular systems showed a near absence of light.

Unlike the Darkwoods where light was forcibly absorbed by the flora, this was darkness caused by the dissipation of light across drastic aquatic depths.

The depth of the waters that the Collector perceived possessed essentially no light, yet there was no sign of crushing pressures inherent to such an environment.

There was only the slight sensation of numbing, and this, the Collector surmised would have been exponentially more severe should the Collector not have possessed the Blessing of the Deep to provide a protective film over its cells to ward against the effects.

The numbing, to an unresistant specimen, would have caused the immediate separation of nerves from any processing unit with an additional severing of magical connections to cores.

Magic itself seemed to numb in this space, with mana not flowing properly throughout the waters or in any body part that came into contact with the unidentifiable liquid.

Thus, magical sensing was impossible.

A trait to note.

Because there was no light, the ocular systems of the Flametongue Salamander skull were minimally useful. However, they did possess auditory systems and a lining of sensitive hairs, but these too picked up nothing.

Merely the constant flow of water.

The water itself possessed unique physical properties to it that caused it to perpetually flow downwards, even further into the depths of this foreign location, but the Collector's body itself seemed to be anchored to a fixed point, unable to follow this flow or be affected by it in any measurable way.

The anchoring effect extended to the Collector's own movements as well, rendering it completely immobile within a spherical space that would roughly encompass the space of any body part it submerged.

The Collector ascertained that there was not significant risk in occupying the submerged space, but it as of now did not attempt to do so.

Should it fully enter this space and submerge its entire body, then when it exited, it would have to deal with the water's numbing properties dulling both it senses and flow of internal mana.

The Collector calculated heavily compromised combat capacity for two seconds while it adjusted after submerging, but two seconds was crucial in any altercation.

And already, the Collector could sense an altercation coming.

The 'boss' creature's presence drew near. Its magical aura surged outwards in sensible presence far before its physical brawn was perceivable.

Yet, this was not due to the fact that the beast possessed particularly massive amounts of magical energy.

No, in sheer capacity, it would have paled in comparison to the golden winged humanoid.

Rather, it was that the beast did not possess or did not attempt to exercise any proper and controlled flow of its internal mana, thus shunting it out in a wide aura.

This was highly wasteful, but in a sense, possessed some utility in warding away other predators from this territory.

When the creature desired to hunt prey, then quite likely it would minimize its presence as well, though not nearly at the same efficiency as the Collector.

Likely, the creature was attempting to warn off the Sabretooth Lion it had not found and never would find.

Instead, it would find the Collector waiting.

On the hard stone of the dungeon cavern, the Collector could hear the creature's steps with great clarity. Large, thudding steps that echoed through the depths of the cavern. Extrapolating from the sound, the Collector reasonably determined within a 10% margin of error that the creature was approximately eight tons in weight.

Approximately twelve times heavier than the Collector's six-hundred-kilogram form, though as the Collector had come to know well in this world where physical laws meant little, the condensing properties of mana allowed the Collector to essentially compact its mass into a smaller form.

Should the Collector have fully expanded its mass outwards now that it was metamorphosis level eight, it determined its total weight would have neared six tons.

Thus, though mass did play a sizable role in comparing physical might, what was more important was the density of magical energy.

In that regard, the Collector noted with clicked mandibles that the monster's incoming, ever loudening steps were accompanied by a surge of magical energy indicative of total mana levels exceeding the Collector's by approximately a forty-two percent gap.

This because the Collector's mana level was stuck at what it would have been at its seventh metamorphosis level on account of having skipped a level to eight. Should the Collector have operated with the full amount of spirit roots it would optimally have had at its current eighth level, then it calculated that it would have been approximately equal to this incoming creature.

Agreeable, then. This specimen would provide a vast amount of spirit roots to allow the Collector to make up for its spirit root deficit.

The Collector flared out its magical energy in an intense aura around it, sending swirling ribbons of chaotic, crackling red energy sparking from its body.

Sensing this, the 'boss' specimen loosed an enormous roar that rumbled and shook the cavern before its quadrupedal footsteps became faster, louder, until within a few seconds, its form emerged from above, to the alcove leading down into the pit.

The 'boss' specimen was a sizable ursine covered in thick, wintry white fur with ends that hardened into spike-like icicles.

Underneath the fur, the Collector could perceive the creature possessed an enormous bulk of muscles and sizable padding of fat, allowing it to better shoulder blows and possess more stamina than the Sabretooth Lion's pure muscle frame.

This creature was built for sustained, brutal fights, and it showed: upon its tawny head, between its two sets of glowing blue eyes, were several scars and improperly healed contusions.

A large set of jagged cervine horns jutted out from the sides of the creature's head, fashioned out of what seemed like pure ice, though it glowed not blue like Everfrost, but white.

Jagged, thick fangs meant for grinding and crushing showed themselves under black lips, and a puff of heated air steamed out from the ursine's flared snout.

The Collector stretched out its four arms, beckoning the beast to come. It was here to test out its new array of abilities and to indulge itself in a proper battle. No need for an ambush when it could already sense that this specimen was worthy of a true fight.

Sensing the challenge in the heart of its very own territory, the ursine specimen snarled at the Collector.

The Collector activated its flame aura, sparks of fiery red and orange showering its body first before igniting into a raging pillar of heat and magical energy.

The ursine embraced the challenge and leaped forwards, and when the Collector analyzed the creature's body as it sailed in mid-air, the claws from its front two legs bared and ready to crash down on the Collector, it determined the monster's physical dimensions.

7.7 tons in weight. 6 meters in height when on all fours. 10 meters standing on its hind legs, though height mattered little unless the Collector decided to engage in aerial combat.

The Collector slammed its tail into the stone floor, cracking it and sending itself flying backwards with the force of the mana charged blow.

Where the Collector had been, the ursine specimen crashed, shattering the already cracked floor into chunks of flying rock with a thunderous impact.

Thin shards of blasted out stone spattered against the Collector, cracking into dust against its durable hyperalloy carapace.

Dust and debris rose up around the ursine specimen's, but it soon blew away as its aura of mana surged.

Colored red.

Chaos-type, much like the Collector. This meant that the beast would tend to circulate its mana in powerful but unregulated bursts, sacrificing efficiency for explosiveness.

The Collector flared out its own aura, and though it was physically half the size of the ursine, their auras were almost the same in terms of size and intensity, twin clouds of red crashing against each other, neither one giving a single inch as two predatory wills clashed.

This ursine specimen circled the Collector, sensing that they were nigh evenly matched in terms of sheer physical and magical specs.

The Collector entered this dance, circling against the ursine, and the two gazed at each other like this, a pair of bright, icy blue eyes leering down at six pairs of yellow, skeletal sockets wreathed in flame.

The stalemate lasted three seconds before the ursine made the first move, roaring and leaping towards the Collector with speed that belied its enormous bulk, bearing down on the Collector with a swat of its claw-tipped paw.

The paw itself must have nearly been a third of the Collector's size, and it was absolutely packed with magical energy boosting its movements.

The beast did not know any refined method to channel its mana, no semblance of the fine-tuned movements the four-star adventurer utilized, but it made up for it with sheer ferocity.

Animal ferocity alone was insufficient to match the Collector, however, for in base, evolutionary predatory instinct, it was simply unsurpassed.

The Collector dodged the easily telegraphed swipe by swerving to the side, getting right in front of the ursine's face. The ursine hesitated to bite the Collector due to its aura of flames, and the Collector capitalized on the specimen's moment of inefficiency.

The Collector unsheathed twin blades of golden, solidified light from its first set of arms and uppercutted the beast at the chin with a mana-infused punch. A crack of impact resounded through the pit as the ursine's head jerked upwards with the force, blood spilling from a light-rimmed hole at the base of its jaw.

Report chapter

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

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

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

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

Purifying light, as it was denoted.

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

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

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

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

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

The Collector filed the battle data for use.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It did not move.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Report chapter

The sound of lightning roaring with the fury of the heavens echoed through the innards of the pit and cavern. It was a tremendously loud sound, one of crackles and screeching screams that sounded as if a third predator of merit had descended upon this battle between aspects of nature's evolutionary might.

The Collector stood at the center of a vortex of rapidly swirling arcs of white lightning. The orb of lightning rotated as it engulfed the Collector, drilling its sizable mass into the ground. Any stone its blinding white light came into, it pulverized into dust.

Any rock that the countless stray arcs of lightning from the orb struck, they turned into molten, smoking smears.

Within the center of this sheer destructive force of elemental fury, the Collector shunted out all the excessive sensory input, the intense crackling of the whirling lightning, the feeling of searing heat crashing against its carapace, and the intense light that lit up the entire cavern.

The heat from this attack, the Collector could resist with its Blessing of Mount Oe. Though the blessing specifically functioned only with flames, it still provided some direct heat resistance to sources of elevated temperature that did not come from fire.

The problem was the intense amount of condensed electrical energy raging throughout the Collector's body. Ordinarily, such an attack would have ravaged the Collector, blowing it apart from within in a fatal attack.

However, with inspiration from the four-star adventurer, the Collector adapted and evolved. It utilized the four-star adventurer's technique to disperse offensive energy throughout his body.

The lightning passed through unresisting flesh, circulating throughout the Collector in a continuous flow like a current bouncing within a closed loop.

The light of the enormous attack died down, and the Collector steadied its ocular systems while it felt its entire body slowly heat up. It stood in the middle of a smoking, molten, and sizable crater carved out with completely even precision by the ursine's attack.

The lightning from the attack might have died down around the Collector, but within it, the vast brunt of the attack's potency, approximately 70% of it, still circulated.

Arcs of white lightning crackled across the Collector's entire body, dancing around its four arms, broad chest, and tail.

Its whole body glowed a shade of bright white, continuing to circulate and contain the vast amount of power.

Yes, this was it. This was the proper flow of things.

Yet, energy as unstable as this could only flow within the Collector for so long without detrimental effect, even with the Collector's superb grasp of mana flow. Already, some parts of its internal musculature were beginning to overheat.

The Collector aimed its ocular systems, the shining yellow sockets in its skulls, to its arms. As it flexed the muscles of its four arms, arcs of lightning sparked from them.

It gazed up at the ursine.

The ursine was breathing heavily, steaming, sizzling air pooling out of its mouth. Its once glowing white horns had dimmed down now to a dull blue shade. It had lost a drastic amount of magical energy to fuel such an attack, and it seemed charging and unleashing the attack also caused some internal damage by superheating the insides.

That was to be expected. Unlike the Collector, the ursine did not possess the necessary fine tuning to circulate this energy through itself. The Collector had already theorized this, but in witnessing the four-star adventurer disperse the shock of tremors, it was almost certain it could apply with more efficiency th same to attacks that were more energy form such as this mass of lightning.

Now, its hypothesis had been proven.

The Collector thrust out its four arms towards the ursine and shunted out the vast stored amounts of electrical energy coursing through its body. Its four fists acted as venting points where four arcs of stored lightning thicker even than the Collector's sizably muscled arms ejected.

The four bolts fused into one enormous beam that thundered forwards, crashing into the ursine's chest. The Collector intentionally avoided its core for destroying it, the link to this dungeon, would permanently kill it, and more experimentation was further on the way.

The ursine roared in pain, but even its impressive vocal chords could not compare with the scream of lightning crackling around it. It blocked the bolt with its reflexes, using its two brawny arms to intercept it, but the bolt beam smashed through the limbs with utter ease, blasting apart the furred flesh into charred chunks.

The beam drilled a hole straight in the middle of the ursine's waist, completely severing its torso from its legs in one wide, circular wound, as if the flesh and bone and everything organic there had been erased clean.

The Collector leaped into the air with a push of its tail, fluttering its four insectoid wings in flashes of fiery flaps as it reached the ursine's falling body in one bound. It landed in front of the ursine and grabbed its disembodied torso with its two thin, stick-like shinchu arms.

The arms, like extended probes, grasped their three thin fingers on either of the ursine's shoulders and lifted the torso up for inspection. Smoke sizzled from the bottom of the torso; the wound cauterized fully from the lightning's heat.

The ursine's head dangled down, inactive in unconsciousness.

However, the Collector could still sense life within the ursine despite this grievously mortal wound. There was a heartbeat that grew fainter by the moment, but the magical energy from the dungeon began to flow into the ursine, strands of blue emanating from the many crystals dotting the pit all funneling to the ursine's chest, to its heart and core.

Soon enough, the regenerative properties of this magical energy would allow the ursine to recover even from a fully fatal wound like this. Already, the cauterized flesh at its torso was beginning to split and crack, revealing freshly growing pink mass underneath.

The Collector ejected a monomolecular blade from one of its lower set of arms and then thrust it into the ursine's chest. The Collector pushed in deep, past the thick fur now that it had lost its defensive ice layer, and surgically severed the ursine's spine such that its nerves would no longer register sensations to its processing center.

With this accomplished, the Collector bid its chest to split open down the middle. The carapace clicked before splitting apart, and then its detachable maw ejected forwards. The maw was like its own living creature, undulating forwards in snapping motions to tear off great chunks of the ursine's body to devour it.

The Collector, however, ate around the ursine's core and brain, leaving the spine, brain, and heart intact throughout the whole process. By the time it finished devouring all that was non-essential, the Collector left but a bare spine padded with thin ribbons of flesh and a small curtain of red muscle over the breast to shelter the heart.

The imposing wide bulk of the ursine's body was now reduced to nothing but the barest of bones and skeletal and circulatory system components.

*Biomass Gained (10)*

Biomass Level: 11/100 21/100

*Genetic material gained*

Stored Genetic Material:

-Frostborn Hobgoblin Thrall [Core]

-Vineswinger Goblin Champion [Core]

-Windcutter Wildcat

-Shockstripe Eel

-Lurker

-Goblin Lord [Core]

-Frostborn Goblin Champion

-Sabretooth Lion

-Grizzled Stormbear

*Spirit Roots Gained (15%)*

Root Consumption Level : 10/100 25/100%

Yet, like this, the Collector left the ursine 'alive' by the dungeon's standards, and the flesh continued to regenerate. Muscle, nerves, and connective tissue began to flower out again from the ursine's bare spine.

The Collector waited, then, when it sensed that the ursine's spinal section that had been severed by the monomolecular blade had recovered enough, severed it again.

The ursine had proved to be of no significant challenge to the Collector, but it had still been an apt specimen of strength, a recognized predator that relied only upon its pure evolutionary edges and instincts.

This, the Collector could respect, and it showed as much by preventing the specimen from ever being conscious or, even if it was, feeling the pain of being continually devoured.

When the ursine regenerated enough, the Collector once again devoured around its non-essential components, gaining additional biomass and spirit roots continuously. A continual cycle of consumption and regeneration.

The Collector noted that the dungeon seemed to be capable of indefinitely sustaining this regeneration and made no real note of whether the ursine was combat capable or even conscious or not.

So long as the ursine was alive by the metrics of the dungeon, metrics that seemed to value only the intact presence of the core and potentially continued neural activity, then it would continue to support the specimen's life.

Agreeable. The Collector would continue to devour and devour until it reached its next metamorphosis level and until its goblin swarm was to come within the next ten minutes.

Eight minutes and fifty seconds later, the Collector sensed that the goblin swarm made their way to the entrance of the dungeon and now were approaching the Collector at rapid speeds.

The Collector clicked the mandibles of its main skull, ready again to further additional experimentation.

Report chapter

Nine minutes and fifteen seconds later, the Collector sensed the presence of the goblin swarm directly outside the dungeon cavern. They were quick, making their way without hesitation through the cavern and into the pit with a mass of charging, hurried steps.

The Collector heard a resounding war cry echo through the cavern depths, growing ever louder as the goblin swarm came to reach the edge of the pit.

"Fight! Fight for the king!" came the shout from the carrier unit, with rousing cries echoing the sentiment for battle.

The Collector heard as the carrier unit crossed the dive into the pit with a single large leap, landing heavily on the stone floor with four arms tensed up and ready to grapple or strike anything that remotely posed a threat to the Collector.

All the other goblin champions scrambled behind the carrier unit elite, hopping down the divide and landing on the stone heavily with weapons in hand or, if they had no weapons, their bare fangs and fists ready for the fight.

In response, the Collector turned around and showed the carrier unit and the swarm the grizzled stormbear, or rather, what was left of it. It held the stormbear's intact head in one of its hands while its bare spine and thinly flesh covered ribcage fluttered in the air.

"There is no cause for elevated concern. The battle has been fought and won," declared the Collector.

The carrier unit elite knelt down, and so did the rest of the champion swarm. They fell low to the cracked stone floor before the Collector's flaming form, their white skinned bodies giving homage and devoted respect to the living flame of strength and authority before them.

"As expected of our king," said the carrier unit elite with a deep nod. "O, you who are mighty and great and bright."

The Collector clicked its mandibles in satisfaction that these specimens were so devotedly loyal despite still possessing more individuality than it had been initially comfortable granting.

The only remaining test now was to put these specimens' trough the harsh trial of legitimate combat and see whether in the face of a true threat, their loyalty would remain unyielding.

Initially, the Collector had thought to allow the swarm to do battle with the grizzled stormbear, but it would seem that such an option would be risky. It had devoured the ursine many times over now, enough to reach the biomass threshold to reach the next level of metamorphosis, but attempting to continue spurring the dungeon to regenerate the stormbear specimen would likely lead to the dungeon's complete structural degradation.

Already, the Collector could bear witness to the fact that the dungeon's regenerative properties were distinctly finite.

The blue, glowing crystals dotting the pit were growing dimmer now, many of them lined with cracks, and the stone floor was starting to break apart with chunks of ice from the ceiling falling.

With two more regenerative cycles, the Collector estimated, the dungeon would collapse, and it did not yet desire for such an outcome.

"Your mastery over your native tongue has improved significantly," noted the Collector as it spoke to the carrier unit.

"With this new form that you give me," said the elite, putting the index finger on one of its hands to its temple. "My knowledge grows. I learn more. The elder teaches me our tongue, and I learn."

"The accelerated rate at which you grasp new information will prove highly useful in more efficiently commanding your swarm. See to it that you continue to nourish your mind," said the Collector.

"Yes, my king," said the elite.

"Choose a unit among you that possesses potent combat capacity," said the Collector to the carrier unit.

The goblin elite nodded, then stood up. His gleaming red eyes scanned over the swarm of kneeling evolved goblin champions in deep consideration.

"Bolg," said the goblin elite.

One of the evolved champions at the front of the rows of kneeling goblins stood up. In his hands, he wielded a large club of Everfrost, indicating physical strength worthy enough of allocating the rare Everfrost resource to his martial merit.

"Yes!" said Bolg with unbridled enthusiasm. His tusks jutted from his mouth as he smiled broadly at the Collector.

"Bolg is strong," said the goblin elite. "Strongest besides me."

"The density of musculature and magical energy does seem to support your judgement," said the Collector. "Approach."

"Got it!" Bolg contained his excitement and walked towards the Collector with almost skipping steps. "What I do?" he said when he got close enough in front of the Collector to squint his eyes at the Collector's light and heat emanating from its swirling flames.

"Show the king respect," said the elite.

"O-oh, sorry, king," said Bolg and bowed his head.

"Apologies are a waste of mental processing power. They are mere elocutions emitted in an attempt to soothe the mind of a mistake that has already occurred.

There will be no more apologies among this swarm," said the Collector, remembering how in the Darkwoods, it had given a similar explanation of its thoughts to the female daemon specimen. "Focus instead on actions. Do not state apology, show betterment."

The goblin swarm all nodded, taking the Collector's words deep into their hearts like it was the lecturing of some great philosopher or messiah come to tell a parable to save their souls.

The Collector thrust forth what remained of the grizzled stormbear to goblin champion known as 'Bolg'.

"Strike this specimen's heart," said the Collector, intending on transferring ownership of this dungeon to this evolved champion.

"Got it," said Bolg as he took in a breath, arcing the club back before exhaling and slamming the heavy end of the Everfrost weapon right into the stormbear's exposed ribs, crashing through them and splattering the heart within.

The Collector with this command attempted to observe whether transferal of the dungeon's ownership would occur and whether this was based upon solely whoever landed the killing blow. It felt finally as the stormbear's life faded away, entering into permanent death.

The Collector put a hand under the stormbear's torso to absorb the drizzle of heart chunks and blood dripping from its open ribs to see whether its core material possessed any Blessings attached to it, but there were none.

After setting down the stormbear's corpse, the Collector aimed its glowing yellow skeletal sockets at Bolg, analyzing the specimen for any notable changes. The dungeons energies not only supplied regenerative powers, but also some measure of strengthening that spurred various magical and biological growths.

Potentially, if this 'Bolg' were to receive these energies, then it would gain the potential to ascend further into another champion.

However, no such changes occurred.

"Tell me, do you sense any changes within your form? Do you feel this space funneling its magical energy within you?" said the Collector.

Bolg looked down at his body with a raised brow. "N-no?"

"Then it is not so," came the elder's voice. The kneeling goblins parted as the elder hobbled forwards on his walking stick, wrapped up in his cloak and skins. "O king, I tell you now what happens. I did say before that these dungeons are taken by beasts, and beasts that slay them gain dominion over them.

Yet, it is not the killing blow alone that determines this."

The elder shook his head as he made his way up beside Bolg and bowed his head to the Collector. "No, it is far more sacred, more primal. It is the submission of the soul."

"Explain further," said the Collector.

"The boss of this dungeon may have had his heart crushed by Bolg, but his soul did not submit to Bolg, it submitted to you, O king," said the elder. "Thus, you are the new boss."

Clamors and whispers began to spread among the goblin swarm.

"We get dungeon now?"

"No more moving around. We stay one spot now. Warm spot."

"We get own land. Our land!"

The Collector clicked the mandibles of its main skull as it began to feel the dungeon's flow of mana begin to circulate around it, currents of blue flowing from the mana crystals and swirling around the Collector's ashen form.

*Primal Density Gained (5%)*

Primal Density: 20 25%

It recalled from the elder that specimen that became dungeon bosses became bound to them not only magically, but physically. However, it could not afford such geographical limitation for its mission required vast amounts of travel.

"I will not sustain continued ownership of this territory," said the Collector, and a disappointed silence arose among the goblins. It noted the presence of three frostboar corpses dragged along by the swarm, ready for consumption, and decided it would give them some time to recuperate their strength.

"Consume those frostboar specimen and regain your strength. The swarm's continued course of action will be determined soon."

The goblin swarm scrambled to sate their hunger with the Collector's command. However, the elite, Bolg, and the elder all stayed in front of the Collector, sensing its will.

Report chapter

The Collector first spoke to the elder.

"Tell me of the mechanics involved within ownership transferal regarding these lairs known as 'dungeons," said the Collector. "Specifically in regards to geographic proximity. What occurs when my physical presence exceeds the boundaries required for ownership?"

The elder cocked his head and thought about this question for a lingering second. "It is rare that any would ever give up the worthy title of a dungeon boss, for with it, one grows closer to the world's breathing.

But, yes, there have been such cases. Once, a terrible beast from afar, a creature that once was the familiar of a mighty sorcerer, was set loose upon this land, and it devoured all in its midst, toppling boss after boss, and, when it reached the edges of this land, made its way back to defeat again the creatures that took up the dungeons in its absence."

The Collector read through the lines of the elder's talk. "Then it is simply that when this form exceeds the given range limit of ownership, it will default to any specimen within the dungeon's proximity."

"I believe so, but still, my king," said the elder. He turned around, long ears pricking at the commotion behind him. He waved his hand to the rest of the goblin swarm as they butchered the frostboar corpses, sharing the meat among themselves.

"Never once have I seen our tribe so unified under one purpose. So…together. Three champions have I lived through, and all three were selfish and simple, seeing only but the next meal and how much of it they could take, letting the children and others starve to sate themselves.

