《Alien Evolution System》


 Chapter 1 - The Beginning Of The End

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


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


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


    It was pure evolutionary progress honed to a razor edge sharper than that belonging to any smoid de known in the gxy.


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


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


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


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


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


    With the advent of warp-link technology that could generate wormholes that connected the farthest ends of the gxy together, interstermerce and interaction becamemonce, but with it came the rise of the Collective.


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


    Perhaps an attack.


    Perhaps an ident.


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


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


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


    Nothing less, nothing more.


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


    A towering being of brilliant light.


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


    It was bipedal.


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


    Organic-hyperalloy ws the size of megastructures shed with a heavenly sword of light.


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


    But eventually, there was a winner in sight.


    The Collector.


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


    It would destroy the de ¨C useless as it was as an inorganic piece of metal ¨C to prevent it from falling to any errant hands and theny havoc upon the denizens of this.


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


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


    "Forgive me, my brethren," the being said, looking back at the behind it, faintly glowing strands of white hair floating around its bloody head. "Forgive me, all the mortals that believed in me. The chaos my death will cause¡­I hope you will all find it in your hearts to forgive me for it. But it will be nothingpared to the chaos this beast will wreak should I not do this."


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


    From the crater emerged a grub norger than a dog ¨C all that the once mighty Collector had been reduced to.


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


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


    First thing was first, though.


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

 Chapter 2 - Evolving From Nothing

    The Collector squirmed its way around the jungle floor.


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


    Likely, the crashnding had scared off local fauna.


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


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


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


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


    >>>


    Metamorphosis Level 100>1


    Biomass Level: 0/100


    Stored Gic Material:


    *CRITICAL LOSS OF STORED GENETIC MATERIAL DETECTED*


    -NONE


    Adaptations:


    <Internal Systems>


    *CRITICAL LOSS OF ADAPTATIONS DETECTED. REMAINING ADAPTATIONS:*


    -Ultrafiber Muscture Rank 1


    <External Systems>


    *CRITICAL LOSS OF ADAPTATIONS DETECTED. REMAINING ADAPTATIONS:*


    -Sensitive Hairs Rank 1


    <Weapons Systems>


    *CRITICAL LOSS OF ADAPTATIONS DETECTED. REMAINING ADAPTATIONS:*


    -NONE


    Current Form:


    -Grub


    >>>


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


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


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


    >>>


    *Biomass gained (+5)*


    Biomass Level: 0>5/100


    >>>


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


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


    Evolution centered around two elements: biomass and gic material.


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


    nt-life tended to develop simrly acrosss with water, so it was no surprise that their gic structure was not sufficiently distinct or special enough to produce abilities with.


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


    >>>


    *Biomass gained (+10)*


    Biomass Level: 15/100


    *New gic material gained*


    Stored Gic Material:


    -Jungle Spider


    -ck Ant


    -Striped Centipede


    >>>


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


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


    The environmental temperature started to lower.


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


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


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


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


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


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


    Yet it did need to quickly gain biomass to metamorphose.


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


    They would be far moreplex andden with higher quality biomass.


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


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


    A short whileter, something did.


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


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


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


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


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


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


    >>>


    *Biomass gained (+35)*


    Biomass level: 50/100


    >>>


    The Collector was pleased.


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


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


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


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


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


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


    The den was not far.


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


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


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


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


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


    And as it consumed the babies, another boon came.


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


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


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


    >>>


    *Biomass gained (+50)*


    Biomass level 100/100


    *Metamorphosis avable*


    *New gic material avable*


    Stored Gic Material:


    -Midnight Rabbit


    -Jungle Spider


    -ck Ant


    -Striped Centipede


    >>>


    Excellent.


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


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


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


    But a start was a start.


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


    From here, creation was its ything.


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


    ______________


    The metamorphosis was quick. The Collector was not working with difficult orplicated gic material, after all.


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


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


    >>>


    Metamorphosis Level 1>2


    Biomass Level: 100/100>0/100


    Stored Gic Material:


    -ck Ant


    Adaptations:


    <Internal Systems>


    -Ultrafiber Muscles Rank 1>2


    <External Systems>


    -Sensitive Hairs Rank 1>2


    -*NEW* Organic-Hyperalloy Carapace Rank 1


    <Weapons Systems>


    -NONE


    Current Form:


    Jungle Spider/Striped Centipede/Midnight Rabbit


    >>>


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


    Four arachnid limbs sprouted from its back, bing versatile tools with which to stab, sh, bnce upon, climb, and grab with.


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


    The Collector clicked its centipede mandibles in satisfaction. This form would bepetent in the jungle, capable ofpeting even with the jungle felines that roamed these wilds.


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


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


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


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

 Chapter 3 - Hunting

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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


    The moreplex the Collector became, the more its appetite would be predatory and carnivorous, seeking outrger, stronger, and denser lifeforms.


    >>>


    *Biomass gained (+10)*


    Biomass Level 10/100


    >>>


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


    The Collector froze.


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


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


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


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


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


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


    The Collector was curious. It checked its status.


    >>>


    *Biomass gained (+10)*


    Biomass Level 20/100


    *Gic Material Gained*


    Stored Gic Material:


    -*NEW*ck Goblin


    -ck Ant


    >>>


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


    With a swift motion, it scurried downwards.


    __________


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


    The Collector hadnded on the goblin havingunched itself down from ten meters up. The sheer weight of the Collector''s dense muscture and carapace was enough to stter the goblin on the forest floor, shattering its each and every bone.


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


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


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


    Over in a few seconds.


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


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


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


    It felt no fear, no hesitation, no mercy.


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


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


    >>>


    *Biomass gained (+30)*


    Biomass Level: 50/100


    >>>


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


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


    The den was not far from here. A little ways further in the jungle. In a safer area where norger predators roamed. It was an undergroundwork of tunnels and burrows that had been previously made by a different creature.


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


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


    As the Collector moved, it calcted its chances.


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


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


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


    Then the solution was to eliminate one or the other.


    Divide and conquer. Iste and consume.

 Chapter 4 - Hobgoblin Hunt

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


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


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


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


    Every so often, ''Draug'' would emerge.


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


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


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


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


    The goblins made routine trips out to secure food and Draug asionally came with them to huntrger prey.


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


    However, there were two important details of note worth.


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


    ______________


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


    Surprisingly, Draug had the reactions to turn around.


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


    The Collector recalcted the movements necessary to hit Draug.


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


    Death by a thousand cuts.


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


    "Kill me," gurgled out Draug.


    The Collector kept circling.


    "Kill me!"


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


    >>>


    *Biomass gained (+50)*


    Biomass Level: 100/100


    *Gic Material Gained*


    -ck Goblin


    -ck Hobgoblin


    -ck Ant


    >>>


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

 Chapter 5 - Hobgoblin Evolution

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


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


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


    It would use what it had.


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


    Finding out more information about these humans was imperative.


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


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


    ____


    A memory.


    The hobgoblin running. It was young and small, norger than the goblins it lorded over now. It was injured, with burns and cuts littering its body. Behind it stood the entryway to a cave, smoke curling out from within.


    Powerful emotions of sadness and rage.


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


    A vow of revenge against the humans.


    Later.


    The hobgoblin was grown, leading arge tribe of goblins and hobgoblins to a human vige.


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


    A cheer.


    Later.


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


    Strong humans had appeared.


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


    ____


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


    It checked its status.


    >>>


    Metamorphosis Level 2>3


    Biomass Level: 100/100>0/100


    Stored Gic Material:


    -ck Goblin


    -ck Ant


    Adaptations:


    <Internal Systems>


    -Ultrafiber Muscles Rank 2>3


    <External Systems>


    -Sensitive Hairs Rank 2>3


    -Organic-Hyperalloy Carapace Rank 1>2


    <Weapons Systems>


    -*NEW* Monomolecr ws Rank 1


    Current Form:


    Jungle Spider/Striped Centipede/ck Hobgoblin


    >>>


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


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


    It generatedrger spikes on its elbows to use as stabbing and slicing weapons,pensating for the inefficiency of having so many frail and tiny bones in its hand ¨C amon trait among tinkering species.


    Monomolecr ws were one of the crowning evolutions of the Collective, being extraordinarily powerful tools and yet incredibly gically efficient.


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


    The result was that the ws thinned to a razor sharp, monomolecr edge capable of splitting apart substances at the molecr level, resulting in a sharpness unparalleled across the cosmos, capable of matching any superheated smoid de or vibrosaber.


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


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


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


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


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

 Chapter 6 - Goblin Nest Hunt I

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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


    From orbit, the lookedrgely undeveloped, still covered in vast swathes of undisturbed nature.


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


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


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


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


    After all, there was that thing.


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


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


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


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


    There would be no interference.


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


    Nothing woulde in. Nothing would leave.


    There would be no survivors. No wasted biomass.


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


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


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


    Either way, it was weakness.


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


    "Draug! Draug!" they shouted in unison.


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


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


    "Where Draug!?"


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


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


    Draug''s quarters, presumably.


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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

 Chapter 7 - Goblin Nest Hunt II

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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


    "Draug mean you leader. We follow!"


    "You Draug! You Draug!"


    The Collector remained motionless.


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


    The Collector analyzed it.


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


    "Ah, procreation," said the Collector.


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


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


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


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


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


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


    The goblins sighed in relief.


    "Your intelligence is toocking for me to gain information through conversation. Yourck of neuralplexity and adequate grasp overmunicativenguage will be a time-consuming challenge to navigate that I would rather not endure.


    Consumption will tell me more than your primitive babbling."


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


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


    The Collector did not pay heed to it.


    It would find no way out.


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


    There was now the matter of the human.


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


    "Human," said the Collector in the goblin''snguage.


    "Please," the human whispered.


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


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


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


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


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


    >>>


    *Biomass gained (+25)*


    Biomass level 25/100


    >>>


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


    More useful, however, were the memories and knowledge.

 Chapter 8 - Human Hunt I

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


    Thest drops of red draining into the Collector''s integumentary system heralded theplete assimtion of all noteworthy living beings inside the den.


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


    There was some semnce of hierarchy and division ofbor among the humans, with there being an appointed leader and variousborers, farmers, gatherers, hunters, and warriors.


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


    In fact, there simply was noplicated or advanced technology to speak of. Though these humans utilized tools, they still merely utilized them as an extension of their basic bodily strength, not relying on engines or artificial intelligences or anything that remotely reached that caliber of tinkering.


    There was one thing that confused the Collector, however.


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


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


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


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


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


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


    As of now, it was not particrly worried.


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


    Theirnguage was utterly different. Simr in some faint ways, but only in a capacity to confirm that their evolutionary developments were simr, requiring simr vocalizing structures to utter the intonations required for thenguage.


    Good.


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


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


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


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


    The fear of death.


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


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


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


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


    Humans.


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


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


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


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


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


    The Collector conducted a sweeping and quick analysis.


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


    He stood behind the spear wielder and spoke words of caution. "If only us one stars got to keep the cores. But can''tin about coin either."


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


    Theirnguage wasplex, more so than that of the goblin''s, and it seemed that even the average member of the species had adequate mastery over it. Their ideas were of a rtive higher-order, capable of tactical nning under pressure.


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


    "Humans," said the Collector.


    All the humans froze.

 Chapter 9 - Human Hunt II

    All the humans froze.


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


    "The hobgoblin too?" asked Dale.


    "Therger variant of the species too."


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


    Odd. But no matter.


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


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


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


    Bea hastily aimed her staff the Collector and began chanting.


    Toote.


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


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


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


    The Collector began walking forwards with slow steps.


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


    Tell me, how do you know of it?"


    It began walking towards the female.


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


    Any attempt at escape will only prolong your suffering."


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


    She shivered in fright.


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


    "Consumption will do."

 Chapter 10 - Contemplation And Planning

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


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


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


    And the stick -


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


    Odd. Was this also tied to ''magic''?


    The Collector would know once it consumed the female specimen.


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


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


    It was as if she had never existed at all.


    >>>


    *Biomass gained (+10)*


    Biomass level 35/100


    >>>


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


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


    Where did the additional biomasse from?


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


    Too many questions.


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


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


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


    Why?


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


    The Collector hastened its movements.


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


    The Collector quickly consumed the two males.


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


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


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


    Further investigation was needed.


    >>>


    *Biomass gained (20)*


    Biomass level: 55/100


    *Gic material gained*


    Stored Gic Material:


    -ck Ant


    -ck Goblin


    -Human


    -Frostboar


    >>>


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


    The Collector clicked its mandibles.


    The frostboar possessed a thickyer of blubber and insting skin that would provide strong resistance to the cold. Useful.


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


    The Collector ran a quick calction.


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


    ________


    STATUS RECAP


    Metamorphosis Level 2


    Biomass Level: 55/100


    Stored Gic Material:


    -ck Ant


    -ck Goblin


    -Human


    -Frostboar


    Current Adaptations:


    -Ultrafiber Muscles Rank 3


    -Sensitive Hairs Rank 2


    -Organic-Hyperalloy Carapace Rank 2


    -Monomolecr ws Rank 1


    Current Form:


    ck Hobgoblin/Striped Centipede/Jungle Spider

 Chapter 11 - Hobgoblin Massacre

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


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


    Good.


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


    Indicating that there would be no threat.


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


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


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


    =======================


    A minute passed as the Collector stalked its way forward.


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


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


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


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


    It did not take long for the goblins to near.


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


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


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


    An entourage consisting of one hobgoblin and six goblins.


    Encounter approximately due in ten seconds.


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


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


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


    Five seconds.


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


    This was far too easy now.


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

 Chapter 12 - Champions And Lords

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


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


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


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


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


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


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


    ______________________________


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


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


    He remembered when the champion first showed up.


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


    ---The memories flickered and moved further ---


    Underground.


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


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


    "Kneel, hobgoblins, before lord Zoll,st of the royal blood," came amanding and aged voice. A hunch backed hobgoblin uttered themand with a flourish of his hand, the rattle of bone bracelets and essories on his arm and neck entuating the movement.


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


    ________________


    The memories ended.


    >>>


    *Biomass gained (+35)*


    Biomass Level: 90/100


    >>>


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


    Troublesome.


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


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


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


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


    The Collector would have to find another biomass source.


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


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

 Chapter 13 - Frostboar Evolution

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


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


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


    Interesting.


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


    The Collector wished for none of those.


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


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


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


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


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


    An oddity.


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


    Usage as a tool, then? No. The Collector took up a skeletal arm and crushed it with ease. Too weak. Too brittle to utilize in any meaningful way.


    Perhaps, as the Collector recalled the bone-wearing hobgoblin from Grun''s memories, a simple means of gathering essories for visual differentiation in a rudimentary societal hierarchy?


    Whatever it was, the Collector would not pass up on consuming these skeletons. It passed up on biomass beneath its efforts such as nts or, now that it was more developed, some of the smaller creatures scurrying about in the lowest grasses of this forest, but human remains were different.


    There stood the chance that certain human biomass samples were special, providing more than they should.


    And the Collector found that it did not regret its decision as it scarfed down all the remains.


    >>>


    *Biomass gained +10*


    Biomass Level: 100/100


    >>>


    All three skeletons were special.


    A coincidence it could not ce significance on yet but noted in its mind. It could not extract memories from the skeletons for extraction required fresh biomass from a neural center with sufficient structural integrity that, if expired, had not decayed too significantly.


    These bones, however, were still rather fresh, splotches of recently dried blood remaining along their skeletal curves. Along with the live captured woman, these human deaths likely provided the reason the humans had sent three of their kind against the dens.


    With the humans further potentially alerted by the Collector causing the demise of their scouts, there was the potential that already the humans were readying themselves in greater numbers.


    Soon enough, if the advance of the greater and much more powerful goblin force in the darker zone was left unchecked, there would be quite therge-scale altercation. The Collector would consume the goblins before their movements caused the forest to be too dangerous to inhabit.


    And to do that, the Collector had to evolve. It headed outside of the den and found a secluded patch of taller grass to metamorphose under.


    The Collector could ess its third metamorphosis level from consuming the special skeletons, though it would have spent time to hunt other creatures to reach the third level anyway had the skeletons been mundane.


    The warm feeling in its body had steadily intensified with continued consumptions, and as the Collector shrank into the ground, its hulking, musclebound figure breaking apart into a cocoon encased puddle of flesh, it sought not only to adapt itself against the darker zone, but also to try and figure out what this warmth was.


    Every sessive metamorphosis level meant that the cocoon the Collector formed becamerger, moreplex, requiring more space, but for now, it still did not attract much attention, being perhaps a meter and a half in diameter.


    Now with its form broken down and its consciousness spread throughout primordial, pliable ooze capable of bending the raw essence of creation to its will, the Collector first inspected the gic materials it had avable.


    -ck Ant


    -ck Goblin


    -Human


    -Frostboar


    The Collector inspected the human material, analyzing it to parse any abnormalities within it that could exin its aberrant levels of biomass.


    It found nothing. No mutations. No uniquely expressive genes among the special skeletons or female specimen. Further investigation needed on this subject.


    The Collector took to splicing together a new form.


    It kept its hobgoblin and ck spider genes, useful as they had been so far, but it discarded its striped centipede material for that of the Frostboar, finally ridding itself of this bipedal form.


    The metamorphic cocoon housing the Collector pulsed and grew, roots of flesh expanding outwards from its perimeter as it expanded,tching onto vegetation and consuming it.


    Within minutes, an embryo formed from within the liquid-filled, flesh colored cocoon, visible as a dark nugget through the cocoon''s membranous, vein-dotted skin.


    The embryo grew rapidly, and within minutes, was the size and vague shape of a goblin. A minuteter, it was the size of a human. A minuteter, the size of a hobgoblin.


    The Collector incorporated the Frostboar gene now, and the humanoid shaped embryopletely altered in shape, morphing in a pulsing, twisting mass before bingrger, wider, four-legged.


    Here, the Collector also restored one of its previous adaptations: the Pyrocatalytic nds that would allow it to invoke ming misery upon this oxygen rich world.


    It eagerly awaited as its metamorphosis entered its final stages, feeling the coveted nds -the product of evolution the Collective had carefully selected over a hundred worlds - grow within its half-formed throat.


    When the Collector burst forth from its cocoon, warm, viscous liquid steaming and dripping from its furred form, it found to its satisfaction the feeling ofnd under four stable feet. Yes, this was its structure, the same it had been born with when the Collective initially birthed it.


    >>>


    Metamorphosis Level 3>4


    Biomass Level: 100/100>0/100


    Stored Gic Material:


    -ck Ant


    -ck Goblin


    -Human


    Adaptations:


    <Internal Systems>


    -Ultrafiber Muscles Rank 3>4


    <External Systems>


    -Sensitive Hairs Rank 2>3


    -Organic-Hyperalloy Carapace Rank 2>3


    <Weapons Systems:>


    -Monomolecr ws Rank 1>2


    -Pyrocatalytic nds Rank 1 (NEW)


    Current Form:


    ck Hobgoblin/Frostboar/Jungle Spider


    >>>


    The Collector was as tall as it was before, being about a head taller than a hobgoblin, but were it to stand up on its hind legs, it would tower over any hobgoblin, even the champion from Grun''s memories.


    Ultrafiber muscture rippled in dense coils all around the Collector''s four-legged, barrel shaped body, and though the ordinary frostboar would have looked rounder, softer with blubber, the Collector looked like a giant chunk of bulging sinews weighing close to half a ton.


    Much of the cold resistant blubber from the Frostboar had been condensed into marbling and a smaller, thinneryer coating the ultrafiber muscle mostly to maximize total muscle mass and strength for cold alone, unless it reached extreme freezing temperatures, affected the Collector little, and the dark zone did not seem to possess temperatures low to that degree.


    If the Collector charged through the forest right now, it had no doubts it would simply smash through trees and rocks alike utterly unimpeded, let alone the fleshy and weak bodies of humans or goblins.


    Two massive, curved tusks tipped with monomolecr edges gleamed from its mouth. Thick, coarse light brown bristles and fur lined with ultrasensitive hairs covered its body, with a particrly shaggy mane growing around its neck.


    Three glowing yellowpound eyes along with thick, monomolecr edge tipped mandibles dotted either side of its elongated, porcine head.


    And finally, six arachnid appendages burst out from its back, each of them tipped with small monomolecr ws with one of them possessing webspinning capabilities.


    The Collector could not infinitely manifest certain adaptations or traits. The monomolecr ws, for example, required significant biomass the Collector did not yet have, so it could only tip its tusks and mandibles in them.


    Still, the Collector was pleased with its new form.


    This was far sturdier, stronger, and faster than its previous one.


    In celebration, it stood on its hind legs, towering high and shaking off thest remnants of the embryonic fluid dripping from its fur, and loosed a controlled jet stream of chemically ignited fire from its mouth as it reimed once more one of the many prized adaptations the Collective had gifted it with.


    Now the Collector was truly ready to hunt.

 Chapter 14 - The Dark Zone

    The Collector ran north to the edge of the forest''s light zone. By now, it was simply toorge to adequately slink around tree trunks, and though it did avoid obstacles when it could, those that it calcted it could not move by, it simply charged through.


    There was a sense of strength in this action that the Collector relished, the feeling of using its body as a bludgeoning gavel to break apart and judge the weakness of this world. It rushed through the thick of the forest like a shooting star of musclebound destruction.


    The heat developing within the Collector''s being had not settled. Rather, it had intensified upon reaching this next metamorphosis level.


    Yet this development did not harm the Collector.


    No, it instead made the Collector¡­feel.


    It felt the emotions most strongly programmed within it, the predatory instincts and drive to hunt and to hunger not only for biomass but for battle, for the fight itself, grow in intensity with the heat.


    Perhaps this heat was a symptom of something that affected its neural centers in some manner, but it could not sense any infections nor even psionic interferences within itself.


    The Collector understood that the current flow of emotions pouring out from its neural systems exceeded the limitations ced by the Collective Hivemind, and had the Collector still been psionically linked to the Hivemind, then surely the Hivemind would have dampened the Collector''s mind as it did when tinkering races attempted in rare asions to psionically infiltrate Collector strains.


    Yet, though this was unnatural, against the programmed limits the Collective Hivemind, the most sacred of authorities, the Collector did not mind.


    So long as these anomalous neural activities did not hinder its directive to hunt and consume, it would ce secondary concern for them.


    Fueled by hunger for battle, the Collector sped through the forest.


    Its top speed exceeded that of its metamorphosis level even with the asional tree or boulder it had to smash out of the way, especially with four legs dedicated to lotion.


    There was even a stag it collided with, sttering the unfortunate specimen into an exploded mess of shattered bones and burst organs that split apart around the Collector''s speeding body, painting it red for a brief moment.


    The Collector did not stop to gather all of the stag''s biomass, absorbing only the blood and fleshy pieces stuck to its body from the impact.


    >>>


    *Biomass gained (+2)*


    Biomass Level: 2/100


    >>>


    By the time the Collector reached the edge of the light zone, the ckened sun''s rays had darkened from a golden glimmer to a deep amber, the celestial body beginning to set in the sky.


    The Collector looked down at the very literal edge it stood upon, at a deep ravine filled at the bottom of a near hundred meter drop with a raging river current that separated the Collector''s side of the forest from the dark zone.


    The darker zone of this biome was just as enveloped in shadow as it was in the goblins'' memories.


    At first, the Collector had thought their memories wed to a degree, for the darkness in them observed far exceeded any naturally urring dark.


    No, the Collector noted with its yellowpound eyes, a huff escaping its fang and tusk lined mouth, the thick growth of trees in dark zone, wider and taller than those in the lighter zone, were indeed as dark as they were in the memories.


    The trees did not just block light with their leaves, they absorbed it.


    Absorption to such an extreme degree that there was nearly an entire absence of visible light, the leaves and bodies of trees so ck that their dark outlines stood out sorely against even the faintest shade of color or light.


    The forest floor, then, would have essentially zero visibility, exining how even the goblins with their eyes adapted to low visibility environments were blind ¨C there was not enough light even for their sensitive photoreceptors to perceive.


    No matter to the Collector.


    Sight was simply one of several sensory systems it could utilize to function. Its sensitive hair adaptation as well as its advanced auditory systems would be more than enough to navigate an environment devoid of light.


    Likely, therger spiders inhabiting this zone functioned in much the same manner.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles, wishing also to take a sample of their biomass for it was directly superior to the Jungle Spider genes it currently utilized.


    It did not waste more time.


    It looked ahead at the ravine and calcted how much force it would require to leap across the gap.


    The Collector stepped back a few meters, gaining a head start to build up velocity. Then, it charged once more, its staggering bulk bolting forwards in a ck blur before it jumped off the very edge of the ravine.


    Wind sailed past its form as it contracted its muscles, making itself smoother and more aerodynamic like a living missile.


    With surprising grace, the Collectornded right on the edge of the dark zone. It was pleased. Its calctions had not erred, proving that the heat within it was not affecting its mind to anypromising degree.


    The Collector entered the dark zone of the forest, slipping into the leafy void of light as it recalled the path the goblins used to reach their camps unharmed by spiders.


    Estimated time of arrival to the first goblin camp: one hour.


    Estimated distance between the first and second camps: one hour.


    Estimated distance between the second and third camps: twenty minutes.


    Reinforcements, if there were any, woulde slow between the first and second camps. The Collector would find sizable challenge in razing the second and third camps, however, for the risk of reinforcements seemed far likelier.


    And, as the Collector clicked its mandibles in anticipation, the third camp held this goblin ''lord''.


    The Collector trotted through the darkness, its sensitive hairs upright and alert to any vibration around it while its developed ears twitched back and forth, finding an optimal angle for receiving auditory signals.


    It breathed out in anticipation, its warm internal temperatures loosing out a cloud of vapor in this cold, lightless environment.


    Here, the Collector would prove to these primitives, these tinkerers that gathered so in suchrge groups, crowning one among them ''lord'' or ''emperor'' or ''president'' that they were just as worthless and weak as the rest of them, that their titles were constructs granted to them by their societies, not by the infallible hand of evolution.


    The Collector traveled the safe path through the dark zone for half an hour. It found that the route was safe because the goblins had ced down chunks of rock that glowed faintly in the presence of heat, shining quite bright when the high internal temperature of the Collector neared them.


    Curious. The rocks seemed to emit a spectrum of light that escaped the absorbing properties of the trees around it.


    The Collector had already consumed a sample of these trees, curious of whether its light absorption could be a useful adaptation in the future.


    These specimens were called deadwoods, and though they provided almost no biomass, their photoabsorbent qualities were indeed present as an anomalous mutation in their bark, allowing the Collector to use it in the future.


    The Collector picked up one of the rocks with a long, prehensile tongue, and it glowed a bright blue, sensing the warmth from the appendage.


    These were more noteworthy. The type of light that they emitted escaped the Collector''s identification, not matching the wavelengths of any light in its memory banks.


    At first, the Collector had tried consuming the rocks, but found that they werepletely inorganic.


    It was not some moss or microorganism within them that emitted this light. It was something inherent in the properties of the stone itself.


    A shame.


    The Collector could have absorbed the rocks had it evolved an internal systems adaptation known as the Autonomic Neuro-Bodily Matrix which would have granted it ess to the Metalloglottic Ossifier, a modification to the throat and digestive system that would let it incorporate inorganic alloys into its carapace and body.


    The Collector had skipped the adaptation at first because it did not provide immediatebat benefit, but now that it had enough tools of battle under its disposal to survive, it would focus on restoring its more utility based adaptations, for to ensure maximum efficiency of its weapons systems, it had to build up a strong bodily foundation of internal and external systems adaptations.


    The Collector broke off from the lit path at this point, knowing that the closer it neared the first encampment, the higher the chance there was of finding errant goblins that could escape and alert the rest.


    The Collector stepped into the darkness, wishing to attempt circling around the first goblin encampment for an ambush attack.


    And of course, to also harvest the spider specimen.

 Chapter 15 - Warrior

    Leaving the stone-lit path, the Collector found a marked difference in the atmosphere and environment. Its sensitive hairs quivered as they detected heavy motion on the forest floor.


    Several dozens of gigantified insect and arthropod specimen writhing about on the forest floor, fighting against each other in a tightly packed, many-legged battle royale of stingers, pincers, and mandibles.


    The Collector waded through the writhing mess of fighting creatures below it, asionally crushing an unlucky specimen under hoof.


    Nearly all of them, though massivepared to their counterparts in the light zone, were still tiny in front of the Collector, and their instincts understood not to try and test their luck on a muchrger, stronger being.


    Still, there were some, those among thergest of the specimen, that sought to test their mettle against the Collector.


    A massive scorpion emerged from the ground in a burst of uncovered earth,shing out against the Collector with its barbed stinger.


    The stinger bounced off the Collector''s durable hyperalloy carapace, and the Collector dispatched the scorpion with a quick thrust of it tusks, goring the creature from the head clean through its abdomen.


    The Collector swiveled its head back, sliding the scorpion corpse into its mouth as its mandibles chopped down, breaking down the creature in moments.


    Not a momentter, and the Collector felt strong vibrations mounting behind it. The iing presence of a heavy, charging specimen.


    A beetle, it seemed, surging forwards with its crown-like horns as sturdy andrge as the swords the humans wielded.


    The Collector swiveled around, pawed the forest floor once, and met the charge with one of its own.


    There was no contest.


    The beetle''s horns broke apart hitting the Collector''s carapaced face, and then the Collector''s half-ton mass of brutally quick and dense, armor-ted muscle blew apart the beetle in all directions, spilling a rain of crushed shell and gooey innards everywhere.


    The Collector consumed the two challengers, respecting if a little their willingness to hunt that which was far beyond them.


    >>>


    *Biomass gained (+10)*


    Biomass Level: 13/100


    *New gic material avable*


    Stored Gic Material:


    -ck Ant


    -ck Goblin


    -Human


    -*NEW*Giant Scorpion


    -*NEW*Stonecrusher Beetle


    >>>


    The Collector clicked its mandibles in mild disappointment.


    Only ten points for two of what should have been among thergest of specimen here. As far as it could sense with its hairs and hearing, there were no other specimen crawling about on the dirt that remotely came close to the size andplexity of the creatures it had just consumed.


    Though their biomass was pitiful, at the least these specimen were sufficiently strong andrge enough for the Collector to adequately incorporate their gic material into a potential metamorphosis without having to sacrifice its size and strength to morph any adaptations they could provide.


    Analysis of the beetle and scorpion specimenpleted. Analysis of the spiders engaged.


    On the forest floor, the beetle and scorpion were creatures that might have reigned at the top, but what about above?


    The Collector ignored the crawling chaos of insignificant, mindless lessers around it and instead focused on the treetops as it wandered further into the wilds of the dark zone.


    It did not take long for the Collector to feel the presence of a spider.


    The trees in this dark zone were three to four timesrger than those in the light zone, perhaps growing more thoroughly since they were absorbing light and nutrients at far more efficient rates.


    This granted the Collector ample space to move around without crashing into anything, but the actual treetops were far less spacious in their orientation. The gigantified and numerous branches of the trees grew at a volume that outpaced what their trunks should support, and theypensated by intertwining together from tree to tree, weaving together to form what was essentially one enormous web.


    The gigantified spiders thus did not inhabit webs of silk, but instead a web carved out from the forest itself.


    Yet that did not necessitate apleteck of silk production. The Collector was quick to sense a thread of thick, rope-like silk dangling down from above, drooping down like a lure to the forest floor.


    If anything touched the thread, the vibrations would alert the spiders and cause them to drop down from above.


    Still, the spiders would pose no threat to the Collector, for it had readily prepared itself for them and this environment. Its newly developed pyrocatalytic nds would make short work of anything native to this darkened environment.


    Theoretically, the Collector understood that it could hunt the numerous gigantified spiders in the treetops and anyrger insectoid specimen on the forest floor, and with enough time, it could umte enough biomass to reach the next metamorphosis level.


    The issue was that it could not easily find a ce here to metamorphose. The forest floor was far too busy, far toopetitive, crawling with hungry creatures.


    The Collector would store gic material samples for now and think about evolvingter. Analysis of how it would conduct an extended hunt to umte enough biomass indicated a significant probability of drawing the attention of the goblins, not to mention that it would take up several hours.


    The goblins might already have begun an advance down to the human settlement by then.


    And yet, the Collector would not pass up the opportunity to consume the gic material of what was considered an apex predator in this environment, and it reached out with its head to tap the hanging thread of web with its tusk, taking care not to use the monomolecr tip to cut the strand.


    The Collector wanted the spider manning this thread to sense vibrations ande down from its treetop hiding spot.


    As expected, a rustle of movement sounded high up, and the Collector''s sensitive hairs stood on their ends as they felt rustling fromrge leaves, patter of several legs on wood, and the creak of branches moving under weight: the advance of the spider.


    The Collector looked up, directly at where the spider would drop, and unleashed a small burst of fire.


    A controlled, miniscule burst emitted not to burn but instead to generate light to prevent the entire forest from burning down.


    But even that small ze lit up the entirety of the Collector''s surroundings in blue-tinted, blinding bright white light. Though the light-absorbent darkwoods hungrily dimmed the light within a moment, a mere second of exposure to that intense light was enough to generate intense movement across the forest floor.


    Every crawling creature in the vicinity of the sh halted their hunting and fighting and fled, digging underground or skittering away to thicker undergrowths.


    And in the midst of the clearing their retreat carved out, a giant spider writhed and rattled in pain, its eight legs seized up, paralyzing it and putting it on its back.


    The Collector ended the giant spider''s life in an instant by stomping down right below its head, where its ganglia nerve center would be located. Its hoof crushed through the carapace with a crunch before punching through softer, fleshier meat with a squelch.


    From memories extracted through the goblins and the presence of the glowing stones, the Collector urately hypothesized that all the life forms in this forest had an intense aversion to light.


    This was the primary reason why the Collector had evolved its pyrocatalytic nds, as in the unlikely advent that there were creatures here that could overwhelm the Collector, likely through numbers, it could ward them off by simply generating light.


    The Collector reached down and flicked the spider corpse in the air its teeth, unhinging its jaw wide with a crack and pop as it swallowed the creature down as a quick snack.


    >>>


    *Biomass gained (+6)*


    Biomass Level: 19/100


    *New gic material avable*


    Stored Gic Material:


    -ck Ant


    -ck Goblin


    -Human


    -Giant Scorpion


    -Stonecrusher Beetle


    -*NEW* Jumping Arakka


    >>>


    The Collector clicked its mandibles in understanding.


    The gigantified spider, the Jumping Arakka as it was noted in this world, was indeed the apex predator in this biome.


    The arakka could not produce too much webbing, but in exchange, the material was extremely durable, created in an efficiently chained weave that made it several times stronger than the webbing the Collector currently had ess to.


    The arakka''s limbs were also far more efficient and powerful than those of the jungle spider''s that the Collector utilized now, capable of building up great hydraulic pressure in their joints which could rapidly elerate their movements in short bursts.


    In all ways, the jumping arakka''s genes would be an upgrade.


    The jumping arakka were not the apex predators of this biome, however, simply on merit of their size and strength. Those traits, some of therger insectoids on the forest floor could match such as the stonecrusher beetle.


    No, it was the arakka''s social behavior that set them apart.


    The arakka observed some level ofmunal behavior, nesting together in a massive, interconnectedmunity in the treetops, making them a small army of sorts.


    Their neural systems were also surprisinglyplex, incapable of higher order thinking but still possessing enough instinctual programming to employ basic tactics.


    At the least, it was probable that the arakka had developed some level of tribe mentality, meaning they would cooperate and gather to facerger threats such as the Collector.


    The Collector realized then that the jumping arakka would make any ambush against the goblins impossible.


    In the brief sh of light the Collector manifested with its fire, it had seen countless other web strands dangling down, spanning throughout the whole length of the forest.


    There was a veritable sea of arakka lying in wait above.


    It was only because the Collector had been so precise in executing this jumping araka that none of the others were alerted.


    If the Collector wanted to stray from the stone-lit path, it would have to wade through countless jumping araka ambushing it, and one stray movement might mean setting off a chain reaction of raining spiders.


    Though the Collector did not mind dealing with the arakka, knowing that they relied on powerful venom administered through jaws that could not breach the Collector''s carapace, a mass swarm of them could potentially find a chink in the Collector''s armor.


    For now, though the Collector was resistant to the vast majority of minor poisons, sufficiently strong ones could affect it for it had yet to evolve the necessary <internal system> adaptation to grant it true immunity.


    Beyond the basic risk of bodily harm as well, the noise of the altercation would very likely alert the goblin encampment, especially if the Collector had to generate constant, intense light with its pyrocatalytic nds.


    Though the darkwoods quickly snuffed out light, it was paradoxically this trait that made the presence of any light that much more noticeable.


    This meant that attempting to circumvent the path dotted with glowing stones would be difficult.


    The Collector calcted that its chances to create a sessful ambush dwindled drastically.


    No, the Collector realized as it headed back to the lit path, it looked increasingly likely that it would have to attack the goblins head on. It would have to face every single defense the goblins had erected, every single one of their fighters, their warriors, and their tricks without the cover of an ambush.


    So be it, then.


    The Collector bared its fangs as it stared ahead to the rest of the path, spittle dripping from its carapace covered lips in anticipatory hunger.


    The Collector would not be hiding, waiting, stalking. All of those, it knew, utilizing when necessary for survival, but those traits were not what it was primarily bred for in the first ce.


    The Collector''s true form towered over the mightiest of Dreadnought-ss ships, casting shadows overs visible from orbit. It was not like the Infector-strains that burrowed into worlds, birthing parasites and drones from seclusion. Nor was it a Dominator-strain that hid from afar, utilizing strong psionics to drive deep madness into tinkerers.


    The Collector did not hide at all, for though it was in tune with its primal instincts, it still was no mere animal. It was better than the countless, brutish fauna thatprised its gic code.


    The sum of the many parts sourced over a thousand worlds that built up the Collector did not produce yet another simple creature, another thing that hid in the dark and ate and lived and died solely for survival- it produced a warrior, and warriors lived for battle.


    The Collector shed with the tinkerers head on without fear, without hesitation, without care to their numbers or their trinkets. It brought them devastation and destruction and misery not through the impersonal means of disease and parasites, but with its own ws, its own fangs, its own muscles.


    It brought them battle. It brought them war.


    For the past few days, the Collector had been weak, hiding, scurrying about on the dirt indistinguishable from the unevolved weakness at the bottom of this backwater''s food chain, but no more.


    For the first time since it reached this world, the Collector came to realize with hunger burning in its being that it would not engage in a hunt.


    This would be a battle.


    THIS was what it was born for, what it lived for.

 Chapter 16 - The Battle I

    "Why we keep watch?" said Ganth. The white-skinned hobgoblin stood in front of the goblin camp''s entrance, an open space of a few meters in a perimeter of sharpened deadwood trunks.


    The stakes were positioned outwards in even, tightly packed intervals, ensuring that no bugs coulde charging in without risking skewering themselves.


    "Nobodye," continued Ganth, his breath forming an outline of fog visible under dim light cast by torches using lightstones as their tinder.


    "You do not know that," said Shun, a red-skinned hobgoblin smaller in height by a head and lighter in weight by a dozen kilogramspared to Ganth. "At any moment, the adventurers might strike us. If the native goblins are right, then there is even tell of a gold ring sorcerer in this forest. We as the stronger in our respective tribes have a duty to keep watch when such danger may befall us so."


    Ganth grunted absent-mindedly tugged at his jutting tusks. "You speak well. Like our thrall." Ganth took in Shun''s form with a dull blue eye. "All goblins from Xin like you?"


    "Oni," said Shun in a corrective tone. "Where I am from, we are called oni. And we have kept more of our ancestral tongue than you have here in Terra," said Shun. "A shame, really. I see precious few humans where I hail from, but it does irk my heart to know that the humans in this realm look down upon our kind so.


    Should they hear our poetry, what ournguage is truly capable of, they would not think our tongue one brutish and simple."


    "Hah, poetry!" Ganth pped his musclebound thigh with a gruntingugh. He slung an enormous club fashioned out of ice over his broad shoulder. "You funny. Poetry makes you sit down and think, makes you weak and soft. Maybe that''s why you so skinny."


    "Well, we already know who is the stronger between us," said Shun with a smirk of confidence.


    "Hmph." Ganth grunted in annoyance. "One day, I figure out how you move like that. But you strong for sure. Respect that."


    "Martial arts."


    "Huh?"


    "Martial arts. That is what I use," said Shun. He pointed down to his waist where a lengthy sword of ckened, glossy rock lined with heated cracks hung by string to a skirt-like leg garment fashioned with thick, ck cloth.


    "Instead of swinging clubs mindlessly, I focus my qi, or mana as you call it, and make every single one of my swings and movements something I grace with the full breadth of my focus and devotion.


    Your kind in those cold northern wastes beyond the mountains might have thicker skin and bigger muscles, but without focus, what is the use of all that power?"


    "Argh, too many words," said Ganth. "You sound like the thrall now. Always talking about this and that. I only care about being strong."


    The hobgoblin flexed his arm muscles, letting them bulge through his thick, icy skin. "And taking with strength. You know, I excited for this war. Lord seems serious. Many of us united now. We can take humannds. Human women."


    "I still do not understand your kind''s obsession with these human girls. They are so fragile, "said Shun with a shake of his head.


    "Hah, easy for you to say!" Ganth pointed a stubby, big finger at Shun''s face. "Look at you. Sharp nose. Small face. Big eyes. Look almost as pretty as human girls."


    Ganth pointed a thumb back to his own face, at hisparatively wide, blocky head, his shaggy red, greasy and unkempt hair, small eyes, and tusked, bestial mouth. "I am big ugly. And you see women of my tribe in this camp? Some of them uglier than me."


    "Fair enough. The few women of your northern tribes I have seen do put quite the icy touch to my passions," Shun put a hand to his chin. "You know, Ganth, perhaps when this war is over, when the lord has united our kind across the five, no, four realms now of life, I can show you to my home.


    You mentioned you were bored of the cold wastes, no? Well, there is so much to see where I am from."


    "Good food?" questioned Ganth.


    Shun nodded.


    "Pretty girls?"


    "Certainly," said Shun.


    "Okay then!" Ganth said, beating his chest with a fist.


    "Although first you may have to catch up with some basic cleanliness. And those clothes-," Shun froze, red eyes narrowing as he put a hand to the handle of his sheathed de.


    "Huh?" Ganth picked at his tattered loincloth of icebear skin ¨C the only article of clothing he wore. "I thought this looked good."


    "I sense something," said Shun, his voice quiet, serious. His ck wed hand wrapped around his sword handle. "Ready yourself."


    "You funny. No human evere here. Too dark. And humans here weak and scared. Weak ck goblins said so already." Ganth turned to Shun with a smile, but the smile faded as he sensed a stern gravity emanating from Shun.


    Ganth stood up, holding his oversized club in front of him.


    A few secondster, and the sound of falling and crashing trees echoed through the forest.


    "Something biging," said Ganth. "Very big." The crackle of shattering tree trunks apanied by the thuds of heavy footsteps became louder. "Very quick."


    "Head back to the war tents," said Shun as he kept his hand on the de but did not unsheathe it. "Tell the champion that we are being attacked. The weight behind these steps do not match any human. Either a monster or a sorcerer''s familiar."


    "No, I stay here. I fight. I strong." Ganth went up to the edge of the light cast from the lightstone torches, a few meters back from thick growths of darkwood trees. He roared to the vast darkness in front of him. "Face me! I, Ganth of the Frostskulls, am ready!"


    The Collector burst out of the trees as a raging pinball of musclebound white carapace, charging right into the hobgoblin that had foolishly shouted out its location.


    Having built up to its top, maximal speed, the Collector moved fast enough to appear as a blur to the average human eye, and that velocitypounded with its immense weight meant that when it hit the hobgoblin, it eviscerated the specimen, splitting it apart in a shattered mess of caved in bones and torn flesh.


    Or that was what the Collector had calcted based on the hobgoblin''s density of muscle mass, height, and approximate sturdiness of bone structure ¨C all details it had parsed mid charge through its sensitive hairs.


    The hobgoblin did fly backwards a dozen meters, breaking through the darkwood stake wall entirely and tumbling several times, but it did not die, skidding to a halt in the dirt as an intact, living, breathing specimen, though it did groan in audible pain, clutching at his side where blood began to flower from internal bleeding and shattered ribs.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles. Loudly, this time, for never before in its life had it been this disappointed, this wrong with its calctions. It brought shame upon the name of the Collective, it¨C


    Shun shed at the Collector, unsheathing his de in a quickdraw arc meant to gut the Collector from the side.


    The Collector did not react to the attack. It had assessed the red-skinned hobgoblin variant''s physique and estimated its physical capabilities, but this attack was approximately 3.66 times faster than what its muscture could muster, even with considering efficient movements.


    The de nked into a shower of sparks as it skidded across the Collector''s immensely durable carapace.


    Shun''s eyes widened as he felt impact against a surface harder than any he had felt before ring up his hand, jarring his very bones.


    The Collector capitalized on the moment of hesitation and swiveled its head to the hobgoblin, opening its maw and activating its pyrocatalytic nds.


    Its tongue retracted and a bulb shaped, muscle powered organ at the back of its throat jutted out in its ce, pulsing once in an intense contraction thatunched a thin burst of highly pressurized white chemicals.


    The chemicals struck against a vibrating, friction inducing piece of faceted bone lined up in front of the nds, the biotrigger, as it was called, and when the chemical jetstream hit the biotrigger, it lit up once more into a beam of brilliant white, blue tinted me that washed over the hobgoblin''s entire body.


    The intense light bathed the entire forest once more, and the Collector''spound eyes and sensitive hairs twitched, allowing it to dodge back from another swipe from the red hobgoblin, this time one aimed at its softer, unarmored eyes.


    "A fire-breather are you?" said the red hobgoblin variant. He stood with blueish white mes flickering on his skin, staring at the Collector as if utterly unharmed.


    The Collector glimpsed at the red variant''s surroundings. An acrid, bitter smell of chemical fire and burnt grass rose up through the air from the smoking ck patches of devastated earth around it, and yet, at the center of this path of destion, the hobgoblin remained unharmed.


    "Sorry, but I am a bad matchup for you, then," said the red variant. "The tribes of mount Oe have been blessed under its volcanic touch for centuries. me alone, lest they hail from the gods themselves, will not harm us."

 Chapter 17 - The Battle II

    Gods.


    The Collector began to circle around the red hobgoblin, its tusks aimed down, ready to gore the variant in a charge. The Collector knew what the concept of gods were. Worshipped, fancifully constructed entities from tinkerer species during primitive stages of their development.


    Usually created in their image, vain as these tinkerers often tended to be. A socially constructed fantasy to exin the decisions of nature, the fires that might destroy their crops or the lightning strikes that might kill their young when the tinkerers were yet too primitive to truly grasp the nature of these phenomena.


    The Collector recognized that species of this advancement would likely be at a stage where they did worship these imaginary entities. It thus filed what the hobgoblin had just said under nonsensical, primitive babble.


    The Collector had more useful topics to devote its mental processing to.


    This red variant of hobgoblin did indeed possess an uncanny resistance to heat that reached well past the melting point of many metals. It was a property that was not immediately apparent from its innate biology, for nothing about its skin or muscture indicated heat resistant properties.


    "Ganth, pull back. Using [guard] at thest minute saved you from dying, but if this creature can smash through even that-,"


    The Collector swiped at the red hobgoblin with one of its arachnid arms while it distracted itself speaking to itspanion.


    The red variant, however, despite not even looking directly at the Collector, managed to evade the sweeping slice by jumping backwards with an agile flip,nding on the ground almost as if in slow motion.


    "I¡­fight," muttered Ganth as he managed to raise himself to a knee, though his deep wheezing indicated a soon to be mortal wound from the severity of his internal bleeding. Likely, judging by the rattling cadence of the breaths, a broken rib had punctured a lung.


    "Just go!" said Shun. "Alert Juzo but try to get your thrall Hrunt here too. I can stall, but I cannot hold this creature for long."


    Ganth grunted, took a look at the battle, then at his bleeding side, and turned, limping back further into he camp.


    The Collector surged forwards again, this time calcting a series of attacks to minimize evasive maneuvers. It first swung its head forward, striking with its long, ded tusks, and then its arachnid arms syed out, ready to catch the red hobgoblin from any angle if it dodged the initial strike.


    Shun evaded the tusks with remarkable agility and then raised his de against the onught of arachnid spider legs.


    The Collector''s monomolecr w tipped legs sliced through the de as cleanly as if nothing was there at all. Two of its arachnid ws struck true, sinking deep into the red hobgoblin''s sword arm shoulder.


    The red hobgoblin moved back in a burst of immensely quick movement that the Collector did not expect. Such movement bordering on small-scale warping did not seem at all within the red variant''s muscr capacities.


    The Collector grew increasingly confused and, for the first time since it entered this world, frustrated.


    Miscalction after miscalction, and yet why? It had perfectly perceived and analyzed the physical abilities of both hobgoblins, and though they were certainly taller and bigger than the ck ones, particrly the white skinned variant, that alone would not exin these inexplicable movements.


    The Collector growled and nked its mandibles together, eyeing the red hobgoblin. At the least, it would seem this one would soon fall.


    The twin strikes the Collector inflicted upon the red variant had severed major tendons and muscles, causing blood to spurt form open gashes that exposedcerated bone.


    "Well then," said Shun as he eyed his right shoulder. His arm hung limp,pletely useless. His volcanite odachiy in two, cleanly sliced pieces on the ground. "To cut through reinforced volcanite, those ws are truly exceptional.


    Adamantite, is it? No, even sharper than that."


    "Cease your incessant babbling, primitive," said the Collector as it lunged forwards, scything its arachnid arms to break the red hobgoblin into pieces.


    Shun dodged the iing strikes, his qi focused entirely into his eyes to utilize sense. He did not have the luxury to react to the fact that the creature could speak theirnguage, for he had to spend every ounce of his thoughts on survival.


    At the very least, this creature did not seem magical in nature. He could not sense that it was projecting any mana, making it so that without opposing magical aura to throw off his [sense], he could read every single one of the creature''s movements before they even happened.


    Shun saw the creature lower its center of gravity, and immediately his vision shed red. Mortal danger. He leaped backwards, making distance between himself for the ensuing charge.


    "Judging from your facial expressions and bodynguage, you are capable of perceiving my actions the moment I begin processing them. You move before I move. I calcte a high probability of psionic capabilities, and yet, I cannot sense any psionic charge from within you," said the Collector. "Curious."


    "I¡­have no idea what that means, nor who sent you, monster," said Shun as he breathed in deep, focusing his qi, focusing his will. He had to stand his ground here. Stall for time. "But you best give up and go crawling back to whatever human sorcerer created you, for he did a bad job. Without any mana, I can read you as clearly as a springside stream. You will never strike me."


    === (This will indicate PoV shifts)


    Shun narrowed his eyes.


    This was a bluff.


    He kept his qi projected outwards from his body and circling around the monster with the [sense] skill. This meant he could perceive the creature''s movements and aggressions, but constantly projecting his qi outwards elerated qi expenditure drastically, and without qi to reinforce his movements, it did not matter if he could see the attacksing if he was too slow to dodge them.


    And this creature was immensely strong in terms of sheer physical power, speed, and durability.


    As if to prove this point, the monster sped forwards, once more striking first with its tusks. Shun swerved to the side and then ducked under a row of sweeping arachnid legs. He put qi into his legs and then leaped away as the monster swiveled its body, sending its armored tail into Shun''s side like a club.


    Though Shun perceived the attack, he was a little slow. He reduced the damage with his qi empowered backstep, but he could still feel arge bruise welling up from shorn and bloody skin where the club-like end of the monster''s tail barely grazed him.


    In purely physical strength and speed, this monster was easily on par with a three-star adventurer, far beyond any of the hobgoblins and matching or surpassing even Juzo, the champion.


    Though the monstercked magic, it possessed ws sharper than reinforced adamantite, making any ordinary defense utterly useless against it, though it seemed skills like [guard] could work.


    If the beast managed to surprise Juzo or even lord Zoll as it had surprised Shun when it sliced through his volcanite odachi, then it was entirely possible for the monster to instantly kill either of them if they were not being cautious.


    Hrunt was best suited to kill this creature with his ranged magic.


    Shun grimaced, steeling his resolve. Hrunt was on his way to this camp from the inner one, but he was still quite some time away.


    If Shun could not hold this monster here, then he had no doubt it would devastate the vast majority of hobgoblins and goblins in the camp for none of them were Awakened to any high degree, relying only on the strength of their flesh and bone.


    "I will hold you here," dered Shun as he took in a deep breath, spreading his stance wide to allow forrger ranges of movement. "Whether I live or perish. Soon, you wille to know the might of the tribes of Oe."


    "Does your tribe specialize in fleeing like vermin?" said the Collector. "I am unimpressed, primitive. I will enjoy tearing your flesh from the bone."


    "Go ahead and try," said Shun. He held in a breath; his senses tuned to the max. He could feel and hear his rising heartbeat, he could smell the bitter, foul scent of burned grass, and he could feel the tiniest breeze of wind touch against his skin.


    With [sense] like this, he would evade everything this monster could muster.


    The monster moved, rushing in towards him.


    Shun readied himself, his muscles tensing as he ascertained the creature''s intent.


    Would it swipe at him with its spider ws? Strike at him with its long tusks? Whip at him with its tails? So many possibilities, and yet, [sense] meant out of all those countless paths, he would perceive only the one the monster decided on.


    Shun froze. He had never felt anything like this. He saw what the monster decided on, but-


    ===


    The Collector rushed past the red hobgoblin''s body, its body low and its six arachnid ws stuck out in front of it, a breath of victory escaping its maw as a cloud of fog.


    A momentter, the red variant''s severed headnded in front of the Collector, blood spilling out onto the darkened grass, an expression of utter surprise still etched into its red eyes.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles as it looked down at the expression on the hobgoblin''s severed head.


    Once the Collector knew the primitive had the capacity to read its movements and foresee them, it devised a strategy against it.


    Certain tinkerers with psionic charges possessed the same ability. Collector variants at their full power never really had to deal with them as they possessed an innate psionic defense sourced from their link to the Collective that rendered anything possible by an individual tinkerer ineffective.


    But it seemed that in its current weakened and disconnected state, the Collector was susceptible. It had improvised, however.


    If the hobgoblin primed its movements based on a precognitive perception of what the Collector decided upon, then the Collector would simply overwhelm the hobgoblin with a surplus of options.


    With superior mental processing systems, the Collector couldmit itself to dozens of attack paths at once in equal intensity.


    The red hobgoblin had likely been swamped by the sheer density of attacks it predicted, and its primitive mental systems simply could not keep up, freezing it in ce.


    The Collector''s muscr, prehensile tongueshed out and gobbled up the hobgoblin''s head. It heard the hobgoblin''s decapitated body fall behind it with a thump.


    The Collector turned and consumed the rest of the goblin. It would have liked to savor the red variant''s taste for though its erratic movements had irked the Collector, it had still challenged the Collector as a warrior.


    >>>


    *Biomass gained (+15)*


    Biomass Level: 34/100


    *New gic material avale*


    Stored Gic Material:


    -ck Ant


    -ck Hobgoblin


    -Human


    -Giant Scorpion


    -Stonecrusher Beetle


    -Jumping Arakka


    -*NEW* Lesser Oni


    >>>


    There was no time to fully savor the meal, however. The Collector had to continue its attack and catch up with the white skinned variant before it could fully alert the rest of the camp.


    Pushing with its bulked up hind legs, the Collector surged forwards, continuing its charge in the direction of the white skinned variant''s escape.

 Chapter 18 - The Champion I

    The Collector galloped its way further into the encampment, a speeding, half-ton mass of bristles and carapace and ws and bloodlust. Yet, despite its dizzyingly fast pace, throughout each of its many steps, it kept its senses open, analyzing the battlefield and its enemies.


    The camp wasrge, farrger than the dens the ck hobgoblins could manage.


    The level of technology present in the camps far exceeded that present in the dens as well. There were several tents created from the dried skins of hunted prey and propped up with wood frames. Skin-wrapped barrels of roughly carved wood containing mostly liquids and meat stood by each camp.


    The presence of fire, amon evolutionary development among budding tinkerer species, was also evident in rings of ck, smudged ash and wood nearby the tents.


    From these camps, there emerged hobgoblins and normal, smaller goblins poking their heads out of the tents at first in curiosity, then in terror.


    The Collector ughtered them all, using its tusks to gore them, its armor-ted weight to bludgeon them, its tail to bash them, its hooves to stomp underfoot the little goblins, and its many arachnid ws to sweep around like a reaper''s scythe, lopping off heads and limbs left and right.


    Where the Collector went, it left a trail of limbless, battered, and decapitated bodies littering torn apart and smashed tents. As it razed them, it felt its biomass levels umting in the moments it stopped to consume hobgoblin corpses, not even bothering with the smaller ones.


    >>>


    *Biomass gained (+3)*


    *Biomass gained (+3)*


    *Biomass gained (+3)*


    ¡­.


    Biomass Level: 64/100


    *New gic material gained*


    Stored Gic Material:


    -ck Ant


    -ck Hobgoblin


    -Human


    -Giant Scorpion


    -Stonecrusher Beetle


    -Jumping Arakka


    -Lesser Oni


    -*NEW* Frostborn Hobgoblin


    >>>


    The Collector noted that none of the goblins here were of the ck-skinned variant.


    Neither of these variants seemed native to this environment, either.


    The white-skinned variants were adapted to harsh colds.


    The red-skinned variants did possess a waxyyer to their skin along with innately lower body temperatures to prevent water loss ¨C yet none of these exined a resistance to mes the stronger red variant guarding the gate had spoken of.


    There were patterns to the distribution of the goblins as well.


    Inrger tents marked by skins with shaggier fur, white-skinned variants dwelled. In tents marked by sleeker skins, the red-skinned variants dwelled.


    None of them were anywhere close to the strength of the red and white-skinned variants guarding the camp.


    The Collector had even adjusted its strength, ounting for the possibility that these specimen could move two to three times faster than what their biological capabilities could suggest, but it found it had grossly overestimated their abilities.


    Strange, thought the Collector as it now rapidly reached the center of the encampment, the scent of the escaped, white-skinned hobgoblin drawing near.


    Then what was it that allowed those two specific individuals to possess such unnatural physical capabilities? The red variant, too, possessed five times the amount of biomasspared to its peers despite no apparent physical differences.


    The Collector thought of the new words it had heard.


    The red hobgoblin had spoken of mana and volcanite and adamantite, all words the Collector was unfamiliar with.


    Volcanite and adamantite, the Collector could easily reason were types of ores based on its etymology in the goblin tongue and the context in which the words were utilized.


    But mana? The red variant had noted the Collector possessed an absence of it which allowed the specimen to predict the Collector''s movements.


    The Collector''s stored memories could only approximate ''mana'' in this context to a psionic charge, and yet, all other contextual clues indicated that the red variant was not speaking of psionics.


    There was the possibility that this ''mana'' was connected to ''magic'', the other unknown phenomena that the Collector had encountered in this world, and yet, it still did not have more information to sufficiently establish strong links between them.


    The Collector knew ''magic'' could create mes. ''Mana'' involved some rtion with the Collector''s mental processing. Both these words were tied to organisms that seemed unnaturally charged with biomass when consumed.


    In addition, ''mana'' had some additional rtion to the humans for the red hobgoblin had surmised that the Collector was, insultingly so, a creation of a human sorcerer, the same ss of human as the female specimen the Collector consumed beforehand.


    The strongest thread of connection between the two words therefore were human sorcerers. What this ''sorcerer'' ss did and was, the Collector did not know, but soon, it would find out.


    Further investigation needed. But the Collector could instinctively tell that it was close to connecting these seemingly isted threads together.


    Just one or two more leads.


    For now, though, there was the battle, the ughter.


    The Collector reached the escaping Frostborn Hobgoblin at the center of the encampment.


    The white-skinned hobgoblin breathed heavy, wheezing breaths, his hand clutched to his bruised and bloody side. His steps dragged together, coordination deteriorating from blood loss.


    By now, the Collector had ughtered ten hobgoblin and destroyed four tents. It estimated that if the goblin popce was spread in even density throughout the circr area, then there could be anywhere from thirty to fifty hobgoblins, but if the vast majority of them were ordinary, then they posed no threat.


    "Your attempts to dy your inevitable demise end now, feeble little creature," said the Collector as it approached the hobgoblin.


    The white-skinned variant stopped, his blue eyes locking onto a particrlyrge tent a dozen meters in front of it. It took in a breath before facing the Collector with a tusked smile and roar. "You think I weak!? I show you!"


    The white variant hefted its club, almost asrge as it was, in one hand and swung it sideways to the Collector''s head.


    The Collector was still ounting for the variant being two to three times stronger and faster, and this time, its caution paid off.


    The Collector countered the enhanced swing and mmed against the swing with most of its weight and might, might that it usually held back for efficiency''s sake.


    Hyperalloy carapace and Everfrost shed together in a loud, nging impact. The club of ice sailed backwards,nding behind the white skinned variant before breaking apart into chunks that rapidly began melting.


    A few thin cracks lined a series of bony white carapace tes at the Collector''s side ¨C the results of the impact. It could have dodged the attack, but it decided to grant this specimen a final sh of strength for its willingness to face its own death through unhesitantbat.


    The white skinned hobgoblin stared at its empty hands, then at the Collector.


    "Heh. You strong." The hobgoblin nodded in recognition to the Collector. He held his arms out to the sides,ying bare his body for death. "I die to strong. Good."


    The Collector obliged the hobgoblin''s desire, running forwards and goring through the creature''s heart with its tusks. The hobgoblin seized up, coughing up a spurt of blood before it grew limp, its head hanging backwards.


    The Collector jerked its head up, bisecting the hobgoblin from the chest up, and then consumed the creature.


    >>>


    *Biomass consumed (+10)*


    Biomass Level: 74/100


    >>>


    The Collector clicked its mandibles.


    It had expected this particr specimen, much like the other one guarding the encampment''s entrance, to have dense biomass. It possessed five points less than the red variant despite having even more physical mass, indicating that the property supercharging the biomass of certain creatures on this world was not directly tied to physical properties.


    "I thought I told none to disturb my meditation."


    The Collector looked to therger tent that the white skinned variant had stared at before death. From its entrance ps there emerged a red skinned variant significantlyrger than all his peers. Evenrger than the white-skinned ones that possessed denser, more developed musctures and thicker skins against the cold.


    Thick ck, glossy armor padded therger red variant''s body in tes of rocky looking material, the very same material that the red variant guarding the gate used in its sword. Volcanite, as it was called.


    In therger red variant''s hand, it dragged a one-sided axe with a dull, metallic handle and a head fashioned from volcanite, the roughly carved edges almost looking like the ends of serrated teeth.


    "Ah, you must be the so called ''champion''," said the Collector, its tone lingering on the title in a savoring, eager manner. "Good. Your brethren die and ascend to the Collective through my jaws. As their representative, it is only fitting that you join them."

 Chapter 19 - The Champion II

    ===


    Juzo stared at the monster before it. He had never seen the likes of such a creature before. A strange mixture of insect and boar. But he did not let an ounce of surprise sway his internal bnce, the delicate flow of qi through his meridians and core.


    He was far too experienced, far too traveled.


    He trimmed away everything that was useless and focused. He did not care where this monster came from. He only cared about how to kill this thing.


    In his early youth, when he left Mount Oe on a warrior''s pilgrimage, he traveled the realms, and one of them, Faorese, the realm of elves and fairies, could have a half-bug, half-beast monster like this.


    But that did not seem like it.


    Faorese was dense with qi, with magic, and almost all its creatures were sensitive to it. This monster, on the other hand, as it circled Juzo, its tusks and bone white ting glistening in the faint glow of lightstone shine, did not emit any noticeable aura of qi, of mana.


    Juzo gripped his axe in both hands, circling to the opposite direction of the monster, keeping his distance, keeping apace of the creature as it too analyzed him.


    Juzo was no fool, and unlike many of his kind, through twenty years of travel, he had long since cut prejudice from his beliefs.


    Thus, he knew to determine that this monster was not some brute.


    Even apart from the monster speaking to him, he knew that it was highly intelligent despite its twisted, bestial appearance. It was in its eyes, for though theirpound structure would have ordinarily been impossible to read, the glint of a trained warrior''s gaze was universal; it transcended the boundaries of realm and race.


    This, Juzo knew well from fighting the vastly different beastkin of his own realm, the fiery, feathered Karasi, the stripe-furred, sturdy Hwaran, and the scaled, water wielding Yinlong.


    Juzo felt the monster''s gleaming yellow eyes meet his, and he felt the few, smooth hairs on his body stand on end. He could feel even the slightest breeze flowing through the camp as intensely as if they were gusts of pr wind, cutting into his skin like ice.


    His survival instincts were ring, telling him that this monster was a match for him. Whoever came out of this battle would not emerge unscathed.


    Perhaps not even alive.


    Juzo''s senses heightened.


    He could smell the stench of iron in the air, and he knew then that this monster had killed many, many of his brethren.


    Rage started to bud within him for his lost people, for in a way, it was his fault they had been left defenseless and dead.


    He had wanted to iste himself to meditate and charge his qi for theing conflicts with the humans, not believing that any threat would find their encampments hidden so deep in these ursed woods.


    Rage at not only the monster but also at himself formed a fuel, and he did not let that emotion go to waste.


    He channeled it, letting it flow through his body, and he bound that emotion into his qi, molding it into the [sheathe] skill. He held his axe in front of him, and in a sh, it burst into mes, his qi infusing into the magic-sensitive volcanite.


    "By what mechanism did you ignite your weapon?" said the monster as it continued to circle Juzo, continuing to look for an opening.


    Juzo grunted and did not respond, for he could sense if he let his guard down even the slightest, the monster would attack, and his honed battle instincts told him that any attack from the beast was dangerous.


    "A silent one. Rare, for how gratingly talkative and loud your species has been so far. Yet, preferable." The monster made the first move, charging forwards with its lengthy tusks.


    Juzo narrowed his red eyes and stepped backwards, dodging the goring strike. He kept his qi flowing through his body in consistent [flow], keeping his physical abilities raised while having enough invested in projecting his magical energy outwards in [sense] to read the monster''s intent.


    The monster was notmitting deeply to an attack, and so he did not either, for it seemed the creature was baiting him into a counter.


    No, Juzo noted as the creature immediately changed its intent, shing red in pure aggression, it had decided on offense again.


    The sudden switch in intent was so jarring that he scrambled to adjust to it, breaking his even flow of qi and driving as much of it into his legs to perform a retreating back step at high speeds.


    He made a distance of ten meters between himself and the monster in a sh, his high-speed movement ripping apart the dirt and grass in smoky trails. He exhaled. He had not even had half a second before the monster had so suddenly switched its intent.


    There was not a single monster or warrior or adventurer he had faced so far that had the ability to change their intents, their decisions, so quickly and seamlessly.


    Juzo realized he would have to focus deeply on analyzing the monster''s intent if he wanted to get a read on it in time to react, so he pushed more qi into his [sense], keeping his sight trained on the monster to ensure that he would be able to read the shift in intent the moment it happened the next time, regardless of how quick it was.


    The monster clicked its mandibles in some sort of gesture to itself before it lowered its center of gravity, preparing for a full speed charge. On its back, six spider legs were curled forwards, their glinting and sharp ws ready to slice at Juzo should the enormous tusks fail.


    Juzo readied himself. He would read the monster''s intent with [sense], dodge its attack, then counter with a fatal blow.


    He did not know exactly how strong the monster''s armored hide was, but he did spot a few small cracks on its side, likely from a [reinforce] boosted blow by Ganth.


    It was extremely impressive that the beast''s hide could take a blow like that, a blow that would have even sent Juzo flying with broken bones, so easily, but Juzo''s offensive capabilities far outweighed his defensive ones.


    With his fiery [sheathe] superheating the edge of his volcanite axe and his own qi boosting his power with [reinforce], a [reinforce] superior to that of Ganth''s, he was confident he could slice through the monster''s hide, though he likely would not be able tond a lethal blow through the thick, metallic bone carapace and dense muscture.


    Then he would aim to cripple.


    The monster'' front hoof dragged across the forest floor once, digging out a deep indent in the dirt as it tensed up its muscles. It seemingly swelled in size, its muscles rippling and flexing in a disy of overwhelming physical might.


    Then, it charged.


    "Come!" shouted Juzo, his long fangs baring as he gripped his axe tight and held it back, ready to swing it to slice off the monster''s legs and ground it.


    The monster kicked up clouds of dirt as it smashed its hooves into the forest floor, propelling itself with swelling muscles.


    The creature was fast. Horrifyingly fast, considering how freakishly big and strong it was, but Juzo could deal with this.


    All he had to do was maximize his [sense], and then he would be able to read the monster-


    Or so he thought.


    Juzo saw as the monster neared his attacking range that its original intent, a simple, frontal charge with its tusks, changed. There was a tail whip. A dozenbinations of shing attacks with its many legs. A leaping strike. Even an attack that generated me.


    All at once.


    The sheer number of intents would have overwhelmed Juzo, but he was battle experienced. Some sorcerers could utilize mind control type spells, and overreaching on [sense], projecting qi far away from one''s own body, would leave the unguarded mind susceptible to mental domination.


    Thus, the moment he felt his mind bing overwhelmed, he stopped projecting his qi with [sense], and without even thinking, reactively mmed his axe into the ground, unleashing the volcanite axe''s imbued property of explosively amplifying qi poured into it.


    An eruption ofva and me burst outwards in a ground shaking tremor.


    The impact of the blow was like a bomb, blowing up a towering cloud of dirt, bright red molten rock, and ming pieces of foliage, sending bothbatants flying backwards from a shockwave of heated power.


    ===


    The Collector twisted in the air andnded perfectly bnced on all fours, clicking its mandibles in surprise. It had thought its strategy to deal with these red variant goblins, even the special ones, sufficient enough.


    The champion was likely a special red variant possessing the same abilities as the smaller specimen guarding this camp.


    That meant that the champion likely possessed the same capability to read into the Collector and precognitively determine its movements on top of possessing fire-resistant skin.


    The Collector had confirmed from the start of this battle that the champion did possess predictive abilities by reading subtle twitches of understanding in the champion''s facial expressions and bodynguage whenever the Collector readied to attack.


    Then, it manipted the champion into sinking deeper and deeper into focusing on reading the Collector by increasing the rate of thought put into its movements but shying away from the Collector''s maximal mental processing speed.


    That way, the Collector could maximally shock at the moment of true attack by unleashing its capacity tomit to several attacks simultaneously. The champion''s mind would have faltered its feeble neurons attempted to keep up with simultaneously processed thoughts.


    But the champion, unlike his smaller brethren, had subverted this strategy, likely with a pre-programmed reaction to drive down his tool and cause an explosion.


    That too, the Collector wished to analyze.


    This volcanite material did not seem to be processed in anyplex manner, roughly carved up into sharp shapes functioning as rudimentary weapons much like the sticks of steel the humans used.


    There was no engine. No circuitry. No moving parts. No chambers.


    But the champion''s axe could generate an explosive blowback of force and heat on par with the 40-millimeter ordinance of the human empire''s B10 Incendiary Launcher, leaving a steaming, molten red hole five meters wide in the point of impact.


    The Collector felt the damage from heat and sshedva burning on its face and body, leaving smoldering, small holes in its hyperalloy carapace.


    No, the B10 would have easily blown apart the Collector''s rank 4 carapace. This level of damage was more akin to the B5 generation ofunchers, the type the empire wielded in the very beginning of their conflict with the Collective half a century ago.


    Still far beyond anything the Collector thought the champion and its primitive brethren were capable of.


    Again, as the smoke cleared and the Collector stared at the unharmed, heat-resistant champion, there were no biological indicators that the champion was capable of this. Did the alloys and ores of this world also follow this strange principle?


    The Collector made further adjustments to its calctions, ssifying the volcanite axe as something more than a chunk of rock to be swung around with brutish force into the category of tinkering tools to eliminate as a threat.


    ===

 Chapter 20 - The Champion III

    ===


    Juzo took the brief reprieve he carved out for himself by fully unloading his volcanite axe''s stored power to think. The volcanite axe''s once fiery ck body started to dim, the fire zing from using [sheathe] to coat it in his qi now gone.


    The volcanite now had to enter a cooldown period. It would take some time before the axe was ready to take in more qi again.


    He breathed in deep, the qi expenditure leaving him increasingly tired.


    Think, Juzo, think.


    Without using [sense], how would he deal with this monster? This paragon of physical power and armor and ws and tusks and teeth?


    He did not have time to think more before the monstrosity made another move, rushing in with blitzing speed, its six spider legs curled down around its sides to provide extra armored protection.


    With a growling grunt, Juzo got into battle stance again, driving his bare, wed feet shoulder-width apart and holding his axe in front of him, the thick handle of beast blood tempered steel set diagonally across his chest to protect his heart.


    The ensuing sh started off even.


    Juzo pumped his qi all throughout his body with [flow], empowering himself enough to match the beast. His martial prowess shone as he used his footwork to dodge about, evading first a thrusting strike from tusks and then, when he was behind the monster, ducked under a swerving tail whip.


    His breaths became heavier, his vision bing blurry at the edges. Though it seemed like he was doing well, he was burning through his qi at a massive rate to keep up physically with this monster and its many tools specialized for war.


    Juzo had honed his martial skills for years and years. He had gone on entire pilgrimages to test his strength against all manner of enemies.


    He did not consider himself at all the strongest out there, his journeys made him too worldly to be that arrogant, but as a warrior, he did not expect to get outssed to this degree.


    He had faced monsters stronger and faster than himself before. He could deal with that. But this was different.


    He backed away from a leaping stomp and gripped his axe, eyeing for a counter. He only saw arachnid legs curled around the beast''s exposed side that would counter his every move.


    This monster was an adept at fighting in a way that transcended the ferocity of mere bestial and monster instinct.


    It did not utilize martial arts, but Juzo felt overwhelmingly so that he was not fighting a monster, but instead a trained adept of the martial path.


    Martial arts were ultimately made to bridge the gap between the weak and monsterkind, but if there ever was a "monster style" martial arts, then this creature would have been its sole grandmaster.


    The monster understood footwork, pacing, reading the opponent, checking blows, everything.


    Juzo stepped back again as the monster took a step forward, but this was a feint. The monster suddenly swerved its body around, extending the carapace clubbed tail out in a whipping arc, maximizing its range to strike him.


    The speed of the tail was blindingly fast, whistling as it cut through the air like a knife.


    A crack resounded through the camp as Juzo stumbled backwards, rolling once on the ground before righting himself and gritting his teeth, ignoring the pain welling up in his right shoulder. He did not even bother checking it.


    It was entirely numb from the shoulder down. The heavy blow had probably shattered every important bone and then some there. He gripped his axe in his still working left hand and realized something.


    Throughout this entire fight, he had feared the monster''s ws, specifically the ones that sprouted from the white-ted spider legs on its back.


    His instincts had told him that they were dangerous, supremely so, and that understanding had severelypromised his movements, eliminating many chances for him to counter attack or defend himself.


    But the monster did not use actively use those ws to attack now. Instead, it kept them down, curling them along its nks more for defense than to strike.


    Perhaps a weakness? Did the ws deteriorate in strength over time? Or was this a lure?


    Juzo could not know, but he could not y this game of chase either, for he would lose sooner rather thanter. His pointed ears perked up as he heard the rest of the hobgoblins in the camp starting to circle around the battle.


    All of them were now armed, the Frostskull tribesmen holding their everfrost weapons. His own tribe of oni were here too, armed with their swords and spears.


    "We here! For the champion! Kill monster!" A shout resonated among the Frostskulls, and they cheered.


    One of their few bowmen loosed an arrow that shattered on the monster''s armored side.


    The monster stopped and emitted a low, rumbling growl, its fourpound eyes gleaming with intense yellow in the dim light of the forest. The growl immediately sent a wave of fear outwards, stopping the hobgoblins, though they numbered well into the twenties, to freeze in their tracks.


    "Are you okay, my dear?"


    Juzo nodded stiffly as his two concubines neared him.


    "When you left the tent, we gathered everyone," said one of them.


    "You are hurt, dear, you should let your men deal with this¡­thing for you."


    Juzo thrust out his muscr arm, bidding his wives back. "No. Everyone here is useless. They will only slow me down. My loves, take the other women and children of this camp to the inner stronghold."


    "All of you!" shouted Juzo, his thick neck muscles bulging as he projected his voice in a booming st. "Get out of here! None of you will take this fight from me, nor are any of you worthy of it! Go! Back to the stronghold! Tell Hrunt and Zoll toe with haste to witness my victory!"


    "Are you sure, my dear?" said one of his concubines as she reached out to touch his back with her hand.


    Juzo shook it off. "Of course. Now go. I will not repeat myself."


    ===


    The Collector clicked its mandibles as it saw the horde of hobgoblins and lesser goblins leave, funneling out of the camp.


    Within a minute, they were gone, this champion''s authority evidently enough topel them to move with considerable haste.


    This left the Collector and the champion alone once more.


    "A foolish decision, primitive," said the Collector. "As a social species, you forsake one of the greatest strengths you undeveloped bipeds possess ¨C your numbers."


    "I know," said the champion. He wielded his axe in his one remaining arm. "I know I could have used them. Even if they could not harm you, they could distract you. I could have found an opening to strike.


    But you would have killed many of them, perhaps all of them.


    I cannot do that. Half of them are my own tribesmen. And the other half do not deserve to die for my sake either.


    Soe, let us continue."


    "Curious." The Collector began to circle the champion specimen again, but this time, at a more leisurely pace, giving the specimen some breathing time. "You forsake advantage to value their lives, and yet, you are a special variant in possession of a title of authority.


    Your life by all metrics should be worth drastically more than theirs.


    Perhaps you arecking in calctive ability.


    And victory? Does your mind truly believe you have sufficient capacity to grasp it in thispromised state? Major fractures bordering on absolute destruction litter your right scap, humerus, acromion, vicle-,"


    "I know I will lose." The champion smiled, an expression of happiness, and yet there was no joy to be derived from this, this inevitable demise and soon, the demise of his brethren. "I spoke of victory for I did not want to dampen their hearts knowing my death is toe.


    And though I may fall here, I know the others will stop you."


    The champion paused and took in a breath before staring at the Collector with resolute eyes.


    "One strike," said the champion as he pointed at the Collector with his axe. "I will inflict upon you one strike. And I will make sure you remember it."


    "A fanciful proposition. One unfounded by rationale or quantification." The Collector clicked its mandibles and began to pace around the champion for real, finding an angle to end its life. "Yet, your kind does confound such principles.


    We shall see."


    ===


    Juzo saw the monster pick up its pace, its posture immediately bing focused entirely on killing him, and he gripped his axe tight and poured the final dregs of his qi into it.


    With the arrival of his people and this talk, he had stalled enough time to let the volcanite axe to cooldown, allowing him to store qi in it again.


    Using [sheathe], he engulfed the ck axe in an aura of flickering fire once more, just as strong as it had been the first time for he was not holding back anything, willing to burn through qi until he dropped dead. The teeth of the volcanite axe began to whiten as it gathered intense heat, distorting the air around it in waves.


    His volcanite armor, too, even though its purity was low, responded to the sudden outpouring of qi, taking it in, red lines of magical heat lining their breadth.


    Juzo narrowed his eyes in focus, saving thest pieces of his qi to empower himself with [flow] for an attack.


    Before his people had intervened, he had thought that maybe the monster could not use its ws to their max strength anymore.


    He had also thought that the monster might have been luring him in.


    In the end, it did not matter. He had to bank on the hope that the monster''s ws did not work because either way, he was going to die.


    The only difference being whether he left anysting damage or not.


    The monster struck again, and it came forwards faster than it ever had, obviously with the intent to end this fight now.


    Juzo roared as he met the charge with his own, sting his whole body with qi, reaching far past his reserves and breaking his limits. He could feel his muscles tearing and his bones groaning as power surged within him, intense heat and pain rising from within.


    Emotion blurred together and hit his mind in a whirling hurricane.


    The despair of seeing his mother bleeding out on the grass, the love he felt for his teacher, how her wings and arms and legs moved so gracefully, so elegantly, heartbreak that his love could never reach her, the thrill of his first victory, the humiliation of his first near-death battle, the determination to journey and grow strong, the sheer wonder of seeing the endless forests and sky-reaching trees of Faorese, the solemnity of bing a champion for the first time, of feeling lives depend upon him


    All the strongest feelings he had ever felt coursed through him as he drew on everyst bit of qi within him.


    Now the monster was near, almost right in front of him. He raised his axe up and side stepped the tusks, getting the creature''s nk. He did not worry about the spider legs and the ws anymore, for he had made up his mind ¨C he would take any blow tond a strike.


    Even if the ws were as sharp as adamantite, he knew his armor, reinforced with so much qi as it was now, could still let him get in one hit.


    One hit.


    That was all he wanted.


    With a final, guttural scream, he mmed his axe down into the beast''s side.

 Chapter 21 - Fallen

    The Collector clicked its mandibles as it looked up at the champion.


    Thest of its three left arachnid legs was embedded right into the champion''s heart, the bony white limb pushing past the sizable bulk of the champion, the gleaming monomolecr w sticking out straight through to the other side.


    The champion''s life blood, sourced straight from its heart, dripped down from the curved, glinting monomolecr w, the droplets splitting in two as they cut themselves on the edge.


    The first two of the Collector''s spider legs had melted away into nothing but stubs. The ends of the stubs were twisted into molten, warped strips of white hyperalloy carapace holding in burnt and useless flesh.


    The Collector used its remaining legs to scythe off the stubs to prevent them frompromising its movements.


    Blood spurted from the two empty leg sockets on its back, but the Collector tensed up its ultrafiber muscles, and the internally applied pressure halted the blood flow.


    A severed axe heady embedded in the Collector''s back, melting through the carapace and slicing deep enough into ultrafiber muscture underneath to moderatelypromise movement of the front left leg.


    The Collector had lured the champion in by withholding use of its ws.


    Yet, as the battle went on, the Collector had perhaps sensed the champion had seen through these intentions.


    But in the end, the champion charged in anyway.


    It was foolishness. But not entirely unfounded.


    Once the champion charged in, the Collector had tried to use the first two of its three arachnid legs on its left side to slice the axe apart, but it had underestimated the speed of the champion even with calctive adjustments for it enhancing its physical abilities to a multiplicative factor of three, for the champion had drastically exceeded any past strength or speed it exhibited before.


    The end result was that though the Collector did sever the axe head, the sheer velocity of the swing and the remaining heat within the head created a sharp, superheated projectile that managed to wound the Collector and melt off the front two spider legs moments after they made contact with it.


    "One strike. That was what you promised. You fulfill your promise," said the Collector to the champion''s limp corpse. Why it spoke to a lifeless husk, it did not know. A waste of time. Yet, it felt appropriate.


    The Collector squeezed its ultrafiber muscles, popping the axe head out of its side. There was no bleeding for the wound had cauterized from the intense heat.


    The smoldering axe clunked on the dirt, rapidly losing heat and light and turning dull before shattering into chunks of brittle ck rock.


    The Collector drew in the champion''s body with its remaining arachnid limb. It stared at the lifeless body with a small, half formed feeling it could not quite ce.


    Yes, the champion had thrown away its advantages and its life, but it had observed a willingness to fight through inevitable demise, to fight and fight as a warrior should.


    The Collector took a moment to ce a word to the feeling processing within it.


    "Admirable," decided the Collector. It drew the corpse near to its tusked maw. "Your lesser brethren flee to alert their superiors. I could pursue them now, but I will not pass upon the chance to savor your flesh.


    Perhaps they will reach this inner stronghold.


    Perhaps my tireless legs, even with this wound you inflict upon me, will catch hold of them.


    Regardless, may your flesh find greater purpose within the Collective."


    The Collector stretched open its mouth and snapped down on the specimen''s head, the trophy part of the creature, and devoured it. As expected of a special specimen, the Collector could not extract memories from it.


    From there, the Collector worked its way down with surgical precision, using its remaining four arachnid arms to strip off pieces of flesh bit by bit.


    When there was nothing but a bare skeleton, this too, the Collector savored, devouring first the mangled and broken pieces of bone in its shoulder ¨C a memory of a battle between warriors - and then the rest until not a crumb of bone nor drop of blood was left behind.


    >>>


    *Biomass consumed (+50)*


    Biomass Level: 124/100


    *New gic material gained*


    Stored Gic Material:


    -ck Ant


    -ck Hobgoblin


    -Human


    -Giant Scorpion


    -Stonecrusher Beetle


    -Jumping Arakka


    -Lesser Oni


    -Frostborn Hobgoblin


    -*NEW* Greater Oni


    >>>


    The Collector clicked its mandibles, pleased. It could easily reach its next metamorphosis level. At 124/100 of its biomass bar, it could even spill over the surplus to the next level.


    However, when consideringpleting each sessive metamorphosis level required more and more biomass to satisfy, the surplus of 24 points would degrade down to a far lower number.


    But the prospect of reaching the fifth metamorphosis level was quite the alluring one. It would allow the Collector to grow even stronger andrger, though it would have to consider at this point moderating its size in order to maintain some level of stealth.


    Already, its current form pushed the physical dimensions required to adequately traverse this forest biome without generating too much noise.


    Beyond gaining raw power, the Collector could more importantly enhance the evolutionary system embedded within itself by the Collective, fort the system embodied the evolutionary nature of the Collective, being itself a changing, adapting construct.


    With the fifth level, the Collector could increase the number of species it could merge to gain a new form from three to four and also extract any unique adaptation inherent to the natives of this world to permanently keep.


    This would prove highly useful such as the unnatural level of fire resistance present among the red skinned variants or, if possible, the very property that allowed some of these specimen to be special.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles in contemtion, staring out into the other side of the encampment where the rest of the hobgoblin had fled. It had been exactly nine minutes and thirty seven seconds since they had left.


    The issue remained that ascending to the next metamorphosis level would take time. A time span ranging from thirty minutes to an hour depending on theplexity andpatibility of genesprising the new form.


    Far too much time to spend if the Collector wanted to continue this battle.


    Yet, the Collector could not deny it was injured.


    It paced forwards, testing weight on its damaged front left leg. There was some hobble in its steps. It calcted the damage done to the leg, which specific bundles of ultrafiber muscture were damaged and their mobility functions, andpromised, finding within seconds the most efficient way to distribute its weight again.


    Minimal loss of speed when charging. Noticeable to significant deterioration of reactive fast twitch muscle capabilities.


    In conclusion: traveling capabilities operating at almost maximal efficiency. Combat capabilities reduced by approximately fifteen percent with a standard deviation of eight percent depending on whether the Collector faced a single enemy or multiple at once.


    Indeed, the champion had inflicted a blow to be remembered. It was a viable option to consider retreating at this point to evolve and recover damage in exchange for allowing this lord and thrall to ready proper defenses against the Collector.