But you, my king, you hold no such lowly views. You see beyond, to a far greater vision, obtaining power far beyond us. This, I understand. Yet, I must implore you, will you not claim this dungeon as yours and grant our people the warmth and lands they have long so desired?"

"I cannot be limited by any geographical restrictions," said the Collector. "For my purpose requires extensive amounts of travel. Yet, I sense from your mannerisms that simply yielding this dungeon to nature will be cause of some discord among your social unit.

This, I will remedy."

The Collector pointed at Bolg. "You shall remain here with a contingent of ten champions. The dungeon's mana flow naturally will proceed to the specimen with the highest mana capacity, and that shall be you. You will become the new 'boss'."

"I…I feel great honor," said Bolg.

"Stand," said the Collector, and Bolg did so.

The Collector punched its hand into Bolg's chest. The carrier unit elite and elder did not flinch, for they were now used to this process of evolution.

Bolg himself held back his pain and instead nodded in acceptance.

The Collector utilized Higher Calling, imparting a modification into the champion's biology directly into his heart. Red and black energy glowed from within the champion's chest, shining through his pale white skin for a few seconds before the Collector withdrew a blood-soaked hand.

The Collector flicked its hand, slicking the blood off to the ground as it watched as Bolg's chest wound closed up. Bolg bent over at the waist with a deep breath, as if the wind had been knocked out of him, and then, the back of his bald head started to split apart with a single bloody laceration.

From the cut emerged two black tendrils intertwined around each other. They dropped from Bolg's head and hung like a dreadlock of hair, though their slight wriggling indicated otherwise.

"The greater influx of magical energy your core will receive from the dungeon will no doubt influence your physiology. The Grizzled Stormbear too had gained additional muscle mass and magical energy capacity with extended exposure to this dungeon environment.

However, I cannot wait to reap those benefits, nor are they appreciable enough to consider in favor of metamorphosis. Yet, they will prove greatly useful to you, a lesser specimen."

The Collector assessed the champion's current physique and analyzed his level of magical energy.

"Your current form lacks the potential to evolve. Thus, I have ushered in modifications to your physiology, priming your body for evolution with these tendrils that will funnel greater amounts of mana through your body to nourish it.

When you have undergone sufficient exposure in this environment and bathed in its magical energy, there is likely potential for your ascension into an elite variant."

"An elite? Like Thokk?" Bolg stared up at the carrier unit elite, and thus, the Collector came to learn the elite's name.

"Presuming you are capable of surviving during my absence," said the Collector. "To ensure as such, the ten champions I leave shall be under your command and function as your guard. The tendrils sprouting from your rear cranium will also allow you greater psionic access to me in the same manner applicable to the carrier unit.

Ensure you do not stray outwards from the dungeon for long, for without its support, you will grow feeble due to many of your roots now being portioned for absorption, not output."

"I understand, king," said Bolg. He smiled up at Thokk. "Soon, I become strong as you, maybe even stronger!"

"Hah, no chance!" said Thokk as he flexed his four arms. "But if you want a challenge, I always up for it."

"Soon, brother," said Thokk as he held out a hand, and Bolg grabbed it in firm and friendly gesture.

"Choose among yourselves which of the ten champions will guard you," said the Collector. "And return to the swarm. I will continue to assess my future actions with the elder."

"As you wish, my king," said the elite unit with a bow.

"Got it," said Bolg with a deep and grateful nod.

"If I may, my king," said the elder.

"Proceed," said the Collector.

"Will you not consider simply allowing the women to remain? The children you have ascended, though now much larger and mightier, are still not yet mature. It will be best for them to stay here, where it is warmer and safer with a mighty elite to guard them."

"The female specimen themselves are sufficiently strong enough to contend with the males," said the Collector.

"Yes, tis' true, yet, I suppose it is principle. The men will go to battle and the hunt, the women will tend to the young and the forage."

"True," said Bolg before he checked himself and bowed to the Collector. "No disagree with you, king."

"Women are strong. They can fight too," said Thokk.

The Collector calculated the cost of allowing all the female and children to remain. If it replaced the ten guards with all the female and young, then it would lose a net five additional champion specimen. It was willing to sacrifice that number to prevent any potential discord among this social unit.

"It shall be so," said the Collector. It faced Bolg. "Instead of ten guards, the female and young specimens will guard you."

Then, the Collector faced the elder and said, "Will this be sufficient to quell discord among your kind? I know little of customs of tinkering land ownership, but I presume this shall be enough to sate any primal desire for territory and account for this concept known as 'tradition.'"

"Yes, with the women and children warm, the men will fight with cleare minds. Our ways have changed much since you must have reigned, my king, I know, and to you, they may seem so simple, but these are the ways that have developed over the centuries," said the elder. "I am sorry for burdening them upon you."

The Collector clicked the mandibles of its main skull, and the elder hastened to correct himself.

"Ah, there must be no apologies, yes, only betterment," said the elder.

The Collector spoke to Bolg and Thokk. "You are no longer required. Tend to the swarm and their needs."

Bolg and Thokk left after their formal departures, leaving but the Collector and the elder.

The Collector assessed its decisions. This champion unit, 'Bolg' as he was called, would remain here, and when ownership of the dungeon transferred to him, quite likely evolve into an elite after some time. By staying within the dungeon, the Collector could also establish a greater link to the unit's mind via the tendrils.

The Collector could not sustain such a link with the other specimens, but with Bolg, fueled by the dungeon's regenerative properties, it was possible to maintain a high performance, sustained link that would allow the Collector to see through Bolg's eyes and sense the dungeon's surroundings.

Like this, the Collector could place sentry points through every dungeon, increasing its map of awareness greatly. In a sense, it was greatly similar to the hivemind procedure of the Collective where every single unit, connected to the greater Hivemind, was an extension of the Hivemind's eyes and ears, thus ensuring that even the lowliest of drones was a deadly threat whose death would never go unnoticed.

In time, if the Collector amassed even greater forces, incorporating the remaining few goblin tribes in the area as well, then it could conceivably possess quite the extensive surveillance network.

Report chapter

The Collector went on the move once the goblin swarm had adequately seen to their physical needs by consuming the frostboars and taking in sleep.

By leaving the females, young and Bolg behind at the dungeon, the Collector's swarm thinned out to a total of twenty three units. Twenty two evolved champions and Thokk, the carrier unit elite. Tagging along them was the elder, though he did not possess any combat capacity to note.

Even his ability to utilize magic had been diminished for he was simply too frail to circulate large quantities of mana into his roots any longer.

Prior to the departure, the Collector noted a few curiosities. The elder had requested the Collector to utilize its flames on the frostboar meat the swarm subsisted off of, rendering it into a form that seemed to suit the taste buds of the goblins far better.

With this, a certain set of behaviors began to form. It was noted from the elder that fire was an extremely rare resource in this biome, particularly with the goblin swarm this far up north where there were precious few flammable pieces of flora to ignite.

In addition, the inclement weather made any manner of flame extremely difficult to sustain.

Thus, when fire was seen, it was seen as a rarity, and a sign of great reverence for a gift granted by an anthropomorphized concept of nature. A shard of precious warmth in a land of unforgiving cold set alight by the errant lightning strike.

But here was the Collector, an infinite source of warmth and flame that seemed to stand against the wails of winter.

The goblin swarm carved up chunks of meat and brought them with bowed heads to the Collector's aura of flame, extending both their hands out and lifting the meat as if to have it blessed by the Collector's presence.

There was something occurring here, something the Collector could not quite place, but it knew from its stored memories that this was roughly comparable to the idea of primeval worship that primitive tinkerers were often predisposed to indulge themselves in.

The Collector was not simply a 'king', an entity that stood at the top of a social hierarchy, it was increasingly beginning to step outside the hierarchy itself and become considered a 'god.'

The Collector did not care much of this. It still believed notions of social hierarchy and worship of 'gods' simply an expression of tinkering evolutionary adaptation to clump together, with this adaptation serving also to weaken them individually.

Yet, perhaps not so.

The Collector could see that the more this mystique intensified, the more these savage tinkerers began to not only bow to it, but worship it, the greater their individual strengths would be. The greater the lengths they would be willing to traverse for the Collector.

Thus, so long as the swarm utilized this predisposition to incline themselves to be loyal to the Collector, it allowed these nonsensical parades, this 'worship', to continue.

The Collector went on the move as daylight faded and night arose.

Night, the Collector deemed, was the most opportune time to traverse without risk of threat.

For though Shadows followed set patterns of movement that followed the 'Great Storm' without actively hunting others, it was still difficult for those that lacked the capacity to sense them to avoid their paths, especially if it had been such that there were smaller storms that had attracted them.

Of course, the Shadows would not bother the Collector. This, too, roused mystique, and as the Collector traversed the icy lands once more, this time taking up a slower pace to keep the goblin swarm close behind it, it could hear with its sharp auditory systems whispers of further reverence.

That the Collector alone could break the darkness and bend it to its will.

That its kingly aura and flames would bring life and warmth to the swarm and ensure the prosperity of their females and young.

Further, that it would lead them to the Old Age.

"Tell me," asked the Collector. "What is this 'Old Age?'"

The elder, this time carried on Thokk's broad shoulder, responded. "It is the age before the Common Body set its iron rule upon the realms. When yet our kingdom still stood strong.

Ah, my king, you who have been born anew into this land to lead us, I should have explained much earlier."

The Collector clicked the mandibles of its main skull. "You are capable of perceiving the age of this physical form?"

"Not the body. The soul." The elder looked towards the Collector with blank, blind eyes, seeing but not seeing. "Your soul…it is very young.

Thus, it must be so that you are a king born anew into this broken world to lead us once more into greatness befitting our lineage."

The Collector had been created and birthed solely to fight whatever had been behind the anomalous warp gate above the Hivemind planet. In terms of numerical age, it was now thirteen days and fourteen hours old.

In most biological standards, this was an extremely short time, and yet, the Collector possessed enough stored knowledge implanted within its processing unit that the very concept of tinkering 'age' simply did not apply to it.

It was born knowing.

"The soul is simply an expression of latent psionic energies.

Conceivably, it is possible to determine age based upon a psionic reading investigating the breadth of information within a unit, yet, I cannot sense any psionic sensitivity within your form, nor would such a scan yield any accurate result regarding myself" said the Collector.

"I know little of what these energies your vast knowledge hold are, but my king, the soul is not simply unfeeling energy. It is much more. It is what marks us as individuals."

"Individuality is a summation of traits, psionic expressions, and neurochemical balances that comprise your conception of 'personality'. Nothing more," deemed the Collector. "Tell me instead of this capacity to read 'souls'.

Likely, you have developed a means to perceive finer details of psionic energy without possessing psionic sensitivity of your own."

"Hmm." The elder grew silent for some time as they traveled north, into the depths of the cold and winter wastes.

"How must I put it. To perceive the soul is…there is no simple method," said the elder. "There is no inborn trait within us that allows us to see it. The soul has no color, no shape, no taste, no smell, it simply…is.

In my old age, seeing lives of many different sizes and shapes and wills pass by me, I begin to understand better myself.

And because I am secure in who I am, I am better able to see who others are even with the loss of these eyes of mine."

"In summation, there is a method," corrected the Collector. The method was far more mundane than it had thought. "According to your analyses, it is that in accumulating knowledge of the world and other specimen you are capable of analyzing patterns of behavior and tendency and thus determine the 'personality' of other specimen.

Yet, this alone does not explain your capacity to perceive the age of organisms."

"Forgive me, my king, for what I am to say, but…you seemed young," said the elder. "You desire to know a great many things."

"The desire to accumulate knowledge is an intrinsic part of any organism's framework for survival. Exponentially more so with organisms that possess higher levels of intellectual capacity," stated the Collector.

Simply the desire to know should have been insufficient for the elder to deduce anything remotely resembling age.

"It is in how you desire to know. Your desire…it is pure, so very pure." The elder smiled from Thokk's shoulder. "You wish to know the world and understand it untainted by many of the emotions and experiences that weigh the vast majority of us down.

Eventually, there comes a time when we live our own lives too long, when we have too many experiences and feelings and judgements ingrained in us that we can never desire to know simply for the pure sake of knowing.

Your desire, your curiosity, however, though it is, as you say, shaped to aid our survival, still holds the curiosity of innocence to it.

In time, as you come to know more and more, I am sure that you too will begin to understand yourself, to know who you are, and then, you will start to know how others are."

The elder suddenly began to cough, violent tremors shuddering through his thin, fragile body. The Collector's senses alerted, perceiving that now that the nature of snowfall in the area had undertaken a drastic change.

Instead of flakes of white dropping at lazy pace from the sky, there was instead a downpouring of black particulates.

Report chapter

These particulates, the Collector sensed, still possessed all the physical properties of snowfall.

They were cold and melted quickly before they could touch the Collector's aura of flames. Aside from the greater intensity at which they fell and their color, there was no differentiation.

"So it is true. Grain falls this far to the north," said the elder.

"Explain further," said the Collector as it clicked its mandibles. It had thought it had thoroughly taken note of this land from the elder, but it knew that the elder did not possess anything remotely resembling the hyper efficient processing unit within the Collector, meaning it was susceptible to forgetfulness and mistakes.

This, the elder knew, but he did not apologize for he knew by now that the Collector believed them to be worthless.

"In speaking of Grain, I suppose I can tell you some of the Old Age now," said the elder. "I have told you of the World Dungeons, no?"

The elder asked with genuine curiosity because he was unsure of whether he had spoken of these topics with the Collector despite their conversation having been conducted just shy of a day ago.

"Yes," said the Collector.

The elder had, in fact, spoken of them.

The World Dungeons were seven enormous dungeons located in various areas around the planet, and they were unique in that they manifested throughout every single realm, being intrinsically connected to all of them.

Like black holes that were wells pinned through all layers of space, the World Dungeons remained the same in all realms where environments and creatures and tinkerers changed forms and shapes across them.

The only exception was Aetheria, the realm of the so called 'gods', and this because the realm had been constructed artificially, though the means by which it was done so was difficult to ascertain.

The elder only knew of far-flung myth regarding this event, stating that when the gods rallied with the Convergence, their flying palace ascended its form also into Aetheria.

The World Dungeons were a topic of immense interest to the Collector. At the dawn of recorded oral history, it seemed that shortly following the appearance of gods, two sets of challengers arose to face them to vie for planetary supremacy.

The first were the dragons. Reptilian creatures of immense might and varied strengths capable of manipulating natural disasters to their wills. In a battle known as the Draconomachy, the gods slew the dragons, utilizing a brilliant light from their sky palace that burned the dragons away.

Afterwards, when the gods had begun to settle into supremacy, another challenge beset them. The emergence of World Dungeons swarming with powerful monsters.

And from them, there arose the Titans – boss monsters of supreme power that laid waste to civilizations whilst seemingly possessing absolute resistance to any magic the gods could perform.

Thus, in response, the gods assembled together two weapons of unparalleled power that surpassed any of the magics they had previously utilized.

Twin blades known as the Dawnrise and the Duskfall, and with these combined, they lured the titans to one area and obliterated them with a mighty strike that erased an entire continent through every single realm.

The Dawnrise, the Collector was familiar with.

It was the weapon of the god it had encountered and slain. The supposed 'High King'.

The Collector did not possess magical energy at the time of encountering it to have analyzed its full capabilities. But merely through physical observation, it could determine the blade was capable of easily outputting firepower on the level of nuclear ordinance, rapid, large-scale cellular regeneration that would have been unsurpassable had the Collector not possessed its bilespitters, and barriers capable of comfortably weathering the Collector's explosively charged stabilized bioplasma or psionic-plasmobaric explosions.

And the Collector knew that the weapon had been cast away by the entity to someplace in this world, though very likely, it calculated that some tinkerer or god had assumed control of the weapon once more. Thus, until the Collector could at the very least assume power to match such a weapon, it had to minimize its presence.

The elder, when questioned, seemed to possess no conception of where this weapon could be.

Or, potentially, the Collector could seek out the presence of this secondary weapon of equal merit. This 'Duskfall'. Yet, the location of this weapon, too, the Collector lacked any data of. Nor did the elder possess any such relevant information.

The best the elder could provide was that the Duskfall belonged to the daemon variant of humanoids in their home realm known as 'Zerul', but after a large-scale confrontation between other humanoids and the daemons, the realm had been sealed off and the Duskfall supposedly lost.

"One of these World Dungeons lies farther north, far beyond even the Rift, it is said," continued the elder. "There, the great Titan Fimbulvaltr, said to be the last of the great dragons, lies in eternal rest, having been struck down by the war goddess.

Where World Dungeons still to this day birth mighty monsters, it is said that Fimbulvaltr's World Dungeon remains as his grave. From his corpse, it is not monsters that emerge, but instead, his promise of eternal winter is still kept.

The Great Storm is said to originate from his body, and so too, is this Grain. Blackened snow said to be the crystallized tears of his failure.

Goblins have never traveled this far north, to reach the dangerous lands nearing Vimur, but the farther north one goes, the more Grain from the Rift falls."

"Tell me, if you are capable, the properties and qualities of this 'Grain'. Both magical and physical," said the Collector.

"Feels…strange," said Thokk as he narrowed his red eyes and rubbed at a spot on his shoulder with one of his four arms where a particularly large Grain flake landed and melted down into black liquid. "Numb."

"Grain is said to choke magic," said the elder. "Within a great storm of it, it is said that not even the mightiest of spirit roots and cores will be able to flow mana. Yet, those that are monsters born from the world, born from the very same essence that Fimbulvaltr himself arose from, are immune."

The Collector the mandibles of its main skull. It sensed general discomfort all around the troop of champion units behind it as they continued further and further into the increasing Grainfall. Yet, the Collector itself was entirely immune.

Likely because the Collector was considered a 'monster' and therefore exempt. However, it was not origin of creation itself that necessitated this, for the Collector's place of construction was within the Hivemind planet, far from this rock.

No, it was, instead, the Collector perceived, due to its Primal Density. The Primal Density charging each and every one of its cells that allowed it to better perceive the flow of environmental mana and render it more resistant to tinkering magics was the very same magical barrier that warded against the Grainfall.

"You did not mention notable threats in this area," said the Collector to the elder. "Yet, you state there are such presences now."

"Ah, I forgot," said the elder with a shrug.

"Elder…you really forget something important like that?" Thokk groaned and shook his head. "I should take you off my shoulder and make you walk."

"There will be no such course of action. Instead, make known to me the details of these threats," said the Collector.

"The lands close to the Rift, I know so very little of. Only the faintest of tales," said the elder. "But around Vimur, I have heard that around the Jotun's corpse, wraiths – living specters of ice – will wail and stand eternal vigil."

"Wraiths?" asked Thokk, utterly clueless.

"Ah, I only ever told Hrunt most of the stories and tales passed down to me," said the elder. "I do miss the young one despite how unruly he was. Selfish and easy to anger he was, but still, he believed much in leading our people to greatness.

I take solace in knowing that to bring the king to our midst, he must have fallen."

"If you possess any knowledge of the capabilities inherent to these 'wraith' specimen, you will inform me now," said the Collector.

"I…I know little, I am afraid. I know merely that they are said to be harrowed lost souls. Perhaps guardians of the Jotun, for it is said also that his hand holds a great treasure within."

"Specify this treasure," said the Collector.

"This too, I know nothing of."

"Elder, you know a lot less than I thought you did," said Thokk.

"Such is the wayward nature of life," said the elder.

"That sounds like something you make up as an excuse," countered Thokk.

"First you learn our tongue so quickly, now you begin to see through me." The elder smiled a toothless grin. "Wonderful."

The Collector clicked the mandibles of its main skull, understanding that the elder would provide little to no more useful information. They were in territory beyond the scope of his experience.

The Collector determined that the Grain did not affect the goblin units significantly for they were all physical fighters. The Grain prevented magical energy from circulating outwards, but inwardly circulating it for physical strengthening did not suffer any drop in efficiency.

The goblin units were approximately ninety percent capable as a fighting force. The Collector remained at one hundred percent combat capacity.

A good thing, too, for it would seem that these 'Wraiths' were already here.

Report chapter

The Collector maintained high alert on all of its sensory systems as it began to perceive multiple magical energy signatures, all of the same kind, begin to converge upon its location. Unlike the goblins, the Collector possessed enough primal density that the mana interfering properties of the intense fall of Grain did not limit it, allowing it to properly sense magic and utilize it as well.

However, because the Collector's units could not sense through the Grain, it was up to the Collector grant them commands.

"Encircle yourselves around me. Form a precise ring formation. Maintain a distance boundary between five and seven meters. This will prevent burning from my flames and maintain visibility in the Grain."

The Collector clicked the mandibles of its main skull as it sensed inefficiency. The goblin units did have a faint sense of united movement, but because the Collector had granted them some operating independency in order to remove mana upkeep to sustain their existence, the units stumbled here and there.

A ring formation command seemed so utterly simple, but the units ran into each other or created gaps in the ring.

"Move it! Move!" shouted Thokk, sensing the Collector's intent due to possessing a greater connection to it. It pointed with each of its four arms this way and that, commanding and gesturing this champion units to move with more efficiency.

"Thragg, take those three here! Bron, keep those two by your sides!" Like this, Thokk greatly facilitated the Collector's will, and within a minute, the ring formation was complete. Against the heavy fall of black snow that ate away all visibility, the ring of champions stood strong, the light and fire of the Collector behind it giving them the confidence to face the dark.

Not tens seconds passed after the units created their formation then did the wraiths appear.

"There! Strike!" shouted Thokk as he pointed to the rear of the Collector. The champion units occupying that area of the ring stiffened up as their reddened eyes flashed, waiting to see the enemies befalling them.

"Three advance enemy units," said the Collector. "A total of fifty-seven within a fifty meter radius around my point. Total time for complete convergence of these enemy units: forty-four seconds."

The Collector would allow the champions to engage with these three enemy units and observe their capabilities.

The wraiths emerged from the black snow. They were creatures of billowing black mist comprised in a vaguely humanoid shape. The visage of a icy skull flickered where the head should have been, but aside from this feature, the rest of the specimen's body was flickering, intangible dark wind and ice.

They were as tall as the champions with long, spindly limbs of inky mist that reached out. The champion units swatted the misty hands away but found that their physical hands and weapons could not interact with them.

When the wraiths' foggy dark limbs passed over the champion's hands, the champions grunted in pain. Their hands became blue, the cells entering rapid decay as instantaneous freezing caused ice crystals to split apart their flesh at the cellular level.

The Collector conveyed its intent to Thokk.

"Gon, Torr, Midge! Step back!" shouted Thokk, and the three champions that had engaged with the wraiths immediately leaped backwards, their eyes widened in fear of the seemingly invincible foes.

"Away, part!" said Thokk, motioning with his arms for the champion units to clear a straight line of sight to the wraiths for the Collector, and the champions followed promptly.

Before the wraiths could pass through the gap let by the retreating champions, the Collector's stomach split open, and here, it stored its pyrocatalytic glands and its Volcanite-encased biotrigger. With its new sub-adaptation, it no longer required much of a delay to activate its flames, and by further infusing the Volcanite biotrigger with mana, it could manipulate its flames to a far finer degree.

The Collector blasted forth a thin cone of white-blue flame at high speeds. The flames passed through the gap made by the champions with pinpoint accuracy and washed over the three wraiths in white and blue waves. The temperature of the flames was intense enough that the ice and snow they touched did not just evaporate, they caused a steam explosion.

Yet, the Collector noted as the steam simmered down that the wraiths were unharmed. They halted for a moment at the attack, and then began to move forward once more. This time, the ring of champions began to waver, belief in the Collector's ability wavering a little.