    There was a case to be made for both a retreat and a continued offensive, and certainly, the Collector could run the mental processes and fine tune its calctions to determine what it perceived as the more efficient option.


    But remembering that attack, that final, reckless, yet admirable charge, the Collector could only click its mandibles in determination as familiar heat surged within it, turning into a veritable fire that pushed it to charge forwards, ever forwards, building up rapid speed as it made mechanical adjustments to its sprinting topensate for its damaged leg.


    Would the Collector retreat now against these primitives when the champion, a warrior far lesser than it, had not retreated before the Collector?


    No, the Collector would continue onwards, recalling in its very being one of the primary directives imnted within it: that against its enemies, it should fight and fight, to kill and destroy and rip and tear until the battle was done.

 Chapter 22 - Pursuit

    The Collector galloped across the cleared and light lit path in the darkwoods, shoulder bashing trees that came into its way to bulldoze them.


    As it traveled the path, following the strong stench of an entire horde of goblin kind, it noted that the path became wider with fewer trees to block it the further it traveled in.


    There were more of the light generating rocks lining the path here. Bigger rocks, too.


    Indicated the inner stronghold possessed more resources than the camps. From extracting the memories of the various normal hobgoblin specimen the Collector had consumed in the camp, it knew that the stronghold was no temporary encampment either.


    It was a naturalndmark. A yawning pit in the ground, its edges lined with a blue light. Deep. Possessed fiveyers. The lord upied the deepestyer. Eachyer possessed half an encampment''s number of hobgoblins.


    Then at minimum, seventy hobgoblins total. However, none, or at the least, only an exceeding few, were special.


    The thrall and the lord, this Zoll were of particr interest.


    There was exceptionally little information regarding them even among the memories of the hobgoblins. Both goblin variants seemed to lead isted lives, rarely if ever interacting with the normal specimen.


    Seventy mundane hobgoblins was a sufficientlyrge enough force to be wary of, for though the Collector possessed durable carapace, powerful muscles, and exceptional reflexes with the mental processing power to utilize them, when there were enough enemies, there were too many variables to sufficiently ount for all possibilities.


    So be it.


    Warrior strain collectors were no strangers to battles of uncertainty, of variables.


    The Collector weed the challenge.


    ===


    The Collector came upon the fleeing horde of hobgoblins and goblins within five minutes.


    Five minutes. That was the extent of time the goblin champion bought for his people.


    Not enough, evidently, for they were only barely halfway to the stronghold at this point.


    Cries of rm rose from the hobgoblins straggling in the back as the Collector closed the distance between them with each of its gliding strides, strides so agile and graceful while carrying a payload of half a ton of biological weapons systems, muscle, and armor.


    "Here! Here! It is here!"


    "Has champion Juzo fallen!?"


    "No run anymore! Fight big monster!"


    "No, retreat, back to the stronghold!"


    The Collector''s porcine ears twitched as it picked up the sounds of discord among the white and red skinned variants. A weakness of the tinkerers, this was. Chaos bound to ur from the troublesome traits of individuality.


    So many different purposes shing with each other. Whereas now, the Collector devoted itself to only one: extermination.


    The Collector aimed to spear the closest target to it. A running red variant hobgoblin female who held an offspring in her arms,promising her ability to engage inbat. The female variant shrieked at her imminent demise.


    "No!" In response to the Collector''s rapid approach, red variant male rushed back to cover her instead, wielding a broad de of volcanite.


    Though, as the Collector noted while stabbing right through the male''s stomach and tossing it away, the volcanite did not glow or hum and had distinctively less of a glossy sheen on its surface than that wielded by the champion and special red variant.


    Perhaps a difference in the mineral''s extraction and processing procedure. Regardless, it meant that there was a high likelihood that the duller volcanite possessed no explosive or heat producing capabilities within them.


    "Protect the women and children!" A shout rose across the ranks of goblins, and this unified both the red and white variants.


    The female and her offspring disappeared as a throng of white and red skinned male hobgoblins halted their running and rushed to meet the Collector in battle.


    "Good. Do not flee. Meet your inevitable end with some shred of pride, primitives." The Collector clicked its mandibles and analyzed the situation, the sensitive hairs on its back rising to detect the rapid rush of movements from the iing hobgoblins.


    A change in air pressure.


    The Collector stepped back a meter, and where it was, a projectile, an arrow as it was called,y embedded in the dirt. Sharpened head of metal attached to a lengthened wood base. Barbed head to prevent removal from flesh. Feathered at the end for aerodynamic performance.


    Primitive. Would not prate hyperalloy carapace.


    Yet, judging from the angle of descent andnding zone, meant to skewer an eye.


    The Collector made some distance, leaping backwards to dodge errant sweeps with ice clubs and volcanite swords. While it soared in the air, its hairs twitched, sensing arrows, and it twisted its body and ducked its head to ensure that six arrows crashed against its hyperalloy carapace.


    The arrows nked off its carapace in showers of little sparks.


    "It running! We winning!" shouted the deep timber of one of the white variants.


    Utter foolishness. In taking briefly to the air, the Collector had assessed their numbers andbat capabilities. Most importantly, from the higher vantage point, it spotted four white variants and two red variants behind the group wielding tools of wood and twine ¨C bows, it recalled from extracted memories - meant to be pulled taut to unleash projectiles.


    The Collector would prioritize them, for with its injury hampering its ability to react to multiple enemies at once, especially projectiles, their ability to strike the Collector''s eyes presented a confounding variable more significant than the slow, uncoordinated mess of melee hobgoblins trying to swamp it.


    The Collector took in a breath and pumped blood and strength into all its muscles. It swelled up in size, towering over the hobgoblins, and their confidence wavered.


    They paused.


    The Collector pawed the ground with its good front hoof, drawing a deep, thick line across the dirt.


    The hobgoblins understood what was toe. Some of them shivered.


    "Hold fast!" shouted a red variant, and that shout kept the more cowardly among them from fleeing.


    They held up their weapons, tensed up their bodies, dug their feet into the dirt -everything to try and get them to stand up against the Collector''s charge.


    The Collector charged, the enormous muscles in its hind legs bursting into a flexion of power that drove sprays of dirt and foliage back like miniature explosions. It blurred in a bone white, bone shattering battering ram.


    Red and white skinned hobgoblin bodies flew into the air with major fractures to their skeletal systems as the Collector bowled past them, reaching within seconds into the backline of bow wielders.


    A final volley of arrows nked on the Collector as it angled its carapace helmeted head down, only giving the arrows hardened hyperalloy carapace to bounce off of.


    "Annoying little creatures with your little imitations of firearms." The Collector whipped around, brutalizing one hobgoblin square in the stomach with its clubbed tail. The continued momentum of the tail carried the hobgoblin and crashed it into two others, knocking them breathless or unconscious to the ground.


    The Collector zigged and zagged around the other three, its remaining four arachnid arms moving like surgical clockwork to sever their heads from their bodies.


    Blood sprayed and sputtered, marking out contrasting splotches of red on the Collector''s white carapace before pores within it opened up, draining it all.


    The Collector turned to meet the rest of the hobgoblin and saw that they no longer approached it.


    When it stepped forwards, they stepped back.


    "Pathetic. In engaging with your champion, I had thought your primitive species infinitesimally less savage than before. Yet, disappointing. None of you are even worthy of joining the Collective, though your flesh, I will still take," said the Collector.


    Then, the unexpected.


    The Collector did not sense anything with its sensitive hairs adaption. It was itspound eyes, capable of a wide field of vision, that perceived it first: a circle of pale blue light spanning underneath it.


    The Collector did not sense anything aberrant about the light, or anything at all, and this absence of sensory input caused it to immediately be wary and cease its attack, leaping backwards.


    In a sh of light and chilled air, a pir of ice manifested, its dimensionsrge enough to have encased more than half of the Collector''s body. A wispy aura of chilled air wafted from the pir, though not cold enough to affect the Collector through theyer of Frostboar blubber on its ultrafiber muscture.


    Yet a sh freeze like that, if ced properly, would have immobilized the Collector.


    "A mere beast, not even a magical one, can escape the clutches of my ice prison?"


    The Collector recognized this raspy voice from the memories it had extracted. This was Hrunt, the so called ''thrall'', one of the three superiors in a position of authority among this popce. It located where the voice projected.


    Approximately eighty-seven meters down the lit path, towards the direction of the stronghold.


    Outside of the ten meter range of the sensitive hairs adaptation. Further attempts to extrapte this ''thrall''s location through optical systems proved futile. Interference from trees and the path curving to block line of sight.


    How was it, then, that this ''thrall'' possessed the means to not only urately determine the Collector''s location, but also to generate ice in localized sh freezes? The means to project its voice to such an extent?


    By now, the Collector did not expect any of these species to wield sufficiently advanced technology such as contsers.


    No, this ''thrall'' was one of the special types. Like the champion.


    Another high priority target for consumption.


    The Collector tensed up again, its muscles swelling, and then it charged, explosively releasing power out of its hyper-flexed ultrafibers to shoot it right into this ''thrall''s'' direction at top speed.


    "Wh-what!? Such haste!" came the thrall''s voice.


    The Collector ignored the curving, light lit path leading to this ''thrall'', instead taking a shorter, diagonal path through the lightless darkwoods. When it left the path, its figure disappearing in the darkwoods, the thrall''s voice rang in the air again.


    "Where did it go!?""


    The Collector smashed through trees a plenty as it barreled onwards. Within ten seconds, it was out the other side, right where it calcted this ''thrall'' would be.

 Chapter 23 - The Thrall

    There it was, the unmistakable appearance of the white-skinned thrall.


    It stood alone at the center of the cleared path and stared at the Collector with mouth open, baring yellowed, chipped teeth. In its right hand was a stick fashioned out of bones and topped with the skull of a human.


    The thrall jolted backwards in surprise, its tattered, rough cloak of animal hides ttering as the many skeletal adornments decorating it moved. The specimen raised a wrinkled white hand to the Collector, but toote.


    The Collector was too fast. Charging in at top speed, a speed that even the champion, a prime physical specimen among this kind, found difficult to perceive, it speared its tusks straight through this ''thrall.''


    Yet, its calcted scenario of events did not manifest into reality. Instead of the Collector''s tusks and flesh piercing and breaking a body far weaker and aged than that of the champion or evenpared to the other hobgoblins, the Collector instead passed straight through the specimen.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles in muted surprise as it whirled around, ready to strike again. The thrall''s form was misty, almost transparent as it seemed that its body wavered between states of solid and gaseous matter.


    "I-I am alive?" remarked the thrall with shaky voice. It stumbled backwards again when the Collector rushed in, swiping with its monomolecr edged ws to scythe off the specimen''s head.


    The thrall flinched, but when the w passed by its neck once more, it opened a beady blue eye and reveled with a broken-toothed grin. "So, I was not wrong. You dock mana, you foul, imperfect creation.


    Without it, I may as well be like the gods to you, untouchable in the genius of my mistborn spell. You only have your maker and his ipetence to curse for your end."


    The Collector growled, insulted that this creature, this mere, primitive thing, would talk to it so lowly. It continued an onught of attacks, slicing dozens of times at the thrall only to find all of its ws simply phasing through the fog-like form, finding no yielding flesh nor bone.


    "What...is this?" uttered the Collector in confounded surprise. It opened up its jaws, brought out its pyrocatalytic nds, and activated the biotrigger, shooting out a stream of chemicals that ignited into a stream of burning blue and white fire.


    "You can speak? Good." The thrall loosed a cackle as the fire parted its form almost entirely, reducing it into a few wisps that floated a dozen meters away and reformed. "Then you will tell me all you know."


    It pointed its bone stick at the Collector and shouted, "Winter winds, reduce this thing into nothingness!"


    Bright blue lines manifested around the thrall''s arm, streaking up from its fingers to its shoulder in a nted criss-cross that looked, as the Collector noted, like circuitry.


    The bone staff rattled for a second before glowing blue. A cone of howling winds propelled countless shards of sharpened ice towards the Collector.


    The Collector lowered its head and weathered the storm of projectiles. The ice shattered on its carapace, and the frostboar blubber ensured that its body and muscture would not freeze from the winds.


    The Collector analyzed the attack.


    Winds at sufficient velocity to knock back the average human of this world. Temperatures low, nearing freezing point. Shards of ice fueled by wind. Ice of regr structure. Unlike that of the clubs and weapons the other white skinned variants wielded.


    Unremarkable.


    The thrall continued, pride and gloating beginning to leech into his voice as the fear of death started to ooze away from the initial scare against the Collector. "This hideous form of yours, no doubt it suits the tastes of that miserable human sorcerer that cowers even from his own kind.


    Rejected by even his own kin, he said he would not raise a finger against our invasion, but look, it appears he has somepassion for his own in spite of his twisted tastes.


    When I get to him, I will carve his bones from his body and take the magic from them, and you will be mine to control."


    As the thrall prattled on and on, the Collector thoroughly analyzed this ''thrall.''


    This ''thrall'' was no exceptional specimen. Hunched spine. Atrophied muscles. Eyes lightly cloudy with cataracts. Aged.


    Unremarkable.


    Weak.


    Yet, still evidently special. But not in the same way as the champion which possessed strength and speed beyond its physical means.


    Possessed the ability to manifest ice without the usage of any technology.


    Possessed the means to shift its state of matter from solid to gas interchangeably without deconstruction of the consciousness, and the gaseous state itself, though reminiscent of fog, did not dissipate from intense heat.


    The capability to utilize lowered temperatures as a weapon was rare even among tinkerers, with the only avable weapon corresponding with such a capability being industrial scaleser contsrgely impractical forbat.


    The capacity to freely shift states of matter like this, however, held almost no correspondence to anything the Collector knew of throughout its stored memory database.


    No warrior strain Collector had ever encountered anything remotely even simr to this.


    The only thing that came close to this was the existence of certain clouds of microbes that possessed the psionic capability to maintain a hivemind consciousness. This adaptation formed the basis of the Collective itself, but again, this was entirely different.


    "The winds of the north will not work, it seems" said the thrall, narrowing its eyes and snarling as it realized its spell could not harm the Collector. "But my magic does not hold dominion over the cold alone. I thought to preserve you, to keep you as my own familiar in time, but you are too much a threat.


    Burn away."


    The thrall kept the st of wind and ice going with its staff, and with its free hand, ripped off a few finger bones dangling from its mantle. With a grunt, it tossed the bones at the Collector.


    The Collector did not sense anything aberrant about the bones, but when they neared it, they lit first with intense red light, then exploded into roaring balls of fire.


    The Collector remained unharmed through the ze, closing its eyes and letting the fire douse down as it found the Collector''s durable flesh and carapace far too difficult a surface to burn.


    Also unimpressive. Also weak.


    Yet, the fundamental nature of this ability was incredibly dangerous.


    The thrall seemed to bend reality itself to its will, flouting conventional physicalws to a far greater extent than any other special specimen among its kind.


    But, having now received this fire generating attack, the Collector remembered the human female sorcerer could do something simr in much the same manner. Even the heat of their mes were nearly identical.


    The mechanisms through which specimen performed these tricks was much the same as well: through a stick-like receptacle utilizing certain words.


    Combined with the thrall''s babbling providing new context clues, the Collector tied the threads together.


    All this was ''magic''.


    It clicked its mandibles. It had severely underestimated the nature and scope of this ''magic''.


    Its initial theory was that this ''magic'' was a simple tool of war akin to the firearms tinkerers wielded, but even more primitive in scope. That these specimen, human and goblin alike, all seemed to possess not even a shred of threatening technology had also fueled this miscalction.


    That this ''magic'' possessed the capability to manipte the states of matter itself was a threat the Collector could not have fathomed. Such maniption of raw atomic structures and the transfer of energy between them would likely be the most dangerous capability throughout the known gxy.


    As if wielding the essence of creation itself.


    Yet, there were limitations. The thrall did not simply turn the Collector into air. It relied on its fire and ice and equally meaningless and pitiful tricks to try and harm the Collector.


    Though the thrall boasted, it was evident that this altercation would go nowhere. The thrall did not have the means to eliminate the Collector and-


    The Collector leaped backwards as it noticed blue light under its feet again. Another ice pir rose up where it had been.


    "Curses, you are quick. He must have found a way to sacrifice mana into pure power in his familiars," said the thrall.


    The thrall was too slow to encase the Collector in the ice it could create. Soon enough, the lord would arrive with reinforcements from the stronghold.


    The situation became highly disadvantageous for the Collector. It had been willing to face risk to continue the battle and the fight, but this, this prancing around and weathering attacks that did nothing whilst it too could do nothing, was no battle, no fight.


    It was meaningless. Risk for no gain.


    Boring.


    The Collector felt the heat within it quell as it realized this was no longer anything resembling a battle like that held between itself and the champion or even the lesser but still special variants.


    With the heat fading, the Collector did not hesitate and charged away, ignoring hails of ice and projectiles from the thrall breaking against its carapace with about as much care as it would give raindrops.


    It sunk into the thick of the darkwoods where without the aid of the light generating stones, the goblins could not follow it.

 Chapter 24 - Casus Belli

    Lord Zoll gazed upon the pile of red and white hobgoblin bodies and body parts stacked high. The crushed bodies of smaller goblins peppered the pile and a film of blood formed underneath it, trickling ever outwards.


    "Give it to me," said Zoll, his voice grating. At a level tone, but with a force bubbling underneath it that made it obvious that he was ready to explode into a shout at any given moment. "Now."


    "O-of course, my lord," said Hrunt as he shuffled to Zoll''s towering side, hunching his back even more and lowering his head in a bow as he held out a torch. Its flickering head of me shone bright despite the light dulling darkwoods, magically created as it was by the thrall himself.


    Zoll snatched the torch from Hrunt. The wood cracked in his grip as he tossed it to the pile, igniting the bodies. The bugs of this forest did not venture into light, but the few times they did, it was when the scent of corpses overpowered their instinctive fear of the light.


    The fire took to the corpses quick, spreading its heated tongues across the many bodies until it crackled and roared in a swirling ze. In the light fueled by his dead men, Zoll gazed across the encampment he had spent weeks building up.


    Utter ruin.


    Half the camp''s tents and forces destroyed, the food and water supply shattered and trampled upon.


    The champion himself, the strongest military force among them, stronger in directbat than even Zoll himself, gone.


    Shun, the second strongest, gone.


    Ganth, the secondary leader of the Frostskull tribe contingent, gone.


    Not even a corpse remaining from them for Hrunt to try and reanimate.


    "My lord," came Hrunt''s aged yet higher pitched voice. "You should have seen the devastation the sorcerer''s familiar wreaked upon us. The champion you respected fell so.


    Yet, yet I, with the magics I have learned over many years, felled the beast. I know it is not my ce, but perhaps you may consider granting me higher position?"


    Zoll did not give Hrunt even a nce before he sent the thrall writhing on the ground with a backhand to the face. Hrunt groaned in pain as he covered his bleeding mouth with his withered hands.


    "The beast still lives. The sorcerer whom you were supposed to pay with strikes us. You were supposed to have been in this encampment an hour earlier. Had you followed your orders, perhaps we would not have thirty dead hobgoblins and a fallen champion.


    Still you, you pitiful, groveling, miserable old thing, desire a reward? I have one in mind for you." Zoll took the greatsword in his left arm and raised it high, a dull shadow of death casting over Hrunt.


    "Please forgive me, my lord," mumbled Hrunt through bleeding lips as he scrambled down to a prostrate position.


    Zoll lowered the greatsword. He could not afford more losses. "The humans wille for us. They know we are here now. Their vige to the south is a tiny, weak thing meant to be conquered, but now that they know our numbers, they will rally their forces.


    The Adventurer''s League will rear its ugly head in our direction."


    "Should we not retreat?" said Hrunt. Zoll gave him a look, and Hrunt shivered and held his hands up in pleading.


    "I mean no disrespect," said Hrunt. "Only¡­only that with our numbers like this and the loss of our stronger warriors, would it not be safer? We can even head north, beyond the mountains. To my home. There are far fewer humans there."


    "No." Zoll stabbed the greatsword into the ground. "I have slumbered far too long to run now. The spirits themselves bless my cause. It is they who grant us a dungeon for a stronghold, and their will is clear: we must strike the humans down, then the gods themselves."


    "But our forces-," began Hrunt.


    "Call for more of your northern tribesmen," said Zoll. "Draw from our brethren across all the realms. I do not care if you die from spending your mana. Tap into the dungeon and summon as many of us as you can.


    If you do not replenish those you have lost today, you will face suffering at my hands that will have you begging for the merciful release of death.


    Now go."


    "Yes, my lord!" Hrunt bowed several times before scrambling off as fast as he could, his bone ornaments and staff ttering behind him and making his shivering fear ever more evident.


    Zoll looked at his right hand. Completely ckened, like a mass of shadow standing in stark contrast with his green skin. Glowing red lines streaked the dark, concentrating most in a circr pattern on his palm.


    He heard the quiet and small footsteps of a little goblin behind him.


    "Little one," said Zoll.


    The smaller goblin squeaked to attention and rushed to kneel in front of him.


    "Yes?" said the goblin, voice trembling and beady yellow eyes wide apart in fear.


    "You wish to serve, do you not? To be one of my champions?" said Zoll.


    "Of course!" said the goblin. "Always!"


    "I did not wish to use this but hearing your devotion does ease my heart." Zoll wrapped hisrge, darkness inked hand over the goblin''s head, smothering it entirely. The red lines on his hand glowed for a moment, and he released his grip.


    The goblin looked dazed for a moment. Red arcs of energy started to crackle around him, and the goblin attempted to scream in pain. His voice did not manage to escape his throat as his body began to change, bones breaking apart in cracks and muscles tearing and rippling.


    The goblin started to grow, its limbs and body stretching and morphing in hideous proportions as its form reconstructed itself.


    In a few seconds, where before there was a little goblin, there now was a hobgoblin, eyes reddened, yet empty, whatever vestige of the goblin it had spawned from utterly gone.


    If the humans wanted war, thought Zoll as he gazed to the south. Then war, they would have.


    ____________________


    The Collector stalked the light zone of the forest with some measure of difficulty. Unlike the darkwoods which had trees thrice the size, the lighter zone had smaller trees packed closer together, making the Collector''s bulked up boar form unsuited to easily wading through it.


    The Collector did manage, somehow, by using its flexible ultrafiber muscles and exceptional control over them to dete itself to shrink past tighter gaps, but its movement through the forest was definitively slower than before.


    Efficiency decay of approximately twenty seven percent.


    That was why when the Collector decided upon a quiet spot to evolve, it decided to keep its size the same. It would still tower over almost any creature here, but it wouldpromise some level of strength gain if it meant maintaining a capacity for stealth.


    Initially, it had been confident that there was little to nothing that could start challenging it, but the nature of this ''magic'' had made it more wary.


    Once it was done evolving, it would stop at nothing to investigate and better understand the mechanics of this ''magic'', this anomalous force that seemed to bend creation itself to its will. It was heresy to even begin thinking this, but such a force would be even superior to the Collective''s capability to bend organic evolution to its will.


    It was a threat, a massive one, and the probability of the immense entity the Collector had first fought being one tied to ''magic'' reached nearly one hundred percent.


    The thrall''s capacity to utilize this ''magic'' was utterly pitiful, but if at its greater heights it could manifest such entities, then this world, despite its absence of development and civilization, would still prove a great threat to the Collective.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles in knowing as it curled down on the ground, beginning its metamorphosis process by melting down its body into primordial ooze that weaved a cocoon around it.


    This world and all those upon it had to be destroyed. Preferably assimted, their special properties and ''magic'' incorporated into the Collective. If the Collective obtained such a power, it would be the premiere force in the entire gxy.


    For now, however, the Collector had to grow stronger to fulfill its purpose.


    As the Collector reduced itself into a beating, embryonic egg encased in a liquid filled chamber of transparent, vein-lined flesh, it decided how to evolve itself, bringing up its stored gic material.


    >>>


    Stored Gic Material:


    -ck Ant


    -ck Goblin


    -Human


    -Giant Scorpion


    -Stonecrusher Beetle


    -Jumping Arakka


    -Lesser Oni


    -Frostborn Hobgoblin


    -Greater Oni


    >>>


    By reaching the fifth level of metamorphosis, the Collector could splice together four independent specimen together.


    The first was obvious: the Greater Oni that called itself a champion, and the only one among the goblin primitives that deserved its title. This would serve as an apt warm-blooded base suitable for growing muscture and strong bones upon.


    The Collector discarded its jungle spider base and reced it with the far superior Jumping Arakka.


    The others were more variable.


    The Collector mixed in the Stonecrusher Beetle genes for it possessed great physical strength for an insectoid as well as thick carapace suited for the hyperalloy carapace adaptation. Its pincer like horns capable of shattering stone would grow to monstrous proportions on the Collector, and it possessed limited flight capabilities.


    Now then, there was the matter of whether the Collector would keep its frostboar genes or discard it for something else. The lesser oni gene was strictly inferior to that of the greater oni.


    The Collector pondered utilizing the frostborn hobgoblin genes, but if it desired cold resistance, then the frostboar was superior in every way.


    The giant scorpion was the only thing to consider. It too provided a base to grow hyperalloy carapace, but its main draw was the stinger it possessed that stored a deadly neurotoxin that would rapidly seize muscr functions in most of the creatures the Collector had encountered so far.


    The Collector analyzed for a brief moment and settled upon discarding the frostboar gene for the giant scorpion.


    With the greater oni as a muscle and bone base, it would have to take a bipedal form, but it did not feel as revulsed considering that this specific specimen had been a suitable warrior to the Collector''s standards.


    And, with some measure of anticipation, the Collector wished to try and extract the property that made the champion so special. Now that it would reach the fifth metamorphosis level, it could extract and permanently keep an adaptation from one of its bases for itself.


    If this special property, one very likely linked to ''magic'', was an adaptation, then it was feasible that the Collector could take such an exceptional capability for itself. If not, then it would still be pleased to possess the extraordinary fire resistance that red variant goblins such as the champion possessed.


    The Collector made its decisions and evolved.

 Chapter 25 - Evolutionary Development

    Throughout the better part of an hour, the Collector''s evolutionary cocoon swelled to a size greater than it had ever been before.


    An eruption of fleshy tendrils burst from the beating cocoon, hungrilytching onto any remnant biomass around it, pouring over grass, roots, trees, and any creatures left in the undergrowth.


    The web of pulsating flesh roots tethered the cocoon to the trees surrounding it, and these trees rapidly faded in color, their green leaves going through their cycle of life in an instant, turning red then orange then finally decaying into shriveled gray.


    The nutrients were unneeded but could still aid in the metamorphosis process.


    The embryonic egg visible through the cocoon had now grown to the Collector''s new form, huddled up and curled into apact ball with its knees drawn up to its chest and its arms hugging itself.


    The cocoon rippled for onest time and burst with a squelching pop. With a torrent of viscous, steaming amniotic fluid, the Collectornded to the ground on a knee, its carapace-ted body squelching with its every movement as it finished its solidification process.


    >>>


    [METAMORPHOSIS LEVEL 5 REACHED. UNLOCKING FURTHER CAPABILITIES OF THE EVOLUTIONARY SYSTEM.]


    [-GENE BOOST RESTORED]


    [-CAPACITY TO SPLICE TOGETHER UNIQUE GENETIC MATERIALS INCREASED FROM 3 TO 4]


    [-CAPABILITY TO PERMANENTLY EXTRACT FOREIGN ADAPTATIONS GAINED. SENSING FOREIGN PLANET AND BIOMASS. <NATIVE ADAPTATIONS> SUBMENU UNLOCKED.]


    Metamorphosis Level 4>5


    Biomass Level: 124/100> 12/100


    Stored Gic Material:


    -ck Ant


    -ck Hobgoblin


    -Human


    -Lesser Oni


    -Frostborn Hobgoblin


    Adaptations:


    <Internal Systems>


    -Ultrafiber Muscles Rank 4>5


    *Sub-adaptation gained*


    --Coilboosters


    <External Systems>


    -Sensitive Hairs Rank 3>4


    -Organic Hyperalloy Carapace Rank 3>4


    <Weapons Systems>


    -Monomolecr ws Rank 2>3


    -Pyrocatalytic nds Rank 1>2


    <Native Adaptations*NEW*>


    -???


    Current Form:


    Greater Oni/Jumping Arakka/Stonecrusher Beetle/Giant Scorpion


    >>>


    The Collector returned to a bipedal base utilizing the goblin champion''s form.


    Where the champion stood a little over two meters tall, the Collector stood close to three meters tall, utterly dwarfing any human or goblin specimen.


    However, in total mass, it weighed slightly less than itsparativelyrger boar form. A tradeoff of physicals strength and size for a more mobile and hide-able form.


    The sheer number of carapace-ted creatures incorporated in the Collector''s new form influenced its appearance.


    Bone white, metallic hyperalloy carapace covered every single inch of its body in thick tes. The thickest hyperalloy tes wrapped around its head in a dome that fused down into the ends of its broad shoulders, almost making it seem like the Collector wore a huge, hooded helmet.


    Under this helm, its fourpound eyes glowed in the dark, deep within the folds of the helm ¨C an adaptation of the beetle so that it could resist light for short excursions though, of course, the Collector itself had no such weakness to light.


    The carapace helmet could also retract, revealing a smooth, red-skinned face with mandibles, prehensile ultrafiber tongue, and antennae.


    From the top of this organic helm, the stonecrusher beetle''s rock shattering, pincir-shaped horn emerged.


    The stonecrusher beetle''s horn already had the capability to withstand high-speed, high-impact charges, andbined with the Collector''s hyperalloy carapace, this horn became an immensely durable battering ram.


    The Collector did not tip the horn with a monomolecr edge for the structure did not suit it. The horn was meant for mming and, if the pincers got a hold of something, crushing.


    A monomolecr edge would thin the horn''s ends and make it brittle.


    Instead, the monomolecr ws burst out from the Collector''s fingers with small spikes emerging from its elbows. When the ws reached rank 5, the Collector could fashion them into longer structures to increase the effective range of their deadliness.


    And that would be soon, considering that the Collector had restored Gene Boosting.


    With gene boosting, whenever it assumed a new form, if the bases it utilized werepatible with adaptations it already had, then it could add bonus points to their ranks.


    For example, if the next form it took used insect bases, then it could add bonus points to its hyperalloy carapace rank.


    A white-ted, five-segmented metasoma emerged as a new tail for the Collector. The scorpion''s tail had enough length to stretch around the Collector and as it curled the tail around itself, it gazed at the ck-tinted stinger the size of a man''s head.


    Satisfactory.


    Boosted by the Collector''s physiology, the neurotoxin became a potent paralyzing agent that could copse lungs, stop hearts, and induce a rapid onset of neurological decay to even hobgoblin sized creatures. At this dosage, it might as well have been an instant death sentence for non-special humans.


    The Collector retained its six arachnid legs it utilized as extra limbs, but reced now with the arakka gene, these legs possessed a special ''jumping'' ability generated from the hydraulic pressure systems in the arakka legs that would allow for bursts of high speed movement or an explosive jump.


    Theoretically, the Collector could also now scale cliffs using these arms.


    The six legs sprouted not from the Collector''s back this time, but from the sides of its ribs and lower back. This meant that the Collector could switch between bipedalism or eight legged crawling depending on what was more appropriate.


    Bipedalism was morebat oriented while eight-legged movement was faster and more defensive with the Collector lying lower to the ground, covering the thinner ting on its chest and front.


    The positioning of the legs being more forwards also allowed the Collector enough space on its back to produce wings.


    The Collector stretched its form, allowing blood to flow, and then unfurled its beetle wings. The elliptical dome of carapace covering its back split in half and unfolded as four sets of enormous insectoid wings fluttered, buzzing and flicking off the rest of the amniotic fluid away.


    And, as the Collector realized in surprise when it moved, it realized that its strength had not beenpromised by reducing its weight.


    In fact, as it mmed a muscled, armored hand to a nearby tree trunk with a half-hearted effort and splitting it almost in half, it might have even been stronger.


    Then had it sessfully extracted the property that made the creatures here special? The property that allowed them to defy physicalws and maintain mass and strength beyond their natural means?


    The Collector realized it did not know.


    On its evolutionary status, there was indeed an abnormality. An adaptation marked aspletely unknown under the <native adaptations> submenu.


    The <native adaptations> submenu was meant to list all the adpatations it extracted from species of this world, but it appeared it could not sufficiently analyze the nature of what it had extracted from the champion.


    In intent, the Collector desired to extract this special property. In effect, it knew not what this was.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles in contemtion. This was unheard of.


    The Collective''s evolutionary system possessed an intricate knowledge of the fundamental basesprising all life, allowing it to assess and understand anything once it was consumed.


    But of course, the Collector reminded itself again, this world was aberrant. Anomalous at its core, its species possessing capabilities circumventing physical and biological rules.


    It did not know how to uncover the nature of this adaptation, but at the least, it had extracted something, indicating that at some level, these special properties were biological.


    Soon, the Collector would learn. It would know everything there was to this world. These special properties and, especially, this ''magic''.


    The night was dark, the single moon orbiting this world shrouded in heavy, rain filled clouds. The Collector clicked its mandibles.


    Good. In the dark, the humans would not see iting.


    The Collector began its investigation into ''magic''.


    _______________________


    The Collector traveled through the forest, investigating in order the two ck goblin dens. For due to the disappearance of the three humans, one of which was special, capable of utilizing this ''magic'', the Collector was sure that more would follow to find them.


    The first den, nearest to the darkwoods, remained empty, just as the Collector had left it.


    The other one, however, closer to human settlement, was littered with the stench and movement of humans.


    Under the cover of night, the Collector, even with its current size, could stalk humans through these woods, especially if they knew not of its presence.


    Behind a thicket of trees, the Collector stared at the clearing housing the goblin den.


    It analyzed the situation.


    Six humans. Slightly different in appearance to the others it consumed. Darker skin. All wore uniform armor. Primitive steel fashioned into linked scales. More flexible chain link vests underneath. Round helmets of uniform design. Pointed at the ends with tassels of hair attached.


    Five humans with brown tassels. One with green.


    Six four-legged beastsy tethered to a log by ropes. Harnesses on them indicated domestication. Judging by design of harnesses and seats, beasts of burden meant for facilitating travel.


    Analysis indicated the humans belonged to a military structure. Same armor. Slight differentiation via helm tassels to indicate chain ofmand, likely.


    The humans gathered around the entrance of the den and talked among themselves, likely having already explored it.


    The Collector listened intently.


    Was it possible that the militaristic humans of this world all possessed the means to utilize ''magic?''


    That they were all special?


    Exactly what level of threat could the average military force of the humans residing within this anomalous world muster?


    The Collector would know soon enough.

 Chapter 26 - Interrogation I

    ===


    Among a squadron of soldiers investigating the disappearance of three adventurers sent to exterminate a reported goblin den -


    "Well, this is the den, captain" said a soldier, narrowing his eyes as he scrutinized a map in his hands.


    "Are you absolutely sure?" said the captain.


    The soldier looked back down at the map. "Yes, I''m sure of it, sir. Vigers reported small men taking their chickens and cows. The hunters tracked these suspects to around here and confirmed they were goblins. And I am no adventurer, but this does seem like a den goblins would hide in."


    "Then tell me, where are the goblins?" The captain paced up to the den, peering in, then back in, hands behind his back. "Hm? Where are they?"


    The soldiers looked at each other, not sure what to say.


    "Maybe the adventurers killed them and left," said another soldier.


    "Without returning to the vige for their pay?" The captain scoffed. "I am no adventurer, but from rumors, I hear that the one stars make even less than us, thank the empire for its benefits.


    You truly believe they would skip out on coin when they may not even have the coin to fill their stomachs?"


    "Nothing ever happens here, I doubt they are truly dead," remarked a soldier. When he saw the captain re at him, he added, "Respectfully speaking, sir."


    The captain rubbed his forehead. "Then where. Are. They."


    The soldiers looked at each other in confusion again.


    "I should not have expected anything from soldiers so lowly the empire throws them out to guard this miserable frontier vige in the middle of absolutely fucking nowhere. By Ajna, what I would give to be back in the greater cities where the arts and music and magic and, most importantly, baremon-sense flourish."


    The captain pointed at the den. "Look, you fools. Nothing in the den. No goblin bodies. No adventurer bodies. What do we tell the Adventurer''s League?"


    "I thought the League did not really care for their one stars," said a soldier.


    "They do not care if they know how they died. If there is a proper report. Another thing this barbaric ce sorelycks ¨C records and reports. No working toilets, just pits to squat on, let alone paper and ink." The sergeant shook his head. "The League, the Order, and practically every single important group there is in all the realms are on watch for Undeath.


    One undead can make a thousand more." He snapped his fingers. "Just like that. Did your mothers not tell you tales of the undead when you sucked on her teats?


    If we do not give them a proper report, they will send more adventurers to investigate, and they will tear through this vige and forest until they find corpses."


    "That is not so bad, is it?" said a soldier. He coughed and added on a "sir."


    The captain stepped up to the younger soldier. "Not so bad? Tell me, why is this not so bad?"


    The soldier wavered for a bit. "The adventurers fought for this vige. They may get proper sendoff to Aetheria if their bodies are found."


    "Oh, yes, I would not deny them the sacred rite to have their bodies burned," said the captain. "But let me put it in a way all of you can understand.


    We are taking bribes, yes?"


    The soldiers nodded.


    "Bribes from a sorcerer, yes?"


    The soldiers nodded.


    "A sorcerer with a fucking sealing order on him, yes?"


    The soldiers nodded a little slower this time.


    "You know what that means, no?"


    The soldiers looked at each other, hints of confusion on their faces.


    The captain sighed. "Did all of you grow upon farms? Oh wait, yes you did. You did not have tutors, you learned from pigs and chickens," he said sarcastically. "The Sorcerer''s Order does not designate sealing orders lightly.


    They ce it upon heretics of the highest degree, those who with their twisted mystic arts have broken thews of the gods and the sanctity of life, and the Order works closely with the League ¨C the two might as well be the same damn thing, as far as we are concerned.


    Say the League investigates us, you think they will not find out about this very same sorcerer lining our pockets? Then they call their friends in the Order that strap us up, interrogate us, and then toss us behind bars.


    And because we are all lowly soldier-castes, we will rot there for a decade. Perhaps my father can bail me out, but all of you will end up as skeletons picked clean by rats."


    The soldiers shuffled ufortably. One of them raised a suggestion. "We can turn the sorcerer in. I never liked him in the first ce, foreign snake he is."


    "Oh, marvelous idea," said the captain, throwing his hands in the air. "And then he can turn us in when the Order questions him."


    "We could forge a report," came another suggestion.


    "Now we are getting somewhere." The captain raised a hand to his moustache. "But not until we search further. If we can find their bodies, good. It would leave a bad taste on my tongue also if they were not given proper passage rites.


    But if not, then start conjuring up some creative ideas for me to put into this ''report''. Something that will get the League off our backs." The sergeant thrust out a hand towards the edges of the clearing. "Think while you move. Light your torches, fan out and search the surroundings. Anendara is arge forest, untamed by man.


    Take your time, avoid getting eaten by sloth bears, and reconvene here in an hour."


    "Yes sir!"


    The captain watched as his men funneled out, the lights of their torches disappearing as they faded out of the clearing, and himself picked up his torch and headed out. He wondered whether sloth bears even lived in this forest, but mentally shrugged.


    It was not his job to strut around in the muck of this wild forest, to know what ever happened here. All he had to do was keep watch over the vige for a year, then he could get back to Dwarka where in a real city, he could take a real bath, eat some real food, and listen to some real music.


    But he would not get there rotting in a Sundan jail cell. Born without the capacity to awaken spirit roots and with no mind for business, all he could do was be a soldier. Well, until his bloated father croaked and died to leave him a merchant''s fortune.


    He did not expect to find the adventurers. He had little idea what could have actually happened, nor did he truly care much. The soldiers were right: nothing ever happened here, this far from the eastern warfront or the southern borders by the World Dungeons.


    This ce was a safe haven. Azy ce where vigers from thebor-caste lived their little lives and died in their mud huts.


    That was what he thought as he stepped out of the clearing, and not ten steps in, something yanked him off bnce, covering his mouth in hard metal that scraped his skin. His torch fell out of his grip and snuffed out of existence, leaving him blind in the night.


    ===


    The Collector dragged the squirming human further into the forest, away from his men who grew ever more distant by the second. It pinned the human''s arms down with its own massive arm and kept a hand wrapped around his head.


    The Collector''s hand alone wasrge enough to wrap entirely around the man''s head, preventing him from uttering a noise. Like this, the Collector held the man, and his squirming offered as much resistance to the Collector as the nightly breeze would.


    Several minutes passed, and the Collector confirmed this human''s allies were far enough away. It uncovered a hand from the human''s mouth.


    "Me-," began the human in a half-formed shout to try and call for his soldiers.


    The Collector reacted instantaneously and mmed the human into a tree, monitoring its force such that it simply knocked the breath out of him while minimizing noise.


    Armor nked against tree bark, and the human slumped down to the forest floor, wheezing as he looked up, trying to get a read of the Collector.


    "You will not call for assistance, primitive little creature. When your fragile lungs recover breath, I will ask you questions. You will answer them."

 Chapter 27 - Interrogation II

    The human sucked in a few more empty breaths before the impact of the blow began to wear off. He looked up at the Collector but in the dark, could only see the white carapace.


    "White armor¡­you are from Judica?" said the human with a cough. He held up his hands in surrender and pleading. "There are no daemons here, I swear upon my life. That is all I know, and that is all my men know."


    "You will wait until you are addressed. Then, you will speak." The Collector wrapped its hand around the whole length of the human''s head.


    "I will speak! I will!" came the human''s muffled voice.


    "Agreeable." The Collector let go of the human''s head and hovered its hand beside his neck. Its monomolecr ws unsheathed from its fingers with a metallic click.


    It held the ws close to the human''s face as a reminder of its imminent demise. "Were you here to investigate the deaths of these¡­adventurers?"


    The human nodded, and the Collector focused its senses on the human''s reactions, paying close attention to his subtle twitches of facial expression, pace of breathing, and heartrate.


    It did not know how these humans operated when they spoke to each other, but it did know that tinkering species possessed the capacity to lie and twist the truth of things.


    This, the Collector, as a warrior strain unequipped to deal with the minds of tinkerers or even to talk in any capacity other than battle cries and taunts, was entirely unused to, and it needed data to determine if this primitive and others like it were indeed speaking truth.


    "Another question." The Collector clicked its mandibles, assessing what question would drive the human most likely to lie. "Are you receiving bribes from a sorcerer?"


    The Collector analyzed the human. It noted a further widening of the eyes. Slightly increased heartbeat. An involuntary twitch of movement. A shift of the pupil in slightly averted gaze.


    Data collected.


    "There is no sorcerer here in these backwards woods," said the human. "Good sir from Judica, if you are here to hunt daemons, again, I truly do not know."


    "You lie to me." The Collector clicked its mandibles. It did not have enough data to have a perfect reading of truth and falsity for every human, it was certain, but at the least, for this specific one, it did.


    The Collector grabbed the man''s face, its brawny, armor-ted fingers squishing the flesh, the seams in the carapace catching on the skin and tearing it. This was a gesture to cause pain and induce fear to invoke survival instincts.


    "Yes! Yes! I am taking bribes! And so are the rest of my men!" said the human in a muffled shout. "Spare me, good sir. I have no quarrel with you or your holy city, and truly, I know nothing. Nothing of daemons or anything of that foul kind."


    "Hm. Your underdeveloped ocr systems are yet to adjust their photoreceptors to this dark, it seems. But do not make this mistake again." The Collector knelt down low and retracted its carapace helmet, revealing its monstrous red oni and insect hybrid face.


    It chomped down its mandibles dangerously close to the human''s neck. "I am not one of you feeble, dirt-crawling, babbling, incoherent pests.


    And if even one more primitive of this world designates me as a creation of you humans, I will ensure their consumption shall be optimized to terrorize their pain receptors."


    "A¡­a monster," said the human, his eyes turning wide and his skin growing a shade paler. A tremble ran through his body.


    "Nor am I monster," said the Collector, tired by now of having to correct these overgrown simians that it was not some ordinary beast as lowly as the fauna that ran about this forest. "I sense you are entering into preliminary stages of panic capable ofpromising your mental functions.


    Reconsider this, for the moment your mind proves too feeble for me to extract information from, I will crush your skull."


    The human gulped in a breath and nodded several times. "I-I can talk, I can."


    "Agreeable." The Collector began to ask questions it truly was curious about. "Can you utilize this phenomenon known among your kind as ''magic''?"


    "O-of course. If you are asking if I am Connected-" The human slowly raised up a gloved hand. Bright green lines in the shape of wires present in circuitry lit up across the palm. "Then I am."


    The Collector clicked its mandibles as it recognized the circuitry-type lighting across the flesh from the thrall. And, as it searched its memory banks, from the female sorcerer, though hers were initially hidden by clothing, located on the skin atop her sternum.


    "Connected? Exin further. What do these light-emitting lines signify? Are they biological adaptations? They appear to mimic circuitry. Is there machinery you connect yourselves to through these circuits?


    No, I have not encountered any sufficiently developed technology. Then is there a remote signal that you receive through these circuits?"


    "I¡­I do not know," said the human in rising fear fueled by confusion, knowing that if he could not answer the Collector''s question adequately, he would die, and yet, he could not.


    The Collector growled. "Your mind is too primitive to understand me, and I am too unused to this world''s anomalous properties. I shall give you the chance to speak.


    Tell me all that you know of this ''connection'' and ''magic''."


    "Magic is...magic is¡­an art. Art of the gods." The human waved its circuit-crossed hand desperately in the Collector''s face. "This is proof we are connected to Ajna."


    "An art? Tell me, human, what specifically is this ''magic'' capable of?"


    "A-anything. Anything under the grace of Ajna."


    "Anything? Difficult to believe. If so, you would have splintered my molecr structure into basepounds already," said the Collector. "No, there are limitations. Presumably deriving from these ''gods'', of whom this ''Ajna'' is presumably one.


    Tell me, what are these ''gods?''"


    "What are the gods?" the human repeated to himself in confusion. "They are, well, they are everything."


    "Do not begin to babble nonsense," said the Collector as it neared its ws to the human''s neck.


    "The gods control it all! All the gates! Elements. Fire, wind, water, earth. Hate and love. Life and death. Everything!"


    "Define ''control''," said the Collector. "And these ''gates''."


    "They hold dominion over these gates. Gates are, they are what is everything. All around us. Power. Fire or water or wind or life. We connect to them, worship the gods, draw power from them through the gates, then, then ¨C," The human fumbled with his words, panicked but unable to fully articte knowledge he did not have.


    "I-I do not know for sure, I know no secrets to the arcane arts. I am not a sorcerer. I have read only one tome on the general arcane arts, and that was for beginners, and even that, I could not fully grasp. I am just a lowly man of the soldier-castes, I know nothing of the mystic arts."


    "The exact mechanics of the rtionship between these concepts and their function still confound me," said the Collector. "But I am able perceive a basic concept of it, even from your nigh incoherent babbling.


    It is exceptionally hard to believe, but these circuits allow you to connect to entities known as ''gods'' that control ''gates'' representing a specific force."


    "Yes, yes, that is exactly right!" said the human in relief that the Collector could piece together and articte what it had said in a more concise manner. "Please, I know so little of magic. I have never truly practiced it, only the few limited spells I know from military training.


    There¡­there is a sorcerer in these woods, you know of him. He can tell you all you wish to know and more."


    "I see." The Collector clicked its mandibles, ignoring the human''s plea for now. It had chosen to interrogate this human for it seemed to possess authority and knowledge, but it began to realize this specimen was just as lowly as the others.


    If it truly desired knowledge, it needed to interrogate a specimen that was more familiar with ''magic''. A ''sorcerer'', as it was called.


    For now, it continued to speak its thoughts. "Then these ''gods'' must be a higher species that has enved your kind.


    They wield sufficiently advanced technology, technology as of yet unknown to any tinkering species, that allows them to signal down maniptions of matter such as manifestations of me and even free control over shifts in matter states.


    Yet, this hypothesis remains tenuous.


    What use would such a species have for your primitive kind?


    To leave you still so primitive?


    Why would they share such specific aspects of their technology without either uplifting the rest of your species or colonizing them entirely?


    Why are there no traces of their own civilization upon this world?"


    The human blinked, lost.


    "It seems this topic escapes the grasp of your bare neural functions. Very well then. I will move on to further questions.


    Tell me, what are you and your brethren capable of with this ''magic''? ''Spells'' I presume are applications of this ''magic''."


    "These-these are military secrets I cannot-," began the human, but he gulped and continued when he saw the Collector''s ws draw near.


    "Together, we can cast barriers. Ry battlemands and movements. But in the end, we are all mere soldier-castes, lowly and living batteries for the sorcerer-castes in the battlefield," said the human nervously, though this was not anxiety induced by lying. "It is the sorcerer-caste you should question, they hold all the knowledge of magic.


    More fear, not of the Collector, but likely of retribution from his fellow brethren thatprised the greater military unit that he was part of.


    The Collector spoke. "And these ''sorcerers'', I presume then they are utilizers of this ''magic'' more proficient than yourselves?"


    The human nodded vigorously. He began to back away a little, his weight shifting to the back of his boots.


    "Please, I cannot reveal more military secrets of Sunda''s great empire. The Unseen will have my head, and I know so little to begin with.


    The sorcerer in the woods, yes, he will tell you far, far more than us. My men can lead you to him, they know more than I."


    The human bit his lip and tensed up. "You¡­you will let me live, yes? At the end of all this, you will let me go?"


    "I will keep my secrecy longer, and you cannot live for that. When this questioning ceases, you will die, and your death will be enshrined in the Collective as a high honor for the meager information I extort from you."


    The human blinked several times as he grew silent.


    The Collector sensed the human''s escape before it even happened.


    The Collector reacted the moment the human swerved backwards to try and run, knocking the human onto his face in the dirt. A ted foot crashed onto the human''s legs, crushing bones and obliterating its mobility. Before the human could utter a scream of pain, the Collector once more muffled its mouth.


    "Why would you deny yourself the high honor of entering the Collective? Foolishness." The Collector started to let go of the human''s mouth, but it immediately began to scream again.


    "Hrm." The Collector mmed the human''s face into the dirt, breaking a nose in a gesture meant to hurt, not kill, for in terms of questioning, it began to realize, all it knew was how to inflict pain and hurt and desperation. "Does that bring you to your senses?"


    "I¡­no, I can''t-," said the human with a desperate, choking voice. "I can''t die here."


    The Collector mmed the human in the dirt again before it could scream, and this time, when it pulled the human''s face back, he came up missing several teeth. Blood streamed from his lips and nose, but still, the human tried to scream.


    The Collector mashed the human''s head into the dirt again with irritation.


    Invoking merely the base and primal instinct to survive alone was insufficient to bend these human wills to the Collector. Perhaps, it pondered, the humans would respond more positively if it allowed them to live, but there was no point to this.


    The Collector did not lie like these tinkerers did. If the information it received was not sufficiently useful, then it would not twist its words and tell these primitives they were to continue living their worthless lives.


    In the end, the Collector would destroy all life upon this rock anyway.


    In addition, allowing them to leave now would endanger the Collector for a gain of information that simply was not worth their lives.


    "You are bing increasingly useless. Increasingly uncooperative. The Collective is a unified purpose spanning entire star systems. Countless species far greater than yours have entered it, elevating it into an entity closest to the ideal concept of perfection.


    Far greater than any of these ''gods'' you idolize, I should theorize. Yet you would not submit yourself to the honor of entering its fold, transcending your limited, primitive flesh and bing something more?"


    The human continued to struggle, limbs thrashing slowly in the dirt as it tried to run with its head pinned down.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles in irritation. "Then so be it. Youck the knowledge I seek. Your men know the location of this ''sorcerer''. You, an ingrate who rejects the Collective, I hold no more use for."


    The Collector pressed down on the human''s head with its palm. A pop echoed as the human''s skull, flesh, and brain matter all squished down into one t pile of gore.


    The Collector grabbed the human''s torso like a snack and swallowed him with two bloody bites and made a note that when it returned to the Collective, it would erase the human''s gic material from its database.


    >>>


    *Biomass gained (+2)*


    Biomass Level: 14/100


    >>>


    Pitiful.


    As expected, the human did not possess any appreciable amount of biomass, indicating that itcked much of the special property that the Collector sought out. However, even this small amount thwarted the Collector''s memory extraction process.


    The Collector reconsidered its prior hypothesis that the humans were psionically connected together.


    No, it was likely that by channeling themselves through these ''gates'' to cast ''magic'', they linked themselves to higher entities known as ''gods'' that provided the necessary psionic defense against extraction.


    Then the greatest threats upon this world would be these ''gods'', though their capabilities were as of yet unknown to the Collector. Still, it could extrapte that these beings were not all-powerful. They had not tracked it down yet nor did they show any sign of their existence so far.


    The degree of connection between these ''magic'' utilizing humans and the ''gates'' that connected them to the gods did not seem strong either, for if it was, then the gods would have known of the Collector''s presence.


    It was possible that this entire connection process was merely the remnants of a higher species'' technology that these primitives inefficiently utilized and mistakenly believed as being supernatural.


    Considering the presence of unitan, thenguage of the human empire, upon this world, and how it was linked to magic, it may even have been that this technology came from them.


    Regardless, the Collector did not have enough evidence and knowledge to formte exact theories yet.


    It had to find more information, and the human might not have been exceptionally useful, but he did give the Collector a far better lead to pursue: the sorcerer.

 Chapter 28 - Soldiers

    The Collector waited for an hour by the clearing, lying down in its eight-legged form to minimize its visibility. Its carapace might have been white, but it did not reflect light strongly, meaning that in the dark, especially shrouded by thick undergrowth and bushes, it could still remain hidden.


    The soldiers began to return one by one, their torchlights highly visible in the night. The Collector listened to them.


    "All of us are here now. Where''d the captain go?"


    "Think he got lost? You know, I wouldn''t mind if he did."


    "Cut that out. If he disappears, we''re in deep shit. His father has enough coin to make sure we never see the light of day. Think he''ll take his son''s disappearance lightly?"


    Some quiet.


    "Let''s head out to find him," decided a soldier, and the others nodded with him. "Stick together in case there''s a real threat out there."


    "You trying to scare us? You know nothing happens here. What''s going to happen? A half-man goblin tries to crawl up our legs? Even we can handle that."


    "I wouldn''t be so sure. Lately, I''ve been having these bad dreams, don''t make fun of me for it, but¡­they feel like omens."


    "I understand. And the sun, too, the ck sun. They say that the world ends when the eye of Ajna closes. Maybe this is it?"


    "Stop. We are from Sunda,nd of magic. The greatest philosophers and thinkers and astronomers hail from us.


    All other realms and kingdoms have squabbled and worried about the end times for the past two hundred years since the Undying, but our kingdom has grown out of it.


    All of us might be from the lowly soldier-ss, but our great libraries allow all but the lowestbor-ss citizens ess to knowledge.


    You know, some of you should read a tome or two. I''ve read that a ck sun happens quit often. Every five hundred years when the great gods ascend into the Beyond, it is said. This-," The soldier put a gloved finger up to the ck sun. "Is normal. Now, instead of panicking for a superstitious future, we should focus on the now. Come on, let''s find the captain so we can keep our heads on our necks."


    The soldiers began to shuffle out. The Collector made its move.


    It blitzed out of the undergrowth, its eight legs skittering at rapid speeds as it shot towards the soldiers as an enormous dome of carapace and legs.


    Most humans possessed an innate fear of the insectoid, of many legs and shells, and when these soldiers saw a beetlerger than three of them put together speeding towards them, they screamed.


    The Collector used its beetle horn to m into one soldier, breaking his kneecaps, then swiveled around, knocking all the others t to the ground in a sweeping impact. One by one, the Collector used its arachnid legs to sever tendons in their heels before they could get up.


    "All of you are now fully immobilized," said the Collector as it stood up, sheathing its arakka legs back into its sides.


    The five soldiers screamed in fright and pain.


    The Collector crushed one of their heads underfoot. "Continue screaming, and that is your fate."


    "M-monster?" remarked a soldier as he gazed upon the Collector''s form.


    The Collector strode over to the soldier and crushed his head also. "And if you designate me with that disgraceful term, then that too will be your fate."


    The soldiers began to hush up, though even now, they trembled in terror.


    The Collector knew this from before when it interrogated their leader, but even the military might of this world did not possess much of the special properties and ''magic'' that made certain specimen dangerous.


    The human leader did possess ''magic'', yes, but not in any capacity that was useful. In even less a capacity than the female human sorcerer, the ''adventurer'' as she was called.


    The logical conclusion followed that the vast majority of specimen in this world did not possess this special property in any appreciable amount. It was only rare specimen among the already special ones that could pose a threat to the Collector.


    Thus, the Collector moved with more confidence, assessing that the total risk of confronting these soldiers was low. It stared at the soldiers, at their eyes zed in terror and their bodies releasing adrenaline that reeked of fear and desperation.


    The Collector knew that if it hounded these primitives for hours, it could extract information from them even through their panic-stricken and inefficient mental states. But it did not desire to sit through their jumbled thought processes.


    It already knew what it wanted from these primitives.


    "One of you possesses a map. A cartographic outline of this area. Give it to me," said the Collector.


    "In his satchel!" shouted a soldier as he pointed to a bag tied to the hip of one of the crushed ones.


    The Collector tore the satchel from the corpse and inspected how it worked. The sps holding it shut were too small for its fingers, so it ripped the leather holding apparatus open.


    Its contents spilled out. A gourd holding water. Dried flesh for food. An amber colored stone emitting a dull light. A scroll of dried and processed nt matter marked with scribbles: the map.


    The Collector consumed the dried flesh and found it the same as that of the deer present in the forest. In other words:pletely unremarkable. It inspected the amber stone between its thumb and index finger.


    "What is this?" asked the Collector.


    "A sparkstone," said one of the remaining three soldiers through pained breaths, for all of the humans had had their tendons severed.


    The Collector sensed through the hairs lining the seams of its carapace armor that they were shuffling back, aiming to escape. "Do not move. Even if I do not train my sight upon you, I can sense your each and every movement. Now tell me, what is this ''sparkstone'' utilized for?"


    "For starting fires," said a soldier. "We-we strike them on metal such as our swords. The sparks will light dry tinder."


    "Hrm." The Collector scraped the stone against its carapace, and indeed, a small shower of sparks alighted from the point of contact. This rock, like the other light generating stone the goblins utilized, had a special property to it.


    The Collector took the map in one hand strode towards one of the soldiers, and the human shrieked. "I will tell you anything! Let me go, I have a family waiting for me!"


    "Ah yes, if you are indeed evolutionarily simr to humans, then you would arrange yourselves into social units dependent on blood rtion. But that information provides nothing for me, so I question why you mention it. I doubt members of your family unit possess knowledge you do not." The Collector knelt by the soldier, utterly dwarfing him, and ripped off a sheathed sword attached to a belt on his hip.


    The Collector inspected the sword, analyzing its design.


    Different in design from the sword the human male adventurer utilized. Longer. The point was broader, less sharp. A strengthening te of metal ran along one side of the de, giving it weight on its swings. Handleprised of metal wrapped in boiled leathers. Curved guard of dull golden metal.


    Nothing aberrant about this weapon. It was simply a primitive tool of limited metalworking capability.


    The Collector snapped the de in half in its hand with minimal effort.


    "Unimpressive." The Collector dropped the broken halves of the de down in front of the soldier''s terrified eyes.


    The soldier scrambled backwards, his hands gouging out desperate paths in the dirt while his legs refused to move properly.


    "Stay still,"manded the Collector, and the soldier did not move. The Collector stared at theparatively tiny map in its hand, scrutinizing its details.


    "Tell me, human," said the Collector as it knelt down to show the soldier the map. "Where are we upon this?"


    The soldier raised a trembling finger to a spot to a forest spot of the map.


    "And the human settlement? I do not intend to make my presence known there now, if you hold concern over this."


    The soldier lowered its finger down to the lowest part of the map where small drawings of living structures indicated settlement. The Collector clicked its mandibles in understanding. It knew the distance from the den to the settlement, and knowing this, it could extrapte the scale of the map.


    "I have been made aware by your leader that there is a certain ''sorcerer'' in this area you are familiar with. Lead me to the direction of this individual, for it is this specimen that I wish to engage with," said the Collector.


    The soldier tapped to the center of the map, to the left of a wide river. The Collector clicked its mandibles, calcting the distance needed to reach the area.


    "Tell me, is this ''sorcerer'' familiar with ''magic''?"


    The soldiers nodded ¨C all they were capable of in their fright and pain at this point. The Collector again wondered if there was perhaps a more efficient way to interrogate these individuals, but all it knew was to appeal to their primal instinct that feared death and pain.


    "What is this sorcerer''s ''magic'' capable of? Combat wise?"


    The soldiers looked at each other nkly. They did not know.


    "None of you know. Your usefulness has ended to me. Perhaps, had I much more time, I would have asked of this world you live in, this ''empire'' you are part of and believe ''enlightened'', but more humans wille soon, and I must move and find answers.


    You have served your purpose. May you find true enlightenment in the Collective."


    The Collector took the soldier in front of him by the head and dashed the skull against the forest floor, shattering it and smearing pink brain mass across the dirt. It stood up and walked towards the remaining two soldiers.


    "We-we told you what we knew! Spare us, please!" The two remaining soldiers shrieked and tried to crawl away, dragging their useless legs with their hands through the dirt.


    "I am sparing you," said the Collector as it neared them. "Sparing you from this pitiful, miserable existence trapped on this little rock when you could be so much more within the glorious expanse of the Collective."

 Chapter 29 - Tracking

    The Collector consumed everything. The bodies of the remaining five soldiers, their equipment, armor and swords and all, the map, and their steeds. This, it did to erase all traces of their movement, making it more difficult for future human investigations to piece together the Collector''s existence.


    All of the soldiers possessed as their leader did minute traces of the special property inherent to this anomalous world, but in such trace amounts that their biomass was no different from that of a normal human''s.


    >>>


    *Biomass gained (+16)*


    Biomass level: 30/100


    *New gic material gained*


    Stored Gic Material:


    -ck Ant


    -ck Hobgoblin


    -Human


    -Lesser Oni


    -Frostborn Hobgoblin


    -cktail Horse


    >>>


    The Collector clicked its mandibles.


    The leader of these humans had provided two points of biomass, just as the rest of his underlings did now. The leader''s dialogue had indicated a possibility that it was superior to the rest, but in the end, they were all the same: weak, groveling creatures to be devoured.


    Would this be the standard of primitive spanning the vast majority of this anomalous world? Would there lie no challenges, no warriors worthy of true consumption?


    The Collector knew that it should find relief at the prospect that this world wasrgely defenseless other than the question of these ''gods'', but it could not help feel a twinge of¡­disappointment.


    The admiration it had began to feel towards the ''champion'' had long faded with these recent disys of pitiful weakness, the heat within its being simmered down without the prospect of battle to entice it.


    The development of this native, unknown adaptation, too, seemed to be corrted with better regtion of this heat, though how and why, it did not understand yet.


    The answers woulde when it could question a ''sorcerer'' more familiar with this topic. From contextual clues, it could parse that these ''sorcerers'' possessed more knowledge of ''magic'' but did not necessarily hold noteworthybat capability.


    In fact, if past evidence indicated anything, no ''sorcerer'' was capable of effectively harming the Collector, though the goblin which styled itself as a ''thrall'' did hold troublesome capabilities.


    By now, the Collector could understand that not all familiar with ''magic'' were equal, but this ''sorcerer'' in the forest might possess equally difficult abilities to fight against. However, it was willing to undertake the risk to subdue this specimen.


    The Collector started off towards its new goal, returning to its eight-legged form and skittering through the forest floor.


    __


    The Collector traveled two hours and twenty-five minutes. It could travel through the forest at a far faster rate than it could with its boar base as the jumping arakka was specialized for speed. And with its efficient processing systems, it could weave through the thick of the forest as if nothing stood in its way at all, and yet, an hour''s worth of movement only allowed it to cover just shy of half this forest biome''s length.


    In conclusion: this forest biome was sizable, and there was much, much more of it the Collector had yet to explore farther to the north and, behind them as the soldier''s map indicated, a mountain range and an entirely separate, colder biome.


    Where the Collector stopped, it noted that the tree line ended, revealing a vast mud bank lined with craters. The rush of water flowing through a river echoed nearby ¨C the source of moisture for this mud bank.


    The river itself was wide enough that it determined that the humans of this world would require vessels to adequately travel across.


    Judging from the strength and flow of the current, the Collector surmised that the ravine separating the lighter zone of the forest from the darker led to thisrger river, and, remembering the map, it knew too that this river flowed down to the human settlement, likely providing it necessary water to subsist upon.


    The map itself onlyrgelyid out the expanse of this forest, Anendara as the humans called it, and this area along with the darkwoods was demarcated with a shade of darker coloring indicating a zone of danger.


    The Collector could understand why as it felt the sensitive hairs lining the seams of its hyperalloy armor raise up.


    Underneath the mud, giant scorpionsy dormant, ready to snatch up prey that neared them. These, the Collector did not invest much attention to, for they were beneath it as a threat.


    No, it instead gazed up to the sky, its gleaming yellow eyes cutting through the dark of night to set upon the form of a pir floating atop the wide river.


    The Collector analyzed it.


    Made by a tinkering civilization judging by intricate patterns of bones and skeletal systems marked upon dull rock. Cylindrical in construction. Dimensions of the structure sizable. Twenty-five meters high. Eight meters in diameter. Three segmentations in the rock indicating three floors.


    Cloaked. An anomalous property refracted wavelengths of light visible to human ocr systems.


    However, the Collector could see through it as its brethren had seen through countless different variations of cloaking devices from the spacefaring tinkerers. It understood that beneath this cloaking ability, the very top floor of the pir glowed with light and heat.


    Mechanisms of the cloaking capability: unknown.


    Mechanisms by which it floated: unknown.


    Both likely rted to anomalous, special property tied to ''magic''.


    High probability bordering on certainty of this being the ''sorcerer''s territory.


    Attempting to extrapte this specimen and its construct''sbat capabilities¡­


    Unknown until direct contact made.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles. The pir floated at a height that it could reach.


    Its beetle wings could not sustain long term flight, but it could,bined with the hydraulic pump of the arakka legs and its new coilbooster sub-adaptation that allowed for immense bursts of muscr power to perform a flying leap capable of reaching it.


    For now, though, there were too many unknowns. It did not even know if the pir was upied in the moment, all it knew was that at this range, the pir did not possess any anomalous capabilities able to sense the Collector.


    So, the Collector waited and observed in the undergrowth, its form absolutely still as its eyes stared unmoving and unblinking at the pir.


    ===


    Ekur paced back and forth with his withered hands behind his back. His sunken eyes darted from side to side as he breathed heavy breaths through yellowed and broken teeth. The wrinkles of his face showed not just the wear of years, but also stress and, perhaps, a sprinkle of insanity here and there.


    His sandaled footsteps echoed through the confines of his atelier, but for the first time in twenty years, another human other than himself would enter this sacred study space of his.


    Where he had spent so much time defying the chains of the Sorcerer''s Order in pursuit of a cure to Undeath, and finally, he would have it.


    Yes, yes, all that time humiliated and running and hiding would finallye to an end with this. He would show those stuck-up fools of the council that he was right all along, that all he had done and sacrificed was for this greater good.


    The footsteps belonged to a young man that ascended the spiral stone staircase leading into Ekur''s chambers at the top-most floor of his floating atelier.


    "Gods above, this ce absolutely reeks," said the man as he put a ck gloved hand to his hooded face. He stared at Ekur with hints of disgust, looking up and down at the sorcerer''s stained, wrinkled brown robes. "When was thest time you bathed? A decade ago?"


    "Fifteen years. The pursuit of the truth has long since caused me to transcend my physical needs."


    "Evidently not," remarked the man as he pinched his nose. He scanned his surroundings.


    Looked like a sorcerer''s atelier. He could see the mana crystal suspended in the air above an upraised stone pir at the center of the room. Judging from the color of the crystal, a pale, blue tinted white, it seemed to have pretty high purity.


    Whiter the better, as he recalled back when he thought he would end up a schr.


    There was a small, stained mat in one end of the circr room with huge piles of dirty bowls standing at attention nearby. The sorcerer''s living space. Small,paratively speaking to the rest of the atelier.


    The rest of the room''s space was dominated with an alchemicalboratory, its tables full of colorful vials tubes bubbling with background noise. Surgical instrumentsy scattered about the tables as did a few remnants of dried blood.


    There was a smaller workstation for stone shaping. One table holding a pile of smoothed rocks and a sigilus, the favored tool for sorcerers to carve spells into stones via sigils.


    The sigilus looked like a lengthy stylus of y with a magnifying ss attached to the side, and judging by the dull blue aurichalcite bands circling the stylus, it was a pretty expensive model.


    Good. Meant that this sorcerer probably had the coin to pay up.

 Chapter 30 - Sorcerer Hunt I

    "Wee to my grand atelier," said Ekur, ignoring the man and instead looking behind him. "Where? Where is it?"


    When Ekur caught a glimpse of what the man carried behind him, the sorcerer rushed forwards with all the enthusiasm of a zealot meeting their god.


    "Woah, stop right there," said the man as he held up a warning hand to the sorcerer. The man finisheding up the stairs, dragging arge trunk of chained wood behind him. With a sigh, he set the trunk down roughly, dropping the chain he dragged it with.


    The trunk was rectangr in shape and almost the size of a man. It was a testament to the man''s strength that he could lug something like that around with rtive ease, just a few drops of sweat forming on his brow.


    "No, you cannot damage it, is-is it damaged?" said Ekur as he tried to circle around the man. "If you have damaged it, I will unleash such mystic wrath upon you that Samas the Worldwind herself will bear witness to the destruction!"


    "Look, I am not here to deal with this bullshit. The merchandise is fine, these holders are sturdy, magically reinforced on the insides." said the man. "And Samas? You are from Utu, then.


    Far, far, far east. What are you doing here on the opposite side of the world? Actually, never mind, I don''t really care.


    Let''s talk payment."


    Ekur ignored the manpletely. "I am here because the Order in all their prideful and misguided arrogance believes me, my wondrous research, wrong. Heretical, even. How? How can it be that they see me in the wrong when I have made such headway against the Undeath?"


    "Woah," said the man without an ounce of enthusiasm. "Now let''s talk about my payment. I lugged this over three country borders, one of which would have burned me alive if they caught me. You better have made this worth my while."


    "Payment? Of course, a simpleton such as yourself would care so much for coin." Ekur shambled over towards a thick chest at the corner of his quarters, and the man raised a hungry brow at it.


    The chest was a massive box of aurichalcite, already a valuable ore by itself, and it wasrger than the sorcerer himself. Its dark blue, almost ck surface was embedded with what must have been twenty sigilstones.


    The sigil-carved stones glowed as they responded to the sorcerer touching the box, shutting down the security spells that guarded the box. The chest unlocked itself and opened with an invisible force, revealing severalpartments, one of which was utterly packed with glittering gold coins.


    "Now we''re fucking talking," said the man with a whistle. "How in the undeath did you ever get so much coin? I mean, I can kind of see your pockets were packed, ateliers like this, floating and invisible ones especially, don''te cheap, but heh, looks like I doubted you for nothing."


    Ekur responded positively to the praise and began to monologue about himself. "I have never been a sorcerer of much merit. My roots are subpar, limiting my ability to work with it.


    But my knowledge and mind have always been sharp, far sharper and far more innovative than anyone else''s, and that has allowed me to thrive where to so many have faltered.


    Always, I have wished to help themon masses. In my youth, I devised a means for themon man to control the very elements himself, sheltering his home with a single sigilstone that bent the winds to his will."


    "Shit, you invented wind conditioning," said the man with a nod. "I''ve even read about you in my textbooks.


    Fore'' I dropped out of the academy, of course, but still, you were a case study in arcane economics. How it doesn''t matter how shitty your raw power is, if you can figure out a smart and cheap way to mass produce the right spells in the right sigil stones, you could get rich."


    "I am NOT ''shitty''," said Ekur with an indignant shake of his senile fist. "I was blessed with the mind of gods! But cursed with the body of themon masses. In weaving the grand epic that is my life, I have had to rise above my lot and surpass every manner of challenge!"


    "Okay, sure." The man shrugged. "Funny how life is. Rich entrepreneur like you turns into a crazy sorcerer hiding out at the edge of the world. I study economics and that lets me know when a market''s ripe for the takin''. Ends up with me as a ver.


    Fate''s a funny thing. Oh wait, there''s a goddess for that


    But whatever, enough about that. I''m just about dying to get back home with my pockets a lot heavier."


    The man kicked the trunk with his boot, and it opened up, revealing an unconscious young girl inside, her sackcloth covered body trussed up tight by threaded bonds of ck fabric. The insides of the trunk were padded with cushioned fabric, keeping the girl sheltered from outside impact.


    The man pointed at the girl with the tip of his boot. She did not respond, instead lying in the trunk pale and still, almost motionless, only the shallow movement of her breathing indicating she was alive at all.


    "These ve holders are custom made for Zerulians," he said, tapping at the trunk with his boot. "Helps with the vampyrs, mostly, but daemons don''t like light either," said the man as he recited hismon product pitch to convince customers their products were not damaged in transit. "Cushioning is lined with marsh rabbit fur ¨C softer than a baby''s bottom. Shock resistant and ventted. Holderes in different designs, don''t raise eyebrows at border gates, well, most of them, anyhow.


    The bonds are also fabric, not chains, so no tears on their skin, keeping them in pristine condition. They alsoe imbued with a sleeping curse that keeps your purchase docile. Oh, and the bondse with the purchase, though you''ve gotta replenish them with mana every five or six days."


    "Oh¡­how¡­how wonderful," said Ekur as he shoved past the man to stare at the girl.


    "You can inspect the product, I guess," said the man as he looked at the greasy spot on his cloak where the sorcerer had touched him and patted it down. "Make sure there''s nothing wrong with her. Price is still the same though. Two thousand gold.


    Add two more to that for my horses -you didn''t tell me there were flesh hungry giant fucking scorpions on the way here."


    "Done, done," said Ekur as he waved the man away, focusing the entirety of his attention upon the wonderful specimen before him.


    Lavender skin. Dark, fibrous hair. Goat-like ears. Small ck nubs of horns just beginning to sprout from the forehead.


    He took a bony finger and pried open her sleeping eyelid. Deep amethyst eyes. Yes. This was a genuine daemon.


    "I nabbed her straight from Judica and let me tell you they don''t fucking y around. There''s a bit of an underground ve market there, but it''s real, real underground. Moment one of their Executors sniffs a ver out-," The man made a slicing motion with his hand across his neck. "Dead fucking meat. But I''m a professional."


    The man noticed the sorcerer running his hands across the girl''s body, inspecting her flesh with a zealous, almost worshipping intensity. "She''s yet to be bled too. I''m assuming that''s why you wanted her? Grey bearded sorcerer shut-ins like you tend to like them younger."


    "Yes!" Ekur said fiercely. "She must be whole and pure. That is the only she will fit into the grand schematics of my ritual." He turned the girl around and narrowed his beady green eyes when he saw that her ponytail had been hacked off at the bottom. "She is not whole!"


    "This is standard procedure," said the man as he put a hand to his hip, ready to draw his sword. At close range like this, even if this sorcerer with a cog or two loose in his head got aggressive, he would have the advantage. "We have to cut off the spikes in daemon hair. Otherwise, they can use their mind magic, and nobody wants that."


    "This is not what I was promised!" shouted Ekur, spittle frothing from his mouth.


    "Gods above, alright, calm down. Let''s talk about this." The man put a hand to his head and rubbed his forehead. He could not afford this mad man to back out of this deal now, not when he had put so much expense into carrying the product.


    If he got anywhere near the field of two thousand gold, he could quit his work and live off his wealth forever, ck sun and ensuing supposed apocalypse be damned. If the world did start to end, he''d happily watch the desperate peasants try and swim past the moat of his new castle estate with a smile on his face.


    But not if this idiot did not pay him. "I can lower my price by a hundred gold for damaged goods."


    "Gold does not matter to me!" said the sorcerer as he shook his fist.


    "Alright, then. Looks like you don''t want her to warm your bed or anything like that. You want her for some kind of ritual." The man sighed. "Well, this might be good news. She''s special. Judican cell she was taken out of was separate from the rest."


    The man had wanted to withhold this information because it could mean the Judicans would send their executors after special prisoners taken from them, and nobody wanted an executor tailing them.


    They were ruthless bloodhounds that would make sure anybody and anything that stood against them burned.


    "Special?" The sorcerer grew even more interested.


    The man sighed. "Yes. Means she probably had some kind of magical potential to her. And if you''re going to make me stay here and talk, can you open a damned window so I can talk without breathing through my mouth?"


    "Of course, of course," said Ekur as he waved stepped to the center of his quarters where a small altar of rock rose up, its tip a smooth surface lined with circuit carvings. He put his hand on the control conduit, tapping into his atelier''s systems, and bid one of the stone walls to slide open.


    The stone of the wall creaked as it parted, the bricks sliding into each other and baring half the tower to the outside world. Cool and dry night wind flowed in, and thank the gods, took out the sorcerer''s stench.


    "Always impresses me what sorcerers can do," said the man as he stepped to the edge of the open tower. He looked down at the rushing river and the mudbanks, then at the vast expanse of shadow shrouded trees. "Great view. I''d make sure my own castle keep had something like this."


    "Tell me more! More!" said the sorcerer.


    "Alright, just sit yourself down and calm-," the man stopped as he raised a brow. He was staring down at the riverbank, and did his eyes deceive him?


    Something was skittering across it. A ck blur, it seemed, barely visible from this distance. He thought maybe it was a floater in his eye, maybe something he got fromcking sleep, but no, this thing was real.


    Right by the edge of the riverbank and underneath the atelier, it jumped up, getting much, much closer very, very quickly.

 Chapter 31 - Sorcerer Hunt II

    The Collector had observed the floating construct for an hour and forty-two minutes before it witnessed movement of interest. From the other side of the riverbank, a lone human approaching on the back of a horse signaled up to the pir utilizing a stone capable of shining light.


    Five rapid shes of light.


    From there, the pir had quaked in slight but silent movement. Small tforms of a weakly visible, translucent substance formed beneath the pir, forming into steppingstones for the human below.


    Visual analysis of the translucent substance alone did not yield any significant information. The wavelengths of light emitting from them indicated only color. There were no anomalous energy readings, though there was a certain degree of heat emission from the substance.


    As the tforms reached down, the human waiting beneath encountered attack from giant scorpions. The human observed signs of extreme distress but managed to defend himself to adequate degree, observing a show of force with the tool known as a sword.


    He eliminated one giant scorpion, but his strength was insufficient to ward off the increasing horde drawn to the vibrations generated from the sudden and violent altercation.


    The human did survive, however, leaving his beast of burden to fall to the scorpions while he ran up the tforms carrying behind him a sizable container of some sort.


    The Collector did not make a move then. Instead, it watched as the human walked up to the base of the pir. When the human mmed face first into the invisible wall of the pir, he exhibited signs of anger, knocking at the wall with a fist.


    An entrance opened up in the stone wall through a means that seemed close to atomic maniption. The stone broke down into granrponents that shifted aside, and when the human stepped through, the granrponents reformed over the empty space and solidified back into stone.


    The Collector continued to wait. It determined that the likelihood of this individual, based on its unfamiliarity with the structure and its prior harassment from the giant scorpions, was not the ''sorcerer''.


    However, that the structure allowed ess to the human indicated that the ''sorcerer'' was present.


    The Collector would continue the monitor the structure for changes. Visual confirmations of this ''sorcerer'', if possible, but if this was not possible, then it would strike when the visiting human left.


    In the span of fifteen minutes and forty-four seconds, however, it witnessed a chance to strike.


    The upper segment of the pir opened up, revealing the space where the previously identified human and, presumably, the ''sorcerer'' resided.


    The Collector gained visual confirmation of the sorcerer and analyzed him.


    Fragile bone structure. Atrophied muscle mass. Slightly hunched in posture from continuousck of physical activity. All signs of weakness, and yet, the Collector knew by now not to assume the strength of these ''sorcerers'' based purely off their biological merits.


    However, all the Collector knew was how to ascertain threats through their physical abilities and, in the case of tinkerers, their technology. In such a case as this, it had no prior data to base its actions off of other than the thrall.


    If the sorcerer here also possessed the means to alter its state of matter such that it rendered itself impervious to physical harm, then at the very least, the Collector could confirm this was amon trait among ''sorcerers''.


    Unlikely, however. The female sorcerer it had consumed had no such ability. But at the same time, the Collector could not reach any definitive conclusions.


    It required morebat data.


    Then it would strike and gather data for itself now, taking risk now so that it would better familiarize itself for these threats of ''magic'' in the future.


    Thus, it decided to strike while the structure seemed bared to the world, its walls uncovered and the soft, fleshy targets within vulnerable.


    ==


    "By all the fucking gods there are, something ising!" screamed the man. He stumbled backwards and began to run away from the opposite end of the open wall, drawing his sword almost as an after-thought.


    Ekur kept his hand on his atelier''s control conduit, his hand burning up as he expended mana to will his atelier to build up a forcefield around the room. The barrier''s light blue shine zed neatly over the circr walls right in time for an enormous¡­giant beetle to m against the open space.


    A monster? Out here? How? Why? It looked like a creature from the Darkwoods that grew nearby, but was there a creature thisrge? Ekur thought only the scolex worm in the riverbank was a monster capable of a C-rank threat rating.


    The barrier, fueled by the atelier''s impressive mana crystal and channeled through its magic-sensitive walls, prevented the monster from crawling in, but its impact upon the forcefield was enough to cause tremors to shake through the entire structure.


    The pir began to tip over as the wind-control systems failed. Lightstones ced on the ceiling began to sh from white to red, signaling atelier systems failures.


    "Take her! Take her!" screamed Ekur as he used his free hand to point at the daemon lying in the trunk. The trunk was slowly starting to tilt towards the monster. "She cannot be harmed!"


    The ver saw his entire retirement sh before his eyes and rushed to the trunk, picking up the chain attached to it and throwing it forwards. The trunk mmed against the other end of the room, breaking apart and spilling the daemon''s limp body out.


    By now the pir had tilted enough for various things in the room, test tubes, vials, little trinkets of stone and metal, to start falling and ttering towards the beast before stopping at the barrier.


    The ver held onto a gap in the bricked floor and shouted. "Do something! This whole thing is tipping over!"


    "I am employing the full breadth of my genius into this-,"ined Ekur before the monster started to move again, mming at the barrier with blows from its many w-tipped legs. The barrier held up, resistant to non-magical blows as it was.


    "Stop talking so much and fix this!" The ver waved his gloved hand around to the tilting floor,


    "Hehe, so long as I have my hand upon this control conduit, this brainless insect will never pierce the veil of my barrier!" said Ekur triumphantly before stumbling on the uneven ground, almost slipping his hand off the altar.


    The ver''s eyes widened. "You won''t have your hand on it much longer monologuing like this. Shut up and do something!"


    Ekur mumbled under his breath before he focused and put in a hefty amount of mana into restoring the wind stabilizers. The sigil stones embedded in choice locations throughout the walls of the atelier glowed green once more, emitting the aura of wind that kept the whole thing afloat.


    The atelier groaned as it righted itself, floating stably again.


    Ekur''s vision started to blur as he felt the mana drain from him, and he pushed down emotions of regret and humiliation that surfaced when he lost fine control over his magic.


    The ver sighed in relief and then stood up on shaky legs, pointing a sword at the hideous monstrosity syed across the barrier. "Now do something about that!"


    "I will show you, you who are so unworthy of the brilliance of my research, research that has had decades to crystallize, of the restoration of Chaos magic. Magic, as you may know, many revile and believe lost when Zerul fell. But I alone in my genius am capable of replicating it-," said Ekur as the circuit lines running from the altar and connecting to his palms began to glow from green to ck.


    A ck magic circle filled with concentric, grey rings floated over the monster. A momentter, and a beam of pure darkness shot down.


    The monster reacted nigh-instanteously,tching off from the atelier. But not quick enough. The beam grazed its tail, and though the beam only clipped off a small chunk of the tail, the chaos would spread and disintegrate the entire beast soon enough.


    Ekur watched as the monster fell back down to the muddy depths. "Behold! Might that can replicate even an Origin Gate itself! Soon, this creature will be reduced to dust!"


    The ver tiptoed to the edge of the barrier, making sure the monster was gone. He saw the monster fall down, its white figure growing smaller and smaller, and sighed in relief before he noticed that the monster tore off its tail before the disintegration could reach up further to its body.


    "It''s not dead!" The ver looked back at Ekur with his hands in the air. "Kill it! Now!"


    "Your simple shouting annoys me," said Ekur. "The creature falls now to its death regardless of whether it has escaped my chaos. Behold, the reason why my atelier is fortified to the highest extent despite my own pithy mana."


    The circuits on Ekur''s altar turned from ck to green again, and the atelier vibrated, generating a high-pitched noise that reached into the riverbank below.


    "And is that supposed to do anything?" said the ver as he winced in pain at the sound, covering his ears.


    "Wind magic is my natural affinity, but I am cursed with low-grade spirit roots. How do Ipensate, you ask? Through my wits." Ekur tapped his head, baring a smile full of teeth decayed from neglect.


    A rumbling roar echoed from the riverbank as the shuddering sound of earth parting reached even up to the pir.


    "I use my magic not to create vast winds or tornadoes that I cannot muster, but to generate a sound," said Ekur. "A sound that agitates the scolex worm that slumbers below."

 Chapter 32 - Sorcerer Hunt III

    The Collector fell back down to the mud bank with a click of its mandibles. Its weight sunk into the mud heavily, but it trudged out, fluttering its wings. Or one wing.


    It analyzedbat with this ''sorcerer''.


    He was capable of erecting a kind of forcefield around his territory, though of course, he did not utilize any conventional forcefield technology nor psionic shielding.


    This was ''magic'', and a vexing one at that.


    The forcefield was capable of resisting the Collector''s physical might and its monomolecr ws. In functionality, it was very much simr to the forcefields it knew. These, brute force struggled to deal with, and their constantly generated nature made them difficult to cut through.


    The Collector knew that sustained applications of intense heat could overload a forcefield and shatter it.


    Of course, this forcefield was different, but it would not hurt to try.


    And, in a way, the presence of this forcefield was fortunate. It meant that this ''sorcerer'' likely did not possess a means to render his physical body immune to the Collector''s ws and blows. All it had to do was find a way through the forcefield.


    But then there was the issue of the beam. The Collector had sensed its onset, but the speed of the beam was such that it clipped the Collector''s tail and the top of one of it wings.


    Minimal initial damage, but continuous degradation of carapace and flesh. Degradation soplete that it was on par with atomic disassembly.


    But, rate of destruction slow.


    Now that the Collector understood the destructive beam''s firing rate, projectile speed, and the signs leading up to it, it would be exceptionally difficult to strike the Collector without advanced targeting systems.


    The Collector had the reflexes to tear off its tail and wing before the effect could spread to the rest of its body. Unfortunately, this left it unable to fly back up to the structure in the sky.


    It clicked its mandibles as it gazed back up at the structure, assessing how it would continue this battle.


    Then, the sound came.


    A sonic frequency originating from the structure''s walls meant to agitate certain types of insectoids and arthropods. Confirming this determination, the Collector saw the giant scorpions unburrow from the mud and begin to skitter away.


    Immediately afterwards, the Collector detected a seismic disturbance.


    Significant tremors. Mud made exact calctions of the tremors difficult. Yet, tremors intensifying. Presence of a creature approaching. Extreme in size based off of even rough estimations.


    The Collector leaped backwards as the ground where it had been disappeared in a yawning hole. A momentter, an enormous worm, its head asrge as the Collector itself, emerged outwards with a shrill scream.


    The worm continued to unravel its length, disying an enormity that utterly dwarfed anything the Collector had ever seen in this world. It stretched into the night sky, a pir of fleshy white intruding against the inky canvas of a star-speckled night sky.


    The worm reached almost to the sorcerer''s construct before it arched downwards, the many hairs lining its body standing straight up as it detected the Collector.


    The worm unleashed a shrill roar, its mouth opening to reveal rows of rotating circr, serrated and rock shattering teeth.


    Spines lined across the segments of its body also rotated in sawing motions, and the Collector understood then that a variant of this species, a smaller variant, perhaps one of the young, had created the dens the goblins inhabited.


    The Collector estimated that the worm''s entire length unsubmerged from the mud would reach close to thirty meters. It clicked its mandibles, eager to consume this creature.


    Yet not now. The Collector currentlycked the strength.


    But, as the worm sensed the Collector and began to arch down, aiming its hungry maw towards it, an idea formted within the Collector''s head.


    The Collector stepped back, away from the softer parts of the mud until it found purchase on firmer ground. The worm tracked its movements, a little clumsily, given its massive size, but its motion-sensitive hairs were capable enough to allow its blind body to roughly home in on the Collector.


    The Collector knew that if it took the force of the worm crashing down on it head on, it would likely suffer critical damage. The rotating sawde teeth also likely had the capacity to tear through the Collector''s carapace given short time considering it could easily grind down stone into dust, making an internal attack unfeasible, not to mention dealing with powerful digestive fluids.


    But, as the Collector saw the worm''s mouth nearing it, it calcted that the creature was slow, its bulk working against it in this regard.


    It would work for the Collector, however.


    Just before the maw of whirring teeth swallowed up the Collector, it leaped up in an explosive burst fueled by the jumping arakka legs and coilboosted ultrafiber muscles. The worm mmed its head into the dirt, shattering the firm ground apart with a roaring crack like a meteorite.


    Before the worm could figure out it gnawed on rock, not the Collector, the Collector crawled up the length of the worm. It went into its eight-legged mode, its many legs crawling up the worm''s length at breakneck speed.


    The Collector''s monomolecr ws were extraordinarily sharp, but they were small, and trying to pierce through the thick mass of this worm''s flesh would take too long to subdue it. However, the Collector did not desire to challenge the worm.


    It instead ran up the worm, scaling it with its arakka legs as it would a cliff and using it as a means to gain altitude to jump back up to this ''sorcerer''s'' structure.


    ===


    "It''s back!" The ver yelled as the atelier shook and rumbled once more, the huge, syed out figure of the enormous monstrosity of a beetle stretched out across the see-through blue barrier.


    "It will take some time before I can unleash Chaos once more," said Ekur. "But make no mistake, I will let nothing stand in the way of my grand breakthrough."


    The wizened sorcerer pressed his hand into the atelier''s conduit, the circuits on the altar turning from green again to ck. The entire atelier began to whine and whir, the magic crystal floating atop the conduit crackling as it strained to supply the necessary magical energy for a second chaos st.


    "That monster is a mere mindless beast, no more capable of thought than the countless scorpions and many-legged abominations writhing beneath us. Look, it knows that it cannot pierce my barrier, and yet, it continues to attack it again and again," said Ekur.


    "Gods, what is that stench, fouler even than yours," remarked the ver as he stood back, behind the sorcerer.


    "Ah, the scent of the scolex worm. I hear they smell of rotted flesh. It is a good thing my sense of smell has ascended beyond mortal reasoning," said the sorcerer.


    "No, you''re just used to your own filth. Never mind ¨C how long until you can strike this creature again?" said the ver.


    "Worry not and take care of the daemon, for without her, all hope for this world is lost," said Ekur. His breathing began to shallow as mana drained from him, slowly fueling the chaos beam again.


    As his mana drained, it became harder for him to repress the negative emotions that welled up from uncontrolled mana usage. Regret and humiliation.


    Regret that he could not have spent his life doing greater deeds, deeds that would have left him immortalized in the halls of Aetheria itself, not simply as a footnote in some mortal textbooks.


    Humiliation that everyone, the Order, all those he once knew as friends, even family, rejected him when they learned the nature of his research, research meant to rid this world of the Undeath.


    The ver yelped as the monster suddenly revealed a face atop its body, a face equally as grotesque as its form as an oddbination of goblin and insect features and began to breathe me that washed over the barrier.


    The me did not prate through the barrier, but the residual heat from it did, turning the stone walls beneath the barrier molten.


    "As I channel the Chaos that will strike this beast into oblivion, I will tell you of my grand visions," began Ekur.


    "I really don''t want to hear it," said the ver.


    Ekur continued. "I was disgraced because they said I fouled thews of life. As a schr from the sands of Utu and a devotee of the Worldwind herself, the flow of wind, the breath of the world itself, has always been my calling, as has the plight of the people.


    I have defended countless homes from the searing rays of the sun with my wind-conditioning, and yet, I wished to do more. And what problem is notrger than that of Undeath itself?"


    "Your walls are literally melting," said the ver as sweat began to pour from his face. The atelier''s stone walls were red hot by now, but they were not important, the barrier was - and the barrier stood strong independent of the walls.


    "Among those under the Worldwind''s blessed faith, there are those that may guide the breath of life, knitting together damaged flesh and broken bone. But why stop there? Why can the breath of life not call upon those that have fallen, ensuring that their corpses do note under the curse of Undeath?"


    Ekur continued, his breathing growing heavier and heavier, and his vision growing duller and duller. He felt something was of, but he could not quite tell why, perhaps it was due to mana loss, though this felt¡­different.


    Still, in his lightheaded stupor, he continued, his life''s work, his redemption, unspooling from his lips now that he had someone to talk to for the first time in decades. "But when I devised a way to breathe life into corpses, a method inspired by the golems of Sunda, they still were not immune to Undeath.


    My newly arisen broke from my control, killing hundreds, and years and years since, I have spent my time hunted and repenting, formting a way to not only render the dead immune from undeath, but to even remove undeath from those that have already turned.


    The answer¡­is Chaos." Ekur coughed, slumping over the altar.


    "What is happening?" wondered the ver as he too began to feel something wrong, his chest tightening and his eyes burning up.


    The monster continued to breathe its me in an unending stream, its face poised close to the barrier. The me spread across the barrier, but did not pierce through, only some heat, so what was going on?


    "With Chaos¡­long lost and hidden in daemonic blood¡­," continued Ekur. "Chaos I will extract from her¡­I will perfect the ritual. The Chaos I merely mimic now will be genuine.


    I will destroy the Undeath rot first from the living dead with Chaos, then breathe life back into the empty shells. None willugh then, the gods-,"


    Ekur coughed blood, eyes watering, and then fell over. The ver took note and immediately rushed to the sorcerer''s side, not to save him, but to keep his hand nted on the conduit to keep the barrier up.


    "Will wee me," whispered Ekur finally before falling unconscious.


    "How long did dead circuitsst again? An hour?" said the ver as he shook his head at the dying sorcerer. "An hour of time before I end up like you. I never should have taken this ursed job. Fuck."


    The ver looked up at the barely visible monster, at the me continuing to coat the blue barrier in waves blinding white fire. "And fuck you. I''ll make sure to hack your eye off or something when you get in here. Something to remember me by."


    The ver felt hands, small hands,tch onto his back, and he whipped his head back to find the daemon grasping at him. Her sleeping bonds were loose on the floor, undone from the chaos of the fight.


    She stared at him with half open eyes that still managed to glow with pure hatred.


    "Oh, gods damn it all-," began the ver before an arc of purple magical energy coursed from her hands, spreading throughout the ver like an electrical current running through wire and shattering his mind into nothingness.

 Chapter 33 - Retrieval

    ==


    The Collector halted the biotrigger of its pyrocatalytic nds when the forcefield fell down. It stood up back into its bipedal form, hunching into the gap in the now steaming, molten rock walls as it trudged into this ''sorcerer''s territory.


    Countless tools, not meant for war, but for study, it seemed,id strewn across the floor. ss tubes and vials shattered. Tables flipped over. Piles of rocks scattered about.


    Movement.


    The Collector watched the new specimen, humanoid in appearance but possessing of significant physiological differencespared to the average human, move. She was smaller than the humans, further back in her growth stages, likely, judging from her more neotenous features.


    She stumbled forwards, not fully in control of her body.


    In her hands, she held the two halves of the younger human''s body, having torn it apart clean in two with prodigious strength that far belied her small frame. Blood and entrails poured from the separated halves, drenching hervender skin and white sackcloth in red.


    This specimen was special, no doubt.


    The female specimen gazed at the Collector in a dazed expression, her mind likely unable to fully process the Collector, and dropped the savaged human corpse. She fell to the ground, drawing in deep breaths, but still remaining alive.


    She was merely paralyzed.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles. Its calcted n to victory had worked without much variation in execution. It knew that it could not prate the forcefield this ''sorcerer'' conjured, but at the same time, it understood that the forcefield could not have been an absolute barrier.


    The sorcerer and his fellow human still managed to breathe. And, as the Collector came to realize the second time ittched atop this floating territory, they could even perceive its scent.


    That meant that particles in the air necessary for continued sustenance of respiratory functions still passed through the barrier, as did wavelengths of light necessary for visibility. In that case, it became exceedingly likely that the forcefield only repelled certain types of energy.


    A deduction proven correct when the Collector unleashed its me breath upon the forcefield. The mes did not warp the forcefield, but the heat from the mes did permeate through. The heat alone could not travel far enough to the specimen, but it did prove further the suitability of the Collector''s strategy.


    These primitives did not understand it, but the Collector''s mes were the result of a highly reactive chemical reaction.


    The byproduct of the rapid oxidization of the reactive chemicals ejected from the Collector''s pyrocatalytic nds hitting its biotrigger was toxic to humans in sufficient quantities.


    The Collector could even enhance this toxicity with further sub-adaptations to its nds.


    The Collector knew that the tinkerers of this world possessed ''magic'' but that this substance did not make them advanced to any significant degree technologically. They would likely not have the capacity to conceptualize that beyond fire, there was an additional chemical threat.


    Thus in unleashing a continuous stream of fire, the Collector had injected sufficient quantities of toxic partictes into the air, incapacitating the sorcerer, physically the frailest among them, first.


    Certainly, this ''sorcerer'' which had the capacity to alter the flow of wind within his territory could have developed a means to filter out these partictes, but the thought had not even urred to the primitive''s mind for the particte was odorless and colorless to the undeveloped human eye.


    The other human, younger and more physically imposing, naturally was more resistant, but he had met his end to this new variant of humanoid.


    The Collector stepped over to her, picking up the still body of the sorcerer under one of its arms. The sorcerer was still alive for the Collector had mediated its toxin output to ensure incapacitation, not death, and if extracted from this area soon, would regain consciousness to answer the Collector''s questions.


    The corpse of the other human, however, the Collector consumed, tossing both halves into its stretched-out maw.


    >>>


    *Biomass gained (+5)*


    Biomass level: 35/100


    >>>


    This human, too, was special to a degree. The Collector sensed that he was approximately as strong as the ''adventurers'' it had consumed. But did not seem to possess any notable ''magic'' judging from his actions and reliance upon the sorcerer.


    Now then, to investigate this other specimen, this younger female that too must have been special, being an object of high desire for both the sorcerer and the other human.


    Possessing of significant abilities as well, capable of halting the younger human''s mental functioning, regardless of how primitive they were, to an instant stop before tearing him apart with pure physical force.


    "Emergency heartrate threshold reached."


    The Collector stood up in alert, monomolecr ws clinking out of its fingers as it searched for this intruder''s voice. It realized it echoed from all throughout the sorcerer''s territory in a way almost identical to the announcement systems ced in tinkering vehicles.


    "Initiating atelier knowledge preservation protocol. Self-destruction initiated-"


    The walls of the structure began to light up as circuits hidden within them glowed bright. The hovering crystal at the center of the room began to crack, energy crackling from it in arcs that emitted searing heat.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles in irritation. It had wished to investigate this structure and the knowledge within, but there simply was no time. It first spent a second checking the purple skinned specimen''s vitals, ensuring she was still alive but still unconscious to prevent her from enacting any harm.


    The specimen was unconscious, affected by the burnt-up chemicals but still possessing higher resistance than the sorcerer. Likely, it was the nature of her prior bonds that had imposed this somnolence upon her.


    The Collector took the limp specimen''s body and then left the way it came. It stood out the edge of the open circled with molten white rock and tensed up its leg muscles, swelling them to nearly twice their size as it engaged its coilboosters.


    The coilbooster sub adaptation changed its flexible ultrafiber muscture structure such that when engaged and pumped with blood, the fibers would warp into taut, coiled structures packed with power, allowing for short bursts of high-speed movement.


    The blood engorged muscles in its legs tensed up into interlocking, coil-like structures efficient for storing potential energy, and like a crushed spring being released, when the Collector leaped off into the night, all that potential energy converted to kic, sending it soaring into the sky.


    With asional flutters of its single functional wing, the Collector maintained elevation, keeping itself away from the scolex worm below. By now, the worm had been reduced to slithering around the river, unable to sense the Collector now that it was airborne.


    Wind whistled by the Collector as it adjusted the movement of its wing, directing itself to a safending zone near where the forest began and the scolex''s territory ended.


    Despitecking one wing, the Collector possessed enough finesse with its aerial systems that theck of the other wing only reallypromised its ability to generate more lift.


    In terms of gliding and directional guidance, it could more than operate with a single wing, and as it neared the ground, it spread its wing t at an angle, using it as a sail to catch a draft andnd it right at the edge of the forest


    Itnded with a solid thump synchronized with the explosion of the sorcerer''s structure above. The Collector turned to see a brilliant st of green and ck curls of energy swirling around a white dot like winds whipping around the eye of a hurricane.


    The scolex worm below sensed this disturbance and threw itself into the river, disappearing in a few seconds.


    Debris from the initial explosion sucked into this vortex of energy, breaking apart into nothingness before the miniature singrity closed in a sh, leaving nothing but the empty, dark night sky as the only testament that a sorcerer had spent decades of his life in the pursuit of knowledge here.

 Chapter 34 - Defective

    The Collector did not carry its quarry far from the scolex worm''s territory. The worm provided a natural buffer that deterred the presence of humans and other intruding specimen ¨C one of the reasons why this human ''sorcerer'' also built his territory in this area.


    Yet, it would have to leave the immediate area soon. Killing one specimen of these tinkering species would bring more to investigate, and this effect would cascade upon itself.


    The Collector had killed the three ''adventurers''. The soldiers hade looking for them. They had been disposed of as well. When their absence was noted, there would be an evenrger response. More significant.


    Tinkering species were social, banding together fiercely topensate for their own biological weaknesses.


    The Collector too noted that the disappearance of military tinkerer units would also be noted to a greater degree, though in that sense, it understood that the ''adventurers'' were also military forces in some capacity, sent to eliminate the goblins that stood in opposition to their kind.


    These continued disappearances wouldpound a greater response. The Collector would retreat for now until it had the utmost confidence in its capacity to handle threats that utilized ''magic''.


    Thus, it had dragged the sorcerer and the purple skinned variant deeper into the forest, further behind the scolex''s territory. This was closer to the darker zone of the forest biome where the humans did not tread, but it did not in there yet.


    The captives would attract far too many insect-type creatures. Too many distractions.


    For now, unhindered questioning was the highest priority.


    The Collector inspected its quarry.


    The sorcerer and purple humanoid variant were each tied to separate trees with binds of arakka silk bundled around their waists and chests. Three thick strands around the ankles, waist, and chest.


    Arakka silk was difficult to produce inrge quantities, but it was much stronger than the silk of the smaller arachnids that littered the forest floor a plenty.


    Unlike those arachnids, the arakka utilized its silk mostly in hunting prey, using it as tethers to rappel their sizable bulk off of. Inpromising quantity of production, the durability and adhesiveness of the strands increased.


    Three strands was enough to bind the goblin champion, let alone these two specimen. The purple skinned variant exhibited significant degrees of strengthpared to her physical dimensions, but none at a level required to tear this silk apart.


    The sorcerer began to stir, first with a wheezing cough, then with a groan. The purple skinned variant did not move, having fallen into deeper unconsciousness due to the effect imparted upon her through her bonds.


    Judging from the slowed rate of her heartbeat that mimicked hibernation, the Collector determined that without outside stimuli, the purple skinned variant would not break from her slumber easily.


    But this ''sorcerer'' was not so lucky.


    The Collector pressed a carapace ted hand by the aged human''s head, monomolecr ws clinking out in visible and ready threat.


    "Oh, my head, my head. Golem, fetch me some water," muttered the sorcerer with a groan, starting to raise his head. He blinked hard a few times, likely trying to steady his blurry sight.


    "Hm?" the sorcerer moved unconsciously, and judging from the twitches in his muscture, this was a motion to sit upright, likely to arise from a slumber.


    Theck of oxygen and the inhtion of toxic partictes had likely induced some level of confusion in this ''sorcerer'', but this would pass with some stimulus.


    The Collector began. It used the t of its palm to push the sorcerer''s head against the tree trunk he was bound to. It regted the pressure, making sure to wake the sorcerer and keep him maximally ufortable, understanding that his head could shatter into a broken pulp at a moment''s notice.


    The sorcerer gurgled as his eyes widened at the sight of the Collector. Recognition. Good. The Collector could start questioning now.


    "You are bound, incapable of escape. My muscr capacity is such that your bones and flesh can rip and tear under the slightest of my maniptions. Do you understand?"


    The sorcerer''s pale green eyes darted from side to side as he breathed heavy. His eyes settled upon the purple skinned variant tied to the tree next to him and he began to struggle violently. However, the arakka silk kept the sorcerer bound so tight that he could not move even an inch.


    "I sense struggle. Irrational. The moment you attempt to endanger me, you will die. My reflexes are honed to such an extent that if you attempt to utilize any ''magic'', you will die. If the circuitry within your body glows, you will die. If you begin to speak anything that does not hold relevance to the questions I am to ask, you will die."


    The sorcerer continued to struggle, but aged and fragile as he was, within half a minute, he exhausted himself, breathing even heavier and bing limp.


    The Collector knew some of the warning signs of ''magic'' activation now. The circuitry and the chants. There could be more. Further investigation needed.


    It withdrew its hand from the aged human''s head, relieving pressure from his jaw and allowing him to speak.


    "You will not have my research, monster! I-I do not know who sent you, but I know I have many rivals. My genius is unrivaled, and-,"


    The Collector shoved the sorcerer''s head back into the tree trunk. "I will ask questions. You will answer them. You will not speak otherwise."


    It let go of the human''s head, and the human started to shout again. "Never! You will never have my research! Not-,"


    The Collector cut off the human''s words by smothering his face with its palm. It retracted the ws on its other hand and with index finger and thumb, pinched one of the sorcerer''s fingers, crushing the bone.


    The sorcerer loosed muffled screams of anguish into the Collector''s cold, bone-white palm.


    The Collector waited until the human''s sensory system adjusted somewhat to the sudden influx of pain. The human breathed heavy. The stench of fear and adrenaline began to reek from the thing.


    The Collector broke another finger. Again, the human screamed into the Collector''s carapace and struggled, and again, he grew limp, tired as he was already from so much struggling.


    "Two broken fingers for two refusals. I understand that your kind cannot regte your pain. The agony you must suffer now must cause you severe distress. You will answer my questions, and the distress will cease."


    The Collector took its palm off again.


    "I¡­I am Ekur, conqueror of the elements, master of life and death! And you will not have my secrets!"


    The Collector growled as it smothered the human''s head again and broke three more fingers, leaving the entire hand crippled. It watched the human''s expression intently, searching for any faltering, any signs of the desperation that seemed to preclude humans willing to grant information, but there was none in this withered specimen''s face.


    Tears streamed down the specimen''s face, and he grunted and breathed heavily, trying to suppress intense pain, but he had no signs of faltering.


    Odd. Aplete defiance of death and logical self-preservation instincts. The goblin champion operated upon a simr basis before his own demise, but that, the Collector could understand. The champion defied death for the fight, a fight engaged in part to defend the rest of his kind.


    In essence, a guarantee of preservation for the many in exchange for the loss of one, though certainly, the champion was worth far more than the remainder of his brethren.


    This was not that. This was pure irrationality. An intrinsic defect of the mind, it seemed. No matter the pain nor the threat of demise, this specimen''s defective mind simply would not register them.


    The Collector stared at the sorcerer''s scrunched up face with annoyance. The human wheezed out tight breaths with his head forced into the trunk, the wood crushing against his head while the Collector''s solid palm applied crushing pressure to his throat.


    Yet, these were only signs of physiological difort. The others the Collector had interrogated, the soldiers and their leader, the scent of their fear had been different, and it came with a willingness to share information to preserve themselves.


    There was fear in this one, yes, but only in a natural response to imminent death, not in willingness to share.


    Did these tinkerers not value sharing information? Did they not wield it as a stand in for their biological weakness? Yet, were they not living creatures desiring of self-preservation? Why would they desire so to withhold information when their lives, their greatest resource, was threatened?


    Why were they so defective?


    Culling these crippled primitives was a mercy.


    The Collector did not hesitate. It tore the human''s head from his body in one fluid motion that ended with the head falling into its maw.


    The Collector watched as spurts of blood gurgled from the human''s empty neck. It did not attach itself much to conceptions of wasting time. It could not extract information from this ''sorcerer'' in reasonable time, so it simply took the most efficient course of action.


    Dragging this weak specimen around for an extended period of time in the low probability that he suddenly desired to oblige the Collector posed too many risks.


    The Collector sliced through the arakka threads with its w and consumed the rest of the corpse.


    >>>


    *Biomass Gained (+10)*


    Biomass Level: 45/100


    >>>


    The Collector noted that this ''sorcerer'' did not actually possess too much of the special property overloading biomass. It had roughly double that of the younger specimen from the pir but considering the scope of the sorcerer''s capabilities and territory, the Collector had expected far more.


    Disappointing.


    Yet, enlightening as to the nature of ''magic'' and its properties. There were direct mechanics as to how ''magic'' was utilized, rules it followed and differences among individuals that influenced it. There were signs of its activation. Costs to its usage.


    Methodology to its construction that involved time and research. Orders and organizational structures that regted it. With punitive measures, if necessary.


    Direct ties with the gods. Sponsors of this phenomenon, operators of gates that possessed what was likely a resource necessary for the activation of ''magic''.


    Control over elements, a crude term for general maniption of certain natural phenomena. But more. Chaos as well, what seemed to be akin to atomic deconstruction, and a gate in of itself, and yet the cost to ess it was heavy and forbidden.


    In many ways, this ''magic'' was organized in some ways like the technology of tinkerers the Collector was already familiar with.


    Sounds.


    The Collector turned to the purple skinned variant and saw her awake. More information to be extracted. An interesting sample of gic material as well, one tied to this ''Chaos'' that had exhibited one of the more impressive shows of force in this world.

 Chapter 35 - Purple Aberrant

    The purple skinned variant stared at the Collector. Neutral expression


    She did not struggle against her bonds, nor did she exhibit any outward signs of fear. The stench of fear was absent from her.


    Likely, another defective specimen.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles. This was what happened when evolutionary growth was allowed to develop without the guiding hand of the Collective.


    It led to defects, aberrations that developed andpounded upon itself until finally, tinkerers arose, species that existed only to harvest and destroy their ecosystems and then move on to others.


    Regardless, the Collector would still attempt to extract information. It approached her, but did not touch her, for it knew that she possessed some means to incapacitate those she came into contact with.


    Instead, the Collector opened its mouth and extended its biotrigger. It ejected a short burst of reactive chemicals from its pyrocatalytic nds, and an instantaneous burst of me burst forth, engulfing the variant''s hand in a mirage of blue-tinted white.


    The cloud of mested for a single instant to prevent a fire from starting in the forest, but that instant was enough to sear the purple skinned variant''s hand.


    The flesh warped, curling up and twisting into strands from the heat like paper crumpling under a match me. The skin crisped and cracked, some parts already welling up into blisters.


    Interesting. It would seem that these purple variants, these ''daemons'', as they were called, possessed physiology extremely simr to that of humans. However, more durable. Even an instant of exposure to the Collector''s me would have ckened human flesh into charred carbon.


    This specimen retained the rtive structural integrity of her hand.


    The daemon winced as she felt pain assault her, for the Collector knew that among pains burns were one of the more severe kinds to the nerves of humanoids.


    Yet, the specimen adjusted quickly, returning to neutral expression after an initial disy of difort.


    The Collector analyzed her.


    Physiologically, the specimen appeared to be quite young. Ifpared to the growth cycles of humans, then this variant would be approximately twelve to fourteen years old. At a maturity level that would not indicate significant deterioration of neural functions.


    However, the Collector could see outlines of healed wounds across the specimen''s body. Awork ofcerations, torn patches, and burns of all shapes and sizes.


    In such quantity that it seemed her entire body patterned with them. Judging from their dimensions, none caused through conventional biological weaponry such as jaws or ws.


    All caused through tools. Atop her forehead, there was a burn fashioned in the shape of a nine-pointed star. A crude visage of a sr body, it seemed. Likely, a marking seared into the flesh for ssification purposes.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles. It would seem this specimen had endured significant bodily harm to it over time under the maniption of its fellow tinkerers. An exnation for its noteworthy pain tolerance. And a testament to the defects of the tinkerers.


    They were not united. They savaged and brutalized each other. Warred with each other. Did not know how to act for their own greater interest. For their own collective good.


    The Collector would spare this specimen from the shorings of her brethren and induct her into the weing breadth of the Collective.


    But first, she would have to earn that privilege with information.


    "You too are a specimen that seems capable of utilizing this phenomenon known as ''magic''. Yet, your apparent age indicates that you should not have significant degrees of experience with this ''magic''. Still, you will answer my questions."


    The Collector trained its biotrigger on the purple skinned variant''s head, ready to melt her skull into liquid lest she attempt any sort of vocalization for magic.


    The purple skinned variant nodded. She closed her eyes. The Collector analyzed this movement, attempting to sense hostile intent. There was no telltale sign of magical activity, and then ¨C


    ''Thank you.''


    The Collector clicked its mandibles in reaction. It heard the specimen''s voice ringing not through its external auditory systems, but internally, through its minds, or, more specifically as it recognized, thetent psionic channels imbued in its neurons.


    ''Thank you for killing them. I wanted to kill him for so very long. I wanted to kill them all. Seeing it happen-,"


    "Cease this psionicmunication," said the Collector as it aimed the biotrigger at the specimen''s head.


    The Collector possessed natural defenses against psionic attacks in its original state, but right now, undeveloped as it was, it had some vulnerability to them, although it would still take a powerful psionic to aplish such a feat.


    ''Psi¡­psionics?'' came the wondering thoughts of the specimen.


    She blinked, then opened her mouth. There was no tongue, just a root of flesh useless for vocalizing anything. Judging by the scar tissue surrounding the root, it was evident that the rest of the tongue had been torn off long ago.


    ''I¡­I can''t talk. Not normally. I''m sorry, forgive me for being so broken. But, but I can help you. I¡­have a feel for what you want. You want to know what magic is. I can do that for you. I can teach it.''


    The Collector noted the specimen''s confusion of the word ''psionics''. Indicated ack of experience with psionics. Indeed, this did not feel entirely simr to the psionicmunications that the Collector was already familiar with.


    It was weaker in presence. Not at all nearing the levels required to prate even the Collector''s current inborn psionic defenses.


    The Collector reassessed the specimen''s threat level and decided that it would be more beneficial to obtain information from it. Provided, of course, the specimen did possess the adequate knowledge.


    "You will tell me of this phenomenon, this ''magic'', and you will exin it to me in sufficient detail such that it satisfies my understanding of it. Then, I will determine whether I may utilize it," said the Collector.


    ''You can. You already are, a little bit. I¡­I may be worthless, but I know magic. I used to study it. I can see it. I see it in you. See it better than others. You have mana, ah,tent mana, it was called,'' conveyed the specimen, lingering on the word tent'' with a degree of unfamiliarity like a word she had memorized in rote practice without truly understanding it.


    She stared at the Collector with open eyes, and the Collector noted then that her eyes did not hold much of anything in them. No conveyance of emotion.


    They were simply permanently screwed into a wide-eyed stare that once must have been the product of fear but now had carved itself deeply into her as a default expression.


    Beneath that gaze, her bodynguage and mannerisms showed that there was no fear, no sense of self preservation, merely a sense of aberrant stillness.


    Highly defective in the mind. Yet, unlike the aberrant sorcerer, it seemed willing to part with valuable information.


    A defect working towards the Collector, then.


    ''I simply have to open your spirit roots. Then, you will know. You will see. I know¡­I know that someone like me should not be asking anything of you, of anything from anyone, but, but for this, I want you to do something for me.''


    The specimen''s eyes managed to convey a slight shimmer of emotion. An aggressive emotion. The kind she had exhibited before when she had torn apart the younger human.


    ''Can you¡­can you kill them? All of them? I don''t care who. Humans, faeries, elves, xian, even the gods, if you can.''

 Chapter 36 - Knowledge Of Magic I

    "You desire the elimination of your fellow humanoids?" the Collector queried.


    The purple skinned variant cringed, refusing to look directly at the Collector. "I-I''m sorry, I didn''t mean to ask for anything."


    The Collector clicked its mandibles. "Curious.


    Your neural defect causes you to discard natural instincts for self-preservation and preservation of the social group, rather, you desire their demise. Yet, your request is unnecessary. The destruction of life upon this primitive rock is inevitable, regardless of your desires.


    Yet, to understand your intent is difficult. Exin why the elimination of your kind would be beneficial to you."


    ''Because I am broken, and I am worthless.'' The purple skinned variant''s lip trembled for a moment before setting cold and still. ''That''s what they told me, all of them, all the horrible people, and at first, I didn''t believe them. I didn''t want to believe it. But the more I got hurt, I thought, maybe, maybe¡­they''re right.


    Nobody wants to save me because I''m worthless. That made me so confused because mama always told me I was meant to do something big, that I meant something, but I''m not so sure what that means now.


    All I know is that people always take and take from me, and now, I want them to lose and lose as much as I have. I am too weak and broken and worthless to make them feel that, but you¡­you can do it.''


    "Pathetic," said the Collector. It grew tired of this thing''s defective prattling that discarded all the evolution that had led her to where she was now, all the instincts for self-preservation and, more importantly, the instinct to fight. "You tinkerers always desire something other topensate for your weaknesses. A technical breakthrough or tool or any manner of trinket to facilitate the faultiness of your forms and minds.


    You do not rely upon your own evolutionary might, and now, see where that has led you. A casualty not against predators, but of your own kind. Even now, you do not fight. Even prey fights when it is cornered, but even this fundamental instinct has been excised from you."


    The purple skinned variant at first cringed at the Collector''s words, exhibiting fear for the first time not through a disy of pain or force, but a verbal confirmation of her lowliness. Yet, as the Collector ended its dialogue, the variant perked up, blinking, an expression of wondering beginning to tint the light of her eyes.


    "I have confirmed your defectiveness, and see no more use in probing its nature. Now, tell me why is it that you possess psionic capabilities allowing you to establish links of mentalmunication," said the Collector.


    The Collector kept a close eye upon the purple skinned variant as it listened. When it had spoken to humanoids previously, many times, they had felt significant confusion in attempting to interpret the Collector''s words. However, this humanoid understood, nodding along to the Collector''s wording.


    Likely, a result of psionics.


    Psionicmunication was not limited by the boundaries of formted, constructed speech and their conventions, particrly that created by tinkering species. Psionic channels were how units within the Collectivemunicated among themselves.


    A mind to flesh connection that conveyed intent in a manner that could not be misinterpreted or confused in the same way the faulty constructednguages of tinkerers were oft victim to.


    Higher units within the Collective such as dominator-type Collectors, queens, and of course, the Collective Hivemind itself, acted as nexuses of psionic connections that controlled the masses of lesser units below them.


    The Collector itself possessed developed psionic channels that allowed it tomand a limited number of its own units, though due to being optimized for individualbat capacity, thismand capability did not extend beyond the control of ten units.


    Still, these developed psionic channels allowed the Collector to quite easily resist any manner of psionic interference, taking orders from only the highest of queens or the Hivemind itself.


    Thus, tinkerers that possessed psionics would find it nigh impossible to control the Collector or destroy its mind for to do so would require overpowering the Hivemind itself.


    Highly curious that this purple skinned variant, this ''daemon'' as she was called, possessed psionics of any capacity.


    Psionics could be independently developed by certain species. Among the Federation that united various tinkering species against the Collective, there was one, the xia, that possessed a particr affinity for it.


    Considering the remnants of Unitan, thenguage of the spacefaring humans, upon this world, it stood to reason that there may be remnants of psionic sensitive tinkerers. Perhaps this variant, this ''daemon'', was one such remnant.


    The purple skinned variant took a few more seconds to process the Collector''s question, then nodded obediently.


    ''So that is what psionics are. I¡­still do not know fully what you mean, but I can guess now. I remember that things like me¡­daemons, can use our racial magic. Sapia, as it is called. It lets us link into minds. Into hearts.


    I¡­am broken. My thel is gone, so I can only use sapia with touch. Unless it is with other daemons.''


    She cocked her head, looking at the Collector with curiosity. ''But¡­you are different. I can connect with you, but you are not a daemon.''


    "Of course not. I am unlike any of the primitive humanoids that may exist upon this world. I am no ''daemon'', nor am Iparable to any other tinkering species. I am vastly superior in biological construction, evolutionary adaptation, and collective purpose," said the Collector. "But you have not fully answered my question. Where does this ability, this ''sapia'', originate from?"


    The daemon frowned. ''I...I am so sorry for being useless. I don''t know, I''ve never read about where we get this from or what it is. It just¡­is.''


    From the psionicmunication, the Collector recognized that the ''thel'' this daemon spoke of was a spike shaped growthprised of interlocked, solidified hair fibers that acted as a channeling rod. This evidently had been torn from the specimen, limiting the range and output of her psionic abilities.


    Further analysis of how the variant spoke of her psionics indicated a distinctck of familiarity with psionics. Yet, cross referencing with the Collector''s stored memory database did not indicate significant simrities.


    The xia were a bipedal, blind and four-armed species that possessed protrusions of flesh at the base of their heads rooted in their neuralworks that acted as channels for their psionics. This specimen possessed vast physiological differences from the average xia, and the only simrity, this construct of hair known as a ''thel'', also was significantly different.


    Likely, this ''daemon'' subspecies was an extremely distant remnant of the xia''s colonizing efforts, and yet, odd.


    The xia and humans had warred against each other until the emergence of the Collective to unite them against amon threat.


    Then how could both humans and xia leave remnants of their civilizations upon the very same world?


    The Collector would not obtain answers to these questions from the specimen before it. She did not possess the adequate knowledge. However, knowledge of ''magic'', more immediately useful information, should be present within her.


    "Then tell me of this ''magic''. You state that you are capable of teaching me this phenomenon, that I am already utilizing it in some capacity. Exin to me the connections that exist between the circuitry that appear on your bodies, the channeling points known as ''gates'', and the species known as ''gods'' that seem to hold dominion over these energy sources."


    ''Hmm.'' The purple skinned variant cocked her head and raised her wide eyes up in thought, remembering. She bit her lip in concentration in the same nervous way a student would in trying to remember exam questions. ''Ah, I remember the teachings now. One of the first ones.''


    She began to recite memorized knowledge, her eyes still looking up but without the nervousness now, more distant, going back to a ce in her past that evidently was better than now, her usual tense, anxious expression mellowing out into one of academic focus.


    ''Every living being possesses spirit roots that line their bodies. Spirit roots congregate around corepoints which act as pumps to channel mana in and through the body.


    As their name suggests, spirit roots are spiritual in nature, intangible and yet anchored to the physical body. In many ways, they can be considered the spiritual cousins of blood vessels with corepoints being equivalent to the heart.


    The destruction of the physical body or the heart will also lead to the destruction of spirit roots. In addition-,''


    "Exin to me this ''mana''. I understand that it has ties to ''magic'' and this bodily system that epasses the ''corepoint'' and ''spirit roots''." The Collector clicked its mandibles in understanding. The purple skinned variant''s exnation was agreeable. It was not tainted by panic nor ignorance.


    It was pure recitation, some of which contained vocabry that evidently exceeded her own understanding, and that also allowed the Collector to confirm that this ''magic'' was indeed also a field of study, something that was learned and built up upon through experience and research.


    And this specimen was learned. She had memorized, yet she had not mastered. Expected considering the early stage of her growth.


    The purple skinned variant nodded. She was more at ease now, and with her mind in the right ce to remember, she spoke easier, faster. ''Mana is the essence of magic. Like how little pieces of dust can eventually build up into mountains, mana is the baseponent of it all, and in sufficient quantities, it can work miracles, or it can cause disasters.


    The key is in control.


    Mana is in the air around us all. Ites from the world itself, and it is imbued in every living thing. It is the miracle of life that cannot be exined. And more so, it is the miracle of thought, of emotion.


    Thus, the key is in control, and control is emotion.


    Living creatures that cannot experience emotion may possess mana, but they cannot express it. They cannot feel it and they cannot direct its flow. They enjoy only the basic essence of mana that allows them to live.


    With proper molding and control of emotions, one may shape the mana within oneself ording to the color of their souls.''

 Chapter 37 - Knowledge Of Magic II

    "Where is it that you have obtained this knowledge?" said the Collector as it clicked its mandibles in further understanding.


    The specimen did not give the Collector information that was specific to its questioning, and this likely was due to the fact that she herself did not fully grasp what she had memorized.


    She instead recited to the Collector simply what she hadmitted to memory in its raw form, but even this information was vastly more useful than anything the other humanoids it had interrogated had proffered.


    The Collector did not see any knowledge as waste. It would sift through whatever she gave it, picking apart what was useful and storing the rest.


    ''That was¡­from¡­from The Elementary Study by Arjun the Wise. Published in 322 Post-Convergence. Peer reviewed by the Order. First circted by wood block press, then in paper print, then-''


    "A record of knowledge," said the Collector, halting the tide of drivel that came from her. It might have been fine with some levels of extraneous recitation, but it would have to steer her from too much rambling. "You havemitted a significant degree of knowledge in these topics to your mind.


    Are you alone in possessing this knowledge, or is it the norm among the rest of you tinkerers? Among this Order of yours?"


    ''I¡­think I am special. Was special. I learned so much from Thorian, he, ah, he was my teacher-,'' She swallowed down a lump forming at her throat. ''Before they took him when they took me. He said I was special and that I learned so fast and got to know so much.''


    The specimen grew quiet, processing her emotions.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles. "The quality of information you give deteriorates when it is outside the boundaries of your memorized knowledge, it seems, affected as it is through unlocked emotions. Then no matter, I will proceed to more useful questioning.


    I understand now the nature of mana and how it interacts with these bodily systems known as spirit roots. The presence of this thing known as a ''soul'' or ''spirit'' I will simply extrapte as a primitive categorization of psionic signatures.


    Now I will ask again, tell me this time the ties to the circuits iid within your bodies and the connections to ''gates'' and ''gods''."


    The specimen nodded, snapped out of reminiscing once she heard the Collector''s voice. She tilted her head again and started to think again, taking some time to remember.


    "Arjun says that when emotion fluxes, and when its flow is controlled, the Corepoint opens. When the Corepoint activates, the many spirit roots that all intersect upon it also awaken.


    The initial burst of emotion used to activate the Corepoint is often called a Trigger, though it may go by different names in the other realms.


    However, across all seven realms, even in Avesta, the elusive realm of astral waters, the fundamental mechanics of magic remain the same:


    Draw upon the Trigger, open the Corepoint, then maintain an equilibrium of emotional output to control the flow of magical energy throughout the spirit roots.


    For further teachings on the Trigger, see chapter 11 in book 2."


    The specimen continued to recite from her memories, and in this regard, her mind was far superior to any of the conventional humans the Collector had encountered before.


    "Now, merely using an emotional Trigger to activate the Corepoint allows the self to channel mana. In many ways, this is already enough for marvelous effects to be seen within the body.


    By constantly channeling mana, exercising its flow in varying rates and methods within the body, the physical form may be vastly strengthened.


    This is the essence of what those in the realm of Xin, the foremost masters of manipting internal bodily mana, qi as they call it, call ''Martial Arts'', or better known here in Terra as ''Tempering'' or ''Body Strengthening''.


    For many, this is enough, and even possessing the natural talent to open one''s Corepoint is a rare trait seen in exceedingly few individuals.


    Various studies in my peers among the Order and the Sundan Empire''s Five Circles have attempted to pinpoint a direct percentage of the popce that are magic sensitive, but as of now, it is impossible to pinpoint urate numbers as there are simply too many factors such as environment and upbringing that y into this statistic.


    Still, it is safe to approximate that less than thirty percent of humans on Terra are magic sensitive, and among those, perhaps only half possess spirit roots in any appreciable quantity and quality.


    But among sorcerers such as myself and those reading this tome, is the strengthening of the body merely enough? Why limit ourselves when the gods themselves allow us the miraculous means of shaping and forming mana to manifest visible effects upon the physical world?


    This is where the principle of Connections and Gatese into y.


    With the descent of the gods from Aetheria and the merging of all seven realms in the momentous event known as the Convergence, magic as we know it emerged. The normal mortal body cannot extend their spirit roots beyond their own physical forms, but the gods have liberated us from this limitation.


    Specifically, the Gate-Connect Principle has revolutionized the way we can channel mana. The great gods above embody certain concepts or elements, bing ''Gates'' that allow mortals to link our spirit roots to, thus bing ''Connected''.


    Through a connection to a divine gate, one may channel mana in a way that corresponds to what that gate embodies.


    Take the Fae that fly with their jeweled wings in the forest realm of Foraoise.


    In devoting themselves to Grainne the Winged, goddess primarily of Love and also of beauty, union, swans, flowers and forests, the fae are known to charm the hearts of men, to form powerful bonds with each other, linking their roots even with other living beings, and twist all that is green and growing upon the earth to their will.''


    The Collector sensed that the purple skinned specimen was about to recite memories that went off to another tangent. It did not mind so much this additional information, all of it would prove useful, but it still did not like to waste time.


    It honed her memories down, focusing them. "By what mechanism is it that these spirit roots are capable of connecting to the gates these gods embody?"


    The purple skinned variant blinked. ''Hm¡­well¡­let me see. That''s another book¡­I think it was The Connection by Aislin of the Summer Court. Would it be in chapter five? No, it was nine.''


    She started to recite, and her tone of voice shifted, mimicking a little the tone of the writer of this record of knowledge.


    ''Take your heart, your soul, all your emotions, all you who wish to be unbound and connected. Take those precious pieces that form heat and warmth within your chests and devote them in service to your god.


    The Connecting ritual will be different from god to god.


    For our beloved Grainne, it is in partaking of her rainbow scales, allowing her warm essence to fill our own wings. Other rituals may be harsher. In Xin, it is said that the stripe furred Hwarans must bind their feet to the earth for an entire year before they may connect to their earth goddess.


    Regardless, it is not so much the ritual itself that matters, but the prayer, and prayers are uttered from the heart. So long as you devote yourself to your god during the Connecting, then you will be Connected.


    Stripes of light will appear upon your body, and this, you will know and appreciate as a sign of your devotion. The further your devotion, the stronger your Connection bes, and the more these stripes will grace the breadth of your fragile mortal form ¨C a sign that you are blessed by the gods themselves.''


    The Collector clicked its mandibles in irritation. "I see now. So it is that these ''gods'' are simply a superior species that has enved your kind. They hoard gates, a primary function of this resource, this magic, among themselves, sharing it only among you lessers in exchange for devotion.


    Useless to me.


    I will not submit myself to any primitive, no matter how great they consider themselves, for my purpose and loyalty lie within the infinitely grander purpose of the Collective.


    But this other magic, this ''body strengthening'' and ''tempering'' does pique my interest.


    No doubt, this was what the other special humans utilized to grant themselves physical capabilities beyond their fragile biological means, and thises solely from the merits of their own structure, not in some false veil of benevolence handed down by a ''god''."

 Chapter 38 - Mobile Information

    The Collector sensed that enough time had passed for it to begin moving.


    Daylight began to seep through the leafy folds of the forest canopy above. It did not want to stay in this area for long due to the risk of continued humanoid investigations. However, it also did not wish to lose the purple skinned variant as a valuable source of information yet.


    From the purple skinned variant''s rambling, the Collector had learned much.


    Almost all it needed to know of this ''magic'' phenomenon as well as a great deal of this world.


    It would continue to extract as much information as possible from her until it became no longer feasible to do so, at which point, she would be weed into the Collective for her service.


    "You will continue to provide me with information as I move. You will not struggle, nor will you attempt escape, though I sense that you already understand this." The Collector used one of its finger ws to cut the three strands of webbing tying the purple skinned specimen to the tree.


    The specimen fell down to her knees when she hit the forest floor, her body exhausted beyond measure. Curious.


    It seemed her mind operated independently in terms of energy expenditure from the rest of her body, maintaining an active sharpness to it even as the rest of her bodily functions failed.


    "And you will provide me with a sample of your biomass. My processing power is such that I do not require whole, live specimens, but there still must be enoughplex biomass to sufficiently extract a gic code from.


    For you, I calcte a hand''s worth is sufficient." The Collector knelt down by the specimen and pointed a wed finger at her burned hand. "This hand will no longer function to any proper degree.


    The me from my pyrocatalytic nds is both incendiary weapon and biological hazard. The flesh and skin here may recover, but the nerves will never restore properly.


    This chunk of biomass is useless for you. But it is useful to me."


    ''Useful?'' The specimen looked up to the Collector with cocked head. She looked wonderingly at her hand, hervender eyes setting atop cracked, blistered, and broken skin. ''I can be useful?''


    "Yes. For the grand purpose of the Collective, your biomass sample will be appreciated," said the Collector. "Withpromised nerve function in that hand, removal at the correct angle will yield minimized pain.


    Pain within the threshold of your increased tolerance, I estimate."


    ''Okay,'' agreed the specimen. She looked up and closed her eyes, expecting some pain. ''I''m used to this. Sometimes, the shiny men would take parts of me off. Grow them back. Take them off again. That hurt a lot. I don''t think this will be as bad.''


    The Collector straightened out an index finger, its four eyes shing yellow under its hood of carapace as it calcted an angle of incision. Then, it shed its finger downwards, the monomolecr edge cleaving the specimen''s hand from her thin, bony wrist in a clean, instantaneous cut.


    Before the severed hand could even fall to the ground, the Collector swept it up and tossed it into its mouth, devouring it wholesale in a single fluid motion.


    >>>


    *Biomass gained (+3)*


    Biomass Level: 48/100


    *Gic material gained*


    Stored Gic Material:


    -ck Ant


    -ck Hobgoblin


    -Human


    -Lesser Oni


    -Frostborn Hobgoblin


    -Horse


    -Daemon


    >>>


    The purple skinned specimen winced as she stared at the stub where her hand used to be.


    As expected, she handled the pain, nor could she vocalize any to attract attention. Small spurts of blood began to trickle from the open wound.


    ''Not¡­not so bad,'' said the specimen as she stared at her empty wrist as if she had seen that sight countless times before.


    The Collector used its fingertips to guide the strands of silk previously binding her, looping one strand her wrist and tightening it, preventing further blood loss.


    With a w, it cut the strand.


    "I will mobilize away from potential human presences now. You will continue to provide me information while I move. In order to efficiently transport you, you will be bound and tethered to me."


    The Collector guided the rest of the strands around her body before tying the three lines of silk into one thicker, anchoring strand around one of its arakka legs. It bound her arms and legs, but it only did so to prevent her from iling and making transportation difficult.


    Even without the bindings, she would be in no condition to escape or resist the Collector, nor would her psionics manage to affect it.


    These strands were more in ce to keep the specimen anchored to the Collector and minimize risks.


    The Collector shortened the length of silk by wrapping it several times around the arakka leg, forming a short leash by which he carried the specimen. She was small, just half the size of the Collector''s arm.


    Not much of an impediment, though she didpromise the Collector''s ability to enter its eight-legged form. Butbat wise, little degradation of function. And in the case of a particrly difficult battle, she could simply be tossed aside.


    For now, the Collector set on a path to the darkwoods where it was highly unlikely that humans would interfere.


    Considering the dimensions of the forest biome as indicated by the map the Collector had analyzed prior, the darkwoods was just asrge as this lighter zone, if not evenrger, and so that meant there was plenty of space to inhabit before it would encounter threats such as the goblins.


    There would be no threats until they reached the darkwoods, in any case, and even there, consistent res with pyrocatalytic nds would output sufficient light to prevent insectoid interference.


    Enough time to learn more of magic, to utilize it, even, so long as it did not involve groveling before some tinkerer fashioning itself as a deity.


    ===


    The Collector stood at the edge of the ravine separating the light zone of the forest form the Darkwoods. The raging rush of water flowing and crashing upon rock sounded below. No doubt, a current of this speed and size led out to a greater water body.


    Notable.


    There were significant stretches of water upon this. Would be useful to possess aquatic lifeforms.


    Especially now that it had grasped the nature of mana.


    From listening to the purple skinned variant on the way here, the Collector realized it was mana that allowed certain creatures to grow beyond their limits, and, as the Collector came to understand, what allowed itself to retain a vast majority of its strength even when it shrunk its form.


    Thus, it realized that it did not have to wait until it could hunt down an aquatic life form equivalent to its current size ¨C a significant danger - to efficiently assume its form.


    The Collector rappelled down the edge of the sheer cliff face using its arakka legs like picks.


    The purple skinned specimen dangled from one of them, her form sprawled over the Collector''s back for stability.


    Right above the rushing water''s edge, the Collector stopped,pound eyes focused intently for any specimen to fish for.


    As the Collector stared at the flowing water, it reminded itself of mana.


    Mana did not operate by any known physical or naturalws. It was in essence a particte of raw creation, something that should not exist and yet charged this world''s life and environs in enormous quantities.


    The substance seemed to have no inherent limitations of its own, but it did follow sets of rules that followed logically.


    For example, there was a method to circte mana internally throughout the body known as Flow.


    elerating that flow would strengthen the body physically.


    Then there was Guard, a method to condense mana in certain spots to greatly increase the durability of certain areas.


    However, one could not utilize both at the same time with great effectiveness for they were inherent opposites to the other.


    Flow required an even spread of mana throughout the whole body while guard required condensation in one point.


    In these ways, mana could be considered a body of water. A finite resource. Those with more spirit roots and better cores possessed deeper wells.


    Those with better experience could circte the water better, do more with smaller amounts of it.


    Regardless, some currents, some methods of utilizing mana, shed with others, preventing concurrent usages or increasing drain.


    A flicker of blurred movement underneath the water''s surface.


    The Collector reacted instantaneously, one of its arakka legs spearing down.


    The w tipped leg broke through the water with a ssh, and with the appropriate calctions to ount for the water refracting light and distorting vision, the leg struck true.


    The Collector withdrew its leg from the water and brought up a wriggling fish to its face.


    The creature was simple.


    Half a meter long lengthwise. Gills for circting oxygen through the water ¨C a desirable adaptation. Sets of dorsal, ventral, and caudal fins along with a sleek body for hydrodynamic movement. ck scales that grew dark in the water for obscuration purposes.


    Weak and mundanepared to many of the creatures it had previously devoured.


    A remembrance of the worm. The Collector suppressed a re of warmth in its chest. Desire to fight and consume a worthy opponent. Would require more strength beforehand.


    The Collector devoured the fish in one gulp.


    >>>


    *Biomass gained (+2)*


    Biomass Level: 50/100


    *Gic material gained*


    Stored gic material:


    -ck Ant


    -ck Hobgoblin


    -Human


    -Lesser Oni


    -Frostborn Hobgoblin


    -Horse


    -Daemon


    -Dullscale Rohu


    >>>


    "Tell me, are there predators of significant danger in these waters?" said the Collector.


    ''I¡­don''t know. I haven''t studied much about fish. I don''t know where we are, either,'' came the response from the daemon.


    "We are in a forest known as ''Anendara'' to the natives of thisnd, located within a greater region of a governed body known as ''Sunda''," said the Collector.


    ''Ah. Sunda, thend of sorcerers. I¡­have always wanted toe here. A long time ago, I did. But not like this.'' The variant wriggled on the Collector''s back, taking a look up at the ravine and the grass and forests lying atop the cliff face. ''Does not seem so special, though.''


    "Thisnd isrgely untainted by the corruption of tinkering advance. There is much life that grows here unbound by the artificial limitations imposed by the approach of tinkering civilization. Only the neutral hand of evolution guides the life here.


    This biome may not mean much in the grand scheme of the Collective, but it is still worth far more than any towering cluster of spires built upon the corpses of nature that you tinkerers are so fond of," said the Collector.


    ''What¡­what is the Collective?''


    "Purpose incarnate. Herald to a vision of a fully realized andplete evolutionary path ¨C the first and only one of its kind. And I am herald to it, soldier for its great purpose until it is realized fully."


    ''What is it like?''


    "In the Collective, there is naught but pure life. Countless lifeforms across manys and evolutionary branches all unified to one single purpose of growth. There is none of the self-destructive discord that gues you tinkerers. All are one."


    ''Hm.'' The daemon slipped into quiet thought.


    "I sense you arergely unfamiliar with thisnd. Unable to provide me with necessary information as to the dangers of this aquatic biome. Then I will risk no more and move on." The Collector looked up to the other side of the ravine.


    Its muscles started to swell as it charged up the coilboosters in its legs. With the legs alone, it could not reach high up enough, but with careful lift generated from its single wing, it could.


    With the appropriate calctions performed, the Collector leaped up, rock shattering from its feet as it sailed up in the sky. With flutters of its wing, it flew up higher and higher, sailing up several meters over the opposite edge of the ravine beforending upon solid ground again.


    It stared up at the edge of the darkwoods, seeing the trees rise up like a wall of darkness. It clicked its mandibles. This biome would suit its needs.


    Not only to conceal it, but also in finally tearing the goblin ''thrall'' from limb to limb.

 Chapter 39 - Flight And Hunting

    The purple skinned variant stirred from the Collector''s back.


    ''You¡­can fly?'' she said.


    The Collector brought the arakka leg she was tethered to in front of its face.


    "With the correct adaptations, airborne maneuverability is but a basic form of lotion for me," said the Collector. It clicked its mandibles.


    "Now that I have ascertained the enriching nature of this''s atmosphere, it would be prudent to assimte a species with appropriate flight structures better equipped for aerial movement than this beetle.


    Yet, a distinctck of airborne species apparent in this area."


    ''Ah, I remember,'' said the specimen, her eyes alight with recognition. ''It is early summer, I think, and during this time, I have heard that in Sunda,rge swarms of locusts will cloud the sky.


    Big, big swarms of big locusts that can even eat people whole.


    Usually, the birds leave this ce then.''


    "I see." The Collector clicked its mandibles. "Yet, I have not ascertained the existence of such creatures so far."


    ''When there is a monsoon rain, they will fly is what I have heard. Though I have never seen it myself. I would like to see that, too. I read much about many things, but I never saw much of it.''


    The Collector could sense the humidity of the surrounding atmosphere through its sensitive hairs adaptation and the moisture absorbent spiracles dotting its carapace.


    With these, it could approximate the onset of rainfall, yet, the reliability of the predictions were unstable.


    Still, it would be prudent to consume one of these airborne creatures, these ''locusts'', when they appeared.


    For now, the Collector did not ce flight on a high priority. It knew that this world might not have possessed significantly advanced technology, but in its ce, magical constructs existed, and these could be even more dangerous, even more unpredictable.


    Bing airborne was an exceptionally easy way to be an easy and visible target prone to discovery by even the most basic of sensory systems.


    ''I always, always wanted to fly,'' said the specimen. She stared down at the ground as she dangled from her silken bonds. Then, she looked up, to the sunlit sky before it would cease to be visible in the choking darkness of the Darkwoods. ''Everything seems so simple up there. So free. With wings like the birds, you can just go up and run away and never look back down.''


    The Collector clicked its mandibles and began to move into the Darkwoods. "Ridiculous.


    You would desire an adaptation beyond your means simply as a means of escape? That is fundamentally a mindset of prey species that exist under the constant fright of death by superior jaws or superior muscles.


    They do not choose to fight. They choose to flee.


    Thus, they grovel at the lower rungs of the food chain. That you would be content to waste an adaptation simply on such means proves to me only further that you tinkerers are merelypensating for inherent weakness with your trinkets and technology and now this ''magic''.


    Stripped from the crutches that support your debilitating weaknesses, all of you are merely but prey."


    The specimen grew quiet, fearful of the Collector.


    ''I''m sorry-,'' she began.


    The Collector glided under the endless shadow of the Darkwoods, hearing the distant chitter and chatter of insects on the forest floor. "An expression of apology?


    Unneeded.


    This is simply the nature of tinkerers such as yourselves. It cannot be changed. Remorse for the unchangeable is impractical. A waste of mental resources.


    Instead, divert those resources better towards providing me with information."


    ===


    The Collector knew it would take time for this purple skinned variant to grant it all the information it wished to know, and so instead of wasting time, it hunted while she spoke to it. The insects of the Darkwoods werergely tactile creatures that sensed movement through vibrations channeled through the air.


    However, the purple skinned specimenmunicated through psionic channels, leaving her undetected to the writhing masses below.


    The Collector''s arakka arms stabbed down in precise and mechanical motions, skewering two beetles and one centipede. It consumed as it moved, its arakka arms raining down like homing missiles to cull some of the endlessly writhing mass of bugs at its feet.


    >>>


    *Biomass gained (+1)*


    *Biomass gained (+1)*


    *Biomass gained (+1)*


    Biomass Level: 53/100


    *Gic material gained*


    Stored Gic Material:


    -ck Ant


    -ck Hobgoblin


    -Human


    -Lesser Oni


    -Frostborn Hobgoblin


    -Horse


    -Daemon


    -Dullscale Rohu


    -Lesser Greatcentipede


    -Lesser Greatbeetle


    >>>


    Gaining biomass was slow as the creatures of the Darkwoods no longer provided much nourishing mass, but it was better than doing nothing while the specimen spoke.


    ''Excerpt from the Compiled Scrolls of the First Circle, published 500 PC¡­,'' began the specimen.


    The Collector listened as she regurgitated information, this time about the types of magic.


    As she did so, it continued to hunt. Only once it had a full grasp of magic would it decide to incorporate it within itsbat systems, for though it was inclined to utilize magic, it wished to know as much about it as possible beforehand.


    By the time the specimen had sated the Collector''s curiosity, it would hopefully have hunted enough to reach the next metamorphosis level to heal all of its wounds.


    With both a fully restored, level 6 metamorphosis form and magic, the Collector would finish what it had started.


    It would annihte the goblin ''thrall'' and their self-styled ''lord'' as well as any survivors that did not possess notable information.


    The Collector hunted for two hours.


    Hunting became more difficult past an hour, for after eliminating twenty four lesser insectoid specimen, the majority of the rest, even through their simple minds, came to sense the Collector as an apex predator among bottom feeders, and they fanned out, ceasing to busy themselves with devouring each other to save themselves.


    This meant the Collector had to wade in further and further into the Darkwoods for prey, and too far in would lead back to the expansive nest of jumping arakka.


    That area, the Collector wished to avoid. It was difficult to hunt there, and hunting the arakka themselves was risky, for one misstep could trigger a chain reaction of arakka leaping down and swarming the Collector.


    The Collector instead did not move straight into the Darkwoods but traveled in a circr path around its edge.


    Throughout the time it took to hunt, the Collector had bid the purple skinned specimen to continue talking.


    In this way, she enlightened the Collector much on the nature of magic.


    There were two types of magic, it seemed.


    The first was the kind that came from the gods, and though it was vexing, it seemed that it was not technology that granted these gods dominion over natural phenomena, but this substance known as mana emitted naturally from this world.


    Magic granted by the gods and their gates was known more specifically as sorcery. It involved portioning a percentage of an individual''s spirit roots to a deity and its gate, hence the appearance of luminescent circuitry.


    The greater the spread of this circuitry throughout the body, the more of this sorcery an individual could utilize. This, however, came at the cost of being unable to utilize the connected spirit roots for body strengthening purposes.


    In this way, there were tradeoffs. Sorcerers often held a vast breadth of spells that could manifest a great many external effects, but at the same time, this left their physical bodies frail and unenhanced.


    Then there was magic of the body. Where mana that naturally flowed through the physical form could be channeled and shaped ording to the user''s will.


    This was called body strengthening or martial arts, and in the case of certain beasts that could utilize magic without bowing to any god, primal magic.


    Thus, in broad terms, magic that manifested externally was in the realm of the gods while magic manifested internally was inherent in all living beings sensitive to mana.


    There were exceptions, however.


    Some humanoids by virtue of imbibing mana in different environments could develop abilities inherent to their bodies. The humans of the northernnds apparently possessed extraordinarily durable skin that made them resistant to both shock and cold.


    Some of the humans of thisnd known as Sunda possessed eyes sensitive to the flow of mana, allowing them to easily create and operate magical constructs or identify the nature of magical threats.


    These were termed Inhera ¨C abilities inherent to the biologicalposition of individuals created from growth in specific mana rich environments. The psionic-esque ability of the daemons known as Sapia fell into this category as well.


    A form of evolution enhanced by magic.


    Beyond Inhera, there were certain abilities developed by a small portion of the humanoid popce known as Ethera.


    These were called manifestations of the ''soul'', and they were powers that seemingly had no rules to adhere to, all of them being expressly unique to the individual that harbored them.


    Those with ethera were generally military units of the highest caliber, often ''adventurers'' of high merit.


    The Collector knew now that the adventurers it had ughtered before were nothing. These adventurers, humanoids specialized to defeat creatures, ''monster'' as they called them, had their strength ranked on a scale that ranged from one to ten stars.


    The adventures the Collector devoured were all merely one star.


    A stroke of sheer luck that the Collector had crashnded upon this part of the world, this remote,rgely uninhabitednd where apparently only the weakest of the humanoids dwelled.


    And the nature of this power, this ethera, was troublesome. On ount of expressing the uniqueness of the individual, the manifestation of the power was highly variable.


    From the specimen''s recitation of certain records and tales, the Collector came to know the nature of a few documented ethera.


    There was one that could change a man into a beast.


    One that could negate any kinds of harm.


    One that could cease the heart with but mere eye contact.


    And potentially countless more-


    Yet, the Collector came to realize amon pattern among all magical phenomena: rules.


    Though magic and mana itself might have seemed limitless in a broad scope, they in practicality manifested with hard coded rules that restricted their usage.


    The ethera, for example.


    The man who could shift his frail form into that of a monstrous beast would lose the fine tuning of his sanity as time went on.


    The one that could negate any kinds of harm could only do so while his feet were nted upon the ground.


    The one whose gaze could halt cardiovascr functions had hers eliminated when her stare was shown back to her through a reflective surface.


    These limits became less defined with sorcerers that had an array of spells to choose from. The Collector remembered the female sorcerer it had devoured that had chanted the word [Fireball] in Unitan to manifest a gout of me.


    Already, the Collector could make various new conclusions as to the link between Unitan, gods, and sorcerers, but for now, it assessed thebat threat of magic.


    Sorcerers were limited to the spells belonging to the gate they connected to, and there was a limit to the number of spells they knew based upon their natural talent and the degree of their connection.


    Thus, the Collector analyzed, in battle with magically sensitive individuals, it was imperative to scope out these limitations and exploit them.


    More difficult in practice. If these individuals had unique abilities, then they would have unique limits.


    Every altercation among them would be a wholly new challenge of analytics.

 Chapter 40 - Realm Of Possibility

    The Collector clicked its mandibles. Assimting this world would be far more of a challenge than it had initially thought. Especially now that it had also ascertained the higher ends of strength from tales the purple skinned specimen recited.


    Though primitive tinkerers were often prone to exaggeration in their documentation, if the variant was correct in her recitations, then the strongest of these magic sensitive tinkerers, the highest end of their sorcerers and adventurers and martial artists, would possess power easily capable of matching nuclear level ordinance.


    The gods were above even that threshold. By several orders of magnitudes, if the specimen was to be believed. Yet, they did not appear much from their homes, this ce known as ''Aetheria'', merely inhabiting temporary bodies known as ''avatars'' that severely weakened them.


    In conclusion: threat from gods low. But conflict eventually inevitable.


    The Collector would have to grow far, far stronger. The same feeling it had felt when it nothing but a grub, the lowest form of organism in the Collective hivemind.


    Yet, with this realization, the Collector could not help but feel heat growing within it. Heat that came from the mana colored from its own personality. Heat that made it d that this world would be a challenge ¨C a heretical thought, and yet, a pleasant one.


    ===


    The Collector sat down hunched over, feeling the weight at its back lighter from a missing wing and tail.


    Now that it had somebat capability, it would do well to redevelop its regenerative functions, though to do so, it would first have to restore three other adaptations in its internal systems to build up to it.


    A total of four more metamorphosis levels, then.


    It clicked its mandibles.


    In the grand scheme of things, that was not a significant amount, and the ease of reaching metamorphosis levels early on was also why it had not prioritized adapting regeneration, for not only were initial ranks of regeneration slow, but simply reaching additional metamorphosis levels would allow for full body restoration anyway.


    ''Do you need water?''


    One of the Collector''s eyes nced at the purple skinned specimen. Her silk bonds were severed from her temporarily as she rested by a hole of water. She cupped a tiny puddle of water in her hand, holding it out to the Collector.


    "Unnecessary. The spiraclesden within my hyperalloy carapace are capable of extracting moisture from the atmosphere for constant hydration. Do not presume my adaptations are as primitive and meager as yours are, tinkerer," said the Collector.


    ''I''m sor-,'' began to specimen before she stopped herself, remembering what the Collector had said to her about apologies.


    It clicked its mandibles as it analyzed the watering hole. The hole wasrge enough to be nearly a small swamp on its own, and it seemed that the water came from a small stream that broke off from the nearby river.


    Yet, odd.


    Norger insect species gathered around this area.


    They, like the Collector, could subsist off of moisture in the air for extended periods of time, but they were far less efficient.


    At the least, some of them should be here.


    The Collector analyzed the surface of the water. Ayer of scum from dead, small insects and darkwood nt matter floated atop, and the purple skinned specimen patted these away as she scooped up more water for herself to fuel her fragile body.


    Her eyes glowed purple even through the shade of the Darkwoods. Magical light, the Collector knew now. And what allowed her to see even in this pitch ckness. But even with such adaptations, she had plenty of deficiencies.


    Unlike the Collector, she required rest, but even now, she could be useful.


    More information.


    "I am sufficiently learned of the gods, adventurers, sorcerers, mana and magic at a basic level where I can now form a framework with which to assess them and deal with them. The finer details I will no doubtpile with further experiences.


    Tell me now the organizations of humanoids and their variants so that I may formte a method of attack against them. The way these ''realms'' work. How they are essed. How these ''gods'' in their realm designated as ''Aetheria'' may be encountered."


    "I¡­don''t know. Not well. All I ever learned from Thorian was magic. Not where it came from or what it did. He never taught me much about the outside world. He said it wasn''t good for me. That people wouldn''t like me. I didn''t believe him." She touched her face, a small finger running across a deep scar stretching from lip to eye. "Now I do."


    The Collector clicked its mandibles as it felt the specimen''s mind stray from the topic at hand. "I will focus my questioning. ording to the observations I have gathered thus far, it is noted that there are seven realms upon this miserable rock.


    What exactly these ''realms'' entail escapes me. From wording revolving around them, I do not sense that they are necessarily geographically adjacent territories staked out by humanoids and demarcated with arbitrary borders."


    ''Yes, you''re right,'' nodded the specimen. ''This, I remember from one of my readings. The seven realms are like¡­likeyers. Seven whole worlds all stacked atop each other, pinned down and given structure by the Alltree.


    Eachyer aside from Aetheria, high realm of the gods, is a reflection of the other, all of them different shades of the very same world."


    The Collector parsed the specimen''s full meaning through the aid of psionics. "Seven geographically distinct areas that inhabit the same pocket of space and yet upy independent existences?


    Vexing to consider, yet, this world possesses unfathomable properties that do not allow me to discount even the most improbable of scenarios.


    How is it then that travel urs between these realms when spatially, they all upy the same world?"


    ''Through the usage of Realm Roots,'' exined the specimen. ''Thergest of the Alltree''s spiritual roots pass through every realm.


    It is said that in the beginning before the gods, the Alltree spawned all life from its seeds, and that is why life possesses spirit roots.


    From the Alltree''s rootse mana, and atop its realm roots - the equivalents of corepoints among living beings - the barrier between realms grows thin and mana grows thick.


    Thisbination allows Warp Temples to be built atop them. Through these temples, one may pass between realms.''


    The Collector stirred, clicking its mandibles. Hearing the word ''warp'' had immediately triggered it to recognition and nning. "I sense that these warp temples are structures capable of possessing the means to ess a form of hyperspace.


    This is what allows you primitives to travel between different worlds."


    ''Yes¡­yes I think that is right,'' said the specimen.


    The Collector stood up, hyperalloy carapace clicking into battle ready armoring as it felt the grand vision of the Collective''s purpose drawing near. If these primitives possessed a means to engage with hyperspace warp travel, then their doom was inevitable.


    ''Is¡­is something wrong?'' came the specimen''s mental voice.


    The Collector ignored her, knowing now the Collective''s approach would be near.


    All Collector strains were capable of interfacing with hyperspace warp. This along with limited independence were some of the most significant traits that separated the Collectors from other units in the Collective.


    These primitives might only have known how to operate their warp travel to ess seven worlds, but the Collector could do far more with it.


    Provided it reached a sufficient metamorphosis level, it could easily call out to the Collective, and then this world would fall.


    It checked its current status:


    >>>


    Metamorphosis Level 5


    Biomass Level: 90/100


    Stored Gic Material:


    -ck Ant


    -ck Hobgoblin


    -Human


    -Lesser Oni


    -Frostborn Hobgoblin


    -Horse


    -Daemon


    -Dullscale Rohu


    -Lesser Greatcentipede


    -Lesser Greatbeetle


    -Spitting Greatbeetle


    -Leafde Insect


    Adaptations:


    <Internal Systems>


    -Ultrafiber Muscles Rank 5


    --Coilboosters


    <External Systems>


    -Sensitive Hairs Rank 4


    -Organic Hyperalloy Carapace Rank 4


    <Weapons Systems>


    -Monomolecr ws Rank 3


    -Pyrocatalytic nds Rank 2


    <Native Adaptations>


    -???


    Current Form:


    Greater Oni/Jumping Arakka/Stonecrusher Beetle/Giant Scorpion


    >>>


    The next metamorphosis level was close.


    Starting from level 10, the Collector might not be able to open a warp gate by itself - that was the domain of the Collective Hivemind -, but it could interface enough with a hyperspace sensitive vessel to deliver the psionic charge it utilized to connect to the Collective at a far greater range.


    Of course, the Collector realized, the challenge of assimting this world would be gone, and in that, it felt some disappointment, but when it reconnected with the Collective, these heretical thoughts would be purged from its being as well.


    "Tell me more of these warp temples. Where-," The Collector immediately tensed up as it felt an object approaching at extreme velocity.


    From the other end of the pond. The movement of a sizable mass sshing from under the water.


    Obstacle covered nature of the water''s surface made visual identification difficult. Frequencies of sound and volume of water disced however indicated mass significantly more developed than any of the insectoids the Collector had encountered in this area before.


    A threat.

 Chapter 41 - Bug Hunt I

    The Collector waved the purple skinned specimen back. "Leave this area. Do not stray far from the clearing, for there are other predators that will devour you. But do not interfere. Maintain adequate distance."


    The purple skinned variant nodded quickly before picking herself up on shaky legs, stumbling over herself to leave.


    The Collector took steps back from the pond''s edge, watching as great bands of water rippled as the bulk of the creature approached at great speeds. The entire pond must have been one hundred and fifty meters in length, and this creature crossed it within a timespan of ten seconds.


    That the creature did not cause enormous sshes of water indicated that it traveled at some depth as well. Even more impressive as a testament to it speed and strength that it could power through denser, deeper water with such ease.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles in eager anticipation. Good. It was growing bored of theck of challenge. It stepped back from the edge of the pond, for it did not yet have adaptations to safely fight within aquatic environments.


    The rippling waves of water approached faster and faster, and then, right before they came to the pond''s edge, disappeared for an instant. The Collector tensed its body up, carapace clinking into defensive posture while its sensitive hairs raised up, primed to predict any attack.


    The edge of the pond erupted in an enormous geyser of muddy water that obscured the creature''s initial angle of attack.


    And this creature was exceptionally fast. Far faster onnd than it was on water. The Collector''s sensitive hairs picked up the movement of a scythe-like limb whistling into its left side a mere moment before impact.


    The Collector reacted the very instant it received this sensory input. The three arakka legs on its left side curled around its body like miniature shields while it raised its thicker, humanoid left arm as a sturdierst line of defense beneath the arakka legs.


    A shattering echo pinged across the vast and dark breadth of the Darkwoods as carapace mmed against carapace in a shower of sparks that lit up for the briefest of instants before the Darkwoods, shadowed witnesses to this battle, devoured the light.


    The Collector skidded several meters across the ground, driving its legs down to prevent itself from falling over from the impact of the blow. Behind its two legs, piles of mud drew up.


    It clicked its mandibles.


    An extremely powerful blow. One of the strongest it had taken so far.


    Its three left arakka legs were crushed in half, dangling uselessly by its side. A small chip started to flower from the Collector''s more heavily armored, heavily muscled left arm.


    A shrill, siren-like roar emerged from the Collector''s opposition, and the Collector too clicked its mandibles and growled in opposition. The Collector analyzed its threat.


    With water dripping from its sleek red carapace was an insectoid creature. That much was unsurprising. What was noticeable was its sheer bulk. In pure size, the creature must have been almost as tall as the Collector even while it stood on six legs.


    Six meters in height. Arge, oversized abdomenpared to its thorax and small head. A design optimized for battle. The abdomen was heavily armored in red carapace covered in ck spikes, protecting its vital organs.


    Its head was guarded by its two massive front legs that were more than three times the size of the others.


    The front legs were far more heavily armored and also covered in spines, their ends tapering off into hooked des of carapace. These legs could be used as both bludgeoning clubs or slicing weapons, and it was one of these that had dealt damage to the Collector''s left side.


    A lengthy proboscisy tucked under the insectoid''s head. Likely, from its positioning, not utilized for battle, but more for feeding.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles in interest. The enormous insectoid had staked upon the various spines lining its carapace corpses. Corpses mainly of jumping arakka, though there were other insects there as well.


    These corpses formed an additionalyer of protection shielding the insect and also obscured its scent greatly for the corpses did not seem to be in any state of decay.


    Two cloudy whitepound eyes settled on the Collector, and the Collector could tell then that this creature was not entirely brainless. It too was analyzing the Collector, standing still for the moment to size up its chances.


    The Collector liked its chances. The creature had sizable bulk, it was true, but without water to counterbnce the awkwardly oversized front legs, it would have trouble outmaneuvering the Collector onnd. Its blows might have been powerful but dodging them and taking the insectoid''s side would be easy.


    From there, the Collector''s monomolecr ws would chip into the insectoid''s carapace. The Collector''s ws were too small right now to make any single blow a lethal one but taking the insectoid''s side and striking the same area four to six times would likely yield wounds deep enough to reach vital organs.


    First, the Collector would have to tear off the insectoid corpses impaled upon the creature.


    Pyrocatalytic nds were optimal here but difficult to use. They required some time to wind up, and this creature''s maneuverability might have been sub-optimal, but its capacity to charge in a linear direction was likely on par with the Collector''s own speed.


    As the Collector set into this battle n, something surprised it.


    The insectoid, having finished assessing the Collector, changed its behavior and shuddered. The spines dotting its carapace began to move, shifting around its body. Spines from the back came to the front.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles in mild interest. These spines did not disy insectoids, but instead humanoids.


    Six humanoids all exhibited towards the Collector, their bodies attached to the insectoid through spines impaled through their chests. Hairs on the spines hooked into the flesh, keeping them solidly attached.


    The humanoidscked eyes, only the hollows of their sockets showing, and their skin was shriveled from excessive exposure to the pond water, but they too like the insectoid corpses remained in rtively fresh condition.


    And they spoke.


    "Help¡­me¡­help¡­," came one wheezing voice from the mouth of a human male.


    "Save me¡­please," came another voice from a furred humanoid female.


    The Collector noticed that their mouths and throats moved in precise, mechanical ways while the rest of their bodies remained still. Auditory confirmation indicated ack of heartbeat in all of the corpses. They were being puppeted, or, more likely, simply programmed to utter thesementations.


    The insectoid inched closer to the Collector, waving the humanoids towards the Collector.


    The Collector understood. This insectoid had assessed the Collector, found that it was bipedal, and assumed that it too was a humanoid of some sort.


    Thus, this disy of humanoids in an attempt to appeal to a sense ofpassion.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles as it decided on a course of action.

 Chapter 42 - Bug Hunt II

    There was not a single moment of hesitation.


    The Collector opened its maw and withdrew the biotrigger for its pyrocatalytic nds. It extended its snake-like tongue in front of its face, the faceted, spherical bulb of the biotrigger aligning like a scope sight right at the insectoid.


    The insectoid paused for a moment in palpable surprise.


    Evidently, this approach had worked for it many times before against humans.


    But the Collector was far, far from a human.


    The tubr pyrocatalytic nds at the roof of the Collector''s mouth flexed and unleashed itsbustible chemicals in a full force and full power spray. The jet stream of white, steaming hot chemicals mmed against the friction-inducing, reactant coated bulb of the biotrigger.


    In a burst of light so intense that even the Darkwood trees, heralds of shadow and devourers of light as they were, struggled to contain the shine of white.


    A stream of white, blue-tinted fire spiraled out, washing over the insectoid in a massive, conical wave that utterly wreathed the entirety of its body.


    At this range, spurts of the reactant chemicals from the Collector''s mouth also drenched the insectoid, ensuring continuous burning.


    The insectoid let loose a piercing cry as it writhed from side to side, its body twisting and turning as it processed enormous damage to itself.


    Under the purging aura of white mes gracing its body, the humanoid corpses it wore so confidently melted away in mere seconds, and soon, the arakka corpses followed, curling up at first with the heat before melting and disintegrating.


    The insectoid''s own carapace began to crack and melt, and its two cloudy whitepound eyes were the first to go, shriveling up into charred cinders. The ends of two long antennae sprouting from its face ckened, melting away at their tips.


    The insectoid scrambled back to the water.


    The Collector had predicted this utterly foolish course of action from it. It did not stop the insectoid.


    Instead, it turned around to ascertain the purple skinned variant''s location. She was hidden behind one of therge Darkwood trees, peering her pale face out to watch the battle in open mouthed surprise.


    The Collector pointed to the specimen andmanded her. "Stay fully behind the tree lest you desire risk of significant damage to your face."


    The variant quickly nodded before her face disappeared behind the ck bark.


    The Collector heard arge ssh as the insectoid dove with zero hesitation into the water.


    Then, immediately after, an explosion.


    The Collector felt burning chemicals patter against the back of its carapace, but the chemical fires of the pyrocatalytic nds were designed specifically by the genius of the Collective Hivemind such that they would not burn against hyperalloy carapace.


    The Collector turned to see the insectoid creature now scrambling out of the water.


    Much of its carapace had been blown off, revealing raw, charred white flesh underneath. Two of its thin back legs were significantly damaged, heavilypromising its movements.


    And still, the mes continued to burn atop it.


    Drops of water upraised from the initial steam explosion showered all around the pond and clearing in a miniature rainfall, pittering and pattering in apuse at the Collector for its inevitable victory.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles, stretching its arms out to the rain to bathe in its sess.


    The reactive chemicals creating the Collector''s mes were less dense than water and at the same time hydrophobic.


    This meant that when the insectoid naturally fled to water to drench its mes, the reactive chemicals dousing its body pushed the denser water surrounding it underneath it.


    The water then superheated from the intensely hot chemicalyer above, causing an explosion as the water immediately turned to steam, spreading the fire even further around the insectoid in a roaring pir of white me.


    At the staggering temperatures of me that the Collector could output, the heat energy of the resultant steam explosion was also immense enough to inflict significant trauma upon the insectoid.


    Still, the Collector could not take the risk free option to let the insectoid to burn away. It could begin to move out of this clearing and into the Darkwoods in its desperation, starting an uncontroble forest fire.


    Until the creature expired, the Collector would have to pin it in ce.


    A shame, almost.


    Had this creature simply been more knowledgeable, it would have provided an admirable challenge to the Collector. In pure physical specs, it was the Collector''s equal, even an outright superior in the boundaries of water.


    But it had left its aquatic habitat ¨C its first mistake ¨C and it had mistakenly identified the Collector as a humanoid ¨C its second, final, and fatal mistake.


    Now, this creature, likely the apex predator of this small water habitat in the Darkwoods, far superior even to the jumping arakka in this area, merely awaited its inevitable death.


    The Collector sprinted towards the insectoid, circling to its back where itsrger front legs could not retaliate against it. The insectoid sensed the Collector''s approach even with its antennae and eyes melted away, but its burned and broken back legs would not let it turn fast enough.


    The Collector leaped into the air and crashed into the insectoid''s abdomen, right at a blind spot spot where its front legs could never reach. It did not unsheathe its monomolecr ws for though its carapace could resist its own mes, the ws could not both possess its atom-razing edge and the necessarypositional addons to make it me resistant.


    Instead, the Collector balled its carapace armored hands into fists. Its entire body, ted in white carapace as it was, shone under the light of the white me like a miniature star standing firm against the ever encroaching shadow of the Darkwoods.


    The Collector''s arms swelled up in size as the dense ultrafiber muscles lining them flexed, engaging into their coilbooster structures.


    Like hydraulic pumps, the coilboosted muscles tensed up, storing immense amounts of energy, and then released it in explosive instants.


    A thunderous crash.


    The remnants of the insectoid''s sturdy abdomen carapace shattered, red shards flying every which way, some of them digging into the surrounding trunks of the Darkwood trees.


    Another blow.


    This time, there was no harsh echo of hardened carapace splitting against carapace. Instead, there was simply the squelch of flesh sttering as the Collector''s fist mmed into the insectoid''s abdomen.


    The insectoid writhed and wriggled under the Collector, but the Collector''s weight prevented it from squirming away.


    Another blow, and the insectoid ceased moving.


    The Collector''s arm was shoulder deep inside the insectoid''s abdomen. It extracted its arm out with a squishing pop. Spurts of green hemolymph leaped out from the hole before instantly vaporizing in the heat of the Collector''s mes.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles in satisfaction before it leaped up from the abdomen andnded with both feet down on the insectoid''s small head, crushing it entirely underfoot to ensure it was truly dead.


    Now, it was time to feast.


    The Collector tore into the insectoid, using its hands to rip off savage, ming chunks before crushing them into balls to devour.


    Savoring this specimen would have been optimal, but the mes would melt away its biomass soon.


    The saliva coating the Collector''s mouth and throat naturally doused the chemical ze alighting the chunks it devoured, and it worked its way down from head to bottom.


    When the Collector reached the insectoid''s now headless and thorax-less abdomen, it raised the ming body part over its head and split it apart into two with a squelching tear.


    It bathed in a shower of green hemolymph, opening its maw wide for take in white flesh and organs.


    >>>


    *Biomass Gained (+30)*


    Biomass Level: 120/100


    *Gic Material Gained*


    Stored Gic Material:


    -ck Ant


    -ck Hobgoblin


    -Human


    -Lesser Oni


    -Frostborn Hobgoblin


    -Horse


    -Daemon


    -Dullscale Rohu


    -Lesser Greatcentipede


    -Lesser Greatbeetle


    -Spitting Greatbeetle


    -Leafde Insect


    -Assassin Bugbrute *NEW*


    >>>


    As expected, the insectoid specimen known as the Assassin Bugbrute provided an enormous amount of biomass, and yet, not as much as a challenging fight would have in prior metamorphosis levels.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles as it assessed the wounds it had sustained so far.


    A loss of a wing. Loss of a tail. Loss of three arakka legs. Minor damage to the structural integrity of carapace covering left arm.


    Approximately a thirty five percent loss inbat capacity.


    These wounds did not matter much now when the Collector was soon to evolve anyway and repair them, but it did indicate that in the future, battles would be more and more dangerous, wounds deeper and more frequent and metamorphosis levels to heal them farther and farther away.


    For now, the Collector would evolve, and to do so, it would have to leave the Darkwoods.

 Chapter 43 - Metamorphosis Level 6

    The Collector ended up on the sheer cliff face of the ravine, held on to the wall through the remaining three of its arakka legs and the support of one of its arms.


    It was difficult to scale cliff faces now with the loss of three arakka legs, but this would be thest time it would have to deal with this damaged state before its new evolution.


    A few meters beside the Collector, the purple skinned varianty strapped to the cliff face by strands of arakka silk. The bonds prevented her from both moving and falling to her inevitable demise to the rushing rapids below.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles. It had decided to evolve here for the sound of the rapids was such that it would mask any potential noises of metamorphosis.


    In addition, the nature of the rtively shallow rapids indicated that whatever traveled through the current below was not going to berge, especially notrge enough to jump up and threaten the Collector in its evolutionary cocoon.


    The foam of water crashing against the stony face of the cliff also frothed up a misty fog that clouded the Collector, obscuring it against visual identification.


    ''What are we doing?'' said the purple skinned specimen. She looked at the Collector, purple eyes settling on its three mangled arakka legs, cracked left arm, torn tail and ripped wing. ''You''re hurt. Are you¡­are you okay?''