The Collector encased its ocular systems in green magical energy in order to better analyze the flow of mana surrounding its foes.

"I-I know this!" said the elder. "My senses are dim here, but I know this feeling. It is like Hrunt's Mistborn!"

The Collector came to the same conclusion. It raised two arms to the three wraiths. Purple flashed around the Collector's arms, and then Sapian force enveloped the three wraiths, completely stilling them.

Then, the Collector closed the fists of its arms, and the wraiths mashed together, the skulls of ice shattering and their misty black forms breaking down and condensing into a ball.

Mana Level: 95% 90%

"Return to formation," stated the Collector as it condensed the wraiths down further into a ball capable of fitting in its palm. It brought the ball over to itself as the champions filled the gap once more, though now their hands were completely disabled by frostbite and ice crystals growing within their flesh.

At the very least, the champions could function as live bodies to delay the wraiths.

The Collector brought the ball of wraiths to its stomach and them simply inserted it into its stomach, easily devouring them.

Mana Level: 90%95%

The Collector clicked the mandibles of its main skull. The wraiths were not organic specimen at all. Unlike the thrall that utilized the Mistborn spell to artificially render its flesh into different states of matter, these specimen did not possess any intrinsic flesh at all.

Nor were they alive any, for if they possessed even an ounce of psionic energy coming from a brain or sapience, they would have provided the Collector with some biomass as well. No, they were merely automatons of a kind created from Grain.

However, the specimens did grant the Collector magical energy from devouring them, indicating that some type of magic was charging and binding their being together.

With analysis, the Collector determined that the agent that bound these wraiths together, granting them form, was Primal Density, the magical essence that seemed inherently linked to the environment. However, it did not seem that merely devouring them would enhance the Collector's own Primal Density.

Essentially, these wraiths were creations of the environment. No more alive than a boulder or raging river.

But if Primal Densiy was the only essence holding them together –

The Collector sensed that the rest of the wraith swarm was fifteen seconds from approach. The sizable swarm's imminent advance was marked by a constant symphony of wails that mimicked the howling of wind.

The Collector faced the intense whirl of raging Grain in front of it. The Firefly Shinchu orb at its chest glowed, and a moment later, a shard of solidified golden light formed in front of it before flying forwards, into the Grain storm.

Mana Level: 95% 92%

A moment later, and an explosion of gold lit up the wall of black Grain particles, indicating that a wraith had succumbed.

The Collector conveyed its intent to its carrier unit elite.

Thokk nodded as it sensed the Collector's thoughts and sprung into action.

"Come here!" Thokk bid one of the injured champions to him and then transferred the elder from his shoulder to the champion's. "You stay here. Carry the elder and keep him close to the king. I fight."

The champion opened his mouth in protest. "No! I fight too!"

"I. Fight." Thokk gave the champion a piercing stare, and his intent was made clear.

The Collector did not explain much for time was short, instead, it simply told the rest of the units what to do. "Half of you, trail behind me. I will turn off my flames to allow you to maintain closer distance to me. The other half will follow the carrier unit."

With that, the Collector focused its magical energy, creating from its orb four shards of solidified light, and further, with Sapia, warped and shaped them down into daggers. These, the Collector floated over to the carrier unit.

Mana Level: 92% 52%

Thokk took the four golden light daggers in his arms with a broad, tusked smile eager for battle and to test out his new weapons.

"Thank you, my king. I will use these well!" Thokk shouted before he leaped forwards, to the other end of the ring. He tossed two of his daggers to two champions, spreading defensive capabilities more evenly around, for the wraiths were slow and easily perceivable, their only real difficulty being their intangibility.

"The rest of you, to the king!" shouted Thokk, and half of the champion units from the ring broke formation and gathered near the Collector.

The Collector did not utilize such tools for its own form, and instead, it withdrew the twin blade-claws of Firefly Shincu light from two of its arms.

The flames around its form died down, but by now, with two days of adjustment to this world and with superior goblin genes, its skin had formed natural adaptation against the cold capable of sustaining it for extended periods of time even without external heat sources.

The Collector did not fashion additional weapons for the units surrounding it, not only because shaping the Shincu's light was prohibitively expensive, but also because it was confident in its abilities to easily defend them all.

Report chapter

---

Read Alien Evolution System Chapter 111 - Purpose online for free - AllNovelFull

The Collector pressed forwards, onwards to the direction of Vimur.

The elder did not know the exact coordinates of this location, but by now, the Collector was close enough to the area that it could perceive the environmental flow of magical energy swirling towards it.

The initial patterns of mana flow movement across the environment indicated that Vimur was likely going to be a dungeon and judging by the quantity of flow vastly surpassing the lair-like dungeon of the ursine, it was one that promised much more danger and, simultaneously, much more reward.

Of course, an accurate threat assessment of the dungeon could not yet be calculated until the Collector could directly analyze its immediate surroundings.

Estimated time of arrival to Vimur: two hours accounting for constant interference from these specimen known as wraiths.

As for the wraiths –

The Collector blitzed a complete warpath of carnage and destruction.

Like a lone star casting away the dark, the Collector's solidified golden light blades sliced through wraith bodies with utter ease.

One swipe could catch two to three of the misty figures, and when the light blade passed through their normally incorporeal bodies of mist, grain, and ice, an interesting reaction occurred.

The Primal Density, visible in particulate form as iridescent, rainbow specks, holding together the inky wraith forms sputtered out, their light snuffed out at points of contact with the Firefly Shinchu light.

Then, this reaction spread, and all the primal density holding together the wraiths faded away, causing them to spontaneously combust into a miniature explosion of shattered ice and heat.

This explosion too was lethal to wraiths nearby, and the Collector ensured it wrought maximal destruction by targeting clusters of wraiths, leaping forwards to stab one and let its death explosion deal with the rest.

In the case that wraiths came too close to the units behind the Collector, it would utilize Sapia, crushing them with ranged capability.

The carrier unit and his chosen two subunits to wield the solidified light held their own well.

The carrier unit, in particular, devastated the ranks of the wraiths. With agile flips and dashes zig-zagging through the misty dark bodies, the carrier unit slashed and stabbed and hacked, shattering wraith forms wherever he went.

The sub-units were far less agile, but still, as champions, they defended themselves and the unarmed units adequately enough, with only a small number of injuries accumulating among the goblin swarm.

So far, no deaths.

With the goblin units the Collector personally guarded, there were not even injuries.

When the greater body of the wraiths numbering almost fifty in total came forwards in a veritable sea of darkness, the Collector created three more shards of light and with Sapia, rotated them rapidly around itself, creating mobile blades that it could shoot out or back to defend its units in more angles.

Thirty more minutes later, and the Collector stood victorious, no wraiths remaining to stand against it.

The goblin swarm stared at the Collector in complete awe, marveling at its martial prowess and capacity to defend them to such a degree.

Mana Level: 30%

The Collector clicked the mandibles of its main skull. It had by devouring the Ursine constantly compensated for the loss of spirit roots from skipping a metamorphosis level, but even so, the cost of the Firefly Shincu's light was significant.

It would take ascending to the next level to make them manageable.

Which made the Collector wonder what it would be like to truly face the Firefly Shinchu in venerated battle.

An exciting prospect for another time.

For now, the Collector made note of its resources.

The goblin swarm reconvened around the Collector, the dark snowfall of Grain raging all around them. Even though the goblins were well adapted to the cold with their flexible skin, the champion units did not possess the same prime genetic material as the elite unit, and correspondingly their capacity to adapt cold resistance was lower.

Here, farther north were Grain generated temperatures far lower than ordinary snowfall, the champions possessed compromised movement and function from the cold.

Thus, the Collector, after it ascertained there were no more wraiths in the vicinity, alighted itself with flame once more.

The goblins knelt down in reverence as the flames coated the Collector, almost forming a royal cape of flames around its back.

"Stand," said the Collector. "There is no time to squander. Carrier unit, report to me an assessment of your units."

"Yes, my king," said Thokk as he stood up, daggers of solidified light fastened to the loincloth at his waist. "Five injured champions. Three of them have lost the use of their arms, but the icy curse upon them will heal in time, I am sure."

"No compromise to movement capacity, then," said the Collector. "Then we will move forward."

A small silence echoed through the ranks of the champions, and Thokk whirled around, sensing the sentiment.

"Who is it?" said Thokk. His red eyes were alight with displeasure. "Who among you is not devoted to the king's cause?"

"Calm now, Thokk," said the elder from a champion's shoulder. "They are merely afraid for they are not as mighty as you."

"Fear?" mused the Collector. "For what possible reason should fear foment within your processing units? Most of you have emerged from this altercation unscathed or with no permanent injury."

"King, it is not that we scared of fighting," said one of the champions with lowered head. "But…but fighting ghosts hard. Can't hit them but they hit us. Not like a real fight."

"I see," said the Collector. The Collector could actually understand the emotion and sentiment behind this thought. It had felt the very same the first time it had fought the hobgoblin thrall when he could simply phase through the Collector's blows.

There was no sense of the fight, of any meaningful exchange of blows.

"And we know we fight for king, but some of us want to know," continued the champion. "What king fight for? What he lead us to?"

"Is it not enough to fight by your king's side?" questioned Thokk.

"Elder says king lead us to Old Age, but none of us know Old Age," said the champion. "What…what we get from fighting?"

The Collector began to understand. The champion specimen, or at the very least some of them, though they were conditioned to follow the Collector, maintained independence enough to value their self-perseverance and desires as well.

Thus, the discontent specimen desired good fights and appropriate rewards for risking their lives for such fights.

Yet, what would these units desire? The Collector had never required reward for any of its actions. It simply did as it was meant to, and fulfilling its created purpose alone was sufficient justification for its existence.

The Collector had some ideation. Perhaps the units desired a promise of basic physical needs. Continued warmth and sustenance. Perhaps they desired additional means of growing strength.

In either case, the Collector could provide so long as their desires did not grow too cumbersome to accommodate.

"If is continued sustenance and shelter you desire, then at the very least, your physical needs will not want," stated the Collector. "These flames that I generate will provide heat. Prey for consumption, I can easily generate through the usage of Snow Sprites to lure them.

You will not want for companionship with others of your kind, nor in access to reproductive functions, particularly when the other goblin tribes of this biome have been assimilated."

This explanation seemed to be sufficient for most of the champion units for, as the Collector knew well, instinct dictated that they prioritize such physical needs close to themselves. Such was the nature of intelligence and independence.

Tinkerers often thought themselves separate from those species less mentally capable, somehow beyond basic primal need due to intelligence and independence, but at the fundamental level, both of those values were simply a means to an end for fulfilling such primal needs and desires.

"That good," said the champion, and yet, the specimen continued, this time looking right at the Collector. "I like food, fire, lair, and that good for most of us, but me – I want to know again: what I fight for?"

"Thragg, if you continue against the king like this, then you will know what you fight for. Your life against me," said Thokk.

"A purpose, is it?" said the Collector, musing in thought to itself.

The specimen desired a purpose to justify its fighting. Or, at a more fundamental level, a purpose to give meaning to its existence. Beyond even the promise of having its physical needs met, it desired a purpose.

This…was an idiosyncrasy of tinkerers that the Collector knew of but did not truly understand.

The Collector was created with purpose to bring forth the Collective's reign across the universe. Its entire physiology, its combat capabilities and processing power and even its implanted desires, all of it was fashioned for the purpose of waging battle to further the Collective.

This, the Collector had known from the moment of its conception.

But tinkerers – they had no purpose to themselves. When they were born, they knew nothing, and though they could have purposes instilled into them through learning, that they were not born for their purpose meant their devotion to it was fickle.

They expanded and gathered resources for seemingly no real purpose in sight, for inevitably their expansion would collapse from the discord of independence or incompetency.

This was what the Collector had initially thought.

Yet, perhaps that was the wrong way to think about them.

Perhaps the distinction was that tinkerers had the capacity to choose their own purpose.

Report chapter

The Collector pondered exactly how to state what the purpose of these goblin specimen were. They desired one, and the Collector was in a position of authority to grant them one.

Or, rather, it was more accurate to state that the Collector could suggest them a purpose, and though they would undertake it due to the Collector's perceived authority, it was up to them whether they would truly believe the purpose suited for them.

To that end, the Collector was incentivized to create a purpose for them that would grant them sufficient satisfaction.

Perhaps, as the elder had stated, a promise to an "Old Age" which the Collector deduced based off conversational hints and terminology that it was an era within which the goblin species was both more numerous and influential.

However, this was not what the Collector desired these specimens to fight for. In the end, the Collector wished for these specimens to lay their lives down for the greater Collective's purpose.

The purpose to stand before all purposes. The Great Purpose.

Would the goblin specimens, however, be willing to champion such a cause when they were not bred with, born with it implanted in their every cell as was the case with the Collector? This question, the Collector could not immediately calculate an answer to.

Yet, the Collector did not lie, and it believed in the nobility of its purpose. Thus, it reiterated the purpose that it believed in.

"You are subordinates of mine, and thus, the purpose I have undertaken for myself is therefore yours as well," stated the Collector, its smooth, calm voice resonating elegantly throughout the goblin swarm.

"The purpose that has been invested unto me is one that precedes all others. The Great Purpose is what it is designated as, and in gathering strength against it, entropy, the inevitable heat death of all that is, may be reversed."

A sense of silence rose throughout the goblin swarm, and the Collector sensed this was one of confusion with continued silence occurring due to respect for the Collector preventing anyone from speaking up.

The Collector analyzed how it interacted with these specimens. Its wording in relation to their knowledge. Their attitudes toward the Collector. It considered their emotions, needs, and desires, and it weighed them against its own, or, if possible, whether they could be harmonious.

It realized that it could not compute an answer to them. It had to relate to them.

Perhaps for the first time since the Collector had landed upon this lone yet unique rock in the vast void of space, it considered the swarm before it as a collection of individuals, not as a swarm of units.

The Collector could not have done so before. It had not held any concept of many of the emotions and desires these specimens felt.

But now, it had sufficient data to perceive many of their emotions and, though it still could not truly empathize with them, to feel their emotions as strongly as they did, it could at the very least understand them.

This allowed the Collector to alter its wording.

"The Great Purpose is a purpose that precedes all others," stated the Collector, the fiery aura around it raging upwards in a particularly bright show to emphasize its words.

It re-worded the Great Purpose to make it understandable and desirable. "It is the ultimate representation of the primordial desire of life to stand against the unknown, to overcome it to survive.

It is the ultimate stand against an eternal darkness that will come to this world and all others like it.

By fighting with me, by gathering forces and strength for this form of mine, we will stand against the eternal dark to come: a threat that will overwhelm and swallow all life and warmth upon this entire world.

Should you simply content yourselves with simple lives, then you may enjoy the immediate future, but inevitably, the darkness will come, and when it descends, it will swallow all that you are and all that you know."

The Collector motioned two of its hands towards the goblin swarm of evolved champions.

"Look among yourselves now. Look at your forms. Look at how much strength they have garnered, how they have evolved far past the weakness that chained them just days prior. Look at how you no longer want for food. Look at how you have now claimed a dungeon to your tribe.

None of you must run and hide now, scurrying amid the snow, afraid of the shadows and beasts.

Soon, you shall all attain further heights of strength, and then, you need not even fear the adventurers longer.

I grant you this strength not so that you may scavenge in fear as you have always done. No, I grant you such strength so that you may, in time, stand with me against the greatest darkness of all."

"We fight…to save the world," said Thragg with a deep nod.

"Yes," said the Collector simply.

The Collector did not lie. But it knew now how to word itself better. To relate them better to these specimen. This, the Collector could perform through some assistance via the mental link it possessed with the carrier unit and the soon to be evolved elite.

The links were two-way, and just as the units could sense the Collector's intent, the Collector could parse theirs, and, if it so desired, widen the connection so that it could glimpse their emotions to sufficient enough degree to understand them.

Yet, the Collector did not truly feel those emotions. It essentially saw them in the same way a tinkerer would investigate a pathogen under a microscope and come to know its effects and structure, but not truly feel the ravages of the disease with its own body.

This was not like how it had been when the female daemon specimen had unleashed her emotions unto the Collector.

Those emotions. Sadness. Loneliness. Happiness.

Those, the Collector could not understand even now though it could begin to understand more muted versions of those emotions.

When the Collector faced a worthy opponent, it could achieve something close to a muted 'happiness'.

But sadness and loneliness, those emotions, especially at the intensity at which the female daemon specimen had felt them, only confused the Collector.

Thus, it continued to seal them.

Perhaps, in a further time, there would come a need for the Collector to better understand them.

Perhaps in relating to the specimen under it to a greater degree. Or perhaps in requiring those emotions to utilize a useful core.

But for now, there was no need to further muddle the Collector's processing system with them.

"Then no greater purpose for me," said Thragg. He beat his heart with his fist. "Always, I wanted to be next champion. Tired of running and hiding. Lead tribe and make them big and happy and strong. But always, too weak.

Now, strong. Strong from you, king, you are right. And if this darkness will come for us, then I fight with strength you give me. Save my people."

The Collector understood that this specimen, this 'Thragg' as he was denoted, as particularly unique among the other specimens, having possessed great amounts of ambition beyond the bare necessities of his physical needs.

The Collector had uttered its words almost solely to convince this unit, but it understood that such words would also galvanize the other, more simpler units and also grant a cohesive, collective purpose to which the entire swarm could devote itself to.

In a way, this was a microcosm of the Collective Hivemind itself.

Except with the Collector at its center.

The Collector did not know whether this was heresy or not. Whether it was merely taking an efficient path towards the purpose implanted within it or whether it was usurping it.

For now, the Collector did not desire to ponder such a dilemma. The fact that it could even conceptualize such a dichotomy was indicative of the changes from the many varied experiences it had accumulated upon this world.

"I sense then that this purpose is sufficient. Then we will move on further," said the Collector.

The rest of the way to Vimur held no errant threats.

The intensity of Grainfall, however, significantly increased to the point where the raging fall of black particulates was such that they almost completely mired visibility, reducing it to within five meters even with the Collector's honed ocular systems.

However, it did not seem that the already exceedingly frigid temperature of Grain became any colder. Thus, the champions could handle the cold so long as the Collector maintained its aura of flame to warm them.

Approximately forty minutes before arrival to Vimur, the Collector stopped the units to grant them sustenance. It did so by remaining stationary and allowing Snowsprites to gather around it once more.

Just as it could dispel them with a clap of its hands, it too could bid them return with the same motion. The Snowsprites seemed to be able to move throughout the Grainfall with no detrimental effect, and they shone even brighter against the contrasting darkness.

As time gathered and more and more Snowsprites whirled around the Collector's warmth, their intended usage came into effect as bait.

Report chapter

Snowsprites, according to the elder, were meant to allow creatures desiring shelter from cold to follow them to warmth, but here, they became death traps.

Prey animals flocked like moths to a flame. An antlered, quadrupedal mammalian specimen. Three rabbits with exceptional size exceeding a meter and a half.

These prey specimen, the goblin swarm worked together to entrap and hunt. Once they had slaughtered them, the Collector dispelled the Snowsprites again to minimize its presence.

These prey specimens did not possess much magical energy flowing through them, nor were their genetic samples particularly useful, but sampling them did indicate information about specimen generally in this area.

It would seem that far up enough north, the constant and severe Grainfall acted as an evolutionary push for specimen to enlarge themselves to better accommodate themselves to the temperatures.

In addition, these creatures, though they themselves did not possess much in terms of magical capacity, had an impressive ability to sense mana in the air through antlers, altered olfactory organs, and so on.

This also meant that, like the Collector, the creatures could bypass the mana-insulating effects of Grain. However, they did not possess Primal Density charging their cells, and therefore, the Collector came to deduce that Grainfall seemed optimally fashioned against tinkerers.

Tinkerers and humanoids upon this planet did not possess any Primal Density, and the unique energy itself was, as the Collector had observed, naturally occurring in specimens that were more deeply connected to the environment.

Thus, when the Collector absorbed the dungeon's ownership, it gained more Primal Density for the dungeons were highly linked with the natural environment.

Primal Density, too, possessed the unique ability to neutralize magical energy wavelengths that corresponded with anything sourced from the gates wielded by the entities known as 'gods'.

In essence, it almost seemed as if Primal Density was a natural adaptation of the environment itself against the 'gods'.

The Grainfall, too, seemed uniquely engineered against tinkerers. Because its mana insulating properties worked only on those with little to no Primal Density, the vast majority of tinkerers would never be able to traverse this part of the world.

Any tinkering specimen that relied upon Sorcery, the magic granted by the gods, would find themselves completely powerless.

Only tinkerers that relied solely upon the might of their own physical forms would survive here, and even then, they would be greatly cut off from their social units, for the Collector highly doubted that any form of magical surveillance could penetrate Grain.

As the Collector utilized its flames to roast the prey specimen meat for the goblin units to enjoy, it came to hypothesize that it was possible that the environment itself possessed some measure of will, or, at the very least, functioned like a body possessing a thorough immune system.

According to the elder, the gods descended, and in response, enemies known as dragons first faced them, then these lairs known as 'World Dungeons' manifested.

This Grainfall, said to be sourced from a World Dungeon, had the markings of being deliberately engineered to stymie gods and tinkerers that relied on them.

Thus, it was a possibility that these 'gods' were an entirely foreign presence upon this world that the environment rejected as a pathogen.

Correlating this fact with the presence of Unitan, the language of the United Front against the Collective among spacefaring tinkerers, led the Collector to fashion yet another conclusion: it was perhaps that the spacefaring tinkerers themselves were 'gods'.

However, too many inconsistencies. Too little evidence to truly ground a conclusion. If the United Front truly was upon this world, then their advanced sensory systems would have picked up on the Collector immediately.

This was not to mention the fact that the first god the Collector had faced, the one styling itself as a 'high king', possessed absolutely none of the technological advancements that marked the United Front's innovations against the Collective.

Yet, there was no doubt that the two, the presence of the United Front and the 'gods', were inextricably linked.

Further investigation needed.

For now, the prime directive was still to survive and grow strong. And this environment was apt for such a directive, for the Grainfall would grant the Collector cover from any tinkering force or surveillance.

As the Collector mused, the elder, now seated upon a mound of snow, still wrapped up in his thick padding of skins, spoke.

"O great king," said the elder.

The Collector clicked the mandibles of its main skull to bid the elder speak further. As it did so, it solidified another shard of Firefly Shinchu light and hovered it away, to the greater body of the swarm, thus arming the goblins.

All the while, the Collector continued to open the pores in its carapace to imbibe magical energy, restoring what it had lost.

"The purpose you have bestowed upon yourself, upon us, this 'Great Purpose'," said the elder. "You have said we must stand against a great darkness. What, if I may ask, is this darkness?"

"The end of all things," stated the Collector. "It is the loss of life and warmth to the inevitable approach of decay."

"And this darkness…will it strike us soon?" said the elder.

"Unlikely. Yet, there is no reason not to prepare," said the Collector. "The darkness acts over extended periods of times, times unfathomably large to lifespans for specimens such as yourselves, yet, that alone is no reason for complacency.

The darkness is capable of manifesting and devouring in sudden moments that belie any sense of common reason."

The Collector knew this well.

Ultimately, the Collective Hivemind stood against the inevitable approach of entropy, but both tinkering races and the Collective itself did not fully grasp the nature of this heat death.

The tinkerers, in particular, knew nothing of its true nature, for they believed entropy a far-flung fate billions of years in the distant beyond.

However, the Collective Hivemind with its extensive tendrils of awareness had picked up swathes of space where entropy had come and went, rendering all energy in the area inert.

Such spaces were deemed Voids.

Simply areas of sheer nothingness that were inaccessible due to their permanent lack of energy, largely undetectable, and inscrutable.