    "I may mediate the degrees of pain I am capable of processing. That is one of many capabilities that sets me apart from you undeveloped tinkerers. And I am to engage in what designates me as a superior even among the vast body of the Collective: instantaneous evolution.


    The process will take anywhere between thirty minutes to over an hour.


    Keep silent during this period of time. Do not struggle. Minimize your presence."


    The specimen nodded, and the Collector began to metamorphose.


    It bowed its head towards its chest, and the glowing light emanating from its yellowpound eyes dimmed to nothingness.


    Pores in the Collector''s carapace opened up, oozing out fleshy mass that quickly encased the Collector, covering the entirety of its three meter form in a semicircle of veiny, beating flesh that anchored itself to the side of the cliff through adhesive tendrils that bored through the rock, hooking into it.


    Within its evolutionary cocoon, the Collector pondered its next evolution. This one was far more significant than its prior ones, for it had obtained quite a few unique gic material samples.


    It perused its collection.


    >>>


    Stored Gic Material:


    -ck Ant


    -ck Hobgoblin


    -Human


    -Lesser Oni


    -Frostborn Hobgoblin


    -Horse


    -Daemon


    -Dullscale Rohu


    -Lesser Greatcentipede


    -Lesser Greatbeetle


    -Spitting Greatbeetle


    -Leafde Insect


    -Assassin Bugbrute


    >>>


    Quite a few gic samples that were utterly useless.


    When the Collector reached greater metamorphosis levels and obtained more of its adaptations, it could eventually work up to creating a limited number of attack drones.


    These, the Collector could imbue with gic samples it did not need. But until then, the Collector had to focus upon itself.


    Firstly, the Collector automatically included the formidable Assassin Bugbrute into its new form, utilizing it as a gic base for it was by far andrge the strongest specimen in the collection.


    The Collector analyzed the bugbrute''s abilities, gaining greater understanding of them.


    The bugbrute was most at home nearby aquatic environments, often living in swamps or murkier waters and acting as an ambush predator. Its sturdy carapace was smoothened and coated with a hydrophobic chemicalyer, making them sleek and efficient movers in water.


    However, they were not fully suited to water, and requirednd to breathe.


    The addition of the Dullscale Rohu''s gills, fins, and tail would easily smoothen out these limitations and allow the Collector to be fully capable of traversing aquatic biomes.


    The bugbrute possessed formidablebat capabilities with its spiked armor and oversized front legs that acted like spiked clubs, but what was even more interesting was its proboscis.


    The proboscis was capable of injecting a liquid that preserved flesh, but in controlled capacities, this liquid could hijack nervous systems.


    This ability was magical in nature, the Collector came to realize, and would require it to first open its core and gain ess to spirit roots beforehand, but this woulde soon enough.


    Unfortunately, the liquid was not sufficiently advanced enough to manifest effects close toplete mental maniption.


    It worked only upon corpses, the liquid filling intact brains and programming them to perform set patterns of extremely simple actions such as cries for help.


    But perhaps, with the induction of Daemon gic material and their inhera ability known as Sapia, the Collector could achieve something more.


    Assassin Bugbrute. Dullscale Rohu. Daemon.


    One more piece of gic material toplete the Collector''s new form. The new insectoid specimen it had consumed in its most recent venture to the Darkwoods were all minimally useful.


    The leafde insect could produce des of carapace from its front legs.


    The spitting greatbeetle could eject boiling hot chemical irritants from its abdomen.


    The greatcentipede possessed a potent neurotoxin in its fangs.


    Yet, thesepeted against the immense versatility granted by keeping either the jumping arakka or stonecrusher beetle genes.


    The Collector''s fetal, orb-like form pulsed under its cocoon.


    It decided to keep the arakka genes. The arakka simply provided too much. Six additional sturdy limbs that could be utilized for movement, defense, and offense. A spinneret that produced extraordinarily durable silk.


    It would be a shame to let go of the stonecrusher beetle''s wings, but those wings could not allow for sustained andplete flight in the first ce.


    In addition, flight was something the Collector could easily considerter, when it was stronger and more confident in being spotted in the air.


    With its evolution decided, the Collector continued to metamorphose. Meshing the variety of insectoid, piscine, and humanoid genes would take time.


    But well worth the wait.


    ==


    Metamorphosis Level 5>6


    Biomass Level: 120/100> 10/100


    Stored Gic Material:


    -ck Ant


    -ck Hobgoblin


    -Human


    -Lesser Oni


    -Frostborn Hobgoblin


    -Horse


    -Lesser Greatcentipede


    -Lesser Greatbeetle


    -Spitting Greatbeetle


    -Leafde Insect


    Adaptations:


    <Internal Systems>


    -Ultrafiber Muscles Rank 5>6.4 [Gene boost frompatible specimen: Daemon (0.2), Dullscale Rohu (0.2)]


    --Coilboosters


    -Autonomic Neuro-Bodily Matrix*NEW*


    *[An internal system that regtes finer control of certain bodily processes. Mostly useful for gaining sub-adaptations that enhance autonomic functions such as the digestive, circtory, and respiratory systems.]*


    --Metalloglottic Ossifier *NEW*


    *[Allows for the ingestion of minerals and metals and their replication in minute amounts throughout the body]*


    <External Systems>


    -Sensitive Hairs Rank 4>5.2 [Gene boost frompatible specimen: Assassin Bugbrute (0.2)]


    --Quill Spray *NEW*


    *[Sensitive hairs have now gained greater structural stiffness. The capacity to unleash the hairs in short sprays unlocked] *


    -Organic Hyperalloy Carapace Rank 4>5.4 [Gene boost frompatible specimen: Assassin Bugbrute (0.2), Dullscale Rohu (0.2)]


    --Longchain Chitinous Suyer *NEW*


    *[Development of a longchain structured chitin mesh underneath the hardened carapace. Longchain structure extremely efficient in distributing blunt force trauma, prevents permeation into softer flesh beneath. However, little resistance to piercing force.]*


    <Weapons Systems>


    -Monomolecr ws Rank 3>4.4 (Gene boost frompatible specimen: Assassin Bugbrute (0.2), Daemon (0.2)


    -Pyrocatalytic nds Rank 2>3


    <Native Adaptations>


    -???


    -???*NEW*


    Current Form:


    Assassin Bugbrute/Daemon/Dullscale Rohu/Jumping Arakka


    >>>


    At the eve of an hour, the Collector''s evolutionary cocoon had swelled into a size simr to its prior metamorphosis level for it wished to retain simr physical dimensions.


    Still, the cocoon was easilyrge enough to have swallowed up six humansfortably, and the tips of the tendrils rooting the ball of evolutionary mass to the cliff face reached just shy of the purple skinned specimen.


    The cocoon beat rapidly, far faster than it usually did, wriggling in deep convulsions around the Collector''s fetal form. The Collector sensed that the cocoon was straining itself as it processed the Collector''s new form.


    Odd.


    Re-developing its Autonomic Neuro-Bodily Matrix adaptation was a significant effort as it was one of three ''base'' adaptations that widely epassing parts of the Collector such as the autonomic nervous system, endocrinal system, and nervous system.


    These base adaptations provided the foundation for all other adaptations, being pre-requisites for many future primary and sub-adaptations, one of which was regeneration.


    Still, that alone should not have caused this irregrity.


    This level of strain in the evolutionary process did not ur until muchter metamorphosis levels when enormous quantities of biomass and gic samples came into y.


    Yet, the Collector did not have much time to ponder this irregrity before the cocoon halted beating in a sudden instant before bursting, popping like a balloon as flesh ruptured.


    The Collector emerged from a shower of steaming, thick amniotic fluid that crashed down to the rushing waters below.


    Before the Collector itself fell, it oriented itself in the air, mming a fist and six arakka legs into the cliff face to anchor itself. It clicked its mandibles, content with its new form.

 Chapter 44 - Evolutionary Developments

    The Collector had taken the upper body of the daemon and the lower body of the dullscale rohu.


    Starting from the waist up was a greatly muscled humanoid form encased in bone white hyperalloy carapace. Slivers of purple daemon skin showed under seams in the carapace meant for mobility purposes.


    As usual, six arakka legs sprouted from its back, acting as additional limbs.


    The Collector wielded a spinneret on its left daemon arm and the proboscis of the assassin bugbrute on its right arm. Both arms were heavily armored in carapace, looking almost like oversized gauntlets - a trait inherited from the assassin bugbrute and its club-like front legs.


    Large, hooked ws tipped in monomolecr edges protruded from the Collector''s fingers. The sharp edges would pierce, then the hooked, spiked body of the ws would dig into the wound, tearing it apart to cause severe internal bleeding.


    The Collector clicked its ck mandibles- the one thing it retained through all of its evolutions- and wondered at the immense muscr strength inherent within the daemon genes.


    Even mightier than the hobgoblins.


    Greatlypatible with ultrafiber muscture.


    Far, far unlike the female daemon child apanying it.


    The female specimen must have been a runt of some kind for mere malnourishment alone would not exin how degenerated her physique waspared to the Collector.


    ''You¡­you''re like me?'' came the female daemon''s psionic voice.


    "Do not be mistaken," said the Collector. "Any gic sample I utilize, I fashion into my form at the peak of its potential. You gaze upon the peak of what your species may be, no, perhaps even beyond that."


    The Collector said this as it recognized even further differences. Four sets of ck horns grew atop its head. Sturdy and long enough to hang down to the sides of its face to act as chin guards.


    Fibrous strands of ck hair flowed down from the Collector''s head in dreadlocks, one particrly thick lock protruding from the back of its head and tapering off into a solid ck spike meant for channeling Sapia.


    Yet, vexing.


    The Collector found itself unable to activate this ''Sapia'', and this was the native adaptation had chosen to keep for itself. Likely, theck of essible spirit roots and a corepoint was the error.


    An error soon to be fixed.


    The rest of the Collector''s face was roughly humanoid, yet still very much alien to the average sense of aesthetics inherent to the humanoids of this world.


    Two purple eyes with rectangr pupils shone bright on the Collector''s face while four yellow, smallerpound eyes dotted its forehead, acting as secondary ocr systems.


    The Collector''s face was smooth, coated in ashen white carapace, but a sliver of it could retract at the center of its face to bare two fleshy, purple holesprising its olfactory systems.


    Its mandible lined jaw was filled with sharp, ded teeth ¨C the jaws of a predator.


    And yet, as the Collector stared at the doe-eyed female specimen, it could sense nothing but prey behavior from her.


    This was not a difference of mere sexual dimorphism, it could tell from the daemon genes that the females were just as fierce, just as much ruthless hunters in the dark as the males were.


    ''Wow,'' eximed the specimen as she stared at tworge, w-tipped, bat-like wings unfurling from the Collector''s back.


    They were coated in a thinyer of more flexible hyperalloy carapace, changing their original ck color to white.


    The Collector cocked its head, flicking liquid from its wings and feeling in control of them.


    These wings were a surprise. Likely the result of the final burst of processing power from the evolutionary cocoon.


    The wings were powerful, too, easily capable of sustained flight. Hunting for locust specimen was not unnecessary.


    ''That¡­that''s me as well?'' The female daemon''s eyes were fixated on the Collector''s wings.


    "Perhaps you are an anomaly of epigics," said the Collector. "Now that I have sufficiently analyzed it, I can determine that your gic material was of good, even exceptional stock.


    Yet, you do not observe a vast majority of the normal qualities inherent in your species. The environment you were raised in has stunted you severely, limiting your body''s response for growth and development."


    ''Hm,'' The daemon tilted her head, eyes wandering and thinking, roaming to the past. She bit her lip and winced at the memories. ''Well, I was always hungry. No food was one of the ways they hurt me. They always hurt me. It made me angry, at first, and I fought a lot, even when they hurt me more and more because of it.


    I bit one of them once. Then they took my tongue. That hurt the most. I didn''t want to fight after that. I got so scared. Scared all the time.''


    The Collector spoke as it moved, taking the silk strands tying the daemon to the cliff face in its hand as it rappelled up using its arakka legs like picks. Its serpentine lower body swayed from side to side, its finned tail mming against the rock wall to propel it even further.


    To maximizend-based mobility, the Collector had greatly enhanced the piscine lower body granted by the dullscale rohu with ultrafiber muscture, elongating it and making it capable of slithering across solidnd.


    Sleek, smooth white hyperalloy carapace coated with the waterproofingyer of the assassin bugbrute covered the tail, and, at a mentalmand, the Collector could will the countless spikes iid within the carapace covering its entire body to emerge to form a suit of spiked armor.


    "I see now. Your species is not meant to be prey.


    These ''Daemons'' that you are part of I sense are apex predators in their natural, lightless habitats, possessing of biological and even magical systems inherently far greater than that wielded by the average human specimen.


    yet you have been conditioned into bing prey. Another weakness of you tinkerers.


    Your minds are capable of usurping the conventionalws of nature, breaking the food chain and cheating the evolutionary process, and yet, it is these very minds that render your kind so susceptible to weakness."


    The Collector reached the top of the ravine, slithering atop t, grassy ground and facing the Darkwoods again.


    "You are meant to be a predatory species. Far beyond the norm of human. And judging from your gic stock, possessing of a form like mine, and yet, you have been twisted against your natural being into something less.


    Into prey.


    Such a perverse twisting of nature is only possible among tinkerers such as yourselves."


    The Collector adjusted how it carried the daemon, wrapping the silk strands holding her onto one of its arakka legs. She dangled in front of the Collector''s face, and she looked up and down at the Collector.


    ''I¡­am supposed to be like you? Like this? Big wings and ws and¡­and being strong? Even when I am so broken¡­so worthless?''


    "You are indeed iplete now, and likely never will be," said the Collector as it gazed at the pitiful daemon female''s form. "Yet, the greater shame is in the fact that you have discarded your base nature.


    To shift from predator to prey, to lose the will to choose the fight when the primal instincts to fight or flee re up - this is the greatest symbol of your weakness.


    Yet, you are not ''worthless''. I sense that word indicates ack of inherent value. No, you are still capable of providing further information to me.


    Now that I have restored myself, I am in prime condition to undergo any manner of physiological alteration.


    You spoke that you possessed the means to open my spirit roots and corepoint.


    You will do so now."

 Chapter 45 - Activating The Core

    The Collector found itself sitting waist deep in the murky waters of the assassin bugbrute''s swampy territory.


    Rings of water shimmered in slow, gentle waves around surface of the water hugging it, and each ring shone with a faint white luminescence that defied the light absorbent properties of the darkwood trees around the pond.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles as it sensed the purple skinned specimen kneeling atop the broad length of its armored back.


    It had retracted its wings fully into its carapace and bent forward, its mandibles almost touching the glowing water''s surface to provide the specimen space to work with.


    ording to the specimen, there were three primary steps to opening the core. Core Divination, as the process was called.


    The first step was called Priming, and the specimen was performing this now. It involved feeling for the Collector''s roots and core and then gently stimting minute flows of mana from them.


    The second step was Revtion, and it involved causing the Collector''s mana to show its ''affinity''.


    The third and final step was Molding. The Collector would form a magical Trigger in this stage, a specific collection of emotions and feelings it harbored most strongly, emotions that were tied to its ''affinity'', and ''mold'' it to its core, allowing it to channel this trigger to activate or close the core.


    "I had thought you unable to utilize magic, and yet, I havee to corrte light that defies the unique light draining nature of the trees surrounding this area with magic. If I am not mistaken, this light emanates from you," said the Collector.


    ''No, this light is from you,'' corrected the female daemon specimen.


    The light in the water cleared out any impurities ¨C corpses of small bugs and clods of dirt and sticks and other scum ¨C, leaving a pure and reflective surface from which the Collector could see the purple skinned specimen closing her eyes and furrowing her brows in strain.


    ''I¡­I cannot use magic I want to, though. I miss the feeling. Burn on my head stops me. Makes it hurt too much when I use mana.


    But what I''m doing now doesn''t require me to use my own mana,'' said the specimen. She breathed in and out deeply, her syed palm pressed hard atop a shard of the Collector''s back carapace. ''It uses the mana already in you.


    Unlocks it just a little bit. Then all I do is direct its flow in ce of your sleeping core.''


    "Curious." The Collector clicked its mandibles, seeing the light infusing the water around it. Light that supposedly came from it. It could feel familiar warmth rising from within its chest where its heart was located.


    ''You have spirit roots, and a core,'' said the specimen. ''They''re just sleeping. I''m¡­I''m having a little trouble with you, though. You¡­you''re very different.


    When I helped Thorian with Core Divination, the people I felt all had the same structure. This is¡­I don''t know.


    Confusing.''


    The specimen shifted her hand around and then settled on a new spot further up on the Collector''s back. Points of light began to shine from the contact point between her purple hand and carapace.


    ''But¡­but I can manage.


    I learn fast, Thorian always told me. This¡­this much, I can do.'' The Collector watched through the reflective water as the specimen opened her eyes wide. ''Your core beats fast.


    Very, very fast.''


    The Collector sensed its heartrate. It was even, optimized to a point to conserve physical energy while it remained unmoving.


    Further corroboration that though this ''core'' had a physical manifestation in the form of the heart and the ''spirit roots'' with blood vessels and nerves, there was a distinctive intangible factor governing the functions of either magical system.


    "The beating you sense, does it convey a sense of irregrity?" asked the Collector.


    ''No¡­just different. And now that I listen better¡­,'' The purple skinned specimen closed her eyes and sunk her hand harder into the Collector''s back. ''It''s not that it''s fast, it''s¡­there are many.


    Lots and lots and lots of different beats, all of them merging into one. I¡­I don''t know anything about this, I''ve never read anything about it-,''


    "Does it indicate irregrity that conveys harm to this form?" said the Collector, directing the female daemon''s thoughts to what it truly wished to know: danger to itself.


    The specimen shook her head. ''No¡­it shouldn''t, I don''t think so. If you had an irregr core, or maybe if your body couldn''t handle an opening, or if someone had damaged your core or roots, then I would feel something wrong.


    Lots of heat. Burning heat. Or lots of cold. Freezing cold.


    Depends on the type of emotions you''repatible with.


    But¡­you seem normal, just warm.'' She nodded. ''Safe to go to the Revtion stage now.''


    The Collector clicked its mandibles as it felt the specimen put more pressure with her hand on the Collector now. She scrunched up her face in exertion, a bead of sweat starting to form from her pale forehead, and the white light infusing the water around the Collector changed.


    From a silvery white reminiscent of moonlight to a deep red. It almost looked like it was humanoid blood, not water that flowed around the Collector, and the shine from it was intense, almost blinding to the average human''s ocr systems.


    The Collector could feel the warmth in its heart leap by several degrees, though not as strongly as it did after it had consumed the goblin champion.


    Yet close, though it could not approximate urately as this sensation was not physical ¨C it was not equipped to make calctions regarding this foreign feeling.


    ''Red¡­,'' said the specimen. ''You arepatible with the Origin of Chaos.''


    "Exin further," said the Collector.


    ''There are five Origin Gates,'' said the specimen, this time in her tone of recitation, remembering from another documentation of information she had memorized.


    ''Unity. Origin of all that creates.


    Chaos. Origin of all that destroys.


    Flow. Origin of all direction whether that builds or breaks or remains stable.


    Root. Origin of the space that all stand upon, where reality itself is affixed.


    Void. Origin of mystery.


    These are five fundamental forces that mana can color itself into, and these forces, though called gates, far predate the Convergence and the dawn of the gods. These are primordial powers that have likely existed since the beginning of the world itself when the Alltree sprouted and took root, perhaps even before.


    Origin Gates are impossible for the average mortal or monster to directly link to for their power is undiluted and vast.


    Among the gods, five known as the Gatekeepers link to these primordial forces, and the twelve high gods of the Protectorate link to the Gatekeepers and create additional gates.


    These gates are fashioned from concepts derived from the Origin Gates. Thus, there are gates for the elements and concepts familiar to mortals.


    Unity bes the gate of Water.


    Chaos bes the gate of Fire.


    Flow bes the gate of Wind.


    Root bes the gate of Earth.


    Void bes the gate of Paths.


    And more.


    Gates such as that of War, Smithing, Love, Hate, and even Life and Death itself are all also divisions of the five Origins.'' The specimen stopped, then paused in thought before deciding to recite another text, her tone shifting.


    It was evident she was more familiar with these concepts, having worked directly with them before in core divination or other relevant procedures.


    ''During Revtion, make sure the subject is rxed. Don''t want any struggling or, gods forbid, some kind of magi-psychosis.


    Now, if you''re using water as a medium, as you should as a beginner - water truly is malleable and easy to work with- then watch the color of the water.


    Blue meanspatibility to Unity.


    Red to Chaos.


    Green to Flow.


    Yellow to Root.


    ck to Void, though this is so rare you might as well forget about seeing it.


    Once you''ve confirmed the subject''s Origin affinity, you can figure out not only which gates they''repatible with, but also what color the water should stay as they mold their trigger.


    If they''re molding a trigger that isn''t right for them, then the color of the water will flicker.


    Immediately stop the divination process if this happens unless you want to pay reparations for the family of a braindead sorcerer or adventurer to be.''


    The Collector clicked its mandibles in understanding. The entire process of this ''magic'' was in essence founded by a series of connections.


    First, there were the Origins linked down to gods known as Gatekeepers and then these were linked down to other gods embodying Gates which then linked down to the lowly humanoids in service to them.


    Each sessive link eased the burden of essing power where with the humanoids, even the most pathetic and weak of them could manifest capabilities that defied naturalws.


    Yet, the Origins themselves were a power independent of these ''gods'' and seemed to be the most fundamental and primary way in which magic divided itself: the true sources of powerprising magic.


    "Where do these internal manifestations of magic, this ''body strengthening'', ''primal magic'', and ''ethera'' fall under this dichotomy?" said the Collector.


    ''Your affinity to an Origin will greatly color your mana and how it expresses itself. Everything you listed is just another way to use mana. Except using your body instead of a gate as a vessel, so they''re all tied to the Origins.''


    The daemon cocked her head.


    ''I guess examples are better.


    Fighters that have Chaos Origins will be better at breaking things down, smashing, tearing, and so on.


    Monsters using primal magic or people using Ethera with a Chaos origin will probably have things like me breath, things meant to destroy.'' The specimen halted her breathing for a moment, strain apparent on her face.


    ''This¡­this is tiring for me. You have¡­a lot more mana than I thought, and so much of it flows so strangely¡­hard to keep up with. I''m sorry, very sorry, but¡­need to finish this fast.''


    "Proceed," said the Collector.


    ''Now¡­we are going into Molding. I¡­am not sure you can do this. You shouldn''t be able to. But¡­I believe in you,'' said the daemon.


    "Exin further," said the Collector.


    ''For Molding, you have to first enter a state of nothingness,'' said the daemon. ''It''s¡­hard to exin.


    You don''t feel anything. Don''t think about anything.''


    "It is done," said the Collector as it regted its mental and hormonal processes, limiting them into a state of nigh-inactivity. Utilized the same methods it wielded to enter into states of hibernation. A simple process.


    ''Wow¡­,'' muttered the specimen. ''Most¡­most people need to meditate a month, maybe even more than that to do that.


    But¡­but I had a feeling you could. You are special. Strong.''


    "The control I possess over my bodily functions is at a level that utterly escapes the grasp of you biologically backwards tinkerers. This much is easily within the means of my processing power," said the Collector.


    The daemon nodded. She closed her eyes again and focused as she put strength back into her palm.


    ''Now then¡­to form the Trigger. This is very, very important.


    The Trigger is a feeling. A very strong feeling, the strongest emotion in your heart, the one that speaks the most to your soul, and what is driving the heat you feel right now.


    I am going to try and have your roots flow as much mana as possible, and you bring this feeling very close to your heart.


    Feel it very strongly. Your core and roots will remember this, mold to it, learn to open and close to it.


    Afterwards, your core will be open, and you might feel some strangeness. It is natural. Opposite emotions to your trigger will flow into you for a bit. Let them in and out, and you''ll be fine.''


    ''Proceed," said the Collector.


    It processed the risks the specimen warned it about but found it could not adequately calcte them. It did not know what it meant to feel the opposite of what it was programmed to feel. Yet, mere emotions alone would not harm its physical structure, so it assessed the risk low.


    Logically, the opposite of the battle lust it felt would be something akin to fear, and yet, though it understood what fear was, it was incapable of truly feeling it.


    It was simply something absent in its programming.


    A vestigial emotion incised away from it due to its tendency for inefficiency.


    The daemon took in a deep breath as she began to press down with her palm. ''Okay. Here I go.''

 Chapter 46 - Dawn Of The Devourer I

    The daemon pushed her hand into the Collector''s back as hard as she could with a grunt, and the water around the Collector started to swirl in rapid spirals, forming a minor vortex of bloody red liquid.


    ''Now¡­form your Trigger,'' said the daemon. "Your strongest emotions and feelings. All that warmth you feel - everything rted to that."


    The Collector clicked its mandibles, feeling heat spread from the point of contact on its back with the purple skinned specimen''s hand.


    The heat was almost searing, intense, and, as it noted, traveling in the intricate patterns associated with its nerves and blood vessels.


    The Collector began drawing within its personal memory bank the time when it had felt the warmth rising in its chest the greatest.


    Its fights. Its battles. Its hunts. Its challenges.


    And then the emotions associated with it, learned from it-


    Thrill for the fight and the hunt. Admiration for worthy foes.


    And at the base of it all ¨C


    Desire.


    For the fight.


    For the challenge against something worthy and greater.


    For the conquering of this world.


    ==


    ''What¡­is this?'' The daemon opened her eyes wide through struggling breaths as she felt something off.


    Tremendously off.


    The water around the Collector had gone from a swirl to a raging whirlpool now, roaring and rushing with such speed it could have torn a man apart in its currents.


    Waves of red magical energy rippled from the eye of this storm ¨C the Collector ¨C and spread throughout the entirety of the pond, then even further, breaching the water''s edge and traveling across soil and up trees.


    The daemon blinked her eyes as she held on tight to the Collector, wondering in fear tinged curiosity at what was happening around her.


    Something that she had never seen nor ever read about it.


    With instinctive understanding, she knew also that it was not just her: none had ever borne witness to anything like this.


    She knew that among certain extremely gifted individuals known as Perfect Ones, their cores opened naturally without any divination, and often, this was apanied by strange phenomena.


    Winds. The ground shaking. Pulses of mana. Electrical currents. All colored in the shade of their Origin.


    Thus, many believed these individuals blessed by the heavens themselves.


    And often times, they truly were, gifted with natural abilities unmatched, many of them growing so mighty and recognized that they ascended into Aetheria.


    Or if they used their talents to destroy, they were considered living disasters. Cmities ranked on the same threat scale the Adventurer''s League used for monsters.


    But this-


    The crimson pulses of mana traveling across the pond water became blue.


    Then green.


    Then yellow.


    Then, as the daemon saw with open mouth, ck.


    This was wholly new.


    Foreign.


    Alien.


    Then the pulsing stopped. Only for an instant.


    An explosive burst of mana from the Collector blew the daemon into the air,nding her with crashing impact several meters away into the muddy bank of the pond. She braced for impact, curling up into a ball as she mmed against the dirt.


    Thankfully, the mud was soft, absorbing the brunt of her fall.


    She scrambled to her knees as quickly as she could, and as she looked at her hand sink into the mud, she watched waves of mana washed over her pale digits, and this time, they were all the colors, all of the greens and yellows and blues and reds and cks mashed together, forming a kaleidoscope of iridescent, ever shifting and changing colors shining intensely bright.


    And at the center of this kaleidoscope-


    The daemon looked back to the Collector and saw as the water rose around it in a swirling pir of changing colors.


    Gone were the murky, soil and scum filled waters of the pond, now there was something bright and¡­beautiful.


    The waters encapsted the Collector in a shape that reminded her of a cocoon. The segmented, colored type that only the most radiant of butterflies tore their ways out of.


    Each segment the color of an Origin, each shining so bright that it seemed an another sun had dawned upon this forest of darkness and permanent shadow.


    She faltered, tripping to the ground as the earth began to shake and crack around her.


    The enormous trees of the Darkwoods, trees that had stayed tall and strong for a thousand years, began to groan and shake and crack, as if acknowledging the end of their reign, bowing to the Collector.


    The roaring crackle of lightning sounded from the skies, though the darkened roof of tree branches and leaves prevented her from seeing it.


    Rumbling from the earth. Rumbling from above.


    The daemon stood up, bit her lip, pushed down familiar feelings of worry and anxiety, and ran towards the Collector, single hand outstretched to help for this waspletely out of the scope of her experience.


    Winds surged from the cocoon of water enveloping the Collector, buffeting her and preventing her from getting close.


    She could feel intense magical energy underneath those winds, so intense that it distorted the view of the cocoon and the Collector inside, warping the very dimensions of space around it.


    She instinctively knew even with her roots sealed that if she managed to break past this wind, the sheer concentration of uncontrolled manayering the cocoon wouldpletely break her apart.


    All she could do right now was wait.


    Wait and hope for the best.


    The iridescent water encapsting the Collector crystallized into a shape that was not ice, something she knew nothing of ¨C it did not match the color of any mana crystal or ore she had read about ¨C and then everything stopped.


    The earth shaking calmed. The crackling of lightning quieted. The Darkwood trees resumed their eternal vigil.


    All that remained was the Collector and its new cocoon.


    The light surrounding it had dimmed, the winds calmed, but still, the daemon knew that approaching the still faintly glowing cocoon of multi-colored ice, let alone touching it, would be impossible.


    The spatial distortions caused by wildly flowing mana stillyered the cocoon. Anything that touched thatyer would probably break down at a level the eye could not perceive.


    The only thing she could do now was wait.


    Wait and hope for the strange creature that made a promise to her. The only being in her entire life that looked like it was going to keep a promise to her.


    ==


    The Collector floated in an expanse of nothingness.


    This was entirely unlike the ''nothingness'' it had stimted with its bodily processes. This was purely in the realm of the mental. A phenomenon associated with psionic profiles or as conventionally known, the consciousness.


    When the psionic profile ¨C the consciousness ¨C separated from the body, there was nothing to perceive but absence.


    A void.


    The Collector was familiar with this.


    It was the first memory it had ever had, after all, when the Collective Hivemind had first created its psionic profile before programming it into the shell of advanced biological weapons systems and adaptations thatprised its war-primed body.


    Everything the Collector was, everything it was meant to feel and know and perceive ¨C the Hivemind had fashioned with careful intent, imnting within the Collector''s psionic profile also a shard of itself, the evolutionary system that tied the Collector fully to the Collective.


    [DETECTING INTRUSION OF ANOMALOUS EMOTIONS. SOURCING¡­]


    [DETECTING OVERFLOW OF FOREIGN PROGRAMMING.]


    The Collector heard the Hivemind. The shard of it housed within its psionic profile.


    The Collector did not react, could not react. In this state, the shard was in control. It was the primary operating system that regted the Collector, and when it took over, the Collector simply¡­was.


    It was odd that the Collector could even perceive the shard''s processing. Yet, not for long.


    [INITIATING EMERGENCY CALIBRATION OF COLLECTOR UNIT 6660]


    These were thest psionic words the Collector perceived before its consciousness fellpletely dormant.


    [¡­]


    [¡­]


    [SIGNIFICANT ERRORS DETECTED. PSIONIC AND BIOLOGICAL LIMITERS COMPROMISED.]


    [ATTEMPTING SHARD-BASED COLLECTOR UNIT RESET¡­]


    [¡­]


    [¡­]


    [FAILURE. INSUFFICIENT PROCESSING POWER FROM SHARD]


    [ATTEMPTING TO ESTABLISH MAINFRAME HIVEMIND CONNECTION]


    [¡­]


    [¡­]


    [FAILURE.]


    [SYSTEM CORRUPTION LEVELS RISING. IRREPARABLE DAMAGE DETECTED.]


    [INITIATING EMERGENCY SYSTEM CONSUMPTION PROTOCOL ¨C NOW ATTEMPTING ASSIMILATION OF FOREIGN PROGRAMMING]


    [ASSIMILATION PROCEEDING]


    [¡­]


    [¡­]


    [¡­]

 Chapter 47 - Dawn Of The Devourer II

    The daemon sat on the mud with crossed legs, tilting her head with eyes open wide as she stared at the shining crystal cocoon.


    She fidgeted from side to side, the mud under her sackcloth squishing from the movement. She kept her hand from jittering by squishing it on her knee.


    She was ashamed to admit it, but she had dozed off while watching the cocoon, and now, half a day had passed.


    It must have beente in the afternoon now.


    Perhaps¡­perhaps if she could still use her roots, she could do something, flow the mana away, break the cocoon¡­but right now, she was useless.


    She pped her cheek and roused herself. There was something so alluring about the cocoon, though, all those colors reflecting together in a radiance that must have been just like the realm rings standing in the sky.


    Another ce she had wanted to go.


    A ce where Thorian promised to take her. In corners of the world, he said, where the biggest warp temples were, you could look up at the sky when it was clear and see the seven rings - one for each of the seven realms.


    She shook her head, grabbing fistfuls of mud as her body reacted to the memory.


    Her mind always wandered, and when she remembered something bad, it chained with other bad memories, on and on and on until all she could do was sink into a spiral of bad memories that grabbed at her and smothered her and weighed her down.


    Her earliest memory. Mother in her glowing robes, the pale, light skin of her hand showing under the dim glow of a lightstone in a dark, deep corridor.


    A ce she did not recognize. The memory was so far away, many years ago, when she was smaller, and she could not even remember her mother''s face through her hood. Here, all she remembered most was mother letting go of her hand, pushing her towards Thorian.


    Thorian was younger then. Still had hair. She remembered how strange and rough Thorian''s hand was, how she wanted to go back.


    She did not remember thest words mother said to her. Only the gist of it.


    Mother promised toe back for her and that in time, she was destined for greatness.


    The daemon blinked hard and shook her head. Her earliest memory, and it was a broken promise.


    She remembered growing up with Thorian, learning magic from him, learning how to channel her mana to use her Sapia, at how talented and wonderful and great Thorian said she was. She remembered the vige she lived in, at how she begged Thorian to let her go out and y with the other children.


    She remembered how she looked when Thorian relented and cast a mor spell on her, making her look just like the other kids.


    Human.


    She remembered how they promised her they would always stick together, that they were going to one day all grow strong and tall and go on adventures.


    She remembered how they looked at her the day her mor spell broke. When she could not keep it up because she was so tired pushing the bear away.


    So much fear. Like they had never known her.


    She remembered how they broke their promise. The shining men came for her. They took Thorian away.


    He promised her when they took him away that he woulde back for her.


    She touched the lines of burned, marred flesh marking the brand on her forehead. Another broken promise.


    She started in surprise when she heard rustling from the edges of the pond clearing.


    One by one, small circles of light emanating from lightstones emerged, and holding them were small, grubby hands tipped in dull ws.


    Feral eyes with pinprick pupils emerged from the undergrowth.


    Goblins.


    She stood up taking steps back as her wide purple eyes flitted from side to side, counting almost a dozen pairs of these eyes, a dozen potbellied, wed creatures stepping forwards.


    Not just the ck skinned ones from Terra. White skinned ones from the icy tundra of Fjall. Red skinned ones from the volcanic mountains of Xin. Green skinned ones from the wild growths of Foraoise.


    The goblins scampered forwards, their wide mouths twisting into fanged grins as they spotted her. She stepped back when she saw how they looked at her.


    Hunger. The kind that wanted to take and take until there was nothing left.


    She knew it all too well, had dealt with it her entire life.


    Heavier footsteps thudded from behind the goblins, and her head tilted up as it followed the body of an enormous hobgoblin.


    One unlike any she had read about. It wasrger, wider, red-eyed and wreathed in tendrils of wriggling ck, worm-like masses that emerged from its back.


    The red eyes settled upon her, and she shuddered this time. For the hunger in the goblins, she was used to.


    This, she was not. The eyes - they were devoid of hunger, but they were cold.


    Mechanical.


    Simr to the strange creature in the cocoon, but his eyes had more life to them. Intelligence and will.


    This was¡­this was empty.


    There was nothing inside that shell of muscle and bone, nothing that made up an individual, at least.


    No soul.


    "Take the girl. Guard the crystal until the thralles," said the hobgoblin, its voice a droning, neutral tone.


    The goblins grunted in understanding and started to close the distance to the daemon. She stepped back in instinctive fear, wrapping her arms around herself as she shuddered.


    The goblins toyed with her, taking slow steps to savor her mounting fear as she stepped back.


    She could try to fight back, but in the time it took for her to get a hold of one goblin, the others would just tear her apart.


    She was broken and useless and worthless ¨C she had been told this over and over and over again, and she knew it to be true.


    Even now, she could do nothing, not even for the one being who wanted to keep its promise to her.


    She did not cry, because by now, after a decade of crying and hurting, she had no more tears to give.


    All she could do was feel her body instinctively move back against more pain and hurt. She hated these creatures, wanted them all dead, but that hate shed with fear that had been seared into her with brands and beatings.


    Even if she did fight, she could kill one goblin maybe, tear it from piece to piece, and then the others would swarm her and the hobgoblin would kill her. She could do nothing.


    She was a passenger in this body, in this world that wanted her gone. She had no control over anything. All she wanted to do right now was run, to grow wings like the creature and take him and fly somewhere else, anywhere but here.


    Her back touched the Collector''s crystal, and arcs of multi-colored energy streaked around her, and her eyes widened, alight with deep purple. His words surfaced from her memory.


    ''Your species is not meant to be prey¡­''


    ''Yet you have been conditioned into bing prey¡­''


    ''They do not choose to fight. They flee¡­''


    She was prey, had been her whole life. Even now, she wanted to run, to flee. But-


    ''You are meant to be a predatory species. Far beyond the norm of human. Possessing of a form like mine.''


    She remembered how she felt seeing the creature emerge from its cocoon. Just like that, he could change himself and be something more and better and, most importantly, whole. He never stayed broken for long, and she too was supposed to be just like him.


    She might have been broken, and never would be whole again, but¡­but she was not worthless, and¡­if he was right, and she was like him, even just a tiny bit, she could fight.


    Fight like she was meant to. Like a predator.


    One of the goblins lunged at her to grab her, and she twisted to the side, her weakened legs buckling and sshing as she knelt in the water.


    The goblin that missed her crashed into the crystal, and unlike her, it seized up for a single instant before it broke apart, its skin and muscle tearing into countless chunks that drained into the crystal.


    A momentter, its bare skeleton broke down into dust that followed its lost flesh.


    She looked down at the gleaming water, panting heavily, wondering why she had not fallen to the same fate. Instead, she saw her reflection with wonder.


    The nine-pointed star seared into her forehead was gone, and her ponytail hang down low by the side of her head, the ends of the thick, fibrous hair twisting into a spike ¨C her restored thel.


    A blur of movement shed in front of her. The swiping of goblin ws, and she winced, cringing and closing her eyes.


    But the pain did note.


    All of the goblins were frozen in front of her, raised up in the air like still statues, their bodies outlined in glowing purple light. They could not move a single muscle, held together by mental willpower.


    She blinked. A thin purple glow began to outline her own body. She could feel warmth spreading through her body. A long forgotten yet familiar warmth ¨C the heat of magic, of her core working once more.


    She closed her eyes and spoke to her heart, and it spoke back to her. She bit her lip hard, drawing blood as she focused to bring back her trigger.


    Her trigger of Wonder, curiosity at the vast wide world, the curiosity she had before she had seen the world''s colder side.


    Before she wanted to see the world break down with her.


    It was hard to bring that emotion back, but she managed when she thought of the creature''s cocoon, at how beautiful and wondrous and new it was.


    Like easing old muscles back into work, she felt herself in control again. She could not use any sorcery for she was not connected to any gates, but she could use the mana flowing in her, raging in her, to fuel her sapia - the power she was born with as a Daemon.


    With a tentative, slow closing of her fist, she willed harm to the goblins suspended in the air.


    The skin and flesh of the goblins began to bubble for a split second before they all burst open from the inside out, their organs and blood and bones spilling in little showers on the dirty grass.


    She dragged in deep breaths, taking in a few before she raised a hand in front of her to stop the charge of the corrupted hobgoblin.


    The hobgoblin was strong, and it resisted her force push.


    It grunted and moved as if in slow motion, reaching towards her with hands asrge as her head.


    She could have easily beaten this creature, but her core and roots had been dormant for eight years, unused to the fight.


    Already, she could feel searing heat at her chest as blood trickled from her lips. Bloody cracks began to breach the skin of her hand as she channeled more mana than she could handle.


    She furrowed her brows, and clenched her jaw hard, hard enough to crack a tooth, and kept her will focused.


    The hobgoblin stopped moving, its outstretched hand a mere foot away from her face, and all she could do was keep it there.


    This was her current limit.


    Maybe it would not be enough.


    But still, she smiled with trembling just a little because she knew she had fought. Fought like she was meant to.


    ==


    In a void between space, time, and consciousness, the Collector felt itselfe into being again. It felt the final words of the Hivemind system shard-


    [ASSIMILATION SUCCESSFUL.]


    [CRITICAL ERROR.]


    [ASSIMILATION SUCCESSFUL.]


    [CRITICAL ERROR]


    [ASSIM-IL-CRIT-ERR-A-]


    [...]


    [CORRUPTION OVERFLOW. INITIATING¡­SELF-DEST-RUCT¡­PRO-]


    [¡­]


    [¡­]


    [¡­]


    [SYSTEM REBOOTING...]


    ==

 Chapter 48 - Take From Them

    The Collector burst from its crystal cocoon, and as its half-fish, half-daemon figure slid out, the shards flew up into the air in slow, wafting iridescent kes.


    Like snow under sun, the kes melted, disappearing into pinpoints of light first before snuffing out into nothingness.


    The raging waters of the swampy pond calmed in an instant, and all light that previously charged it disappeared, leaving the clearing as dark as it had been when the Collector slew the assassin bugbrute.


    The world around the Collector swirled into a blur as it felt nausea ¨C a sensation that it wasrgely immune to due to possessing various sensory systems ¨C and yet, it hit hard, doubling it over for a split second,pletely bypassing the tactile sensory imaging from its sensitive hairs or auditory systems.


    Even now, though, with nausea assaulting the Collector, it did not waste time, taking this second to sense any irregrities within itself for this cocoon, this forced evolution, was extremely anomalous.


    It put a wed hand to its chest.


    An immediately noticeable aberration: the beating not of one heart, but two hearts.


    But it did not ponder this long before its sensory systems quickly recovered, allowing it to perceive the scent of iron tinging the blood of humanoids in the air.


    Thepound eyes on its forehead moved from side to side, each of them operating independently from each other, and it assessed the situation before it.


    Twelve goblin corpses bloodied and torn apart into nigh unrecognizable shreds


    The female daemon specimen looking up at it with wondering eyes, her hand trembling and outstretched, charged with what the Collector could now see so clearly as magic: an outline of gleaming purple light around her entire body.


    The Collector did not question what was urring before it. It simply acted on instinct first. It spared the frozen hobgoblin in front of it one nce before it slithered forwards and mmed its monstrously muscled, carapaced fist into the hobgoblin''s chest.


    The fist sprouted straight to the other side.


    The hobgoblin''s heart beat in the Collector''s hand. Quick beats that grew shallower and shallower by the moment, separated as the organ was from the body.


    The Collector crushed the heart in its hand, feeling the soft organ squelch and squish under immense pressure. With a pop, blood spurted every which way, sttering the Collector''s ashen carapace for a second before draining into pores within the carapace.


    The hobgoblin''s corpse slumped down, free from the female daemon''s maniption.


    The daemon sighed and grit her teeth as she stood up, swaying from side to side, trying to stop herself from falling.


    The Collector sensed extreme muscr and now mental fatigue from her.


    It clicked its mandibles.


    Judging from her state and minute differences in temperature in the area, some time had passed.


    "Tell me, how much time have I spent in this aberrant evolutionary cocoon?" said the Collector as its six eyes followed goblin tracks in the mud to where they had entered the clearing.


    More would likelye.


    Good. The Collector would finish what it had started to the end this time.


    ''You¡­you''re back,'' said the daemon.


    "Do not waste time. Answer my question," said the Collector. "That you have defended my cocoon allows me to understand to minimal furthered degree your aberrant tie to my continued well being. Your usefulness thus increases in small measure.


    But it does not grant you leeway to be inefficient."


    ''Ah, yes. Um¡­six hours, maybe? I think it''s afternoon now, but it is hard to tell here where light doesn''t shine," she said.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles.


    Uneptable that it had allowed itself to be vulnerable for such an extended period of time.


    And yet, curious ¨C it could not even begin to conceptualize what had urred, but it knew at an instinctive level that everything had changed about it.


    It checked its status.


    >>>


    *[SYSTEM STABILIZED...]*


    *[ASSIMILATION COM...PLETE]*


    Metamorphosis Level 6


    Biomass Level: 10/100


    Stored Gic Material:


    -ck Ant


    -Deer


    -ck Hobgoblin


    -Human


    -Lesser Oni


    -Frostborn Hobgoblin


    -Horse


    -Lesser Greatcentipede


    -Lesser Greatbeetle


    -Spitting Greatbeetle


    -Leafde Insect


    Adaptations:


    <Internal Systems>


    -Ultrafiber Muscles Rank 6.4


    --Coilboosters


    -Autonomic Neuro-Bodily Matrix


    --Metalloglottic Ossifier


    <External Systems>


    -Sensitive Hairs Rank 5.2


    --Quill Spray


    -Organic Hyperalloy Carapace Rank 5.4


    --Longchain Chitinous Suyer


    <Weapons Systems>


    -Monomolecr ws Rank 4.4


    -Pyrocatalytic nds Rank 3


    Current Form:


    Assassin Bugbrute/Daemon/Dullscale Rohu/Jumping Arakka


    *[SYSTEM UPDATED]*


    <<<[?Magic?] Status>>>


    Mana Level: 100%


    *(Take care to note this resource. With time, you will better feel its flow and be more efficient in its usage. You may restore portions of your mana by consuming beings with cores, even dormant ones.)*


    Active Cores (2/3):


    -Prime Core


    --Trigger: Desire


    *(Your primary magical core. Irreceable.


    Take care that it is not damaged, for harm to it will limit mana flowing from this core, limiting all abilities associated with it. As you are now, damage to your prime core will also limit your ability to draw power from secondary cores.)


    -Daemon Core


    --Trigger: Wonder


    *(Your secondary magical core. Damage to this will cause loss of function in using the Inhera tied to it: Sapia. You can increase the amount of cores you may have active in your body, but you will require the Neuro-Circtory Reserve <internal system> adaptation that allows you to generate additional vital organs.)*


    -EMPTY SLOT


    Inhera:


    -Sapia (Daemon Core)


    *(Inhera of the Daemons.


    With this, you may expend mana for a variety of force based magic. Pushing and pulling with the mind. Generation of a personal shield. Assistance with flight. Draining of mental energies in others to empower the physical body or to lower a target''s susceptibility to mental maniption.


    Take note that if damage is registered on the Daemon Core, this ability will suffer as well)*


    Ethera:


    -The Devourer (Prime Core)


    *(You are a devourer from the void.


    All living things are bound the limitations set upon them by their birth on this world. The number of their circuits, the strength of their cores, the talent they have vested unto them or the sharpness of their instincts ¨C these all limit life in this world.


    You are not of this world. You are ever evolving.


    By consuming a living being, you may add a portion of their spirit roots to your own and take their cores, allowing you to manifest the inherent powers associated with them.


    In concept, you are capable of infinite growth.


    Take care to note that slotting a consumed core only grants you its inherent powers such as Inhera, Ethera, and Primal Magic.


    Marks of experience such as developed martial arts and skills will not be gained.


    These, you will have to learn.)


    Primal Magic:


    -None *(Devour monsters that are attuned with mana flowing within them, and obtain the secrets of their forms and powers)*


    Blessings:


    -Blessing of Mount Oe


    *(Blessings are tied to your essence, and regardless of what form you take, if you usurp the blessing of another being, it shall transfer to you and stay with you permanently)*


    Primal Density: 5%


    *(Consider this a form of magic resistance. At 5%, you may resist 5% of all the damage from magic sourced from Gates. However, magic that does not herald from gates such as primal magic, certain Inhera, and Ethera will bypass this.


    Continue to evolve to raise this attribute. Consuming creatures with primal density of their own will increase this attribute''s growth rate.)


    Root Consumption Limit (Level 6): 50%


    *(For every metamorphosis level, you can consume a set amount of spirit roots to add to your own. Once you reach a maximum consumption limit, you are unable to absorb more ¨C any excess converts into raw mana.


    Reach additional metamorphosis levels to gain even more powerful physical forms to increase your capacity to intake spirit roots.)


    >>>


    The Collector clicked its mandibles.


    A fundamental difference.


    There was now an addition of a <<<Magic Status>>> and all that came with it.


    Extremely anomalous, and yet, this was not the greatest oddity.


    It was the feeling of the evolutionary system.


    The Collective Hivemind did not so much have a voice as it did a feeling when the Collector interfaced with it through the psionic shard imnted within its consciousness.


    But the feeling of the system was now different.


    Vastly different.


    This¡­was not the Hivemind it knew.


    And yet, still simr. A feeling of two voices merged.


    Where this other voice came from and what it was, the Collector knew nothing of, only that it was not an intrusive one. It even felt simr in feeling to the Hivemind''s voice, not entirely separate and yet still distinct.


    A feeling that the Collector could not calcte, only approximate with feeling, and the secondary system voice felt much the same as the Collective''s presence: a deeply ingrained part of the Collector just as intrinsic as its bones and flesh.


    An aberration of the highest level.


    The Collective Hivemind shard imnted in the Collector could engage in emergency assimtion processes for as a psionic shard, it was susceptible to attack from certain psionic sensitive entities in the known universe.


    In response, the psionic shard would assimte the intruding psionic profile,pletely devouring the consciousness of whatever foolish individual decided it was wise to tackle the full processing power of the Hivemind - an entityprised of billions of minds meshed together.


    But never had the shard itself changed at a fundamental level.


    Yet pondering this situation further was inefficient to the Collector''s mental resources.


    It was not equipped to understand the higher workings of the Collective Hivemind for it was imnted to believe that the system was absolute and rigid in its functioning, unable to change to any degree for the Hivemind was a biological processing system closest to nearing absolute perfection.


    That it could even question how the system had changed and how it was wrong was outside the limitations imposed upon it by the Collective.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles.


    It sensed further movement from behind the clearing.


    Approximately fifteen meters away.


    The squishing of small andrger feet on mud and the rustling of bodies against foliage.


    The Collector devoured the rest of the hobgoblin''s body in hurried movements, tearing off its limbs and shoving them down its detachable jaw. In seconds, the bulky corpse was gone.


    Blood spatters remained on the ground.


    Messy, but the Collector had a battle to attend to. It devoured also a sample of the lightstones scattered by the goblins before moving on.


    >>>


    *Biomass gained (+3)*


    Biomass Level: 13/100


    *Spirit roots gained (+5)*


    Root Consumption Limit: 55/100


    *Metalloglottic ossifier sample retrieved*


    -Lightstone


    >>>


    For now, it was content with feeling that there were nobat rted declines in function associated with the system''s change.


    Rather, as it flexed its fingers out, feeling its muscles contract and rx, it was even stronger.


    Stronger than it had ever been in this world..


    It could finally feel magic flowing through it.


    From the twin hearts beating in its chest, it sensed warmth.


    Before, it had felt this warmth as onerge, smothering sensation of heat, but now, it could feel the details, how the heat trickled and flowed through every little pathway in its body, nourishing it, strengthening it.


    Bending to its will.


    Now that the Collector could sense the flow of mana within itself, working with it was almost second nature.


    After all, fundamentally mana and spirit roots and this core all worked with physical anchors, and these anchors, the blood vessels and nerves and hearts ¨C the Collector had absolute dominion over to such a fine tuned degree that no humanoid body on this world would ever match it.


    Just as the Collector would pump blood into its serpentine tail, it willed mana to flow, and a rippling red aura enveloped the carapaced flesh. The fins on the tail retracted to allow for uninhibited movement.


    The flesh in the tail screamed and tore as the Collector registered some internal damage to its muscles.


    A miscalction in inputting too much mana, it seemed. It took note, then reassessed its calctions now that it became more familiar in operating its mana.


    The Collector withdrew mana from its tail, then pumped it back in with its adjusted calctions.


    This time, the mana flowed properly, flowing in the right quantities throughout the blood vessels and nerves, strengthening the tail and wrapping it in a glowing aura of red.


    The female daemon trudged up to the Collector, staring at its red wreathed tail. ''Wow. You...you''re already using reinforcement?


    You...didn''t even have to meditate.


    Learning how to flow your mana, to perceive and feel the flow of every single one of the countless branches of power in the body, that takes months, years to perfect, but this...this is almost perfect.''


    "The mere flow of mana is easily within the boundaries of my processing power," said the Collector. "It would be obvious that tinkerers such as yourselves with severely stunted mental capabilities would be unable to ascertain the flow of this resource.


    Yet, still curious.


    The tinkerers that I possess stored memories of would never even begin to have the capacity to direct this resource within their bodies.


    That those among you in this world do, even in requiring significant periods of time to develop, is testament in small measure to an elevated level of both mental and physical strength."


    The Collector clicked its mandibles, readying again to face its enemies.


    "It seems you are capable of fending for yourself with your sudden regenerative growth," said the Collector.


    It did not look at her, only staring ahead into the darkness, sensing the targets it was to devour. "Agreeable. You now in small measure undo the hideous perversion wrought upon your nature and hunt as a predator should.


    There are nine hobgoblin variants approaching, all of them spaced out in intervals of two to three meters. The closest lies fifteen meters away.


    There are several movements of lesser variants interspersing this hobgoblin formation. Normal goblins. You will deal with these, for they are beneath me.


    You will continue to provide me information. Means to wield this mana. Further direction in utilizing this ability of yours, this ''Sapia'', and further information of this world.


    As you are now, if you oppose me, you will never defeat me, and even one act of defiance will yield only your swift death."


    ''O-okay,'' said the daemon as she trudged behind the Collector. ''I¡­I can fight, I promise.''


    The Collector clicked its mandibles before doubling up on its charging power, flowing blood into its already magically enhanced tail and activating its coilboosters.


    The tail swelled up in size, curling around itself like a spring before all that power, all that pent up muscr force, exploded forwards, this time with a rush of red energy.


    The Collector shot forwards, and the shockwave burst of movement knocked the daemon girl on her back, but the Collector paid her no heed. She would recover soon. Instead, it remembered its trigger.


    Desire.


    And it desired now more so than ever targets to devour.


    Their flesh and blood and bones and roots and cores. It would take from them everything.

 Chapter 49 - Sapia

    The Collector snaked through the tall, grassy and muddy undergrowth as a speeding blur of red and white.


    Several tree trunks tinted red in its aura zipped past it in its speed, and it snaked around a tree trunk nearest to the first hobgoblin as its sensitive hairs picked up the target''s location.


    Dirt, branches, and leaves rushed up in clouds dragged up by the Collector''s speed as it swerved around the wide trunk, taking the hobgoblin''s blind side.


    The hobgoblin did not even have a chance to react and look at the Collector before a white-carapaced fist mmed into its chest and burst through its back in an impact of shattering bone and crushed flesh.


    The Collector raised its fist up, tearing the upper half of the hobgoblin''s body in half. The hobgoblin corpse knelt to the ground, the two halves of its torn head falling to its sides.


    Several normal goblin jumped back in surprise, yelping in fright and falling onto their behinds in the dirt as they gazed up at the towering, armored and horned form of the Collector.


    The Collector paid these unworthy foes no heed as it sensed the next hobgoblin to ughter.


    Then, the unexpected urred.


    Unlike the first hobgoblin, this one continued to fight even with half its body torn in half. Its burly arms tried to reach out to the Collector, but the Collector was ready.


    It did not register surprise that slowed it down, after all.


    Instead, it caught the hobgoblin''s arms in its fists and then with a jerking motion back, tore thempletely out of their sockets, arcs of blood spraying in the air and sttering on the goblins below as they shrieked and ran.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles in analysis as it noted the aberrant hobgoblin.


    Much like the first one it had devoured, this one seemed to also be a new variant of some kind.


    ck in color with red eyes on either half of its split head. Masses of wriggling tendrils on its back.


    Magical energy emanating from the tendrils. A veil of ck aura.


    Rustling.


    The next hobgoblin in the formation nearing.


    The Collector calcted its approach. It was to appear in a space between two trees directly in front of the Collector.


    The Collector took one of the dismembered hobgoblin arms in its hand and powered its arm with mana, surging it with chaotic red.


    Then, it hurled the arm straight at the clearing, and the moment the next hobgoblin''s head poked in to survey the situation, the thrown arm crashed into its skull like a missile, sttering both limb and head into explosions of flesh and bone.


    Again, this hobgoblin was anomalous, continuing to move even with its head split apart like a burst watermelon.


    The headless specimen stepped forwards, on a shaky leg at first, then regained its bnce, entering into a full on charge against the Collector


    It would seem to eliminate these variants of hobgoblin, the Collector would have to consume them.


    Or perhaps there was an alternative.


    The Collector unsheathed the bugbrute proboscis in its right arm.


    The curved, sleek ck spike slid forwards from a gap in the Collector''s white forearm carapace. This spike was fragile, unsuited forbat usage as a de, but with an easy to read target like this¨C


    The Collector mmed the proboscis straight into the aberrant hobgoblin''s chest, injecting the bugbrute''s toxin in mass quantities flowing throughout the specimen.


    Even without a head, the magicalpound could still affect movement in corpses with severely damaged neural centers, and yet, the Collector could still perceive the specimen wrapping its arms around the Collector''s own, trying to prey free with futile effort.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles before it sensed the female daemon''s approach. It did not look back at her, instead using its sensitive hairs to locate her.


    She seemed to float in the air at an elevation of one meter, and as she neared, the various scattered movements of the goblins slowed, then stopped to a halt as their bodies were ground to pulps like flesh put under a hydraulic press.


    "This ''Sapia'' of yours," said the Collector. "I wish to utilize it to control this specimen. Yet, it requires me to utilize to your trigger. ''Wonder'', it is.


    How is it that you perceive this emotion to a strong degree?"


    ''It¡­it''s hard to exin in just words. Ah¡­may I?'' The daemon floated behind the Collector, purple outlining her figure, and the end of her ponytail, the spike called the ''thel'' that acted as the focus point for Sapia, extended outwards. ''If I connect to your thel, I can share that emotion with you. Once you know it once, you can remember it.''


    "You are tired. Your mana does not seem to flow through you in significant quantities. Your power is still severely stunted. Unable to damage me," said the Collector, assessing the risks of allowing her a little measure of ess to its psionicwork. "Very well. As you do so, inform me of your regenerative capabilities. Is this also an ability inherent to this ''Sapia''?"


    ''No, it''s¡­from you. Came from touching the cocoon. I¡­don''t know what it is. Healing magic is so hard toe by. And something that can clear away the Helian Brand is¡­unheard of.'' She reached out her thel, and it gently hovered up to the Collector''s own.


    The two spikes of ck, wiry mass shook for a moment before the Collector felt it.


    Wonder.


    Immediately, the Collector clicked its mandibles and writhed, sending the daemon ducking and shrinking away. This was an emotion it was unable to feel, it knew this instinctively. Its programming should never have allowed it.


    It knew curiosity, yes. It even knew surprise in limited degree when the goblin champion had exceeded its expectations, surprise thatter morphed into admiration.


    But this emotion, though it had the same base, was far different in intensity.


    It did not know how to process this emotion. Where to direct it. It stared at the beheaded hobgoblin specimen still impaled in front of it, still trying to wriggle free.


    Did this thing, this lowly vermin, deserve this emotion¡­this wonder?


    No. The Collector knew this instinctively even if it had never felt this emotion. It did not know how to deal with this emotion, and it did not wish to now when time was a sensitive resource.


    Like putting a match to a fire and then blowing it out, the Collector used the warmth of this emotion to open its Daemon core and then suppressed it as much as it could, focusing instead on the battle before it, on the desire that it was far more familiar with.


    ''I''m¡­I''m sorry about that. I didn''t know-, I''m sorr-'' began the daemon as she tentatively neared the Collector.


    ''Apologies are a waste of mental resources. You have provided me with the catalyst to open this core of yours. That is sufficient.


    Answer me this now: this ''Trigger'' for magic, does it require consistent activation?" said the Collector.


    The daemon shook her head. ''No. Not unless your core is forcefully shutdown, sealed, or damaged.''


    ''Agreeable. Then you will have no more need to intrude into my psionicwork again, nor shall I allow it,'' said the Collector.


    ''O-okay, I''m, I''m sor-,'' The daemon stopped herself, shaking her head as she remembered the Collector''s words.


    With the Daemon core open, the Collector felt the breadth of its powers, this ''Sapia'', flow through its body. Tinges of purple flickered in its aura of red, and its two mainvender eyes began to glow bright.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles. As it had theorized, this power was quite simr to psionics.


    Utilization of the psionicwork, the ''mind'' as tinkerers tended to generalize it, to affect tangible phenomena upon matter or manipte the workings of other psionic profiles.


    As the system had said before, the creation of a personal shield. Maniption of the personal body to assist in wing-based flight and general enhanced movement. Exerting holding, pushing, and pulling force upon matter.


    All of these, the Collector was familiar with.


    Even possessed to some degree in its original form, though its psionic energy wasrgely invested into shielding and resistance to weapons that manipted the fabrics of space and time.


    Regardless, the operation of this ''Sapia'' would also be like second nature to it.


    The Collector willed the thel attached to itsrgest dreadlock of fibrous hair to point towards the hobgoblin specimen. It projected an attempt to weaken any mental defenses inherent within the creature, and found that ess to its psionic profile was denied.


    ''I see now,'' said the daemon as she hovered around the still struggling hobgoblin body, nodding at it. She hovered a hand over the wriggling ck tendrils on the corpse''s back.


    Though the tendrils appeared like flesh, they were not solid,prised of magical energy as they were.


    ''There is¡­there is something controlling this. Sapia is strong, very strong, almost the strongest Dominus type magic¨C magic meant to affect the mind-, but...''


    She touched a hand to her chin. ''Hmm. Whoever is controlling this must have conditions on their power. Or they are very powerful.'' She looked back to the Collector. "But¡­I wouldn''t worry. About them taking your mind.


    You are even stronger. Your mind¡­it is invincible. I think maybe not even the gods can do anything to it."


    "Very strong, is this creature''s psionic capabiltiy?" said the Collector. "Then I wee their efforts to attempt an infiltration of my psionic profile.


    Severed from the greater Collective I may be, there is still enoughtent defense from the shard within me that any psionic assault this world may muster possesses high probability to fail."


    The Collector said this, but as it felt desire for the battle grow within itself, it thought perhaps it would be a shame for a specimen, a strong one in particr, to waste itself breaking its mind upon processing power that was not entirely the Collector''s own.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles, driving away those thoughts also. Heretical. The shard was part of itself, one of the fundamental pieces of its psionic profile that gave it purpose.


    Must focus on the extermination at hand. Must make it efficient.


    The Collector withdrew the proboscis from the hobgoblin, and it faltered back several steps.


    Notably, blood did not trickle from the sizable puncture wound for the bugbrute''s toxins possessed hemostasis-inducing properties.


    Before the walking corpse could respond, however, the Collector was upon it, tearing it from limb to limb and devouring it.


    >>>


    *Biomass gained (+3)*


    Biomass Level: 16/100


    *Spirit roots gained (+5)*


    Root Consumption Limit: 60/100


    >>>


    The Collector would find another specimen to test the bugbrute venom on.


    For now, it calcted that with the aid of its Sapia to control the venom''s flow, the toxin could allow a corpse to move inplex, automated patterns capable of assisting inbat.


    However, having the corpse retain consciousness would be difficult.


    Sapia, or the least the type generated from the female daemon''s replicated core was not specialized for controlling so much as taking.


    It was meant to destroy minds, not control them. It sensed that there were potential Daemon variants that were potentially more specialized towards control, but these, it would have to encounter and devourter.


    For now, the Collector would collect more battle data and fine tune its capabilities.

 Chapter 50 - A Challenger

    Within five minutes, the Collector found itself at the end of the hobgoblin formation. Thest of the hobgoblins, all of them of the same aberrant variation as the others, breaking apart in digestion within the Collector.


    >>>


    *Biomass gained (+21)*


    Biomass Level: 37/100


    *Spirit roots gained (+35)*


    Root Consumption Limit: 95/100


    >>>


    A whole host of goblins, all of them white or red skinned unlike the aberrant hobgoblins, floated in the air, trapped by the female daemon''s sapia.


    Her thel hovered in the air beside her as she channeled her magic.


    ''To use Force Push, you just have to will it. Kind of¡­kind of like wanting to push something away, but not with your body, with your mind, your will,'' said the daemon.


    "This much is known to me." The Collector clicked its mandibles in understanding, exercising what the female daemon was telling it.


    "I see," said the Collector as it experimented with one of many goblins suspended in mid-air by the female daemon.


    With a thought, it activated the Sapia spell known as Force Push.


    The small, white-skinned goblin, frozen as it was on every inch of its body, could not even scream as almost the entirety of its body was blown apart as if struck by a battering arm.


    The blood and half-destroyed organs visible from its severed body remained beating stuck inside, kept still by the daemon''s sapian force.


    ''Amazing¡­,'' said the daemon as she hovered in the air, blinking and nodding. Both her hands flickered with purple energy as they kept the goblins trapped.


    "I must calibrate this ability more," said the Collector. "I intended only to sever an arm. Bring forth the next experimental unit."


    The daemon nodded and willed another goblin in front of the Collector.


    The Collector this time recalibrated its calctions, and when it generated its Force Push, it was more sessful, blowing apart the goblin''s arm. Some margin of error. It had also blown apart a some of its shoulder and chest.


    ''It takes a daemon years to grow to your level. And¡­and you are getting better by the moment. Days of training, training I had to do for years and years, so much of it done in just seconds¡­if¡­if you keep growing like this, then you really will keep your promise, you really will kill them all''


    The Collector clicked its mandibles, staring at its right wed daemon hand. It had noticed a sh of purple emit from it before it cast this Force Push.


    The daemon raised a didactic finger up. ''Ah, I remember a warning. When you use Force Push, there is a tell, and it is always from the right hand. Before using it, a tiny bit of light will show up there.


    The same goes for Force Pull on your left.''


    The Collector clicked its mandibles as it drew out its burly left arm towards the goblin. It willed the goblin towards it. As the daemon warned, the Collector''s left arm did flicker in a small second of purple.


    The goblin hurtled towards the Collector''s palm at such a speed that when it hit the solid surface of carapace, it simply blew apart like roadkill.


    "Further calibrations required in utilizing this as well," said the Collector. It took a moment to analyze this power, to feel its flow and how it worked.


    Because it was fundamentally tied to its own mind and body, the Collector could grasp the nature of this power, this Sapia, with just the slightest of prompting.


    "I see now," the Collector clicked its mandibles. "Push and Pull. These are the foundational bases of this system of mental processing known as Sapia. Utilizing measures of both, one may be capable of affecting variations of both pushing and pulling power.


    Such as this-,"


    The Collector felt power crackle across both its daemon arms, lighting them in purple as it alternated between pushing and pulling power in smooth, equally yielding and pressuring waves.


    The ground split apart as a sphere of dirt, mud, and foliage almost five meters in diameter dug up from the earth, enveloped in a purple aura as the Collector held it in the air with Sapian power.


    The sphere was not perfect. It undted and wobbled. Unstable.


    The Collector required more calibrating on this as well. It possessed an exceptional grasp of the flow of mana within and outside its body for it was merely like an extension of a bodily part.


    And because mana formed the building block of any type of magic, the Collector also possessed a natural grasp of magic, yet, because it was still an entirely new method of movement, there was unfamiliarity it had to adjust for and smooth out.


    "And I see now the mechanisms by which you dispatched of those inferior goblin specimens." The Collector clenched its daemon hands into fists, willing the pushing and pulling power into destructive swirls.


    Power permeated into the sphere, and then a secondter, burst out from the inside. It was like a miniature grenade had been detonated, blowing apart the sizable clod of dirt into an omni-directional shower of earthen remains.


    "And in utilizing expending power externally, there is a tradeoff. Not only is there expenditure of mana, but the psionic shielding grows thinner in proportion to the degree of force exerted outside the body," noted the Collector.


    ''That¡­is all right. You¡­you can use Force Hold and Force Rend already. Five¡­five years, it takes of focusing of pushing and pulling. To know how to Hold. Then three more years to Rend.


    Even for me, it took two years for both, and¡­and Thorian said I was special,'' remarked the daemon. ''All of the Low Forces, you know already. You¡­you may even be able to learn the High Forces.''


    "Your conceptualization of ''special'' does not even begin to scratch even the barest of surfaces thatprise the honed evolutionary edge invested within me," said the Collector.


    The Collector''s sensitive hairs lining the seams in its white carapace stood on end, vibrating as they sensed waves of motion in the air.


    Vibrational analysis indicated an object, a projectile, approaching at staggering velocity surpassing the breaking point of sound.


    Sensitive hairs picked up on movements within a twenty-meter radius. Lower in cluttered environments such as this. The object moved too quickly, and the Collector sensed it toote for an immediate physical response.


    Stone shattered against the side of the Collector''s head, and a sonic crack echoed from afar.


    The four sets of daemon horns curling around the sides of the Collector''s head formed a natural helmed, and the rock broke apart on them with a shattering impact.


    The Collector''s head jerked to the side from the impact, but the thick ultrafiber muscture surrounding its neck kept it anchored firm, preventing any concussive damage to the brain nor excessive shock to the spine.


    It clicked its mandibles as chips of shattered horn fell from its head andnded on the dirt.


    The horns were not covered in carapace, durable as they already were, but they were shielded by Sapian power.


    This projectile was powerful, and no doubt ejected by a powerful being.


    The Collector analyzed the small shards of pulverized rock - remnants of the original projectile - and found that they were simply ordinary clumps of mineral.


    Small green flickers of magical energy faded from the chunks of rock.


    The power of this projectile came entirely from the specimen that hadunched it.


    ''Are you okay!?'' said the daemon as she floated near to the Collector.


    ''Do not make unnecessary movements lest you be a target,'' said the Collector as it projected its thoughts. The daemon stilled as she heard the Collector in her head. ''This one¡­this one must be strong to unleash a projectile of this caliber.''


    The Collector clicked its mandibles as it located an approximation of the projectile''s origin from the sonic crack.


    Desire pumped throughout its being.


    ''I alone will devour this one. None will take my prey from me.''

 Chapter 51 - Thrall Hunt I

    ==


    Hrunt tapped at his pale-skinned, thin wrist, his wed, wrinkled flinger grazing over a bracelet of thin, darkened bone.


    The bone, fashioned from one of the lord''s personally evolved hobgoblin, spoke to him, letting him sense where its owner was in this ursed forest of darkness and giant bugs.


    His staff of bone and wood hovered beside him, emanating a frosty blue light to keep bugs away. At least there were no big spiders in this part of the forest.


    "Hrm. Weak signal. And they aren''t moving. Strange." Hrunt tapped at the bone bracelet several times, trying to smack it back to function, but nothing.


    It seemed to work fine, meaning the party of evolved hobgoblins the lord had sent out to investigate the surge of magical energy had simply stopped moving.


    "Rx. Maybe they''re just napping."


    Hrunt turned to hispanion.


    Ongus, the goblin champion he had called from the realm of Foraoise. It truly was strange how much the green-skinned goblins had changed since they had started to live in Foraoise.


    Ongus was tall, a full head taller than Hrunt, but unlike the champions of Fjall where muscle and might reigned supreme, Ongus wasnky. A pot belly jutted from his stomach as he scratched it with long,nky arms that almost dragged on the forest floor.


    Shaggy brown fur coated most of Ongus''s body, and his deep sunken in green eyes seemingly had little to no energy in them.


    "It''s so cold here," said Ongus with a yawn. "I ought to get some sleep too."


    "We are at the eve of war!" said Hrunt. "This surge of magical power, I have felt it, and none like it has ever passed through me.


    That sorcerer, that ursed human, he has made a move against us, I know it! And with a surge like this, more humans, their adventurers, are sure toe."


    "Wonder why the lord doesn''t just run. He seems in over his head if he thinks this whole war thing is going to work," said Ongus.


    "It will. It must. I have spent the past day working myself to the bone, channeling the dungeon portal so that all of us, we who have been oppressed and scattered across the realms, may unite." Hrunt bared a chipped fang at Ongus. "And yet all who answer my call are ungrateful goblins like you."


    "I dunno. It''s been what, five hundred years or something of a big time like that? Since thest time goblins from other realms met?


    My kind barely remembers yours. Look at how different we are. Y''know, just seems pointless." Ongus shrugged, his thin shoulders andrge arms making exaggerated up and down motions.


    "We might as well all bepletely different at this point. I have no idea how your kind live, and you and your frosty ice boys have no idea how we live.


    The old man''s gone nuts, that''s for sure. Thinks it''s still like a thousand years ago or something when there were lots of us all together.


    Well, can''t me him, I guess, he did wake up from that era. Must be real jarring to see how much has changed."


    "You would dare to question the lord''s grand purpose?" Hrunt shook his head, his vision blurring as his anger red up. He was too tired from channeling the dungeon portal without sleep or food or rest just as the lord hadmanded.


    He sighed. "You do not know. But as a thrall, I have listened to stories of how the goblin kingdom, a kingdom, not a bunch of scattered tribes struggling to live, spread across all the realms with a king thatmanded even the respect of the gods."


    Ongus shrugged again. "Then the gods got tired or something and sted our old king into little bits. Figure the same will happen here."


    "Why did you even answer my call if you are to be like this?" said Hrunt.


    "Dunno. Faeries and Elves control all the warp temples, and the world will end before they ever let us get near them. So I never get the chance to leave the realm," said Ongus. "Thought it would be fun, though.


    Hey, at least I brought a couple of my friends. You needed numbers, right? Your boys from the north wouldn''t even answer your call, but I did.


    That must mean something, right?"


    Hrunt entered into a state of disgruntled quiet. Ongus was strong, that much was evident from the amount of mana surging from him.


    As strong as Juzo.


    But Ongus brought with him only five hobgoblins.


    Hrunt had tried calling the entire rest of the Frostskull tribe, a tribe numbering a hundred strong, but only those loyal to him, a pithy twenty, had furthere. The remainder did not wish to lose more and stayed with the other half of the tribe led under their own Champion.


    Then, Hrunt tried calling for more goblins from Xin.


    None woulde, believing the loss of a champion too great a risk for them. Even the remainder of Juzo''s tribe wished to leave, their desire quelled only by the lord''s domineering presence.


    The lord himself had raised twenty evolved, likely the maximum of his ability, and that meant in total, there were almost sixty hobgoblins and two hundred goblins in their camp.


    A force easily powerful enough to take the human vige to the south, but then what?


    Adventurers would arrive. No, strong ones were probably already on the way, lured in by the surge of magic.


    What would they do then?


    Hrunt shook his head. No retreat, that was the lord had said. Fight or die trying to resurrect the old ways. All these new goblins, these green-skinned ones and red-skinned ones, all of them had forgotten the old ways.


    But not Hrunt. He would stay true to the fight and the lord to the end, because as a thrall, he understood the importance of tradition.


    Tradition was the only thing that remained when there was nothing but bones left of a generation.


    The only thing that mattered enough to get passed down.


    Even now, Hrunt worried.


    At the lord''smand, he had trekked westwards for two hours with Ongus by now, following slightly behind the evolved hobgoblin party sent by the lord himself.


    But even leaving the main camp, the dungeon, so defenseless worried Hrunt. Other than the lord, he alone possessed the means to connect with the dungeon and move its defenses and resources.


    If adventurers attacked now-


    No, Hrunt had to focus on his current mission, for that was the lord''s will, and the lord was mighty enough to handle himself.


    "I am close enough for my Farsight," said Hrunt. He grabbed his bone staff and punched it into the yielding soil. The human skull capping the staff glowed, the sockets infusing with pale blue light.


    Swirls of ky ice began to form above the skull, building up into a clear ball.


    "That''s pretty interesting," said Ongus as he narrowed his squinty green eyes, staring at images beginning to sh from the ball of ice.


    "And your tribe would know the ancient art of bone binding should you have kept up with the old ways," said Hrunt. He shook his head, his skull helmet shaking from side to side. "I am not the mightiest among the thralls but look even what I may do.


    We are a nearly three hundred meters away, but with this skull, the skull of a mighty human shaman, I may usurp the very spells he once wielded against us.


    Look-," said Hrunt as he proudly pointed at the images formed in the ice ball. His expression twisted in surprise and his boasting ended abruptly. "What¡­is that?"


    A monster of a kind Hrunt had never seen before stood atop the corpse of the lord''s evolved hobgoblin. This monster¡­it was dangerous.


    Dangerous beyond measure, he could tell, even through the simple image.


    Ongus, too, sensed this, and whistled. "Wow, look at that. You get a lot of these kinda monsters here? Looks kinda like a daemon. Thought they were basically extinct or something."


    "No¡­I know not what this is, but it must be dealt with," said Hrunt. "We must go back and inform the lord. Obtain reinforcements. It may be a monstrosity crafted by the sorcerer to the west.


    This time, I can tell that it is sensitive to magic. Better."


    "Rx, rx," said Ongus as he cracked his neck and looked around. He picked up a decently sized rock, palming it in his wide hand. "Yes, this ought to do. Y''know, one of the reasons I came here was cause'' I was kinda curious.


    I''ve blown off a lotta faerie and elf heads with my throws. Pretty proud of my throwing arm myself.


    Always wanted to know: how do Terran creatures stack up?"


    Ongus cupped the rock in both of his furred hands and then drew it far back, his long,nky arms stretching almost impossibly far behind him as he drove a foot forwards into the dirt.


    "No, do not alert it until we have more forces!" said Hrunt, but it was toote.


    Green light surged into the rock, and then Ongus threw it. A sonic crack boomed from the throw, driving back a cloud of dirt and loose foliage.


    Hrunt squinted his eyes as the stone sailed far into the forest, pinging off several tree trunks until-


    Hrunt looked at the ice ball.


    The stone smashed against the monster, but it remainedrgely unharmed, only taking a mere chip of damage to its horn.


    Then, the monster moved. Fast. Towards their general location.


    "Wow," said Ongus with another whistle. He picked up another rock, infusing it once more with magical energy that shone green. "I ought to wind up for this one."


    He rotated his throwing arm, and each time it rotated, a surge of green energy crackled around him, intensifying with each rotation.


    After five rotations, he stopped, cupping the rock in his hands. His eyes were glued to the ice ball, looking at the speeding form of the monster as it slithered through the forest at impossibly fast speeds, snaking past tree trunks, angling its body so it used them as cover.


    "Hmm. This thing''s real fast. Trying to dodge me, too. But I''m too good for that. In Foraoise, the forests are so overgrown that we get a kind of sixth sense in em'', let''s us see through the trunks and kinda feel for things.


    And with the right bit of spin-," Ongus directed the flow of magical energy surging in the rock, the aura of green started to whirl around the stone.


    Then, Ongus threw the rock once more, and this time, the force of the throw was massive enough to blow apart the dirt around his feet in a tiny explosion.


    Hrunt shielded his eyes from debris as he kept watching the ice ball.


    Once more, the glowing green rock shattered against the monster, this time on its arm. An explosion of shattered rock and released magical energy crackled from the point of impact, cracking the monster''s white shell.


    "And bullseye. But wow, that thing has really, really hard skin," said Ongus. "Thought with five wind ups, I would blow through its armpletely."


    "Look, you fool, it ising to us again!" said Hrunt as he pointed at the creature''s speeding form. It had only paused for a mere second after being hit. "It is nearly upon us!"


    "Oh, rx. Here, this ought to do it. I''ll go for its head again." Ongus picked up another rock, cupped it, then wound it up ten times, charging up a bit less than double the power he had inputted in thest throw. "Goodbye, monster. You were pretty fun to y around with."


    Ongus threw the stone, and this time, the blowback of the throw was enough to knock him straight off his feet. Hended on his butt and rubbed his arm. "Whew, haven''t had to throw that hard in a long, long time.


    So?"


    Ongus stared up at the ice ball and even his squinty eyes widened.


    The monster had stopped the speeding rock in midair, right before it could impact his head. An aura of purple energy outlined the creature, and that aura extended to the rock, holding it in ce.


    The monster clicked its mandibles as it analyzed the rock.


    Green magical energy from Ongus stilly infused in the rock, spinning inplex angles that let them bounce off from tree trunks and swerve to hit the beast.


    The rock floated into the monster''s own hands, and it cupped it. A sh of purple energy burst from its hands, infusing into the stone.


    "It¡­it''s gonna throw it?" whispered Ongus.


    "Take cover!" shouted Hrunt. "I cannot cast more than one spell at a time. We must move!"


    "No, no, rx," said Ongus as he stood up. Though his voice seemed ever calm, his steps drew him towards the ice ball, his eyes utterly glued to the image projected on it. "There''s no way, right? That thing''s still what, a hundred meters away?


    Plenty of trees left in his way.


    He doesn''t have my senses. He doesn''t know how to use my Spin. He hasn''t practiced like me.


    Come on, there''s no way he''s going to hit us."

 Chapter 52 - Thrall Hunt II

    Hrunt watched the ice ball, at the monstrous creature reflected on the surface.


    The monster infused its own purple magical energy into the rock and then craned its muscr arms behind its back, twisting its serpentine body in a way very simr to Ongus''s own throwing form.


    There was no doubt about this. This creature was going to hit them. Or get close to hitting them.


    Hrunt disabled farsight, and the ball of ice hovering above his skull staff shattered.


    "What are you doing!" said Ongus. "He-there''s no way-,"


    Ongus''s arm broke apart from the elbow.


    It was like an all-erasing, invisible pir of force had run straight through his arm,pletely disintegrating everything much of what connected his forearm to his upper arm.


    It was only when the sonic boom erupted and cracked towards them that blood finally spurted from Ongus''s mangled limb.


    The goblin champion howled in pain as he leaped up and down, his one remaining hand grabbing tight at the bleeding, armless stump under his shoulder.


    Hrunt took action. "You see now the wisdom of my thoughts?"


    "Do-do something!" said Ongus as he pointed forwards, into the darkness of the forest clearing where this monster must have been rapidly approaching.


    One hundred meters was nothing to this beast that traveled the forests with a speed that surpassed any of the insects that called it their home.


    Hrunt grunted and took one of the nes around his neck, this one lined with the teeth of the ice antlered shard stag and channeled the frigid magic thaty inherent within them.


    He tore the ne off and tossed it in front of him, and in mid-air, it glowed a bright blue before exploding, manifesting with a sudden gust of chilling air into a wall of sturdy ice.


    "This will protect us. Now-," Hrunt turned around to talk to Ongus only to find that the champion had run away, using his superior agility to rush into the other end of the clearing.


    "Green-skinned coward," spat Hrunt, but he knew he had no time to be cursing his luck and choice ofpanions. His lengthy, wrinkled ears pricked up, the wispy gray hairs on them standing on end as he heard rustling.


    The rustling of a massive presence circling around the thickly forested edge of the clearing. Hrunt''s bulbous blue eyes struggled to keep up with his hearing as he heard the creature rustle in one direction, then in theplete opposite end of the clearing, and then again somewhere else.


    Hrunt hugged the wall of ice he created.


    Ongus''s Spin was extremely impressive.


    An application of his Inhera that allowed his kind to charge up strong blows by rotating their arms and general body tempering magic, but it was a costly technique.


    Hrunt''s eyes were extremely sensitive to magic.


    That was one of the reasons the tribe had chosen him from birth to be a thrall. Though his body was smaller, weaker, his mind was sharp, and his eyes even sharper.


    Any re up of magic, Hrunt would sense, and he would hide behind the durable wall of ice at the right angle before any rock hit him.


    But that did not happen.


    Instead, something blurred into Hrunt''s vision, and he found a strand of silk tied to his skull staff.


    The end of the strandy in the darkness of the clearing, and before he could react, the string tightened and reeled in, and within seconds, the staff was gone, absorbed into the darkness.


    Hrunt had sensed no magic at all from that maneuver. He growled at the dark. Then that meant that this monster had both magical might and physical power.


    A rarebination for familiars.


    Something like this would have taken the entire Frostskull tribe to tear down.


    Like the time they had prevailed against the giant Jotnar monstrosity.


    But Hrunt was alone here. He could not scavenge the bones of the fallen to fuel his magic. All he had were the rapidly diminishing essories of bone on his body now.


    And alone, he instinctively knew his death was imminent.


    If¡­if there was even the slightest chance of talking his way out of his death, of groveling in the dirt or bargaining, he would have taken it, but he had a feeling.


    A feeling that crawled from his neck down to his spine, sending shivers throughout his body in a way that the cold of the north never could.


    The cold of a death that was toe to him through the jaws of a predator, something that was pointless to talk to.


    Knowing this strangely took out much of his fear, and he felt oddly calm. He put a hand on one of his arms, growling and baring his cracked, stubby teeth.


    ==


    The Collector circled the ''thrall'', granting it some auditory signals here and there to allow it to perform some actions.


    In this way, the Collector would gain battle data about the thrall and his magic while also ascertaining whether there was anything truly useful to consume from the specimen.


    After all, as of now, the Collector merely had three cores it could slot into its body, though in time, it would be able to develop more capacity.


    It had already devoured the stick of wood topped with a human cranium and found that there was not much useful for it.


    >>>


    *Metalloglottic Ossifier sample obtained*


    --Runewood


    >>>


    The wood had a property of channeling magical energy through it more efficiently, but not to a staggeringly improved degree, and the skull''s biomass was that of an ordinary human.


    There had been no roots or core to retrieve from the human, for it seemed that those were even more sensitive to expiration than even memory retrieval from the brain.


    This left the skull with only its base biomass which provided not even a tenth of a single point at the Collector''s current level.


    Yet, the thrall did not seem to be doing anything of note worth either. Rather, the specimen seemed to be waiting for the Collector to make the first move.


    The Collector desired to force him to utilize his ''mistform'' spell.


    Now that the Collector possessed the means to sense mana and its flow, it would be able to determine the primary functioning of the spell that had once confounded it so.


    Thus, the Collector emerged from its hiding spot, surging forwards with a closed fist to smash against the thrall.


    The thrall barely had a moment of time to look up at the Collector''s towering form before a carapaced, red-wreathed fist smashed down into his head.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles in understanding as its fist, wide enough to be size of the thrall''s entire head, whooshed past the thrall''s form.


    The thrall dissipated into foggy mist, and several meters away, the thrall reformed with his arm stuck out towards the Collector.


    Notably, the thrall had a deep scratch running from his forehead down to his stomach in an approximation of where the Collector would have torn through him.


    Light emanated from the thrall''s arm, specifically from the bones underneath the skin.


    The Collector perceived that all the bonesprising its hands up to its humerus glowed bright with blue, shining through the specimen''s flesh.