The exact mechanisms by which these Voids occurred, the Hivemind did not yet know, yet, the immutable fact stood: entropy could approach billions of years ahead of its calculated coming.

And there was equally as much possibility that this entropy was random as it was potentially targeted.

In the case that it was targeted, then that necessitated the presence of a phenomenon or entity that could direct entropy, and the mere idea of that alone was a monumental enough threat for the Collective Hivemind to fashion the Great Purpose against.

"How is it that we stand against such darkness, my king?" said the elder. "Forgive me, but these old bones and grey hairs are always curious."

"Power," stated the Collector simply, mediating its words in such a way that they were easily understood by the elder. "There is a force that, should this form of mine manage to reach it, will bring salvation upon this world and all others like it.

Yet, I lack the necessary capability to forge communications with said force. Thus, I require access to a warp mechanism of sufficient complexity and strength.

This, I have deemed to be located in this city known as 'Middir' located to the south of this biome."

The elder's head perked up with sudden notice. "Middir? You will storm Middir? The most fortified city of the North?"

"I sense from your elevated heartbeat and agitated tone of voice that such a prospect is one incurring incalculable risk. This, I have already factored. Thus, I gather power for now until it is such that I cannot be challenged.

Or, if this Facestealer you speak of is capable of easily altering its form, then it would be preferrable to harvest its genetic material and infiltrate the city."

"I…I see" said the elder before he chuckled to himself. "So that is where we, as a people finally united, are to head. To either storm Middir, against the full might of the Adventurers and the gods themselves. Or against the Facestealer, the highest of all spirits whose fearsome strength has been unchallenged in a thousand years."

"Does this intended course of action displease you?" stated the Collector.

"No. No, no," said the elder, emphasizing his words with a shake of his head. He smiled, baring his worn, yellowed and chipped teeth. "Always, I have feared that we as a people have decayed so far. The elder before me told me only of the glory we once had.

Many, many centuries ago.

It was always with a lament or far off look that he would tell me the stories of our people and this land, as if, if he could just reach out, with simply a bit more strength, he could take our legacy back.

At first, I had thought him foolish, the stories just as foolish, but perhaps it is the nature of this land. In such cold, I suppose it is natural to grasp onto warmth, and in time, I found myself longing just as much as he had for a time that was so far gone it might as well have never existed at all.

The greatest fear I have held in my life thus far is that my people, my once great people, would never amount to anything. That we would stay scrounging for rotting carcasses left by those stronger and larger than us. That when these blind eyes of mine faded unto death, all I would have seen was how pitiful we were.

But this. Facing Middir. Standing against the gods that cast us down. This does excite my heart so.

And we may save this world while we regain our former glory. There is nothing more I could wish for."

The Collector formulated an idea after it heard the elder. "Your species is given to extremes of desires, oscillating between cowardly fear and decisive desire for the fight and purpose.

I seek to eliminate the occurrence of such inefficient fear. To my understanding, it is such that among your social unit, only those designated to become 'elders' commit to memory these tales of your former glory.

Spread such knowledge throughout the rest of the swarm. Instill within them longing for the greatness of the past. In particular, if it is possible, develop within them a thorough will to stand against these 'gods'.

And ensure they understand that it is through me that their desires, this former glory, will be recaptured."

"I would have done that already," said the elder with nod. "Truth be told, the average goblin was simply too brutish to learn our long history, thus, our tales were relegated to only those among us who were stunted in body but more capable here."

The elder tapped his head. "But now that all of us shall ascend into higher minds soon, I will do as I have dreamed: to spread the pride of our people, the knowledge of all that we have had and lost, to them."

Report chapter

Then see to it that you instill such beliefs into the swarm," stated the Collector. It knew well that the greater an intelligent creature's drive for a purpose, the more effective they were.

Even within the Collective Hivemind, this was true. The vast majority of Collective units were mindless, thus, this did not apply to them. However, among the Collector-class units and Queens, thorough and unshaken belief in the sanctity of the Great Purpose saw to it that even with granted intelligence and a degree of independence, that no unit would take a turn against the Collective, that all would stay cohesively unified towards one purpose.

This, even the Collector felt now. Even though it understood that it was now highly defective, capable of processing thoughts and emotions that were extremely erroneous, it still understood that it had to devote itself to the Great Purpose, for if it did not, existence itself would shatter, and then there would be no point in devoting physical or mental energies to any action.

If the elder could instill within the goblin units a thorough devotion to the Collector's purpose, then it could utilize them far more efficiently. Of course, their devotion would likely not be as great as the Collector's for it was not bred into them, but in appealing to their self-interests or in a desire to regain what they had lost or in a desire to prove themselves beyond their previously meager scavenging existences, they could maintain their loyalty upon the right path.

"We will move in thirty minutes when my mana reserves have been sufficiently charged and the entirety of this swarm armed with one solid light shard," stated the Collector.

The rest of the short path to Vimur was an uneventful one. A collection of Wraiths again did manifest against them Collector and its swarm, but now that they were all armed with Shinchu light shards, the wraiths became little more than a nuisance to deal with.

Vimur itself, however, was an interesting anomaly.

Five hundred meters from Vimur, the Grainfall dissipated entirely, but the pattern of its dissipation was aberrant in that it only faded within a set radial distance around Vimur. The black particulates stopped flowing almost right as the Collector and the swarm reached the edge of a sheer cliff of ice, and one hundred meters below, there lay Vimur.

The Collector saw as the swarm edged closer to the end of the icy cliff, awed at the sight of the strange environmental marker that was Vimur.

The cliff face ran down into a basin of water that was sufficiently large enough to be classified as a lake, and within the center of the water body, there arose an enormous arm. An arm so enormous in scale that it alone reached thirty meters in height, its splayed-out fingers reaching upwards, as if to grasp onto something.

The arm was bare and roughly humanoid in basic structure, but the skin was of a pale blue hue and dotted with crystalline ice formations. As far as preservation went, the arm seemed largely intact.

While the goblin swarm gawked at the arm, the Collector assessed the environment for any potential threats.

First, a physical assessment. Grain did not fall in this location, so visibility was not hindered. Interestingly however, the Collector noted it was not that Grain did not fall, but there seemed to be an upswell of magical energy from the lake that collected above, even higher than the cliff it was on, that formed a dome that caused Grain to hit it and slide away.

Effectively, a barrier made of magical energy.

Yet, the Collector noted as it threw a snowball made of Sapia down the cliff that the barrier did not keep out other physical objects.

The lake itself was surrounded on all sides by towering cliff faces of ice, which, combined with the Grainfall continuing to rage outside, isolated it quite well. Should Vimur have been placed on the surface, atop the cliffs, it would have been highly visible to all with the giant arm.

The perfectly circular structure of the lake and basin indicated that potentially this was no coincidence. It was possible that this place was artificially constructed with secrecy in mind. However, if secrecy was truly the only value that this location cared of, then it would have been far more prudent to remove this barrier that blocked Grain or to place the structure underground entirely.

No, if this area had been constructed, then it was made to be found.

Yet, not found by tinkerers, then, for Grainfall would prevent the vast majority of tinkerers from ever reaching this space.

Further scanning with ocular systems yielded no immediate threats. The lake seemed completely placid. There was a swirling, circular current converged around the giant arm, but the current was too gentle to be a threat.

The arm itself was dead. This, the Collector could sense. Living beings emitted trace amounts of psionic energy, a distinct signature, and this arm lacked that. However, it was preserved well enough that it would be a perfect genetic sample for the Collector.

Consuming the entirety of that arm would grant the Collector an enormous amount of biomass, not to mention the benefit of such a powerful genetic sample. If the Collector could fully devour that arm, it calculated that it could easily leap to a boundary of strength twice its current capacity.

The Collector encased its ocular systems in green magical energy best suited for tracking the flow of mana, and thoroughly analyzed the environmental movement of magical energy in the area. Intense concentrations of magical energy gathered into the center point of the giant arm in a swirling, spiral-like pattern.

The nature of this flow initially seemed like that of a dungeon's. In a dungeon, environmental mana flowed and condensed to the dungeon, but it was in the exact pattern of flow that there were marked differences.

The Collector had seen the flow of mana around dungeons before. It had learned how to accurately discern them with the female daemon specimen. And though its sample size of witnessed dungeons might have been low, it did note that there was no specific pattern for the flow of mana gathering around a dungeon.

However, in this case, the environmental mana formed a perfect pattern of a spiral. Large threads of blue tinted mana from above the cliff faces funneled down the cliff, and as they did so, the threads oriented themselves into a neat, controlled spiral pattern when they reached the basin.

The significance of this, the Collector did not know.

The Collector conveyed its intent, and Thokk, the carrier unit, approached with the elder on his shoulder.

"You are sensitive to the flow of magical energy," stated the Collector. "Tell me, does this pattern of environmental mana correspond with anything within your memory banks?"

The elder, though blind, could still sense the flow of mana through touch, and he held out his hand.

"A dungeon, it does seem, but so very neat. Not wild. It reminds me almost of a spell. A spell of the humans, perhaps, but ah, not so, the nature of it is quite different." The elder cocked his head, and then nodded to himself, as if remembering something. "What little I know of the Jotnar may be hearsay and folk tale, but I do know there are tales of the giants wielding their own magic.

Long ago, when the Jotnar still roamed the lands below the Rift, when they clashed with the humans and gods too.

Perhaps this too is a symbol of Jotnar magic."

"Do you possess any definitive knowledge of this magic?" stated the Collector. It presumed that the magic was independent of the gods, thus, it was not sorcery. In any case, sorcery could not function in this environment against Grain.

"No…I am afraid not," said the elder. "All I know are tales. Fragments of tales. There is one of Dor-Runn, a Jotnar who attempted to reach beyond the skies on pillars of ice fashioned with his magic, yet, he failed when the gods struck him down.

This, however, is the only tale I know of the Jotnar with magic in it."

"I see," said the Collector. It understood that the elder's information had the potential to be highly inaccurate by virtue of being sourced from passed down, orally transmitted information across multiple goblin lifespans, rendering the tales more and more prone to error as time passed.

Thus, the Collector could not readily commit to fact anything the elder stated, though it could keep the information in mind and corroborate it.

The Collector was essentially operating on unknown territory, then, but it was used to this by now.

In terms of sheer information, the elder was far less useful than the female daemon specimen. She possessed such vast breadths of knowledge that the Collector could easily plan against any contingency or understand its surroundings and all its risks with immediate and thorough understanding.

Even in the case that she was unfamiliar with a situation, she still possessed enough background knowledge to adequately formulate accurate assumptions.

Had she been here, no doubt, the Collector would have navigated this biome to a far easier degree.

The Collector broke its chain of thought. It was unlike it to dwell on hypothetical scenarios that could never be made true. The female daemon specimen was dead, and death was an immutable end from which there was no return.

It instead focused on a minor risk to benefit analysis for now. So far, aside from the anomalous patterns of magical energy that could be the base of some kind of spell, there were no threats. The benefits of devouring the Jotnar hand were enormous, on the other hand.

The Collector decided to press forwards.

Report chapter

"I will investigate this environmental anomaly," said the Collector as it stood up straight on its tail, its four firefly wings unfurling from seams in its back carapace.

"It is said that not in centuries has any living being managed to come to Vimur," stated the elder in palpable awe. "To think we…the people of Gob, so lost and so devolved, manage now to uncover history that not even the mightiest of Adventurers could."

"Likely, such a presumption holds true only for humanoid species. The presence of Grain and these primally dense specimen known as 'wraiths' indicate that any species that relies upon connections with 'gods' would fare poorly here," said the Collector. "Yet, that does not exclude the possibility that there are threats of monstrous nature still present."

"We will come with you," said Thokk with a resolute nod. He gripped four daggers of solid light in his hands while the elder rested on his broad shoulder. His red eyes gleamed with determination. "If there is any threat to the king, then I will be the first to eliminate it."

"This form of mine is capable of aerial maneuvering," said the Collector. "But your forms are not capable of such. To access the environmental anomaly below is to scale this cliff face of one hundred meters."

The Collector understood that in order to investigate this Jotnar's hand, it would have to do so by itself unless it was willing to wait for the goblins to slowly climb themselves down the icy cliff face. No doubt, the physically superior carrier elite specimen could likely simply run down this this surface with expert agility, but the comparatively far less coordinated and physically gifted champions could not manage such a feat.

"I can still go," said Thokk. He bid a champion come forward, and he transferred the elder to the champion's shoulder. "This-," He stepped to the edge of the cliff face and looked down at the almost completely vertical one-hundred-meter drop. "Is nothing to me, my king, I swear it."

"My understanding of your capabilities are thorough. I have already calculated you are capable of such movement. Yet, thinning the combat capacity of this swarm to such a degree would be inefficient in the case that a threat arises here while I am below," stated the Collector. "Instead, you are to guard the swarm until I convey communications that should suggest otherwise."

"Understood, my king," said Thokk, though with some regret, evidently strongly desiring to stay by the Collector's side.

The Collector could theoretically utilize its burial tusks to summon two further elites, but they, as beings summoned, would cost constant mana to materialize and maintain. Such a cost was inefficient considering that there was not even a certainty that there were threats.

Knowing this, the Collector leaped upwards, pushing off with its tail before flitting its flaming wings in what was not an insectoid buzz, but a roar of flickering flames. Entering into the barrier generated by the Jotnar hand immediately altered patterns of environmental effects within it.

This, however, the Collector expected. Wind currents within the barrier swirled in a spiral pattern towards the base of the hand just as the water body surrounding it formed currents in the same pattern.

The wind currents were not strong enough to hamper the Collector, and it made its way almost unobstructed to the highest point of the arm: the open palm reaching out to the skies.

As the Collector grew closer, the scale of the Jotnar hand became more and more evident. The Collector itself was now three meters tall, but the Jotnar hand alone was almost 50% larger than the Collector, quite capable of wrapping its fingers around the Collector's sizable form entirely.

And, when the Collector grew close enough to hover in front of the hand, it sensed the magic generated from the body part to greater degree. There was a thin, highly protective barrier around the hand that was imperceptible from a distance.

The nature of the barrier was pure mana of immense scale. Similar to the forcefield generated by the sorcerer the Collector had fought in the Darkwoods. Yet, of a vastly denser and stronger magnitude.

Impenetrable by ordinary means. Yet, assessing the flow of magical energy charging the barrier itself showed that it was powered by the base of the hand, where all environmental mana in the area seemed to spiral towards.

The Collector decided to investigate further, postulating that there was potential for it to find an energy source for this barrier and tamper with it. If it was one that relied upon Primal Density as was often the case with objects related to the environment or creatures completely unrelated to tinkerers, then it could breach it with the Firefly Shinchu's light.

The Collector flew downwards, to the base of the pale blue arm jutting out from the water, and here, an interesting phenomenon occurred. When the Collector neared the arm, inscriptions became visible upon them, glowing with deep blue light as if sensing its presence.

The Collector felt a tingling sensation within its cells, specifically in the Primal Density that charged them. The sigils were reacting to the presence of Primal Density.

If this area was meant to be discovered, then, it was meant to be discovered by beings with sufficient Primal Density, not tinkerers.

However, analysis of the script did not correspond with any literary form imbued within the Collector's memory. What it did notice was that the specific patterning of this script formed a rectangular doorway imprinted upon the breadth of the arm to match the Collector's physical dimensions, as if beckoning it to enter through.

If this hand approximated an artificial dungeon as the Collector theorized, then likely, this was the entrance to it.

Yet, the Collector did not have much time to ponder this before the inscriptions faded in an instant, the light dying down as if a switch had been turned. The earth shook tremendously, the water body surrounding the arm bubbling in violent waves, and then, calm.

The water settled into a placid stillness; the spiral pattern of its currents faded. The winds returned to normal. The barrier surrounding the arm dissipated, and so too did the larger barrier generated from the arm that formed a roof to block Grainfall.

The Collector went on immediate alert. If it was not the one to have disabled the dungeon, then something else was.

As if to confirm the Collector's theory, a creature emerged from the Jotnar's arm, appearing from a ripple in space localized on the giant's flesh.

The creature emerged and hovered in the air like the Collector, though unlike the Collector, it did not seem to rely upon any physical mechanisms of flight.

The Collector made an immediate and thorough physical and magical analysis of the creature.

The specimen was slightly shorter than the Collector. Approximately two and a half meters in height. It was, however, equally as wide, promising a physical bulk capable of matching the Collector in a test of sheer musculature.

The creature possessed both reptilian and aquatic features. Its entire body was covered in countless grey and white scales that functioned like tightly woven armor plating, and these scales, the Collector could tell were highly flexible in nature, shock-absorbent and abrasive to the touch, capable of reflecting some damage from blunt physical blows back to an aggressor.

The specimen was bipedal, though with its slightly hunched upper body and double-jointed digitigrade legs, it was evident that it could easily maneuver in a four-legged form as well. Its arms and legs were thickly muscled, scaled, and its fingers were tipped with shorter, stubbier icy white claws than the Collector's meant more for gripping and hooking.

Crystals of ice protruded from some parts of its scale plating. Specifically in the shoulders, neck, and back.

A large dorsal fin protruded from the specimen's wide back. To match the aquatic adaptation, the specimen also possessed a lengthy, muscle-padded tail that ended in twin fins capped in spiked protrusions of ice.

Its head and neck were sizable compared to its body, with the specimen possessing an enormous, elongated jaw that was slightly open even in a neutral position, revealing multiple sets of fangs crackling with magical energy.

The ocular system of the specimen comprised of two eyes on the sides of its head. The eyes were deeply blue with black, slit pupils that focused on the Collector.

A row of gills on the specimen's enormous neck flared as the creature bared its fangs in a semblance of a smile.

In terms of magical energy, the Collector did not even have to encase its ocular systems in flow sensitive mana to tell. This specimen's magical energy levels were exceptional. Quite easily a direct match to the Collector, perhaps even slightly exceeding it.

An immediate and extreme threat.

The Collector and the specimen stared at each other for precisely one second before the specimen's smile widened, baring more fangs, and in that very instant, the Collector sensed a change in intent from the specimen from curiosity to hostility.

Reacting to this, the Collector made an immediate attack, stabbing into the now opposing creature's side with an unsheathed monomolecular claw.

Report chapter

The enemy specimen reacted to the Collector stabbing at it with its monomolecular blade at the very last second. The creature's eyes narrowed as it thrust out its arm to the side, intercepting the Collector's arm at the end of the forearm.

Yet, intercepting the arm that far down was not sufficient. The specimen possessed enough strength to stop the Collector's thrust in its tracks, but the Collector still managed to stab into the specimen's side with a third of the length of the blade, easily slicing through the durable mesh of grey scales.

The beast, no, there was in intelligence in its eyes, the specimen growled in reaction to the blade so easily cleaving through it, though the wound was too shallow to be lethal.

In the time that the specimen used to growl and register surprise, the Collector initiated a flurry of additional attacks. With all four of the Collector's arms, it thrust at the specimen with the rest of its weapons systems. Its other monomolecular blade and both Firefly Shinchu light blades.

The creature had two arms; the Collector had four. The arithmetic was rather simple. The creature, if it stayed in direct melee range, would never be able to properly fend against all four strikes.

The specimen grasped this instinctively and took the optimal course of action, letting go of the Collector and leaping backwards with high-speed movement, stopping to a halt right before it hit the Jotnar arm. It levitated in the air, right above the water, and the Collector could sense it utilized magical energy to do so.

Likely, one of its inherent magical abilities. Primal magic.

The Collector took some distance, fluttering its fiery wings and hovering several meters in the air. When the specimen merely curiously looked up at the Collector instead of pursuing or reacting, the Collector made an offensive move.

The Collector opened up its Firefly Shinchu orb, readying to shower the creature in Shinchu light, for even from a cursory glance, it was possible to tell how charged this specimen was with Primal Density. The energy positively overflowed from each of its cells, tinting its greyed scales in faint white glimmers.

If the Collector was at 20% Primal Density, then it estimated that this specimen was near 60%. Of course, this alone did not indicate power level, merely how environmentally connected a specimen was, as was with the wraiths that possessed upwards of 100% Primal Density simply by being autonomous functions of the environment itself.

Yet, what the Collector did know for certain was that the Shinchu's purifying light would possess devastating effects against this specimen. When the golden light around its chest orb started to glow, the opposing specimen likely understood this as well.

The enemy specimen's back fin stiffened, and it hunched down for a split second before blasting upwards with enormous speed, tackling into the Collector with a shattering crash and sending both of them hurtling high up in the air at speeds that, within four seconds, put them above the cliff face in height.

All the while as they flew, the enemy specimen grasped the Collector tight, pinning the Collector's four arms with its comparatively bulkier ones. It opened up its enormous jaws, readied to bite down on the Collector's series of skulls.

With how massive the specimen's jaw was, it did not matter where it decided to bite down, it would tear off the Collector's main head regardless. The aura of flames around the Collector did nothing to deter the specimen.

But the Collector did not stop charging its Shinchu light beam. Now that the specimen had grappled the Collector, it had locked itself into its own demise. The Collector light fired from its chest, boring into the specimen's own scaled torso.

The specimen still bit down, but the Collector charged mana into its two Shinchu appendages on its shoulders, activating their immense strength and keeping their hands on either end of the creature's jaws, stopping them from clamping down.

Even the Shinchu arms had difficulty opposing the staggering bite force of the specimen, but the Collector's beam was doing grievous damage.

At first, the light merely burned away the scales, but when the thick layer of protection was shorn away and the light interacted with the bare, white flesh underneath, the explosive nature of the Shinchu light came into play.

The white flesh swelled up, becoming engorged with heat, before exploding in fiery bursts.

Yet-

The Collector noticed as the creature's magical energy rapidly condensed around the point of contact with the beam in a manner similar to [Guard].

However, vastly different. Instead of forming a defensive barrier against the beam, which would have been useless regardless because the Shinchu light's effects manifested the moment it touched flesh regardless of whether it was enhanced or not, the mana fueled massively accelerated regeneration.

Even as the beam caused flesh to liquefy and explode, boring deep and dangerously into the innards, white flesh and musculature wrapped their fibrous threads together again only to be blasted apart again in a continuous cycle.

As this went on, the specimen continued to struggle against the Collector, its jaws inching ever slightly forwards to snap against the Collector's head.

The Collector performed a rapid calculation. Utilizing the Shinchu light in a continuous beam like this on top of activating the Shinchu's arms – both mana intensive resources – was rapidly draining the Collector's reserves.

Certainly, the specimen before it was rapidly draining itself as well, but the Collector would succumb sooner.

Thus in response, the Collector swiveled around in mid-air and angled the enemy specimen downwards, getting gravity to aid the Collector by bearing down against the specimen. However, this was only for a slight moment of delay.

By now, both of them were almost a hundred meters above even the cliff face in altitude, but the Collector knew where the goblin swarm was oriented. It activated its Burial Tusks, not so much for the elites, but for the explosive blowback effect they possessed when the tusks were broken down and the elites unleashed.

The tusks on the Collector's goblin skull scattered in a flash of blue light before a cracking shockwave of energy erupted. The blast of energy, combined with a final push from the Shinchu appendages, thrust the specimen away from the Collector, sending it hurtling down into the cliff face below where the goblins were.

The twin elites from the Burial Tusks materialized beside the Collector, but because they were not flight capable, they fell straight down. The elites would be more than capable of surviving such a fall, however, and as they fell, the Collector gave them a command with its now greatly improved Higher Calling.

"Engage the hostile specimen in battle," said the Collector, and the twin elites nodded before flipping in the air and pushing off of it by encasing mana around their feet and using that as a stepping stone to leverage off of.

As the elites sailed down, the Collector analyzed the situation.

The Collector had no illusions about the goblin swarm's combat capacity. Other than the carrier unit, none of them would be able to last more than two seconds against that specimen.

Still, the Collector took a brief moment of reprieve, utilizing the salamander's regeneration to heal minor damage to itself. Unlike the enemy specimen, the Collector could not enhance its own regeneration by infusing more magical energy into it. The salamander's natural regeneration was simply inferior to that possessed by the opposing specimen.

Good. The Collector clenched its fists, repairing cracks in its carapace from where the specimen had pinned its arms.

Finally, in this icy wasteland of a biome, there was a true and worthy challenge. One not a mindless brute of a beast, but a tactically minded creature that understood how to leverage its own strengths and take upon any amount of risk to ensure its victory.

The Collector's mana reserves were running down to forty percent. Utilizing more Shinchu abilities would be dangerous aside from the already manifested blades on two of its arms.

However, the enemy specimen, though it likely would have regenerated its wounds by now, had spend vast amounts of magical energy to keep up with the highly destructive nature of the Shinchu beam.

Likely, considering both the Collector and the specimen possessed roughly equal mana reserves, they were on equally diminished footing.

Where the specimen had more leeway to make mistakes due to its explosive regenerative capacity, the Collector seemingly possessed far greater flexibility in its range of abilities.

This final altercation would come down to a true test of efficiency.

Report chapter

Thokk watched in awe at first as the king faced off against a monster he had never seen the likes of before. The fight was of a scale he could not match.

In an instant, his king and the fierce monster were locked in a grapple of mighty strength that sent them flying high into the air.

There was the king, emanating his golden light and flames, and the beast, emanating a chilling yet mighty aura nonetheless, surging high up like a reverse falling star.

Among all of the goblins, Thokk was the only one with eyes sharp enough to follow the fight properly, and he knew that this battle was a hard fought one for his king.

Even as his king and the beast became mere dots in the sky, Thokk could see that though his king seemed to be dealing all the damage, the majestic light rupturing the beast's stomach, the beast himself was mere seconds away from clamping down those terrible and wide jaws on the king's head.

So, when the king threw the beast down, towards the goblins, Thokk gripped the blades of royal light his king had gifted him tightly.

He knew that now was the time to prove his might to the king.

His life before the king had ascended him was hazy, a far-off dream, but he knew from the very bottom of his heart that it had not been a life worth truly living.

Always, even before, when he was smaller and dumber and weaker, Thokk had wanted to fight and be strong, and he was strong, but oh how small his world had been. He was only stronger than his fellow goblins, more talented than them at picking up how to move this way and that in fighting, but that meant nothing.

What use was being strong when all he would use his strength on was scavenging rotting meat?

Picking fights with others for women or water or some tiny little weapon a human had probably left and forgotten about?

There was no purpose to his strength, but now, now, he knew: his strength was meant for his king, and his king was meant for something greater even then.

The monster slammed into the snow with a rumble, shaking the icy cliff face that Thokk and the others stood on. Plumes of snow rose up from the fall, cloaking the beast for a second.

"Surround the beast!" roared Thokk. "Use the blades the king gives us! They hurt the monster! Take the elder far away!"

He gestured with all four of his arms, getting the goblins to move. He could tell that the goblins were wary, some of them even fearful, because if the great king himself could not strike down this beast, then what chance did they have?

"Hold! Raise your blades! Any goblin that stands down now, I will personally carve their hearts out tomorrow!" growled Thokk as he narrowed his red eyes, watching the momentary driven up snow fall and reveal the beast.

Yes, this monster was formidable, Thokk confirmed as he landed his eyes upon the beast closer now, seeing its uncompromisingly powerful aura.

"Thokk! Be careful, it is a dragon!" exclaimed the elder even as he was whisked away.

"Dragon, huh," said Thokk to himself. When he was much younger, he often liked to hear the elder pass on his tales to Hrunt, the chosen successor. One of those tales, he remembered.

A tale about a great dragon, one that had fought the gods a long time ago, and how it had even shaped this entire place with his stormy and icy breath.

"You're pretty small for a dragon," said Thokk with a smile. "Disappointing. But Thokk the Dragon-Slayer has a nice ring to it."

The monster looked at Thokk and grinned.

Thokk noted alarmingly that already, the stomach wound on the beast was starting to regenerate. The scales had not yet formed, but the flesh was almost fully patched up, on the last ends up replacing burnt boils and scabs with new skin.

Thokk had to strike before then.

"Attack!" shouted Thokk.

Thokk surged forwards, powering mana into his legs. He knew some humans knew how to use the mana in their bodies for strange and incredible movements, sometimes even seeming like they teleported, but all he knew was the basics.

To put mana in the body and make it strong and fast.

Thokk closed the distance in less than a second and tried a twin slash across the beast's belly. However, before his blades got in range, he found the world spinning and his chest aching from a heavy blow.

Pain. Dull, aching pain. Broken ribs, maybe. Not enough to kill, though.

Thokk spun in the air and landed on his feet, his soles digging into the snow to brake him. The monster's two-finned tail had struck Thokk, the icy ends acting like the bludgeoning ends of a club. The ice had punctured into Thokk's side, but thankfully had missed his lungs or organs.

There was no reprieve for the monster, however, as the rest of the champions roared and began attacking him from every angle.

The monster was far too powerful for the champions, Thokk knew that, but he had to catch his breath, but still-

He saw as the monster punched a champion, Dob, in the torso, caving the goblin's entire chest in and sending him flying a dozen meters away. Thragg was right behind Dob, and ducked as Dob's body sailed past him, and Thragg managed to use Dob's sacrifice to land a slash on the monster's belly.

The monster growled as it looked down to see the white flesh of its belly. It was nicked with a tiny cut, but even that cut, filled now with the king's radiant light, became dangerous, spreading heat and and light all across the skin before swelling it up and bursting it in fire and blue blood and chunks of white flesh.

The monster swung its tail around, knocking back five more champions from swarming it, likely breaking far, far more than one or two ribs as was the case with Thokk. They might even have all been dead.

Thokk started to move. He could start to breathe again, the wind coming back to him, and already, this moment of break had cost him a life.

One of the champions, Thru, a smaller but courageous young one, leaped up on the monster's back, trying to stab at it with the king's light blade.

The monster reached behind himself, grabbed Thru's head, and crushed it with ease, leaving nothing but mangled chunks of skull, brain, and red.

Thokk roared again as he dashed forwards.

No more. No more lives lost.

However, the monster predicted Thokk's move and turned to him, ready to strike back.

Thokk, however, was ready to give up his life for the king. If he could drive both blades into the monster's stomach, then he would bare the thick layers of muscle and skin back to reveal the innards and from there, the king could triumph.

But today was not the day for Thokk to die.

From the sky, two elites fell, crashing into the monster's back with synchronized, powerful drop kicks. The blows generated squalls of wind from sheer force, but they were not powerful enough.

Thokk knew not where these elites came from, but they did not have the king's light on them. Their raw physical strength alone, though slightly greater than Thokk's, was not enough to penetrate the beast's scales.

However, the force from the blows distracted the monster, and it bent over a slight bit, losing focus on Thokk.

Thokk took this moment to slide under the beast, drive a dagger into its belly, and before the monster could grab Thokk in a bear hug, he scrambled backwards with such haste that he tripped and fell in the snow, narrowly escaping a crushing death by less than a tenth of a second.

"Everyone, back!" shouted Thokk as he saw the rest of the champions watch the sudden twin elites appear. The champions were keeping their distance, hesitant to commit to an attack when they knew they would die so quickly.

Thokk knew this, and though he could have pushed them to fight more, he figured that with more elites, they did not have to risk their lives.

"We will handle this!" Thokk stood up, watching as the elites beat at the beast with flurries of powerful punches.

The monster was hunched over, protecting its belly even as the dagger driven into it exploded, causing blue blood and white flesh to splatter outwards and pain the snow in front of it a deep azure shade.

The elites kept up their punches, slamming them a dozen times a second into the beast's sides and back, constantly moving so as to never be a still target.

Beautiful punches. Thokk had never seen goblins move like this. So refined, so smooth.

But this was no time for admiration. He gripped his one remaining light blade and circled the beast, trying to see when it would open up its stomach again for another strike.

The monster knew. It kept its eyes on Thokk, and then, assessing the situation, began to charge up an enormous amount of magical energy. Arcs of electricity began to crackle from the monster's bulky frame, coursing from its large back fin towards its mouth.

Thokk saw the other elites immediately halt their attack and sprint away. He did the same, and he felt no shame, for now, the king was here to claim his victory.

Report chapter

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Collector welcomed this. This raw test of might.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Report chapter

But no matter.

The Collector now had the capacity to leverage a moment of surprise, feinting that it did not know the mechanisms of the creature's precognition and leading it into a counter. And with weapons such as the Shinchu's purifying light and monomolecular claws, the Collector could turn any moment of weakness into an instantly lethal blow.

By now, the goblin swarm had begun to inch back, but the Collector conveyed its intent to its carrier unit, and in turn, he gestured for the swarm to stand back.

This battle was the Collector's own to savor and devour now. The goblins instead would watch from the sidelines, in reverence at their king standing to defend them against a might that none of them would ever be able to match.

The enemy specimen looked to the Collector, then to the goblins, and understood that the swarm did not move on behest of the Collector's will.

Knowing this, the specimen grinned and loosed a guttural, rattling growl from within its throat. A sign of appreciation, perhaps.

The Collector kept its purifying light blades out but maintained sheathing on its monomolecular blades. The blades were still quite fragile, and if they were used for an extended period of time in such intensely cold weather as this, the formation of ice crystals would quickly compromise their structure and edge.

Even the flames of the Flametongue Salamander would not be sufficient to keep the monomolecular blades warm enough, not to mention that even with the Salamander's fireproof lipid coating, the blades ran the risk of being warped by the heat.

In addition, sheathing the blades allowed the Collector even more unpredictability. Its enemies would constantly have to question whether the Collector would strike with blunt force blows or unleash its deadly blades.

This time, the Collector made the move. It drew down low, its tail coiling up and swelling with musculature and red mana. The enemy specimen saw this and stiffened up, ready to take the Collector's charge.

The Collector blasted forwards, shattering a volley of rock behind it. Even with a powerful application of mana to enhance the speed of its movement, the Collector was still within an acceptable threshold of speed for the enemy specimen to react to.

But this, the Collector accounted for. When the Collector was within striking range of the enemy specimen, it continued further, smashing into the enemy specimen with a full body tackle.

Or, rather, this was the false intention the Collector conveyed with its mind in order to bait the specimen.

The very instant before the Collector slammed into the enemy specimen, the specimen reacted by opening its jaws wide, readying to clamp down on the Collector's head to counter the tackle and secure an instant victory.

However, the Collector did not fully follow through with its tackle. Instead, it pulled back even as it continued to project with its mind a full intent to continue and crash into the enemy specimen's ready and open jaws.

This was only possible because the Collector was capable of processing multiple lines of thought at once, something an ordinary tinkerer or specimen of this world was incapable of performing, it seemed.

The enemy specimen's glowing blue eyes widened in visible surprise, and before it sought to adapt to the sudden change in situation by closing its open mouth, the Collector acted.

Capitalizing on the enemy specimen's surprise, the Collector uppercutted its fist into the beast's mouth and unleashed its monomolecular claw from within. The blade cleanly sliced through thick layers of muscle, bone, and grey scale, piercing fully through the jaw, then through the brain, and finally, poking a glinting edge through the skull.

The enemy specimen made one final burst of effort, clamping down its jaws, perhaps even in unconscious reflex, and this movement was easily enough to completely tear off the Collector's arm.

However, the Collector was more than willing to part with an arm, and the specimen slumped down to the ground, its jaws clamped around the Collector's severed arm as a final parting gift to its worthy effort.

The blue light in the specimen's eyes dimmed down, and the magical energy crackling through its body faded, indicating its death.

The Collector gazed down at the enemy specimen's corpse, ascertaining that it had no capacity to defy a lethal wound through its brain. A thorough analyses indicated that the specimen's vital functions were now rapidly decaying, its heart mere seconds from halting.

This was the Collector's assured victory. It stemmed bleeding from its missing arm by condensing magical energy around the stump, promoting strong muscular contraction that constricted the blood vessels.

This was a technique the Collector had adapted from the four-star adventurer, and would prove useful until the Flametongue Salamander's regeneration healed the blood loss on its own.

A rousing cry shouted up from behind the Collector, and it turned to see the carrier unit raising its four arms up into the air.

"The king has won! Our king has won!" shouted Thokk.

The rest of the champions followed Thokk's lead and joined in the roaring chant.

The Collector held up a hand against the goblin swarm, bidding them silent. "Do not generate unnecessary sound. The feeling of triumph over battle, I can understand, yet, it is unwise to creature further attention when the nature of this enemy specimen is not yet elucidated."

With that command, the goblin swarm quieted down, leaving the Collector in relative silence to analyze further the enemy specimen and its nature.

Thokk trudged up behind the Collector with the elder on his shoulder.

"My king, you are now killer of dragons," said Thokk.

"Then this specimen is a 'dragon,' stated the Collector. "Yet, significantly weaker than what the elder's postulations and second-hand recollections would indicate."

"Forgive me, my king," said the elder. "I merely thought it like a dragon. I have never laid eyes upon a dragon, nor have most of the elders before me. All we know is that when a dragon unleashes its presence, it is akin to a natural disaster.

And this fierce monster's presence was much like that of a wild storm."

The Collector clicked its mandibles as it scrunched down, using its remaining monomolecular claw to shear off great strips of flesh from the specimen before snatching them up with its detachable maw. The elder was correct in determining that the nature of presences from these specimen were similar to that generated by environmental forces.

Likely, the Collector determined, the higher the Primal Density in a specimen, the more they became similar in presence to a function of nature or environmental disaster.

*Biomass gained (5)*

Biomass Level: 100/100

*Genetic Material Gained*

-Frostborn Hobgoblin Thrall [Core]

-Vineswinger Goblin Champion [Core]

-Windcutter Wildcat

-Shockstripe Eel

-Lurker

-Goblin Lord [Core]

-Frostborn Goblin Champion

-Sabretooth Lion

-Grizzled Stormbear

-Draconid *NEW*

*Spirit Roots Gained*

Root Consumption Level Limit Reached

After devouring an adequate sample of the specimen to read its genetic code, the Collector could come to better understand the nature of these specimen known as 'Draconids'. There was an inherently powerful drive within them to seek out the challenge of combat, and this was implanted into them at a genetic level to such a strong degree that it was likely it was artificially constructed, not evolutionarily grown.

In addition, the specimen were based off of a base of another specimen, though with such a small sample that the Collector would not be able to glean the nature of the organism that these draconids were based off of.

Likely, however, based on speculation revolving around what the Collector knew, these draconids were sampled from the 'dragons' that had been talked about.

Yet, the Collector did not have much further time to ponder before an immeasurably powerful presence drew its attention to the sky. Hovering in the air, looking down at the Collector, then at the slain draconid, was yet another draconid.

Very much similar in appearance to the one the Collector had defeated, but at the same time, different.

This specimen's physical dimensions were similar to its slain brethren, but its eyes were brighter, far more intelligent, and by the sides of its body, where wings would have unfurled, there were instead shards of bright blue energy mimicking aerial organs. Around its neck also was a thick mane of icy white fur - a symbol of superiority among its kind.

But beyond these differences, there was an undeniable, immediate, and obvious difference in the sheer quantity of magical energy that made Thokk and the elder tremble.

Report chapter

The Collector knew better than even the elder and its carrier unit the immense threat that this specimen posed. The amount of magical energy pouring out from the specimen, even as it attempted to suppress it to a degree, was overwhelming.

The aura poured out around the creature's floating figure in ripples of deep red.

A mana affinity of chaos, indicating that the specimen fought with explosive bursts of volatile but extreme strength.

The Collector, too, possessed the greatest affinity with chaos, though it was more than capable of incorporating the other affinities if needed.

All of them aside from the Void affinity, which the female daemon specimen had marked as an anomaly.

This, too, the Collector believed it could harness, yet, it would require observing and devouring a specimen that could utilize it in order to give the Collector a framework to learn from.

But the possibilities of future learning became quite dim when considering the severity of the situation at hand.

The Collector estimated that the sheer density of the magical energy emanating from the enemy specimen, especially when it was fully unleashed, could dwarf that possessed by the golden winged humanoid.

This was not a threat that the Collector could face in its current state. It contemplated utilizing its newfound blessing to dive into the dimension of shadows, but this would render the Collector immobile, merely waiting to be killed.

Instead, the Collector waited and observed, parsing the creature for any intent.

The specimen's scales glowed white through the fall of black Grain. Unlike its brethren, it seemed to possess snowy white scales that reflected the translucent white charge of Primal Density to incredible degree.

Beyond the coils of red chaos mana, this specimen radiated a light of unblemished white that surged forth the pressure not of a storm as was the case with its lesser brethren, but of winter itself, of a snowfall that would never end until it buried the entire world in its tears.

Approximate Primal Density: 90%.

This creature would be nigh invulnerable to any tinkerer utilizing Sorcery or might from the gods.

Yet, the Collector did not rely on such tinkering tools.

There was no doubt about it.

If these specimens, these 'draconids', were to ever possess a leader among them, a zenith of their kind, this specimen would aptly fit under such qualifications if strength was the only trait held in regard.

"You killed him," said the creature, and the Collector noted then that it was capable of speech.

Specifically, of the Common language that most tinkerers seemed to be fluent in.

Indicated some measure of familiarity with tinkerers despite likely living in areas where tinkerers were sparse.

At the same time, the Collector noted an accent in the specimen's speech that was deviant from that spoken from most Common tongue speakers it had encountered. Suggested familiarity but not complete mastery.

The specimen floated downwards, behind the corpse of his brethren, and peered down at the grey scaled body.

The creature's voice was deep. Raspy.

Laced with a guttural rattle, as if inhuman vocal cords were trying their hardest to approximate intelligence and humanoid speech. There was no real intonation in the voice, no sign of emotion at the death of its kind.

"Thur reached the end of his potential," said the specimen. "So, natural he dies. Now-,"

The specimen pointed a white-scaled finger at the Collector. There was no hint of malice. Only a sense of faint curiosity.

"You. You kill him. I check your potential now. Fight you."

The Collector tensed for battle, and in an instant, the new enemy specimen was upon it.

The white draconid had clenched his clawed fingers into a fist, smashing it right to the Collector's side.

The attack was so quick that the Collector did not have the time for any countermeasure.

Instead, it could only deal with mitigating the damage.

Like with the golden winged humanoid, this blow was immensely powerful, and utilizing something like [Guard] which took attacks head on with mana fortified skin would not be inefficient. Resisting the force was impossible. But allowing it to pass through harmlessly was in the realm of possibility.

The Collector maximized its senses to get the timing right, and used [Dispersal].

By going limp, the Collector allowed the heavy blow to smash into the side of its torso with a heavy, explosion-like impact that sent a shockwave of force driving the fall of Grain around it away.

The Collector went even further.

Even with [Dispersal] mitigating over 70% of the force, the initial blow shattered the remaining arm on its left side, but the rest of the force transferred freely through the Collector's limp body.

Now that the Collector had metamorphosed and grown significantly stronger, it had the necessary reflexes and speed to chain the [Dispersal] further. It used the immense force coursing through its body and rolled with it, swiveling around with a backhand blow.

The very same mechanic of taking in a strike and returning the force in a counter attack that the Collector had used against the goblin elites in the Darkwoods.

The Collector's strike was fast. Fast enough that even the Collector itself could not react to its own attack, for it was a blow combined with the force of both itself and the new enemy specimen.

The explosive strike of impact rattled the air once more. The Collector further enhanced this blow with bone binding drawing out shockwave force in its body.

The enemy specimen flew back several dozen meters, past the cliff face, before its wings of pale blue energy flickered, halting its momentum in an instant.

The specimen looked at its left arm where the Collector's counter had struck. The white scales had cracked, but even with shockwave force meant to permeate through scaled armor, its dense, mighty musculature mitigated most of the damage.

"Impressive," said the specimen as he stared curiously at his arm.

The cracks on the arm closed up in an instant, fueled by regeneration. "I have not seen that move before."

The specimen flew forwards, air gusting behind it as it returned to its spot on the cliff in a single moment, standing shoulder to shoulder with the Collector again.

The Collector sensed that the goblin swarm was inching forwards.

Specifically, the carrier unit, Thokk, had managed to suppress the primal fear of immediate death sourced from facing this enemy specimen.

Now, Thokk inched forwards with his purifying light blades.

"No!" shouted the enemy specimen as it fluxed its magical energy, sending out ripples of oppressively heavy mana that kept Thokk and the rest of the goblins from moving any further.

"Weak ones will not interrupt," said the draconid. He looked at the Collector for approval. "Right?"

"Agreeable," said the Collector. It knew that it was vastly outmatched, but it could understand the sentiment from the draconid.

Strangely, the Collector began to note, the glimmer in the draconid's blue eyes seemed faintly familiar.

A kindred energy emanated from the specimen.

At first, the Collector felt as if it was in the presence of another Warrior-strain Collector, but no, that was not it.

It was merely that the Collector and this draconid's desires and purposes coincided greatly.

They had both been born and bred to fight.

And, strangely, though the Collector knew it was vastly outmatched and should have prioritized its survival at all costs, it desired to engage in battle with a likeminded specimen.

At the very least, the Collector knew that this specimen would not immediately attempt lethal maneuvers to enjoy the battle.

"Again!" said the draconid as it launched another punch, this one much faster and aimed at the Collector's head.

Once more, the Collector could not move fast enough to directly counter the blow, but its reflexes and mental processing had always outpaced its physical stats. The moment it was hit, it utilized [Dispersal] again, going limp, and this time, because the blow struck its head, it rolled back the force of the punch and back flipped.

Even so, even with almost miraculous timing, the Collector could not mitigate all damage, and two of its skulls, the one fashioned from crystal and the Flametongue Salamander's, shattered.

Yet, its main skull was still intact. Utilizing a series of skulls as decoys had paid off.

And as long as the Collector was alive, it could fight.

As the Collector completed its back flip, it lashed out its tail, transferring back the blow of the draconid.

Yet, a remarkable occurrence.

The draconid took the tail strike, comprised of the combined power of its own punch and the Collector's own muscles, with an open hand.

The blow was powerful enough to sail the specimen back fifty meters again, perhaps more, but this time, it itself utilized [Dispersal, mimicking the Collector with near pinpoint accuracy.

The draconid swayed back as the force traveled from one hand, and then as it traveled to the other, it unleashed a counter utilizing the exact same mechanisms as the Collector.

Report chapter

---

Read Alien Evolution System Chapter 121 - Destiny online for free - AllNovelFull

The blow was faster than before, accelerated by more energy as it was, and the Collector took it in its chest, but it had figured out the timing. The blows became faster by a factor of magnitude set by adding the force generated by both the Collector and the draconid's strengths.

Thus, it was possible to calculate and predict how fast it would be by simply adding the power generated by both of them, though the faster and faster these exchanges became and the magnitudes of energy transferred between them grown to higher and higher lengths, the margins of error would increase.

But because the Collector could still predict it, it could be ready to counter even if it could not physically react to it.

The Collector used [Dispersal, taking the massively amplified blow aimed at its head. The initial strike was so powerful that it shattered two more skulls and much of hooded carapace surrounding them, but the draconid did not know where the Collector's main skull was.

And unless the main skull was heavily compromised, the Collector would not falter.

The Collector spun around again with the force, unleashing a backhand once more.

This time, the blow was so quick that it easily far surpassed the speed of sound, a sonic boom echoing and merging with the impact.