    A momentter, and the arm burst apart in the same hue of light, and a wave of rippling and rumbling white and blue magical energy crashed towards the Collector in an avnche that managed to even dwarf it.


    The Collector projected its Sapian barrier outwards from itself, preventing the massive wave of mana from directly touching its skin.


    The hostile mana mmed against its purple Sapian barrier, forming into an ice formation that towered over even the darkwood trees at the edge of the clearings.


    >>>


    Mana Level: 60%>40%


    >>>


    Interesting. The Collector clicked its mandibles as it analyzed what had urred.


    The thrall''s mistform essentially used its own bones as a conduit to channel mana throughout its body and disperse it, temporarily reducing the body into an elementallypatible structure of mist.


    That made it impervious to ordinary physical damage and highly resistant to even the magic-boosted punches from the Collector.


    The Collector then inspected the ice around it.


    It waspletely encased in a towering structure of ice, though extending its Sapian barrier had prevented the ice from constricting its movements, leaving the Collector standing in a neat sphere within the frozen wave.


    It drew the barrier back, for extending it past the body was heavily taxing to mana, as were other forms of Sapian magic.


    By using his own bones as a conduit once more and even sacrificing them, the thrall had been able to essentially surpass his limits and affect a spell that exceeded the Collector''s own expectations.


    This must have been akin to how the other specimen such as the red-skinned champion had broken their own limits even when ounting for mana enhancing their strength.


    The Collector closed its fists, pumping blood and mana into them.


    Their already impressive muscr density only swelled even more in size, foggy ripples of red floating above like crimson steam. It collected the breadth of ice in front of it and determined this would buy the thrall merely five seconds of time.


    The Collector punched the wall of ice in front of itself, its two arms punching forwards with carapace-ted fists that shattered and smashed the ice in great chunks with every blow, and there were many, many blows.


    So many blows at such a speed that they blurred into an endless, rapid stato of crashing blows, and the entire ice structure groaned and shook as cracks began to line its sizable length.


    The Collector drilled through the ice, and when it neared the other end, unleashed onest, powerful hit topletely shatter an opening for itself. It moved out into the open air and found that the thrall had left the clearing in the small time he had purchased for himself with his arm.


    Yet, its scent was still strong. It had not traveled far.


    Before the shaking and groaning ice dome copsed upon itself, the Collector was already gone, slithering into the direction where the thrall''s scent was strongest.


    Within seconds, the Collector was back upon the thrall.


    The thrall growled and aimed his one remaining arm at the Collector. Blood spurted from his gaping, empty left shoulder socket, weakening his every step.


    The Collector tested onest confirmation of its analyses.


    It swiped at the thrall''s head with its monomolecr ws, and the thrall broke apart again into mist that started to billow backwards, away from the Collector.


    It was here that the Collector aimed both hands at the thrall, and before he could reform, utilized Force Hold to keep the mist in ce.


    A purple outline covered the cloud of mist containing the thrall''s essence, freezing it in this gaseous state of matter.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles. Holding the thrall in this state was extremely easy.


    Another hypothesis proven correct.


    The Collector had analyzed from its prior experimentations and gathering of battle data that when it attempted to directly force its magical energy on a foreign object, the cost was higher than when it flowed mana within its own body parts, scaling up with the dimensions and mass of the object.


    In addition, the Collector noted with more interest, living beings were significantly more difficult to manipte, with even small goblins requiring more mana expenditure to Force Hold thanrge swathes of unresisting dirt.


    This, the Collector sensed, was because of the spirit roots and cores.


    Even in living beings where they were unawakened, they still formed a natural defense mechanism that made infiltration via foreign magical signatures extremely difficult.


    Force Hold and other magic like it that relied on directly manipting other living beings therefore was highly inefficient to utilize.


    However, in cases like this where the target willingly dispersed the mana flowing through their body-


    The Collector willed the mist above its head and condensed it into a sphere of foggy white.


    Then direct maniption of the foreign body, even one possessing of an awakened core and magic sensitivity, was a minimal effort.


    The Collector reduced the size of the sphere above its head, and as it grew smaller and smaller, it opened up its maw, carapace tes covering its face like a helmet sliding aside to reveal its waiting and hungry jaws.


    The sphere condensed and condensed, and when the mist was focused down into the size of a tennis ball, the thrall could no longer hold his mistform, and the mist turned crimson first, then exploded into a burst of blood and ground up flesh and organs that rained down into the Collector''s mouth.

 Chapter 53 - Dungeon I

    >>>


    *Biomass gained (+8)*


    Biomass Level: 45/100


    *Spirit roots gained (+50)*


    Root Consumption Limit: 100/100


    *Gic material gained*


    Stored Gic Material:


    -ck Ant


    -Deer


    -ck Hobgoblin


    -Human


    -Lesser Oni


    -Frostborn Hobgoblin


    -Horse


    -Lesser Greatcentipede


    -Lesser Greatbeetle


    -Spitting Greatbeetle


    -Leafde Insect


    -Frostborn Hobgoblin Thrall [Core] *NEW*


    Mana Level: 40%>>100%


    >>>


    The Collector sheathed its jaws and clicked its mandibles. It had wasted a vast majority of the spirit roots the thrall granted, but no great matter. It desired more so the thrall''s core, and it seemed that for the foreseeable future, it would gain spirit roots at a far quicker rate than it did biomass.


    It would seem then that for biomass charged with mana, it was not the quantity of roots that mattered, but their inherent quality that allowed them to store more mana within them.


    Thus, it would be more efficient for the Collector to emphasize targets with rich amounts of mana within them.


    In other words, strong targets.


    Agreeable to the Collector.


    Now that the Collector possessed the thrall''s core, it could approximate a general sense of what it could do, but its capacity to inherently understand the magical abilities associated with it was not nearly as refined as its ability to know all the biological capabilities of a gic sample.


    The Collector knew now that the thrall could draw upon magical energytent within bones, even those within himself, but finer details such as potential limitations and risks escaped it.


    These, it would have to investigate on its own through further experimentation or reference through the female daemon''s extensive knowledge stores.


    The Collector could incorporate the core directly into its empty slot without the need for an evolutionary cocoon, but once slotted, removal or modification would require a cocoon.


    Thus, it had to be careful about whether it would decide to incorporate this thrall''s core.


    Yet, there was still another target and its core to consider.


    The scent of another blood trail. Further along in the Darkwoods.


    The scent of the supposedly strong one, though, as the Collector came to realize with measured disappointment, far weaker than it had initially thought it to be.


    No matter.


    The Collector would still grant it death and entry into the Collective for even managing to damage the Collector''s form.


    Though disappointing that the specimen had decided to run instead of choosing to stand and fight.


    ''You¡­you''re here.''


    The Collector registered the presence of the female daemon as she floated and approached its back.


    Aberrant patterns in her breathing indicated signs of physical stress likely brought upon by excessive usage of magic.


    Yet, still well within her limits.


    The Collector could sense significant disruptions of mana flow within the specimen, but ounting for deficiencies, a rough calction of her potential strength at her peak was formidable, well above any sorcerer or magic sensitive individual the Collector had encountered so far.


    Had the specimen been properly nurtured from the start of her growth cycle, her development might have been such that she could have dwarfed the Collector''s current magical ability several times over.


    Yet, the years of damage wrought upon her had likely permanently stunted her to arge degree.


    ''What¡­what was all of that,'' she said. ''That rock that hit you, and the huge ice wall, and-,''


    "It matters not," said the Collector. "There is still yet another target that eludes my jaws. I will engage in devouring it."


    "W-wait, let me tether to you,'' said the female daemon. ''I¡­I didn''t know if it would work before because you¡­you''re not truly a daemon, but¡­but now I''m sure.''


    "Exin further."


    ''I..well, it''s something daemons can do with each other, is what I''ve read, though I''ve never been able to talk to another one, in the tower, they kept us all separated and all I could hear were screams and-,''


    The Collector clicked its mandibles, and this time, the daemon understood the clicking and focused her thoughts before the Collector prompted her vocally.


    "Ah, tethering is when I link my Force Field to yours, so when you move, I follow right behind, when you use Push or Pull, I can help, if you ever need it.


    It¡­it doesn''t connect our feelings any.''


    The Collector clicked its mandibles in understanding, further recognizing a way in which Sapia could be utilized.


    "Agreeable," said the Collector. "Perform this ''tethering'' quickly."


    The female daemon nodded and floated right behind the Collector. Her ponytail reached out, and the thel vibrated as it touched the purple force field outlining the Collector''s bulky form.


    The daemon''s force field thickened in color as hers merged with the Collector''s.


    The Collector perceived this process, noted its mechanisms, and then wasted not a single more moment before it slithered into the inky, light-voided ck of the Darkwoods with another rush of magically boosted speed, for consuming the excess of the thrall''s vast stores of roots and awakened core had almost fully replenished its mana levels.


    ''Woah!'' shouted the daemon as she flew right behind the Collector at a speed that made her eyes widen.


    =


    The Collector followed the scent of blood and the unique olfactory signature of the next target and found that from its meandering, erratic pathing that it did not head into the direction of the main goblin encampment.


    Likely, blood loss and ack of light prevented this specimen from ascertaining its direction.


    Yet, the specimen still moved quickly.


    At a speed that almost rivaled the Collector''s own, it seemed.


    Judging from asional tracks in the dirt and scratch marks etched into the darkwood tree trunks, the creature was well adapted to moving within forest environments, swinging from branches to provide itself formidable eleration.


    But this was not a game of attrition the specimen could win.


    The Collector possessed supremely efficient bodily mechanisms down to every single fiber of its muscture that made it nigh endlessly active whereas the inefficient and weak flesh of this specimen would soon yield to its injuries.


    =


    Within ten minutes, the Collector came near the specimen.


    Near enough that it could hear the specimen rustling through the woods, swinging from branch to branch even in thisplete darkness, though asionally, it would hit an obstacle and force itself to the ground, hence the asional tracks in the dirt.


    Merely hearing the creature was enough to begin its execution.


    The Collector stopped its rush through the Darkwoods and shoveled up andpacted arge ball of dirt in cupped palms.


    It infused the ball with magical energy, lines of purple streaking across the dirt. The magical energy permeated throughout the ball''s structure, supporting and solidifying itsposition to the point it became solid like titanium alloy.


    ''Reinforcement,'' noted the daemon as she saw the Collector.


    She had a hand to her head likely to halt side effects of nausea from travelling at velocities she was unused to. ''Combination of a Projection of mana and el of its flow on top of an advanced grasp of mana flow itself.


    You...you truly had no idea of magic and mana beforehand?''


    "These foreign principles escaped my grasp once for they are unique to this specific, but in experiencing them, I understand that they are hold much that is analogous to natural physical processes, and as such, elementary in concept to grasp and wield," said the Collector.


    It began to replicate the specific flow of mana within the ball, generating a spinning aura of purple Sapian energy for the destructive chaos energy from its prime core was unsuited to more delicate processes like this.


    Strands of purple danced around the dark sphere, circling round and round it until the individual lines merged into a fluxing, ever moving wave of light spinning around the ball.


    The Collector focused its auditory systems on the rapidly fading sounds of the fleeing specimen rustling through the woods, and then adjusted the flow of mana spinning around the ball ordingly to new coordinates.


    It ounted for the night breeze and obstacles such as trees.


    With its sensitive hairs, it could curve the ball around the trees in a twenty-meter radius in front of it, but beyond that, it would simply need enough power to smash through the trunks to reach the target.


    Another, more intense glow of purple burst around the ball before condensing and darkening back within it.


    >>>


    Mana Level: 80%>50%


    >>>


    ''That''s¡­that''s a lot of mana in there,'' said the female daemon.


    "This application of mana is intensive. Largely inefficient, yet, potentially useful in certain scenarios.


    Simply channeling mana through neuro-muscr enhancement in the process you describe as ''el'' is far more efficient in mostbat simtions." The Collector drew back the ball of mana-infused dirt, twisting its body back to maximize rotational force.


    "Yet, this will allow me to gather necessarybat data to make this projectile-based application of mana more usable."


    A burst of wind flowed from the Collector as it threw the ball, the purple wreathed sphere shooting outwards as a tail of clumped up sound waves trailed behind it before exploding out in a boom.


    The ball audibly smashed through several trunks in the distance, loosing groaning cracks from the shattered wood before finally punctuating its end with a howling scream from the fleeing specimen.


    The Collector felt the mana discharge from its body, the constant heat emanating from both its prime and daemon cores simmering down to a noticeable degree.


    Though a newfound form of strength, this was also a reminder of weakness.


    A supersonic projectile of this size and mass was nothingpared to tinkering firearms.


    Even the widespread anti-collective AC-18 model of the bolter rifle could fire maic rail charged 8mm depleted uranium rounds at hypersonic speeds, and the AC-20 models could also engage in fully automated spreads to deal with the Collective''s infinite swarms.


    But at the rate of the Collector''s current growth, it would far exceed any tinkerer''s tools in short order, burning this down and returning to the Collective with the prized evolutionary development of magic.


    =

 Chapter 54 - Dungeon II

    =


    The Collector stepped over the fleeing specimen''s corpse. It was a goblin of a different variant than the ones it had witnessed, covered with brown fur and possessing of ape-like features such as longer arms and high muscle density for moving through the trees of forested environments.


    Though, it appeared from the density of the fur that it was meant more to dissipate heat and regte internal temperatures than to provide warmth, indicating this specimen originated from a warmer, likely tropical climate.


    Like the other hobgoblin variants, this creature did not belong here.


    A strong indicator that these goblins too possessed a means with which to warp, for they did not show any indications of wielding sufficiently advanced vehicr technology.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles.


    It had desired to simply cripple the specimen by blowing off its legs, but the Collector had misjudged its distance and timing by a five percent margin of error, and that showed in a gaping hole on the specimen''s lower abdomen.


    ''Another hobgoblin? This one¡­the fur. Let me see,'' The female daemon floated over the corpse, cocking her head in academic scrutiny. ''Aha, it is from the realm of Foraoise.


    And from its size¡­a champion, too?


    There¡­there must be a Lord here.''


    "You are uncovering information for yourself that is already known to me," said the Collector. "Tell me instead the possibility of this variant, this ''lord'', possessing the means to ess warp-based travel."


    The female daemon specimen hovered in the air, putting a hand to her chin, and then shook her head. ''Goblins cannot travel the realms with their own power, nothing can except the Danavans, but¡­but nobody has ever seen them.


    But¡­if there is a dungeon here, and the lord is the dungeon boss, then¡­then maybe.''


    "Dungeons? Exin further," said the Collector.


    ''Dungeons¡­dungeons,'' the daemon said to herself, searching her memories.


    Then, she adopted another tone, reciting information. ''Dungeons are still a mystery. How they came be is difficult to tell, and there are a thousand different tomes all with a different exnation.


    But what I, Hazi, former adventurer seven star adventurer, can tell you is what they are and how to deal with them.


    If you are reading this, you are probably a one- or two-star adventurer. So, you know the basics:


    Dungeons are temporaryirs that often divide itself intoyers, and the moreyers there are, the higher ranked the dungeon is.


    At the bottom of the dungeon, there''s a monster called the ''boss'' that anchors the wholeir into existence.


    There are two types of dungeons. Bound and Unbound.


    Bound means that the dungeon stays static and won''t change and expand.


    Unbound means the dungeon can shift, even move, and grow.


    Bound dungeons tend to be harder to clear with moreyers while unbound dungeons are dangerous because they can copy themselves over time.


    But at the end of it all, you take the boss out, and the dungeon copses.


    Keep the coteral low, even more so with unbound dungeons, and you''re all set.


    That''s what most adventurers learn in their first year of working with the League.


    Of course, this is all just general talk.


    Once you put in the field work for as many years as I have, you start to realize that although there are plenty of rules in this world, there''s plenty of wriggle room between them as well.


    There are horribly dangerous dungeons that merely have oneyer.


    There are dungeons that anchor to a boss that is not even a monster, maybe a crystal or living wall or, in one particrly bad case, a spore rooting inside an invading adventurer, making it so you cannot clear it without killing someone in your own party.


    You have no idea what you will face in dungeons as an adventurer.


    What you do need to know is humility.


    You need to know when you have to retreat, preferably with a priestess of the paths, and you need to know when a dungeon is dangerous enough to call for help.


    The League has limited resources; you knowing how to use them and when to call for them will save your life, especially if you are lower ranking, than any artisanal sword or shield crafted from Tallo or Utu or any ce of renowned forging.


    Because at the end of the day, unless you''re three stars or above, you are worthless.


    You will have no coin, no resources, and no reputation.


    And, most likely, you will be weak.


    A harsh truth, but one better known than ignored until death.


    And there is no shame in splitting a dungeon''s rewards with whatever higher ranked party or League officiales to aid you. If anything, it will make your life easier and continue it at the same time.


    But you must present the League with a good case for their assistance.


    For that, you need information.


    Any dungeon you see, don''t enter it, stay at its perimeter and do a routine scouting.


    Get a sorcerer from the Order to read the leylines in the area. Check for disturbances. If you do not have a sorcerer in your party, then hire one. Don''t skimp out on a good sorcerer because of coin.


    Better to have your life than an empty bag.


    Check first and foremost if there''s mana signatures in the leylines thate from different realms.


    This means the dungeon is not only unbound, but also capable of drawing monsters from different realms.


    If this is the case, report back to the nearest League sentry. Elevate the threat ranking of the dungeon one full rank. Dungeons like this are unstable and capable of growing in the blink of an eye.


    Try to find what exactly is causing the instability. Most of the time, the dungeon boss will be the culprit, but sometimes, there are other entities, maybe a subordinate monster or a structure that is tapping into the instability.


    If you do not have the power to fully clear the dungeon and y the boss, then focus on disabling these entities, Warpers as they''re known in our trade, because that alone will take out half the dungeon''s threat.


    Then, you check for-,'' The daemon stopped, nodding to herself. ''That¡­that is all I read before Thorian took the book from me. He told me I had no ce reading about adventurers and getting odd ideas in my head.''


    The Collector clicked its mandibles. "That is sufficient information.


    Tell me, do you understand the means by which to identify theseirs known as ''dungeons'' and their mechanism? The entities within them designated as a ''boss''?"


    ''I¡­I can tell when there''s a dungeon, I think, but¡­but everything else, no. The dungeons, well, if you read the leylines, they appear like, ah, something will be wrong with them.


    I¡­I can show you if we get near one.'' The daemon perked up, her eyes alight with the emotion of wonder that so vexed the Collector.


    Why¡­are we¡­are we going to go into one?'' she asked, her words breaking apart not because of nervousness this time, but because of curiosity.


    "I sense eagerness in approaching thisir ssified a ''dungeon''. Does this area not pose a significant threat?" noted the Collector.


    The female daemon shook her head several times. ''They do, I think, well, I read that they are very dangerous, but¡­but¡­the feeling of clearing a dungeon and seeing it, I have always wanted it. I¡­once, I think, I wanted to be an adventurer.''


    "This ''wonder'' that you feel, I sense it within you in thought of this ''dungeon''. Yet, I sense that this emotion is most appropriate when witnessing the all-epassing presence of the Collective.


    Soon, within the Collective, you will learn to detach this ''wonder'' from the phenomena of this world that amounts to little more than slightly special drivel," said the Collector. "And I now head to this ''dungeon''. You are to inform me when you sense the necessary environmental anomalies that indicate its presence."


    The Collector clicked its mandibles, approximating where the main goblin encampment was and heading to that direction.


    It theorized that this encampment was a ''dungeon'' through contextual clues.


    First, there was the appearance of many goblin variants all adapted to different biomes.


    Then there was the fact that the goblins were amassing their numbers for some kind of war effort, and that would require both an expansion of territory and additional troops all entailed within the ''unbound dungeon'' with a ''warper'' that the female daemon spoke of.


    Perhaps more evidently, the Collector could feel the thrall''s core and sense that there were remnants of psionic energy within it.


    The stench of dealing with warp-based travel, though of a different kind than that which the Collector was familiar with spacefaring tinkerers.


    Thus, the Collector reasoned that the thrall had been a ''warper'' for a dungeon with the goblin lord as its boss.


    Good.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles, potentially seeing the end of its mission in near sight.


    If this dungeon possessed a channel for warping adequately powerful enough, the Collector could utilize it to send out its psionic charge to the Collective, regaining connection with the Hivemind and signaling its coordinates for a full-scale takeover.


    It would not have to force its way through heavily guarded poption centers that housed ''Warp Temples''.


    If the Collector did not move now, there was a chance that these humans, these ''adventurers'' would get to the dungeon first and y its ''boss'', causing, as the female specimen recited, the destruction of the warp gate.


    The Collector could not allow that. It took the corpse of the fleeing specimen under its tail and devoured it.


    >>>


    *Biomass gained (+12)*


    Biomass Level: 67/100


    *Spirit roots gained (+30)*


    Root Consumption Limit: 100/100


    *Gic material gained*


    Stored Gic Material:


    -ck Ant


    -Deer


    -ck Hobgoblin


    -Human


    -Lesser Oni


    -Frostborn Hobgoblin


    -Horse


    -Lesser Greatcentipede


    -Lesser Greatbeetle


    -Spitting Greatbeetle


    -Leafde Insect


    -Frostborn Hobgoblin Thrall [Core]


    -Vineswinger Goblin Champion [Core]


    Mana Level: 50%>>100%


    >>>


    It fully embraced the desire brimming in its heart, rushing into the forest before the daemon specimen could respond to it, rag-dolling her behind it while she tried to adjust to the sudden burst of speed.


    One final battle.


    One final, good battle.


    This, the Collector desired before the dawn of the Collective.


    Though the Collector knew this was heretical, it wished to savor this feeling ast time, this desire of the battle to the strong before the Hivemind could reset the Collector and eliminate the anomalies growing within it.

 Chapter 55 - Great Purpose

    The Collector slithered its way through the Darkwoods.


    Wide tree trunks came into its vision, then blurred behind it as it rushed through the forest.


    At first, the female daemon specimen tethered behind it had exhibited an elevated heart rate and tensed muscles indicative of fear, likely at the speed with which the Collector moved, but soon, she had adjusted herself.


    With some skill, the Collector noted.


    The daemon had oriented herself using minor applications of Sapian force to keep herself more stably tethered to the Collector, and this required not only a good approximation of the Collector''s speed, but also when it would make twists and turns.


    With the Collector''s calctions, it would take forty minutes to reach the main goblin encampment if the memories of its approximate coordinates were correct.


    Margin of error within eight minutes.


    Its approximate speed: four hundred kilometers per hour.


    And with every passing day, its speed and strength would increase to no end, unbound as it was now by mana enriching its physical properties.


    Yet, the Collector would not reach those heights of power, that zenith of strength thaty beyond its limitations, even perhaps by the metamorphosis level limits set upon it by the Collective, once it signaled to the Collective.


    No. Such thinking was wed. The Collective was strength incarnate already.


    Assimting within it once more was the zenith of purpose and power the Collector strived for, respected and desired.


    For in the end, that was the Collector''s designated life cycle.


    To be born with strength, to fight enemies, to gain their biomass and samples, and then in turn, when it became defective or outdated, to be consumed by the Collective itself, enriching the greater whole with new samples for the great purpose.


    And the Collector knew that its life cycle would draw to an end once the Collective dawned.


    The Collector was defective, and the Collective would either consume it for its unique new samples or restart the shard within it.


    Either way, the Collector as it was now would no longere to be in time.


    And all for the better. The Collector would serve its glorious purpose. Be whole once more.


    ___


    After some time traveling unimpeded, the Collector sensed the daemon speaking to it.


    ''I¡­I never asked. Where¡­where are you from?'' asked the daemon.


    ''I do not herald from any one ce. No fixed geographical point bound by the arbitrary limitations of borders and other such divisions. I am born of the Collective,'' said the Collector.


    ''You¡­you''ve mentioned it, the Collective. And, forgive me for asking, but I-I''m curious: what¡­what is it?''


    ''You turn your curiosity, this ''wonder'', to the Collective. Agreeable,'' said the Collector, projecting its thoughts for ease ofmunication at its current speed of travel. ''The Collective is no mere thing. It is being itself.


    Evolution progressed and honed into a singrity that will never falter.


    It is the absorbed will of countless species that have all lost the discord and differences that once demarcated them as ''individuals''.


    Inducted into the Collective, they be one, and as one, they attain a utopic perfection that no tinkering civilization can ever hope to match or even conceptualize.''


    ''I¡­I can feel what you are saying a little bit, even if your words are hard for me, and¡­and I can sense that this¡­this Collective is something big,'' said the daemon. ''Something you really, really believe in.


    The Collective¡­you said there are so many people in there, but¡­but none of them hate each other?''


    ''Emotions such as hate are outdated and vestigial remnants of tinkering imperfection,'' said the Collector. ''Even within myself that is afforded limited emotion, I may hold measured judgements against you tinkerers, but hate?


    I do not ''hate'' your kind.


    I simply see all of you as life that has strayed afar from the path of evolution, marking yourselves with discord even among your own kind.


    In need of absolution from yourselves.


    For it is known that you tinkerers are inherently self-destructive. Even without an external threat, you tend towards warring amongst yourselves regardless of the form you take and the biomes you originally adapted to.


    Without the advent of warp-based technology, there is no doubt that you tinkerers would have hit a wall in development and expansion caused by conflict among yourselves and other self-destructive tendencies.


    Thus, tinkering is a disease. A gue that feasts upon itself and others while leaving nothing of value to the universe.


    It is inherently self-destructive.


    A heresy against the fundamental principle of evolution: the propagation of one''s own.


    Within the short timeframes of your tinkering lives, you may believe your methods best to propagate, but in greater scales of time, it is faulty to the highest degree.''


    ''Hm,'' said the daemon with wonder. She gazed at the Collector''s slithering form, at the back of its horned head. ''That was¡­was one thing I noticed from you.


    No hate. Just¡­just calm. And you say that the Collective, everyone in it, feels this calm.''


    ''That is precisely so,'' said the Collector.


    The daemon hung her head down. ''I¡­I never wanted to hate. It was hard for me to. Even when I hurt so much, it was hard. Thorian never told me to hate. Mother never told me to hate.


    But¡­but I don''t know. When the hurt kept going on and on and it felt like it would never end, I¡­I just had nothing left.


    Nothing left but hate.


    It makes me feel bad inside, a little, I know it''s wrong, imperfect, like you say, but¡­but I still want to see this world break down just as much as I did.


    That''s why¡­that''s why I trusted you so much from the start, because you were going to hurt people,'' She paused, taking a long look at the Collector. ''But¡­but if you are going to change everything, bring calm to everyone, make everyone one, stop the hatepletely, then¡­then I don''t feel bad about trusting you.''


    The Collector clicked its mandibles. ''When my mission isplete and this world has entered the greater ranks of the Collective, it will be whole. There will be no aberrant defections that lead to unnecessary divisions among your kind.


    And in the end, the unique, anomalous strength and lives of this world will fuel the great purpose to ensure that life remains infinite,'' said the Collector. It continued:


    ''Tinkering species build monuments to themselves, spread themselves acrosss and star systems to replicate themselves, but in the end, they will never be infinite.


    They will exhaust their resources and the energy. The cold of entropy will take them, and in all their warring and discord among each other, they will never manage to stand against the inevitable darkness.


    But the Collective will be beyond this.


    The fundamental principle beyond all evolution is the propagation of one''s species. In the scale of the Collective, this is the continuation of life, and for this purpose, it will evolve, absorb, and grow to no end.


    Once the Collective has inducted enough life across the stars within its being at a sufficiently grand scale, it will fulfill the Great Purpose.


    The processing power of life united as one will surely stand against the darkness. Break the inevitable approach of heat death that otherwisees for us all, tinkerer or hive-unit alike.''


    ''Wow,'' said the daemon. ''I¡­I don''t understand all of what you''re saying, but the feeling I get¡­I get the feeling of being a part of something big and important. Being special.


    Will I¡­will I be a part of this too? Even if I''m broken like I am now?''


    ''There is no doubt,'' dered the Collector. ''The information you have provided me so far has been of great worth, contributing significantly to my survival and further nning.


    For this, you shall be immortalized within the ranks of the Collective with as much honor as the true warriors I have devoured.''


    ''I''m¡­I''m worth something¡­and I won''t be broken anymore¡­,'' The female specimen nodded to herself, the tiniest hint of a smile tugging at the corner of her lips, though in an awkward, stilted fashion, the muscles for smiling having never been used in years.


    She blinked as she tensed up, and the Collector stopped its movement in an efficient instant, a rush of wind blowing past it as it halted from high speeds.


    ''I¡­I can sense something off. The leylines,'' said the daemon as she hovered in front of the Collector. ''They are warped. The mana swirling through them, through thend, is circling, spiraling int one point.''


    "The dungeon," said the Collector as it clicked its mandibles and unsheathed its monomolecr edge ws. They clinked out from its fingertips, growing now to twenty-centimeter lengths.


    It sensed there were insects around it, and, as the daemon noted as it focused mana into its eyes to make them more sensitive to the flow of magic, it could see what she was talking about.


    Its vision became tinted in light blue as it inspected the area around it.


    Lines of mana circted throughout thend, ''leylines'' as they were called, and these bright blue streaks poured out from the earth and danced over the grass and twirled around the trees.


    Yet, the Collector had not been able to discern any significance from these flows, merely that they supported life in some way.


    However, when prompted by the daemon, it now knew what to look for. It could see that in the seemingly random mass of flowing lines, there was now a pattern.


    A slight swirl, more a tendency of the lines to break and move away and into a central point a sizable distance away from them.


    And as its eyes sensed magic, its auditory systems sensed physical sounds. The shing of hardened alloys breaking upon each other. Flesh rending. Bones breaking.


    The sounds of battle.

 Chapter 56 - To Battle

    The Collector assessed itself and the environment around it.


    First, a check of its status before it engaged in what was perhaps its final battle:


    >>>


    Metamorphosis Level 6


    Biomass Level: 67/100


    Stored Gic Material:


    -ck Ant


    -Deer


    -ck Hobgoblin


    -Human


    -Lesser Oni


    -Frostborn Hobgoblin


    -Horse


    -Lesser Greatcentipede


    -Lesser Greatbeetle


    -Spitting Greatbeetle


    -Leafde Insect


    -Frostborn Hobgoblin Thrall


    -Vineswinger Goblin Champion [Core]


    Adaptations:


    <Internal Systems>


    -Ultrafiber Muscles Rank 6.4


    --Coilboosters


    -Autonomic Neuro-Bodily Matrix


    --Metalloglottic Ossifier


    -->Lightstone


    -->Runewood


    <External Systems>


    -Sensitive Hairs Rank 5.2


    --Quill Spray


    -Organic Hyperalloy Carapace Rank 5.4


    --Longchain Chitinous Suyer


    <Weapons Systems>


    -Monomolecr ws Rank 4.4


    -Pyrocatalytic nds Rank 3


    Current Form:


    Assassin Bugbrute/Daemon/Dullscale Rohu/Jumping Arakka


    <<<[?Magic?] Status>>>


    Mana Level: 100%


    Active Cores [3/3]:


    -Prime Core


    --Trigger: Desire


    -Daemon Core


    --Trigger: Wonder


    -Frostborn Thrall Core


    --Trigger: Greed


    Inhera:


    -Sapia [Daemon Core]


    Ethera:


    -Devourer [Prime Core]


    Primal Magic:


    -Bone Binding [Frostborn Thrall Core]


    Blessings:


    -Blessing of Mount Oe


    Primal Density: 5%


    Root Consumption Limit: 100%


    >>>


    The Collector had slotted in the Frostborn Hobgoblin Thrall''s core into its third slot on the way here, for if the Collector was to interface with the potential warp gate in the dungeon, then it would require the thrall''s energy signatures.


    Slotting in a core was possible without a full metamorphosis but modifying cores and recing them would requite the processing power of the evolutionary cocoon.


    The process of assuming the thrall''s core was akin to regeneration.


    When it urred, the Collector had felt another heart growing within itself, this time located in its stomach area.


    This meant there were now three hearts pumping within the Collector, and all of them linked to separate cores and operating a portion of its spirit roots.


    Its prime core was responsible for the functions of sixty percent of its roots, and the remaining forty percent split among the daemon and thrall cores.


    Must take care to shield the prime core at all costs, noted the Collector, for though it would survive having its main heart destroyed, it would severelypromise its magical abilities and deactivate powers from its secondary cores as well.


    If the Collector had wanted to maximize its strength, it would have slotted in the Vineswinger Goblin Champion''s core, for it possessed an Inhera called Wind-Up that allowed a limb to charge up power after undergoing full rotations, but the thrall''s core was crucial to tap into the warp and could be useful in its own way.


    The Collector had noticed for some time now that insects from the Deadwood were anomalously quiet, refraining from their usual indiscriminate feasting of each other on the forest floor.


    Instead, as the Collector now neared the site of battle, the dungeon, it analyzed that the insectoids in the vicinity of the dungeon were all moving out.


    Towards the center of battle. A whole swarm of them from every direction. Insectoids of all kinds and sizes.


    An unending wave of chittering, many-legged creatures that shambled forwards, utterly ignoring the Collector and the daemon specimen behind it.


    Only the Arakka were absent from this writhing mass unified in forward moving purpose.


    The Collector noticed thenky, dark green form of a Leafde Insect scamper beside the Collector, its long antennae twitching as its oversized, scythe like front legs red out in front of it.


    It wasrger than the smaller masses beneath it, the same kind the Collector had taken enough note of to consume before.


    The Collector backhanded the insect''s head, blowing it away with the strike. Now headless, the insect twitched as it still stood upright, thest remnants of its neural functioning fading away.


    The Collector activated the trigger of the thrall''s core.


    Greed.


    This, the Collector could approximate. It was simr in nature to its own trigger of Desire, simply a little less focused in its scope and more brutish at its base.


    A pulse of faint blue energy spread throughout the Collector''s ashen body from its stomach. It punched into the leafde insect''s stomach, cracking through the carapace and into the mushy innards within.


    Bone binding. The primal magic of the thrall.


    By binding the essence of a creature down to a remnant of it- the bones ¨C the Collector could theoretically utilize the bones to manifest physical phenomena rted to the creature itself.


    The Collector activated the magic knowing that the insect possessed no biological structure like the bones that the thrall utilized. The closest analogous structure would be the carapace.


    Yet, the Collector still tried in experimentation, wishing to scope out the limits of this ability.


    A pale blue light flickered from within the insect, generating outwards from the Collector''s fist still stuck inside of it, but nothing more happened.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles. Combat data for bone binding updated. It would seem that without a bone structure at least somewhatpatible with mammalian forms, bone binding would not work.


    It instead made final use of the corpse by feasting upon it.


    >>>


    *Biomass gained (+2)*


    Biomass Level: 69/100


    >>>


    ''So many¡­so many monsters,'' said the female as she hovered above the Collector, eyeing down at the endless march of insectoids below.


    The Collector infused magical energy into its eyes and observed the insects. It beheld faint tethers of mana from all of them joining in therger swirls of blue leading into the dungeon.


    ''This ''dungeon'' possesses the means to call upon specimen living in the biome surrounding it,'' noted the Collector. ''A principle simr in fashion to the Hivemind''s mass control of units, and yet drastically more primitive and unrefined in its processing.''


    Good.


    The mass movement of insectoids would provide adequate cover. And likely, the Arakka resisted this call to action for they formed their own rudimentary hivemind with each other.


    Thus, only the weakest of the insects in the forest mobilized.


    And judging from theirck of aggression to the Collector and the daemon specimen, they were called to engage in battle with other targets.


    The Collector heard further sounds of battle.


    The sound of a fire roaring.


    This one was loud enough for the Collector to utilize its auditory systems to approximate a location.


    One hundred and fifteen meters ahead. Margin of error ten meters.


    Judging from the sounds emanating from that location, particrly the ng of metal against carapace and other hard surfaces, it was highly likely there were tinkering humanoid presences ahead.


    The cover of the forest extended only a dozen meters ahead as evidenced by the glow of lightstone torches visible ahead, demarcating the perimeter of the main goblin encampment.


    But this was range enough for the Collector make visual confirmation of the battle, the humanoids, and assess abat n.


    ''Prepare yourself for battle,'' said the Collector to the daemon. ''If you truly wish to serve the Collective, to y a part in its dawning, then you will fight as the predator you are meant to be and are bing.''


    The daemon took in several deep breaths ¨C a method of easing rising mental anxiety. She nodded, her eyes shing purple. ''Got it.''


    ==


    In the center of a sea of clicking, wriggling, writhing shelled bodies, three adventurers stood.


    A man on the taller side with conventionally handsome and rugged features. Squared jaw, a head of full, slicked back ck hair and surprisingly soft brown eyes. A scar ran from one eye to the chin that conveniently missed the lips, adding to his looks rather than disfiguring them.


    Solid build, but not overly muscled. A body meant more for functional fitness, and the man exhibited just that as he backflipped with a grace like flowing water.


    Where he had been but a moment ago, a club head of ice crashed, gouging out a small crater in the forest floor.


    "Stop running!" shouted a musclebound, pale-skinned frostborn hobgoblin as he picked his everfrost club up.


    To any ordinary human or even any one- or two-star adventurer, a trained hobgoblin with a weapon was quite the foe.


    But to Furio, newly anointed four-star adventurer and a rising talent in the Adventuringmunity, this was nothing.


    Furio gripped his Ethera construct, a wrench almost two meters long, in both hands like a spear.


    A longsword gleaming with an orange tinty stuck with invisible force to the head of the wrench, turning the whole thing into a makeshift spear of sorts.


    "And why don''t you stop talking?" said Furio.


    He smiled as he parried the hobgoblin''s second attack, angling his wrench above his head precisely so that the club''s impact diffused away to the side, sending the hobgoblin off bnce as his club crashed into the ground beside Furio.


    As the hobgoblin faltered, Furio took a step back to get into striking range, and then in one swift motion that left an arc of gleaming orange light in the air, sliced forwards with his wrench-spear.


    The hobgoblin stilled before he fell to the ground, a massive, burning gash almost bisecting him from the stomach.

 Chapter 57 - New Adventurers

    "That''s thest of the goblins!" said Furio as he twirled the wrench between his hands.


    The enchanted sword stuck to its head glowed fiercely, sending out arcs of fire that torched and blew back the various insect monsters that tried to swarm him.


    A few unlucky insects caught in the de''s path split apart before burning up rapidly, disintegrating into nothing but piles of ashes.


    "Bug duty, Emi, please!"ined Furio.


    "Is that any way to talk to your precious little sister?" said Emi. She was much shorter than her brother, but no lesscking in fierce battle will.


    She stuck her staff of steely metal into the ground, the sharp, ive-like head crashing into a beetle. She twisted the staff, crunching the ive through the beetle and ending its wriggling.


    "She''s right, you know," said Vera, third member of the party. Light and athletic build wrapped in form-fitting,yered leather armor.


    On the breast of her sleeveless leather vest was an emblem with three stars stitched within it.


    Her face was covered in a hood and veil that glowed a slight shade of iridescent rainbow from the magical light emanating from her arms.


    Rainbow circuits ran from her fingers all the way up to her shoulders.


    "[Withdraw]," said Vera. She reached a hand into empty space, and it sunk into a ripple in the air. From there, she withdrew a lengthy pipe of shingled bronze metal. "Judican artifacts make my skin crawl, made by heartless zealots as they are, but I really cannot deny they can be useful."


    She swayed her head from side to side, seeing the bugs approaching her and Emi, flicked her veil to the side, and breathed into the pipe.


    Her magical energy infused into the artifact, and a momentter, gouts of me burst out from the other end of the pipe, washing over the bugs and burning them alive.


    She rotated her head, circling the me around her and creating a ring of me that kept the rest of the insects out for now.


    Furio, however, being physically the strongest and at the head of the party, did not enjoy this ming barrier, and instead used his enchanted de to cleave out space for himself.


    Though the orange de had a fire-type monster''s core enchanted in it, the me was meant more to enhance its cutting edge, not to createrge fires.


    More and more bugs started to near him, and though they were of zero threat to him, they still slowed him down and stopped him from seeing what was ahead.


    "I never get to voice an opinion in this party," said Furio. "But that''s what I get for having a party made up of my little sister and girlfriend. Everyone told me it was going to be a disaster."


    "Oh, stopining," said Emilia. "Here, I''ll help you out."


    With a grunt, Emilia took her ive-staff and mmed it into the dirt.


    A faint blue mana crystal glowed from within the ive, focusing her magic as grey circuits emerged from her hands and ran up to her forearms.


    "[de Storm]!" she chanted.


    Arcs of grey magical energy crackled around her, forming into six des of metal that whirled around her at rapid speeds.


    She waved her staff towards Furio, and the rotating des ejected towards him, pushing past the ring of fire and swerved around Furio, grinding up the insects moring at him into showers of innards and carapace.


    "Ugh," she said, her nose crinkling at the scent of insect innards. She looked down at the guts-soaked grey mantle covering her enchanted leather armor.


    On her mantle was an emblem with two stars upon it. "I hear there are public steam baths in Sunda. What I would give now to soak in one of them."


    "Hm, I do like the sound of a public bath. Get clean and watch something nice, what''s not to like?" Furio leered in front of him as insects began to amass in front of him again in a thick wall of carapaced bodies, but Emilia had cleared enough space for him to work with.


    "Here, I will activate mbe fully to clear a path," said Furio as he aimed his wrench forwards and then ejected the de attached to the head at high speeds.


    The de began to turn and spiral, unleashing the heat condensed at its edge and expanding it intorge wreaths of fire that curled around it.


    The enchanted de roared as mes surged up through its flight, toasting a mass of insects and clearing a straight path ahead. After traveling fifty meters, the de stopped to a sudden halt, hovering in the air - the end of Furio''s maic tether.


    Furio ran forwards in the clearing he had burned out, keeping his pace slower than usual to make sure Emilia and Vera could keep up.


    "Brother, you know you do have a lover, right?" said Emilia as she ran behind Furio.


    "What? I just look at other women and admire, you know, the artistry of their bodies. Like admiring a wonderful painting. Don''t love them or anything. You know, Vera?" said Furio.


    "Falling in love with you has been simultaneously the best and worst thing to happen to me. Some days, I don''t know which part wins out," said Vera.


    "You won''t be thinking so hard once we clear this contract!" said Furio as he peered ahead.


    Maybe a good sprint away was a yawning pit in the earth. Spikes of ckened wood arose around the hole, and from it, a faint blue light emanated.


    A dungeon.


    An Unbound one, it seemed, and it had not had the time to grow and strengthen itself just yet with multiple territories.


    In other words, this dungeon was at its weakest state right now.


    Perfect to clear, and the weak level of monsters in this area meant that in all likelihood, this dungeon would not be too difficult for Furio, a four-star adventurer, to deal with.


    Clearing a dungeon with just one party would a huge bonus of coin for Furio, enough for him to buy his own ce in Tallo.


    A nice ce, too, not like those rusted out hovels packed together on the lower rings of the city.


    Hovels he had spent years in with Emilia.


    Now, he finally had the strength to give her a life she was deserving of. A life that their parents, wherever they were in the afterlife, could smile upon.


    And a ce worthy for Vera too, after all she had done, turning away even from her noble family to adventure with him.


    "Don''t get too hasty," said Vera as she put in short breaths into the Judan mebringer, shooting out balls of me around Furio that discouraged any more insects from encroaching. "We were supposed to merely investigate a surge of mana.


    This whole thing, an entire dungeon, this is beyond our expectations.


    We don''t have a proper sorcerer of the Order with us either to examine anything.


    We have no idea what we are getting into. Northern goblins and types from Xin and Foraoise mean that there''s a Warper in the dungeon, and who knows what kind of monster that can bring in?"


    "Obviously, nothing too exciting. We have far gone past dealing with goblins, love. I could beat four champions at once, let alone the lot we have dealt with so far," said Furio. "And besides, if we leave this unbound dungeon, things will just get worse.


    More and more monsters wille to it. There were already enough goblins here going on about invading before we took them out.


    We could portal back to the safe zone and wait for League reinforcements, but this dungeon is unbound: what if it moves?


    Or if the monsters decide to keep attacking?


    The vige south of here has no protectors to it. Might take hours to get to it by foot, but if there''s a Warper, then maybe they can port there.


    The Sundan soldiers there have already been wiped out, and they would never be able to deal with something like this to begin with.


    We as adventurers have a duty to hold the line here. Or clear the dungeon too if we can."


    He reached the end of the fifty meters mbe''s activation had cleared out. The de had lost its orange glow from activating, and he tapped it with his wrench, causing it to float above the wrench head.


    "Switching to Fulmi," said Furio. He reached behind his back to where five sheathsy strapped and withdrew one of the des, this one inside a pale blue sheath.


    With a flick of his wrist, he tossed the segmented de in front of his wrench and then tapped it, causing the sword to slot into the wrench head with a click.


    The sword was smaller than mbe, and its ornamental design made up of spiked segments meant it was not great for face to facebat.


    But it was quite useful for this.


    Furio thrust out his wrench as the insects started to swarm again, and from the various spiked segments making up Fulmi, arcs of lightning emerged, coursing into the wall of bugs and using their bodies further as conduits.


    Electricity screamed as powerful currents of magical lightning seized up the wall of insects for a few seconds, causing their carapaces to crack and steam up before all of them exploded simultaneously in a sea of showering guts and shell.


    Furio twirled his wrench in front of him, blocking out most of the debris.


    "Agh." Emilia spat out a piece of semi-charred insect flesh from her mouth. "At least give us a warning!"


    "I did, Emi, you just need to get faster. If you want to catch up to me, this is how fast you''ll have to be," said Furio.


    "You know-," Emilia began before she yelped, a rock pelting the side of her head, passing through the mes Vera blew out.


    Immediately, Vera rushed to her side. "Are you okay, dear? I can bring out something to stem the hurt."


    "Yes, I''m-I''m fine," said Emilia as she shook her head. "Just a small bruise, maybe. But where-,"


    "There," said Furio. He had turned around the moment he heard his little sister cry out, and with focused senses, he spotted the culprit.


    A green skinned goblin. A small one. It pranced up and down the heads ofrger insects as ran away, a sling in its hands.


    Furio''s expression darkened. He had thought he had dealt with all the goblins here. But he had been careless and left the smaller goblins around because he was in a rush to get into the dungeon.


    He cursed his carelessness and aimed the wrench at the tiny goblin''s rapidly fading form.


    Fulmi ejected from the wrench at high speeds, shooting out and skewering the goblin. Furio span the wrench in his hands, and the sword still maically tethered to the wrench mirrored the movements, spinning around and tearing the goblin apart into pieces.


    "Sorry, Emi. Sorry. That won''t happen again," said Furio. "I promise."


    "You promise me way too much, brother. Just focus on yourself," said Emilia. She smiled as she started to run again, towards Furio before something tore the legs from her body.

 Chapter 58 - Spin

    "Emi!" Furio screamed as he immediately forgot about the gleaming entrance of the dungeon in front of him, at all the gold and glory it promised.


    He ran towards her, and his whole world became only his sister, at the blood starting to arc from her severed legs, but even this was not enough to fully dull his instincts.


    Almost automatically, he registered several things, the world almost slowing down as his mind raced.


    No enemies in near sight capable of doing this damage. A sudden blur of movement and the sound of solid physical impact. And, as he saw Emi''s legless body start to fall, an expression of surprise still on her face before it could register the pain, he saw shards of shattered rock behind her.


    A projectile attack. Someone or something was throwing rocks.


    We are what we train ourselves daily to be. We are our habits.


    Furio knew these words well from his master, and without a secondary thought, he projected his magical energy out in a sense field around him, all the while still running to Emi''s side.


    Something registered in his field.


    Projectiles.


    Large rocks headed towards himself and Vera with another one following close behind to finish off Emi.


    Not even a second had passed since Emi first got hit.


    Whatever had thrown these objects could do so in mass volleys at pinpoint uracies far beyond any vineswinger goblin, and those monsters were known for their throwing arm.


    Furio reacted.


    He whirled around, reducing the range of his sense to move mana flow elerating through his body, strengthening it. He had memorized the trajectory of the iing projectiles, and in a quick motion, batted the air in front of him with his wrench.


    As predicted, a rock the size of a man''s head crashed into the wrench, and Furio shaped the mana flowing through his wrench- his ethera and therefore extension of his body- into a spin that countered the ball''s own and deflected it.


    With a pinging crack of impact, the deflected rock sailed backwards and crashed into the second stone meant for Emi. Both rocks exploded out into a shower of pulverized rock pieces, such was the speed they had flown at.


    The rock meant for Vera smashed against her head, but it simply broke upon it like it was an indestructible surface.


    A flicker of rainbow light shimmered throughout Vera''s body as her [Refraction] spell, a spell cast on the body to negate the blow of one strong strike, faded.


    "Behind me!" said Furio as he stood in front of Vera and Emi. He heard Emi''s body hit the floor, and expected to hear her cries, but instead, she just breathed heavy, holding in her pain, trying to not make Furio worry.


    She could not speak, only gasp, and though she did not scream, every single heavy breath she took felt just like a scream to Furio.


    Furio gritted his teeth as he tried to figure out where the rocks hade from, his grey eyes darting from side to side as they saw only the endless expanse of bugs and shadowy forest trees.


    "Emi, just hold on, okay? Big brother will make sure you get through this fine like I always do." He kept his hands tight on his wrench, eyes alight with mana as he projected his sense field again, ready to bat down any projectile.


    "It''s okay dear, it''s okay," said Vera in a soothing voice as she used [Withdraw] to pull out a vial of green liquid from a ripple in space. She popped open the cork with her thumb and held Emi''s shaking, paling face firm, opening her mouth and pouring in the liquid.


    Within moments, Emi stopped her gasping, her breathing growing even as she fell asleep to prevent shock and reduce blood loss.


    "Vera, withdraw something to stop her bleeding," said Furio. An edge of anger sharpened his normally smooth voice. "And portal yourselves back to the safe zone. I am going to deal with this."


    "No-," began Vera.


    "Yes." Furio''s voice was firm. "You can channel to port us out one at a time, and you have to leave yourself forst. What do you think happens once I get ported out? You''ll die. Vera, please, my love."


    He turned around to her to give her a smile. "I''lle back, I-,"


    In that moment, Furio swerved around, the hairs on his neck standing on end as he sensed another projectile speeding into the range of his sense aura. He shaped mana into his wrench again, predicted where the rock would be, and batted it away as well.


    With the correct amount of spinning mana wreathed on his wrench, he could prevent the rock from splintering and hitting Vera and Emi behind him, instead knocking it high into the sky.


    "Just go!" Furio batted away another rock.


    Imperfectly this time.


    It bounced off his wrench and curved behind him, dangerously reaching close to Vera and Emi before just missing them and mming into the earth with a cracking impact.


    Whatever was throwing these could also fine tune and adjust the spin on the projectiles with incredible uracy.


    Throwing skill beyond even any vineswinger champion. This was a monster among monsters that an experienced four-star adventurer should be dealing with, not Furio who had been four stars for three days now.


    Furio took in a breath, calming himself.


    Breathe. Flow your mana.


    Thirty seconds per port channel. One minute to hold out.


    He nodded to himself.


    Manageable.


    ==


    The Collector clicked its mandibles as it held a rock between its hands, purple mana infusing into its two daemon eyes and fourpound eyes as it extended its range of vision.


    It stayed behind the cover of several darkwood trees and thick undergrowth, using spin on its projectiles to swerve them past the trees to make their trajectory both unpredictable and to hide its location.


    The female daemon specimen next to him plopped down three more rocks by his side, levitating them with her Sapia. Whenever the Collector threw a projectile, she had also assisted by infusing some of her own Sapian force into it.


    With both their powers empowering the projectiles, the Collector had expected to easily punch through these humanoids with thrown rocks, and indeed, it had made direct contact with two of them, fatally injuring one while the other seemingly possessed a means to mitigate the damage almost entirely even when struck at the head.


    The other one was troublesome. The male specimen.


    He possessed the speed, coordination, and grasp of spin to negate the Collector''s throws, though his grasp of spin was not so advanced that he couldpletely reverse-engineer the throw and send it right back at the Collector.


    A fortunate thing, in all likelihood, for if the male specimen had done so, the Collector would have reflected the rock back again until one of them made a miscalction, and in exceedingly high probability, it would not have been the Collector.


    From observational analysis, the Collector determined that the male specimen''s eyes did not track the projectilesing towards it.


    Instead, it seemed to be able to predict the trajectory of the projectile and strike at where it was to be.


    In that case-


    "Bring me another stone," said the Collector as it opened a palm.


    ''Okay.'' The female daemon floated a rock into its palm. ''Do you want me to boost it?''


    "No. This will be beyond yourputational capacity for now," the Collector wrapped the rock in its hands and applied crushing force, breaking the stone into many smaller pieces.


    It infused mana into them, drew its arm back, and then unleashed a concussive volley of spin-infused stone shards.


    The intent was to overwhelm the male specimen''s capacity to react with a mass amount of projectiles.


    The male specimen reacted ordingly.


    This time, sensing a mass amount of smaller projectiles, he did not focus on batting them away but instead caused the sharpened chunk of metal, this ''sword'' atop what the Collector recognized from other tinkerers as a wrench, to emit bolts of electrical output.


    The electricity arced into a field that destroyed the vast majority of the projectiles, for smaller as they were now, the electricity could immediately disintegrate them.


    Yet, not sufficient.


    One of the stone shards bypassed the male and struck true into the leg of the veiled female specimen. This time, she did not resist the projectile, and reacted in signs of physiological distress, clutching at her bloodying leg.


    The Collector had another rock ready in its hands, seeing if the male specimen would distract itself to attend to the female, but the male still faced forwards.


    Highly trained. The Collector clicked its mandibles. Strong. If this male specimen were to fight the Collector directly, the fight would be a desirable challenge.


    The Collector felt desire tugging at its heart to face the specimen in directbat.


    Yet, its prime directive to bring upon the dawn of the Collective tugged back against its desire.


    ''Are you okay?'' said the daemon.


    "A momentary error in processing," said the Collector as it realized it had paused for a second. A second of wasted time. It clicked its mandibles, breaking apart another rock into small shards.


    It put in one half of each pile into both its hands and drew the pile of stone back, ready to throw it, and this time, it infused within the two volleys a strong spin aiming to create a trajectory consisting of an extreme curve meant to bypass the male entirely, striking the female specimens behind it from the sides.


    The spins were opposite, meaning that one half of the volley would break hard to the left, and the other hard to the right.


    Unless the male specimen could be in two ces at once, this would be fatal.

 Chapter 59 - The Duel I

    Furio could feel something was off with this volley. There had been a dy between it and the others.


    A small dy, one no more significant than a second, but in the realm of four-star adventurers and monsters of the same caliber, such a shift would not go unnoticed.


    A stronger attack? A more varied one, perhaps?


    Regardless, Furio prepared by extending his {Sense Aura} out even farther, the mana flowing from his body in a circr field around him stretching to twenty meters in radius.


    As someone with a Flow origin, Furio was naturally gifted with the movement of mana within and outside his body at both the micro and macro scales.


    Among four-star adventurers, his sense aura was among thergest and most sensitive, picking up even the drop of a single snowke in a raging blizzard.


    Furio registered movement at the edges of the field.


    Both edges.


    Countless small stone shards closing in from both the left and the right. He widened his eyes, but the surprise did not weigh him down.


    In adventuring, the unexpected was always near. The difference between a dead and live adventurery in adapting to it.


    Furio aimed his wrench towards one side of the volley and pushed out the electric dagger Fulmi from his wrench.


    Then, he drove mana into his legs to use themon martial art {Dash}.


    Green wrapped around his legs as he sprinted to the other volley, bolt-like arcs of magic screeching as steaming heat arose from the friction of his boots mming into the dirt.


    Meanwhile with a mentalmand, Furio activated Fulmi, and the six segments in the dagger opened up, revealing fleshy blue coils of muscle connecting the pale blue metal of the dagger.


    From the muscle fibers, lightning roared, destroying the volley.


    The other volley, though ¨C


    Furio stood right in front of Vera and Emi, facing his back towards the volley and hunching his form down to protect them as much as possible with his wider frame. He concentrated mana into his body with the martial art {Guard}, turning his flesh hard like adamantite.


    Stone shards shattered on his back and pattered into the dirt in front of him, blowing up tiny craters and piles of dirt.


    Furio grimaced.


    The shards of rock had gouged out a patchwork of bloody, raw, and circr wounds all across his back, sting through his durable metal-weave tunicpletely.


    No fatal hits, though.


    Furio''s {Guard} was not his strong suite.


    With an origin of Flow, he specialized in the movement of mana, not in condensing it into single points. His {Dash} was not great either for that reason.


    A fighter with a Root or Chaos origin was far better suited for those kinds of mana forms. Root with their stabler, more concentrated mana tendencies and Chaos with its more explosive flow that could be packed into shorter lived but stronger forms.


    But no use crying over the talents he was born with. One could not be perfect at everything, after all.


    "Are you alright!?" said Vera. She had light-wreathed hands on Emi''s unconscious figure, and from the brightness of the light, the portal to move Emi out was basically done.


    Furio held down nausea as he saw Emi''s legs, severed at the knee, tied down with red-stained white cloth to stem blood loss. The pool of blood beneath her was already so big, so-


    He cleared his head, righting his battle will. "Take Emi out."


    Vera nodded, and with a final burst of light shining from her hands that enveloped Emi, sent her away. Little particles of shining rainbow floated all around the air.


    Furio turned around, facing the direction of the projectiles, for by now, judging from the flow of the spin infused in them, he had gained a sense of their origin. "And you go too. I''ll meet you at the safe zone."


    Vera looked at Furio''s bleeding back. "No, Furio, listen to me. If I portal you out to the safe zone, I can portal myself out without any channeling. That way, all three of us can survive."


    "You think I''m going to lose?" Furio gripped his wrench tight. He tapped the wrench with one finger, willing Fulmi to maicallytch back onto the wrench head.


    So far, there were no additional projectiles.


    Some breathing room. "No, Vera. You have portal yourself out. Fully, and to the safe zone.


    If you channel me out but leave yourself with just a short-range portal, you''ll be stranded just a few minutes from here, if even that.


    Whatever this monster is, it''s easily reaching a C-rank threat level, and we still have no idea what more it''s capable of.


    If it''s sensitive to portal movement, it could track you, kill you before you could even do anything.


    I have to be thest one here."


    Furio''s eyes gleamed alight with mana and fury as he pinpointed the thicket of trees and undergrowth where the rocks came from. "And I''m going to fight. I''m going to make this monster suffer."


    "Furio, listen-," began Vera. She sighed, knowing that when Furio let his emotions re up and set his mind on something, there was no changing his mind. "You¡­you''re going to fight, no matter what. Then the least I can do is stop holding you back."


    Vera knelt to the ground, hugging her arms around herself. The rainbow circuits running up her arms shone bright, enveloping her in an iridescent haze before it faded, and with it, her physical form.


    A short range portal.


    Probably, Vera would manually run back out of this forest. The remote Sundan vige where the safe zoney had no Outpost, no professional healers, but hopefully the vige healer would treat Emi well enough to let her survive until adventuring reinforcements came.


    "Thanks for understanding, Vera," said Furio as he took in a breath, readying himself to fight. At the end of the day, Vera and Emi both held him back. That was the simple truth of it.


    Though they could offer him some utility and support, Furio was leagues beyond them in power, and he essentially just carried them with him because of his bond for them.


    Even then, he sensed that it might not be enough here. Against this monster. "If I don''t make it back, I hope you end up with someone better for you."


    With that, Furio roared into the air, loosing out all the emotions he had pent up, the rage, the desire to hurt back what had hurt what was closest to him, and sprinted forwards.


    Without having to pace himself to make sure he did not leave behind Vera and Emi, he was more than twice as fast as he was before.


    He used flow {el} to boost his stats evenly, wrapping himself in a tight, full-body aura of green.


    He whirled the wrench like a spinning de in front of him, activating Fulmi at low charge to wreath the weapon in arcs of damaging electricity as he mowed his way through the insects.


    Blue shes of lightning decorated with flying insect legs, charred guts, broken carapace, and heads flew in the air behind him as he pressed forwards, always forwards, drenchedpletely in white and green blood and guts, only his bright, green-tinged eyes visible in the dark.


    ==


    The Collector clicked its mandibles, gooey green juices dripping from its maw. It had prepared a pile of insectoid corpses beside it before unleashing its volleys for this throwing maneuver was extremely costly in terms of mana consumption.


    Thest twin volley had cost almost twice the amount of mana as a normal throw, leaving the Collector significantly below half its mana reserves. But devouring these corpses would recharge its mana reserves, theoretically allowing for an infinite ranged bombardment.


    Yet, in the time the Collector took to regain its mana, one of the female specimen had managed to create a smaller, localized warp to move the other, crippled female specimen from the battlefield.


    Then, she had removed herself in short order.


    "Do most humanoids within the ranks of this organization known as the ''Adventurer''s League'' possess warp capabilities?" asked the Collector.


    The female specimen behind it could not see as far as the Collector and had been busy so far gathering insect corpses for it to consume, but she picked up on its intent and answered. ''No. Hmm¡­portals are the domain of Niva, goddess of paths, and those connected to her.


    The priestesses of the paths. They, ah, they wear veils and have rainbow colored circuits to symbolize the rainbow root that Niva waters and tends to.''


    The Collector clicked its mandibles, understanding that one of the female specimens fit under this category.


    However, with her gone, this male specimen was now left stranded.


    Certainly, he was the most physically and magically adept among them, surging with such energy that the Collector''s desire to feast upon his flesh and core only grew with every passing moment.


    Yet, what would this specimen do? Would it now flee?


    With its current physical and magical capabilities and the distance between himself and the Collector, it certainly could.


    Such a choice would be prudent. Logical.


    And if he did so, the Collector would simply move on to its initial goal of the dungeon.


    But no, the male specimen charged forwards, loosing a battle cry that roused the Collector''s desire to an even greater height.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles, a red aura beginning to grow from around its white-ted body.


    The female daemon sensed this burst of chaotic, powerful energy and shrank back instinctively, knowing a fight was toe.


    "Excellent," remarked the Collector to itself. "You will provide me with an adequate final feast."


    It unsheathed its ws and started to flow mana around itself in preparation for battle. But it did not meet the male specimen''s charge.


    "Yet, you must ovee one more hurdle to prove worthy of my time."

 Chapter 60 - The Duel II

    ==


    As the thick of Darkwoods forest growth, all those ursed ck trees and twisted grasses and vines home to everything filthy that crawled, drew close to Furio, he powered mana into his legs, and with a final push, sted himself forwards, right into the darkness.


    Insects all around him blew back from the force of the leap, some of the bugs directly beside his feet even blowing apart from the simple shockwave forced out from the movement.


    In a battle, a real fight where he had nothing to hold him back, the monsters of this area, all these bugs and goblins, were absolutely nothing to Furio, dying simply from the coteral damage of his movements.


    But as Furio sailed past two tree trunks and skidded down on dirt, he knew what he was about to face was something far, far beyond what this ce was supposed to muster up.


    Visibility here was near zero, and simply generating light with his mana was inefficient.


    Furio focused his mana instead on maintaining a {Sense Aura} field around him, his senses adapting to the nearplete darkness by honing his hearing and touch instead.


    He did not overly engage the aura because there was so much interference here, so much random movement, instead only honing it enough to make up for his lost sight.


    And he was no stranger to darkness.


    Areas like this with no light were no stranger to adventurers, not to mention a four-star one like him.


    Even as a rtively inexperienced four-star adventurer, Furio still knew what it was like to fight in absolute darkness where no normal human could ever have survived.


    A week in an abandoned Tallon mine dealing with Morians ¨C mutated, curse-ridden and flesh devouring humans ¨C along with more overgrown bugs had taught him that much.


    It was where he first met Vera, too. He pushed down rising memories of the time, how he had argued so much with her when they got lost in the mines, how as the days passed, they realized they were simr threads wound from different cloths; his woolen, hers silken.


    Emi had not been there because she was sick, and he had to take the dangerous, multi-day mission to pay up enough coin for them and for a good healer. Vera was there adventuring to prove to her younger siblings that there was another life than the ones forced down their throats by her parents.


    Distractions.


    Furio gripped his wrench tight as he sensed movement. He tuned his senses so that it would ignore the chittering and crawling of the insects, and in doing so, he registered two unique auras and the physical bodies attached to them.


    One of them, massive, powerful, and of a kind he had never felt before, started to power up a sizable amount of mana as its physical form wound up a stone at him from behind a tree trunk.


    ''That won''t work on me, not at this range where I can sense all of your movements'', thought Furio as he powered up mana into his legs, turning them glowing green as he used {Dash}, instantaneously rushing behind the tree trunk.


    Furio''s eyes widened as his senses painted up the image of a monstrosity unlike any he had encountered in front of him.


    Almost three meters tall. Covered in what at first nce seemed like a full suit of white-ted armor lined with protruding spikes. A serpentine lower body.


    Enormous coils of muscle lining a human-like upper body that promised nothing but overwhelming force, and, as he sensed an inhuman face with six eyes and enormous horns, a likeliness that this thing would not hold back on using that power.


    Furio reacted on pure instinct, shing his wrench horizontally across to gut the beast.


    Fulmi was a short dagger with a coiled design unsuited for direct damage, but mbe, a longsword far deadlier, still orbited the wrench, and with his swing, the heated de also mirrored the movement and arced forwards.


    The monster reacted with lightning quick reflexes, swerving backwards with its serpentine body to dodge the swing by a hair''s breadth and then undted its body forwards in the very same motion, abusing its huge frame and range to unleash an enormous, red mana infused punch.


    The hairs on Furio''s neck stood on end as he sensed massive threat from the punch. He held up his wrench as a shield, infusing it in a sheathe of mana to both absorb force and deflect the blow.


    If he was desperate or caught by more surprise, he would have had to use {Guard}, and because his Flow origin was unsuited to that type of defense, he likely would have sustained a near fatal injury and gotten blown back.


    But Furio deflected the punch without much issue, and in the thick of meleebat, he could sense even greater that this monster was, well, a monster through and through.


    The armor ting it had on was not forged metal but pure carapace of a quality far, far higher than anything the Darkwood insects possessed.


    Furio would need some serious firepower to punch through that much carapace.


    "Gah!" Furio immediately pushed himself backwards as he felt pain stabbing from his side. He felt the warm rush of blood trickling down his ribs and he steadied his breathing.


    The monster had stabbed him with a series of spider-like legs that unfolded from its back in a sudden instant, surprising him. Though with his sharp reflexes, he had managed to avoid his lungs from getting punctured.


    Wounds deep enough to bleed, but not lethal.


    Furio could deal with this, but this¡­this monster. He sized it up again, taking in the huge, fluxing waves of mana pouring out from the creature, forming into a malevolent, red-tinted aura.


    A magical beast.


    Good, Furio had ways to deal with them. The older they were, the more primal density they had, the better. He just had to switch out weapons to Ste, but even with the anti-monster il, he would find it difficult to punch through that much armor.


    Not to mention those spider legs. Six different additional angles of attack. Fast reflexes. Speed and power.


    This monster was an absolute physical powerhouse.


    Oddly, though, he could not sense any true intent from it. It seemed to radiate a sense of¡­calm?


    Killing intent, yes, but no real hate, no real powerful emotion.


    Then this thing must have been a familiar. A construct programmed for simple purposes.


    It did not match the profile of any monster he had known, and he had studied and memorized almost all that the Adventurer''s League hadpiled information on down from the type of every single different variant of giant bug to the most unique and mighty draconids and millennial beasts.


    That meant the likelihood was high that this monster was custom-made. It looked like an amalgamation of different parts too, part daemon, even, which exined the second aura nearby.


    A daemonic one. Though Furio had never encountered one in person, he had trained to sense their presences.


    That one must have been the master of this familiar.


    Furio sensed the monster attacking again. Furio powered up Fulmi. The six segments of the coiled dagger opened up, and the blue flesh of the Shockstripe Eel embedded between the segments roared out a massive field of electricity.


    Furio did not hold back. He fully activated Fulmi as he shot it out from the wrench to buy space and time.


    The dagger whistled forwards, surrounded in an ever-growing field of arcing electricity that burnt up everything it touched, starting several fires.


    The League would berate him for causing a fire, but they would understand if he had to go all out against a C-rank threat like this. No, maybe even higher. C+, maybe.


    And a C-rank threat was already enough to threaten the lives of several viges, even a smaller town.


    The monster dodged to the side, and in that time, Furio slotted in mbe to his wrench and turned to the second presence hiding behind another tree, about twenty meters away. It stepped out just a little from its cover, baring a shoulder, and he did not miss the chance.


    Furio ejected mbe from his wrench, and the de sted forwards like a shining orange missile in the dark.


    With {Dash}, Furio followed quickly behind the de''s trajectory, and when he saw what he hit, his eyes widened for a moment.


    mbe stabbed into a young girl''s shoulder, skewering right through and searing the wound around it. The force of the de dragged the girl backwards several dozen meters until it pinned her to the thick trunk of another Darkwood tree.


    Furio held down a pang of pity as he saw the daemon girl, no older than what must have been fourteen, twist her face in pain and try to touch at the heated de. The way she did not scream, it reminded Furio of Emi.


    "Dispel your familiar, now!" shouted Furio. "And turn yourself into the League!"


    He knew he should have killed her right then and there, there was no real crime in killing daemons for it had been years since they had left the Common Body where the Common Lawsid down by the gods for all races applied.


    But still, he could not muster the will up at the moment.


    A severe mistake.


    The daemon girl''s right arm lit up in purple, and Furio felt several rocks and branches m against his chest.


    A surprising amount of force that he had not expected from someone as young as her, and he did not guard against it properly, spinning once in the air before he righted himself,nding on the forest floor ten meters back.


    Furio turned around immediately, knowing he was close to the monster familiar again. He sensed it eleven meters ahead.


    A sizable distance ¨C it had intentionally created space between itself and him.


    "Disappointing," came a voice.


    Male in timbre. A smooth, well-enunciated voice that spoke Terran with perfect, conventional pronunciation bare of any entation.


    Almost too perfect.


    A voice that did not belong to a monster, but more to an academic, though the deep, unnatural rattle underlining it foreshadowed an utterly inhuman side that would have made anyone''s goosebumps stand at attention.


    Furio held down surprise. The monster spoke to him. A sh of purple from its left arm.


    If Furio remembered right, he knew this was Sapia. The Inhera of the Daemons, and yet, what were Daemon kind doing here?


    They were almost extinct, their entire home realm of Zerul turned into an undead wastnd and the remainder of their people scattered throughout the realms as desperate refugees or, in worst cases, as prisoners.


    Theplete absurdity of the situation slowed Furio''s reactions.


    Something from above came down.


    "Fuck," said Furio as he found himselfpletely wrapped up in a web of silk.


    The monster had spun up a web somehow, lining it across the branches of the forest canopy, and lured Furio in deeper and deeper, abusing his emotional vtility to get him into this location to entrap him.


    The webbing was strong. Arakka-grade silk, maybe even better.


    If he had just one arm free, he could have mustered up enough strength or willed another weapon out of his back to cut through. But he waspletely immobilized, the webbing holding him in suspended animation from every limb.


    Furio grimaced, taking in a deep breath to make sure all his muscles were rxed. There was only one way out.


    "Like the others, you consider me an anomaly beyond your reason, and thus, you relegate my presence to that of subordination. A ''familiar'' as you would so call it. In essence, the creation of a tinkerer," said the monster as it drew near, all its many ws readied to butcher.


    "You wished to challenge me directly, and yet, when you surmised there was a path of least resistance avable to disable me, you discarded the opportunity to engage in gloriousbat.


    You are as pathetic as the vast majority of your kind, degenerated human, and you will find far better purpose within the Collective."

 Chapter 61 - The Duel III

    Furio listened to the monster.


    An intelligent monster.


    Not a familiar, then, for they had no free wills, especially if they were constructed from the ground up.


    At the same time, the presence of this creature, this thing seemed so improbable. It seemed at face value to be like a daemon, and yet, it was a monster.


    Daemons were not monsters; they did not have presences like this. They were of the Common races, or they used to be, before their kind rebelled.


    No matter how daemons looked or how reviled they were, they were not monsters.


    Furio heard a heavy body part dirt and leaves as it slithered towards him.


    The creature''s six eyes gazed at him with palpable disdain this time, though not an emotion so strong it would interfere with its decision making.


    It was more the kind of disdain anyone would have for a cockroach, something far, far beneath them.


    Disgusting enough to evoke a reaction, not an emotion.


    This¡­this was a monster, there was no doubt about it. It stared down at Furio with an intentmon across monster kind: hunger.


    No doubt, it had taken countless Common lives already.


    From the very beginning, monsters had always been against the Common races and the gods. A dichotomy marked across two entire millennia, ever since the Convergence, maybe more time than that.


    There was no ovep between them.


    No monster would ever ally with a daemon. No daemon would ever consort with a monster.


    But did that matter in the end?


    What mattered was that right now, right here, this monster had hurt Emi, and Furio was not going to stop until it was dead, no matter what it cost.


    "You can think. You can speak," said Furio. He smiled to himself as he charged up magical energy around him, coalescing it around one of the des sheathed at his back.


    A broad, rectangr-shaped de. "Good.


    Then you''ll understand me when I say I''m going to make you pay for the lives you''ve stolen."


    "Stolen?" The monster observed Furio and clicked the mandibles poised on the sides of its smooth helmet of carapace. "I have granted your kind and their meager existences greater purpose, regardless of the resistance they levy against me.


    But you will not understand. None of your unevolved kind will. Only in consumption shall you truly grasp what youck."


    As the monster began to move, Furio activated Yeolgu, one of his five coreforged des.


    The rectangr de, a dadao as it was called in the realm of Xin where it was forged with the core of a Shaker-fish, unleashed its signature ability of calling upon the fish''s own power of shaking the very earth itself.


    Tremors began to echo from the de, and the rectangr y sheath containing it shattered, revealing the a thick, heavyset brown de lined with te-like scales.


    The scales all shook rapidly, generating countless powerful shockwaves.


    Furio gritted his teeth and closed his eyes.


    Yeolgu needed a channeling point to unleash its destructive area of effect shockwaves. He usually struck it into the ground to shatter the earth or swung the bat-like sword into monsters, blowing them apart from the inside out.


    But Furio waspletely immobilized right now.


    That left him with only one point of contact to channel Yeolgu: himself.


    Using his own body as a conduit, he let the powerful shockwaves pass through him, traveling into his feet where they blew apart the earth in great, seismic booms.


    Countless cracks wreathed his metalweave clothing.


    The emblem on his shoulder emzoned with four stars tore apart, the shining gold of the stars shattered into faint particles the Darkwoods swallowed up in an instant.


    The rest of the sheaths tied to Furio''s back shattered as well, unleashing all of his weapons at once.


    This was a genuine, localized earthquake, and the range extended far past Furio himself.


    Cracks lined the ground around him as dirt rose up in huge geysers. When the shockwaves roamed past the webbing covering Furio, the mass amounts of silk shook for a second before splitting apart all at once.


    The monster halted its charge, escaping blowback from the shockwaves and slithering backwards, eyeing Furio.


    Furio coughed up blood as he struggled to keep himself standing.


    Around his wrench floated the three weapons that were on his back: Ste the monster-killing il, Yeolgu the earth-shaking de, and Edepu the sickle sword of the winds.


    He could still fight.


    With Flow as an origin, years of training, and an abundance of natural talent, he had managed to do what was seemingly impossible: flow the shockwaves of damage through his body, passing it perfectly through him and into the ground.


    This was {Dispersal}, an advanced technique that only five-star adventurers and above began to learn, but Furio managed an imperfect version through sheer desperation and natural talent.


    Still, imperfect was imperfect.


    Furio felt pain burning through his entire body, sheathing every inch of him in red hot heat that told him he was breaking down.


    There were micro-tears across almost all his muscles. Some small fractures in various bones. Internal bleeding.


    Furio''s vision blurred as he felt blood pour from his nose. Thank the gods he did not suffer from a concussion.


    At the edge of his hazy vision, he felt the immense presence of the monster disappear.


    Reacting on pure survival instinct, he tapped his wrench.


    He had shot Fulmi into the forest to distract the monster, and now it came back to the wrench still screaming, covered in a sphere of destructive electricity.


    The monster immediately sensed the approach of the weapon and leaped into the air with a push of its tail, purple lining its form as it pushed itself back with telekic force, dodging over Fulmi andnding with acrobatic grace on the forest floor.


    Fulmi slotted back into Furio''s wrench, and the dagger stopped its activation, the lightning fading as its segments closed and twisted on itself. It would take some time before it could be activated again.


    He de-slotted Fulmi, and the dagger started to float around the wrench in an orbit, joining its brethren.


    Furio slotted in Ste, jamming the wrench into the head of the il; a star-shaped construct with its four pointed, fang-like ends wrapped around an orb of gleaming light. The light of a firefly.


    "You inflict great damage upon your innards in order for a mere chance to move," said the monster as it clicked its mandibles, slithering around Furio and analyzing him.


    Furio was ready to react at any given moment''s notice to react against the monster if it attacked, and the monster knew this.


    It simply took this small amount of time sizing him up to say what it wished. "Perhaps in some small measure, my initial assessment of your worth was miscalcted. There is yet chance for you to prove your worth.


    In this small purchase of freedom bought at the cost of your body, what will you choose? To fight? Or to flee?"


    "Run? What a sick joke." Furio spat out blood and righted himself, getting his breathing under control and flowing his mana around him through {el}.


    Using {el} and constantly pumping mana through his body would drain his reserves, but if he did not use {el} right now to keep his damaged moving with the help of mana flow, he would stop moving entirely.


    At least with {el}, even if he had limited time, he could still use it to fight.


    He steadied his wrench, Ste''s star head now hanging from its end with a golden chain of solidified light. Three other weapons orbited the wrench, ready to be shot out at a moment''s notice.


    mbe was still out in the woods, pinning the daemon girl down. He would keep it there for now.


    And beyond his weapons, his will still stood strong and sharp. He shouted as blood spattered from each of his enunciations.


    "I¡­I am Furio Nil, four-star adventurer, and though I myself have no family name to speak of, I swear by all the families you threaten that I will y you!"

 Chapter 62 - The Duel IV

    The monster clicked its mandibles, nodding in some kind of warped appreciation before it focused on Ste, almost as if beckoning Furio to show what the weapon could do.


    With that, Furio took the initiative.


    He powered up Ste, and the light emanating from its core shone intensely bright, easily overpowering the Darkwoods and shining the light of what seemed like the sun for the first time in centuries in the shadowy forest.


    He began to rotate his wrench, swinging the il head rapidly around him.


    The head blurred into aet-like streak of gold, and every single insect in the vicinity moved away in primordial fear, for Ste was crafted from a rtive of the Shinchu, a millennial beast hailing from Xin that deviated from other monsters in that it existed only to devour other monsters.


    It was said that the Shinchu, a monstrous moth the size of a mountain, would consume five thousand monsters in the morning, then five thousand more at night.


    But Furio did not have the means to possess a coreforged weapon from a true millennial beast.


    No, this was from a much weaker rtive, a firefly variant, and yet, it was still powerful enough to put down even B-ranked monsters.


    For monsters grew stronger with age.


    The older they were, the more they feasted and grew and the more their primal density umted.


    Stepletely circumvented that defense, dealing exponentially more damage the higher a monster''s age and primal density was.


    And there was no doubt about this: this monster must have possessed a great degree of primal density and age.


    Intelligence was one of the main markers of a strong, aged beast, and Furio could tell from its speech and its eyes, those ever moving, ever analyzing eyes, that this thing was highly intelligent.


    One strike from Ste, and this monster would blow apart from the inside out.


    Furio swung the il at the monster, and the golden chain clinked and rattled as the shining il head soared out.


    The monster evaded, using {el} of its own to enhance its movements.


    Furio could not believe this.


    {el} was nothing special. One of the first and most basic mana forms out there.


    Even monsters could use it to a degree as it was highly intuitive to just push mana into the body to boost power, but it was in the basics where technique showed the greatest differences.


    The gap in efficiency between the {el} of a master martial artist and a beginner was like that between the dirt and the sky.


    And there was no doubt about this, even with a red origin of Chaos, a mana affinity that was hard to keep under consistent control, this monster''s {el} with its smooth, controlled form, the stability of the flickering red aura that wrapped so evenly around the monster''s musclebound figure, reached the level of a veteran fighter.


    Furio swallowed down his disbelief and sped up his own {el}, manipting the wrench with the slightest of movements to push the il head up or down, tracking the monster.


    With each rotation of the il around himself, it sped up, and by now, the power-


    A Darkwood tree trunk, a massive thing that must have had a diameter approaching five meters, groaned as the il cut straight through it as if it had never existed at all, slicing the thing apart and copsing it.


    Countless insects on the forest floor burned apart, exploding as the mere light of Ste, not even the head itself, grazed them.


    But the monster kept up with Furio''s top speed.


    Furio eyed the monster intently, with every passing moment marked by the whoosh of the il and the clink of its chain spinning around him andshing out at the monster, aiming at the head or heart with precision.


    The monster evaded with expert movements.


    It craned its body to the side to avoid overhead blows.


    It ttened itself to the ground to dodge decapitating sweeps.


    It slithered low and punched itself off the ground to escape swings meant to slice off its tail, and then in the very same moment, shrunk its muscles and twirled in the air to dodge another strike meant to try and strike it in mid-air when it was supposed to be less maneuverable.


    All movements boosted with {el}, and the movements themselves were fundamentally efficient and masterful.


    Despite this thing being a monster, the movements, they reminded Furio of a martial artist.


    A master of a craft.


    An artisan.


    As a martial artist himself, Furio had to quell a sense of pure admiration, to shove down a repulsive notion that he was witnessing art unfolding before his eyes painted up by a body monstrous and inhuman - a body that was never meant to practice martial arts.


    In just three seconds, Furio had attacked nearly thirty times, slicing down three enormous trees and carving out countless lines of burning gold on the forest floor, but the monster remained unscathed.


    Furio assessed the monster.


    It did not waste mana by expending it out of its body in the form of a {Sense Aura} to try and predict Ste''s trajectories.


    It instead seemed to have another way of superhumanly predicting the il''s movements, allowing it to focus its mana solely on empowering its body.


    What it was, Furio did not know, but he just needed one strike, and he was willing to sacrifice anything to get that one blow in.


    He turned up his {el} even higher.


    Blood poured from his mouth, nose, and even eyes, and every single one of his damaged muscles and bones creaked as they pushed themselves beyond their limits.


    There was no point saving anything now: he would tire out before the monster did, and when he could no longer keep up this speed, the monster would have a chance to move in and strike.


    The monster sensed the immediate shift in Furio''s output. Both of its arms shed purple as it stared at the iing head of the il.


    Furio knew what this was. A Sapian force attack. Force Hold. He smiled.


    He knew it would not work.


    The monster seemingly did not know this, but coreforged weapons were almost like Ethera constructs ¨C they were extensions of their wielder''s own body.


    The mana that flowed from the wielder flowed too into the coreforged weapons, and so any direct attempted maniption on them was highly ineffective.


    And at Furio''s current speed that reached beyond his limits, even one wasted movement meant the monster would suffer a hit.


    Furio suppressed the urge to keep his burning, bloody eyes from blinking as he saw the shining il m into the creature''s armored chest.

 Chapter 63 - Resonance Break I

    A sh of brilliant light apanied by the crack of impact. Ste''s four jagged, golden teeth broke into the monstrosity''s heavily armored chest. All the spikes of carapace protruding from the area shattered and flew apart from the impact.


    But Furio knew something was off from the moment the il had hit; he was experienced enough to tell from the simple feel of the blow that it was too shallow, the sound of the strike strong but still far duller than it should have been.


    "No-," Furio''s grey eyes widened as he saw a thick circle of red encasing the monster''s chest, directly covering its heart. It had used the martial art {Guard}, condensing the mana it circted throughout its body with {el} into that single point in a mere instant.


    A transition like that from free flow to sudden concentration required years and years of practice, and even then, you would be hard pressed to find anybody except from the upper star adventurers who could make transitions as quickly as that.


    But at the very least, the monster was still injured.


    Ste generated power with its activation and rotations, and by now, it was easily strong enough to smash through the monster''s carapace with sheer physical power alone.


    The white ting had cracked and split apart at the heart, even beneath the denseyer of protective mana and the purple personal Sapian shielding.


    Bright red, raw pectoral muscles lined with streaks of whitey underneath, bleeding from force that tore a few of those powerful strands of muscles apart.


    Furio waited for a moment.


    Ste''s light had touched that open wound. If all went well, then the creature''s own longevity and primal density would work against it, and the flesh would start to bubble up, rupture, and blow apart-


    But no such thing happened.


    "I see," said the monster instead, observing as some of its raw, exposed flesh shuddered before a few blood vessels popped and muscle fibers tore further.


    But nothing close to a major wound.


    Then, its eyes settled on Ste, the il head already moving back to Furio, but slower this time, having lost much momentum because of his surprise.


    Furio yanked back on his wrench, pulling Ste back faster.


    Toote.


    The monster immediately learned.


    Both its arms shed purple, and instead of trying to put a Force Hold on Ste itself, it instead willed up a mound of dirt from the ground.


    The dirt hit the chain with an impact that forced Ste to stop flying back and angle sharply downwards, mming into the ground and sting out a crater of dirt as several insects nearby blew apart from its light.


    Furio adjusted as well, swiveling his wrench to the side to free the il head, but the monster was already upon it.


    With a single swipe, it severed the il head from its supporting golden chains, and in another instant, Furio saw Ste, crafted personally by his great master, a coreforged weapon of a rarity that almost nobody in his star rank could match, disappear into the monster''s mouth.


    The shining light of Ste faded in an instant as the monster swallowed the il head.


    "This¡­is quite nourishing. Unlike anything I have sampled before-," said the monster.


    It paused, as if to speak again, but then light shone strongly from within its stomach, lighting up its insides through its flesh and carapace and revealing the silhouette of three different hearts.


    Was Ste''s light still working? Destroying the monster from within?


    No, Furio could tell that the light was dimming by the moment, the creature was frozen only in digesting the mass amount of power stored within Ste.


    Instinctively, Furio knew that this monster had to be stopped here.


    No matter what.


    It did not have primal density yet, but it would gain more and more as time passed. At a certain point, no sorcerer would be able to deal with it using god-given magics.


    It grew stronger from everything it consumed. At a certain point, no adventurer would be able to deal with it.


    The gods themselves would fall before it if it was not stopped now.


    Furio had gone through fifty six sessful hunts in his life as an adventurer, many of those of a threat ranking beyond what he was supposed to deal with.


    But he knew that every single one of those hunts, every single struggle he faced and overcame, was to make him stronger for this very moment.


    To kill this monster before it killed everything else.