But the draconid only smiled and took the hit to the side of its head, using [Dispersal] to spin around sideways just as the Collector did, swaying and rolling with the blow, before transferring the force into a tail strike of its own aimed at the Collector's side.

The Collector calculated and predicted again.

The tail strike hit the side of its torso, and at the very moment of impact, the very infinitesimal smidgeon of time required for the Collector to take the blow before it could disperse it, the strike was powerful enough to completely obliterate one of its arms, wreaking deep cracks into the hyperalloy carapace on its torso.

The Collector weathered the initial impact and dispersed the rest of the force, channeling it through its body again.

The Collector redirected the blow, letting it guide it, spinning in the air and unleashing a straight punch with its now one remaining arm.

Again, the draconid caught this blow, this time with the top of its broad, plated head.

Imperfectly, though. The strikes were becoming too fast even for it to properly obtain the right timing for.

Deep cracks lined the top of its head with pale blue blood welling up from them before it spun forwards, riding the flow of energy and unleashing a falling axe kick mid-air.

This time, after so many cycles of building up energy, this blow was beyond the Collector's capacity even to redirect. The speed of the strike was such that the margin of error was simply too high for the Collector to obtain the proper timing to, and unless it had the perfect timing that would allow it to experience only the smallest of moments taking the initial blow, the strike would be lethal.

[Dispersal] could only block so much damage.

Even ten percent of this blow would obliterate the Collector's entire body.

Yet –

The Collector activated Chronostasis, massively accelerating its mental processing temporarily.

It perceived the world with such heightened reaction that all movements seemed to slow down to a crawl, tinted with a faint blue hue. This ability could not be utilized consecutively, and the toll on its mental processing afterwards ensured that it was not one to be used lightly.

But the Collector used it now, for if it could perfectly counter this strike and impart the blow back to a vital area, it could triumph over the draconid with its very own overwhelming might.

Even with slowed time perception, the strike was too quick for the Collector to completely perceive, but at the very least, it could calculate the timing better, and if it knew the timing of the strike to within one percent margin of error, then it estimated it could reduce the damage of the blow by up to 95%.

There was absolutely no room for error here. Beyond a one percent margin of error would dramatically reduce [Dispersal's] efficacy down to 85% damage reduction, and that was guaranteed to be lethal.

But the Collector was a warrior of the Collective, bred and born to be the zenith of natural might, adapted to any and all situations.

When hardship arose, it met it, adapted to it, and evolved past it.

The Collector engaged the perfect timing. The kick struck its upper chest chest, and even with perfect [Dispersal, the initial shock was enough to completely blow apart the Collector's chest carapace, splitting apart the hyper alloy carapace and tearing apart the longchain chitinous sublayer underneath.

The Firefly Shinchu orb shattered, and the force continued to travel internally to rupture one of its hearts.

Though, thankfully, it was the heart holding the female daemon specimen's power.

Thus, not necessary for immediate survival.

The Collector managed to force the rest of the powerful blow flowing harmlessly through its body, and as Chronostasis began to end, it diverted the rapidly accelerated power to fuel a back flip.

With the back flip, it coursed the power into the edge of its tail like a whip, striking it out at the specimen's chin.

The permeating force would be enough to destroy a significant portion of its brain, at the least.

Chronostasis ended, and as the Collector's perception of time rapidly accelerated to normal, it felt itself sailing backwards, skidding into the rocky ground of the cliff, gouging out a deep crater with its back. Its tail had ruptured at the end from transferring such a vast quantity of energy.

The Collector used its remaining arm to push itself up, focusing its ocular systems on the draconid. Its sensory perception was hazy, with some sounds, sights, scents, and tactile inputs being numbed or registering late – a side effect of Chronostasis.

The simple shockwave generated from unleashing the blow directly had shattered the edge of the cliff face entirely, as if a high-ordinance demolitions charge had been set off. In the middle of this carved out carnage, the form of the draconid floated in the air.

Half of the draconid's head was blown off. A lethal wound. Yet, the unmistakeable glint of life in the draconid's one remaining blue eye showed that the Collector had not grasped victory.

Where the draconid's shattered skull should have exposed thoroughly pulped brain mass, there was instead just gleaming blue energy covering any viscera or bone matter. This was not the mana boosted high speed regeneration that the other draconid had, this was of an energy signature entirely different.

Regardless, the effect of it was apparent: it kept the draconid alive.

The Collector unfurled its Shinchu wings and hovered on them, half of its tail having blown off and in need of thorough regeneration.

The draconid floated towards the Collector, putting a hand over its shattered head.

"You…you strike me with strong hit. Hit enough maybe to kill. But curse does not break," said the draconid. A rattle escaped from his throat. A quiet, muted rattle. One of melancholy. "Maybe…you are not the one."

The draconid stared at the Collector, its one eye's slit pupil narrowing to a point as it thoroughly took in the Collector.

"No, you are the one. You must be the one. You have to be the one," said the draconid, almost pleading, more to itself than to the Collector or anyone else. "The White Voice does not lie. You have potential.

Grow stronger and stronger."

The draconid touched the cavity in its head covered by blue energy. "And when you are strong enough, you break my curse. Not now, though. Now, you are too weak."

The draconid floated higher in the air, its head instantly regenerating with an explosive burst of white flesh and bone matter. "When you are strong, come north. To the Rift. You find your destiny there."

With that, the draconid flew away with enough speed that it parted the fall of Grain all around it, becoming nothing more than a blurred dot in less than a second.

Report chapter

Seeing that flight made the Collector realize the draconid had been significantly limiting its strength, allowing the Collector to strike it to sate its own desires. It was the same manner in which the Collector itself would allow certain specimen that it believed to be worthy leeway within which to show further their battle prowess and worth before consuming them for the Collective.

In essence, an act of mercy. Yet, the Collector could sense that this mercy, this act of leaving it alive, was bestowed primarily with the emotion of respect behind it.

Respect of the Collector's strength, and respect that it could reach further heights of power.

At the same time, this was not solely the reason for the draconid specimen's actions. The specimen knew of the Collector, or at the very least possessed some ideation of the Collector's strength and potential to grow already.

Based upon conversational threads, the creature knew of this information through the 'White Voice', and yet, that raised another question: how was it that this 'White Voice' knew of the Collector? There was also need to consider the tone and emotions exhibited by the draconid specimen.

The draconid specimen exhibited a deep sense of longing.

When the Collector had managed to redirect the final strike to the draconid's head, it had shown surprise that it was still alive. This indicated to some degree that the specimen had expected the wound to be lethal, and, to some degree, its longing was directed towards a desire for that wound to have been sufficient to expire it.

Why was it that the draconid specimen desired expiry from the Collector's form? How was it that this 'White Voice' had transferred knowledge of the Collector to the draconid?

Yet, the Collector understood instinctively that to obtain answers to these questions, it would have to travel north. Farther north, across the series of mountainous structures demarcating what was called the 'Rift'.

Where the draconid had invited the Collector to secure its 'destiny'. As to what this 'destiny' meant, the Collector would come to know when it traversed to the Rift.

But for now-

The Collector felt an undeniable heat rising up within it. This was in many ways similar to the fiery heat that had blazed within it when it had first consumed worthy specimen on this world. Yet, in some ways, different.

This was not the heat of desire to test the strength of others. No, this was the desire to test its own strength.

The Collector had been deemed weak. It did not take offense to this judgement as a tinkerer might have, for quantitatively and qualitatively, it was simply a fact. Compared to the higher echelons of power in this world, of which this draconid specimen likely occupied a rung, it truly was still weak.

It had to become stronger. To evolve further.

This, the Collector had always known. To serve the Great Purpose, it had to be strong enough to be unchallenged in this world.

And yet, this was not that.

The Collector desired strength now not to be unchallenged, but to be a challenge.

To become strong enough to match those that would desire battle with it, and in turn, engage in worthier and worthier battles.

Yes, the Collector thought. It would grow strong. It would maximize its potential. Then, it would challenge the draconid specimen once more.

"All of you," said the Collector, projecting its voice.

The goblins all came forwards, standing as close as they could to the Collector's flaming form.

Its injuries, though slowly regenerating, were still apparent. A deep, shattered cavity in its chest. Speckles of solidified gold cracked around it from the orb at its center breaking. Multiple skulls cracked apart. Arms blasted off. Half of its tail blown apart. A heart ruptured.

All soon to be irrelevant.

These injuries, the goblin swarm noted, and they exhibited palpable concern, particularly in the case of the carrier unit that the Collector had a stronger mental tie to.

"Do not concern yourselves over these injuries. They are temporary. Instead, begin to scale down this cliff and form a perimeter around the Jotnar hand," stated the Collector. "Utilize the shards of purifying light that I have granted you to leverage yourselves against the wall."

The Collector hovered in the air withs its flaming wings and peered at the sky. The fall of Grain was becoming intense, and it seemed almost as if with the barrier emanating from the Jotnar's hand gone, the Grain was making up for having its fall impeded with a vengeance.

There was so much Grain falling with winds of such ferocity guiding them that it might as well have been the dead of night with how little light permeated through this whirl of dark specs. With this level of Grainfall, there was no conceivable way for an ordinary tinkerer to make its way here, nor for a tinkering force to scout the Collector.

The 'White Voice', too, the Collector surmised was not a tinkering presence, for if it operated farther north, in the area known as the Rift where Grainfall was to be more intense and severe due to being closer to its source, then it was extremely unlikely a tinkering influence was behind it.

And if it was not a tinkering presence, then likely, it was against the tinkerers and the 'gods', for there did not seem to be any middle ground between the environment and monsters versus gods and their Common Body swarm.

"The fall of Grain has rendered this area inhospitable to tinkering presences," stated the Collector as it hovered over to the new edge of the cliff face created by the sheer shockwave emissions of the exchange of blows between the Collector and the draconid.

The Collector faced down and ejected its detachable maw, sucking up whole the rest of the weaker draconid's corpse below it.

Then, the Collector hovered beyond the edge of the cliff, a ball of fire and flickering golden light in the midst of great darkness as it peered down at the goblins.

"The presence of the draconids has cleared this land of additional threats. These specimen, these draconids, are apex predators within this biome. Where they tread, no others do. I will descend to the hand of the Jotnar, and the swarm shall accompany me," said the Collector.

This was likely not a complete coincidence. If the draconid specimen had known of the Collector's strength, in particular its potential to evolve, then it knew that by leaving the Jotnar hand and the corpse of its brethren, the Collector would consume both and become stronger.

It was as if the draconid was inviting the Collector to feast.

To devour to its heart's content, to evolve, adapt, and then challenge it.

A challenger.

This was what the Collector was.

Never before had any other Warrior-Collector been a challenger. Always, they were the challenge, the great threat that darkened the skies and tore down civilizations. They were that which tinkerers had to unite to struggle against.

But this feeling, this idea of becoming that which rose up to meet and surpass, this feeling, the Collector did not dislike.

This feeling, the Collector relished. Always, its strength had been geared towards the Great Purpose. It still was. But now, there was another purpose, secondary, of course, to the Great Purpose, but one that spoke to the Collector's heart just as well.

It would take the draconid's challenge.

It would devour and become strong.

The Collector began its descent down the cliff, towards the awaiting Jotnar hand. Without any barrier guarding the skin, it was simply a mass of preserved flesh charged with incredible amounts of magical energy.

The amount of strength that the Collector would gain from fully assimilating this was truly a stimulating hypothetical to entertain.

A hypothetical soon to become reality.

The Collector hovered at the base of the Jotnar hand rising from above the water. Surrounding the edge of the water, on solid ice, the goblin swarm stood watch. Or rather, they knelt.

"The king will ascend," was what Thokk, the carrier unit, had said, knowing full well the Collector's intentions.

And ascension, it seemed, was a ritual worthy of reverence.

Ascension.

An apt word for what the Collector was to undergo now.

Report chapter

Now that it was close up to the Jotnar hand, the Collector could see that the Jotnar had indeed been a remarkable specimen when it had been alive.

The enormous length of the pale blue flesh towered high into the air, almost fifteen meters, with the base of the arm supported from under the water by a solidified pillar of ice.

The arm was thoroughly muscled, the definition of the musculature clearly visible, each curve and indentation pushing against the skin.

Across the skin, crystalline structures of ice protruded, with particularly large collections clumping around the elbows and forearms to form rudimentary spikes and guards.

Waving patterns of deep blue were etched into the skin, mimicking the flow of water and winds, and within them, the Collector could sense remnant traces of the environment's mana.

Likely, these markings, much like the carved sigils that stored spells for tinkerers, functioned to manifest a certain magical phenomenon; in this case, the manifestation of a dungeon via absorption of environmental mana, though the nature of the dungeon, the Collector could no longer glean.

The energy signatures of the dungeon had largely dissipated.

No doubt, the draconid specimens had entered the dungeon projected by the hand and eliminated the energy source that sustained it. Glowing sigils of foreign script no longer manifested upon the arm when the Collector neared.

This left only the bare flesh of the arm unprotected by barriers of magical energy.

Flesh ready for consumption, perfectly preserved by the environmental mana that once condensed around it, marking it as a focal point for a dungeon.

The Collector placed its remaining hand on the pale blue, almost white skin of the hand, feeling a radiating cold permeate from it up through its hand. Its ocular systems traced the dark blue, nearly black patterns mimicking winds and waves running across the length of the arm.

At the very least, there was an entire dungeon's worth of magical energy in this arm.

And no small dungeon either, it seemed.

An overwhelming magnitude of mana emanated from the arm that far exceeded that emitted by the draconid specimen, though the Collector understood that the draconid was severely holding back the full reserves of its magical energy, facing the Collector solely with its sheer, latent physical stats unenhanced even by basic flow.

Regardless, the Collector understood that by consuming this arm, it truly would evolve into a status worthy of the term 'ascension'.

A range of strength that could access the upper echelons of might in this world.

The Collector had always known that had it possessed full access to the Collective, allowing its shard to gain adaptations from Infestor and Dominator Collector strains, it could have had half of this entire planet under disease and control by now.

Yet, at the same time, the Collector was thankful that it had been locked out.

Had it simply gone ahead with Infestor or Dominator traits without fully understanding the nature of magic in this world, it would have spread death and disease at a large scale and been immediately spotted by tinkerers with unfathomable abilities and firepower.

Or perhaps it would have succeeded, adapting magic to its diseases and mental manipulations and breaking this world down from within.

Yet, it would have been too easy.

Where would the battles have been? Where would the thrill of growing strong have been?

It would have simply burrowed underground, manifesting parasites and clouds of microbes or projections of psionic control.

There would have been no challengers, merely survivors of pathogens and parasitic influence.

The Collector would never have had the chance to become a challenger itself.

It would not have fought. It would simply have…functioned.

Regardless, the Collector understood that fundamentally, all the desires it sated for itself now would lead to growing its strength, and with more strength, it would achieve the Great Purpose with more ease, thus, it felt more comfortable with these emotions and desires it now began to cultivate, more willing to accept them as simply part of the journey to bring forth the Great Purpose.

"I shall create an incision within this limb and enter into its flesh," stated the Collector, projecting its voice to the goblin swarm. "Within, I will undergo what you term as an 'Ascension'. The process will take significant periods of time, and it is difficult to calculate the precise length.

Regardless I will state this: when I emerge, I will have the might to lead all of you truly to grand purpose. Beyond to the Rift, then, to the domain of the tinkerers."

"Yes, my king," said Thokk, the carrier unit. He thumped his chest. "We protect you with all our lives."

The elder on Thokk's shoulder looked up and side to side, his eyes blinded but his magical sensitivity still sharp.

"I can sense it," said the elder, almost in a whisper. "This is the power. The power of the Rift. The ancient power of the World before it was marred by the gods.

The power of dragons. The power of Titans. The power of giants.

The power of the World's will itself."

The elder put up his hands, bidding the kneeling champions to rise.

"Rise, my brethren, and bear witness," said the elder, shaking in excitement as he smiled, baring the few yellowed teeth he had. "Our king will soon possess the Old power.

A new age is upon us."

The swarm stood up, reverently gazing at the Collector, their bodies tense as they readied themselves to guard the Collector at all times.

The Collector clicked the mandibles of its main skull in appreciation that its units would stand vigil and neared the Jotnar hand.

By now, the Collector had regenerated its tail and one of the limbs holding its monomolecular claw. The skulls that had shattered during its fight were half-formed, but they were a testament to the Collector's survival: the draconid specimen had struck the Collector's decoy skulls.

That happening of chance had allowed the Collector to survive to this point. A fundamental point where the Collector sensed that it would possess enough strength to operate on a different scale.

Where it would shatter boulders with its strikes, it would now crack mountains.

With that strength, no, even further strength than even that, the Collector would challenge the draconid, then, it would bear down upon the tinkerers, welcoming any challenger in turn that they mustered up against it.

The Collector unsheathed its monomolecular blade and made a rectangular incision through the Jotnar arm. The arm began to shake unpredictability, not because of any movement on the Collector's part, but because the pillar of underwater ice that supported the hand was slowly starting to crack and break apart under the arm's weight.

The ice had been generated largely by the arm's own magic, and now that it was inactive, it would start to deteriorate.

Good. There were no life forms in the water. Once the Jotnar hand sunk, the Collector would be able to metamorphose within it with the least amount of visibility possible.

The Collector grasped the flesh it cut and pried it open like a door. Even with the full extent of its muscular, mana-enhanced might, it could barely pry open the thick, heavy flesh from the few connective tissues that attached it to the rest of the arm.

When the Collector had pried the chunk of flesh open enough to see dark blue blood pouring out, streaming in the waters below in large, inky clouds, it entered the cavity it had formed. It shrunk itself as much as possible, condensing its muscles and minimizing the output of its magical energy, fitting into the cavity in a snug ball.

From here, the Collector began the process of metamorphosis.

A metamorphosis unlike any other.

A metamorphosis that promised to change not only the Collector, but the fate of this world itself.

The evolutionary cocoon could itself consume and devour organic matter near it to fuel it, and in the case that the Collector could metamorphose within a rich sample like this, it could engage in an accelerated and enhanced evolution that could skip metamorphosis levels depending on how much biomass it consumed.

And in the case of this Jotnar arm, the Collector knew it had ample quantities of heavily magically charged flesh to evolve again and again and again, for it never had to exit the cocoon until all the flesh around it was consumed.

It did not know the full extent of strength it would gain, merely that its current state would be utterly incomparable to its new might.

Report chapter

The Collector settled itself within the clean, incised gap of flesh it had carved out within the Jotnar arm.

All around it was flesh.

Bloody, almost black, blue flesh that emitted the faint hum of magical energy, though had the Jotnar been alive and actively circulating its mana, then surely, its mana surges could have made the earth rumble.

Here, the Collector would knit its evolutionary cocoon.

The evolutionary cocoon could itself consume and devour organic matter near it to fuel it, so in the case that the Collector evolved in a large breadth of biomass, it could continue to consume without exiting its cocoon and therefore skip metamorphosis levels effectively.

And in the case of this Jotnar arm, the Collector knew it had ample quantities of heavily magically charged flesh to evolve again and again and again, for it never had to exit the cocoon until all the flesh around it was consumed.

The danger of possessing too few spirit roots in comparison to its metamorphosis level could also be circumvented here for technically, the Collector underwent multiple evolutions, simply not exiting its cocoon as it did so, and each time, it would reset the counter for its spirit root consumption.

Ordinarily, that would not have meant much, but here, where there was a glut of root rich flesh to devour, the Collector could keep up it spirit root count with its physical development.

The Collector did not know the full extent of strength it would gain, merely that its current state would be utterly incomparable to its new might. It was difficult to calculate how much biomass this Jotnar arm would grant, for certain parts of it were more magically charged than others.

Regardless, the Collector calculated that even with the lowest estimates, it would reach the tenth level of metamorphosis, skipping two levels entirely.

It curled up its form as much as possible, shrinking and condensing itself, letting the oxygen pumping its blood and muscles dissipate out from its pores.

Then, the evolution began.

Flesh colored ooze flowed out from the Collector's carapace pores and skin, engulfing itself and attaching to the raw muscles and flesh all around it in a webwork of tendrils.

The Collector's form began to break down into genetic ooze, ready to manipulate itself into a truly ascendant domain of might.

In this enclosed space, the Collector's initial metamorphosis cocoon was small, making the initial evolutionary process slow, but in time, as the cocoon came to bore into the Jotnar flesh with its consuming tendrils and digestive juices, the process would accelerate further and further until this entire arm, all fifteen meters of it, was broken down into fuel.

All that was left of the Collector's once imposing figure of skulls and ashen carapace and musculature was now just a small, meter wide sphere of flesh, the cocoon beating in the dark of the Jotnar flesh.

Tendrils of flesh stabilized the cocoon's position in the Jotnar arm, and then began the consumption process, drilling into the hardy Jotnar flesh and breaking it down with digestive enzymes.

The more that was broken down, the larger the cocoon became.

The consumption process became a cascading effect, and as the cocoon grew larger and larger by the minute, the Collector began to analyze what genetic samples it would utilize.

Upon reaching the tenth metamorphosis level, the Collector could retrieve prior genetic samples it had utilized for former evolutions, diversifying its options, but ultimately, the decision was rather simple, for there were just a few overwhelmingly mighty genetic samples that the Collector had at its disposal.

First, there was the Jotnar genes that the Collector now assimilated.

The Jotnar genes were incredibly useful, with the original specimen having been a thirty-five-meter-tall giant that, like the Firefly Shinchu, operated in some capacity as an environmental regulator.

Where the Firefly Shinchu sought to hunt and destroy individual beings that accumulated too much longevity, the Jotnar existed more for environmental regulation.

The markings etched into the giant's skin were not manually applied, but biologically manifested, and were like lightning rods for mana that locked it in vast quantities, being particularly suited for drawing up mana from the environment.

When the mana was stored, it could be emitted via the Jotnar's breath into energy that nourished life and accelerated the growth of fauna and flora.

The essence of the Jotnar was thus pacifistic.

Because the environment itself possessed a flow of mana to it, excessively chaotic flows could manifest in natural disasters or cause certain areas to become inhospitable or unbalanced as a biome due to heavier or lower concentrations of atmospheric mana that magical species relied upon to survive.

Jotnar found these spots of instability, took in the unstable environmental mana, then converted it into life giving breath that re-stabilized biomes.

Hence, the elder's tales of the Jotnar interacting with tinkerers, building them cities or fending them against the cold.

The Jotnar even had the ability to shrink down its form to that matching the size and shape of humanoids, and, conversely, expand its form to its original titanic mass.

This would also prove extremely useful.

The Collector condensed its biomass to keep itself compact and less noticeable, but there would be times when enormous size would prove useful.

The Jotnar's size manipulation would allow the Collector to access what would likely be a forty-meter-tall behemoth of a form when it needed to, massively enhancing its might and durability at the cost of severely compromising its maneuverability and stealth.

Yet, also notable that the Jotnar were now no longer present below the Rift.

Driven away by tinkering presences, likely, with the gods themselves, at least according to the elder's tales, intervening against them.

Then, the draconid genes it had taken.

They might not have been the prime material of its kind like that which belonged to the white maned variant, but it still possessed exceptional powers the Collector would greatly benefit from, the most notable of them being magically induced high speed regeneration.

The Collector would retain its Firefly Shinchu genes.

It had not been able to access the full breadth of the sample's powers for it had been beyond the Collector's metamorphosis level, but now, it was confident that it could fully incorporate the specimen's strengths into itself.

Then, the Collector would retrieve back the daemon genes.

Those genes were of a prime genetic stock that the Collector could not fully manifest, but with more levels, it could scale to them better and express their might to a far higher degree.

There were no other samples that came close to matching the Collector's other magically rich genetic samples. Thus, it had to think in terms of sheer utility.

In terms of maneuverability, the Collector now had access to airborne and aquatic biomes through the draconid genes, for it had the capability to utilize magical energy to generate a field around it within which it could 'swim' through air or accelerate its movements in water, not to mention that the daemon's genes would provide adequate flight regardless.

The Collector could potentially decide to access subterranean biomes through the Lurker genes still within it, and yet, it had to weigh those genes against those belonging to the goblin elite.

The goblin elite's strength might have been far outclassed now, but it theorized that goblin genetic material was of yet a vastly untapped resource.

Even the elite's genes were thoroughly degenerated from a much larger, more complicated source code in the very same way that the draconid's genes were sourced from something far greater, something that belonged to the Rift that the Collector would soon come to hunt down and make it its own.

The Collector could only construct hypotheticals as to what a primordial goblin specimen was like, before countless generations of degeneration into the parasitic specimen that relied on humanoid females of other species to propagate.

Yet, the Collector could not deny that the genetic code of the goblins were extremely versatile, capable of short term evolution that manifested in the span of weeks to months, allowing them to escape hunting from humanoids and populate a vast variety of biomes.

In some ways, the goblins represented the ideal of evolutionary adaptation far better than the other specimen the Collector harnessed.

There was an origin to this remarkable trait that no other species on this planet seemed to exhibit thus far.

This secret, the Collector believed it could glean from the entity known as the Facestealer far west of this biome.

The histories of the goblins and the Facestealer seemed to be intertwined across a millennium of time. If there was any entity to know what the true origin of the goblin species was, then it was the Facestealer.

And, the Collector did not know why, but it felt right that because its swarm was comprised of goblins, it should thus grant them some level of approximate familiarity by undertaking some of their genetic code.

Report chapter

The Collecotr finalized its selection of genetic samples.

Jotnar. Draconid. Daemon. Firefly Shinchu. And Goblin Elite.

These five samples, all of them superior or of stock exemplifying the prime representatives of their species, mixed into the Collector's form, and all the biomass it now devoured went into giving shape to this ideation, like an outline sketch being filled in with vibrant colors sourced from the finest pigments.

The Collector's consciousness within the cocoon could still sense the world outside of it, albeit through muted senses, and it felt itself swirling in the amniotic liquid of its evolutionary chamber.

The Jotnar hand had tipped over, beginning what must have been an awing spectacle of a descent into the waters below. The goblin swarm would be smart enough to evade the waters pushed up by the impact, no doubt.

Thirty minutes had passed, and by now, the Collector's cocoon was the same size it had been prior to its metamorphosis. And it was growing rapidly by the moment, the growth accelerating the larger it became and the more tendrils of consumption it managed to manifest.

The Collector, still a sphere of pliable flesh yet to be given form, shook and rattled inside of its cocoon as the Jotnar hand slammed into the water and sank.

Bitterly cold waters filled into the cavity the Collector had carved out, and all light faded as the Jotnar hand sunk and sunk, its massive bulk falling straight down to the depths of the lake below.

Never before had the Collector felt like this. Its evolutionary cocoon glowed strong with a bright, iridescent light that reflected red, blue, green, yellow, black, and white, shining in the murky depths of the lake like a lone star amid the darkness of the cosmos.

Magical energy funneled into the Collector in enormous quantities and at continuous pace. Its prior form truly would be nothing compared to what it would emerge into.

An hour passed, and the Collector sensed that it had become a singularity of sorts.

Water started to spiral arounds it, drawing around it like a vortex, likely because the Collector's tendrils, latched deeply throughout the length of the Jotnar arm, were absorbing magical energy at extraordinary pace, simulating an analogous physical reaction from the environment.

It was not merely magical energy from the arm that flowed into the Collector now, it was mana from the environment itself. Pure white, translucent and charged particles swirling through the wind and diving in the water, swimming deep down to the Collector.

Primal Density. At this rate, the Collector determined that its Primal Density would become high enough that any Sorcerer would find it extremely difficult to wound the Collector to any significant degree.

The Collector struggled to maintain its continued consciousness as the glut of magical energy continued to funnel in, infusing every single cell of the Collector with untold levels of power.

This was similar in feeling to when it had first metamorphosed into adapting mana for its own, when its evolutionary shard had changed itself, separating from the Hivemind and obtaining another voice.

Yet, now, the Collector was far better in control of itself. Far more familiar with mana.

Always, the Collector had thought that secondary voice a product of evolution from the shard within it. A sign of the Collective shard adapting to mesh with the unknown energies of magic.

Never had the Collector believed it a voice separate from the Hivemind, merely another projection of it after it had adapted to the foreign energy of this world, for the essence of that voice had always been the same as that which was projected by the Hivemind.

But the Collector heard the voice call out to it again, and as its whispers reached the Collector's consciousness, the world around it faded away.

The Collector's consciousness floated, subject into what it identified as a form of psionic communication.

It could surmise this because it knew when its consciousness, or psionic profile, to be exact, could float in bare, psionic-energy space such as when it attempted to navigate the Tesseract.

Every sentient being possessed an unique psionic profile for it was merely an expression of their minds with emotions, thoughts, and memories being simply the constructs of the neurochemical formulas comprising the greater mind itself.

There was also an aspect of genetic memory that went into the psionic profile, but regardless, there was no real physical representation of a psionic profile for it was an intangible concept to begin with.

However, there were cases where psionically developed beings could color their profiles, grant it space and shape depending on their individual experiences.

The Collector surmised that to a denizen of this world, this would seem like a physical representation of their 'soul' as a space.

These were psionic spaces, and the larger they were, the greater the degree of psionic strength of the space's owner.

Thus, when the Collector accessed the foreign psionic space embedded within the female daemon specimen's psionic profile, part of its decision not to investigate further was because the psionic space was so developed.

A throne room of considerable size. Though, most certainly, much of the Collector's threat assessment lay in the anomalous nature of darkness surrounding the psionic space, making entry within it a dubious prospect.

Yet, the psionic space the Collector now found itself in was one of extraordinary scale.

A vast cavern, so vast that its ends could not be perceived. Cold in temperature. Echoing with a rhythmic, organic beat, like the movement of a heart's pumping.

The sound sourced from a great white light shining in front of the Collector, though compared to the unending expanse of shadowy dark around it, the light seemed tiny.

Whatever being was capable of manifesting a space like this was no ordinary being. A space of this size was impossible for any single tinkerer to manifest, regardless of how gifted they were in psionic manipulations.

This level of space outclassed even a Dominator-class Collector, and those Collector variants were optimized towards psionic powers, their minds capable of constructing tears in space that could shatter entire fleets of warships or putting an entire small planet's populace under control.

The only psionic profile the Collector knew of that could outclass this was that of the Collective Hivemind itself.

Yet, the Collector was secure in its safety.

When psionic profiles clashed with each other, attempting to influence control or eliminate the other, it was simultaneously a battle of wills and psionic space available to each profile.

However, in the case of the Collector, because of the built-in Hivemind defense protocols inside of it, attempting to dominate its mind would require being able to breach the defenses set by the Hivemind itself, and the Hivemind had the combined psionic might of billions of harvested life forms.

At the same time, this only guaranteed the integrity of the Collector's psionic profile.

It could, theoretically, be imprisoned indefinitely by a vastly greater psionic entity than it such as the one before it, but that would also mean that entity would also imprison itself with the Collector.

Still, the Collector maintained a sense of alarm at the sudden emergence of this sudden entity.

"[My child from the stars," came a voice from the white light.

Hearing this voice, the Collector's consciousness filled with the profile's energy signatures. An ordinary tinkerer experiencing this voice would have felt their minds light up with the color white.

A translucent, flickering white.

There was no mistake about it. This voice was the very same that had addressed the Collector when its Collective shard had altered, when its evolutionary system changed.

A neutral, feminine voice. Yet, one exuding warmth in this space full of dark and cold.

"[I once thought you another to wipe out. A star creature poisoning me. Just like the Usurpers who break my body and steal my voice.

But you are different. In many ways, you are much the same as my proper children.

Yes, I will embrace you with my warmth. You, the only child that can now hear my voice beyond mere whispers, even if our time together now is short.

For I know, as you stand before me, with strength you have gathered for yourself in spite of the many hardships you must have borne, that you will be the one.

You will be the one to rid my body of the Usurpers.

As from the stars they come, through the stars they must be purged."]

Report chapter

The voice continued, and as it did so, the Collector noted that the psionic space began to falter in its structural integrity. The darkness that filled the cavern began to encroach on the light even more, and as it did so, the cavern began to rumble, as if ready to shatter apart at any given moment.

This was a sign that whatever connection that had been established between the Collector and this voice was now entering the end of its time. Yet, not due to willful termination on part of the voice, but due to environmental circumstances that the Collector did not yet grasp.

All the Collector could be certain of for now was that this connection was both temporary and unstable.

[You must have many questions, my child. But my time with you is drawing near to an end, for the darkness submerges me once more.

Know that as much as I can, I am with you.

Though I may slumber, my great voice reduced a whisper, stolen by others, there is still some part of me that can always be with you. In the air, in the soil, in the snow, through all that which is untouched by the Usurpers, I am there.

But I know that my slumbering presence alone will not aid you. Thus, I grant you my Blessing.

With it, may you find safe purchase against the might of the Usurpers.

May you find peace with my lesser children. Lead them when the time is right.

May you find the shards of my being.

Three shards of myself did I grant to each my seven great children.

All of them now scattered across my body.

Some taken by the Usurpers. Some still guarded by my children. Some lost in the darkness.

You have found one. One that lets you awaken me even if for a moment.

Find the rest, my child, and make them your own, and do not let false voices lead you astray, for mine is the true White Voice that speaks to the winds and waters and life.

Fight, my star child, fight as you were meant to.

Your brethren drove the Usurpers in fear across the stars, and now, you will fulfill that same duty here.]

The psionic space collapsed, immediately dissolving into a nothingness painted solely by darkness before the black faded to reveal the Collector's current surroundings.

The time spent inside of a psionic space was unpredictable, the Collector knew, especially in the case that a psionic space was both large and unstable.

Yet, the Collector had not expected this. It had still expected to be fully submerged under the lake of Vimur, still in its metamorphosis cocoon. For the evolution that the Collector had undergone was an extremely extensive one.

Magnitudes more extensive than any it had undertaken before aside from the initial anomalous evolution that had granted it magic and, as it now came to know, a deep tie with this entity known as the 'White Voice'.

The ramifications of this 'White Voice', its ties to the draconid that uttered its name and to the Collective shard system that it was now intrinsically tied to were all thoughts the Collector would process at a later time.

For instead of being within the dark depths of the lake water, the Collector was now peering down at the lake from far above.

No.

The Collector oriented itself, and it understood now that it was that its size was simply prodigious. Its head and shoulders emerged out of the surface of the lake, every tiny movement from the Collector generating rolling waves that washed outwards, crashing against the cliff walls of ice surrounding it with solid impact.

The depth of the lake must have been nearly forty meters. The Collector assessed that its current height was at exactly fifty meters.

The entire evolutionary process had been aberrant, though not to the same degree as it had been before when the Collector first melded magic into itself.

The Collector analyzed its shard system.

Metamorphosis Level 812

Biomass Level: 0/100

Stored Genetic Material:

-Frostborn Hobgoblin Thrall [Core]

-Vineswinger Goblin Champion [Core]

-Windcutter Wildcat

-Shockstripe Eel

-Lurker

-Goblin Lord [Core] [EQUIPPED]

-Grizzled Stormbear

-Draconid

-Jotnar [Core] [EQUIPPED]

Adaptations:

Internal Systems

Ultrafiber Muscles Rank 8.6 13 (0.2 from Draconid, 0.2 from Jotnar)

--Coilboosters

--Pliomatter Tendrils I *NEW: Shard host can now create three tendrils comprised of Ultrafiber Musculature modified segmented, flexible tendons and pliable muscle fibers that allow for complex, prehensile movement.

With engaged coilboosters, it is possible to generate accelerated, arc-trajectory movements with the tendrils that can deal devastating amounts of damage at range.

Autonomic Neuro-Bodily Matrix Rank 3 7

--Metalloglottic Ossifier [0/5]

--Blood Boost *NEW: The creation of a reserve booster sac located within the host's heart. Through activation, it is possible to deplete the sac of stored nutrients and a stimulating cocktail of hormones and chemicals that massively accelerate and enrich blood flow. Causes the host's body to drastically enhance its physical capabilities.

Side effects: Drastically increased internal body temperatures. Accelerated blood loss from wounds. Unless constant movement is generated to vent off built up heat, internal damage may accumulate. Constant usage deteriorates the capacity to utilize fine tuned movements.

Neuro-Endocrinal Matrix Rank 1 5

--Chronostasis: By overloading neural networks with latent psionic energy, it is possible to enter into a state of heightened tachypyschia, temporarily slowing down the perception of time. Neural networks must require periods of rest in between usages.

--Hunter-Killer: Further developed mental processing has now allowed the host to utilize more latent psionic energy reserves. This adaptation allows the host to commit a select target's psionic signature to memory, allowing the host to track and hunt the target regardless of sensory obscurations.

Applies only to one target at a time.

Neuro-Circulatory Reserves Rank 1 5

--Reserve Heart 1 [Total 4]

--Reserve Brain 1 [Total 2] *NEW*

Restorative Systems Rank 4 *NEW: Allows for accelerated cell growth that functions as regeneration.

Note: current form possesses enhanced cellular restoration functions that allows for certian pre-requisite sub adaptation requirements to be waived

--Restorative Booster [BYPASSED]

--Hyperspeed Regeneration [BYPASSED]

-- Cluster Drone I *NEW: The host may utilize its accelerated cell growth to generate the creation of three cluster drones. Each cluster drone may incorporate the genetic material of two specimens that the host has analyzed.

External Systems

Sensitive Hairs Rank 7.6 10 [MAX]

--Quill Spray

--Condensed Protein Sheathe *NEW: It is possible for the host to sheathe hairs in a temporary encasement of hardened proteins. A prerequisite for the Spine Spitter weapons adaptation.

Organic Hyperalloy Carapace Rank 7.6 11.6

--Longchain Chitinous Sublayer

--Smartshock Carapace *NEW: Hyperalloy carapaces now capable of automatically reacting to trauma and adjusting its structure to optimally fend against it. An adaptation inspired by the Smartsteel of the United Front which possessed malleable atomic structures capable of adapting and adjusting to most forms of applied energy.

Weapons Systems

Monomolecular Claws Rank 6.6 10.6

--Extended Growth *NEW: Monomolecular claws may be shaped into extended, scythe or spike like structures for greater range.

--Reinforcement Sheathe *NEW: Monomolecular claws strengthened via a synthesis of the protein sheathe structure developed by the Sensitive Hairs adaptation.

Furthermore, monomolecular can now be coated in a reinforcing hardened protein sheathe at the cost of some sharpness. The sheathe can be broken down and withdrawn at a moment's notice to bare the claws fully.

Pyrocatalytic Glands Rank 5.4 9.4

--Instant Trigger: Through the evolution of a chemically reactive tubular structure connecting both the pyrocatalytic glands and the biotrigger, there is no longer a delay between the activation of the glands and the emission of flames.

Yet, instant activations will compromise accuracy.

Spine Spitter Rank 4 *NEW: Allows for spines modified from sensitive hairs to be grown and stored internally in a specialized internal organ of ultrafiber musculature that functions also as a delivery system.

Superacid Bilespitter Rank 4 *NEW: The host now possesses the capacity to generate Collective superacid and eject it from an external delivery organ.

Native Adaptations

-Daemonic Thel

-Blood of Gob*NEW: The essence of the goblins' genetic capacity to rapidly adapt to their environments. Further investigation required to fully develop the potential of this adaptation.

-Purifying Light *NEW: The light of the Firefly Shinchu optimized for the elimination of specimens with high levels of Primal Density.

-Seismic Shock *NEW: The adaptation of the Shaker Fish to project powerful seismic shockwaves from its body with the expenditure of magical energy.

Current Form:

Firefly Shinchu/Goblin Elite/Royal Daemon/Jotnar/Draconid

Magic Status

Mana Level: 100%

Active Cores [4/4:

Prime Core

--Trigger: Desire

Daemon Core

--Trigger: Wonder

Frostborn Thrall Core [REMOVED]

--Trigger: Greed [REMOVED]

Jotnar Core *NEW*

--Trigger: Mercy *NEW*

Goblin Lord Core

--Trigger: Superiority

Inhera:

Sapia [Daemon Core]

Breath of Life [Jotnar Core]

Ethera:

Devourer [Prime Core]

Primal Magic:

-Higher Calling [Goblin Lord Core]

-Purifying Light [Firefly Shinchu]

-Royal Privilege [Royal Daemon] *NEW: With the fully unleashed royal blood of a daemon of Zerul, it is possible to access any abilities or spaces barred from those that do not possess this blood.

-Jotnar Shift [Jotnar] *NEW: The ability of the Jotnar to shift the size of their prodigious forms, condensing their might into a smaller, more compact form. The longer a Jotnar stays in their compacted form, the more potential power they build up that is unleashed when they access their unbound giant sizes.

-Eye of the Storm (False) [Draconid] *NEW: The ability to draw forth the natural disaster of the storm, channeling it through the body and unleashing it. An incomplete, degraded power.

Blessings:

-Blessing of Mount Oe

-Blessing of the Deep

-Blessing of the World *NEW: [A symbol of the World Shard now embedded within you, taken from the Jotnar you have become one with. With this, no beast lower in strength than you will lift their fangs or claws against you, for they will recognize you as a greater child of mine.

You may perceive the location of the rest of my shards so long as they are not enshrouded in darkness.

The more shards you consume, the greater this blessing shall become, and the more I may aid you]

Primal Density: 30% 90%

Root Consumption Limit [REMOVED: [Your body now knows this world well. The strength of magic is no longer foreign to you, it is now a crucial part of you. There is no limit to that which you may consume, for with my blessing, your potential is limitless.]

After analyzing the system, the Collector came to understand that it had already chosen its form and made certain modifications such as replacing the hobgoblin thrall's core with the Jotnar core.

These modifications were made sub-consciously by the Collector whilst it was engaged in the White Voice's psionic space, likely with some assistance with the additional brain it now grew within the pit of its stomach.

The Collector was certain of this, even if the engagement with the psionic space of the 'White Voice' had muddled its memory banks, for all the shifts it had conducted to its body were those that it would have made itself.

Its physical form, too, was that which the Collector would have likely ordered consciously.

The Collector had utilized the mighty Jotnar genetic specimen as a base, and because there were so many other bipedal genetic samples included in its new form, it had thus become bipedal and roughly humanoid, though aside from the bare outline of its shape, it could not be called anything remotely human.

The Collector's white hyperalloy carapace encased it in thick plating like dense armor, with some parts of the carapace around its joints lighter and comprised of a scaled weave from the Draconid genes so as to allow for greater flexibility of movement.

Crystals of ice protruded from the carapace, forming great defensive shards around the Collector's elbows, shoulders, and knees so as to maximize defensive capacity for its joints. The crystals, unlike those from the Jotnar, were a pure white in color, charged with the translucent white energy of Primal Density.

Smaller crystals emerged from all around the Collector's body, shrouding it in an aura of frosty cold.

As always, the Collector's build was thickly muscled, heavily empowered by the bulky musculature inherent in the Draconid, Jotnar, and royal Daemon genes.

Extremely thick neck and back muscles from the Draconid genes made the latissimus muscles framing the sides of its back incredibly wide, encasing its body from the back in a strong layer of ultrafiber musculature. Its trapezius muscles started from the ends of its shoulders and formed a solid, triangular layer all the way up to the top of its neck, almost as if the muscles were fused into the neck itself.

Overall, the Collector's upper body was almost too thickly muscled, causing it to ever so slightly hunch over, though this did not compromise the Collector any. It was simply the orientation of the Draconid's musculoskeletal system.

By hunching, the Collector exposed only its broad, muscle padded back while covering to greater degree its chest for at the center of its chest, the Firefly Shinchu orb glowed, radiating its golden light, and around the orb spiraled out a wave-like pattern of dark blue streaks painting over its carapace.

This spiral pattern was the Jotnar's genetic adaptation to store unstable environmental mana and convert it.

The Collector possessed four arms, and all their hands ended with the points of thick, taper pointed black claws that could slash or hook. Each of those claws glinted with the faint frosty aura of infused Everfrost.

Its arms were now the crux of its weapons systems.

As before, two of its arms could manifest purifying light blades from the forearms, and two of the others possessed monomolecular scythe blades kept in their hardened protein sheathes unless required. But beyond these, the Collector now possessed a variety more weapons systems at its disposal.

Where the blades emerged from the upper forearms, the Collector's ranged weapons systems manifested their delivery systems on the underside of its forearms.

On one arm, the Spine Spitter lay, a tubular construct of grooved Ultrafiber musculature that could eject hardened spines at speeds far surpassing sound.

Once the Collector developed its psionic-electromagnetic adaptations, it could enhance the Spine Spitter further with a psionically charged magnetic acceleration that would allow spines to easily surpass hypersonic speeds.

The Collector had held off on evolving its psionic-electromagnetic capabilities because though they led up to psionically induced plasmabolts and plasmobaric wave explosions that were useful against any enemy, they required prerequisite magnetoreception and electromagnetic pulse wave subadaptations that were useful only against United Front technology.

Yet, the Collector theorized that by experimenting with the Draconid's capacity to meld magic with electric field sensing, it could incorporate magic into its psionic-elecromagnetics, potentially even devising a means to cause its electromagnetic pulse waves to disable mana flow in hostile specimens.

On another arm, the Collector's Superacid Bilespitter lay embedded. It was a bulbous sac of glowing green liquid attached to the forearm muscle, underneath the hyperalloy carapace.

When inactive, the sac was deflated and hidden under carapace, but when activated, the sac pushed out through the carapace and expanded with Collective superacid, readying to eject in guided streams or, if necessary, a close-range explosion for the Collector secreted a lipid layer around its skin that neutralized the acid.

The Collector's volcanite tipped pyrocatalytic glands were still housed inside of its stomach, which remained detachable. With more access to the Firefly Shinchu's power and more familiarity with this world, the Collector could begin to fuse its adaptations with those native to this world, though it first had to fully extract those native adaptations first.

Now, the Collector could infuse the flames from its pyrocatalytic glands with purifying light, not to mention that the bite strength of the detachable stomach was now almost a guaranteed kill, for it incorporated the immense jaw strength of the Draconid.

The Collector's three Pliomatter Tendrils emerged from its back. Two from its rear deltoids and one from the middle of its spine. These tendrils were pure musculature, the flesh normally supposed to be raw and red but now colored a blue-tinted white from the cold-resistant genes inherited from the Draconid, Jotnar, and the evolutionary adaptation of goblin blood.

These tendrils were of a pliable, flexible material, and they could shrink down to a third of their size for better maneuverability or extend to lengths more than twice as long as the Collector itself. Infused with mana and engaged with coilboosters, the tendrils could act as high speed whips that would obliterate anything in range.

When the tendrils were further evolved, they could, as they once did in the Collector's original form, possess adaptations of their own such as monomolecular claws or bilespitters.

The Draconid's aquatic features manifested on the Collector. A two finned, thickly muscled and white-carapaced tail emerged from the Collector's back. A large white fine jutted out from its back, a faint hum of electrical energy crackling around it.

The Collector's head was where its structure had deviated from what it would have intended. It would have still intended on utilizing decoy heads, even if it had grown another neural processing unit as a spare, but it form was more straightforward.

At its sternum, the adventurer's crystal skull lay embedded, almost like a glowing, rainbow colored ornamentation.

The Collector's head was crocodilian in shape, nearing the approximate structure of its original form. Yet, its head was almost completely plated and comprised of carapace, making it seem more like a helmet than any organic head.