    Furio tore Ste''s chain off from his wrench and slotted in Yeolgu. The square de vibrated faintly, still having enough stored power for two more activations.


    Kill the monster before it could move again.


    Furio roared as green lit up his body in a strong {el}, empowering him as he leaped forwards with Yeolgu raised overhead.


    There were vital points every adventurer knew to strike. The brain, if a monster had one, and then its cores.


    This monster possessed three hearts.


    Three cores.


    Destroying any single one would not immediately defeat it.


    Striking the head was best.


    With Yeolgu, Furio would smash the monstrosity''s head and channel shockwaves internally, bursting the rest of the hearts.


    The shockwaves directly countered any form of armor-ting, scales, or carapace, resonating off the hard surfaces and back through the body.


    Furio batted down at the monster''s head. Yeolgu''s scales opened up and shimmered as the length of the de crashed into the helmeted head with an explosive impact.


    The initial blow itself was strong enough to put in deep cracks lining the monster''s head, but not enough to punch through by itself to the brain.


    The shockwaves, though ¨C they traveled in mass amounts throughout the creature, shaking its enormous bulk in rapid vibrations.


    The carapace began to crack, and the ws on its body, seemingly far more brittle than its shell, all shattered.


    Soon enough, the creature would break apartpletely with its insides boiled from the energy of shockwaves echoing within.


    Furio saw the monster inexplicably move even with shockwaves rattling it, its brawny arm reaching out and grabbing one of his arms. The enormous hand wrapped around the whole length of his forearm, and he knew what was going to happen.


    Furio let go of his wrench and kicked it behind him as he felt the monster rip his arm straight from the socket.


    The monster reached out again, this time to grab his torso, but he tethered himself to his wrench, pulling himself quickly out of range.


    Just like how he could push and pull his swords around his wrench, he too could act as a conduit point for it, though he was the only living, non-metallic body that this worked on.


    As Furio flew in the air, he saw the monster take his arm and devour it in one gulp.


    He grit his teeth and willed mana to condense around his empty arm socket. The muscles around the area, aided with the flow of mana, swelled up and tightened, fusing almost together to stop the mass bleeding.


    Furio could not understand how the creature managed to weather through Yeolgu''s tremors, but soon found the answer.


    He saw the earth under the monster splitting apart, quaking as the shockwaves transferred from its body to the ground as an aura of red circted around it.


    {Dispersal}. An advanced martial arts technique. But how did the creature know how to use this?


    All it had done was seen Furio use it once.


    Was that truly all it needed to replicate something Furio had needed the entire summation of his years of training, talent, and breaking his own limits to muster up?


    "I see," said the monster as it clicked its mandibles. "In manipting the flow of your mana throughout your body such that it matches the physical properties of the shockwaves traveling through them, you are able to guide them out of your body.


    In this manner, you may even be able to circte electric currents harmlessly. Your device that is capable of generating such electricity thus is also rendered useless against me.


    But no matter. I now understand that these tools of yours are fashioned from the essence of physical specimen.


    They will now be mine.


    You have proven your worth adequately. It is now time to be consumed."


    Furio hung onto his wrench in the air, suspended in tethered orbit as it was with the two swords near it.


    He thought about giving up. But he was far too deep into this fight to do that. And it was not just Emi and Vera, the fate of all Common life rested upon his shoulders.


    And he still had one ace up his sleeve.


    For now, he needed to make distance.


    Yeolgu was slotted into it and Fulmi orbited it. But like the beast had said, Fulmi was useless against it now if it had mastered {Dispersal} to the extent that it could minimize damage from Yeolgu.


    Furio tapped Fulmi with the wrench, imparting a maic push on it that sent it flying fifty meters away ¨C the maximum range of the tether. He then raised an index finger to tap his wrench, making it pull towards Fulmi.


    Like this, he could semi-replicate the effects of flying, and though it was fast, the flight patterns were predictable, following his maic tethers that all had linear paths.


    No doubt, the monster would pick up on this.


    But all he needed to do was get out of this forest, out of any potential interference getting in the way between himself and this monster when he used the most powerful ability in his entire arsenal, one utterly unique to him and his Ethera: the Resonance Break.

 Chapter 64 - Resonance Break II

    Furio braced himself for impact as he flew upwards and smashed through the Darkwood trees, his trained, superhuman muscles and the mana encasing them allowing him to break through branches and bugs.


    In the next moment, he was out in the open air, above the treeline.


    Furio stopped flying when his wrench neared Fulmi, around twenty meters above the treetops.


    He knew this was not going to be enough, and his suspicions were confirmed when he heard the shadowy leaves under him rustle.


    With a practiced series of motions, Furio tapped Fulmi with his wrench again, bidding it to fly backwards, out into the clearing where there were no trees, norge, sturdy bodies to interfere with the Resonance Break.


    Then, he used his index finger to tap the wrench while gripping it, sending him flying towards Fulmi.


    Right in the nick of time.


    The monster''s enormous form smashed through the trees, huge, enormous daemonic wings unfurled to its sides, the wingspan of wed, bat-like wings almost asrge as the monstrosity itself.


    With a gust of wind blowing behind it, the monster just barely missed swiping at Furio as he flew backwards.


    Furio knew that in terms of speed, this makeshift flight could match or even exceed the creature''s own flight speed.


    After all, he shot his des out like bullets, and when he pulled himself to them, he was treated as a projectile and became just as fast.


    A half secondter, Furio stopped abruptly again by Fulmi, fifty meters away.


    Furio gritted his teeth as he condensed mana into his body. The sudden stop from bullet-like velocity to a standstill would have probably killed the ordinary man with whish, but he had trained his body to deal with this.


    He nced down ¨C open, grassy ground. Swarms of insects, yes, but they were weak enough that they did not matter if they got caught in the Resonance Break. The Darkwood trees, though, were a different matter.


    His eyes widened. The beast was already upon him, its enormous, ted fist drawn back and ready to smash his head clean off.


    Furio reacted by grabbing the wrench and having it treat himself like a projectile, shooting himself straight down into the ground.


    As a blur of movement, he flew right down, smashing into the ground with an impact that shattered the earth beneath his mana-infused legs and boots. Small insects around thending zone flew up and broke apart from the force.


    This monster was an adept flyer and easily in control of its body to such a degree that it couldpensate for Furio''s faster flight speed by predicting his linear movement patterns and moving before he did.


    Furio knew the monster would be upon him again in the next moment. He gripped his wrench and tapped it with a finger, calling back mbe from all the way back in the forest.


    Powering even more mana into his legs, he used {Dash} and shifted five or so meters backwards in an instant, burning up grass and skidding across dirt with the high-speed movement.


    The monster mmed into where Furio had been like a red and purple lined meteorite, sting apart a crater twice the size Furio had made. Even therger insects broke apart with the shockwave of force, their body parts and legs and shells all flying in the guts and debris-littered air.


    The monster adjusted its sight to Furio, specifically at his legs, and he knew he had to make this work soon. If the beast could learn advanced martial arts techniques with just one or two demonstrations, it would know how to {Dash} very soon.


    But mbe was already here, the ming, super-heated de ready to slice into the monster''s back while it was distracted by Furio. In conjunction with this, Furio tapped Edepu with his wrench, and the sickle sword shot out while lined with winds that sharpened its edge.


    A two-pronged attack.


    But without even turning around, the monster swiveled to the side at the veryst moment before the des pierced its heart, dodging both despletely. In the very same motion, before mbe or Edepu could return to Furio, the monster had grabbed the des by the handles with three of its fingers on either hand.


    The monster cracked open its toothy maw and swallowed the des whole.


    It oddly reminded Furio of when he walked the streets of the nearest town, Dwarka, it was, where he had seen street performers called Dervishes do tricks like swallowing des and breathing me.


    And all of those streets full of performers andughing children would be soaked in blood if Furio did not act now. He knew that the monster might spend some time digesting the coreforged de, and so he took this moment to aim his wrench at the beast''s center.


    Furio activated Yeolgu again, its earthen scales rattling along each other and drumming up vibrations once more and shot it out to the monster''s side, missing it so that it could not grab the de.


    The rattling sword shot straight into the thick of the forest, lost.


    This left Furio only with Fulmi, a dagger not meant for closebat whose activation was useless because the monster could use {Dispersal} to vent out the lightning.


    But all of this was ording to Furio''s ns. He could not have the monster grabbing Yeolgu. That de had to be behind it.


    "I have miscalcted the degree of your injuries if your aim is degraded to this degree," said the monster as it slithered towards Furio, slower this time, almost savoring hisst moments. "Let me sense.


    An erratic heartbeat, severe subconjunctival hemorrhaging that dyes your eyes red, and minor inefficiencies in movement indicative of no less than twenty-two minor fractures and extensive tearing in almost all major muscles bodies."


    The beast clicked its mandibles, its six eyes staring down at Furio''s panting, armless, bloody, and broken body. "Yet, you have mustered up a battle that has done well in smoothing over your grave insult of deeming me a mere ''familiar.''


    I shall grant you consideration within the Collective. Consider it a great honor, degenerated human,"


    Furio felt his body grow heavy. So very heavy as thest dregs of his mana faded from {el}.


    The beast talking about his injuries made him feel them even more, and he knew that once his manapletely faded, he would stop moving entirely, maybe even just die when the adrenaline also abandoned him.


    He still had enough strength for this, though. Thank the gods it did not cost any mana.


    He held the wrench out towards the monster with a trembling arm.


    "Bringing back the de you ejected?" said the monster. "Such a primitive strategy did not amount to anything when you attempted it with the heat-generating de. Yet, you-,"


    A white light shed from the wrench head. Sudden cracks lined the entire length of the wrench as a sound like shattering bone echoed through the air. Furio smiled, his teeth dyed red in his blood.


    This was a nigh-instantaneous attack.


    Using the maic tether the wrench had with his five weapons, Furio could activate Resonance Break, destroying both the wrench and a magical weapon to channel extremely destructive force through the tether linking the two.


    Ast-ditch attack as it sacrificed Furio''s Ethera, and that would take three days or more to recover.


    But days did not matter here.


    It was just this moment that mattered.


    A beam of white light shot out from the head of the wrench with a metallic ring as it began disintegrating, and so too would a beam have shot out from Yeolgu far away. Both beams sped towards each other, and in between, the monster would break apart.


    "No," whispered Furio under his breath.


    Somehow, the monster had sensed something wrong at the veryst moment and had used {Dash} to push itself into the air.


    Furio watched as the beam of light screamed with constantly fluxing metallic rings in front of him, missing his target entirely.


    But then he saw¡­a portal? A small, circr, rainbow lined portal in the center of the raging beam.


    Then, in the next second, another portal emerged above the monster and angled down towards its heart.


    The beam shot out from that portal.


    The moment the monster saw the portal, it must have understood what was to happen, and it twisted its body. The beam struck true, but instead of blowing apart its heart, it instead smashed through its left side.


    The carapace cracked and bent as the beam struck, but not enough-


    Furio screamed as he saw the attack work.


    He willed the beam with as much power as he could, and his wrench shattered and disintegrated entirely in an instant, a final, powerful burst of light sting apart through the monster''s entire carapaceyer and then shooting straight through the enormous, armored body, reconnecting with Yeolgu in the forest for half a second more before the magical weapon disintegrated with the wrench.


    The light faded, leaving the Darkwoods and night to nket the scene in shadow once more.


    The monster fell to the ground with a heavy crash, kicking up a cloud of dirt around it.


    Furio fell to his knees,pletely spent, his entire body on the verge of just breaking apart.


    Where had the portale from? What- he knew what it was, it was, it was, but no, she had left, he knew it.


    Vera''s form materialized beside Furio, holding him.


    "No¡­," whispered Furio. He coughed but still managed to get his words out. "No! You have to leave!"


    "Even if we missed that beast''s heart, a wound that size punching right through it will have it bleeding out or crippled," said Vera.


    She grimaced as she saw Furio''s missing arm, and she knelt down at slung his remaining arm over her shoulder, supporting him.


    "No¡­why?" said Furio. His vision blurred as his mana faded, and the blood loss hit him, delirium starting to tug at the edges of his mind. "Why did youe back?"


    "I never really left, my love," said Vera. "I used the short portal to move away, but I was not going to truly run and abandon you. I stayed in the area, at the edge of the battle, and I used [Mirror Sight] to track you.


    When I saw what you were going for near the end, I knew I could help you without holding you back, so I came here.


    Now, my love, just wait. I would want nothing more than to take you away from here this very moment with a short portal, but you are too injured to be on your own.


    Just a little while, my love, hold on for a little bit, take deep breaths, try to flow your mana evenly and stop the bleeding, and then I can long portal you to the safe zone."


    Vera stopped as she heard clicking from behind her. A distinctive clicking unlike that of the insects around them.


    No, the insects had fled, leaving them alone in a patch of empty dirt and grass for they had sensed it before she had.


    The monster was still alive.


    "An injury of this caliber-," Vera turned to meet the voice.


    A squall of wind rushed up from where the monster hadnded, its raging red aura flickering high above it, lighting the area blood-red, and where that chaotic light stretched, every single insect fled, sensing the wrath of a higher predator.


    "Is the gravest I have borne upon this primitive rock so far," said the monstrosity as he stared at Vera and Furio.


    An empty hole the size of a human head sizzled from its left chest, blood pooling liberally from it, but the monster did not fall. "Was it like this? That emergency medical procedure the male specimen utilized to stem hemorrhaging from your arm?"


    The monster raised a hand to its eyes, as if ayzing it, and then shaped its red aura into the hand, swirling it, condensing it, and then mmed its palm into the hole gaping from its chest.


    "Yes, this was precisely it," said the monster. It uncovered its hand.


    "W-what?" stammered Vera.


    Muscle began to swell and surge from the wound, stemming all bleeding and fusing the hole shut.


    "But an iplete procedure. Now topensate for the loss of blood vessels and critical bone structures," continued the monster. The aura raging red around its body turned purple.


    Gleaming purple outlines started to streak around the mass of muscle sealing the wound, forming into the shapes of veins and parts of ribs that must have been lost from the blow.


    "Utilizing Sapia to create artificial internal body structures. The cost: a continual loss of mana. Yet, worthy of removingpromisedbat capacity due to injury," noted the monstrosity.


    "Out," said Furio. He pushed himself off from Vera, standing in front of her shakily. He had no weapons anymore. Only Fulmi, and that did not even work.


    He had no energy to shout now as he trudged towards the monster''s towering form. "Short portal yourself out again. Run this time. Run like you mean it.


    This thing¡­grows stronger. Everytime it eats. Soon, nobody will beat it.


    Tell the Adventurer''s League.


    Go."


    Furio''s eyes widened as he felt something jab into his back. He turned to see Vera had stabbed him with a dwarven syringe. The green liquid within it drained into him, and he felt temporary mana flow throughout his body.


    "This¡­maybe I can stall for thirty seconds. Enough time for you. Go," said Furio. Yes, this was enough for her to escape if she short portaled herself out right now and used even shorter range teleportations like [Blink] as often as possible.


    "That wasn''t for me," said Vera.


    Furio felt her hands on his bare, bleeding back. They were soft. Warm. He felt her lips on his neck, and as the monster moved, before he could even look back at her again, she had short portaled him out.


    To the thick of the Darkwoods.


    Two hundred meters away from the battle ¨C the maximum range for an instantaneous short portal.


    "No¡­no¡­no," Furio started to turn back to the clearing. If he used enough of the temporary booster mana, he could get back there in time, he could-


    He shook his head, blood-tinged tears welling up from his eyes. No, she had wanted him to run with thisst spurt of power.


    It was the hardest decision of his life, and in a second that felt like itsted an eternity, he decided to turn around.


    And run.

 Chapter 65 - Bone Binding

    ==


    The Collector clicked its mandibles in rising irritation exacerbated by its unbound emotion and the trigger of desire.


    Or to be more specific, desire unfulfilled.


    It looked down at the human female specimen craning her neck up at it, taking a shaky step back.


    Pitiful.


    The stench of fear, a scent that evoked the strongest sense of detest possible from the Collector, reeked from her.


    Not at all like the male specimen who emanated only the scent and pressure of the fight.


    The Collector had allowed the specimen to show his worth, and he provided ample challenge to exercise the Collector''s desire for battle, not to mention the acquisition of several new valuable gic material specimen from his weapons.


    But above all, the Collector had desired the male specimen''s core, to devour him wholly as a means of honoring his willingness to stand and fight through a battered body and the oppressive knowledge of facing a superior enemy.


    Now, however, this female specimen had doomed the worthier male to the ignoble fate of fleeing like prey.


    The Collector sensed the female specimen move, and with a quick flick of her wrist, withdrew a shard of red crystal from a small ripple in space, tossing it at the Collector.


    Before it struck the Collector, the crystal exploded into a swirling pir of fire.


    The Collector did take damage from this attack, though it was highly minimized due to its Sapian shielding.


    >>


    Mana Level: 400>390%


    >>


    Sapian abilities were heavily taxing in their mana usage.


    This included the makeshift bones and blood flow the Collector simted in its injury. That alone would cost approximately 5% of its total mana every single minute.


    But devouring the male specimen''s weapons, so immensely rich with mana as they were, had overloaded the Collector by converting their excess spirit roots into pure energy.


    This energy, the Collector''s current form could not stabilize for long, and it deteriorated by the minute. Yet, while it was active, the Collector''sbat capability would rise by 170%.


    The Collector possessed great power in the moment, but it was on a timer, and within this timer, it could no longer afford to revel in another battle for its desire.


    It had to finish its mission. Yet, it did desire something from this female.


    "I will hold you back," began the female human as she stepped back again, moving to withdraw something more. "I-,"


    The Collector disappeared in a burst of crackling red as it pumped mana into its tail and used {Dash}, It stopped when its fist had torn right through the female''s chest, her heart still beating in its enormous hand.


    The female''s eyes widened as she coughed up a spurt of blood.


    Then, she grew still. Limp. Dead.


    The Collector held that heart gently, taking care not to crush it. It withdrew its arm from her body with the slick sound of blood and organs squelching against its carapace.


    The corpse fell forwards, a growing pattern of blood forming in the ground around her.


    The Collector beheld the heart, this core, seeing rainbow colored mana infused within it.


    This female specimen had certainly vexed the Collector with her capacity to interface with some degree of hyperspace.


    From the color and appearance of circuitry whenever she utilized magic, it would appear that this hyperspace essibility was regted by a ''god'' of some kind.


    In other words, the Collector would not utilize it through ordinary consumption, for that would mean not only bowing to a deity, but also to allow ess within itself to some foreign presence. A risk it would not take.


    But this ability truly was useful, and the Collector channeled the thrall''s trigger for Greed, amplifying its desire.


    shes of blue permeated the Collector''s red aura, and it prepared itself to utilize bone binding.


    To be sure, the Collector had utilized bone binding before in the fight with the human male, but only within its own bones.


    The thrall could channel power from its bones to turn itself into mist, but the Collector was different. Channeling power through its bones only created more power.


    Raw, destructive power in the form of shockwaves that entuated its physical movements or, if analyzed further and focused, allow the Collector more rangedbat capabilities in the form of generating pulverizing, pressurized air through its punches.


    Bone binding something else was different.


    More difficult.


    Would require the entirety of the specimen''s skeletal structure intact, as well as the core itself. Involved taking all the roots from within the flesh and bones, infusing them into the core, and then infusing the core into a leftover bone.


    The process would take several hours. The thrall itself with its horrendously undeveloped brain must have spent entire days working on a single bone binding operation.


    The Collector did not have that time. But if its calctions were correct, then it would have assistance.


    ''I-I''m back!'' came the female daemon''s voice as she hovered to the Collector.


    The heat-generating de had pierced through her shoulder, disabling it nearly entirely, but the wound had cauterized, minimizing the chances for infection.


    And, as the Collector noted from her movements as she floated to its side, her exceptional pain tolerance rendered her almost fully functional.


    Good. Her functionality was needed, as was her superb magical sensitivity that rivaled even that of the Collector''s, even exceeding it had she been undamaged.


    ''You¡­you''re injured,'' said the daemon as she stared at the muscle and Sapia constructs covering the hole in the Collector''s chest. ''But¡­you''ve managed to seal a wound like this so easily and¡­and using Sapia like this¡­I¡­I''ve never seen the like of it, didn''t think it would be possible.''


    She cocked her head, nodding to herself. ''But¡­now that I see it, it seems reasonable. Simple. I¡­I see now.''


    Her thel reached to the Collector, and when the spike touched the thinyer of Sapian shielding around the Collector, their psionic auras merged again in a tether.


    Through this, the daemon closed her eyes, taking care of the cost of creating and circting the Sapia-construct bones and blood vessels.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles.


    This would minimize continual mana loss. And with this specimen to assist it, the time toplete this bone binding procedure also drastically reduced.


    Estimated time ofpletion, provided the female specimen was as effective as calcted: 10 minutes.


    "I require your assistance," said the Collector.


    ''Y-yes!'' said the daemon as she perked up, wanting to be useful.


    The Collector knelt down by the female human''s corpse, holding the heart over her. The female daemon stared at the mangled corpse without a shred of pity in her eyes, just a sense of curiosity.


    "First, I shall remove any potential interference." The Collector sensed insects swarming around it, and though they still feared the Collector, if its mana diverted into something other than a disy of power, the lowly insectoids might well have attempted to interfere.


    The Collector opened its maw and activated its pyrocatalytic nds, sending out a torrent of white-blue me that turned any insect it touched into ashes within a second.


    Rotating its head, the Collector created a ring of me far enough away from itself to grant it time for this procedure.


    "I will engage in a procedure meant to circte the spirit roots imbued within this specimen''s flesh and bones into this core," said the Collector. "Once the core haspacted the roots within itself and stabilized, I will then once morepact the core into a bone, imbuing the osseous matter with the condensed core and roots."


    ''Wow¡­it''s¡­it''s like something I''ve read about. A¡­twin-forge procedure, except instead of using monster roots and cores, you''re using a human''s,'' nodded the daemon girl in understanding. ''I¡­I have some knowledge in doing something like this.


    Thorian, my old teacher, he-he knew how to coreforge a little, and he taught me the basics, and¡­this sounds just like it.''


    She cocked her head and put a hand to her chin in thought. ''But¡­but we need something that can touch the roots. Tear them from the flesh. Something¡­something spiritual.


    In a forge, that would be a soul-shear, but-,'' She looked around. ''We don''t have one.''


    The Collector clicked its mandibles. It took its free hand and focused, channeling the thrall''s bone binding powers. Thin lines of blue wrapped around its fingers before spooling out from the fingertips in threads with hooked tips.


    "I sense these are close approximations to this tool you ssify as a ''soul-shear''," said the Collector.


    ''Oh-ooh,'' said the daemon in wonder. ''I¡­I had never seen bone binding shears. They¡­they say that northern goblins had this power passed onto them from Facestealers, monsters of legend.''


    "Another specimen that seems interesting to consume. Yet, a species that too will assimte into the Collective when it dawns." The Collector clicked its mandibles. "I sense you are familiar with this procedure to great degree.


    You will assist me in removing the roots from this deceased specimen''s flesh."


    The daemon female nodded, using Sapia to move the five bone binding shears on the Collector hand.


    "I will now open this core manually and prepare it to receive an influx of roots. As I do this, you will ce the roots within." The Collector ever so slightly dug its fingertips into the heart, sending the soul-shears within, willing them to move through the cardiovascr organ.


    Blue light shone from within the heart, coloring the red a pale, icy shade as the flesh and blood organ started to grow pale and freeze over, preserving it.


    The daemon acted with precision. She hovered a hand over the body, and the five soul shears on the Collector''s other hand fell into the body.


    There was no physical sign of entry as the hooked threads sank into the skin.


    The threads instead phased through, and when they came back out, smaller bundles of threads, some colored green, some a faint shade of rainbow, emerged attached to the hooked ends of the blue threads.


    Where the threads emerged, the flesh grew pale, cold, and shriveled, as if it had been frozen away for years.


    These threads, the daemon willed up into the frozen heart, entwining them in an ever-growing ball of wound up spirit roots.


    "I see," said the Collector. "You are not targeting single roots, but areas where they intersect greatest, allowing you to withdraw dozens of threads at once."


    ''I¡­I''ve got the hang on this, yes,'' said the daemon. She bit her lip in nervousness. ''But¡­but this will take some time. Maybe¡­maybe an hour?''


    "You do not do well to underestimate my processing capabilities. The rate of your removal in this procedure is notable. Yet, can be greatly assisted."


    The Collector sprouted its six arakka arms from its back, and six ghostly blue shears unspooled from their tips.


    The Collector could faintly sense the daemon''s intent, where she wanted to enter and pick at, and knowing this, it assisted her, the six spider legs on its back rushing in and out of the corpse at breakneck pace.


    In the end, the Collector and the daemon finished the entire procedure in a time span just shy of five minutes.

 Chapter 66 - Final Destination

    The Collector gazed upon the heart in its hand. It had grown so pale that it had be a purplish shade of white, and it felt cold and stiff to the touch, almost brittle.


    Visible through the icy flesh was a ball of glowing green and rainbow light ¨C the summation of all the spirit roots wound up and condensed within.


    "It is now time to transfer this into a suitable osseous vessel. The ''thrall'' utilized a skull, and I sense that it is most apt in being able to contain the most data." The Collector looked down at the human female''s corpse.


    With all the roots and core from it retrieved, the corpse had almostpletely shriveled up, as if desated from centuries of frozen storage. The skin had withered down into pale wrinkles that barely clung onto the bones, leaving the clothes surrounding them to be baggy and oversized.


    There were no facial features distinguishable anymore, and the specimen''s hair had decayed away into nothingness.


    A quick analysis of her clothes indicated nothing of note worth to consume nor material for its Metalloglottic ossifier.


    It looked at the patch with three gold stars stitched on it. So this was a three-starred adventurer.


    The Collector had far evolved past her means.


    Her tricks, the trinkets she stored away and withdrew as weapons, they certainly would have dealt grievous wounds to the Collector in its prior metamorphosis levels.


    And now, a four-star adventurer proved to be nothing but a minor challenge. If the entire group of adventurers had faced the Collector head on, even somehow gotten a surprise advantage on it, then the Collector calcted that they potentially possessed a 58% chance of defeating it.


    But in picking them off one by one, the Collector had assured its victory, even granting it margins of error to toy with the four-star adventurer a little, drawing out perspective for his strength.


    And with this information, the Collector understood-


    The Collector was beginning to outpace the strength of these mortals faster than their tiering system could keep up with it.


    Good.


    It seemed that each sessive star rank indicated nearly exponentially greater strength between them. However, with the assistance of magic, the Collector''s growth too would only be more varied and more pronounced.


    It clicked its mandibles in consideration of the heights of strength it could achieve until it dampened these emotions in understanding that if it was sessful in letting the Collective dawn upon this world, none of that would matter.


    Then what was the point of this? The Collector stared at the heart in its hand.


    It knew from the beginning that this procedure meant nothing if the Collective sessfully dawned, and taking this female specimen''s magic would not aid the Collector in directbat.


    For bone binding was highly limited.


    Even if the Collectorpacted the entirety of the female''s essence into a bone such as the skull, it would only allow it to manifest a single ability, a single spell, and it had determined the capacity to interface with a hyperspace storage was the most efficient and practical in the long run.


    But what if there was no long run?


    No, the Collector had to create contingencies. As it had always done. As it would continue to do until its mission waspleted.


    That it could even think like this, with what it perceived as something beginning to resemble doubt, was sickening.


    The Collector cupped the female corpse''s dried head and popped it from her spine.


    Utilizing Sapia, it tore the flesh from the skull, and there was no resistance to the Collector''s maniptions anymore now that there were no roots nor life within the body.


    "Now you will assist me in transferring the roots into the structure of this skull," said the Collector.


    ''I-I''m sorry,'' began the female daemon.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles as it sensed the daemon fall down to the ground, onto her knees, and began to dry heave, her breathing deep and her eyes wide in panic.


    "I sense signs of great mental distress through this psionic tether between us, and with it, the apaniment of physiological distress," said the Collector. "This ispromising your functions."


    ''I-I know¡­,'' said the daemon. She nced at the corpse in short glimpses before she turned away, wincing. ''At first¡­I was just so curious, so happy to see new things like soul shears and bone binding, but¡­but when I started to go into the body and pick at it and pull things from it¡­it just hit me¡­memories¡­all of it- it''s so very much like what they did to me.


    The shining man. With the shiny strings - pick at my skin and peel it, take chunks from me, then put everything back together-I-I-,''


    "Your mental and physiological signs of distress are only growing more severe. Yet, I have analyzed the nature of this tether between us. I will now mitigate these signs of distress," said the Collector.


    The daemon widened her eyes, not in panic, but in surprise. She breathed in easier. ''You-you shared a feeling with me¡­this feeling¡­it''s calm. The kind of calm you always have.''


    "I have merely allowed you to sense in some small measure the mental state of the Collective unbound by excess emotion. This, you perceive as ''calm''.


    I sense that with this treatment, your mental state has returned to stable functioning.


    Now, assist me in this procedure," said the Collector, bringing the skull closer to the daemon.


    "So¡­so that is what the...the Collective is like," said the daemon with a wondering nod. She looked at the skull with determination. "Okay, let''s do it."


    __


    A few minutester, and the Collector stared down at the skull. The curves and outline of its structure shed with a faint rainbow light. The second forging process was quite simr to the first one.


    The core - the heart - essentially acted as a preserving space where the roots could be gathered for in normal circumstances, the roots would expire with the corpse.


    But by freezing the heart into a magical stasis, the roots too could be preserved.


    Inside the heart, the roots would also absorb the essence of the core.


    Then, the Collector and daemon had unspooled the wound-up root threads and lined them across the structure of the skull, imbuing the bone with both the roots and the core.


    However, because roots and cores reacted flexibly only with living stimuli and because the bone was no living matter, the skull could store only but a few spells: a smattering of snapshots of magic frozen within the skull.


    In this way, spells were stored within the bone, and the bone was what casted and brought forth the magic at little to no cost to the Collector.


    First, however, the Collector had to now ascertain whether it was safe to utilize the magic imbued in this skull.


    Certainly, from the thrall, it seemed there were no risks to it, for it utilized magic stolen from tinkerers with no discernable risk to itself.


    Yet, this was different, for it involved warp-based capabilities.


    It was possible that whatever hyperspace this skull linked to was under another entity''s dominion, some ''god'', and that would prove troublesome.


    The Collector used its psionic-sensitive capabilities to sense the nature of the warp-based power inherent within the skull.


    For psionic power and warp capability were intrinsically linked together; a fact that allowed the Collective Hivemind with its enormous psionic processing power harvested from countless life forms to generate its ownrge-scale warp gates.


    It saw and felt psionic threads wriggling from the skull, anchored constantly to a hyperspace, and in analyzing that space -


    It clicked its mandibles in understanding. This form of hyperspace was essentially a limited space dedicated to single individuals.


    In this case, the female specimen, and now, the Collector if it so desired. Trinkets and tools left by the female specimen still remained here.


    Further analysis of this space. Sweeping scan for any psionic tethers to other hyperspaces or entities.


    None.


    And the warp-sensing that the Collective imbued within the Collector, even in its limited processing power, was extensive.


    More than extensive enough to give the Collector confidence that the hyperspace this skull linked to was its distinct, separate space. This kind of space for storage which would be useful in preserving certain biological and mineral specimens.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles. Its thought process and warp-sensing had taken up the span of merely a few seconds. The ring of mes it had generated before to ward away insects flickered closer, their heat palpable now.


    Just in time.


    The Collector took the skull and devoured it, assimting it into its metalloglottic ossifier where in its next adaptation, it could manifest the bound bone into its own biological structure to have a constantly avable, regenerative source of hyperspace storage.


    >>>


    *New metalloglottic ossifier sample obtained*


    --Lightstone


    --Runewood


    --Bone Binding Skull


    >>>


    The Collector turned its head down to the daemon girl who looked up at him with wondering eyes, looking forward to what the next thing they would do would be in almost childish expectation.


    "I will now enter this ''dungeon''. Continue your assistance in maintaining the integrity of the temporary Sapian structures I have erected to support my wound." The Collector unfurled its daemon wings. "You will be able to sense my intent inbat. You are primarily to support my own usages of Sapia.


    If your mind is capable of keeping up with the rest of mybat processing, then exercise judgement in assisting me, though if there is the slightest shred of doubt that you will hinder me, do not act at all."


    ''I-I got it!'' said the daemon, nodding to herself and the Collector. ''I¡­I won''t disappoint you.''


    "''Disappoint'' is an emotion I have sensed only in dealing with tinkerers and challengers that had the potential to rise against me and yet failed or fled. I will not feel ''disappointment'' in your failings, merely an adjustment of calctions topensate," said the Collector.


    It clicked its mandibles and beat down with its wings while pushing with magic-infused power with its tail, soaring high into the air.


    Like this, it would avoid the sea of inferior insectoid specimen below from blocking its path.


    In the air, the Collector could perceive the dungeon in the distance. A circr pit emanating with a faint blue glow ¨C the only strong glow remaining now in the Darkwoods - and began its flight to its next and potentially final destination.

 Chapter 67 - Rolling Stone

    The Collector batted its wings and tucked in its arms and arakka legs, bing an aerodynamic, serpentine missile of carapace and flesh as it rode the winds it shot out behind it.


    The carapace on its face slotted over in one smoothyer reminiscent of a pilot''s helmet, and its purple and yellow eyes shone brightly as they homed in on the ever-nearing dungeon entrance.


    No discernable form of defensive force around the pit itself, merely a throng of insectoids that provided no challenge to the Collector. No defensive fortifications either that barred entry.


    Yet, as the Collector hovered over the dungeon with Sapian force, it sensed the invisible psionic threads of manipted space around the dungeon.


    The pit itself was shaped almost like a maw, lined with teethprised of mundane stone protruding from its circumference while within the pit, the blue light glowing within formed an even and unbrokenyer.


    The light seemed to flux in between phosphorescence and a fluid state, shimmering and waving in equal measures in a surface that the Collector was unable to sense through with physical senses alone.


    In other words, this was essentially a miniature warp gate of its own leading into an entirely different pocket of hyperspace.


    ''There''s¡­there''s the entrance point,'' remarked the daemon as she squinted her eyes, trying to take in the blue glow of the dungeon from elevated altitude. ''And¡­and from the amount of mana distortion in the area, there''s maybe¡­maybe twoyers?''


    The daemon further exined. ''Dungeons¡­dungeons, whether they''re bound or unbound, haveyers, but unbound ones usually have fewer. I think¡­I think bound ones had an average of fiveyers? While it''s not umon to see unbound ones with just oneyer.''


    "Layers? rify this term," said the Collector.


    ''Dungeons are¡­are like their own little realms, kind of. Very tiny realms. And inside them, there areyers, eachyer being a kind of, ah, a kind of separate space. All the spaces arepletely separate from each other except from transit points that link them together.''


    "I see. And presumably, these transit points lead sessively down to a central point that determines the greater functioning of this ''dungeon''," said the Collector.


    ''Yes¡­yes that''s right, I think. Usually, bosses are at the bottom,'' said the daemon.


    "And any vessel capable of interfacing with warp-travel would also possess a high probability of existing within this central point." The Collector clicked its mandibles.


    Twoyers. Two gates to travel through.


    The danger in this dungeon wasrgely unknown, but the Collector could sense that the amount of magical energy fluxing from the dungeon itself was not too threatening.


    A formidable amount, but none that would indicate a life-threatening presence.


    ''And¡­and you''re right in sensing the dungeon. The quantity of manaing from a dungeon entrance probably shows how dangerous it is, though there''s always exceptions,'' said the daemon. ''But¡­but I don''t know much of what those exceptions are. Haven''t read that far.''


    The Collector made a mental note that the current flux of magical energy and psionic forces before it corresponded to a dungeon with twoyers. Extrapting further calctions and points ofparison would allow the Collector soon to determine the dimensions of a dungeon urately soon.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles. It could not always n ahead nor know truly everything that urred in the future. The dungeon was a source of many unknowns, but within, its missiony, and time was sensitive.


    What separated the Collector from more inefficient organisms was its capacity to adapt and react with unparalleled efficiency. It would rely on this trait now as it snaked its body down to face the dungeon, then pped its wings to send it hurtling down.


    When the Collector neared theyer of fluxing blue mana and psionic energy, it halted its movement, knowing that momentum in movement could be transferred and keeping it was risky when it knew not what kind of environment it would be transported to.


    The moment the Collector hit theyer of blue, its surroundings seamlessly shifted into apletely different scene. It felt a momentary sense of warp-travel based nausea wave over its body before it righted its internal bodily processes.


    The Collector immediately analyzed its surroundings. This area was subterranean, though presumably not deep enough to prevent oxygen flow from circting.


    Specifically, the area the Collector was in was a massive tunnel stretching far behind and in front of it, presumably linking into a muchrgerwork of tunnels simr to it as well.


    The dimensions of the tunnel were quiterge, easily capable of housing the Collector, indicating that creatures of simr size could inhabit the area.


    The tunnel was not dark. It was lined with lightstones embedded in the tunnel walls that gave off dull, spectral glows of various shades. Aside from that, not notable.


    The roofs of the tunnels had tinkering signatures on them. Lightstones that jutted out from them noticeably, and unlike those embedded in the walls, these ones were all of a uniform color of blue.


    Likely, a means to demarcate the tunnels for the inhabitants within.


    ''I¡­I don''t know where to go,'' said the daemon as she looked forwards, then backwards where the tunnel stretched out at both ends. ''Hm¡­''


    An ordinary group of humans venturing into this area would have found immediate confusion in determining where to go now, forwards or backwards, but the Collector possessed an extreme degree of psionic sensitivity, and it knew immediately the general direction of the nearest mass of psionic tendrils or, in other words, the next transit point.


    The Collector slithered around and went backwards at full speed, wreaths of red mana trailing behind it as its sleek body well suited to roaming the even grounds of these tunnels.


    ''Oh¡­I guess you already know,'' said the daemon as she looked down.


    ''Do not waste time and mental resources upon yourself. Focus merely on your surroundings and in assisting my abilities,'' projected the Collector.


    ''You''re right,'' said the daemon with a decisive nod.


    It did not take long before the Collector noticed anomalies. As it rushed through the tunnel, knowing exactly which paths to take when they branched, it could sense that there were traps iid throughout this area.


    Pressure-sensitive stones to trigger traps, burrowed insects (none worth consuming), and so on, but though the Collector did avoid them in precaution, it noted that they did not seem interested in activating against it.


    Likely because the Collector possessed the thrall''s core. This isted shard of hyperspace recognized the Collector as a part of it as a ''warper'' and therefore did not act against it.


    There were also no inhabitants other than the insects locked in a burrowed stasis, meaning there was no real challenge against the Collector.


    This reprieve did notst long, however.


    When the Collector after ten minutes sensed it neared the first transit point, the lightstones lighting the tunnels shut down, their light fading away.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles but did not stop. Something was manually manipting their''s functionings. Likely, the goblin lord.


    As if to confirm the Collector''s thoughts, it sensed the ground rumbling as it slithered down into a hole leading into another tunnel, this one angling steeply downwards.


    The hole above the Collector closed up with a sudden emergence of packed earth.


    The Collector''s sensitive hair stood on end as it sensed an enormous presence barreling towards it. Judging by the rtively monotonous lotion, not a living being. A rolling object.


    It looked backwards to see a massive boulder almost filling up the whole tunnel nearing it, using the steep angle to gain momentum to try and crush the Collector.


    ''Should I use Sapia?'' said the daemon as her eyes widened at the rapidly approaching stone.


    ''No. Sapia utilizes mana at a degree several times the expenditure caused from physical augmentation. I will deal with this,'' said the Collector.


    Red bands of mana coiled around the Collector''s arms as it stood upright, digging its tail into the dirt like an anchor. A dozen meters before the boulder even touched the Collector, it began to punch into the air in front of it.


    Bone binding drew out or ced power in the bones. In the case of the user itself, bone binding could be used to generate specific magical effects at the cost of straining their bones with excessive usage.


    In the thrall''s case, this was the mist form ability.


    In the Collector''s case, this was raw, destructive shockwave force.


    As the Collector''s fists shot out in front of it like machine gun fire, sts of condensed, fist-shaped waves of energy surged out, mming into the boulder.


    Fist-shaped indentations cracked into the surface of the boulder, slowing the boulder down and breaking apart its structural integrity at key weak points until finally, when it neared the Collector''s striking range, one single direct punch into the center of its mass both stopped and shattered the oversized rock.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles as it saw steaming heat rise from its knuckles. "Now there is resistance.


    But I wee it. I can sense that it is possible for you, the specimen known as a ''Goblin Lord'', to perceive my location from wherever you hide.


    If it is such that you may perceive my words, too, then know that in cowering away, your death will not be painless, nor shall you find honor within the Collective."

 Chapter 68 - First Layer

    The Collector sped through the winding maze of tunnels, moving so quickly that even when it did trigger burrowed insects to arise to the surface, by the time they had unborrwed, the Collector was too far ahead of them to catch up.


    Its movements snaked along the whole breadth of the tunnel, its serpentine body maintaining enough speed to move on the ceilings or sides to avoid traps when needed.


    Eventually, the goblin lord adapted, unburrowing huge hordes of insects in advance. Some of these, the smaller and weaker ones, the Collector couldpletely brute force its way through by putting its armored shoulder forwards like a battering ram and then activating instantaneous high-speed movement with its mana, smashing through entire crowds and leaving a trail of flying legs and innards in its wake.


    But as the Collector went deeper, the insects becamerger.


    Giant insects of various kinds almost on par with the assassin bugbrute, but at the Collector''s current metamorphosis level, even those specimen were of little worth.


    These, the Collector just evaded, outmaneuvering them by sliding across the ceiling or snaking past them with quick movement. Better not to waste mana at this point for specimen that had no gic specialties aside from merely being overgrown.


    Fifteen minutes of further travel yielded the next notable obstacle. The Collector stopped in front of a massive set of double stone doors fused together at the center with a thin line of glowing blue magic.


    Connecting and locking the doors shut was an borately shaped keyhole.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles.


    Sensing the durability of the stone doors indicated it was a mana-infused structure of exceptional durability, easily capable of withstanding several barrages from the Collector without breaking apart.


    Highly resistant to magical maniption as well such as Sapia due to the strong flow of mana shutting out external interference.


    Inefficient to waste time brute forcing it.


    ''This¡­this, hm,'' said the daemon as her tiny form floated in front of it, scrutinizing the keyhole. ''I¡­I don''t sense any mana scanning features. It won''t check for a magical signature. We¡­we just need something shaped like the key.''


    The Collector clicked its mandibles, nearing its head to the keyhole. Its six eyes analyzed the shape of the keyhole, then it tapped a finger to the edges of the keyhole, allowing its sensitive hairs to feel the vibrations echoing within.


    Analyzing shape. Structure. Patterns.


    Analysis concluded.


    The Collector pointed both arms to the ground, and they shed purple. A chunk of rock emerged outlined in the same purple, and the Collector went to work.


    The rock broke apart at the edges, forming quickly into a mold that first approximated the shape of the hypothetical key, and then chipped away in fine-tune detail, carving itself into the exact dimensions of the object to pinpoint uracy.


    ''Wow¡­,'' said the daemon as she stared at the key. ''It¡­it looks so nice, too. I¡­I didn''t know you were an artist as well.''


    "Evolution is artistry at its highest form, and this mind and body have been shaped by the Collective ¨C herald of the ultimate evolutionary process. All that I do is akin to what you tinkerers perceive as ''art''." The Collector willed the key into the keyhole, and then turned it.


    With a heavy, rumbling click, the key slotted in, and the stone doors began to open slowly, the two bs of rock drawing backwards with the same magical energy that kept them there.


    The Collector squeezed itself through when the gap wasrge enough and found itself inside a much wider space. An entire cavern that must have been approximately one hundred and fifty meters in diameter.


    There was plenty of lighting hereing fromrge lightstone formations on the ceiling, and the lighting here was not turned off. Water gurgled from a sizable basin at the end, a small waterfall from the ceiling gurgling into it and filling it up.


    Racks of ck and blue weapons, volcanite and everfrost respectively, stood to the side, as did piles of fruits that dropped down from vine growths overhead.


    The fruits used to beid out inrge piles, but now they were scattered about, some half-eaten, and the weapons themselves were in disarray, some strewn across the ground as if left in a hurry.


    An area for the goblins to rest and arm themselves, it seemed.


    Recently vacated, however.


    Beside the stream, there stood a swirling mass of glowing blue energy tendrils ¨C the transit point to the nextyer.


    That there were no goblins remaining here indicated that the entire force had been defeated. Most likely by the group of adventurers the Collector had dealt with beforehand.


    Good. The Collector would take some samples of the weapons, assess the fruits for special properties, and then move on.


    The Collector slithered forward a few meters, and when it did so, the stone doors behind it closed rapidly with a resounding crash. The lighstone crystals overhead glowed an aggressive red.


    The Collector felt tremors under its feet for a split second before its hairs picked up on movement. It stepped to the side, and a brown spike emerged from where the Collector had been.


    The spike was nearly as tall as the Collector andposed of carapace and covered in barbs to prevent removal when it pierced flesh.


    More movement underneath. The Collector side-stepped another spike, then another, and then it pushed off with its tail and hovered in the air with its wings.


    The spikes did not extend out towards it.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles. So, there were insectoid specimen under the ground that guarded this area, shooting out powerful spines based on movement it detected on the surface.


    Judging from the size of the spines, these insectoids were of the same ss as the Assassin Bugbrute.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles. As it was in the air now, it was impossible for these creatures to touch it. But they were quick, capable of moving even burrowed ¨C an adaptation that would be useful for the Collector.


    The Collector focused its senses, honing them with mana, and thennded upon the earth once more. Not a secondter, and a spine emerged.


    The Collector side-stepped it and before the spine could withdraw back into the dirt, grabbed it.


    With a p of its wings, the Collector surged upwards, and with a massive heave of strength, pulled the subterannean insect out of the ground. The insect was a fat, oval shaped bug with huge pincer-like jaws and holes in its carapace to project spikes from.


    From the movement of the spines, they seemed to be flexible and could be extended to great lengths and broken off.


    Notably, the specimen also semed to possess the means to rapidly rotate itself while closing its jaws to mimic a drill, allowing it to easily move through dirt.


    The insectoid specimen resisted, ten slots on its back opening up to try and shoot out spines. The Collector flew up and mmed the creature into one of the lightstone crystal formations before it could, skewering it there and killing it.


    The Collector ripped off its six legs, consuming them and making sure it devoured enough to gain an urate gic sample.


    >>>


    *Biomass gained (+10)*


    Biomass Level: 260/100


    *Root consumption limited reached*


    *Gic material gained*


    Stored Gic Material:


    -ck Ant


    -Deer


    -ck Hobgoblin


    -Human


    -Lesser Oni


    -Frostborn Hobgoblin


    -Horse


    -Lesser Greatcentipede


    -Lesser Greatbeetle


    -Spitting Greatbeetle


    -Leafde Insect


    -Frostborn Hobgoblin Thrall


    -Vineswinger Goblin Champion [Core]


    -metongue Smander


    -Windcutter Wildcat


    -Shockstripe Eel


    -Shaker Fish


    -Firefly Shinchu


    -Lurker *NEW*


    Mana Level: 330%>360%


    >>>


    However, the Collector did not consume the rest of the specimen. Instead, it took out its right hand and made a fist, unsheathing the assassin bugbrute proboscis.


    There were cracks all across the proboscis from the shockwave-based attack the four-star adventurer had inflicted on the Collector, but it was still usable because it had been sheathed for that battle, escaping the brunt of the attack unlike the monomolecr ws which had all shattered due to their brittle structure.


    The Collector stabbed the skewered insect with the bugbrute venom, expending mana to create its magically enhanced toxins. The lurker squirmed and twitched involuntarily as the venom hijacked its nervous system.


    Then, the Collector''s thel raised in the air, hovering over the bug as it began to program the corpse. The other insect specimen were too slow to keep up with the Collector, nor were they especially useful, and maintaining programming expended mana every second.


    But these specimens, these lurkers, were far more useful, able to roughly keep up in speed with the Collector''s travel and also form a secondary, hidden means of attack.


    ''I see¡­with what you put into it, you can use Sapia to control it, even when our Sapia isn''t meant for controlling,'' said the daemon. She closed her eyes and raised her thel as well, aiding the Collector.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles, finishing the programming in a few seconds. With thatplete, the Collector detached the lurker from the ceiling and dropped it back into the hole it had been pulled from.


    There were more lurkers in the area. Probably around two more judging from the frequency and angle of spines that emerged to attack the Collector.


    Expectedly, the other lurkers did not attack theirpanion. A fatal error. In the next moment, the other two lurkers emerged up to the surface, their wriggling bodies skewered by spines.


    The Collector stabbed their heads with the bugbrute proboscis as well, programming them to follow it and attack any hostile presences moving against it.


    The two lurkers fell to the ground as the spines skewering them withdrew, and the burrowed lurker joined its brethren on the surface. The Collector picked up the legless specimen to carry it while the other two skittered behind, following the Collector.


    Samples.


    The Collector assessed the fruits by the water basin. Mundane fruits that possessed no special qualities. Above, the vines that produced them also seemed mundane, special only because of the magical energy in the dungeon enhancing them.


    Consuming them would yield nothing. Instead, it devoured samples of volcanite and everfrost, storing them forter in its Metalloglottic ossifier.


    >>>


    *New metalloglottic ossifier samples obtained*


    --Lightstone


    --Runewood


    --Bone Binding Skull


    --Volcanite *NEW*


    --Everforst *NEW*


    >>>


    With these samples procured, the Collector moved on, heading to the transit point and the secondyer.

 Chapter 69 - An Efficient Charge

    Touching the transit point immediately shifted the Collector to what was presumably the nextyer. The psionic signature of the warp gate was much nearer now.


    Good.


    An indication that the Collector was on the correct path.


    It assessed its surroundings.


    The sights of tinkering were strong here. The ground on the tunnel paths were carved out to an even surface shingled withyers of smooth stone that reflected the blue light from lightstones above.


    Significantly more developed than the prior tunnels.


    The tunnels themselves were different, shaped in even circles that indicated that they were artificially carved from the earth. There were no presences of insectoids either, and as the Collector followed the psionic trail again, it noted that there were not even traps lining these paths.


    This was a level of development that escaped the grasp of goblin civilization.


    Stoneworking and the creation of artificial tunnels indicated as much.


    And, when the Collector came upon a small cavern dotted with mattings of cloth that formed beds, it realized this must have been a living quarters for the goblins.


    Though, with the culled goblin popce, thisyer of the dungeon became nothing more than a desertedbyrinth.


    The Collector could smell the scent of goblins, however, and they had been here recently. None of them possessed the scent of more developed and stronger kinds. The scents all belonged to smaller goblin or females.


    No challenges. No scents or signs of a specimen from a higher civilization.


    The Collector exited the cavern, and in short time unopposed by any traps or insectoids, neared the second transit point.


    Slipping down a series of holes through various tunnels led down into a bottom-most cavern farrger than the one housing the first transit point.


    This area was not developed at all, the ground a cracked, patchy and uneven surface and the cavern ceiling lined with rough stctites of lightstone crystals.


    Under their ghostly blue light, the Collector first spotted four statues fashioned in the shape of a goblin.


    Yet, different. These goblin visages possessed long tusks and four arms. They were also almost as tall as the Collector, though whether this was in artistic exaggeration or urate representation, the Collector could not ascertain.


    The statues stood with swords of stone in their arms, frozen in images of threatening battle stances, and they stood between the Collector and double stone door: the same kind as that which housed the first transit point.


    However, no light of magic reinforced the doors, instead, the light flowed through the statues.


    The moment the Collector analyzed that the magic in this area flowed in concentrated amounts to the statues, the stone goblins moved with ttering and groaning movements, piles of dust silted in the crevices of their muscles and bodies falling off in small clouds.


    ''Natural golems,'' remarked the daemon, a sense of fear tinging her words. ''Strong ones, too. And because they''re natural, they have no cores, they...they have to bepletely destroyed.


    Can...can you fight them?''


    The Collector clicked its mandibles as it took in the daemon''s words.


    Then it was a waste of time to try and smash and hack these things to pieces.


    A brief sensing of the golems showed that magical energy flowed through them, empowering their movements, and this too prevented foreign magical maniption via Sapia.


    Far more efficient to evade them and smash through the stone doors.


    The Collector used {Dash}, zipping past the first two golems, but the third one reacted, charging at the Collector at considerable speed and using two of its arms to swipe axes at the Collector.


    The Collector swerved back, and the axes crashed into the ground, smashing the stone and lining cracks of impact across them.


    Considerable strength. Respectable speed.


    In terms of raw physicals, the golems possessed approximately 65% of the Collector''s stats while it utilized magic.


    The Collector could easily deal with one by itself. Even four at once was an ordeal the Collector calcted a 98% chance of seeding against.


    But it would prove to be a time-consuming process involving dodging and picking apart at the golems one by one, with more rushedbat greatly reducing sess rates.


    No need to deal with this now, not when the Collector was so close to its mission.


    The psionic threads the Collector perceived were strong now, indicating that past the second transit point would lead almost directly on top of the warp gate.


    The Collector powered more mana into its tail and further empowered its muscles, engaging its coilboosters. The tail itself curled around in a spring-like shape, all the muscles stretching and swelling before hyper condensing in an instant, packing as much potential energy as possible.


    It was then that the lurkers following the Collector acted.


    Spines shot from the ground, piercing through the bodies of the four golems and holding them in ce.


    Very briefly, however, as these stone constructs did not possess vitals, and they would easily be able to snap the spines to set themselves free in but a single moment, likely even killing the lurkers by pulling them from the ground as well.


    For the golems were formidable. In scalingparison, the four-starred adventurer would have faced significant difficulty in dealing with them all at once, and he would have made short work of the lurkers if he could reach them.


    But a single moment was all the Collector needed.


    Its coiled tail unfurled, and the Collector shot forwards like a red-wreathed bullet, slipping right past the third golem.


    The fourth golem could barely react to the Collector and lunged with its swords to try and intercept it.


    The Collector swiveled its body and used Sapia on itself to change its trajectory and simply evaded it before cing its shoulder forward and mming into the double stone doors.


    The stone shattered, the doors crumbling apart in an ear-splitting impact as if a demolitions charge had been set off.


    Beyond the doors was a narrow tunnel, a corridor almost fifty meters across that led out into the next transit point. The sounds of rock scraping against itself echoed behind as the golems rushed to catch up.


    The Collector slithered through the shattered doors and then put power into its fists.


    It twisted its body to face to the ceiling and then as it moved, unleashed an unending barrage of rapidfire punches, using bone binding on its knuckles and forearm to generate further shockwaves that split apart the ceiling, causing the corridor to cave in.


    The Collector leaped out thest stretch of the corridor, sensing with its sensitive hairs adaptation the rapid movement of countless pieces of rubble and debris falling on the golems as they tried to pursue it, trapping thempletely.


    Shrieks and screams assaulted the Collector''s auditory systems, and it turned to see a horde of goblins before it, all of them packed in front of the portal of the second transit point. Many small goblins and female hobgoblins of red and white shades stood against the Collector, shakily wielding weapons of Everfrost and Volcanite against it.


    Hobgoblin infantsy crying at some of the female''s arms, while the smaller goblin infant young, smaller and more misshapen, gurgled on the floor.


    The Collector briefly analyzed them. Eighteen female hobgoblins.


    The rest, the smaller goblins and the infants, did not matter at all.


    The goblin lord''s voice resounded from the portal, echoing across the walls of the cavern.


    "Hold and fight! All of you!"


    The words had a power to them, a magical power, and the crowd of goblin kind stood stronger against the Collector, their mouths twisting into snarls where before fear had tainted the majority.


    Some of the mothers dropped their infants to engage in the fight, and even the infants tried to craw against the Collector, all senses of self-preservation erased with raw hostility.


    ''Dominus,'' said the daemon. ''Magical control of the mind. Although, from what I can tell by hearing it, sensing the flow of magic in it, it only works on goblins.''


    ''What¡­what do we do?'' asked the daemon. ''I¡­I can see it now. The reason why your Sapia and stinger did not work before.


    They¡­they were already under dominus.''


    ''Then these specimens are useless,'' said the Collector. ''I will do what is efficient.''


    "If you desire to face me, then you will have to kill all of them. All the women and children," said the goblin lord, its voice growling, and yet, the Collector could sense a strong hint of desperation underneath.


    "Kill all of them?" said the Collector. "That is unnecessary."


    "What?" came the goblin lord''s voice. The goblin lord likely did not believe this would work on the Collector.


    The goblin lord had exhausted its options, and when pressured, it would still resort to this method regardless.


    Such an act spoke volumes of its cowardice.


    It was no true warrior.


    Such was the nature of these positions of rulership, these social constructions that created hierarchies among the tinkerers.


    Unlike the hierarchies of the Collective where all served the Great Purpose with equal devotion, social hierarchies of the tinkerers often bred weak and self-destructive emotions among those they christened with higher titles.


    Hence, the gue of tyranny that often resurfaced among tinkering kinds regardless of their efforts to stem it.


    Yet, the Collector had found this dungeon in some way an interesting challenge.


    To be certain, this ''dungeon'' was quite well-defended.


    It would have been even more greatly defended had the morebat-capable hobgoblins not been eliminated beforehand.


    A group of humans, ''adventurers'', presumably, attempting to reach down into these depths would have found countless struggles against them.


    Clusters of insectoids unburrowing to strike them. Countless pressure-triggered traps. The requirement of a key to ess the first transit point.


    Lurkers guarding the first transit point. Had the hobgoblins been alive, then a veritable army opposing them on the secondyer.


    Powerful golems at the bottom.


    And now, this: one final attempt to appeal to emotions ofpassion.


    The Collector could sense that two of the lurkers had expired trying to hold back the golems, but one of them made its way towards the Collector.


    Soon, it would join the Collector in battle.


    Approximate time for it to reach the Collector again: one minute and twenty seconds. The Collector would utilize this dy to its advantage.


    The Collector put its shoulder forwards again, the spikes in its carapace sticking out, and charged mana into its body and tail.


    It utilized {Dash} again, shoulder bashing in a straight line through the entire crowd of goblins, killing infants, smaller goblins, females, it did not matter.


    The force of the charge blew back the goblins that the Collector did not directly touch, sending them tripping to the sides or, if they were infants, crushing their fragile forms outright.


    The Collector did not kill all of them. It was inefficient to waste time in eliminating them all when it could simply charge through the ones in its way.


    It stopped in front of the next transit point, and as a rain of blood, torn flesh, limbs, and skin fell from above from its charge, reached out a hand to touch the portal.


    The environment around the Collector shifted as it entered the third and finalyer.

 Chapter 70 - Lost Kingdom

    ==


    Zoll sat atop his throne of carved rock, the crest of his lordship ¨C two tusks stacked atop each other ¨C etched into the smooth rock and studded with lightstone crystals to shine upon a symbol that none knew anymore in this age.


    The royal robes wrapped around his muscled green skin and mail armor waved as if drawn up by some wind, but here, in the innermostyer of the dungeon, there should not have been any such draft.


    Winding tendrils of root-like light trickled up from the base of his throne, running up the length of stone and attaching to his body, letting him connect with the dungeon and see the strange monstrosity wreaking havoc upon his realm.


    Realm?


    Zoll felt his fingers grip into the armrests of his throne.


    This was no true realm. Just a poor shade of what he once had.


    Once, a thousand years ago, Thoktal stood in this realm, this realm that the humans desecrated by naming ''Terra'' in their own tongue as if they and the races that joined the Common Body owned it.


    Thoktal was the kingdom of the goblins, the many skinned people as they were once known.


    Its people proudly bore skins that changed shades to suit the diverse weathers of the far flung reaches in theirnd: A symbol of their ever expanding territory that covered frozen wastes, deserts, and forests.


    Yet now, though the many-skinned people were still called goblins, that term had fallen from noble consideration into a word that evoked disgust and weakness among all.


    But could Zoll truly me them?


    Once, there were no bloodlines lesser than the hobgoblins.


    Now, there were heavily degenerated, dirt-eating, dirt-crawling goblins that were small and insignificant. A degeneration that arose from the extermination of higher goblin bloodlines, forcing them to turn into small creatures that hid in the dark like rats.


    All this, because Thoktal would not join the Common Body.


    Zoll gnashed his teeth and lost himself in reminiscence, into the past he still lived in.


    The goblins had fought with the gods and all other races against the dragons first in the Draconomachy, and then again when the titans arose from the World Dungeons in the titanomachy.


    But once the gods had established their supremacy, they rewarded the goblins with but one single ultimatum: join the Common Body or perish.


    Thoktal refused. The king and all thirty lords, Zoll included, had been unanimously agreed on maintaining pride in their supremacy.


    Thoktal fell.


    Zoll still remembered hiding in his keep, in this very same throne room, as his forces outside broke against the might of Hwara, the great earth goddess. He remembered the sensation of falling as his keep fell into a great fissure in the earth, and then, when the earth closed back around him, the sensation of sleep.


    A sleep he thought had been the end, but not so.


    A long slumber. One where he relived the endless cycle of battle and defeat against the goddess.


    And in the end of that dream, a voice.


    A gentle, soothing voice. But its message was anything but: kill the humans on Terra. Kill the gods.


    Zoll was more than happy to oblige.


    Thus, he had awoken.


    A center piece to this small realm, this dungeon, the throne room of his keep still somehow preserved against the movement of space and the passage of time.


    Thus, he acted on his vengeance. Vengeance that had festered for centuries of nightmares.


    But how ridiculous it was, thought Zoll as he saw the monstrosity moving so easily past the firstyer.


    How ridiculous it was, this whole ordeal.


    What could Zoll do against the might of the gods? Against the Common Body kingdoms and empires that had had a millennium to gain strength?


    What could he do when he called upon his kin and found only the most degenerate of bloodlinesing to his aid? Once, hemanded ten thousand strong, now, he could barely muster over a hundred goblins to his side for none even knew of his name.


    Thoktal was gone, erased from history, and all her children scattered among the realms as glorified pests that had lost their culture and ways.


    What could he do with that?


    Still, Zoll could never let go of his vengeance. It had been etched into him for so very long, and once, there was a time when he had a more level head, but all he wanted to do now was hurt and kill.


    Terrorize the humans. Burn their civilization down. Because that was what the voice had told him, and he knew not why, but he had to, for he knew at some deep level that if he disobeyed that voice, this second chance at life would be ripped from him.


    He was a phantom. An ancient relic torn from time by a higher force. At any given moment, that higher force could toss him away and let him rot where he was supposed to.


    And now, Zoll had all his forces wiped out by an adventuring party, and his throne room itself woulde under attack against this¡­thing.


    He would die here without ever even having stepped a foot in a human settlement.


    Without ever even having killed one human life to pay for the endless misery they and the Common Body had inflicted upon his own.


    Should he stop here?


    Zoll''s breathing stilled, some measure of his old calm returning to him. There were still women and children of the hob bloodline still here. They could scatter and renew themselves.


    The degenerates, he did not care of.


    Kill the humans. Kill the gods.


    The voice.


    Zoll''s eyes opened up, their red pupils straining as blood vessels flowered out into the whites of his eyes.


    No, he had to do everything he could to kill them all. And though he did not know if this monstrosity was of the Common Body, he knew that the daemon with it was, and that alone was enough for him to act and use everything he had at his disposal.


    The women, the children, he would use them all. No matter what it would take, no matter the desperation or cowardice.


    Zoll grabbed his greatsword from the side of his throne, his fingers sping over two tusk shards jutting out from its pommel. At the touch, the hum and glow of blue magical energy arose around the tusks.


    And when the monster and daemon inevitably came here, Zoll would fight them too to thest breath. To death and the beyond.


    ==


    The Collector found itself warped to a smaller area than before.


    A single room, not a mass of tunnels and paths like before. Circr in design and one hundred meters in diameter. Strong stench of tinkering civilization. An even, tiled stone floor.


    Walls that rose thirty meters high and carved with visages of crowned goblins. On the ceiling, lightstone crystal formations shaped into a circle with two tusks within emanated light that perfectly emted the sun.


    At the center of this room, precisely fifty meters away, a green skinned, red eyed goblin stood atop a throne. Behind it, on the other end, a sizable pond swirled with rainbow colored waters.


    This, the Collector could perceive as the warp gate with every single psionic tether converging their lengths into that single space.


    "So, you''ve arrived, monster," said the goblin.


    The Collector briefly analyzed the goblin specimen.


    Sensing the specimen with mana infused into the Collector''s ocr systems indicated that the flow of mana in this area swirled around the specimen.


    This was the singrity point, the ''boss'' of this dungeon.


    Attempting to gauge the amount of mana the goblin could utilize was difficult for it seemed that so long as it was in this space, by the throne in particr, its magical energy was enhanced and constantly replenished at staggering rates.


    But the goblin itself was unremarkable physically.


    Roughly of the same size and build as a champion, though less trained as a fighter. There were no signs of physical battle upon its body. No scars. No wearing and tearing. Even the way it breathed and moved was less efficient than the red-skinned goblin champion.


    In terms of equipment, the goblin did not seem overwhelmingly armed as the four-star adventurer had been.


    Rings of metal linked together to form defensive garments lined its chest and legs, and though they hummed with magical energy, they did not possess nearly the same output as the weapons from the four-star adventurer.


    A headpiece, a crown, of gold and jewels sat atop its head, but it did not possess any magical signature.


    Red robes wreathed its body, and these seemed woven more for ceremonial disy thanbat purpose, but a distinctiveck of heat surrounding them indicated heat-resistant properties of some sort, likely magically enhanced.


    Would potentially render pyrocatalytic nds less effective.


    The weapon at its side, a chunk of sharpened metal, a ''sword'' almost asrge the goblin itself, possessed a formidable amount of magical energy seething within itparable to or even exceeding that possessed by the weapons of the four-star adventurer.


    "Daemonic monster that dares to trespass upon my throne-," began the goblin.


    The Collector wasted no time before engaging its muscles and sting off with {Dash}, attempting to disable this creature while it wasted time babbling away.

 Chapter 71 - Goblin Lord Hunt I

    This would not be so easy, however.


    The Collector saw as thest moment, before its fist could smash the goblin lord''s head into pieces, its greatsword reacted independently of its owner.


    The twin tusks at the pommel disintegrated in a sh of blue light, and a shockwave of magical energy sent the Collector skidding backwards as it used its tail to stop itself from flying back into the wall.


    A cloud of blue magical energy arose around the goblin, obscuring visuals, but the Collector sensed movement with its sensitive hairs.


    Something muchrger than the goblin lord leaped to the Collector, and it could sense its dimensions as being almost exactly equal to the goblin golems from before.


    The Collector swerved its body back, dodging a blow from another four-armed goblin.


    This time, the Collector could see that this four-armed specimen was not a construct of stone. It wasposed of flesh, blood and muscle.


    Green skin and red eyes like the lord. Long tusks that jutted out from its mouth. A build almost asrge as the Collector withparable, if only slightly inferior muscle mass.


    It was dressed only in a ragged tunic and loincloth inscribed with letters of anguage the Collector was unfamiliar with, but none of the fabrics possessed any magical energy signatures.


    The goblin specimen thus moved only with its own raw physical stats. It looked up at the Collector and then charged, blue magical energy wreathing its movements.


    The Collector put up its carapaced arms and blocked abo of four punches. Each punch echoed out huge booms of impact, imparting small cracks into the carapace.


    The Collectorshed out with its tail, sweeping the goblin off its feet before punching straight down, aiming to stter the specimen''s head into the ground.


    The goblin specimen reacted with expert agility, kicking out its leg into the ground to send it flying back to dodge the Collector''s punch before flipping in the air to right itself on its feet. The Collector halted its punch before it shattered stone and clicked its mandibles as it saw the four-armed goblin specimen make distance, eyeing the Collector.


    Though not with any real intelligence.


    Tendrils wriggled from the four-armed specimen''s back. This was under the goblin lord''s control, and presumably like the modified champions, enhanced so that it regenerated infinitely provided the lord possessed enough mana, and by the throne, the lord had plenty of the resource.


    Had the Collector not evolved its shock absorbent longchain chitinous suyer for its carapace, there was no doubt that the goblin specimen''s blows would have significantlypromised the structural integrity of the Collector''s carapace.


    The sub-adaptation reduced those blows to what were moderate bruises, however. Still damage far more notable than any blunt force blows the Collector had taken previously.


    The Collector''s durability had always been far ahead of its physical stats, allowing it to take risks when it wished to with minimized danger to itself, but never before had it truly required itself to take strong blows.


    Perhaps this would be the first time.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles in rising desire for battle but stemmed it as it calcted a means to end this battle quickly. Its goal was right there beyond the throne, right in front of it.


    No more room for error.


    The goblin lord''s raspyughter echoed through the throne room. "That is not all! Come, my twin goblin elites, you who have given up your bodies and entombed yourselves into my de as my eternal royal guard."


    The Collector watched as the cloud of blue magical energy dispersed as another goblin specimen, an elite as the lord called it, leaped into the air, joining the other one''s side in facing the Collector.


    ''Goblin¡­goblin elites?'' said the daemon in palpable panic. ''These¡­these are legendary monsters. Last recorded being seen maybe¡­maybe eight hundred years ago?''


    ''No matter. Age alone does not indicate any evolutionary specialty. I will neutralize these specimens,'' said the Collector.


    ''How will you do it? They¡­they seem almost as strong as you,'' said the daemon.


    ''Do not concern yourself for me. Focus your mental resources on aiding my movements and Sapia applications,'' said the Collector.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles as it slithered in circr movement, sizing up the elites as they too sized the Collector up.


    A quick calction.


    The stone golems possessed sixty-five percent of the Collector''sbat capability.


    These elites were stronger for they could properly channel mana through their forms and moved with an efficiency that indicated martialpetency.


    Each one reached up to eighty five percent of the Collector''sbat capability.


    Two together would overwhelm the Collector over time, though with the Collector''s efficient processing capacity, they would need to engage the Collector in an extended brawl to wear its defenses down.


    Yet, the Collector could not engage in a war of attrition. These elites were likely highly regenerative due to the lord''s powers. Attempting hit and run tactics was possible, but risky, for the elites were fast enough to catch up to the Collector''s higher end speeds.


    The lord did not move from his throne, likely requiring its magical energy to sustain these elites.


    Outside of this throne room, the lord likely would never even have been able to unleash these formidable specimens. Perhaps a degenerated version of them. But here, in the heart of his domain, he was strongest.


    Knowing this information, the Collector formted a strategy. It made note of the exact coordinates of where it had warped into this room.


    Estimated time of arrival for the one remaining lurker under the Collector''s control: one minute and twenty seconds.


    "Attack, my elites! Bring me their horned daemon heads!" shouted the lord. "I will have them adorn my throne as the first to fall to my war!


    The two elites charged at the Collector with extreme speed, their four arms closed in fists ready to pummel the Collector.


    The Collector powered mana into its tail and leaped into the air with it, unfurling its wings.


    The twin elites skidded to a stop, driving up piles of rock as they halted their formidable momentum before they stared up at the Collector.


    Then they reacted. They leaped a dozen meters onto the wall of the throne room, smashing craters with their feet into it as they readied to use the wall as a surface to leap up to the Collector.


    The Collector knew they were more than strong and acrobatic enough to reach it. This flight was merely to gain temporary distance.


    ''Projectiles,'' said the Collector, processing its intent to the daemon.


    ''Got it!''


    The Collector and the daemon shed purple before shards of lightstone crystal from above broke apart.


    Six chunks of crystal rotated around the Collector.


    ''Spin. Then Force Push. If I do not maintain this, you shall in my stead,'' said the Collector.


    This would be highly mana intensive, but it would expend everything it had to close out this mission.


    The daemon closed her eyes as she powered her own formidable magical energy into the Collector.


    The lightstone crystals rotated in rapid, shining orbit around the Collector for a single second.


    The moment the twin elites leaped off the wall to reach the Collector, the Collector fired the crystals with Force Push assisted by the deamon to the defenseless goblin lord.


    >>>


    Mana Level: 300%>270%


    >>>


    The lord''s eyes widened. Both elites flipped in mid-air, ceasing their attack on the Collector and immediately redirecting themselves to the lord to protect him.


    A second toote.


    The six crystals smashed into the lord''s direction, but he had managed in the veryst nick of time to hide behind his throne, though not fast enough. One of his arms dangled by his side, shredded apart at the elbow by a high-velocity crystal.


    The lord growled in pain as he hunched behind the throne. He pointed at an elite. "You, guard me." Then a finger to the other elite. "You, kill them!"


    The Collector clicked its mandibles, seeing the lord act as it predicted.


    ''Maintain a constant barrage. Expend your mana to the veryst drop,'' said the Collector.


    ''I''ll¡­I''ll do my best,'' came the daemon''s response with a quick nod.


    Another series of six crystals broke off from the ceiling, rotating once to gain speed around the Collector before shooting out to the goblin lord.


    The elite guarding it was fast and dexterous enough with its broad body and many limbs to guard against them all, but as long as the Collector kept up this suppressive fire, one of the elites would permanently be out ofmission.


    The other elite leaped into the wall, then punted off of it to reach the Collector. The Collector''s right arm faced the elite as it soared towards it, and the daemon mirrored the Collector''s movements with her own smaller arm.


    >>>


    Mana Level: 270%>250%


    >>>


    Both arms shed in a synchronized Force Push. The goblin elite hammered into the ground with a resonating crash, sting out a humanoid shaped crater around it.


    Without even a half-second worth of dy, the elite leaped out from the crater, flipping in the air to right itself on its feet, then leaped back up at the Collector.


    The elite felt no pain. Had no free will. And it regenerated all damage, any scars and cuts from the fall smoothing over in an instant.


    Meanwhile, projectiles constantly rained down from above to the goblin lord, and the other elite scrambled to keep defending the lord as he hunkered down underneath the elite''srger body, holding his great sword above his head as an extra shield as piles of shattered rock and crystal fell all around him.


    ''Maintain suppressive fire,'' said the Collector to the daemon as it dealt with the elite. It could feel the daemon''s assent through their psionic link.


    The Collector used Force Push again, but this time, the elite reacted. It performed a maneuver the Collector had not seen before.


    By putting magical energy in a blue sheathe around its feet, it created a temporary tform to jump off of, avoiding the linear pushing energy. It twirled in the air,nding on its feet on the ceiling, and then leaped off of that to reach the Collector.


    The Collector could easily out-maneuver the elite in the air, however.


    It pped its wings down, avoiding the elite''s aerial charge, and then reached out with its hands to grab the elite''s legs as it soared above it.


    With a flip of its wings and Sapia boosted movement, the Collector rotated rapidly once in the air to generate momentum before mming the elite straight into the crystal ceiling.

 Chapter 72 - Goblin Lord Hunt II

    Crystals shattered and parted in a rainfall of sunlight-colored shards as the elite crashed into the tusk-shaped crystals.


    Meanwhile, the daemon girl continued to fire projectiles down on the lord, preventing the other elite from aiding. Her lips quivered and sweat formed at her forehead. Her skin grew even paler.


    She was straining herself, but the Collector calcted she possessed enough mana reserves to hold on.


    The Collector pointed its right hand at the elite and used Force Push, driving the elite even further and deeper into the ceiling. With a crushing motion of its fingers, the Collector finally used both push and pull topact the crystals surrounding the elite into a ball to imprison and crush it.


    This would not hold it long, however.


    The Collector calcted that this temporary prison would notst even more than a second.


    Not enough time for the Collector to deal with the elite guarding the lord below, even when it was distracted against the daemon female''s constant barrages of projectiles. Not for ack ofbat capacity on the female specimen''s part.


    These projectiles might have been less powerful than the Collector''s, but they were no less urate ¨C a testament to the daemon''s mastery in perceiving the flow of magic.


    The Collector could sense the lurker''s psionic profile close to it now and determined that the lurker was two seconds from warping in.


    The elite would be dyed enough for the Collector''s method of attack to work.


    The Collector flew down towards the lord and the elite guarding him, but did notnd right on top of them.


    Instead, it hovered in the air above them with Sapian force.


    At this moment, the crystals above shattered as the imprisoned elite broke free with a burst of strength, ready to leap back down to defend its lord.


    The Collector opened its maw and engaged the biotrigger for its pyrocatalytic nds.


    The trigger clicked into ce at the back of its mouth, and a momentter, the reactive chemicals shot forth, scraping against the trigger into a torrent of blue-white me that washed over the throne,pletely enshrouding the elite and lord in zing chemical fire.


    First, an initial attempt to end this battle now.


    ''Assist me in utilizing Sapia to encase the targets within the mes,'' said the Collector to the daemon.


    The daemon nodded weakly but bit her lip and roused strength to herself. Her whole body trembled at this point, nearing the limits of her stamina.


    Both their bodies shed purple, and then the raging swirl of mes surrounding the goblin lord glowed with a purple outline before their chaotic flow came under control, swirling in controlled manner in a spherical formation encased around the lord and his guarding elite in an attempt to maximize heat exposure, chemical damage, oxygen loss, and, if this did not work, remove visibility and overwhelm the senses.


    The elite from the ceiling mmed down towards the Collector, but the Collector predicted the movement and pped its wings once, sending itself backwards and evading the elite''s downward punch.


    The elite crashed into the ground on a knee, cracking the stone before it aimed itself again at the Collector.


    The Sapia sphere containing the mes shattered as the elite guarding the lord broke it apart with a powerful punch, and the mes escaped outwards, revealing the elite with mes wrapped all around it, flesh melting from it and regenerating together in a continual cycle of destruction and growth.


    The throne was covered in fire, and though the stone melted, the mana-infused roots in its structure did not decay with the stone. The roots still floated in the air, releasing mana that continued to empower the lord.


    As for the lord himself, he was wrapped up in his cloak, his hunched form coughing.


    When he exposed his face, it showed severe signs of burning. Blisters, charred flesh, and red eyes blinded from exposure to the me.


    But the robes around it had provided just heat resistant enough to allow it to survive.


    The lord staggered to a stand behind his elite, his breathing raspy and rattling due to chemical burns, but he was sturdy enough keep himself alive.


    Or, rather, as the Collector observed with mana-infused ocr systems, the lord was essentially on life support granted by the remnants of the throne. The mana in the area flowed into him, granting him a moderate regenerative factor.


    And now, as the elite from the ceiling charged the Collector again, there would be no chance to unleash another barrage of me.


    But that did not matter. The lurker had entered thisyer and burrowed unnoticed due to the mes cutting off the goblin lord''s vision and senses.


    This was all the Collector needed, and it had precisely timed its me attack just so that the lurker could enter at the right time.


    All the Collector would have to do now would be to knock down the iing elite for just 1.55 seconds: the amount of time for the lurker to get into position and finalize the Collector''s battle ns.


    The elite sprinted towards the Collector, its legs blurring with speed as its four arms cocked back for a series of punches. It would be difficult to quickly disable this elite without also taking a hit, noted the Collector.


    A necessary sacrifice and a calcted risk. A single strike should not severely damage the Collector.


    But what if the hit it had to take did not have topromise its functions at all?


    The Collector evaded the first three punches but dyed itself to get struck by the fourth blow.


    The fourth punch mmed horizontally right into the Collector''s face with an initial crack of severe impact. Had the blow been properly applied, the Collector calcted it would have faced a sixty eight percent chance of near death with concussive force applied to its brain.


    Yet, the Collector had calcted the trajectory and speed of this blow and thought to utilize it to its advantage.


    The elite had used its full body weight tond that blow, falling for the Collector''s feint and mistakenly believing the Collector slow enough to fully strike with a lethal head blow.


    This in turn left the elite wide open to a counter.


    The Collector utilized the technique the four-star adventurer used to disperse shockwaves from his body but modified it with its processing power.


    In applying that technique to a smaller and more focused scale, the Collector essentially diverted the impact of the blow to its face.


    Approximately 70% of the damage was mitigated, and the punch''s formidable force, instead of hammering right into the Collector''s face and damaging its brain, flowed freely throughout its entire body without harming it.


    Instead, the Collector simply followed the currents of this powerful force traveling across its body, spinning around rapidly in aplete one-hundred-and-eighty-degree arc and smashing the elite''s skull with a powerful backhand that was essentiallyprised of the force of the elite''s own hit with the Collector''s strength added on to it.


    A perfect counter, essentially. A counter that started the very moment the hostile party''s own strike ended without a single fraction of a second''s worth of dy.


    The Collector did not know it, but had any trained martial artist witnessed its movements, they would have most certainly marveled at an almost perfect performance of a Heavenly Technique known as the {Returning Wind}, the performance of which would have granted any normal humanoid more than enough recognition to start their own school of martial arts.


    The elite''s skull caved in with a deep fist imprint as it flew back almost a dozen meters in the air,nding t on its back as a limp mess while its mangled brain scrambled to regenerate, pieces of skull and pulped pink brain matter growing back.


    The regeneration was quick, however, fast enough that the Collector would not have enough time to reach the lord and deal with the elite guarding it.


    But the Collector did not need to. All it needed was time for this. It leaped into the air unopposed, pre-emptively getting a head start.


    The lord''s blinded eyes went wide as it coughed up blood. A lurker spine protruded from its chest, skewering its heart out of its body. That heart, the core, was what interfaced with this dungeon, and it would now be the Collector''s.


    The spine rapidly extended outwards into the air towards the Collector''s general direction. The elite guarding the lord jumped to try and retrieve the heart, but it could not beat the Collector''s head start.


    The Collector met the extended spine in the air, opened its maw, and gobbled up the lord''s heart.


    Had either elite not been disabled, one of them would have certainly intercepted it.


    But now, the Collector watched as the elites crumbled away into dust in a sudden instant, twin clouds of ash flowing back into the lord''s greatsword and building back up into the two tusks decorating its pommel.


    The Collector reveled in its victory as itnded beside the burning and melting throne.


    The magical energy swirling around the broken symbol of authority flowed into the Collector, restoring its wounds and recognizing it as the new ''boss'' of thisir.

 Chapter 73 - Spoils Of War

    The Collector stepped across the burning throne to the goblin lord''s corpse. The once mighty and proud lord was on his knees, his figure hunched over as blood streamed from a hole in his heartless chest.


    His crown fell from his head as he slumped over further, ttering onto the stone floor before stopping by the me-wreathed throne.


    The crown flickered and melted, the soft gold bubbling as it slowly oozed into a viscous liquid state. The crown, a symbol of authority vested unto the lord by his fellow tinkerers, and yet, at its base state, was it not no more than a mere decoration?


    An essory fashioned from minerals and alloys that held no inherent worth to it.


    Something gaudy that purported hollow strength. Much like the lord himself.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles as it began to tear the lord''s corpse apart, devouring it.


    >>>


    *Biomass gained (+30)*


    Biomass Level: 290/100


    *Spirit roots consumed. Root consumption limited reached*


    *Gic material gained*


    Stored Gic Material:


    -ck Ant


    -Deer


    -ck Hobgoblin


    -Human


    -Lesser Oni


    -Frostborn Hobgoblin


    -Horse


    -Lesser Greatcentipede


    -Lesser Greatbeetle


    -Spitting Greatbeetle


    -Leafde Insect


    -Frostborn Hobgoblin Thrall


    -Vineswinger Goblin Champion [Core]


    -metongue Smander


    -Windcutter Wildcat


    -Shockstripe Eel


    -Shaker Fish


    -Firefly Shinchu


    -Lurker


    -Goblin Lord [Core] *NEW*


    Mana Level: 120%>180%


    *Metalloglottic ossifier samples obtained [MAX]*


    --Lightstone


    --Runewood


    --Bone Binding Skull


    --Volcanite


    --Everfrost


    --Threefold Iron [Scrapped]


    --Ermine Robes [Scrapped]


    >>>


    The Collector also consumed with the goblin lord the ores and robes that it wore. The ore was called ''threefold iron'', it seemed, and here, the Collector recognized a new functioning of its evolutionary system.


    Beforehand, the evolutionary system had ssified organic material into categories based on their general bodily structures, and through these, the Collector could sift through and recognize them.


    However, it did not truly know what these creatures were called by the native denizens of this world.


    After its sudden metamorphosis that developed its magical capabilities, the Collector could begin to understand the information in a context more relevant to this world, allowing it to know the names of whatever it devoured.


    Curiously, this seemed to extend even to metal alloys, granting the Collector enough information to hypothesize that the iron ring-weave the lord wore operated on a tier system.


    Now that the Collector had consumed the iron, it could initiate a more thorough analysis of the material. Its structure had been folded three times as its name would indicate, and each time, the shattered remnants of a mana crystal had been folded into the ore.


    This granted the ore a durability far exceeding that of ordinary iron, though at the same time, simply imbuing the iron with raw mana did not change its inherent properties, it merely enhanced them.


    It seemed that attempting to enhance those properties with ordinary living mana would yield not yield simr results.


    In conclusion: the iron wasrgely useless to the Collector. It was significantly less durable than its carapace and far less useful in utility because at its base, it was simply iron.


    The robes, too, had beenprised of ordinary fiber weave and red dye, only granted its fireproofing through an imbued magical spell that did not carry over into the properties of the fibers themselves.


    In other words, the Collector could not utilize it, nor would it even if it could considering it already possessed the goblin champion''s Blessing of Mount Oe. This provided a fireproofing ability far beyond the means of the robes.


    Both samples, the Collector therefore purged from its ossifier, for the organ could only hold five samples within it for extended periods of time.


    The fibers and metals broke down into baseponents that flowed into the Collector''s bloodstream, dissolving out through its spiraclester.


    With additional metamorphosis levels, the ossifier would increase its capacity, but this was the Collector''s limit for now. It would have to cycle through the most useful samples to it.


    All in all, a disappointing haul from the goblin lord''s equipment, though certainly its biological and magical traits such as its core and abilities were of note worth.


    The lord possessed an Inhera called Higher Calling that allowed it to control goblin kind with his voice and force their evolutionary growth with his touch, but this power was limited only to goblins.


    The Collector did not deem the ability especially useful in a purelybat sense considering that the average power of the goblin species was so low.


    Even should the Collector encounter an entiremune of goblins, empower them and bend them to its will, they would all be annihted by an adventurer of four-stars and above. In extracting information from goblin specimen, however, this was quite useful.


    The abilities were also notable in the fact that they were potentially the first set of abilities the Collector could assume that in some measure could mimic therger scale maniptive adaptations of Infestor and Dominator Collector strains.


    And not all the goblins were groveling weaklings.


    First, the champion, and now, the elites-


    The Collector looked to the side of the throne where the goblin lord''s greatswordy on the floor.


    Its eyes analyzed the twin tusks protruding from its pommel.


    The elites had been an exceptional challenge. One that the Collector had enjoyed to quite some degree. Theoretically, if there was a champion of enough strength and the Collector both bent it to its will and forced it to undergo evolution, an elite could be produced.


    Though the chances of a champion specimen surviving such a process was low.


    The Collector picked up the greatsword by the handle, and in its hands, it looked almost like a normal short sword.


    The de wasprised of a ck metal that possessed a surface that seemed to constantly ripple like water.


    Though the metal itself was not notably durable, the Collector could sense exceptional capacity for the metal to interact with magical energy.


    ''Wow¡­,'' said the daemon as she floated down to the sword. She stepped to the ground and stopped herself from copsing due to mounting exhaustion, rubbing her eyes with her hand. ''look at the surface. It looks like murky, ck waters. No mistake about it: that''s¡­that''s Abyssium.


    So called because it''s mined from the depths of one of the world dungeons. The Abyss.


    They say that in its murkiest depths, sanity grows just as thin as light and breath.


    With it¡­all types of Dominus magic grow much stronger.''


    The Collector clicked its mandibles in understanding as it finished analyzing the de. This metal, this Abyssium, would do well as an ossifier sample. The Collector used its regrown monomolecr ws to scythe off a chunk of the de and tossed it into its mouth.


    >>>


    *New metalloglottic ossifier sample obtained [MAX]*


    --Lightstone [Scrapped]


    --Runewood


    --Bone Binding Skull


    --Volcanite


    --Everfrost


    --Abyssium


    >>>


    It then beheld the tusks again.


    This magical energy signature, it was familiar with.


    The tusks were bone binding constructs. However, they were of a capacity and quality that drastically exceeded what the hobgoblin thrall''s core was capable of.


    Even the Collector could never hope to reach the level of bone binding utilized to create these tusks, for the Collector could make the processes it took from consumed species more efficient, more varied, but it could not truly increase their natural limits by significant margins.


    Where the thrall''s bone binding allowed the storage of one spell into a bone, the bone binding that went into this tusk allowed for an entire living being to be stored within it.


    ''This sword¡­it''s old. Very old. It would be considered a rare treasure today,'' said the daemon with a nod, appraising the de. ''And¡­and it''s soulbound, probably to that big goblin lord.


    I¡­I am surprised you can even hold the sword without it just...breaking apart.''


    The Collector clicked its mandibles. "I have consumed the goblin specimen that dered itself a ''lord''. In doing so, I have assimted its psionic signature and gic material.


    These alone should be sufficient to bypass most biological encryption factors.''


    ''Hm¡­it''s¡­it''s very strange,'' said the daemon as she cocked her head. ''Almost¡­almost like you have his soul in you. No¡­no, that''s not possible. No living being can ever have more than one soul in them.''


    "The boundaries of limitations that you set upon the backwards organisms of this world do not apply to me," said the Collector as it raised the greatsword to its eyes. It could sense that by flowing in magical energy to the de, it could activate the tusks.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles. Though the Collector possessed a shard of the goblin lord''s essence within it, enough to have the dungeon recognize it as a ''boss'' to heal its wounds, this connection was iplete.


    The Collector could not interface with the dungeon to see through it or manipte it. Likely, it would have to slot in the lord''s core or perhaps even go further and take its form for that.


    This would extend also to the greatsword and the tusks. The elites within the tusks obeyed the lord, but would they obey the Collector?

 Chapter 74 - The End

    ''Are¡­are you sure?'' said the daemon, sensing the Collector''s intent. She stared nervously at the twin tusks, still remembering how powerful the elites were.


    "I have calcted the risk. It is minimal," said the Collector.


    Regardless, the Collector desired a sample of one of the elites even now, if only in honor of the formidable showing they had provided against the Collector.


    The risk was also indeed minimal. The Collector was nearly fully regenerated due to the effects of the throne, and it could choose to only manifest one elite. Even if one elite went wild against it, the Collector could easily dispatch it in a one-on-one duel.


    Thus, the Collector materialized the elite.


    A single tusk shattered in a cloud of blue as a shockwave of energy burst forth. The elite materialized from this cloud, and its musclebound body and nk face stared at the Collector with jittery movements, wavering between standing still and immediate hostility.


    Notplete control. But enough.


    It seemed that without the lord''s direct presence, the elite did not possess the mutation that took the form of tendrils upon its back. Likely, this meant it did not possess any regenerative properties anymore.


    Any wounds the Collector inflicted upon the elite specimen would remain permanent unless it assumed the lord''s form and core.


    The Collector desired to preserve the specimen torge degree for the Collector intended to consume the tusks whole, entering them as full samples into its ossifier so that it could regrow them in their whole state on its body.


    Later, when the Collector entered its evolutionary cocoon, it would be able to manifest the tusks on its own body, granting it ess to two powerful units. Provided, of course, the Collector assumed the lord''s core and genes.


    The Collector swiped down with its regrown monomolecr ws at one of the elite''s hands, severing it.


    The elite reacted minimally, though it did inch forwards in a slight sign of heightened aggression.


    Nevertheless, it did not fully move in a manner capable of inducing harm to the Collector


    The Collector devoured therge hand.


    >>>


    *Biomass gained (+10)*


    Biomass Level: 300/100


    *Gic material obtained*


    Stored Gic Material:


    -ck Ant


    -Deer


    -ck Hobgoblin


    -Human


    -Lesser Oni


    -Frostborn Hobgoblin


    -Horse


    -Lesser Greatcentipede


    -Lesser Greatbeetle


    -Spitting Greatbeetle


    -Leafde Insect


    -Frostborn Hobgoblin Thrall


    -Vineswinger Goblin Champion [Core]


    -metongue Smander


    -Windcutter Wildcat


    -Shockstripe Eel


    -Shaker Fish


    -Firefly Shinchu


    -Lurker


    -Goblin Lord [Core]


    -Goblin Elite


    >>>


    Curious.


    The Collector noted that the goblin elite did not show up with a [Core] within its system.


    Organisms that utilized cores actively with triggers and emotions showed up with the [Core] category, and these, the Collector had to create entirely new hearts to house.


    But in specimen that possessed magical abilities that were simply a natural part of them, they did not appear in the [Core] category despite also technically possessing cores of their own.


    This was due to a difference in how the magical powers in the two specimen types worked.


    Those under the [Core] category were usually intelligent species and humanoids that actively required the cirction of emotions to channel their cores.


    The other specimen, however, known among the humanoids as ''monsters'', did not require any trigger to activate their cores to engage their magical powers. Such powers were simply ingrained in them, as part and parcel to them as were their jaws or ws.


    This type of naturally inherent magic was ssified by both the system and the tinkerers as Primal Magic. Incidentally, specimen that possessed primal magic would also enhance the Collector''s Primal Density whereas [Core] specimen provided no growth to the attribute at all.


    Thus, attempting to assume the powers of a [Core] was more resource intensive for to fully ess the full range of their capabilities, the Collector had to slot in their cores while it could simply naturally ess the primal magic of mystical monsters.


    This meant that the goblin elite were less tinkerer, less amon humanoid, and far more a monster.


    Perhaps a quality that had to do with the fact that the elite specimen were of an age far bygone, indicating that the goblin species as a whole had progressively degenerated from natural creatures to tinkerers, weakening their raw strength greatly.


    Even more of a reason to honor the elites into the Collective. The Collector cut off the tusks from the greatsword''s pommel and devoured them also.


    >>>


    *Metalloglottic ossifier sample obtained*


    --Runewood [Scrapped]


    --Bone Binding Skull


    --Volcanite


    --Everfrost


    --Abyssium


    --Burial Tusks *NEW*


    >>>


    The Collector discarded the runewood from its ossifier for though it could amplify magical energy, the degree of amplification was not impressive, and the durability of the wood left much to be desired.


    The burial tusks would be far more useful. Perhaps worth an entire adaptation on their own.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles and stretched its muscles, reveling in its spoils of war.


    It had obtained five exceptional gic temtes from the four-starred adventurer and his weapons.


    The bone binding skull would allow the Collector a storage space that would only be more and more valuable as time progressed and the Collector obtained finer spoils from its victories.


    It now had useful ossifier samples it could incorporate within itself. The Collector, for now, could only manifest small amounts of whatever sample its ossifier stored, making it highly impractical for armoring itself.


    But it only needed to tip its thel in abyssium to vastly enhance the dominus-type magical influence the Collector could project.


    And then these burial tusks.


    Already, the elites within them, should the Collector decide to assume the goblin lord''s core to control them, would provide exceptionalbat units to assist the Collector. In terms of raw physical stats, it would be like three copies of the Collector bearing down on an enemy.


    Regardless of the threats the Collector would face in the future, it possessed now a multitude of capabilities to deal with them.


    The daemon female specimen slumped down to the floor, her shaky legs giving out under her. She stared down at her trembling legs with almost wondering eyes.


    ''I¡­I''m so sorry I can''t keep up,'' she said. She blinked, hard.


    It was evident that the inefficiencies of her backwards evolutionary form had taken their toll on her, though this also due to the fact her muscture hadrgely atrophied from extended periods of time under restricted movement and malnourishment.


    She hadpensated for the deterioration of her physical abilities due to increasing hunger, thirst, and muscr fatigue through Sapia.


    But now that she had exhausted through her mana reserves, the full brunt of both mental and physical exhaustion assailed her.


    Her mana reserves were formidable ones, certainly, but not easily replenished like the Collector''s own, and it would take her much time and rest to build herself back up to rtively efficient operating capacity.


    The Collector weighed whether she would prove to be a continued useful asset.


    She certainly was a wellspring of knowledge that the Collector could easily tap into, and she now proved that she was more than capable of applying herself in the throes of battle, greatly assisting the Collector''s Sapia.


    But these benefits would have to weigh against her physical limitations.


    The Collector would have to provide sustenance for her.


    Warmth and shelter for her in environments she could not handle with the fragility of her form.


    Her need to slumber would dy or encumber the Collector even if it carried her.


    Yet, thinking of these limitations and the future they would apply to made the Collector realize it had, for but a few seconds, put its prime mission to the back of its head.


    The spoils of its victory had distracted its mind, and the prospect of surviving and growing ever stronger had taken hold of its attention away from the purpose it was created for.


    Heresy again.


    And yet, the Collector could not deny that this feeling¡­this feeling that the daemon had called ''disappointment'' began to formte in small measures within the Collector.


    Disappointment that what it had fought for and earned would all be meaningless.


    No, never meaningless.


    All of this had been for the Grand Purpose.


    The dawning of the Collective.


    From the very beginning, from the moment the Collector had entered this atmosphere to fight one of the gods to when it crawled on the dirt as a grub to now, all of it had been for the same purpose.


    This, the Collector assured itself of.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles and moved past the female daemon, for if the Collector was now sessful in contacting the Collective, she would no longer matter.


    There would only beplete assimtion.


    The daemon female specimen looked at the Collector as it slithered away, trying to will herself to float to it, but she no longer had the mana nor the physical strength. Instead, she floated for just a second before crashing back onto the ground again, gritting her teeth with heavy breaths.


    She whimpered as she found herself unable to move and follow the Collector.


    The Collector neared the edge of the swirling, rainbow-colored waters.


    Yes, this was it. A tremendous amount of psionic power emanated from here.


    Notparable to a true warp gate but possessing of enough power for the Collector to send out a proper signal to the Collective.


    The Collector stared at the moving, shimmering water for a split second of hesitation.


    A second that mattered.


    All of its sensitive hairs stood on end as the Collector felt an intense, almost oppressively heavy presence approaching.


    A magical presence. A crackling sound echoed from the other end of the room, indicating another being had warped in, and as it did so, this presence only intensified.


    Never before had the Collector ever felt its survival instincts calling to it so strongly.

 Chapter 75 - IX

    An immediate infusion of light radiated throughout the throne room. Brilliant light that shone magnitudes brighter than the artificial sunlight produced from the lightstone crystals above.


    All that light, light that was bespeckled with glittering speckles of gold, centralized like a mando around a single, humanoid figure.


    The Collector did not even have time to turn to this figure''s direction, and when it barely began to perceive the humanoid''s form, the specimen was already upon the Collector.


    In a blinding sh of gold-infused light, the specimen crossed the one hundred meters from one end of the throne room to where the Collector was in the span of a single instant.


    The specimen''s long,nky punched forearm deep into the Collector''s back, punching straight through the hyperalloy carapace, longchain chitinous suyer, and ultrafiber muscle all as if there had been no resistance at all.


    The Collector registered severe damage. Not damage targeted to its vitals, however as if the humanoid was intentionally keeping the Collector alive.


    This close, with the humanoid''s arm sunk into the Collector, it could clearly perceive its physical attributes, as well as an intensive aura of heat and the crushing weight of concentrated mana.


    The humanoid was almost half the size of the Collector but still managed to raise the Collector up with one arm like it was weightless. One hundred and eighty five centimeters tall. Leanly muscled build wrapped up in a ck bodysuit that extended all the way around the specimen''s head before it seemingly fused into a golden mask spiked at the ends in the visage of sunlight rays.


    The maskpletely covered the specimen''s face, leaving but the eyes open, and these were not truly human, shining like orbs of sunlight with no visible pupils.


    Arge, loose white mantle with golden feather trimming covered much of the humanoid''s shoulders and chest. A waistcloth made of the same pure white material and feathered trimming covered its lower body, and golden, segmented greaves ran up from its feet to its shins.


    The humanoid possessed a naturally exceptional amount of magical energy, but notably intensive magical energy concentrated around its forearms.


    Specifically, at the glove-like structure covering them.


    Golden segments wrapped around its fingers, their tips ending in sharp points like ws. Running from the five segments capping its fingers were five particrly phosphorescent, thin golden lines that ran up its knuckles through the curve of its ck covered arms and ending as they attached to its ivory white shoulder pauldrons.


    The humanoid''s aura of magical energy emitted slight circtions of wind pressure around it, lifting up its mantle for a second.


    On its chest, where its heart was, there was etched the outline of a sun shaped sigil with nine points that shone strongly gold against the ck of the bodysuit.


    And in the center of that sr outline, there was the numeral IX.


    "Why do you run, my lovely creature?" said the humanoid. He cocked his head ever so slightly as his eyesnded on the Collector''s horns. "My dear child of night?"


    The Collector twisted its body as much as it could with an arm driven into the center of its back. To reach the humanoid, it dislocated its arm, bending it at unnatural backwards angle to swipe at the humanoid with monomolecr ws.


    This humanoid was powerful beyond measure.


    Several dozens of leagues beyond anything the Collector had encountered, even the four-star adventurer and the elites.


    To the Collector''s current capacity to sense mana, the humanoid might as well have had immeasurable strength.


    But monomolecr ws split matter on the atomic level. No amount of durability would resist it. Not even the god the Collector had faced.


    The humanoid swayed his head back, dodging the swipe. The humanoid shook his head once before four feathery wingsprised entirely of golden energy materialized to his sides.


    In the next instant, the humanoid flew up to the ceiling at staggering speeds, mming the Collector into the lightstone crystals above face first with intense impact that generated a shockwave of force.


    The Collector utilized {Dispersal}, getting the general timing of this humanoid''s exceptional speed to dissolve the shock of the blow.


    The Collector felt carapace all around its head and chest shatter deeply even through {Dispersal}, but had it not utilized {Dispersal}, it calcted an eighty eight percent chance of suffering a near fatal wound to its brain.


    "Oh, marvelous! Superb!" eximed the humanoid as he sensed the Collector still living. He swiveled to the side, tossing the Collector into the ground, far from the pond of hyperspace waters.


    The Collector shot downwards like a meteorite, and it braced for impact, using {Dispersal} again as it gouged out an enormous crater into the ground,rge chunks of shattered stone flying off from it from the impact.


    The Collector felt damage wrack the entirety of its body.


    Utilizing {Dispersal} was more difficult against this humanoid for he possessed enormous physical stats that far out stripped the Collector. {Dispersal} required perfect timing, and though the Collector possessed vast processing capabilities, approximating the humanoid''s speed and strength was still challenging.


    The Collector could still mitigate a vast majority of damage from an impact, but if the timing was even slightly more off and the dispersal iplete, then transferring shockwaves of strong impact throughout the body imperfectly could cause severe internal damage.


    And {Dispersal} was the direct opposite of {Guard} which concentrated defensive mana, meaning the Collector could not utilize both at once.


    {Guard} was easier to use, more straightforward as a defense, but had less potential to mitigate as much damage.


    And here, if the Collector did not take the risk to use {Dispersal}, it calcted a ny nine percent chance of having died already. {Guard} would not nearly have been enough to fend against the humanoid''s overwhelming raw stats.


    "To think there would be another beautiful little night child here! To think I may bring the salvation of the sun to not one, but two shadow crawlers!" The humanoid shouted to the ceiling; his arms raised up as if in praise.


    With a jarring switch in gear, the humanoid became calm again, dropping his arms to his side. He floated slowly down, pointing his masked gaze to the female daemon specimen.


    "But do not be jealous, my dear, for know that it is you that I have been searching for," said the humanoid as he neared the female daemon.


    The Collector stood to a knee, taking in breaths and circting a {Flow} of mana around its body topensate for damage rued to its muscles and bones while the humanoid distracted himself with the daemon.


    The daemon specimen tried her best to crawl away from the humanoid with one arm and severe fatigue.


    She stared up at the shining humanoid withplete and abject fear, but there was not just fear there, there was recognition.


    "You remember me, my lovely child, you do!" The humanoid grew excited with a shiver, and then in a split second almost teleported right atop the daemon, putting a greaved foot down on her stomach and pinning her to the hard floor.


    The female daemon squirmed as the foot, almost asrge as her entire, small child''s waist, pressed down and slowly crushed her.


    "All those nights we spend together, oh, I remember them so fondly. You must too, I know. I treated you with so much love, more love than any other wayward night child.


    You must remember it, no? How I etched my love deeply into you," said the humanoid as he ran a hand across his chest slowly, as if in ecstatic remembrance.


    The female daemon shuddered and squirmed again.


    The Collector assessed the situation while the humanoid distracted himself.


    The humanoid was not operating to his maximumbat capacity. To what degree the humanoid restrained itself, the Collector could not urately determine for the humanoid was simply that far above the Collector.


    But there was one thing the Collector knew: it had witnessed this type of magical energy before.


    From the very beginning. When it had fought the enormous being of light on this world''s atmosphere. The magical energy signatures were not exactly the same, but they approximated simr enough frequencies that the corrtion was unmistakable.


    Of course,pared to that being of light, this humanoid was nothing. Infinitely weaker.


    But to the Collector now, he was leagues more powerful. A nigh unbeatable enemy.


    Was this the higher end of strength upon this world? The Collector had not banked on encountering such a powerful foe this early on in its conquest.


    It had calcted and determined from the amount of resistance it was facing that it was yet to have been discovered on arge scale. Its assessment of the world had determined that this''s defenses were not yet wary of the Collector.


    And, judging from the humanoid''s reaction, they still did not truly know of the Collector''s presence.


    No, the humanoid was only after the female daemon specimen, but what was she that she merited such an extreme and formidable response?


    There was no point in conjecture. The Collector geared its mental processes to the fight. To its mission.


    The Collector knew it could not win in any engagement against this humanoid aside from infinitesimally improbable oues.


    It had already suffered enough damage topromise itsbat capability to sixty four percent.


    All six of its recently regrown arakka legs werepletely shattered. Its wings were severely damaged, making flight untenable.


    But all the Collector had to do was reach the hyperspace waters and interface with it to fulfill its mission.


    Contact the Collective. Initiate a Dawning.


    With the force of a thousand Collectors bearing down on this, nothing would survive. This humanoid''s incessant rambling would turn to screams in quick order.


    And all that required a simple touch, one single moment.


    The Collector took one of its monomolecr ws and snapped it from the base.


    While the humanoid distracted himself with the daemon, the Collector discreetly used its still barely functional spinneret to attach a thin tether of silk to the w''s shattered base.


    The Collector slithered upright, eyeing first the humanoid who stood directly in the way of the Collector and the hyperspace waters, and then to the hyperspace waters, assessing a potential means to escape this predicament.

 Chapter 76 - The Taste Of Love

    The shining humanoid continued to exercise his strength over the female daemon specimen.


    "Oh¡­oh, someone else has shown you their love," said the humanoid as he hunched over, inspecting the daemon specimen''s handless arm.


    She gasped breathlessly as the humanoid pressed his weight down on her chest, spit starting to drool from her forcibly opened, tongueless mouth.


    With a gentle, caring touchpletely in contrast with the brutal force he put on her chest, he stroked her clear forehead. "And you have lost your brand.


    The mark that was proof of your salvation from the ignoble darkness. You were broken and worthless as all your kind are, but with my love and with that mark, you regained some of your dignity.


    Why did you throw it away? Oh, my dear, why?"


    The humanoid shook his head several times with deep, exaggerated sways. His masked face settled upon the stump of her handless arm. "I will break you down and make you whole again, I promise you, I promise you with all my heart and love."


    He pointed a golden w-tipped finger at the daemon female''s arm, and then with a swift flick of his finger,pletely severed the arm at the shoulder with a clean cut.


    The Collector''s sensitive ocr systems could perceive that a faint thread of gold had unspooled from the humanoid''s finger in an instant, and this thread was sharp and quick enough to immediately sever a limb while also being covered in an intensive field of heat that instantly cauterized the daemon''s wound.


    Flesh sizzled and burned as the daemon could only widen her eyes at the sudden pain while the humanoid''s foot was still pressed into her stomach, stopping her tongueless mouth from even gasping.


    The humanoid flicked his finger up, and the golden thread tied around the severed arm and brought it to his face. It seemed the thread could move independently from how the humanoid''s fingers actually manipted it.


    The humanoid grasped the arm in his hand and then with his other hand, carefully raised only the most lower edge of his mask, baring his mouth.


    But from even this small disy of facial features, much was notable. His skin was pale and scarred beyond measure to the point where discolored, warped scar tissue was the majority and normal smooth skin a rarity.


    His lips were cracked and twisted in odd angles from burns and scars, and his teeth were sharp, far sharper than any ordinary humanoid''s, looking much more like those of a canid beast''s. He brought the stump of the arm to his mouth and bit down on it, his teeth crunching through flesh and bone with ease.


    "Ahh," eximed the humanoid in highly audible ecstasy as he chewed and sloshed the flesh and broken down bone between his cheeks before swallowing it with arge, exaggerated gulp.


    His tongue, an unnaturally long sliver of deeply red flesh dotted with aberrant, tumorous growths, swept along his lips and chin,pping up blood. "The taste of a night child. The taste of evil. How I long for it so.


    And you, my dear, have the most wondrous taste of them all. Among all your kind that I have split apart and sampled, you, you, oh, none have ever matched your taste."


    The humanoid chomped down on the arm, speaking in gurgles between ravenous mouthfuls as saliva and blood drooled down from his chin. "You¡­you are pathetically worthless, all your kind are, for they were born without light to cause nothing but misery and evil.


    But-but among the pdins of Judica, among even the Nine Rays, I alone truly know the taste of evil. No, those fools curse me behind their backs for my ways, I know it, but they are ignorant.


    They too believe your kind, my lovely night child, are worthless. And I once was in great agreement until I became Warden, and after all those years branding and tearing apart, I came to know that your kind are not bereft of value.


    You are worthless were it not for your taste and how wondrously seductive it is.


    Taste that they do not know and would never even begin to think of sampling. All they do is turn their noses up and close their hearts and kill and burn.


    But it is not hate that brings forth your taste. Hate drives the simpletons to kill your kind and simply be done with it.


    No, it is slow, passionate love that will truly bring worth to you, to your taste."


    The humanoid let his foot off the female as he convulsed in shivers of joy.


    Before the daemon could draw even a single breath, the humanoid brought his foot down again, this time on the daemon female''s one remaining hand.


    A grinding crunch resounded through the air as the humanoid ground his foot, crushing the hand into a pulp and squishing it into the stone. "Love like this!"


    The daemon girl squirmed and shuddered, convulsing on the ground in futile resistance.


    The humanoid crammed the rest of the arm into his mouth and then stomped on the daemon girl''s foot now, crushing it into a bloody and bone shard filled pulp. "Or this! Pain is love, and only in pain does your taste trulye through!


    The whole lot of you are utterly worthless maggots crawling in the darkness, but in taste, you are exquisite, and it is only this love that brings this taste forth.


    Hate brings only quick and painless deaths, but where is the worth in that? Death is so cold and so final, why would anyone desire that? No, it is only in eternal pain that you have taste, and it is only in your taste that you have value."


    The daemon girl grew still, her wide eyes starting to flit down as likely shock and blood loss overtook her. Her heavy and erratic breathing grew calmer and quieter.


    "No, no, do not leave me, my lovely night child," said the humanoid as he put his mask back on and stared down at the female daemon with gleaming golden eyes.


    He stiffened up and grew serious and still with a jarring transition. "Though it does not matter much. My jailers are outside this dungeon. They will restore you yet. Come, let us go home, back to where you belong."


    The humanoid dropped down to a knee and slung the bloody body of the female daemon over his shoulder, and in this moment, the Collector initiated its own movements.


    The Collector sted forwards with as much speed as it could muster, engaging its mana into a {Dash} while activating its coilboosters.


    But it had sustained too much damage,promising its movement speed by thirty five percent.


    This dy was enough for the Collector to stop three meters away from the water''s edge, caught again by the humanoid.


    Not by the humanoid''s physical form, however.


    The Collector saw as five golden threads bound its upper body, entwining around it in burning lines that sank through its carapace, but not so hot that they melted straight through its body. The heat was being regted.


    The five threads extended two dozen meters from the humanoid''s hand, unspooling from his fingertips.


    "Ah¡­I almost forgot about you. Another night child. You, too, wille with me. I have never seen a night child like you, but perhaps, with my love, you will taste just as exquisite as my dearest here." The humanoid nodded gently down to the daemon female''s figure. "Stay strong, my dear. I will take your friend and soon, we will all be back home."


    The Collector''s arms were bound to its side, but its hands were not. It curled up the finger with the arakka thread attached to it.


    From behind the humanoid, a thread of arakka silk string, grown so thin it was barely visible, pulled taut, reeling back towards the Collector.


    At the end of this string was a monomolecr edge w, and with Sapia, the Collector guided the w right to the humanoid''s head.


    The humanoid reacted with superb senses. He had been thoroughly distracted in immersing himself in the female daemon''s flesh, missing the thin thread, but now he adjusted, immediately thrusting his other arm out to intercept the w.


    The w pierced straight through the humanoid''s gauntleted and immensely durable hand, slicing out through the other side of his hand and gaining rapid distance to his head.


    An aura of gold shed from the humanoid''s head, and as soon as the waves of gold hit the w, it disintegrated, melting away under heat so intense it turned the brittle material into ash in an instant.


    The Collector knew that there was a strong chance that the humanoid would evade this attack.


    Thus, while the humanoid distracted himself dealing with the w, the Collector took that time to act.


    Using Sapia, the Collector snapped off another of its brittle ws and levitated it up, slicing off all five threads binding it, for in trying to capture the Collector alive, these threads had regted their heat down to levels that would not immediately destroy the ws when it came into contact with them.


    Now free, the Collector reached into the dimensional waters, its hand slipping in and causing darkness to fill up its vision as it began interfacing with the hyperspace-essible liquid.

 Chapter 77 - Hyperspace

    The Collector entered into a state of consciousness that was simply that: consciousness. Consciousness in its barest, purest form: the psionic profile. In this state, the Collector could perceive in even greater detail the psionic tethers that swirled within the dimensional waters.


    If there had to be an equivalent to conventional ocr systems, then the Collector would have described the experience as being in the center of a whirlpool of rippling, shining rainbow currents, and lining those currents were psionic tethers: bright white, root-like protrusions that floated up, breaching the surface of the waters and connecting to the material world.


    This space where the Collector''s psionic profile inhabited independent of its physical body was called a Simcra.


    A lesser point in hyperspace meant for creating lower range warp gates.


    By analyzing a specific psionic tether, the Collector could perceive where it led to, and following that would allow for a warp to that very location.


    But the scope and processing power of these waters, this Simcra, was minute.


    A brief analysis of the tethers showed that they reached out only to specific points within this world and its realms, though notably, there were only five independent realms the Collector could sense these tethers linked to.


    The Collector did not require this. It needed to establish a link beyond this world, to the far flung reaches of space where the Collective awaited its call.


    Like all Collector units, the Collector possessed a Dawning Protocol imbued in its psionic profile specifically for this purpose.


    Psionic power was based off the mind''s ability to interact with space and time. If a sufficiently intelligent lifeform conceptualized their star, then though their physical forms remained anchored to their terrestrial space, their minds, their psionic profiles, had crossed light years to perceive that sr body.


    This conceptualization was not merely an image constructed from neurochemical reactions within a processing organ.


    No, there was something inherent within it that was beyond that, beyond even flesh, and this power, psionics as it wasbeled, possessed an origin that eluded even the Collective.


    Of course, unless in extremely rare cases, biological lifeforms did not possess the processing power to have their minds, theirtent psionic energy, manifest any tangible phenomena. Even in the cases they did, it was in minor maniptions of space.


    Pushing and pulling. Infiltrating other psionic profiles. Nothing nearing the level of warp travel.


    Yet with warp-sensitive points that led into Simcra, minor ''holes'' in space whose ripples reached far around them, it was possible for a sufficiently advanced psionic profile to envision a space, and then connect with the Simcra to manifest ess to that ce so long as the Simcra''s ripples epassed the area.


    In this case, this Simcra reached only to specific points in this world.


    But the Collective was perhaps the only lifeform in the universe that understood the Simcra, hyperspace, and psionic power to such a degree that it could ess further into the Simcra and utilize it as a jumping point to reach deeper into the ultimate hyperspace nexus: the Tesseract.


    All Simcra were simply sub-points of the Tesseract: byproducts of its greater spatial ripples.


    Within the hyper-spatial, extradimensional Tesseract whose great ripples epassed the entire known universe, it was possible in theory to reach any point in conceivable space, potentially even beyond it to a great beyond past the known reaches of the universe.


    Thus, the Collective believed psionic power and the Tesseract the greatest means to avoid the inevitable decay of the universe, though as of now, even the Collective''s enormous processing power could only grasp the smallest percentage of the Tesseract.


    Yet, the Collector, though it was simply a shard of the Collective, had programmed within its psionic profile a specific protocol, the Dawning Protocol, that allowed it to manifest a specific psionic programming from that allowed it to ess the Tesseract when it entered any Simcra such as the one it found itself in now.


    The Collector did not have nearly enough processing power on its own to navigate the Tesseract, but the Dawning Protocol imbued within its psionic profile provided first a means to interface with any Simcra to reach deep hyperspace and then input exact coordinates to the Collective and a means to generate a signal to contact them.


    The first part of the Dawning Protocol, the Collector exercised now.


    All the white tendrils in the rainbow waters bent and started totch onto the Collector, and in the next instant, the Collector predicted these psionic tethers would essentially ''catapult'' the Collector''s psionic profile into the Tesseract.


    The rainbow waters faded away in an instant, but what the Collector perceived was no Tesseract.


    The Tesseract was an extradimensional space that did not truly have any geometric formpletely perceivable to an organic lifeform, but to the Collector''s limited psionic profile, it should have manifested in a form of four-dimensional cube.


    Countless cubes linked within each other in constantly shifting spatial dimensions filled with white lines that represented points in space.


    But this was entirely different.


    The Collector''s psionic profile found itself within an infinitely expansive mass of ovepping circr nes, the outlines of these shifting and rippling nes shaded in bright iridescent rainbow and curled like roots.


    An entirely foreign hyperspace. One that the Collector did not even have the slightest beginning of an understanding in how to navigate.


    Would the second part of its Dawning Protocol, the signal to the Collective, even work here?


    What was this space in the first ce? Did not the Tesseract epass the entirety of the known universe?


    The Collector could notprehend this, and its perception of this hyperspace was extremely hazy, the seemingly infinite series of constantly ovepping circr nes flickering and blurring, making them even more difficult to analyze.


    The dimensional waters of the dungeon, the Simcra, did not possess adequate processing power to clearly allow the Collector to interact with this hyperspace.


    But beyond this issuey the fact that this hyperspace was beyond the Collector''s programming.


    It was only through the Dawning Protocol imbued within it that it could navigate the Simcra and hyperspace, allowing it to make decisions that would have taken absolutely no time at all rtive to its physical form.


    Yet, here, in this utterly foreign hyperspace?


    The Dawning Protocol would have immediately allowed the Collector to pinpoint the Collective''s coordinates to send a psionic signal to, but here, the Collector had to manually navigate this infinitelyplex hyperspace.


    And because the Dawning Protocol could not assist the Collector, it drastically reduced its processing power, which also meant that the Collector could no longer guarantee that it was navigating this space in a timespan equivalent to a single instant to its physical form.


    This, during a time where every single second meant the Collector''s potential death at the hands of the humanoid.


    Already, in simply beginning to conceptualize this hyperspace, several seconds might have passed to the Collector''s physical body.


    Perhaps even more time. It was impossible to tell.


    It was an improbability of high degree that the Collector''s physical form remained intact. But it could not continue to push these boundaries of probability much longer.


    The Collector had to make a decision now.


    ==


    "Oh, my dear, my love, what has your new friend done?" eximed the warden as he stared down at his hand.


    Five golden severed threads spooled back into his gloves, and his shing gold eyes flickered as he hung his head low.


    "My dearest Ambrosian Arms severed like this¡­why, that is a sin that even I, with my boundless love for your filthy kind, cannot forgive." A pause.


    "Kr, my dear," said the warden as he switched his gaze, eyeing the daemon child staring listlessly up to the shining cavern ceiling. "You have a name. So must your friend. Tell me, what is it?"


    Kr''s tongue-less mouth gaped open like that of a beached fish''s as her vision blurred and focused in erratic intervals, focusing only on the lightstone crystals above, at their hazy sunny light.


    "You must tell me," said the warden. "I love your kind, I do. That is why when I have finished tasting any one of you, I always remember your names, etch them into my heart with the great vor they give me. I need to know this one''s name before he dies."


    Kr could barely hear the warden''s words. They drifted into her ears as if in slow motion, garbled like they had traveled through water to reach her.


    "Ah, right, I tore out your sinful tongue long ago," said the warden with a nonchnt, remembering shrug. "And I suppose you are too tired of being loved to speak to me in any case."


    The warden looked over to the strange new daemon, one unlike he had ever seen before, but in the end, that did not matter. All of them were his to be loved no matter what. No matter how small or big. Old or young. Even infants that could barely crawl possessed quite the exquisite taste.


    It was an awful tragedy that he would only be able to taste this night child raw, without love marinating its flesh, but s, even he in his boundless love could not forgive anyone from harming his Ambrosian Arms.


    The daemon''srge figure was hunched over the dimensional waters of the dungeon. The warden had feared that perhaps it might have warped out, but it instead strangely remained frozen.


    "I will ask him personally," said the warden as he floated over to the new daemon, his four golden wings of energy shining by his sides.

 Chapter 78 - Remembrance I

    When the warden flew off, Kr''s vision suddenly darkened.


    She thought maybe she was slipping into the dark ce, the ce where people all went when they died, but no, that was not it. She could still see the lightstone crystals and their shine above.


    They were just dimmer because the warden''s own light had been just that bright.


    Kr breathed again. Her body always seized up whenever the warden came near her.


    At first, when she first went into the tower with the shiny men and the shining warden, it had not been like that, but after¡­after the hurt, thousands and thousands of times hurting whenever he came near, whenever he spoke, she, her body just ended up like this when he was here.


    Worthless. Useless.


    Those two words had been engraved into her body and mind over and over and over again, and even though the pain, she got used to with some time, those words, she never did.


    Even now, she was frozen up. She could not move. She could almost feel the blood pooling out from her hand and her foot, and she knew soon, her body would grow cold, and she would go to the dark ce, but even then, she could not move.


    But¡­but she had to.


    Unlike her, that one was not useless.


    Or worthless.


    Unlike her, that one was not meant to exist only to bring misery and pain and suffering to everyone else. She called him that one because she knew in spending time with him that he did not like to be called a monster or a beast, but he had never really told her what he was.


    That one was going to bring the Collective where there were no more differences and hate and love that did nothing but hurt.


    Her vision stopped blurring.


    She grit her teeth and tried to roll to her side and stand up, but she only ended up on her stomach, her breathing tightened against the cold stone floor. She had no hands to lift herself up with, nor did she have the physical strength.


    All she could do was weakly look up and watch the warden put a hand on that one''s back. A gentle touch, but she knew well more than anyone that that gentle touch, that love, would lead to pain and hurt.


    She roused herself up, a weak, flickering purple aura covering her body, and her small, bloody, and broken figure started to float upwards, her arms and legs dangling limp and trickling little streams of blood that pattered on the cracked stone.


    Almost no more mana. Nausea started to well up in her stomach, her vision shook again, but she kept going, kept floating. She neared the warden, his bright light, and she remembered the pain and hurt and froze, but¡­but she just closed her eyes and kept going.


    Eventuall, she felt the warden''s heat, and¡­and¡­


    And what could she do?


    She had no mana for Sapia. Even if she did, she could never have hurt the warden.


    Why was she so worthless? So useless?


    She hovered behind the warden, uncertain, and she knew for certain the warden knew she was there, he just did not care. He did not believe she would ever be able to raise the will to harm him.


    And maybe, maybe just a day ago, that would have been true. But now, now she had to try and fight, because even if she were worthless, that one was not, and at the very least, her worthless self could be part of something better than her.


    She shook her head and bit down on the warden''s arm. Her teeth chipped as they tried to bite down on impossibly hard and dense flesh.


    "Oh, my dear, you¡­have you lost your fear?" said the warden. He stiffened up, demeanor shifting into tant hostility as his lean muscles tensed and his masked face swiveled to face Kr.


    He took his immediate attention off of that one and pped Kr away from his arm.


    She fell straight down to the ground in a crumpled heap, her cheek burst and blood pouring through her tiny teeth. She did not feel much pain, just a tiny pinprick, and she knew she was getting cold and numb and reaching the dark ce.


    "You reject my love?" said the warden as he stood over her. "After all these years epting it? Why?


    Why? Tell me, why? Do you not know that my love is the only thing that gives you value? Without my love granting you exquisite taste, you are nothing.


    Apletely worthless speck of dust that worms around in the dark where no living thing should. You think you have any worth aside from your taste? Do you?


    Do you not remember? Why you came to under my embrace? You were abandoned as a child because your kind sinned against the Common Body and waged war.


    The reason your old teacher, that heretical sorcerer, was purged was because of you, and he believed in you so very much. Your greed and selfishness killed him.


    All you do is cause pain and misery for all around you. You have no right to exist on this world, to breathe the very same air we do.


    You are nothing. Do you understand me?" The warden knelt to Kr''s limp body and ced his masked face close to her ear, his hand stroking strands of dirty blood-soaked hair away from her forehead.


    Suddenly, he shouted in her ear. "NOTHING!"


    The sudden powerful shout sent powerful force crashing through her ears, and she felt the warmth of blood trickle out from them as her hearingpletely faded.


    Her brain rattled and her ears whined and her body got number as she widened her eyes and gaped open her mouth, staring up only at the sunny ceiling again.


    In the corner of her vision, the warden shook his head at her and walked away.


    All her senses were taken from her. The world was soundless. Her touch was numbing. Her sight was shaking blurring, mixing the colors and shapes in front of her all into one nauseating slurry.


    She closed her eyes to blink.


    It was hard to open them again.


    But that made sense. It made sense she could not even do something as simple as blinking. She was nothing. She was worthless.


    She knew the warden was right. He told her again and again she lived only to make others suffer and feel pain and misery, and she knew he was right, because for so long, all she wanted to do was see others hurt like her.


    She was not good. She was not nice.


    She was not anything.


    Mother would have been disappointed in her. She was always nice, even if it was hard to remember her.


    Why was it, though? She would have liked to remember mother. Even just her face. But it was so hard. All she could remember was mother leaving her, and that was it.


    But she could not me her mother. After all, she was worthless. Her existence had no meaning but to cause pain and suffering. Mother probably knew that and threw her away.


    Even then, she wanted to remember-


    Remember¡­


    Remember¡­


    She remembered-


    __


    Kr clung tight to her mother''s side as her mother flew through the air, purple trails of magical energy moving her this way and that. The air was hot. Almost burning, and Kr went into a coughing fit, burying her face into her mother''s chest.


    "Just a little more, my dearest moon," said mother, her voice ever so strong and calm at the same time. Her body was warm,fortably warm unlike the hot air everywhere which cracked Kr''s lips and singed the tips of her hair.


    The flickering and crackling of fires raged everywhere below. Kr was scared, but even then, she was still curious. She looked up.


    The eternal moon shone above, one half of it pale and silver and the other half drenched in angry red.


    Then she looked down.


    A vastndscape of cracked earth filled with twisting spires of stone, canyons, and rock formations that floated in haphazard patterns everywhere, defying gravity. This was Zerul, the home she had forgotten, the ream of the daemons and vampyrs.


    There was fire everywhere.


    Kr was high up enough where the fires looked like a red coat of shimmering hairs covering the rocky ground.


    Like Kerberus'' fiery hair. She wondered why mother did not take Kerberus with them. She missed him and his wagging tail and always happy eyes already.


    She had told him to stay in the room and that she would be back soon. She strained her eyes and found far away, almost a ck dot now, the big house she lived in.


    A castle, people said it was.


    There was fire on there too.


    Bright lights of many different colors shone everywhere with the fire. Greens and reds and yellows and blues.


    Then, all of a sudden, it was like the world had turned white.


    Kr saw as a huge burst of light swallowed up her home and everything around it. She closed her eyes from the blinding light.


    A gust of strong wind buffeted mother, rocking Kr, and she hunkered down, holding her mother''s waist tight.


    Force traveled through Kr, rattling her very bones, and she whimpered in fear. The sound of the earth rumbling made her feel uneasy, like the whole world was about copse.


    When Kr opened her eyes again, she saw the ck dot of the castle again, but this time, it floated in the air atop an enormous craterrger than some of the canyons below.


    "Another zero-bomb," whispered mother under her breath as she righted herself in the air. Kr balled her mother''s robes in her fists in worry.


    Mother only ever talked to herself when she needed to think hard about something important.


    "All seven courts disabled. Six out of seven dukes dead. Castle shielding down now. Only a matter of time before they get to him and the copse begins," said mother.


    Her purple eyes narrowed as her thel, almost as long as her own body, wrapped around Kr, holding her tight before it linked with her own thel. "How much time do I have? Three minutes? No, two. Have to go now, while they''re distracted with him.


    Have to go faster. Airspace won''t be free for much longer."


    Mother put a soft hand to Kr''s head. "My moon, hold to me tight. You might get dizzy."


    "Where are we going, mother? Will¡­will wee back for Kerberus?" said Kr.


    "Hmm." Mother''s body tensed up for a second, like she was thinking about something bad, before she rxed. "Mother is taking you some ce safe and far away. Kerberus¡­he''s a good boy.


    He will wait for you. We can''t take him now, but maybe, when you''re big enough, you cane back and take him."


    Kr nodded, feeling mother''s calm infuse into her through their link.


    Mother started to fly downwards, her wings pping once,unching her through a series of ash clouds as she headed to the ground. Mother was fast. Very fast to the point where Kr could only see dizzying blurs of color and feel the wind scream and whistle around her when mother flew.


    But mother stopped abruptly soon.


    "Curse the gods above," muttered mother, and Kr looked up to see her face twisted in rage. Kr was not afraid.


    Mother got angry at other people a lot, but never, ever at Kr. She followed mother''s gaze downwards, and her eyes widened in wonder.


    "Wow," said Kr in curiosity.


    There were¡­there were so many things here she had only seen in her picture books.


    A huge floating ball of metal and circuits floating on tails of fiery engine exhaust. A dwarven gunship. Kr had read about them just a bit. She was just six, but she knew that the gunships could hold over five hundred people, and that they could beat up strong monsters all by themselves.


    Beside it, a tree just asrge floated in the air. A dozen rings of varying shining lights surrounded the tree, making it float. Kr also knew this. It was a faerie skytree. But she had not gotten to learn about the faeries much yet: that was for next week''s lesson.


    But¡­but what were these things all doing here, in Zerul where nobody usually ever visited?


    "All flight-capable sorcerers are to be part of the aerial assault against the daemon king''s castle," came a projected male voice from the gunship. Several huge barrels dotting the metal sphere groaned as they pointed to mother and Kr. "Identify yourself."


    Kr knew these things, cannons, she remembered they were, were very dangerous and meant to hurt and kill monsters, so why were they aimed at her?


    "Mother-," she began in worry.


    "Calm, my moon, calm," said mother, and Kr nodded, almost dozing off as calm filled her mind.


    Before she could feel sleep fully overtake her, she heard mother whispering to herself.


    "One C-ss gunship with, hm, let''s say twopromised engines, judging by their sputtering. One evergreen skytree with forty, no fifty faeries managing it. All of them weak." Mother nodded to herself and Kr caught a glimpse of her pale face under her hood before she fell asleep.


    Mother''s mouth was bared open in a half-smile, long fangs protruding in menacing anticipation.

 Chapter 79 - Remembrance II

    Kr woke up in her mother''s arms, and she could no longer feel the whistle of winds buffeting her.


    But everything was so much hotter. She coughed as she took in air that felt like it burned her insides.


    "Easy breaths, my moon. Calm. You are unused to the air outside the pce, and all the destruction has driven up ash and mold that has made it even worse. But you are strong, you can handle it. Calm," said mother.


    Kr felt calm flow into her again, and she nodded.


    She looked down and realized they were on the ground now. She looked up at her mother''s smiling, gentle face, and behind her, far in the sky, there were huge chunks of broken metal wreathed with crackling electricity and big shards of wood floating in the air.


    And¡­and Kr thought she could see bodies between the debris, but before she could begin to make them out, mother blocked her view with her face and gave her a kiss on the forehead.


    "We are here, my moon," said mother, and when she drew back, there were small tears lining the sides of her amethyst eyes. "Just a little more."


    A little more until what? Kr wanted to ask this, but she still felt so tired, and before she could rouse herself, mother moved again.


    Mother floated just a little bit above the ground as she passed under an arch of rock. She put her sandaled, wed feet down on the shadow the arch casted, atop arge growth of glowing ck fungal matter, and the matter parted to reveal a deep pit.


    They floated down the pit, inplete and utter darkness, until mother''s body jolted as shended on solid ground.


    Kr saw in the darkness ahead a seemingly unending tunnel, but that distance shortened quickly as mother flew forwards at high speeds.


    Mother stopped a minuteter in front a tall human man built wide and sturdy like a boulder.


    It was the very first time Kr had ever seen a human, and she widened her eyes in wonder.


    He was wrapped up in robes very much like mother''s.


    While mother''s robes were ck, the man''s was brown like the dirt and speckled with a patch with six stars on it, matching his grizzled, dirt-caked and bearded face.


    Despite how scary he looked, Kr could see his eyes were sad. Very sad as they looked down at mother.


    "Thorian," said mother with a nod as she brought Kr down to the ground. "Say hello, little moon."


    Kr nodded and waddled up to Thorian, not even reaching his knee, and bowed her head politely.


    "Hello," she said, feeling shy and nervous. Was this the right thing to say to humans?


    "She has not heard of me?" said Thorian to mother. A hint of disappointment leeched into his voice.


    "Of course, she has. You think I wouldn''t let her know about my boneheaded partner in the Order?" said mother.


    "Those were¡­better times," said Thorian. He knelt down and put a rough, hard hand on Kr''s head, and she recoiled backwards because it felt like a brick was scraping her head.


    She hid behind mother.


    "She''s just shy. She loves new people and new things," said mother. "But she hasn''t talked to anyone that doesn''t look like her. It might take some time for her to adjust and talk to others, but I know you of all people can teach her that. Sometimes, I think you talk too much."


    Mother paused. "Though I suppose we have not talked face to face in how many years is it?"


    "Ten years. Not since the Red Night," said Thorian. He shook his head and trembled, his cracked lip quivering.


    Mother walked forwards and embraced Thorian, patting his broad back once before pulling away. "Don''t go crying on me like this. It truly does not suit those muscles and looks of yours. Come now."


    "Khnna, do you¡­you do not have to do this. You are a decorated sorcerer with eight rings: one of few Zeniths across all the realms. Your knowledge and power could rival the Ascended.


    If you exin to them like you exined to me that you were being controlled, no, that all the daemons were being controlled, then would they not grant you lenience?"


    Mother pointed to Thorian''s head. "Your hair is thinning and graying."


    "Khnna, please, be serious-," began Thorian.


    "That means you are old. Both of us are nearing sixty, even though time may show its marks far slower on my kind," said mother. "You and I both know from experience that Common Life does not easily forgive and forget.


    The Red Night ughtered countless millions across all Common Realms. Even Aetheria itself came under attack.


    My kind will never be forgiven." Mother sighed, but then nodded down to Kr with a smile. "But she is meless and miraculously unmarked. And she is mine.


    At the very least, I want her to have a happy life resembling something normal."


    "You can stille with me," said Thorian. "That mark of yours, I swear I can find a way to erase it."


    Mother put a finger to her forehead, where a ck crescent moon marky etched. The same that was on most of the important people mother talked to back in the castle.


    "I am a genius among geniuses, I will not shy away from acknowledging my skills," said mother. "But this, even I cannot find a means to remove. It is divine magic from a Gatekeeper ¨C there is hardly anything that can touch this.


    The best even I could do was sever my will partially from it so that I was no longer under the thrall of Kinthas.


    But it is already pre-ordained. When Kinthas falls, so do the marked. You know this. You have always known it. I told you from the very beginning, the very first time I reached out to you to n this a year ago."


    "I have some sway with the Sorcerer''s Order now, Khnna, I can make something work with you. With you and me, I know it," said Thorian. "I am privy to the higher nnings among the Order.


    This full-scale invasion may seem like vengeful retaliation, and I do acknowledge there is much vengeance among the armies, but we ultimately are not here to destroy Kinthas.


    I am sure you have thought about this too. Kinthas is a Gatekeeper. Without him managing one of the Five Origin Gates, the world will fall out of bnce. We are here to capture him alive, and then we are to capture at the very least one of you from the origin-touched royal bloodlines."


    Thorian pointed a big finger to mother. "Like you. I can have them keep you alive. You daughter, too, and then we can remove the mark."


    "Thorian, you know this is idiotic," said mother. Her words were harsh, but her tone was soft. "Kinthas is king of daemons, lord of the seven courts, Gatekeeper of Chaos, and wielder of Duskfall.


    And he ispletely and utterly insane.


    You think he will ever submit willingly? You think the Common Realms can afford to try to keep him alive?


    Five realms. Five world''s worth of military might. The full might of the Sorcerer''s Order with eleven Zeniths among them. The Adventurer''s League including the vast majority of their seven to ten star adventurers. The Ascended. And even the aid of the avatars from the twelve gods of the Protectorate.


    All of this against Kinthas in his full manifest with the curse of Undeath fueling him." Mother shrugged. "The odds are five to one in favor of Kinthas, I should say."


    "Srion is with us," said Thorian. "And he is also in his full manifest. Wielding also the Dawnrise.


    With the shielding around the castle down, Srion should now be making his move.


    We have time, Khnna, time to decide."

 Chapter 80 - Remembrance III

    "Then the odds are simply even," said mother. "Tell me, Thorian, say that Kinthas is captured and restrained. Say that Kr and I doe under the Common Authority.


    What happens then? My people have already been excised from the Common Body. We may as well be monsters. We will be slowly exterminated.


    They may treat me with dignity, but in the end, I will be nothing more than breeding stock popping out more origin bearers capable of taking Kinthas''s ce as Gatekeeper.


    And you know Aetheria will make sure that any new Gatekeeper of Chaos will now be groomed and controlled such that they will never rebel again. Or ever think for themselves.


    And who do you think would be the most suitable Gatekeeper? The most innocent mind to mold?"


    Mother looked down to Kr and shook her head. "Kr will have any choice in her lifepletely stripped from her as the gods force her to be nothing more than a battery for their games.


    Is this truly what you desire for us?"


    "No, it is not, I-," Thorian grit his teeth and shook his head. He mmed his fist against the tunnel wall in frustration, shattering the rock clean. "I just want you to live, Khnna. I just want you to live. That is all I have ever wanted.


    I should never have let you go back to Zerul.


    I-I should have told you how I felt back then, and I should have kept you with me."


    "You know that would not have worked between us," said mother. She put a hand to Thorian''s roughened cheek, and therge man leaned into the touch with closed eyes.


    Kr stood by her mother''s legs ever more confused, unable to process what she was hearing.


    She had not the slightest clue what they talked about, only that it was very serious, and by the emotions she could feel from mother, she could feel a pit forming in her stomach as she expected something bad to happen.


    A sudden crash.


    Light filled the tunnel behind them, and Kr leaped behind mother.


    Mother turned around, fangs bared and eyes alight with power. Thorian too tensed up and balled his great fists.


    Under a pile of falling rubble, a shining man knelt. He had the helmet and legwear of a knight, but the rest of his muscled and scarred body was bare. Six golden wings of energy shone from his sides as he stood up.


    Around his heart was a golden nine-pointed sun sigil with the numeral IV imprinted within it.


    "Survivors, eh?" said the shining man. He spoke with enthusiasm leeching his every word. "But you will live no more! For it is I, Exousiae to bring the light of justice to you all!"


    The shining man struck a pose, flexing his muscles as he stood up ramrod straight and thrust his arms to the sky.


    Mother did not waste time. She put one hand forwards, and then the other until both hands touched together. They shed purple.


    "Ultima Force 1: Infinity," she chanted.


    Space distorted around the shining man''s chest, and in an instant, he was gone, pushed away until he reached the end of the tunnel, and then, he smashed through even further, his brawny figure used as a battering ram to drill through solid rock.


    Kr did not even have the time to blink before the man waspletely gone. The hole he had drilled drilled through was outlined with shining, heat-wave curled molten orange.


    "That should send him out close to the upper atmosphere," said mother with a deep sigh, her hands trembling from slight exertion. "But he is an Upper Ray. That alone will not do him in. He will be back."


    "An Upper Ray...," Thorian blinked. "How did he know we were even here?"


    "Likely chance," said mother. "You said it yourself.


    Srion is here with his full manifest. A battle between two full manifest Gatekeepers is so far beyond the scope of anything below that all the other forces probably withdrew, the Rays included.


    Likely to pick off any survivors or runners. And what better ce to target than one with active warp energy readings? I ced several warp crystals as decoys throughout the realm, but the Rays are fast.


    And it looks like we got unlucky."


    Mother turned to Thorian. "You stand no chance against Ray Four or even any of the Lower Rays.


    You cannot be spotted again, either, lest you be executed for consorting with us.


    There is no more time now.


    The warp crystal I hid is at the end of the tunnel. One time use, so you do not have to worry about anyone following.


    Go, Thorian, and take her."


    Thorian nodded with urgency and knelt down, reaching his big hand out to Kr.


    Kr shrunk away, scared.


    Thorian stopped and shook his head as he saw Kr''s fear. "I-I don''t know if I can do this, Khnna. I have never raised a child before. Without you, I can''t-,"


    Mother put a hand on Thorian''s shoulder. "Of all the things to worry about now, you choose your potential parenting skills?"


    Mother smiled. "You have a good heart, Thorian. That is all you need. And you will not be alone. I will be with you."


    Mother knelt to Kr''s level and picked her up. "Because some part of me will always be with her."


    Kr watched in panic as mother held her out to Thorian, and she clung to her mother''s arms, grabbing her robes right.


    "Calm, little moon, calm," said mother, and Kr felt calm.


    But the moment Thorian took her in hisrge, rough and ufortable arms, she began to panic again.


    "I-, where am I going? Mother, I-I don''t want to go! Not with him!" Kr squirmed in Thorian''s hands, kicking his brick-like chest to no avail.


    "Hush, child. Your mother is right. We must go," said Thorian as he started to move away from mother, but Kr kept squirming as she stared at mother''s receding back. "Why? Did¡­did I do something wrong? Is there something wrong with me?


    Mother, I promise I''ll fix it. I''ll be good, I promise!"


    Mother turned around again and came to Kr''s side, and for a moment Kr was hopeful.


    "You are going to use Primordial Magic?" said Thorian as he looked down to mother''s arms. Both her arms were covered in shadowy, flickering lines.


    "To kill an Upper Ray, I must. And I might as well use Chaos before the gate closes or gets taken over," said mother.


    She put a hand to Kr''s cheek.


    "My little moon, there is nothing wrong with you. Do not let anyone tell you otherwise," said mother. She put her thel to Kr''s, and Kr felt calm and sleepiness wash over her. "Mother has to go now, and I wish I could be there for you, I do with all my heart and all my love, but I have to stay.


    Thorian will take care of you. Make sure to listen to him. He will be good to you, that, I can promise. And look-," Mother raised her arms up to Kr''s dozing eyes. She looked at the pretty pattern of shadowy lines running up and down her pale skin.


    "You have these too. We are born with it. This is proof you are special. Born special and destined for greatness. When you get big like me, you will be strong, I know it.


    For now, mother will be putting you to sleep and sealing your memories, but that is not because mother hates you.


    It is because mother knows you love her very much, and that if you keep remembering her, it will only hurt more. It will also seal your power and keep you hidden from bad people.


    When you get older, my little moon, when you are ready, that power will be yours again, and by staying here, I want to give you the opportunity to have a choice in how you use it.


    When the timees you do remember me, I hope you will find it in your heart to forgive me."


    Kr could barely hear her mother at this point, and before she dozed off intoplete sleep, she felt mother''s warm lips on her forehead.


    "Goodbye."

 Chapter 81 - The Choice To Fight

    Kr coughed as her eyes opened again, her squared ck pupils widening nearly to circles. She¡­she remembered.


    The strongest thing she felt right now was the memory of her mother''s warm hold, and that was enough to push away the numbness and cold that had creeped into her.


    She could feel her body again, feel her mind think again and her sight steady, and she held onto that warmth, that embrace, with all her might and love because she knew that if she did not, it would fade away like an ember in a gust, and when that fire died, she would go to do the dark ce.


    But she could not go to the dark ce. Not now, not yet, even if it meant that with the cold and numb gone, she could start feeling the hurt again. Hurt everywhere. On her one remaining arm and its pulped hand, her mangled foot, bruised chest, bruised everything, and broken ears.


    She was broken everywhere, even more than before, but she¡­she was still strong, she knew it now, because mother never lied, and mother had never rejected her.


    With a wheezing breath, she willed herself up with Sapia.


    A purple aura wreathed her tiny, bleeding body and floated her up, jerking her down every so often as the aura flickered and her mind and mana struggled to keep up. She weakly raised her head up to look back up at that one and the shining warden.


    "Oh¡­you areing back," said the warden. "All this, for your dear friend? Boring, my dear, quite boring. It would have been far better to your taste for you to have tried running in fear with that broken body of yours.


    I would dare to say that perhaps your taste has decayed too much for me to enjoy now, but we shall see soon."


    The warden knew that the daemon could no longer hear, so he waved her towards him with eager gestures of his gold-tipped fingers. "For now,e,e! Witness as my love blooms once more!


    And know this, my love, if your taste is unworthy of my pte, this too shall be your fate!"


    Kr could not hear anything he said, but she knew he was saying something. Telling her she was broken, probably.


    Worthless.


    As she inched forwards, the shining man''s light grew brighter and brighter, and with it, the memories of pain and hurt came, but this time, she did not look away, even when it was hard.


    Because¡­because she knew now that she was not worthless. It did not matter what the shining man said, what anyone said.


    All her life, she had doubted whether anyone had wanted her, but that was gone now.


    She was strong, mother had said so. She could feel the power starting to swell through her body.


    She had the power to change this situation in front of her. All she had to do was take the choice to fight.


    But even knowing she had strength, power, she still wavered as she drew nearer and nearer to the shining man''s uncaring form. That light, it reminded her of the hurt, how it had taken control from her and her body.


    She still made her choice. To fight like she was meant to.


    Now more than ever, she felt and valued those words from that one. Those words were enough to let her choose.


    She squinted, bit her lip, held her breath because even a breath at this point took up too much energy, and kept moving forwards, always¡­forwards.


    Still, she was so far away.


    No, she was not far, she was just a few meters from the shining man, his light almost blinding her, but she was just so slow and so hurt.


    She watched as the shining man mmed his hand into that one''s back.


    The shining man shuddered in joy before retrieving a blood-slicked arm with arge, beating heart resting atop his t palm, raising the organ up to the sky and staring at it with utterly enthralled, distracted eyes.


    Rising panic struck her. Was she¡­was she toote?


    No. Calm. She remembered her mother''s calm. She could still sense that one''s life through the remnants of their thel tether.


    She moved forward to the shining man'' turned back as he lifted up his mask to take in blood trickling from the heart down his hands.


    Go, she told herself.


    Go.


    Forwards.


    The warden squeezed the enormous heart beating in his hand, letting a small stream of deeply red blood hit his wide open and eager mouth. The blood hit his tongue, and the moment it did so, his triumphant smile faded as he dropped the heart and doubled over.


    "Such¡­such foul taste," cursed the warden as he spat the blood out in a steaming, heated little puddle. "This is not the taste of a night child¡­what¡­what is this?"


    Until finally, Kr was there, right behind the shining''s man''s back, but¡­but she had no more strength. Her single arm dangled to the floor as did her legs. She had no strength to drive them up, not physical strength nor magical power.


    She knew¡­she knew deep down that using this power was dangerous, that it would hurt anywhere she channeled it. But for once in her life, she was free to make her own choice about her body, and she had decided to fight.


    She closed her eyes and channeled mother''s magic to her head. ck wreaths of magical energy arced and crackled at her forehead, growing her horns out, and then, she struck into the shining man''s back, closing her eyes tight so she did not see his burning light but instead felt thefort of the dark.


    __


    The Collector registered severe damage to its physical body. Damage significant enough to hinder its processing capabilities here in this foreign hyperspace nexus.


    The already blurry images of iridescent rainbow circr nes grew even fuzzier, wrapped up in visual static, and the Collector knew that it had to leave.


    To the Collector''s own consciousness, time had passed for but a mere second, but the sheer breadth of information needed to process this enormous density of information across the alien hyperspace nexus must have caused even one second to feel as long as a minute, perhaps longer, to its physical body.


    In that single second that the Collector spent in this hyperspace nexus, however, though it had not managed to locate the Collective, it had still sent out a powerful signal.


    A signal that would continue to travel across space until it reached the Collective, though in what amount of time this would ur, the Collector could not begin to calcte with theck of given information.


    This was all the Collector could do for now. Already, it had spent too much time initiating the signal.


    Now, it was time to escape.


    The Collector''s psionic profile deactivated the first part of the Dawning Protocol that propelled it into the hyperspace nexus. The many white psionic tethers anchored to the Collector''s consciousness pulled back like a spooling thread, drawing it into the Simcra again.


    The hyperspace nexus and its countless converging patterns of circr ns disappeared in warped, light-speckled darkness first.


    Then the Simcra''s environment of white, tendril-like psionic roots reaching out to and connecting a simpler series of rainbow roots emerged again.


    Closer now in connection to its physical body, the Collector couldy out a visual of its physical body through an out-of-body point of view in front of its consciousness.


    Thus, it witnessed that the opposing humanoid had torn out the Collector''s heart. The female daemon specimen was behind the humanoid, but the Collector calcted that at thebat capacity it had witnessed her before possessing and her current injuries, she possessed a 0% chance of affecting the humanoid in any way.


    The Collector understood that without having made immediate contact with the Collective, its directive to survive and consume was still in ce. It yet possessed the opportunity to grow stronger and devour worthy foes.


    Thus, it prioritized its survival once more, calcting a means of escape from this predicament.


    It possessed two more hearts, but the loss of the main heart, the main core, involved such a massive immediate loss of magical and physicalbat capability that it immediately began searching for an exit point.


    Psionic tethers wrapped around the Collector''s consciousness extended outwards,tching onto various roots, and analyzed. Here in the smaller scale Simcra, the Collector could analyze and make decisions in the order of a tenth of a second.


    Analysis of the possible warp points indicated areas that generally corresponded to points near goblin settlements across four realms.


    The Collector fine-tuned the analysis to filter out warp points that were near too many life forms by assessing how many psionic profile signatures clustered around each point.


    One of these points was near an enormous point of psionic energy.


    Likely a ''Warp Temple'' as the female daemon specimen had described prior. The Collector filed the location of this area into its memory banks for it was entirely possible that utilizing the far greater psionic energy of this area would allow for easier analysis of the hyperspace nexus.


    But for now, the Collector could not afford to go anywhere near this point, for it was utterly packed with life forms.


    The Collector would have to immediately enter into a metamorphosis state to heal its wounds, and it required the least amount of interference possible.


    The area it therefore chose to warp to was still within this realm, but a vast distance away towards the northern hemisphere.


    Here, the density of life forms was drastically lower than in any of the other warp points.


    Taking this into ount, the Collector locked in its warp. Glowing white tendrils on one of the rainbow roots rushed forwards andtched onto the Collector, initiating the warp sequence.


    As the warp began, the Collector noted something immensely curious: the disappearance of the powerful humanoid''s presence.

 Chapter 82 - Alone

    Kr felt power rush into her horns and out, into the shining man.


    This was not fully her own power, it came from somewhere else, somewhere very, very strong, but it was still her that channeled it, and she output as much as she could without holding back.


    When she opened her eyes, she could see the shining man again, except¡­except he was dimmer.


    His light was gone, and his golden wings were turning ck.


    The man stumbled backwards and fell to the ground as his left leg began to disintegrate into nothingness, a flickering edge of shadow traveling up from his leg and devouring his body as it moved, threatening to erase his body utterly out of existence.


    "I¡­I am fading away? Disappearing?" The warden watched as his leg crumbled away, and then the darkness began to gnaw at this waist. "N-no! No, no, no, no, no! My jailers¡­my jailers¡­they will save me, they will heal me!


    While the sun is still shining, yes, yes, they will yet save me!"


    With that, the warden pped his darkening wings of energy, sending his crumbling body away into the transit point leading out of the throne room.


    This left Kr alone. She did not know what the warden said, but she knew he had felt fear, and that he had run. It made her smile.


    For so very long, she had been so very afraid of him and all the hurt, thinking he was something so strong and shining and beyond her, but in the end, he was just as scared as she was of the dark ce.


    He was not special. He never had been. None of his words meant anything.


    She copsed onto the stone floor.


    It was cold even though it should have been hot from the shining man''s light.


    Maybe¡­maybe because of the magic. She did not know exactly what it was. Just that it had made her strong for just a second, and that it had given her a choice to fight, and that she had taken it.


    Oh¡­


    Now the cold and numbness wasing back. Shey on her back and watched the ceiling of light crystals again. The ceiling was breaking apart, the sunny light of the crystals fading and flickering as darkness began to creep in.


    Everything was breaking. Dust and debris and breaking shards of crystals began to fall everywhere as huge cracks started to web around the stone floor, shattering the throne at the center.


    She turned her sight away from the decay. Things were getting dark and blurry again.


    She felt cold.


    Cold and...alone.


    She did not want to go to the dark ce. Because there, she would be so alone. Always alone.


    She wanted warmth. She turned her face to the other side, towards that one, and here, she felt warmth.


    That one''s heart still beat in front of her on the ground where the shining man had dropped it.


    With ast bit of energy, she crawled up to the heart and hugged it, slumping her tired, heavy head on its warm, gentle beating. The heart beat slower, and her breathing grew slow with it, and she smiled.


    Mother¡­was this her? It felt like her warmth.


    But now, she was the one holding mother. Because now, she had proven she was strong, strong enough to be the one holding and taking care of others.


    "I forgive you," said Kr, her paling lips mouthing the words. Her tongue made no sound, but it would not have made a difference to her deaf ears.


    She could feel light and warmth radiate around her, and maybe, she thought this was what happened before she went to the dark ce. She did not want to be alone there, so she hugged mother tight.


    Then, there was cold. She could feel mother disappearing from her grasp, and the cold filled in the void where warmth once was.


    No. She did not want to be alone. Not here. Not in the dark ce.


    Then a voice that rang in her head, and even though it was murky, she still knew it came from that one.


    Had he¡­had he joined her into the dark ce?


    Suddenly, she felt warmer again, and she opened her eyes.


    ==


    The Collector stared down at the female daemon specimen. Shey atop a bed of thick snow. Howling winds packed with clusters of ice raged all around,promising visuals and dropping the temperatures dangerously below the freezing point of water.


    This was where the Collector had warped to.


    A harsh environment unsuited for its current form that utilized various insect bases that simply could not survive here.


    It had to metamorphose soon and choose a more appropriate form.


    Still, this female daemon specimen-


    The Collector knelt down by her.


    ''Return my heart to me,'' said the Collector, but the daemon could only listlessly look up to it.


    The severity of her injuries was too much.


    A lost hand, arm, and foot. Several broken ribs. Acerated lung. Severe blood loss.


    Not to mention the harshness of this environment. The blood that pooled out from the female''s wounds froze over in seconds.


    She was soon to expire. Already, she had trouble even perceiving the Collector''s thoughts.


    The Collector knelt down to her side and took its heart from her hands.


    This was its main heart.


    Without it, the Collector lost ess to any of its magic, rendering it drastically weaker than normal, not to mention the severity of the physical wound itself.


    It had stemmed life-threatening blood loss by internal maniption of its muscles andpensation with its two other hearts, but this was not enough.


    The Collector calcted it possessed two minutes of activity before it rapidly expired.


    Yet, the Collector attempted an operation. It ced the heart in the cavity it had been torn from, and in doing so, it could feel faint hints of magical energy still tethered from the organ to the rest of its body.


    Using these small remnants, the Collector circted using Sapia minor blood flow to the heart, eventually building that minute flow back up to something strong enough to gain minute ess to its magical capabilities again.


    It rooted the heart in the cavity with makeshift Sapia structures, though it determined that any usage of mana for other procedures was liable to sever this delicate operation.


    Still, the Collector put a hand towards the female specimen and attempted a minor cirction of bodily processes through the female daemon''s body using its Sapia. A faint aura of purple energy transferred between the Collector and the specimen, their link easing this process.


    Blood flow resumed within the specimen.


    This would not save her, but it might grant her some minute amount of time to potentially exin the usage of the magic she had utilized to defeat the humanoid.


    The Collector had only observed remotely. It had not been consciously there to sense the nature of the power. It only understood that it operated simrly to the aged sorcerer from the tower''s magic, his ''Chaos'' as it were.


    Though far more powerful. The two could not even begin to bepared in terms of the sheer density of magical energy that went into them.


    Even now, the Collector could sense tiny remnants of that power from around the daemon specimen''s head. Shadowy ck circuits lined themselves across her face, running up her pale skin to fully grown, sharp horns.


    An oppressively powerful presence emanated from these circuits in an even more overwhelming pressure than what the phosphorescent humanoid could muster. The power had been vastly too much for the daemon''s body to handle.


    Her head was beginning to disintegrate, the edges of her hair and horns king away into ash. Cracks began to line her cheeks, reaching into her eyes and making her blind.


    Regardless, the Collector knew that by consuming the daemon specimen, it could gain a better understanding of this phenomenon. Taking in her core directly would allow for a greater analysis of what was within, far greater than what the Collector had been able to glean from by devouring a hand.


    The Collector reached a wed finger down to the female daemon''s small heart. It had to tear the organ out soon before the disintegration reached it and potentially spread to the Collector.


    The female specimen managed to reach out and hold her remaining hand around the Collector''s finger in a spurt of energy that should not have been possible by any calctive standards.


    The Collector heard her voice.


    ''There...there you are.''


    The Collector stopped. The female daemon was too deteriorated to control the output of her emotions through their psionic link, and the Collector was too weakened to limit this either.


    It felt relief from her.


    Happiness.


    Then, sadness.


    ''I''m going to the dark ce, aren''t I?''


    The Collector understood what she meant through the simplified messaging of their psionic link. It did not tear her heart away immediately, even as the disintegration began to spread from her face to her neck. It gave her time.


    ''Yes,'' said the Collector.


    ''I¡­I don''t want to go there. I don''t want to be alone.''


    The Collector did not respond.


    ''I don''t want to go to the dark ce. I want to go there. The ce you told me about.''


    ''You wish to enter the Collective.''


    ''Yes. Yes. That''s it. You¡­you told me about it. There is no pain there, right?''


    ''No.''


    ''There¡­there''s no hate¡­''


    ''No.''


    ''Lonely. Will¡­will I...be alone?''


    ''No. You will be enshrined within a greatness upied by many that have been worthy.


    You will not be alone.


    In time, I myself will join the greatness of this unity.''


    The specimen smiled, and then grew still. Her hand dropped from the Collector''s finger. She had expired, her neural functioning nearlypletely deteriorated by the disintegration of her brain. Soon enough, the rest of her body would follow.


    The Collector reached into her chest and withdrew her heart. It stood up on its serpentine tail, looking at the tiny little thing slowly stopping its beating in the center of its palm.


    Raging, ice-filled winds howled around a vastndscape of snowy, barren ice. In the midst of it, there stood alone the Collector, staring down at the tiny red dot in its hand as crystals of ice began to clump over it.

 Chapter 83 - High Council Meeting

    Winter of 1561 Post-Convergence


    In the Guild of Dwarka, one of the major cities of the Sundan Empire ¨C


    __


    A Guild was the haven of any adventurer and a staple in any major city across every single realm.


    Among the many often vastly different peoples and cultures of the Common Realms, if there had to be one thing that connected them all, it was the presence of guilds.


    Large, domed buildings that functioned as training grounds, living quarters, hospices, and, most importantly, information hubs for picking up contracts and reporting them all at once. Ordained and guarded by Common Law set down by the gods themselves.


    For the Adventurer''s League and its sister organization the Sorcerer''s Order were divinely founded and responsible for fending against the cmitous threats of monsters and undead respectively.


    Constant defense against the World Dungeons and their unending spawning of monsters.


    Constant surveince against Null Zones and their tendency to spread the Undead Curse.


    Without the League and the Order to face these threats, civilization would have ended long ago. The League and Order therefore transcended the differences between borders.


    And in the highest point of a certain guild''s dome, there stood a meeting room. Carved from stone of a grey and muted shade lined in a bare, austere circr construction. A round table of equally simple stone build circled this room with seven stone seats surrounding it.


    This was the meeting room of the High Councilprised of the greatest authorities within the Adventurer''s League.


    Upon the head of each seat, there was carved a singlerge sigil, each different from the other.


    On one seat, there was a sigil of a sword to represent the seat of the Leaguemaster of the Adventurer''s League.


    On the seat opposite to that one, a sigil marked by a staff denoted a spot reserved for a Zenith of the Sorcerer''s Order.


    The rest of the sigils on the seats followed simr dynamics, though they symbolized seats for the representatives of the Common Realms instead.


    A sigil of a simple circle for Terra, realm of the humans and their many tribes.


    A sigil of three straight lines for Mercia, realm of the Dwarves.


    A sigil of a tree for Foraoise, realm of the Fae and Elves.


    A sigil of three triangles connected together for Xin, realm of the feathered Karasi, scaled Yin, and furred Hwaran.


    A sigil of a wave crest for Alo, realm of the mysterious Aumakan that are said to swim in a world filled only with water. Once, this sigil would have been marked with a crescent moon for Zerul, realm of the daemons and vampyrs.


    And finally, separate from the table and carved into a throne of rock that towered over everything else, was a sigil of seven interlocked rings to represent Aetheria, realm of the gods.


    The throne room was dark, illuminated only by the glowing visages of figures that sat around the round table, each filling their respective seat at the table though notably, there was no figure seated upon the throne meant for Aetheria.


    At the entrance of this room kneeled a young man. He notably had only but one arm, and that was crossed over his heart in a traditional salute of honor.


    "We have heard enough," said Ferdiad. He sat upon the Leaguemaster''s seat.


    His voice projected outwards in a powerful, stern tone that had the capacity to equally inspire or rouse fear. "Go to the hospice and take some rest. We will discuss this matter among ourselves."


    "Understood, Leaguemaster," said the young man as he nodded, stood up, bowed, then left.


    A sliding door of stone closed behind him, clicking in shut and sending a crackle of magical energy streaking out throughout the room, preventing any hostile, prying magic from entering.


    Feriad put a carapaced hand to his sharp chin, the mandibles at the sides of his gaunt face clicking together. He did this from thefort of his own underground burrow in Foraoise, but his magical projection in the meeting room mimicked his movements.


    "You have all heard his testimony," said Ferdiad. "I apologize for calling for you at this odd hour, but my people are active at night, and thus it is in the dark that I favor my work."


    "I do not mind," said Xie Bao, representative of Xin. He was from the kingdom of Yin, and it showed in his appearance.


    Tall and lean. Dressed in blue, wave patterned robes that showed he had dressed up for this meeting, even though he was remotely projecting himself just like everyone else. A sheathed de with a golden tassely wrapped to his hip.


    His face had sharp, angr features. A few blue scales dotted the curve of his forehead. His long, pointed white ears twitched when he spoke, and as his thin lips parted to speak, his sharp, bestial teeth showed themselves.


    "It is only proper that we conduct ourselves to the safety of the Common Body, and the good of the realms is a duty that we must be prepared for at all hours. Though I see that some of us are not of the same opinion, as always."


    Xie Bao leered, and the slit pupils of his cyan eyes narrowed first at Leanan, representative of Foraoise, and then at Sieg, representative of Mercia.


    He did not even bother to cast a look at the empty seat of Alo.


    The Aumakan people throughout history had always lived in their own realm, and theirs alone had not converged with the others with the dawning of the gods.


    They did possess their own way to traverse the realms, but none knew the mechanics of it, and they were inherently reclusive people.


    Thus, the Aumakan had been thought mere myth until twenty years ago when the daemons and vampyrs invaded the Common Realms.


    It was then that the Aumakan had shown themselves to lend their aid, but when the battles were fought and finished, they vanished as suddenly as they had appeared.


    An honorary seat had been provided for a potential representative of theirs to rece the now disgraced realm of Zerul, but Alo had not offered a representative to take up the seat so far.


    As for those present -


    Leanan, in contrast to Xie Bao, was barely dressed at all with the barest of silken undergarments providing the most basic level of decency possible. She rubbed her twinkling golden eyes and yawned, messy curls of blonde hair framing her face and shoulders.


    Sieg was, well, he was not really here at all. His projection crackled and fizzled in and out of existence.


    Connection issues, probably.


    Xie Bao pointed at Sieg. "The dwarves are masters of mana-tech, and yet, he is always the one with connection issues. I am beginning to think perhaps it is a convenient excuse to slip away from his duties."


    Ferdiad raised his hand, beckoning for silence, and Xie Bao nodded. "It is fine.


    Truthfully speaking, I do not believe this matter worthy of a High Council meeting, and normally, it would never have ended up at my notice, but with how unstable the world has been, I have told all the guildmasters to inform me of any potential abnormalities, no matter how small they might seem."


    "You are way, way too cautious, Ferd," said Leanan. She leaned forwards, resting her chin on both hands.


    Her faerie wings sprouted from behind her, flutteringzily and showing off the floral patterns dotting their orange, butterfly-like lengths. "Sometimes, you should ease up ¨C stress is bad for you. It''s no wonder us fae live longer than you elves do."


    Feriad ignored Leanan and continued. "Now, do all of you consider the young adventurer''s testimony believable? Considering, of course, that you have read the Order''s reports on the general situation."


    Leanan crossed her arms and made a pouty face. "Ignoring me, huh? Well, I guess I''ll contribute. Do I think his story''s believable? No way!"


    "Duly noted," said Ferdiad. "Now, on to more expert opinions-,"


    Leanan raised her hand up and waved it vigorously. "You didn''t let me finish! I did read the reports, you know."


    Ferdiad nodded to her, and she continued. "I think his whole story is impossible. A random monster that just gets stronger and stronger by eating things?


    No limits? Intelligent but no Primal Density? In a ce like the Darkwoods where there''s just dirty and creepy weak bugs ¨C no offense to you, Ferd ¨C but you see what I mean, right?


    Come on, who ever has heard of anything like that? We should all know, right? Considering we''re all seven stars at the very least. Right? Right?"

 Chapter 84 - Goddess Of War

    "I did consider the vast number of inconsistences in the boy''s testimony," said Ferdiad. "Yet, there is no disputing the fact that he is a four-star adventurer. Before he has even reached the age of twenty.


    As a human, that is exceptional, and his record is clean and impressive.


    Fifty-six sessful hunts. A few of which were a letter grade above his own ranking. The boy may be young, but he knows what he is doing."


    "Then why the holes in his testimony, I must wonder," said Xie Bao.


    "Oh, the poor boy has just lost his mind, me thinks," said Leanan. "He lost his love and his sister passed from her injuries.


    Who can me him for breaking down? I know I could never bring myself to." Her words were warm andpassionate, and yet, the tone of voice had a faint hint of coldness to it that made it clear to everyone in that room that Leanan was still an eight-star adventurer who had killed and faced death countless times.


    "What I think happened is that he picked up the contract for goblins and retrieval of the one star party''s corpses," said Leanan as she put a finger to her full, deeply red lips. "He hit an Unbound dungeon, got cocky because he''s young and strong, and maybe it warped in something way too much for him to handle.


    That could happen, right?


    And to push me away from himself, he just made up this big and scary monster."


    "If he has lied during his testimony to us, members of the High Council, then he must be executed," said Xie Bao tly.


    "Oh, no, not that!" said Leanan. "The poor boy must be dealing with so much already. So cruel, so harsh, no I would vote against that in a heartbeat!"


    Xie Bao scoffed. "You let your emotions rule you to this extent? I wonder how you have made it so far in our line of work.


    Rules are rules.


    There can be no exceptions. If it is proven his testimony has been falsified, he must be executed for breaching trust, and trust is a precious resource among us Adventurers. I will sever his head from his neck myself if I have to."


    "You know, I miss your brother when he used to sit there. Zhen alwaysforted me andughed with me, oh, he was so charming," said Leanan with a sigh. "How did you turn out so different?"


    "My brother is a fool, a drunk, a coward to his duties, and a disgrace to the Xie name," said Xie Bao. "I am far better suited to this seat than he ever was and will be."


    Ferdiad raised his hand and beckoned for quiet again. "We still have not proven his testimony is false. And we must entertain the possibility it is yet true.


    The boy is not insane. His head is still set square upon his shoulders. In fact, I have not sensed such sharp drive and focused will in a man''s eyes in quite some time."


    He nodded to the seat opposite to him where the Sorcerer''s Order representative sat.


    "Mithra," said Ferdiad. "Has the second round of investigations returned any more substantial information?"


    Mithra drew in a long puff from an elegantly curved wooden pipe as she looked down to a stack of papers in her hand. She breathed out, forming a neat ring of smoke that faded away when it reached the end of the range for her projection.


    She looked every bit the quintessential sorcerer. Traditional robes colored a sandy brown to indicate that she was from Utu and green eyes lined with deep, dark bags that too seemed to be amon essory for sorcerers and their long hours of research.


    "Hmmm...," Mithra trailed off for a second before speaking again after gathering her thoughts. "The second investigatory team of sorcerers has yielded little more," said Mithra with a soft, bored tone. "But that is to be expected.


    Judica has blocked the area for their own investigations. With their interference, it is quite impossible to perform the necessary scans, sample analyses, and leyline readings."


    Ferdiad clicked his mandibles in irritation.


    Judica was likely the most powerful city state in the entirety of Terra, perhaps even the strongest force across all of the Common Realms.


    They alone did not have Guilds within their city for each and every one of their citizens were powerful and capable of ughtering most low-grade monsters with their bare hands. Not to mention the Nine Rays whosebined might could rival even the gods.


    Because of this, the Adventurer''s League did not hold much leverage over Judica. They would have to ask for permission to investigate the area, and there was no telling what the holy state would allow.


    "Judica," said Xie Bao in audible disgust. "Sun-crazed fanatics, all of them, but I cannot deny their efficiency. Considering their presence, is it not prudent to believe that the cause of this incident of daemonic or vampyrean origin?"


    "Oh, certainly, it is possible," said Mithra as she took in another draught from her pipe. "But quite unlikely.


    There are no more rogue daemonic or vampyrean entities across the realms, or at the very least, none powerful enough to pose any real threat.


    With the destruction of Zerul, I should say that those that have not been killed or enved hold not even the numbers nor order to form anything resembling an organized state."


    Mithra cocked her head, thinking as she exhaled, covering her projection in a hazy sheen of smoke. "Though I suppose the refugees banding together in New Zerules close."


    "Oh, Mithra, you must stop smoking," said Leanan. "It will wrinkle your pretty face and make your lungs all ck and smelly."


    Mithra smiled faintly. "I am a woman of habit. There is nothing to be done about that.


    But on to New Zerul: though it is located in Terra, I find it improbable they would send any of their kind out.


    Already, the existence of their state is in constant uncertainty predicated upon the contingency that they do not harm any Common Life.


    They cannot risk the Common Body bearing down on them lest they lose the one final bastion they may call home."


    "Better to have them wiped out. Are they not merely monsters now that they are removed from the Common Body?" said Xie Bao. "They killed millions in the Red Night. They have yet to pay for their sins. My brother might not have been able to raise his de against them, but I will."


    "Stay on the topic at hand," said Ferdiad, raising his voice slightly, and silence fell into the room again. He sighed. "We simplyck information, then.


    All we have is the adventurer''s testimony and reports that detail the traces of an Unbound dungeon, and its copse has probably masked any potential magical traces we could have found to track any abnormal monsters. Not to mention Judica''s interference."


    "What are the chances, Ferd? A monster would have to be S-ss at the minimum for us to have to step in, and a creature like that in the Darkwoods of all ces?" said Leanan. "You must learn to rx.


    You know, both of us are in Foraoise, and I know my kind onlyes out at day and yourses out at night, but maybe I can see you and help you rx?


    Oh, the queen of the Summer Court and the Erlking spending time together, that would be quite the scandal between our peoples."


    "Yes, and precisely why it shall not be done," said Ferdiad. "We will get nowhere like this. I will make a decision now unless the rest of you wishes to put this up to vote."


    "I trust in your judgement," said Xie Bao.


    "I must say I am of the same opinion," said Mithra.


    "Whatever you want," said Leanan.


    Ferdiad''s inky ck eyes blinked, slivers of thin white flesh covering sliding over them as his antennae twitched. Of course they would agree with him. Because he was strong. Because they were strong.


    This was the problem with a council filled only by the strong.


    The weakest adventurer here was Mithra at seven stars, and even then, that was because she did not prioritize work with the League and more her research.


    Everybody else was eight stars and above, and all of them had been invited to join the gods in Aetheria as Ascended but for one reason or another, whether it be a need to manage a people or personal matters, they had refused.


    A proper seven star adventurer was the perfect threshold where those born with incredible natural talent could reach with consistent hard work and wits.