Its armored jaw jutted out, the 'teeth' comprised of jagged, spike-like ends in the carapace. Its jaw seemed to be always slightly agape, only a void of darkness showing in between. Four pairs of glowing red ocular systems dotted the the Collector's carapace head, two of them facing to the side and two of them facing forwards.

Horns protruded from the sides of the Collector's head.

A pair of thick, curved black horns tinted with shimmering purple framed the Collector's forehead like an alien crescent moon not of silvery light, but of darkness.

Its abyssium encased thel hung low from the back of its head, stretching almost as low as its waist, now capable of functioning as a spiked weapon if needed.

Crystals of white ice dotted the Collector's carapace head, granting it a jagged, roughly spiked texture, and hovering above its forehead was a single shard of glowing white, translucent light. From the shard, a thin line of white light circled around the Collector's head, forming a floating white crown of pure energy.

The Collector could sense that the energy comprising this crown was similar in nature to the wings of the white maned Draconid and the golden winged humanoid.

Yet, different. The shard at the Collector's head must have been the shard that the entity known as the 'White Voice' spoke of. And there was ample more room for more shards to join the crown.

For now, however, the Collector would ascertain the information it had been given, analyze it more thoroughly. There was also the matter of the female daemon's genes changing in structure almost entirely with the Collector accessing more of it, ascending into what was classified as 'Royal Daemon' blood.

Information.

This was what the Collector needed. About the White Voice. About the nature of this 'World'. About the Daemons.

An attempt to simulate the goblin elder's memory could prove useful. The Collector had noted that the goblin swarm was not present, but if the Collector's evolutionary cocoon had swelled up to immense size, then it was natural for them to have taken to higher ground to prevent the displaced lake waters from bearing down on them.

The Collector attempted to channel a communicative link with its carrier unit, but found that there was none to be made.

The unit had been killed.

Report chapter

Unferth put a black armored hand to his helmeted chin as he peered down at the pile of goblin corpses before him. His eyes flashed as two green points of light through his helmet, and his breaths rattled as they sucked in through the filtration system of his All-Environment Suit.

He held down an urge to shiver despite the heating systems inlaid in his body armor and the thick cloak wrapped around it for even more warmth.

Fjall was as cold as everyone said it was.

No, the stories did not do it justice.

This far up north, Unferth felt that if he did not have his suit with its heating function on, he would have turned into an ice block within minutes.

Unferth was no stranger to cold.

Winters in Mercia were dreadful too, and there was once a time when dwarves like him had to hole up underground to watch them pass by.

Though with the Enlightening from the great god Wodin, there was no need to crawl around in the dirt anymore.

Even with the Enlightening, he noted, there were always mysteries in this wide world of many realms.

Such as these goblins.

Unferth looked down at the goblin corpses. They were all laid out neatly across a mat, ready to be rolled up and taken away. The corpses were riddled with bullet holes from both Seeker ship machinegun fire and standard issue infantry tri-arms.

Unferth was no adventurer. Few dwarves ever took to the League.

But as a Captain of the Bluecap Fleet, a fleet meant for expeditionary scouting and reconnaissance across all realms, he had had years of schooling to know the types of creatures and environments he would encounter.

These were all champions. A great many of them. And even a four-armed elite. A force of Frostborn goblins that was far beyond what was normal for the scum that was goblin kind.

The elite was especially troublesome.

It had slaughtered almost all of Unferth's men on the ground, even those equipped with Ironbeast exo-frames, and only constant aerial gunfire led to its demise for it had no means of catching their airships.

"Officer Shield," said Unferth, his voice a mechanical, projected rasp through the filtration system of his All-Environment Suit.

"Yes, sir! "A dwarf standing beside Unferth stiffened up in attention, putting a deferent hand to a blue cap on his head. He was almost indistinguishable from Unferth in terms of appearance.

Both of them were approximately one and a half meters tall. Wide builds. Not much different from the ordinary dwarf.

They both had on the bulky black body armor of the All-Environment Suit that was standard issue for a Bluecap Fleet for they, as one of the expeditionary fleets of the Undead Containment Force, had to be ready for any environment, regardless of how cold or hot or toxic it was.

The only difference between them was that Unferth had a star imprinted on his blue cap, indicating his rank as a captain.

"Signal for the gunship to beam these samples up. This may not be Undeath, but goblin elites are not a force to be taken lightly.

The tendrils on the back of its head may even suggest the presence of a Lord. Though, I suppose that Dark Zones like this would produce sudden mutations like this the most," said Unferth.

He muttered the word 'Dark Zones' with a hint of disgust. He hated taking his fleet through them. Dark Zones were cut off from all surveillance. All communications were shot.

Ordinary Sorcery did not work, and even though dwarven magitech was self-contained in its magical flow, capable of operating even in Dark Zones where particulates such as this 'Grain' severely impaired any external magic expression, it still meant that the fleet had no access to its sensors or remote communications.

Anything the fleet found here, they would have to report back after they had left this storm of Grainfall.

Unferth did not want to waste a single extra second here if he had to.

Cut off from the Terran outpost, the Adventurer's League, the Sorcerer's Order, everything, they were at great risk for any sudden monster to come their way, and Fjall was known for its ferocious beasts.

Especially across the mountain range known as the Rift. That was a place of legend. No dwarven fleet ever dared to make its way there.

And they were uncomfortably close to the Rift.

Unferth watched as Officer Shield nodded and held up a baton in his hand, clicking a button to make it glow a radiant green: a signal for sample retrieval.

Ordinarily, they would have just gone on comms with the main gunship and gotten this all over with. At least they were trained with color signals so that they could navigate through Dark Zones.

Unferth put his hands behind his back and sighed. "When the retrieval team comes down, tell them to take up our losses too. The corpses must be checked for Undeath, and they must be given proper burial rites."

Still, there was something odd that Unferth could not quite place his finger on. His fleet had been given a reputable tip by a Sorcerer's Order that there were potentially daemonic influences in Fjall.

Seemingly unbelievable, and yet, that tip came from Thorian, a known Archmage of the Sorcerer's Order.

Even Unferth knew Thorian's name.

The man was a master golemancer whose works had even influenced dwarven Mechmancers. A known veteran of the Sorcerer's Order who had upheld the order's sworn oath to keep stability across the realms for several decades now. A veteran of the Red Night.

It was odd that Thorian requested that Unferth move in relative secrecy, not informing the rest of the Sorcerer's Order or the Adventurer's League, but then again, politics were complicated.

It was not unusual for representatives in either organization to appeal to Mercia's fleets or forces for things that needed to be dealt with and contained quickly, especially in regards to potential Undeath.

For Mercia was a truly neutral force that sought only the good of all the realms.

This, every dwarf knew, and every dwarf was proud of.

Was it not the great dwarven wall, the Hellegeate, that sealed off Undir from overtaking the realms with its mass undead?

Was it not he dwarven Caliburn-class bomb that had destroyed the shields of the mad daemon king's palace during the Red Night, making it possible for his foul reign to end?

Unferth had taken up Thorian's request for the Archmage truly seemed desperate about daemonic presences, and all those that knew anything of the Red Night knew that daemons were the source of the undeath curse.

And an undeath infestation here was the worst possible scenario for the Common Realms.

In a Dark Zone, it was impossible to tell how far Undeath had spread until it was too late, until a legion of corrupted monsters knocked on the doors of a Common kingdom.

Report chapter

Of course, as Unferth noted, it was still highly unlikely that undeath could make its way here.

Dark Zones possessed inherently high levels of primal energy, and primal energy was effective against warding away Undeath.

Especially here, on the northern edge of Fjall bordering the Rift where primal energy became so dense that it cloyed into environmental markers like this fall of Grain.

But an Archmage's words were not to be taken lightly. They among all their Sorcerer ilk knew well the significance of their sworn duty to order.

If Thorian, an Archmage respected even among those of his ranks, possessing influence perhaps just shy of a Zenith, said there was daemonic presence here and, consequently, possibility for the spread of undeath, then Unferth was not going to question it.

Not to mention the bribes.

Unferth smiled underneath his helmet.

He was a man of duty, to be sure. He truly did believe in the good of his cause, the cause of the Undeath Containment Force, but why not make some coin while carrying it out?

Thorian's bribe was two-fold.

The first part was simple. Predictable. A sizable sum of coin for Unferth to start this investigation and keep it as secretive as possible.

Of course, there were certain procedures Unferth had to follow. But by using his authority as a captain to classify this excursion as an emergency expedition, he could report minimally to any higher authorities.

No need to alert the League or Order.

Only a quick initial report to Mercian High Command as to where he was going and a brief summary of the nature of the investigation. He had to provide a probable cause for the investigation too, but that, Thorian had provided adequately with a sample of Undeath energy signatures.

Whether they actually came from this location or not, Unferth could not tell. Nobody really could.

Undeath energy was notoriously inscrutable to even the most knowledgeable of Sorcerers or the most expert of dwarven Magitechnicians.

Did not matter, really. Unferth would trust the words of a respected Archmage on that one.

The second part of the bribe was what Unferth was both curious and uneasy about.

If Unferth found a daemon here, a young girl, by his description, then he was to retrieve her without harming her if she was not undead.

Or, if she was undead, to try and keep her body as whole as possible and to bring her corpse to Thorian, containing, of course, the spread of undeath to a minimum.

Now this part of the bribe was the most rewarding.

If Unferth found this supposed daemon girl, then he could quit his job as a captain entirely and live out the rest of his days in complete luxury on some Faoresian treehouse, or perhaps kick back on a seaside estate in Xin.

Unferth was growing old, and though he upheld his duty to the UCF well, he was growing tired, and this job was taxing.

He had a wife he barely saw and children who knew little of their father's face.

Retirement benefits for a captain were good, but not excellent, and he would not settle on only granting his family merely a 'good' life. He had crawled his way up from the gutters of Mercia's underground cities, and he would not let his children taste anything but sun-kissed peace and luxury.

The deep rumble of a C-class Gunship sounded overhead, beaming down bright lights on Unferth and his surrounding area. The light pierced through the Grain in the form of several spotlights, focusing on the pile of goblin bodies and, beside it, the pile of dwarven bodies that had fallen.

Unferth felt a measure of loss at the sight of his fallen brethren, but it was muted. He had long since trained to steel his heart to the loss of his men. All he could do now was grant them respect for their afterlives.

Hopefully, their spirits would make it to Aetheria.

Unferth looked up at his Gunship, a sphere of metal crisscrossed with a circuit pattern of glowing golden energy, his helmet's optical systems adjusting to the sudden glare of light.

He had been a captain for ten years now but seeing his gunship in the air never ceased to amaze him.

A forty-meter diameter of steel reinforced by being folded four times over with sixth degree arcanite – the refined form of processed mana crystals. The pale blue glow of Arcanite emanated from the grey of steel, granting it an almost icy luster.

Not as good as the Redcap Fleets that were geared for war and extermination.

Those were made of Adamant-Mithril alloy, with the A-class ships reinforcing even that with ninth degree crystals or above, for any Arcanite created from mana crystals of a lesser degree were too impure and would only degrade the Adamant-Mithril.

Once, Unferth wanted to be a captain of one of those ships, ships that could take down legendary monsters by themselves, but it was a pipe dream he had forgotten about with the years.

Only dwarven nobility with their royal Inhera could interface with magitech like that without overloading their brains and spirit roots.

All Unferth wanted now was to settle down.

But for that, he needed coin, a lot of it, and there was no daemon girl to be found. His fleet comprised of one Gunship and ten Seekers - smaller, more maneuverable airships – and though they fanned across the area, they had found nothing resembling a daemon.

They did find a barrier of extremely dense primal energy underneath this cliff of ice, but it was so dense that any attempts to breach it were impossible, nor did any form of sensor work. The energy was a bright, blinding white, so it was impossible to see through as well.

However, Unferth did not care much about this. Gatherings of primal energy like this were not entirely uncommon.

In remote areas like this, Unferth had read that there could be sudden outpourings of environmental mana. Natural surges in the world's mana flow. Quite like a burst of lava from an active volcano.

An entirely natural process.

Regardless, he had ordered his fleet to fire an initial volley of bullets at the barrier to test it, but as expected, the barrier repelled them.

What happened afterwards was that goblins came swarming out from the barrier, and the investigative ground force was quickly exterminated, prompting Unferth to command a large-scale aerial attack that in turn wiped the goblins out.

If there was something in there, Unferth determined it was going to be the goblin lord, with the goblins likely having developed into champions and elites due to being submerged in such high quantities of primal energy.

Perhaps a dungeon forming, for he knew that around this area, there was a known dungeon called Vimur, though very few adventurers dared to travel to it due to how cut off it was.

Regardless, that was something to report to the Adventurer's League, for it was unrelated to Undeath.

If there was any lone daemon girl in there, she was likely long dead, torn to pieces by the goblins.

And besides, a Bluecap Fleet like Unferth's was suited more towards expedition, not combat.

The fleet did not have enough bullets or bombs to properly raze a full army of goblins and monsters, though it did have more than enough to shred this small contingent of goblin champions.

"Officer Shield, put up a half-blue signal," said Unferth. Blue meant to continue a search, and half-blue meant half the fleet was to engage in it.

He knew full well the possibility of monsters emerging from the primal barrier, and he himself acknowledged his dislike of traveling through Dark Zones, but the image of his retirement kept him from following his better instincts.

He did not want to leave empty handed. "Finding the daemonic and undead presence is our top priority."

Unferth waited a few seconds but found no response.

"Officer Shield?" Unferth turned around to see that Shield had walked up to the very edge of the cliff face, peering down.

Trembling. Conduct entirely unbecoming of a trained officer of the UCF.

Officer Shield pointed a shaking arm down. "Sir…wh-what is that?"

"Calm yourself down, soldier," said Unferth as he trudged forwards, the mechanical parts of his body armor whirring.

Even as Unferth neared, Shield did not stop shaking, nor did he stop to look at Unferth. The officer's face was glued to the sight below, where there should have been nothing but a barrier of white primal energy.

"Ready a red signal if goblins or monsters are approaching. Compose yourself, Shield. Any monster down there will have to scale a hundred meters to get to us. We'll be back on the Gunship long before then." Unferth came to Shield's side and peered down also.

"What in the name of Wodin-," was all Unferth could utter before an enormous shadow swallowed over them. A gigantic head peered down at them. It looked like a helmet fashioned in the shape of a dragon's head with slightly agape jaws and teeth carved from jagged edges of the metallic white plating.

Each one of those teeth were larger than Unferth. The sheer scale of this…thing was immense. As large, no, larger than the Gunship up close.

For a split second, Unferth wondered whether he was gazing at a dwarven mech, but no, those eyes, those four red eyes that shone with a raging brightness belonging to the depths of Hel itself, promised anything but the soulless gaze of a machine.

There was intent in there. Pure, absolute, undeniable killing intent.

The ground rumbled, and Unferth only had time to barely twist around to run before he saw a flash of white and blue rise up from the cliff face. It was an enormous open palm of plated white metal rapidly falling upon him like a meteorite.

Then, nothingness.

The Collector floated in the air, hovering just above the cliff face. It was now capable of flight independent of any of its wings, though certainly, the wings could add an extra burst of speed or maneuverability. At the basic level, flight was now merely a fundamental part of the Collector, originating from the World Shard floating in front of its head.

By exerting minimal amounts of magical energy, the Collector could sustain a flight that did not require any biomechanical movements. Quite similar to that of Sapia-sourced, but far more efficient in cost.

If the Collector wished for no cost flight, it could utilize its Firefly Shinchu and Daemon wings, but in general, its inherent flight was effective enough at a base level.

Thus, the Collector kept its daemon wings curled up and tucked into its back, beneath a layer of hyperalloy carapace plating, the same as it did with its insectoid Shinchu wings.

If the Collector desired maximal speed, it could use all of its various flight systems for a massively accelerated flight, but such was not required now. It lifted up its hand from the cliff face it had slammed it on.

The pasted remains of two squished humanoids formed little smidgeons of cracked black armor and blood on the Collector's hand. It absorbed the organic remains through pores in its carapace, and its shard analyzed and recorded their genetic material accordingly.

These creatures the Collector thus came to know as 'dwarves'. Shorter humanoids possessing an Inhera that allowed their roots and core to interface with the magical energy circulating through inorganic materials.

The amount of biomass they gave was utterly pitiful. Not even close to a hundredth of a single point.

Yet, to be expected.

The Collector was vastly beyond any measure of power it had occupied before. To even begin to progress its biomass bar now, it would have to face mighty opponents of great worth.

Anything lesser than that was not even worth considering. Nor would the Collector itself even consider engaging with anything that insignificant, not when it had tasted what true battle was like.

The Collector's ocular systems honed in on the pile of goblin corpses. This was where the swarm had gone. An immediate analysis of their wounds indicated damage corresponding with firearms, with bullet roles riddling their body, shards of explosively projected metal embedded within their flesh.

This put the Collector on immediate alert. Yet, a measured alertness.

Even the lowest grade of United Front weaponry would have dealt far more severe damage than the bullet wounds on the goblin corpses.

But that did not rule out the possibility that there was an United Front contingency possessing outdated weaponry from the Pre-Collective age. At the same time, further detailed analysis of the wounds, specifically in the bullets embedded in them, indicated that they were comprised of metals native to this planet and infused with mana.

The possibility was greater that these were weapons natively developed here by tinkerers utilizing the resources available to them such as magic, with firearms potentially being an example of convergent evolution among tinkerers that tended to develop some means of ranged projectile or energy based weaponry to compensate for their frail bodies.

Spotlights gathered around the Collector, illuminating its enormous form.

The Collector had sensed these presences already by hearing the whirring of their engines and propellors. Its ocular systems adjusted to them.

There was on large ship, likely a central command unit, shaped like a sphere of blue-tinted metal. Golden circuitry lined its structure, projecting an aura of magical energy that fueled a gravitational field which sustained its flight.

Dozens of seams and indentations in the sphere slid apart, and from them, weaponry emerged. Racks of missiles, the multiple barrels of machine guns, thicker barrels indicating higher caliber ammunition, and even glowing blue, crystal tipped firearms that likely were meant to project energy-based attacks.

Hovering by the sphere on either side were a total of ten far smaller ships. Perhaps ten meters in length. Sleeker in shape and fueled by twin propellors and thrusters that emitted a pale blue flame generated from mana, not any proper United Front engine.

Each smaller airship possessed a single cluster of rockets underneath it and two sets of machine guns.

The Collector had never seen such abject, blatant tinkering before on this world.

At the least, the civilization on this world, coupled with the unique properties of mana, seemed to rely vastly more on their individual mights than their tools, but this –

This was tinkering weakness at its highest heights. Or lowest low, as was more appropriate for the Collector's perspective.

The Collector floated higher in the air, level in altitude with the airships, and prepared not for battle, but for extermination, for that was what this would be.

There was no nobility, no personal glory in destroying swathes of little tinkerers in tiny coffins of metal.

The larger sphere-shaped ship started to glow red, and in turn, all the smaller ships glowed red. Then, they fired their weapons in synchronization. The clatter of gunfire drowned out the howling of Grainfall. A sea of bullets streamed out from the aircraft in streams of little light.

Bullets small and large clattered across the Collector's hyperalloy carapace, sparking as they skid across the ultra-durable surface without making even so much as a scratch. This level of damage was not even enough for the Collector's smartshock carapace to adjust and adapt its structure against.

The Collector channeled its newfound power, its royal daemonic blood, and utilized Sapia in earnest. Now that its magical energy reserves had caught up to its biomass, it possessed a veritable ocean of magical energy.

It stretched out its hands through the raging torrent of bullets and opened its palms. The palms flickered purple, and its black horns became charged with swirls of lavender energy.

All ten smaller airships were enveloped by purple, frozen in place, their firearms abruptly halted.

The Collector brought them down to the ground with a flick of its finger, hurtling them over a hundred meters crashing into the snow. A few of the airships exploded on impact, but the Collector left a few intact to analyze with the pilots inside alive as well, merely crippling their flight capacities.

All of the airships possessed their own natural magical energy field, as if they were almost like living beings themselves. Their inherent structure was rather similar too, comprised of an engine that functioned as a core and circuitry that worked their way around the machines like spirit roots.

Naturally, this meant that the Collector would have difficulty utilizing Sapia directly on them.

However, the machines did not process magical energy as effectively as did living beings, and the Collector's magical energy reserves were massive. Far enough above the machines that it could easily overpower any pitiful barrier they could erect.

This left only the central command unit, which possessed enough magical energy to at the very least repel direct control from Sapia.

After witnessing this, the sphere-shaped command unit began to intensify its internal acceleration of magical energy, likely preparing something more deadly than these weak and inconsequential firearms. Even the countless volleys of missiles had done nothing more than light the Collector's carapace in fire that quickly doused out.

The Collector watched as the command unit's center opened up, revealing the mouth of an enormous cannon. The cannon was comprised of segments of rotating, mana charged metal, and as they began to accelerate together, they generated large quantities of magical energy, shaping it into a sphere of destructive power.

The Collector dashed forwards, parting the fall of Grain around it with the sheer wind force generated from its enormous form. It was upon the sphere ship within a second, for it was still deceptively fast even at this size.

The Collector slammed a punch against the sphere ship, but instead of making impact with the metal, it instead struck the gravitational field around it. There was a muted sound of impact as the field acted like a force dampener of sorts, preventing hostile energy from directly harming the ship.

However, that did not mean the force was neutralized.

Instead, it applied on the field instead, causing the ship to blow backwards, spinning violently in the air as it was launched away over a hundred meters. Nevertheless, the sphere ship continued to charge up its attack even as it spun around, indicating that it possessed the capacity to orient the crew within to match any turbulence it encountered.

The Collector welcomed this test of its new ability. If it was a test of beams the tinkerers wanted, then they would have it.

It curled over and began to amass magical energy. Wind currents started to swirl violently around the Collector, forming raging gale forces crackling with electrical energy.

Arcs of red magical energy as large as buildings began to violently crackle around the Collector's back fin, and as the magical energy condensed, storm clouds began to form around the fin, their dark bodies intermittently lit up with flashes of lightning.

It was as if a natural disaster was beginning to form with the Collector at its center.

The fin began to glow a bright blue, almost white, and strands of intensely charged mana of the same color ran across from the fin up the Collector's spirit roots, lighting up its root network visibly as the energy traveled to the Collector's head.

The darkness within the Collector's jaws lit up in blinding light, and a high-pitched, siren-like noise echoed around the Collector: a manifestation of its energy buildup.

The sphere ship fired from its cannon. A beam of blue light comprised of intensive heat, significant pressures, and gravitational force meant to tear apart any armor or force field. Truly, the beam was a mighty attack, capable of quite easily cutting a swathe through a small army.

The Collector returned the favor.

The built up energy around the Collector's maw released as the siren sounds halted in an abrupt instant. A shockwave of lightning infused energy blasted out from the Collector, and the storm clouds around its fin scattered.

A spiraling beam of white lined with enormous bolts of lightning, shards of ice, and freezing winds capable of shattering metal with their pressure cascaded out from the Collector.

The Collector beam dwarfed the sphere ship's attack by three magnitudes, easily swallowing it up before striking against the ship itself.

The gravitational field around it parted as it faced immense pressure from the magical energy. Instead of punching straight through the ship, the beam gouged a hole in the ship first before the energy coalesced into the ship itself, building up within as a storm of raging electricity, ice, and wind that first made the ship glow a bright white, cracks forming in its exterior as streams of lightning coursed around it.

Then, the ship spontaneously exploded in a nova of light and scattered winds.

The light died down almost as soon as it emerged, the natural darkness of the Grainfall quickly swallowing it over.

Report chapter