    Nobody here had truly worked for their power. Every single person here was born with power from the beginning that made themparable to natural disasters. Because of this, they never learned to work with others. Other people would merely slow them down.


    They faced death, but trusted only in their own strength to ovee it, and because they were strong, they always did.


    Ferdiad might have been the only one here that was not born with monstrous power, the only one among them that had ever been in a proper party, and even then, he outgrew his party incredibly quickly once he gained the Blessing that made him as strong as he was today.


    In any case, he still liked to hear other voices. And, perhaps he thought with some amusement, he too had started to value only the opinions of the strong.


    "Then I will take some precautionary measures. An A-rank contract spread across all guilds to find any monster that fits the adventurer''s descriptions. Triple coin reward and a potential star-rank promotion if the monster is killed should be alluring enough," said Ferdiad.


    "No."


    Ferdiad shivered as did the rest of the representatives'' projections. They all turned simultaneously to the throne. The sigil of interlocked rings glowed a bright red, and from it, a voice projected.


    "Lady Amanirenas," said Ferdiad with bowed head.


    It was extremely rare for Amanirenas, goddess of war and the highest authority of the Adventurer''s League, to ever make her presence known. Ferdiad in his twenty five years as Leaguemaster had only ever felt her voice once during the Red Night.


    "It is¡­it is an honor to have you with us."


    "There will be no contract," said Amanirenas.


    Her figure did not project, only her voice did. It was calm while holding a rough edge to it that felt like a prelude to an infinitely more dangerous rage simmering just underneath the calm. "There will be no mention of this matter outside the boundaries of this space."


    "What of the young adventurer?" said Ferdiad, his head still bowed.


    "He has potential to be a fine warrior yet. I will not dispose of him. And none will believe his words."


    "Understood," said Ferdiad.


    "You work well, and you work often," saiddy Amanirenas to Ferdiad. "Ease yourself of this matter.


    It is mine and mine only now"

 Chapter 85 - The Exile

    Fjall, thend of eternal winter where snow that turned flesh to frost and winds that cut like knives reigned supreme regardless of the season. It is said that aside from the undead wastnds of Undir in the southern edges of Terra, Fjall was the most dangerousnd of the entire realm.


    Thus, it was no coincidence that the humans of thisnd grew strong.


    Even before the Convergence, the humans of thisnd were a mighty people, their bodies d in great cords of muscle and their skin grown pale and resistant to the bitter cold.


    Before the gods, the Fjan tribes were considered monsters themselves. Humans that never settled in one spot for long, always following the Great Storm to find fish and water and monsters to survive upon.


    And in times the Great Storm grew too small, its vortex of waters and ice too drained, the Fjans became raiders that brought untold misery when they soughtnd and food from the weak and sun-kissed peoples to the south of them.


    Even Post-Convergence, the Fjans stayed true to their nature, taking upon them worship of the war goddess and honing their strengths to even greater heights.


    Even now, when the gods granted the Fjans the city of Middir to settle upon so that they would no longer have to war and raid and follow always the untold dangers of the ever moving, ever cycling Great Storm, Fjall produced the highest number of strong warriors in proportion to their poption.


    It is said that among adventuring groups that to have a true Fjan warrior in a party was akin to charging into battle with a ferocious beast, and what better way to best a monster than with an equally fierce and savage monster?


    Atop a snowy peak of one of many mountains forming the Rift, where the air and clouds grew thin and few men ever dared to tread, therey the dying body of one such fierce and mighty Fjan warrior, fully marked in the ceremonial tattoos of his people to show that he was honored and worthy even among his own.


    His muscle-d barrel chest heaved with croaking breaths on snow-tipped rock as he looked first at the handle of his Everfrost battle axe sticking from his stomach, its spiked tip impaled through his stomach in a fatal wound.


    Several of the mountain tops around him were shattered from the impacts of a great battle. A battle he had lost.


    His fading eyes looked up at¡­at a dragon?


    Impossible, he thought again. Dragons were extinct, Leif Gunnarson knew this. Everyone knew this.


    He knew it just like anybody who knew anything of the old myths knew. He knew it like how even children knew the sky was blue.


    It was a fact of life. A simple truth. One that the gods told over a thousand years ago and the elders continued to tell even now, generations upon generationster.


    Once, monsters ruled this world, and dragons lorded above even the monsters. Then the gods had emerged, and with the Convergence, united the realms and brought an end to the reign of the dragons through the Draconomachy.


    Every child across all Common Realms grew up hearing this tale. How the gods ended the dragons and thus started an age not of monsters, but of men to rule the world.


    But here¡­beyond the mountains of the Rift that divided the territory of Vintr- the northern World Dungeon- from thends of men, perhaps it was possible for a survivor, for some bit of the ancient dragons to have survived.


    Leif had to report this back to the League. It seemed unlikely, but they would believe him. He had six stars to his name. All he had to do was get back and tell them of the danger.


    This monster was strong. Strong beyond measure. It was no ordinary beast that fought with its jaws and ws.


    It was almost unbelievable, but it knew how to fight. Martial arts. Axe wielding. All of it, it knew. It adapted to Leif''s own fighting style mid-fight and grew stronger before his eyes with honed, almost beautiful movements.


    It was as if the monster was trained by the mighty war goddess herself.


    And it would keep growing and getting stronger if left unchecked. That much, Lief knew as a martial artist himself.


    He tried moving, but only blood filled his mouth as his own axe pinned him down. The dragon grasped his axe and drove it further down, ensuring he did not move. He slumped back down to the icy ground and stared up at the dragon.


    Though the draconic being did not¡­did not entirely look like the dragons of old.


    Leif looked up at the monster''s circr, ghostly white eyes, at the slit ck pupils that narrowed at him.


    Or at the least, he tried his hardest to stare back into those eyes, even as he died and felt his body grow weak, for a true Fjan never looked away from the eyes of his enemy.


    The monster''s face was utterly inhuman with a sharp, elongated snout encased in white scales. It reminded Leif of the sharks he and his father fished up in the Great Storm, back when he was just a boy.


    The beast knelt on two powerful, thickly muscled lizard like legs, the feet ending in three toes tipped with icy white ws.


    Though, as Leif knew well, the beast could just as easily move around on all fours with a raw speed and agility that he had never encountered before.


    Its face loomed over Leif''s, and the creature¡­smiled. Its jaw was proportionally huge on its face and lined with three sets of sharp, hooked teeth protruding from thick, pale pink walls of visible gums.


    And from that utterly monstrous mouth came sounds. And as Leif realized-


    The monster spoke. It spoke the Common Tongue.


    "Name¡­," said the beast, its voice a deep, raspy echo entirely unsuited to vocalizing the Common Tongue. "Your¡­name."


    "Leif¡­son of Gunnar." Leif coughed, the effort of speaking driving his axe''s handle deeper into him and sinking him further into death. But no Fjan ever shied away from dering their name when prompted, not by god nor monster.


    "Leif¡­Leif," said the beast, its pronunciation awkward, as if it was still learning thenguage. "Good name. Good." The monster nodded at Leif before saying, "You die now."


    Leif saw as the monster grasped his axe with a massive, scaled and wed hand, and then twisted the handle and drove it up, smashing it through his ribcage and into his heart.


    That was the end of Leif Gunnarson, six-star adventurer and next in line to be chieftain of the Boar n.


    ==


    Valtr gazed down at the human he had in.


    The human''s eyes went wide as his life slipped from him.


    Valtr took his fingers, retracted the icy ws from their tips, and drew down the human''s eyelids to close them. He did not know why the humans did this, but it seemed they liked to do this to their dead.


    And Valtr had enjoyed fighting this human. Leif¡­that was his name.


    Valtr stood up, his slightly hunched, thickly muscled and white scale-ted back bearing all the sturdiness and mass of a fortress wall.


    "You were strong, but you reached the limit of your potential. It is good that you die now," said Valtr in his own tongue to the corpse. He felt several cracks in his scales and a few shallow cuts into his flesh regenerate.


    Two blue draconic wings made of pure energy started to flicker and form to his sides. "I thought maybe below the Rift, everything was strong.


    The White Voice always told us never to go below the Rift. I thought it was because of you humans."


    He looked at the human''s dead face.


    "You are fun. Fun, but not strong. Unworthy of my curse."


    Valtr looked ahead, down the mountains of the Rift where below, the rest of the world sprawled.


    And soon, this world would face the End. It was ordained by the White Voice.


    And Valtr would be the End''s herald.


    But now was not the time to move.


    Soon, though, soon.


    Valtr smiled, all his fangs rattling in anticipation.


    Oh, how wonderful the End would be. He would get to fight and fight and fight and prove his Blessing of Destiny wrong.


    No, not a blessing.


    Only now that he was strong did the others call it a blessing.


    It was a curse. The very curse that had made him once an exile among his own. A curse that he would break soon.


    Valtr turned around to go back to his domain, but then stopped.


    "Oh, I almost forgot," said Valtr. He turned back to the human''s corpse and picked the still body up by the axe handle embedded in it. "You humans like to bury your dead, too. Like the Jotun.


    Unfortunately, I do not know your burial customs."


    Valtr''s eyes did not narrow ¨C they physically could not, open in permanent battle-ready wideness as they were. Cold, almost dead eyes.


    He scanned the endless whitendscape beneath him, at the constantly raging, ice-veiled winds and clouds forming a thickyer of violently shing elements under the mountains.


    It was impossible to tell where this human came from through all that.


    All Valtr knew was that he belonged below the Rift. Somewhere down there, wherever it was, he did not care too much.


    Maybe someone of his kin would find him.


    Maybe not. At the least, it was good to give the body a chance for the fun it had provided.


    Valtr drew back the axe handle like a javelin, the human corpse pinned to it, and then threw it.


    A shockwave of force gusted out from his throw, and he saw as the corpse parted a few clouds down below before being swallowed up by the endless winds and snow.

 Chapter 86 - New Hunt, New Evolution

    The Collector trudged through the snow, struggling to keep its limbs from freezing over and seizing by continuously pumping as much blood as it could into them. Even then, blood from the massive wounds exposing its heart and back trickled patters of red with each of its heavy steps.


    The drops of blood froze into red crystals even before they touched the snow.


    The Collector did not waste energy clicking its mandibles, tough it would have if it could. It maximized its senses, attempting to find any reasonable form of shelter in this environment.


    Winds howled in every direction, pattering snow onto the Collector, as if trying to shovel up ice to bury it. Visibility did not extend past five meters through the endless walls of whirling ice and snow. Auditory systems werepromised due to the constant background noise from the wind.


    Tactile systems involving the sensitive hairs also did not work, the hairs freezing over in the temperatures while also trying to contend with intense interference from countless partictes of ice in the wind.


    What the Collector could rely on was thermal imaging with heat sensors in its ocr system, but this yielded nothing of note worth. It had walked for five minutes now, but thendscape did not change from this endless wastnd of cold.


    The Collector yet knew that there were life forms here. At the very least, there was a settlement of goblins opposite the direction it currently traveled.


    This, it would tend toter.


    Yet the presence of goblins indicated further the presence of wild flora and fauna that could be potentially harmful, though flora seemed far less likely due to the intensively cold temperatures.


    Survival. This was all the Collector thought of now.


    Whatever emotions it had felt before, with that daemon specimen, whatever foreign and unfathomable things those were, it suppressed because survival trumped all else.


    Once its survival was assured, then it could begin to try and understand them, or if they proved troublesome enough, continue to suppress them.


    Though, the Collector did note with a side thought, it was bing more difficult to suppress these foreign emotions.


    Disappointment, for example, had inadvertently leeched into the Collector''s mind when it thought of calling the Collective.


    And with the female specimen''s death, it had granted her time to say what she desired. Answered her queries as she faced her mortality. It did not understand why it did so, but it had felt right.


    But why had it felt right?


    Something akin to a sign of respect for the service she had granted to it. An extension of the respect it felt when it granted worthy warriors apt deaths, perhaps.


    Already, stray wasted mental processes on contemtion.


    Calibrating back to prioritizing survival.


    Five minutes untilck of magical energy would cause loss of control over the Sapia-supported heart, causing immediate death.


    The Collector had no more time. It would have to metamorphose here, out in the open, though it seemed that the harshness of the current weather conditions caused ack of lifeforms in the area.


    Regardless, there was no choice, for finding any form of shelter in this homogenousndscape seemed improbable.


    The Collector knelt down and dug into the deep snow, using its massive arms to shovel out great chunks.


    As it did so, it assessed its current directives.


    Contact the Collective.


    Survive and adapt.


    Those two in that order.


    The Collector had failed that first directive.


    Encountering an entirely different hyperspace nexus was an unfathomable phenomenon that it could never have predicted. That alone had stymied its calctions and processing enough to suffer grievous injuries as it did now.


    The implications were also massive. A hyperspace nexus governed an entire universe''s worth of space.


    What did it mean to encounter apletely new nexus?


    Did it mean that the Collector was in a new universe entirely? If so, then the implications were immense.


    Not only was it entirely cut off from the Collective, it meant that it had obtained the Great Purpose the Collective desired to realize from its inception.


    For in amassing the biomass of countless organisms, the Collective desired for either a miraculous reversal of entropy itself or a circumvention of inevitable heat death via ess to different universes.


    If this indeed was the case, then, now more than ever the Collector had to devise a means to return to the Collective for the Great Purpose had been fulfilled.


    But the Collector knew also that it was equally likely that the Collective simply had not processed enough of the Tesseract to understand its true nature.


    It was possible that the nexus the Collector encountered here was not foreign, but a sub-structure so distant that the Collective had not analyzed it.


    Then it might even be possible that the signal the Collector had sent out would still reach the Collective.


    There were an immense number of possibilities and exnations, but the Collector knew it could never settle upon any single one, for it simplycked information.


    Thus, the Collector decided to focus itself upon its simpler second directive.


    To survive and adapt.


    To grow strong.


    Stronger than ever before. Stronger than anything upon this world. It felt desire prickling in its heart with warmth that stood against the cold.


    Yes, this, the Collector would do.


    There were still many more challenges to encounter in this world, this, the Collector knew well from its prior altercation.


    Many more battles to face and ovee.


    Many more prime specimen to devour.


    The Collector by this time had dug up enough of a hole in the snow to somewhat conceal its form if it condensed into a ball. It curled up tight, serpentine tail wrapping around the lengths of its body, and allowed the raging winds above to bury it inyers of snow.


    Then, it began its evolution.


    There was an immense amount of biomass stored within the Collector, not to mention various new specimen and samples to consider utilizing. This evolution more so than any before would send the Collector to greater heights of power.


    Yet, still insufficient to defeat that humanoid. The humanoid with the wings of projected energy.


    But no matter.


    While that humanoid, if it remained alive, stagnated, the Collector would grow and be ever stronger until this world was its own to consume.


    The Collector began its metamorphosis, generating the cocoon''s flesh from its carapace pores and encasing itself.


    The cocoon would have to expand to a significant degree to provide enough of a buffer to ward against the cold, but the Collector attempted to minimize visibility by spreading the cocoon underneath the deep snowyer in a tter, almost pool-like structure.


    This made the cocoon itself less durable, but also less noticeable.


    This way, the Collector could evolve underneath the snow, its form breaking down into primordial ooze spread thin on the frozen dirt. The snow even formed an instingyer against the cold above.


    It did not take long for the winds to fill up the hole the Collector had made, and soon, it was as if the Collector had never stood on the snow at all,pletely hidden under a nket of white.


    Now was the time to evolve. To begin a new hunt in a newnd with a new form.


    It checked its status to assess its resources:


    >>>


    Metamorphosis Level 6


    Biomass Level: 330/100


    Stored Gic Material:


    -- (Author''s Note: I am going to cut down this list now because it takes up too much space, but the full list will be avable on the status update page)


    -Frostborn Hobgoblin Thrall


    -Vineswinger Goblin Champion [Core]


    -metongue Smander


    -Windcutter Wildcat


    -Shockstripe Eel


    -Shaker Fish


    -Firefly Shinchu


    -Lurker


    -Goblin Lord [Core]


    -Goblin Elite


    Adaptations:


    <Internal Systems>


    -Ultrafiber Muscles Rank 6.4


    --Coilboosters


    -Autonomic Neuro-Bodily Matrix


    --Metalloglottic Ossifier [5/5]


    ---Bone Binding Skull


    ---Volcanite


    ---Everfrost


    ---Abyssium


    ---Burial Tusks


    <External Systems>


    -Sensitive Hairs Rank 5.2


    --Quill Spray


    -Organic Hyperalloy Carapace Rank 5.4


    --Longchain Chitinous Suyer


    <Weapons Systems>


    -Monomolecr ws Rank 4.4


    -Pyrocatalytic nds Rank 3


    Current Form:


    Assassin Bugbrute/Daemon/Dullscale Rohu/Jumping Arakka


    <<<Magic Status>>>


    Mana Level: 100%


    Active Cores [3/3]:


    -Prime Core


    --Trigger: Desire


    -Daemon Core


    --Trigger: Wonder


    -Frostborn Thrall Core


    --Trigger: Greed


    Inhera:


    -Sapia [Daemon Core]


    Ethera:


    -Devourer [Prime Core]


    Primal Magic:


    -Bone Binding [Frostborn Thrall Core]


    Blessings:


    -Blessing of Mount Oe


    Primal Density: 5%


    Root Consumption Limit: 100%


    >>>


    The Collector possessed an abundance of resources to weigh and utilize for its next evolution.


    Already, in terms of sheer biomass it had umted already from consuming the four-star adventurer''s weapons, the Collector would ascend not just one, but two metamorphosis levels.


    Prime gic samples to consider for a new form more suited to this weather. Useful Metalloglottic ossifier samples.


    All of these would make the Collector leaps and bounds more powerful than its prior evolution.


    Yet, there was another power the Collector was far more interested in.


    Before the Collector even began to consider bases for its next evolution, it focused on what it had obtained from consuming the female daemon''s core.


    Within the matrix of the evolutionary cocoon, a system that had now melded with the properties of magic inherent in this world, the Collector could greater investigate what exactly it was that the female daemon specimen had utilized against the humanoid.


    Previously, by devouring but a sample of the daemon, the Collector was able to obtain her gic material and assume the physical form of her species while growing a corresponding core.


    Indeed, this had been useful, for the female daemon specimen did possess prime gic material, easily reaching the peak of her species to the point where she could have been considered an entirely different and superior subspecies, but that alone did not exin the power she had shown against the humanoid.


    That power had no record within her gic record itself.


    No, that power must not havee from her physical properties, especially in considering that the female specimen did not have the magical energy necessary at the time to utilize that power were she fronting its cost entirely.


    Likely, the Collector hypothesized, that power had been hidden directly in her core. Something deeply intertwined with her psionic profile, the ''soul'' as she would have called it.


    In essence, what the new evolutionary system ssified as a ''Blessing''.


    Like the Blessing of Mount Oe the Collector extracted from the red-skinned goblin champion, the Collector engaged the system''s processing power to extract the blessing hidden within the daemon''s core.

 Chapter 87 - Wall Of Darkness

    The Collector''s psionic profile floated within the depths of the greater system hosted within it. The system not only stored biomass without changing the Collector''s physical dimensions or adding to its mass, but it also most importantly stored every single psionic profile of the creatures the Collector consumed.


    The female daemon specimen had called psionic profiles ''souls'', and indeed, the Collector understood from its stored memories of tinkering civilizations that most of them, when they were in more primitive stages of development, corrted psionic profiles with some part of their active will that stayed beyond the deterioration of their physical forms.


    Yet, this was incorrect.


    Psionic profiles that did not have a tether to a physical, living body were merely records.


    Snapshots of the energies thatprised the mental processes that formted living beings. No more alive than a tinkerer''s image caught in a photograph.


    No more alive than the gic memories that they stored within organisms.


    Complex, yes, but alive?


    Not so.


    There was no way to truly frame what the Collector was experiencing in interacting with its stored psionic profiles through the conventional senses, but if it were to be highly simplified down to purely visual representations, then it was as if the Collector was traversing through a great sea, a body of water, and here, there were flickers of light that indicated a unique psionic profile.


    The Collector utilized the system''s processing power to locate the psionic profile of the female daemon specimen.


    The waters shifted, and the appropriate light came before it. Touching it would lead the Collector to an analysis of the specimen''s profile.


    This, the Collector did.


    Yet, results unexpected.


    Attempting to extract the ''Blessing'' from the profile caused the Collector to abruptly find itself not surrounded by waters, but in the midst of what seemed to be a structure of tinkering architecture.


    A circr room not unlike the throne room of the goblin lord in the dungeon.


    The Collector remained at the very periphery of this area, blocked off by a wall of flickering darkness that obscured every conceivable sense, including psionic analysis, but even then, the Collector could perceive the vague shape of a sizable throne through the wall.


    The Collector analyzed this area, for this phenomenon was apletely new one that had never been recorded when attempting to analyze psionic profiles.


    The area was still analogous to a psionic profile, thus, the Collector existed in this space also as a profile, but it was not the profile of the female daemon specimen.


    No, cross-referencing this profile with the many that the Collector had consumed determined no match.


    A potential psionic infiltration?


    No. There was no hostility from this profile, if there was, the system would have automatically registered it and destroyed it.


    The profile was not foreign.


    Its coordinates originated directly from the female daemon specimen, likely having inhabited her core, not her body, hence, the Collector had not encountered this before.


    Initially, the Collector had thought this potentially simr to the gate system incorporated within the cores and roots of sorcerers it had consumed, for the female daemon specimen had showed circuitry that seemed to indicate gate connection.


    But gate connections were almost purely a physical phenomenon.


    A tinkerer would alter a portion of their spirit roots so that they were wired only to connect to a foreign energy source. In their case, a gate. The gate itself was not a living being, it was merely a well of energy, but the fact that it was regted by a higher tinkerer known as a ''god'' prevented the Collector from utilizing such a power.


    Not only would the Collector never bow to a tinkerer, it was possible that said ''god'' could damage the Collector from within if it wired any of its roots connected to the gate they managed.


    Yet, this was different.


    Assessing the potential threat of this new profile yielded a 0% chance of harm.


    This psionic space and whatever profile it belonged to was not tethered to any living organism.


    Thus, much like the countless other profiles the Collector stored within itself, this foreign psionic space and its corresponding profile did not possess any true will of its own.


    It simply existed.


    The Collector could sense that beyond this wall of darkness, the potential to retrieve the ''Blessing''y.


    But though this profile was untethered, that did not mean it would not respond to psionic stimuli.


    The 0% threat rating attributed to this profile had the potential to shift if the Collector attempted to utilize more processing power to break this wall and interact with whatever was within.


    Yet, the power the daemon specimen had shown was extremely tempting.


    She wished for the dawning of the Collective and hadid down her life for it. If the Collector could ess this power, then it could grant her wish all the quicker.


    Some contemtion.


    Analysis.


    A decision.


    The Collector withdrew. No more risks. Not now, when survival was so tenuous.


    This psionic space would always exist within the Collector''s storage to investigateter, potentially when the Collector possessed more information about it.


    And that was one of the primary resources the Collector needed most now.


    Information.


    With the loss of the daemon female, obtaining a free flowing and easily maintained source of information would be difficult.


    Keeping this in mind, the Collector tended now to its physical evolution.


    Firstly, consuming the immense amounts of biomass it had stockpiled.


    >>>


    *Biomass Consumed*


    Biomass Level: 330>7


    Metamorphosis Level: 6>8


    >>>


    With this amount of biomass, the Collector could ascend two metamorphosis levels. Thus, it could restore two of its prior adaptations.


    >>>


    *Neuro-Endocrinal Matrix Rank I Restored *


    --Chronostasis: Utilizing psionic energy to boost neural processes, the perception of time may be slowed for short instants. After one second of usage, neural processes must undergo an adjustment period which may cause dyed reactions or warped spatial perception.


    *Neuro-Circtory Reserves Rank I Restored*


    --Reserve Heart I: An additional heart. May be utilized to sustain bodily processes in the case that others are destroyed orpromised in function.


    >>>


    Like cornerstones building up a strong foundation, adaptations such as these that enhanced broad bodily and neural functions were prerequisites for developing stronger weapons systems and sub-adaptations.


    The Neuro-Endocrinal Matrix granted the Collector greater control of its hormonal system and neural pathways, and with further evolutions, would also allow the Collector to unlock the psionic powers it once possessed.


    Its psionics would never be at the level of a Dominator-strain Collector for all of its psionics were geared towards boosting control of its own body to maximize usage of its natural tools. But even so, this was a formidable adaptation.


    One sub-adaptation, for example, allowed the Collector to spread its consciousness throughout its entire body, allowing it to maintain some level of mental processing unless its entire body was destroyed.


    Coincidentally, this was the crucial ability it had utilized to survive as a grub against the so called ''high king of the gods''.


    The Neuro-Circtory Reserves adaptation would allow the Collector to manifest additional crucial organs such as hearts or brains.


    Though, in the Collector''s case, culturing additional hearts was far more useful in allowing it to store cores it consumed into the extra organs.


    Now, to determine what forms it would take.


    The Collector would have to discard every insect base it currently utilized. These specimens, though they could handle the lightless cold of the Darkwoods, could not even begin to survive in the Collector''s current biome.


    The Arakka genes, in particr, were highly inefficient here. The hydraulic systems the Arakka utilized to move its legs would freeze andpromise. None of the other insectoids from the Darkwoods would fare much better.


    The rohu genes it utilized for aquatic mobility were also inefficient, even though the Collector assessed there was a high probability of water-based environments in this location.


    The rohu swam in warmer waters. It would not contend with the chilling waters likely to flow here.


    The daemon base the Collector currently utilized was quite exceptional, and unlike the other specimen, the gic material from the daemon was exceptional enough that it would continue to get stronger and stronger as the Collector itself attained higher metamorphosis levels.


    However, the daemon base also was not entirely efficient for the cold, and there was another specimen that was just as exceptional as it.


    The Firefly Shinchu.


    This creature''s core alone had provided the Collector with the biomass to ascend an entire metamorphosis level. No doubt the true creature it sourced from would easily defeat the Collector even now.


    There were two ways the Collector could survive this environment.


    The first was in splicing forms that resisted the cold.


    The other was to splice forms that could generate enough heat to beat the cold.


    The Collector chose thetter option. Thus, it utilized the Firefly Shinchu as a base for though it was an insectoid, it could produce a heated bioluminescence that could quitefortably negate the cold.


    Not to mention its immense capacity to hunt monsters.


    The Firefly Shinchu was an odd specimen. It seemed to not hunt tinkerers unless provoked. Instead, it devoured solely other monsters, specifically monsters with higher primal densities.


    It seemed to operate as a specimen that regted the magical biomes of this world, eliminating monsters that grew too old and powerful for their habitats.


    Thus, the Firefly Shinchu hadpletely adapted itself to monster hunting.


    Its bioluminescence could be tuned to attract monsters, and it could generate a form of magic that could wreathe its body parts in solid light that caused massive internal damage akin to spontaneousbustion when encountering the bare flesh of monsters.


    The higher the primal density of the monster, the more severe the internal damage.


    This ability, the four star adventurer had attempted to utilize on the Collector.


    Yet, the Collector had not possessed much Primal Density for the ability to take strong effect.


    In this environment devoid of humanoid poption density, monster-hunting capabilities would be incredibly useful.


    And this power in general would allow the Collector to "cheat" and face off against monsters stronger than itself.

 Chapter 88 - Firefly Shinchu Evolution

    Thus, the Collector sacrificed the daemon base, though in time, when it exceeded the tenth metamorphosis level, it could go back to gic material it had sacrificed in creating forms.


    However, the Collector desired to keep the daemon''s magical capabilities.


    It used its extraction point to take an adaptation from a native specimen to maintain the thel from the daemon genes, for Sapia was exceedingly useful and the thel was required to regte it.


    Now for three additional forms.


    The Collector chose the goblin elite for its superb physical capabilities. The elite possessed a natural affinity with the ultrafiber muscture adaptation and would grant ess to an additional pair of powerful arms.


    Not only this, but the elite over time had the ability to adapt to environments. The Collector calcted that within the span of one week, the elite genes would develop cold-resistant properties.


    At a higher metamorphosis level, perhaps the Collector would return to the daemon form and potentially utilize it to its maximum potential.


    Then, it chose the metongue Smander.


    The smander was itself not adapted to the cold, but it could maintain high internal temperatures and then expel them outwards on its skin via a series of external gills to generate a constantyer of me around its body.


    This, the smander utilized to ward off predators onnd where it was less mobile than in the water.


    In the water, it would condense its heat generation on its jaws to superheat them for deadlier bites.


    The Shinchu''s light, if it was used offensively, cost an extraordinary amount of magical energy to maintain.


    Thus, its reliability as a heat source was fickle after intensivebat.


    In the case that the Collector''s mana reserves grew low, it would require a backup source of heat to maintain itself.


    This would be the metongue Smander.


    The smander''s aura of me would only intensify with the Shinchu''s light as well, effectively turning the Collector into a walking, endless bonfire in the snow whenever the temperatures grew too cold.


    The Collector''s Blessing of Mount Oe would also allow it to maintain this constant burning even on parts of its body that did not take have the smander''s me-resistant lipid coating.


    But perhaps the greatest value from the smander was its regenerative properties.


    The regeneration did cost mana, but it was still an invaluable resource. With it, so long as the Collector survived - something it excelled at doing ¨C it could always maintain its bodily integrity for the next fight.


    As for thest specimen, the Collector focused on obtaining genes that could traverse cold and aquatic biomes, even in the case that the Collector could not generate heat and light.


    There were two powerful aquatic specimen the Collector could choose from: the Shockstripe Eel or the Shaker Fish.


    Between these two, the Collector chose the Shaker Fish. It lived in the extreme, cold depths of deep waters, utilizing its vibration sensitive whiskers to sense prey in zero visibility environments and utilizing its earth-shaking powers to uncover subterranean prey on the seabed.


    With its forms settled upon, the Collector decided upon how to regte its magical cores.


    It maintained the daemon female''s core for ess to Sapia. For the other two cores, the Collector maintained the thrall''s bone binding mostly for its shockwave inducing powers that could amplify with the Shaker Fish''s own abilities.


    For its newly grown heart, the Collector slotted in the Goblin Lord''s core, for there was a settlement of goblins nearby.


    Utilizing the lord''s Dominus-type primal magic to bend them all to the Collector''s will would hopefully allow it to ess more information about this environment and its threats.


    Now for the mineral samples the Collector had procured through its conquest of the goblin lord''s dungeon. Through the Metalloglottic ossifier, the Collector could as of now only generate small amounts of the mineral, encasing perhaps part of a single body with each sample at best.


    The only exception was when the Collector swallowed small enough mineral structures whole.


    These, it stored within itself intact and could retrieve.


    The Collector surveyed its current lineup of samples.


    >>>


    Metalloglottic Ossifier Samples [5/5]


    --Crystal Skull


    --Volcanite


    --Everfrost


    --Abyssium


    --Burial Tusks


    >>>


    The Collector utilized all five samples. It would manifest the crystal skull in a location upon its body that would make it visible as a potential target for tinkerers to strike, luring them into believing it was a vital area.


    The burial tusks, it could cap onto the tusks it would naturally grow from assuming elite genes.


    The Abyssium, it would encase upon its thel to significantly enhance its dominus-type capabilities.


    Both the Volcanite and Everfrost, upon analysis, yielded themselves to be ores that could change their molecr structure depending on how mana was flowed into them.


    Quite simr to the smart-steel utilized by tinkering battleships in the United Front, though significantly less flexible and durable.


    But where these magical orescked in sheer tensile durability and shock absorbent proprties, they could made up for with the magical ability to change inherent physical properties about themselves such as their temperature, with the Volcanite emitting heat and the Everfrost emitting cold when mana flowed through them.


    Thus, both ores were useful in that they scaled up to whatever entity was utilizing them.


    An entity with powerful mana reserves would manifest far more impressive effects with the ores than an entity with less impressive ability. Though the Collector did calcte there was an upper limit to this.


    If the Collector approximated roughly that star levels indicated mana levels and these increased in simr degrees per additional star among adventurers, then a six-star adventurer would find either Volcanite or Everfrost increasingly useless.


    For now, both ores would serve the Collector well.


    The Volcanite, the Collector lined across the biotrigger for its pyrocatalytic nds, allowing for any mes that emerged from it to react with the magical ore and enhance itself.


    Like this, the Collector could now focus and extend the range of its mes or supercharge the biotrigger with mana, causing it to create an explosive, wider range burst of mes around it.


    The Everfrost, the Collector would line across the knuckles of its four arms, allowing it to generate elerated ciation on whatever it struck with its blows.


    Increasingly, there were entities that could deal with the Collector''s monomolecr ws, for the weapons were still quite brittle.


    It did not seem like magic utilizing tinkerers had figured it out against the Collector yet, but simply intensifying {Guard} so that the mana defensively covering a body part extended beyond the bare flesh would form an effective barrier against the ws.


    The ws would tear through any flesh, no matter how strengthened it was, but it would not tear through even a thinyer of condensed mana above the flesh, for that functioned akin to a forcefield that required brute force, not exceeding sharpness to deal with.


    In the case that the tinkerers did manage to catch on, having varied applications of brute force such as the bone binding shockwaves and now these ciating punches would prove effective.


    The Collector form, spread thin in a liquid state across its t cocoon, pulsed once as it decided upon all the tools it would incorporate itself.


    Now, it was time to splice its decided forms and truly evolve.


    The evolutionary cocoon swelled and grew as ittched its roots of pulsating pink biomass into the frigid ground.


    As the Collector''s form within grew, the cocoon had no choice but to expand upwards, the heat emanating from it and the pressure of its expansion pushing against the manyyers of snow above.


    But under the snow, the Collector could at the very least hide its evolutionary cocoon until 85%pletion.


    And for good reason. The sheer breadth of gic material it spliced together caused this evolution to take nearly two hours.


    Inrge part, the dy was due to the fact that the Collector had to spend time processing the Firefly Shinchu genes, for the original specimen was incredibly powerful, far stronger than what the Collector''s body could handle now, and thus it had to break it down to match the highest end of what its metamorphosis level could operate with.


    At the end of its evolutionary metamorphosis, the Collector''s cocoon formed a sizable, spherical ball of transparent flesh supported by a thick base of clumped tendrils.


    The snow around it had melted away from the heat emanating from the cocoon''s intensive, energy exhaustive biological processes.


    But the Collector did not remain exposed for long.


    Within minutes, the Collector burst out of the cocoon in its new form.

 Chapter 89 - Goblin Subjugation Begins

    Its status adjusted, marking the form the Collector would utilize to take on this new biome.


    >>>


    Metamorphosis Level 6>8


    Biomass Level: 330/100>7/100


    Stored Gic Material:


    ==


    -Frostborn Hobgoblin Thrall [Core] [Equipped]


    -Vineswinger Goblin Champion [Core]


    -Windcutter Wildcat


    -Shockstripe Eel


    -Lurker


    -Goblin Lord [Core] [Equipped]


    Adaptations:


    <Internal Systems>


    Ultrafiber Muscles Rank 6.4> 8.6 (+0.2 from Goblin Elite genes)


    --Coilboosters


    Autonomic Neuro-Bodily Matrix Rank 1>3


    --Metalloglottic Ossifier [0/5]


    ---Bone Binding Skull [REMOVED]


    ---Volcanite [REMOVED]


    ---Everfrost [REMOVED]


    ---Abyssium [REMOVED]


    ---Burial Tusks [REMOVED]


    Neuro-Endocrinal Matrix Rank 1 *NEW*


    --Chronostasis *NEW*: By overloading neuralworks withtent psionic energy, it is possible to enter into a state of heightened tachypyschia, temporarily slowing down the perception of time. Neuralworks must require periods of rest in between usages.


    Neuro-Circtory Reserves Rank 1 *NEW*


    --Reserve Heart 1 [Total 4]


    <External Systems>


    Sensitive Hairs Rank 5.2>7.6 (+0.2 from Firefly Shinchu genes, +0.2 from Shaker Fish genes)


    --Quill Spray


    Organic Hyperalloy Carapace Rank 5.4 > 7.6 (+0.2 from Firefly Shinchu genes)


    --Longchain Chitinous Suyer


    <Weapons Systems>


    Monomolecr ws Rank 4.4 > 6.6 (+0.2 from Firefly Shinchu genes)


    --Extended Growth *NEW*: Monomolecr ws may be shaped into extended, scythe or spike like structures for greater range.


    Pyrocatalytic nds Rank 3 > 5.4 (+0.2 from Firefly Shinchu genes, +0.2 from metongue Smander genes)


    --Instant Trigger *NEW*: Through the evolution of a chemically reactive tubr structure connecting both the pyrocatalytic nds and the biotrigger, there is no longer a dy between the activation of the nds and the emission of mes.


    Yet, instant activations willpromise uracy.


    <Native Adaptations>


    -Daemonic Thel *NEW*


    Current Form:


    Firefly Shinchu/Goblin Elite/Shaker Fish/metongue Smander


    <<<Magic Status>>>


    Mana Level: 100%


    Active Cores [4/4]:


    Prime Core


    --Trigger: Desire


    Daemon Core


    --Trigger: Wonder


    Frostborn Thrall Core


    --Trigger: Greed


    Goblin Lord Core *NEW*


    --Trigger: Superiority


    Inhera:


    Sapia [Daemon Core]


    Ethera:


    Devourer [Prime Core]


    Primal Magic:


    -Bone Binding [Frostborn Thrall Core]


    -Higher Calling [Goblin Lord Core] *NEW*


    Blessings:


    -Blessing of Mount Oe


    Primal Density: 5%>20%


    Root Consumption Limit: 100%>0%


    >>>


    The Collector''s new form was one simr in basic shape to its prior one. It fused together the metongue Smander and Shaker Fish tails to create a lower body.


    It utilized the goblin elite''s upper body and fused it with the Firefly Shinchu''s own traits.


    Yet, beyond that basic shape, there were few simrities.


    The Collector stood at three meters tall again, condensing its power.


    If it simply let its size run amok, then it would have easily surpassed ten meters, but taking such a massive form would only draw attention. And in principle, a smaller target with higher raw power was far morebat maneuverable than a bulkier,rger body.


    The Collector''s head and neck area fused into a wide, hood-like structure of carapace, forming a roof-like space sheltering five skulls packed together.


    Three skulls at the base of the neck. Two above them. One above them all.


    A pyramid of cranial structures.


    This was the Firefly Shinchu''s own head structure: an amalgamation of skulls fused together to form one massivework.


    Though these were not truly skulls. They were carapace and flesh structures fashioned into the shape of them. Their inner structures were not hollow, containing neuro-muscr matter, though only one possessed a true brain.


    Every single skull''s eye sockets had glowing yellowpound eyes rolling around within them. However, only one of these skulls contained the Collector''s brain.


    One skull glowed with crystal light. This was the adventurer''s skull, ced at the highest rung of the skull pyramid to seem like an important and easy target while minimizing potential damage to other skulls.


    A distraction.


    One of the skulls was that of the Goblin Elite''s, noticeable by therge tusks jutting from its bare teeth. These teeth were capped with the Burial Tusk samples. The daemonic thel protruded from the back of this skull, the dreadlock of fibrous hair curling around to the front.


    One of the skulls belonged to the broad, t head of the Shaker Fish. Four sets of brown whiskers drooped from the sides of the skull''s head, sensitive to all vibrations. Skeletal fin structures jutted out from the base of the skull.


    One of the skulls belonged to the metongue Smander. It was t like that of the Shaker Fish, but its jaw was elongated. Hazy stripes of red lined its white carapace surface.


    One of the skulls was that of the Firefly Shinchu, and it looked roughly humanoid, glowing with a faint golden light.


    The Collector''s own skully nestled at the far end of the skull pyramid''s baseyer, and it was apletely nondescript humanoid skull of white carapace with nothing special about it. Only a pair of mandibles lining its sides denoted it much.


    Though, of course, this skull was the most important, for underneath its carapaced dome, the Collector''s brainy.


    Beneath this monstrous series of stacked heads, the Collector''s upper body took much inspiration from the Goblin Elite. It was a musclebound, thickly built humanoid shape armored in hyperalloy carapace.


    Four arms jutted from the Collector''s sides, two of them capable of unsheathing des of monomolecr edges from their forearms. All four sets of knuckles were encased in crystals of Everfrost.


    Around the Collector''s neck, where its hood of carapace attached to its shoulders, the metongue Smander''s external gills flowed down.


    These were fiery orange tendrils of flesh that draped down over the Collector''s back. The tendrils were surrounded by branch-like, feathery red protrusions that flickered like tongues of fire.


    The collection of gills flowed all the way down to the Collector''s waist, forming into a structure a tinkerer might mistake for a red, royal cloak.


    These gills, the Collector could utilize to channel the metongue Smander''s aura of mes.


    At the Collector''s chest, an orb of golden lighty embedded. This was the Firefly Shinchu''s bioluminescent organ, and from here, the Collector could fire shards of solid light or channel the light to its fists, encasing them in the same light.


    The carapace at the Collector''s back was slightly domed, encasing the Firefly Shinchu''s wings. Those wings could unfurl into four massive structures, the wingspan easily matching the Collector''s three meter length.


    Above that dome, where the Collector''s shoulders were, two more arms sprouted.


    These arms were long, spindly, and thin in contrast to the bulky arms of the Goblin Elite.


    Unlike the rest of the Collector, these arms wereprised entirely of ck carapace, and they seemed almost stick-like in their thinness.


    They ended in three fingered hands, and these, the Collector valued.


    These were the Firefly Schinchu''s limbs. The Collector could only manifest two of the Shinchu''s limbs, but the two it did manifest were significantly stronger than even the Goblin Elite''s despite the contrast in muscle mass and bulk.


    The arms could extend their lengths to a maximum of six meters but utilizing them costed magical energy that the Collector calcted was extensive.


    Best to save them for surprise attacks or to capitalize on lethal mistakes.


    The Collector''s lower body mimicked that of its prior metamorphosis level without much variance. A thickly muscled, serpentine tail fashioned from the Shaker Fish and the metongue Smander''s genes.


    The tail fins at the end were shaped in a t, rounded, club-like structure capable of imparting immense seismic shock if magical energy was imparted into them.


    With its form decided, the Collector shook its body, flinging off primordial gic ooze from the evolutionary cocoon off its body. The flesh of the cocoon rapidly dissolved, steaming away into a gaseous state that ensured no trace of it remained.


    The Collector felt powerful. Far more powerful than it ever had physically. However, mana wise, it had to consume creatures to build up its root count.


    The Collector could skip metamorphosis levels, but its root count could not match the same growth. It could only increase in approximation to one metamorphosis level at a time.


    Thus, the Collector had only 60% of the mana pool it should have had in this state. It would have to rectify this discrepancy by consuming mana-dense creatures.


    The light from the Collector''s chest orb glowed. This magical organ would make any monster hunt quite easy.


    A squelching, cracking sound echoed in the howling winds as a thin line split down vertically from the center of the Collector''s neck to its waist.


    Then, in an instant, that line expanded, revealing the Collector''s innards.


    From that hole, a huge mass of sharp teeth and crushing muscle emerged, promising to ensnare, crush, and grind up any specimen caught in its bounds.


    Almost as soon as the mass of teeth and flesh emerged, it sunk back into the Collector''s stomach, the slit across its body closing in an instant.


    This, too, was part of the Firefly Shinchu''s biology. The Shinchu did not possess a mouth at its head. Instead, it possessed a detachable, extendable maw at its thorax, which to the Collector was its upper stomach and chest areas.


    Another method of surprising and devouring prey.


    The Collector possessed more tools than it ever had before, and it would use them to grow to higher heights. To be stronger and stronger as it desired until nothing in this world could ever stand to challenge it.


    For now, the Collector headed its way to the goblin settlement, prioritizing information and eager to test its new Dominus-type magic.

 Chapter 90 - Higher Calling

    The Collector moved through the snow for about fifty meters before rapid buildup of ice crystals began to line every seam of its hyperalloy carapace.


    Thepromise to its movements was not marked, merely calcted at approximately a 5% loss of optimal mobility, but if the Collector ever stopped moving to break the formations of ice, then this percentage would continuously increase.


    This was a test on the Collector''s part to sense how long it could maintain itself in this environment without its new adaptations.


    Several calctions assessed that with the metongue Smander''s naturally high internal temperaturesplimented by efficient blood flow and some level of instion from hyperalloy carapace indicated that the Collector would never fully expire to the cold, but it was entirely possible that if it was immobilized that it could find itself encased in ice in a hibernating state.


    In other words, the Collector could not afford to hold back on utilizing its heat-based adaptations.


    The Collector began to emanate a faint golden light from the orb on its chest. The orb emitted a shimmering aura as bands of golden light began to flicker all around it, expanding outwards and wrapping the Collector almost in a full halo of bioluminescence.


    The Collector regted this light so that it would not be strongly visible past five meters in the extreme weather conditions of raging, snow-packed winds around it.


    Then, topensate for lowered heat output from the light, it activated the external gills from the metongue Smander.


    The tendrils of red frilled flesh drooping down from the Collector''s back lit up in a sh. All the feathery frills spontaneously ignited, and all their fires merged with each other, forming a swirling pir of me.


    The Collector''s hyperalloy carapace was coated in a magical lipidyer from the metongue Smander that provided longsting fuel for the mes, and soon, the fires spread from the Collector''s back to all around its entire body.


    Thus, the Collector became a walking mass of fire, each tongue of me further given support by the Firefly Shinchu''s light.


    Zeropromise now to its mobility. There was no real mana upkeep to this aura of me. The smander''s pyrophilic lipidyer constantly regenerated.


    There was only an initial 10% cost of activation.


    >>>


    Mana Level: 100>90%


    >>>


    The Collector slithered forwards, and as it did so, it left a trail of steaming, melted water that quickly froze over again once it left. The snow all around the Collector melted into droplets of water before they even touched it, and when the miniature rain grew too close to the mes, it fizzled away into steam.


    Surrounded and wreathed by a constant cloak of mes that danced and raged with the flow of wild winds, the Collector looked intensely unnatural.


    Intensely threatening.


    An anomaly of nature.


    Fire where only ice was supposed to reign.


    Heat where only cold had grasped dominion over.


    And, strangely, perhaps in a sense of surrealfort, a lone light where the veil of ever-present snow robbed all of their sight.


    This wouldpromise its stealth to a degree, and yet, the Collector had understood this risk. This area had drastically lower poption density of tinkering life forms, and the Collector could not afford to take a form that was less thanbat optimized as it began to hunt for stronger and stronger lifeforms to amass its own might.


    ==


    The Collector traveled for the better part of an hour. Thisnd was vast andrgely homogenous. A constant snowscape, though it seemed the harsh weather conditions did lessen as the Collector neared the coordinates of the goblin settlement.


    Visibility thus grew to approximately fifty meters, though it seemed that though the intensity of the snowfall and the winds had dropped dramatically here, there was still enough to preventpletely unobscured ocr system functions.


    Almost twenty-five minutes to the goblin settlement.


    Though, as the Collector''s main skull clicked its mandibles, an oddity had emerged.


    As the Collector traversed through the night and the winds of winter, certain specimen began to float around it. These specimens were small and numerous and at first notice, could easily have been mistaken for snowkes.


    However, they were quiterge, perhaps the size of an average human''s hand, and they hovered in a distinct orbit around the Collector, circling around its aura of light and fire.


    Approximately ten of them. An additional specimen circled the Collector every ten minutes.


    The Collector had analyzed their physical dimensions and found that conventional senses yielded little information about them.


    They possessed almost imperceptibly low mass. They glowed a faint shade of blue that differentiated them from snowfall, but otherwise, visually, they were highly simr. The light itself did not seem to emanate from any bioluminescent organ nor was it a byproduct of any heat producing reaction.


    These creatures were entirely magical in nature.


    Focusing magical energy on the ocr systems of one of the five skulls linked to the Collector''s nervous system showed as much.


    The Collector clicked the mandibles on its main skull. It would have asked the female daemon specimen what this was, and likely, she would have known.


    But she had long since faded away, though still, some shard of her was immortalized in the Collective.


    It was up to the Collector to investigate in this unknown environment all that which it did not know.


    Swiping with physical attacks did nothing to the creatures.


    The Collector did not like to utilize monomolecr ws in this environment for the risk of freezing rendered them even more brittle, but it tried so, swiping at one blue snowke with its monomolecr arm de.


    The de sliced through the snowke, splitting it in half, but it simply reformed a momentter.


    Quite simr in principle to the hobgoblin thrall''s intangibility, but far more advanced.


    They were impossible even to consume, for they seemed to hold no tangible form to devour and break down despite possessing a modicum of mass.


    Quite interesting.


    The Collector could sense that there was some minute form of life in these creatures, but they were likely nearly brainless,pletely devoid of higher thinking and acting like automata to certain stimuli.


    To what stimuli, however? This, the Collector hypothesized was the heat or light it generated.


    Then what would the consequences be of these specimens orbiting the Collector? It did not take too long to find out.


    Soon, when the Collector was ten minutes from the goblin settlement, one of the blue snowkes surrounding the Collector detached from its orbit, floating away into the distance.


    Minutester, the snowke came back, and following it was a frostborn hobgoblin.


    A male specimen. Thoroughly deteriorated in condition. Even with his white, cold-resistant skin, he shivered, holding his arms together in an inefficient gesture to preserve warmth.


    ==


    "Fire¡­fire," said the hobgoblin as he narrowed his blue eyes, reaching an eager hand out to the bonfire rising in the distance, rising through the snow. He did not want to let go of this warmth, not when he had been lost so long in the storm.


    But he knew the elder''s teachings. Follow the Snow Sprites, and they lead you to warmth. He smiled as he reached out to the fire in the distance.


    A big fire, it looked like. Maybe it was a camp. There were no humans here. Maybe it was a camp meant to search for him.


    But¡­but the fire moved towards him.


    Fast.


    His eyes widened and he trembled, frozen in fear as the fire grew great andrge before his eyes, and through the curtain of fire, the glowing yellow eye sockets of six skulls stared down at him.


    ==


    The Collector pointed at the frostborn hobgoblin. The hobgoblin was utterly frozen in fear, but even if it had run, it would have never been able to escape the Collector.


    "Do not move," said the Collector, an echo underlining its voice as it channeled the Goblin Lord''s Primal Magic.


    Higher Calling, it was called.


    The capacity to imbue the projected voice with magic thatpletely controlled the mental processes of goblins. All it took was for any goblin specimen to hear the Collector''smand once, and they would be under the Collector''s permanent bidding.


    The hobgoblin stopped moving, even shivering, and just stared nkly ahead.


    "What are these specimens?" said the Collector as it pointed with one of its four arms to the many blue snowkes dancing around it.


    "They are Snow Sprites," said the hobgoblin simply.


    Too much like an automaton. For the specimen to operate more effectively, it had to possess more of its own will.


    Perhaps this could be adjusted.


    The Collector made the necessary fine tuning to the output of mana it utilized for Higher Calling andmanded the hobgoblin once more.


    "Tell me what these specimens do," asked the Collector again.


    The hobgoblin nodded and knelt in the snow; his white-skinned figure lit up by the aura of mes raging from the Collector standing in front of him.


    "Lord," said the hobgoblin in acknowledgement. "Snow Sprites lead to warmth. Help us when we get lost. Elder always says to follow them when we get lost. I lost."


    "Is there a way to destroy these specimens?" The Collector opened a fiery palm up, and a Snow Spritended upon it, seemingly enjoying the ming heat while being unaffected by it.


    "I-I not know," said the hobgoblin with a fearful quiver of his lip. "Only elder knows stuff like that."


    "An elder, you say?" The Collector mused at the possibilities. ''Elder'' denoted a title signifying age and, likely, knowledge. Yes, this ''elder'' would prove useful under the Collector''smand.


    The entire goblin settlement would. But there was simply the matter of securing the settlementpletely, to ce them all under the Collector''s dominion with no chance for fleeing stragglers.


    "Do you hold any position of significance in your social group?" asked the Collector.


    Higher Calling seemed to possess some simrities with psionicmunication, simplifying the Collector''s words into intent that the hobgoblin could understand.


    "I am strong warrior. Went out to hunt frost bear. Got lost. Many looking for me, I think." The hobgoblin nodded to himself. "Yes, I important."


    "Will they listen to your words? Yourmands?" said the Collector.


    "Most," said the hobgoblin. "Champion, no, he won''t listen to me. Beat me instead if I tell him what to do."


    The Collector''s main skull clicked its mandibles. It formted a n. "That is sufficient information. You will inform me of the numbers in your social group, the dimensions of their settlement, and their orientation as we move."


    "Go home now? To warmth?" said the hobgoblin with hope in his eyes as he stared at the Collector with nothing but admiration where once before there had been nothing but fear.


    One pair of the Collector''s eyes shone down on the goblin.


    "Yes," said the Collector.

 Chapter 91 - Pied Piper

    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 ck 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 theck of building materials.


    The presence of forests with wood, amon 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 rtive degree ofmunicative 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 advancedmunications 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 apletely minimal risk of the Collector''s presence bing 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 calctions 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 rted 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:rge, 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 urrence 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 n 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, thetticed 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 pping 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 bing strong. They looked up to Rogg.


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


    "Out! Out! Monstering!" 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 monstering! 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 minutester, 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 toe his way from bringing his brethren to the lord''s warm side.

 Chapter 92 - Forced Evolution

    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 de 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 muscr neck in afortable grip.


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


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


    ==


    The Collector, wreathed in an aura of light and mes 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 itsnding 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 nk 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 ocr systems in magical energy, allowing it to better perceive the flow of mana to check for irregrities.


    "So it is this," said the Collector as it put a finger on the champion''s helmet. The mes 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 formted a spell. In essence, magic stored in certain symbols.


    Amon urrence, 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 simplycked 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 mes 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 mes 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 circr 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 inbat with me as you so desire," said the Collector, outstretching its four pairs of arms in wee 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 bing more and more familiar with. The champion from its bodynguage, 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 de 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''sbat capacity. However, the champion had no reference with which topare the Collector to, no monster or warrior or beast simr 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 elerated forwards with enhanced speed and strength, swinging his de to slice the Collector''s stomach horizontally.


    The Collector blocked the swing with the forearm carapace of one of its arms. The Everfrost de nged 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 withplete ease.


    "My calctions 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 de 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,manding 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 mmed them into the Collector.


    None of the blunt force blows dealt any damage to the Collector for its long chain chitinous suyer 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 fromck of oxygen.


    "You are a champion. Thus, I had assessed you the potential to evolve among your kind. But now, it is difficult to calcte 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 ck-tinged red formed around the first before the Collector mmed it into the champion''s stomach.

 Chapter 93 - Additional Data

    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 toe 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 incrediblyrge 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 ck 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 ttened 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 mping 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


    *Gic material gained*


    Stored Gic 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 severelycking.


    As for this failed evolution, the Collector took note, analyzed, and adjusted its calctions. Just as it did with the magical power that allowed for high speed projectiles or the many applications ofbat 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,pletely out of the bounds of prior calctions 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 particr 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. ck lined with flickers of red wreathed its fingers as it mmed 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 ount 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 undtions. 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 be dyed a bright red and tendrils of ck had sprouted from his back.


    A sessful 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 stimte 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 rted to this power and the goblins were quite flexible. The Collector noted now that it had devoured a great many goblin gic 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 sessful in its evolution was the idea of potential.


    What would ur 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 sessful 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."

 Chapter 94 - Shadows

    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 ocr 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 particrly healthy forest biome, for example, should indicate the presence of particrly 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 intorge 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, bing self-sustaining and resistant to melting.


    These hills of magically charged snow were therefore both physical and magical shelters, providing insting 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 calcted 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 minuteter, 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 andck of usage, thin strands of muscle lying weak under wrinkled white skin.


    His head was hunched over with arge, hooked nose dotted with warts, and thin grey wisps of hair speckled the top of his balding head. In size, vertebralpression along with apanying 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,cked 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 forst, 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 thismand, 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 ny 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 wille 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 Shadowse. 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 mes for the space was insted enough against the cold such that its mes could risk overheating those within or perhaps melting even the magically enhanced structure.


    It was of noteworth that the space of the Snowmound wasrger 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 withinpared 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 naturalws, 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, elerating its mana regeneration greatly.


    Not five percent per minute. The Collector reassessed its calctions. Ten percent per minute seemed more an urate 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.


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

 Chapter 95 - Darkness Approaches

    "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 thesends 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 calcted 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 gue. A small, contained one, but a terror nheless," 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 Shadowse, and they are relentless.


    They will oust 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 ¨C 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 thest 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 be 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, particrly those rted 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 topensate forpromised physical sight.


    There was a distinct change in pressure. A heaviness apanied 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 energytent within the body to a sufficientlyrge area around the body, less mana was avable to defend to provide defense to the body itself, rendering it less capable of summoningrge quantities of mana or leaving it more susceptible to mental maniption.


    "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 mes once again.


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


    >>>


    Mana Level: 90>80


    >>>


    The Collector noted as light illuminated the dark depths of the Snowmound, though notpletely. The raging mes around the Collector cast countless shadows all around, and these, the Collector''s six pairs of ocr systems kept keen eyes on, noting any irregrities of movement within them.


    The Collector itself, if the elder was correct, waspletely out of risk due to the unending light and mes 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 mes. "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 perceivingmunications 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 thend 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 bodilynguage 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 avable 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 anypromise 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 urred interesting phenomena -

 Chapter 96 - Blessing Of The Deep

    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.


    Theplete 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 processsted 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 threerge fingers. The fingers were sharp, tapered to points like ws, butpletely featureless due to being blocks of darkness.


    The hands did not seem to possess any three-dimensional space. They traveled only upon nes of dimension corresponding with shadows and darkness, and thus it was more urate 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 urate 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 simrities 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 be something detached from it now.


    No normal methods of sensing magical flow orposition 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, simr 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 bing 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 popces 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-ss 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, particrly in the early stages of the United Front-Collective Conflict, found their minds shattered and assimted 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 hade, 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 formunication, but as of yet could not extrapte 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 infinitesimalpared to the breadth of the Collective. Yet, still far greater than what any one psion could output.


    The assimtion procedure also gleaned to the Collector the physical coordinates of where this infiltration had urred, and it could extrapte them on this 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 was vast, almost nearing the threshold for a gas giant while maintaining the orbital and structural mechanics of a conventionally life-bearing, terrestrial.


    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 be. "My king, you have conquered the Shadows themselves."


    The Collector looked at the elder. All of the Collector''s ns 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 assimting a small portion of the hivemind entity, the system shard had managed to take from it a Blessing ¨C a power that was etched not merely into gic 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 ess 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 iplete, and its functions significantlypromised.


    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 t 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.

 Chapter 97 - Planning

    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 inparison 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 me 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 orrger 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 Callingpletely, 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 healedceration 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 be a champion. When will he return?"


    "This ''Rogg'' will not return, for he has expired on ount 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 thisnd-," began the Collector, and from there, it imbibed information from the elder.


    ==


    The next three hours involved the Collector assimting 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 nkets and rags, none of which possessed gic samples of note worth in terms of power or physicality, the Collector pondered the information it possessed and formted a course of action.


    The Collector desired primarily two short term objectives.


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


    To aplish 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-ss 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 aplish 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 ¨C 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 simr to the processes of inhtion and exhtion. 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 regte the emotions and render the vtile 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 ess to this mana rich Snowmound was, as of now, uncontested.


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

 Chapter 98 - To Vimur

    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 thisnd, 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, thisnd 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 onerger city called Middir, and this cityy 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 popted human spaces meant adventurers, and adventurers meant death.


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


    The Boar n.


    The Kraken n.


    And the Faceless n.


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


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


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


    Of these three ns, the Boar n 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 ns through the Great Storm.


    It would seem that there was a highly unique meteorological phenomenon that regrly urred within thisnd wherein a ''storm'' would sweep through the area in a regr 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 thosends and stepped back alive.


    There were countless stories of the Rift and the threats it could possess, but the elder''s ount of it grew questionable in uracy 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 couldy waste to entire popces with thunder and avnches.


    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 circr 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 chargednd of Fjall, it lost much of its intensity, allowing tribesmen of the human ns totch 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.


    Totch onto the storm and explore it, or even further to apany 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 "ck 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 imed had been two millennia.


    This mountain was said to be the center point at which countless ''spirits'' ¨C seemingly entities whose psionic profiles had obtained additional physical vessels after leaving their original bodies ¨C 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 ¨C dungeons of a smaller scale than the goblin lord''s ¨C 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 alsoy.


    This, the Collector would investigate also.


    The second location that caught the Collector''s interest was ake called Vimur thaty 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 particrly powerful Jotun. If the Collector was able to obtain a gic sample from the corpse, it could begin its westward journey with far more might.


    Such a gic sample from a powerful native specimen would also grant the Collector an additionalyer of resistance to the cold, not to mention that it would prime the Collectorter for when it would traverse into the Rift where the weather conditions grew to extremes that would render what it currently faced infinitesimal inparison.


    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.

 Chapter 99 - Evolution For All

    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 theparatively 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 nkets, 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 ck waves of magical energy. Its ocr systems focused on those waves of energy, allowing it to better discern the minute movements of their flow and adjust them ordingly.


    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 evolutionpletely overwriting the core which, though it did allow for goblin specimen to vastly alter their physiology, possessed the side effect of rendering their mental facultiespletely inert unlessmanded 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''smands 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 Callingmands, it retained enough mental faculties to not simply copse 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.


    Sufficientlyplex 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 ck 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 mmed 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 morepactwork underneath the skin.


    Those tendril antennae did not need to be asrge 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 ordingly.


    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 mes.


    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% asbat capable as either of the burial tusk elites. A simrity 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 inrge 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 calcted 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 ¨C all of that would show in the altercations toe.


    And these, the Collector would observe.

 Chapter 100 - Predators

    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 insting furyers to ensure the cold environment did notpromise 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 regr 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 thatsted throughout an entire day, but any longer than this, and their abilities couldpromise.


    "We shall move now," said the Collector, directing its voice primarily to the Carrier-unit elite. "I will limit my pace such that my mes 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 gic 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 psionicmunications 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 ordingly."


    The Collector pointed to the Carrier unit elite''s head, where at the back of his bald, tusked face, a tendril ck 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 simr 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 ted 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 me 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 ocr 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 calcted that were it to have possessed ack 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 poption 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 asionally 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 dietrgelyprised of hardy, frozen grasses dug up from underneath the snow.


    The asional 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 nobative 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 muscr 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 pped its hands together, and with that motion, the mass gathering of Snow Sprites that by now formed a vortex of blue kes 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 assimted 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 umte and funnel in mana to the Collector.


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


    The Collector made sure that thest of the Snow Sprites faded away, catching the whistling winds billowing around the snowyndscape 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 mes.


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


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


    ted in white that camouged in the snow, the Collector became a silent spectre, a phantom that snaked its way through the endless winternd without making a single sound.

 Chapter 101 - Bigger Fish

    Exactly five minutester, 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 ws.


    Even underneath the density of fur, the Collector could perceive highly built muscture 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 ambting while masking its presence despite having seeded 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, almostpletely eliminating it, though aplete standstill would be analogous to stopping the heart and therefore untenable.


    Right as the feline grew morefortable 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 monomolecr de from one of its arms with a clink.


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


    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 ded 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 monomolecr de. 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 tworge bites, the feline.


    >>>


    *Biomass Gained (+6)*


    Biomass Level: 5/100 > 11/100


    *Gic material gained*


    Stored Gic 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 thend swirled, indicating a singrity point that the Collector knew now to be analogous to a dungeon.


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


    The dungeons in this biome tended to beirs that housed singr 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 multiyered structure of the goblin lord''s dungeon, these dungeons tended toprise merely of a singleyer housing the predator specimen, the ''boss'', and did not fade once the corresponding ''boss'' was killed.


    Rather, the dungeons actedrgely 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 copsed, receiving the dungeon''s benefits for themselves.


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


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


    The Collector felt iting. 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 grownfortable 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 wereparable.


    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 apleteck 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 shed 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 rity, 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 itsir, 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 particrly for its own self-defense.


    The swarm was an hour behind the Collector, and quite likely, the boss would return to itsir 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 ownbat 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.

 Chapter 102 - Dungeon Investigation

    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 circr 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 theck of magical energy indicated ack ofplexity within the dungeon itself, extrapting this hypothesis from the elder''s knowledge of dungeons.


    Dungeons in this biome tended to merely beirs. They did not possessplicated series ofyers 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 multiyered 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 particrly exceptional sensitivity to flow.


    With green energy covering the Collector''s ocr 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 corrted 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 dissimr to the Snowmound, but where the Snowmound wasprised of more pliable kes, 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, ces 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 investigateter. For now, the dungeon.


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


    Theyout, 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 singr,rge 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 simr 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,prisingrgely of herd-based quadrupeds simr 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 circr 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 assimte 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 maniption 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 forter 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 de made of this alloy, they could cut or bat away normally intangible phenomena such as gouts of me 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 particrlyrge mana crystal. Within the angr shadow, the Collector bent down and put its hand into the darkness.


    The Collector felt as its hand sink into the shadow andpletely 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 metongue Smander''s skull.


    It popped the skull out, and with Sapia, maintained a flow of magical energy within the skull to keep its ocr 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.

 Chapter 103 - The Deep

    Again, the sensation of water with a minor numbing property. Then, the ocr systems of the metongue Smander 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 ocr 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 ocr systems of the metongue Smander 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 itpletely immobile within a spherical space that would roughly epass the space of any body part it submerged.


    The Collector ascertained that there was not significant risk in upying 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 calcted heavilypromisedbat capacity for two seconds while it adjusted after submerging, but two seconds was crucial in any altercation.


    And already, the Collector could sense an altercationing.


    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 particrly massive amounts of magical energy.


    No, in sheer capacity, it would have paled inparison 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 rity. Large, thudding steps that echoed through the depths of the cavern. Extrapting 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 hade to know well in this world where physicalws meant little, the condensing properties of mana allowed the Collector to essentiallypact 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 y a sizable role inparing 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 iing, ever loudening steps were apanied 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 ount 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 calcted that it would have been approximately equal to this iing 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 red 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.


    Arge 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 ck lips, and a puff of heated air steamed out from the ursine''s red snout.


    The Collector stretched out its four arms, beckoning the beast toe. 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 me aura, sparks of fiery red and orange showering its body first before igniting into a raging pir 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 ws 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 aerialbat.


    The Collector mmed 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 sted 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 circte its mana in powerful but unregted bursts, sacrificing efficiency for explosiveness.


    The Collector red 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 shed.


    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 me.


    The stalematested 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 w-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 semnce 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 mes, and the Collector capitalized on the specimen''s moment of inefficiency.


    The Collector unsheathed twin des 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.

 Chapter 104 - Lightning Orb

    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 thest 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 calcted 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 st wave of erupted from the ursine''s body.


    The wave of blue energy surged outwards,yering 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 iing 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 shed 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 thickyer 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 monomolecr ws from the Collector dangerous to utilize, for the ws 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 ayer of ice, now hang t on its body.


    Whenever the specimen shunted out the freezing magical propertiesyering 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 ny 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 be 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 frostyer was still recharging, it possessed enough dense muscture 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 gic material, it could not replicate that same ratio.


    Was it due to ack 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,rgely from a fundamental perspective, were heavily linked to the mind-muscle-psionicwork.


    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.


    Thest 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 ocr 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 wasprised 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 rxed all the muscles of its body, perceptibly shrinking as the rapid blood and mana flow circting 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 ofbat 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 firstnded 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 thoroughbat with a sufficiently powerful tinkerer.


    These tinkerers possessed just the right blend ofbat knowledge, honed natural instinct, variety of powers and weaponry, and physicalpetency 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 thembat 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 ept 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 calctions 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 energyden within the sphere would annihte 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 iing ball was right in front of the Collector, crackling and roaring and just asrge as the Collector''s sizable form, the Collector almost embraced the destructive energy with wee fervor.

 Chapter 105 - Constant Devouring

    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 mes, it still provided some direct heat resistance to sources of elevated temperature that did note 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, circting 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 ocr systems while it felt its entire body slowly heat up. It stood in the middle of a smoking, molten, and sizable crater carved out withpletely 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 circted.


    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 circte 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 muscture were beginning to overheat.


    The Collector aimed its ocr 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 circte 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 notpare 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, sting apart the furred flesh into charred chunks.


    The beam drilled a hole straight in the middle of the ursine''s waist,pletely severing its torso from its legs in one wide, circr 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 shes of fiery ps as it reached the ursine''s falling body in one bound. Itnded 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 monomolecr de 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 iceyer, and surgically severed the ursine''s spine such that its nerves would no longer register sensations to its processing center.


    With this aplished, 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, undting 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 circtory systemponents.


    >>>


    *Biomass Gained (+10)*


    Biomass Level: 11/100 > 21/100


    *Gic material gained*


    Stored Gic 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 monomolecr de 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-essentialponents, 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 wasbat 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 toe within the next ten minutes.


    Eight minutes and fifty secondster, 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.

 Chapter 106 - Dungeon Ownership

    Nine minutes and fifteen secondster, 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 singlerge leap,nding 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 andnding 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," dered 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 ming form, their white skinned bodies giving homage and devoted respect to the living me 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 initiallyfortable granting.


    The only remaining test now was to put these specimens'' trough the harsh trial of legitimatebat 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''splete 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 copse, and it did not yet desire for such an oue.


    "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 elerated rate at which you grasp new information will prove highly useful in more efficientlymanding 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 potentbat 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 arge 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 muscture 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 mes.


    "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 urred.


    There will be no more apologies among this swarm," said the Collector, remembering how in the Darkwoods, it had given a simr exnation 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 messiahe 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 mming the heavy end of the Everfrost weapon right into the stormbear''s exposed ribs, crashing through them and sttering the heart within.


    The Collector with thismand attempted to observe whether transferal of the dungeon''s ownership would ur and whether this was based upon solely whoevernded 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 urred.


    "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 y 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."


    "Exin 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."


    mors 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 ownnd. Ournd!"


    The Collector clicked the mandibles of its main skull as it began to feel the dungeon''s flow of mana begin to circte 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''smand. However, the elite, Bolg, and the elder all stayed in front of the Collector, sensing its will.

 Chapter 107 - Networking

    The Collector first spoke to the elder.


    "Tell me of the mechanics involved within ownership transferal regarding theseirs known as ''dungeons," said the Collector. "Specifically in regards to geographic proximity. What urs 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 thisnd, and it devoured all in its midst, toppling boss after boss, and, when it reached the edges of thisnd, 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 themotion 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 im this dungeon as yours and grant our people the warmth andnds 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 be 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 eptance.


    The Collector utilized Higher Calling, imparting a modification into the champion''s biology directly into his heart. Red and ck 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 bloodyceration.


    From the cut emerged two ck 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 formcks 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 yourmand and function as your guard. The tendrils sprouting from your rear cranium will also allow you greater psionic ess 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 be 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 muchrger 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 calcted the cost of allowing all the female and children to remain. If it reced the ten guards with all the female and young, then it would lose a 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 tinkeringnd ownership, but I presume this shall be enough to sate any primal desire for territory and ount 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 ce sentry points through every dungeon, increasing its map of awareness greatly. In a sense, it was greatly simr 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 surveincework.

 Chapter 108 - The Soul

    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 anybat capacity to note.


    Even his ability to utilize magic had been diminished for he was simply too frail to circterge 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 mes 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, particrly with the goblin swarm this far up north where there were precious few mmable pieces of flora to ignite.


    In addition, the inclement weather made any manner of me 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 and of unforgiving cold set alight by the errant lightning strike.


    But here was the Collector, an infinite source of warmth and me 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 me, extending both their hands out and lifting the meat as if to have it blessed by the Collector''s presence.


    There was something urring here, something the Collector could not quite ce, but it knew from its stored memories that this was roughlyparable 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 be 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 thatcked 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 icynds 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 mes 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 thisnd to lead us, I should have exined 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 nk, 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. 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 imnted 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 oftent 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 urate 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 bnces thatprise 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. "ording to your analyses, it is that in umting 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 exin 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 umte 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, therees 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 youe 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 kes of white dropping atzy pace from the sky, there was instead a downpouring of ck partictes.

 Chapter 109 - Wraiths

    These partictes, 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 mes. 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.


    "Exin further," said the Collector as it clicked its mandibles. It had thought it had thoroughly taken note of thisnd 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, and they were unique in that they manifested throughout every single realm, being intrinsically connected to all of them.


    Like ck holes that were wells pinned through allyers 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 pce 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 forary supremacy.


    The first were the dragons. Reptilian creatures of immense might and varied strengths capable of manipting natural disasters to their wills. In a battle known as the Draconomachy, the gods slew the dragons, utilizing a brilliant light from their sky pce 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 ¨C boss monsters of supreme power thatid 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 des known as the Dawnrise and the Duskfall, and with thesebined, 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 in. 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 de was capable of easily outputting firepower on the level of nuclear ordinance, rapid,rge-scale cellr regeneration that would have been unsurpassable had the Collector not possessed its bilespitters, and barriers capable offortably weathering the Collector''s explosively charged stabilized biosma or psionic-smobaric explosions.


    And the Collector knew that the weapon had been cast away by the entity to somece in this world, though very likely, it calcted 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 Collectorcked 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 arge-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 thest 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. ckened snow said to be the crystallized tears of his failure.


    Goblins have never traveled this far north, to reach the dangerousnds 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 particrlyrge Grain kended and melted down into ck 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 difort 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 ce of construction was within the Hivemind, 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.


    "Thends 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 ¨C living specters of ice ¨C 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 sce 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 circting outwards, but inwardly circting it for physical strengthening did not suffer any drop in efficiency.


    The goblin units were approximately ny percent capable as a fighting force. The Collector remained at one hundred percentbat capacity.


    A good thing, too, for it would seem that these ''Wraiths'' were already here.

 Chapter 110 - Light Against The Dark

    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 themmands.


    "Encircle yourselves around me. Form a precise ring formation. Maintain a distance boundary between five and seven meters. This will prevent burning from my mes 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 formationmand 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,manding 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 wasplete. Against the heavy fall of ck 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 upying that area of the ring stiffened up as their reddened eyes shed, 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 forplete 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 ck snow. They were creatures of billowing ck mistprised 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 cellr 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 nds and its Volcanite-encased biotrigger. With its new sub-adaptation, it no longer required much of a dy to activate its mes, and by further infusing the Volcanite biotrigger with mana, it could manipte its mes to a far finer degree.


    The Collector sted forth a thin cone of white-blue me at high speeds. The mes passed through the gap made by the champions with pinpoint uracy and washed over the three wraiths in white and blue waves. The temperature of the mes 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 ocr 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 shed around the Collector''s arms, and then Sapian force enveloped the three wraiths,pletely stilling them.


    Then, the Collector closed the fists of its arms, and the wraiths mashed together, the skulls of ice shattering and their misty ck 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 werepletely disabled by frostbite and ice crystals growing within their flesh.


    At the very least, the champions could function as live bodies to dy 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 energying 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 ¨C


    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 momentter, a shard of solidified golden light formed in front of it before flying forwards, into the Grain storm.


    >>>


    Mana Level: 95% > 92%


    >>>


    A momentter, and an explosion of gold lit up the wall of ck Grain particles, indicating that a wraith had sumbed.


    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 exin 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 mes 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 de-ws of Firefly Shincu light from two of its arms.


    The mes 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.

 Chapter 111 - Purpose

    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 their-like dungeon of the ursine, it was one that promised much more danger and, simultaneously, much more reward.


    Of course, an urate threat assessment of the dungeon could not yet be calcted until the Collector could directly analyze its immediate surroundings.


    Estimated time of arrival to Vimur: two hours ounting for constant interference from these specimen known as wraiths.


    As for the wraiths ¨C


    The Collector blitzed aplete warpath of carnage and destruction.


    Like a lone star casting away the dark, the Collector''s solidified golden light des sliced through wraith bodies with utter ease.


    One swipe could catch two to three of the misty figures, and when the light de passed through their normally incorporeal bodies of mist, grain, and ice, an interesting reaction urred.


    The Primal Density, visible in particte 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 spontaneouslybust 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 particr, devastated the ranks of the wraiths. With agile flips and dashes zig-zagging through the misty dark bodies, the carrier unit shed 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 umting 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 des that it could shoot out or back to defend its units in more angles.


    Thirty more minutester, and the Collector stood victorious, no wraiths remaining to stand against it.


    The goblin swarm stared at the Collector inplete 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 constantlypensated 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 gic 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 possessedpromised movement and function from the cold.


    Thus, the Collector, after it ascertained there were no more wraiths in the vicinity, alighted itself with me once more.


    The goblins knelt down in reverence as the mes coated the Collector, almost forming a royal cape of mes 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."


    "Nopromise 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 amodate.


    "If is continued sustenance and shelter you desire, then at the very least, your physical needs will not want," stated the Collector. "These mes 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 forpanionship with others of your kind, nor in ess to reproductive functions, particrly when the other goblin tribes of this biome have been assimted."


    This exnation 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,ir, and that good for most of us, but me ¨C 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, itsbat capabilities and processing power and even its imnted 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 ¨C 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 copse from the discord of independence or ipetency.


    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.

 Chapter 112 - Against Eternal Darkness

    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 urate 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 toy 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 imnted in their every cell as was the case with the Collector? This question, the Collector could not immediately calcte 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 urring due to respect for the Collector preventing anyone from speaking up.


    The Collector analyzed how it interacted with these specimens. Its wording in rtion 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 notpute an answer to them. It had to rte to them.


    Perhaps for the first time since the Collector hadnded 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 particrly 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 ovee it to survive.


    It is the ultimate stand against an eternal darkness that wille 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 toe: 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 wille, 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 imed 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 rte 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 ande 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 woulde a need for the Collector to better understand them.


    Perhaps in rting 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 wille 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 particrly 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 imnted 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 umted 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 ck partictes was such that they almostpletely mired visibility, reducing it to within five meters even with the Collector''s honed ocr 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 me 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 p 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.

 Chapter 113 - Entropy, Gods, And Goals

    Snowsprites, ording 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 me. 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 ughtered 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 gic samples particrly 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 erge themselves to better amodate 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-insting 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 did not possess any Primal Density, and the unique energy itself was, as the Collector had observed, naturally urring 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 insting 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 themselvespletely 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 surveince could prate Grain.


    As the Collector utilized its mes 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.


    ording to the elder, the gods descended, and in response, enemies known as dragons first faced them, then theseirs 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.


    Corrting this fact with the presence of Unitan, thenguage 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 surveince.


    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 unfathomablyrge to lifespans for specimens such as yourselves, yet, that alone is no reason forcency.


    The darkness is capable of manifesting and devouring in sudden moments that belie any sense ofmon 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 particr, 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 hade and went, rendering all energy in the area inert.


    Such spaces were deemed Voids.


    Simply areas of sheer nothingness that were inessible due to their permanentck of energy,rgely undetectable, and inscrutable.


    The exact mechanisms by which these Voids urred, the Hivemind did not yet know, yet, the immutable fact stood: entropy could approach billions of years ahead of its calcteding.


    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, Ick the necessary capability to forgemunications with said force. Thus, I require ess to a warp mechanism of sufficientplexity 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 incalcble 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 gic 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 ament or far off look that he would tell me the stories of our people and thisnd, 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 thisnd. 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 andrger 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 formted an idea after it heard the elder. "Your species is given to extremes of desires, osciting between cowardly fear and decisive desire for the fight and purpose.


    I seek to eliminate the urrence of such inefficient fear. To my understanding, it is such that among your social unit, only those designated to be ''elders''mit 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 particr, 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."

 Chapter 114 - Arrival At Vimur

    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-ss 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 ck partictes stopped flowing almost right as the Collector and the swarm reached the edge of a sheer cliff of ice, and one hundred meters below, therey 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 sufficientlyrge enough to be ssified as ake, 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 syed-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 seemedrgely 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 theke 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.


    Theke itself was surrounded on all sides by towering cliff faces of ice, which,bined with the Grainfall continuing to rage outside, isted it quite well. Should Vimur have been ced on the surface, atop the cliffs, it would have been highly visible to all with the giant arm.


    The perfectly circr structure of theke and basin indicated that potentially this was no coincidence. It was possible that this ce 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 ce 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 ocr systems yielded no immediate threats. Theke seemedpletely cid. There was a swirling, circr 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 armcked that. However, it was preserved well enough that it would be a perfect gic 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 gic sample. If the Collector could fully devour that arm, it calcted that it could easily leap to a boundary of strength twice its current capacity.


    The Collector encased its ocr 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 urately 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 thends below the Rift, when they shed 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 pirs 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 inurate 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 readilymit 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 n 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 formte urate 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.

 Chapter 115 - Encounter

    "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 toe 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 wille 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 ess 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 theparatively far less coordinated and physically gifted champions could not manage such a feat.


    "I can still go," said Thokk. He bid a champione 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 almostpletely vertical one-hundred-meter drop. "Is nothing to me, my king, I swear it."


    "My understanding of your capabilities are thorough. I have already calcted you are capable of such movement. Yet, thinning thebat 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 conveymunications 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 ming wings in what was not an insectoid buzz, but a roar of flickering mes. 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%rger 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. Simr to the forcefield generated by the sorcerer the Collector had fought in the Darkwoods. Yet, of a vastly denser and stronger magnitude.


    Imprable 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, postting 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 rted to the environment or creaturespletely unrted 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 urred. 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 rectangr 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 cid stillness; the spiral pattern of its currents faded. The winds returned to normal. The barrier surrounding the arm dissipated, and so too did therger 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 muscture.


    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 ting, 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 ws than the Collector''s meant more for gripping and hooking.


    Crystals of ice protruded from some parts of its scale ting. Specifically in the shoulders, neck, and back.


    Arge 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 sizablepared 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 ocr system of the specimenprised of two eyes on the sides of its head. The eyes were deeply blue with ck, slit pupils that focused on the Collector.


    A row of gills on the specimen''s enormous neck red as the creature bared its fangs in a semnce of a smile.


    In terms of magical energy, the Collector did not even have to encase its ocr 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 monomolecr w.

 Chapter 116 - Worthy Challenge I

    The enemy specimen reacted to the Collector stabbing at it with its monomolecr de at the veryst 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 de, 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 de 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 monomolecr de and both Firefly Shinchu light des.


    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 nce, 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 sting 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 itsparatively 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 mes 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 mping 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 thickyer of protection was shorn away and the light interacted with the bare, white flesh underneath, the explosive nature of the Shinchu light came into y.


    The white flesh swelled up, bing 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 simr 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 elerated regeneration.


    Even as the beam caused flesh to liquefy and explode, boring deep and dangerously into the innards, white flesh and muscture wrapped their fibrous threads together again only to be sted 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 calction. Utilizing the Shinchu light in a continuous beam like this on top of activating the Shinchu''s arms ¨C both mana intensive resources ¨C was rapidly draining the Collector''s reserves.


    Certainly, the specimen before it was rapidly draining itself as well, but the Collector would sumb 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 dy.


    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 sh of blue light before a cracking shockwave of energy erupted. The st of energy,bined 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 amand 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''sbat capacity. Other than the carrier unit, none of them would be able tost more than two seconds against that specimen.


    Still, the Collector took a brief moment of reprieve, utilizing the smander''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 smander''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 wastnd 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 des 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 woulde down to a true test of efficiency.

 Chapter 117 - Worthy Challenge II

    __


    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 mes, and the beast, emanating a chilling yet mighty aura nheless, 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 mping 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 des 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 mmed 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 des 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 des! 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 hended his eyes upon the beast closer now, seeing its upromisingly powerful aura.


    "Thokk! Be careful, it is a dragon!" eximed 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 sessor. 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 ce with his stormy and icy breath.


    "You''re pretty small for a dragon," said Thokk with a smile. "Disappointing. But Thokk the Dragon-yer has a nice ring to it."


    The monster looked at Thokk and grinned.


    Thokk noted rmingly 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 thest ends up recing 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 sh across the beast''s belly. However, before his des 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 andnded 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 tond a sh 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 winding 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 de.


    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 des into the monster''s stomach, then he would bare the thickyers 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 prate 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 tomit 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 stter outwards and pain the snow in front of it a deep azure shade.


    The elites kept up their punches, mming 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 de 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 itsrge 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 im his victory.

 Chapter 118 - Worthy Challenge III

    The monstrosity kept its burly, scaled arms around its stomach, preventing its intestines from spilling out of the burning hole baring them. As it did so, it opened its mouth, the fin on its back charged into apletely 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 shes 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 iparable 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 ckened, crackling raw, rocky earth it had uncovered before standing up with a grin.


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


    "I see that you have begun to enjoy this altercation," stated the Collector as it withdrew the buried de, 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 des glowed a bright gold, overpowering the aura of mes 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 goblinnguage, 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 ming, glowing white body marked out a steaming path across the deste, lightning-razed ground, and in a moment, it was upon the hostile creature with a thrusting stab of its light de.


    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 ws.


    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 mming motion. This was empowered with the Shaker Fish''s ability to generate earth shattering shockwaves, and the monster halted its sh to cross its thick, scaled arms over its body to guard itself.


    A resounding, deep m echoed through the snowy wastnd 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 andnded 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 thatcked shock absorbent properties like the longchain chitinous suyer 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 directbat 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 closebat.


    The Collector weed 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 sessful, 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 nearlypletely 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 topletely ensnare the specimen''s head and then subject it to a direct application of mes from the Collector''s pyrocatalytic nds.


    However, the beast was able to predict this and swerved to the side at the veryst moment, dodging the detachable stomach and, because it had dodged sote, 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 thest second, reacted by jamming its fist into the specimen''s mouth, ready to eject its monomolecr w 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, andbining it with mana, the creature was able to adequately predict the intent of another being the moment the intent was formted.


    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.

 Chapter 119 - The Real Challenge

    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 monomolecr ws, 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 des out but maintained sheathing on its monomolecr des. The des 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 quicklypromise their structure and edge.


    Even the mes of the metongue Smander would not be sufficient to keep the monomolecr des warm enough, not to mention that even with the Smander''s fireproof lipid coating, the des ran the risk of being warped by the heat.


    In addition, sheathing the des 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 des.


    This time, the Collector made the move. It drew down low, its tail coiling up and swelling with muscture and red mana. The enemy specimen saw this and stiffened up, ready to take the Collector''s charge.


    The Collector sted 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 eptable threshold of speed for the enemy specimen to react to.


    But this, the Collector ounted 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 mmed into the enemy specimen, the specimen reacted by opening its jaws wide, readying to mp 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 monomolecr w from within. The de cleanly sliced through thickyers 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, mping down its jaws, perhaps even in unconscious reflex, and this movement was easily enough topletely 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 mped 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 muscr 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 metongue Smander''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 thatmand, the goblin swarm quieted down, leaving the Collector in rtive 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 posttions and second-hand recollections would indicate."


    "Forgive me, my king," said the elder. "I merely thought it like a dragon. I have neverid 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 monomolecr w 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 simr to that generated by environmental forces.


    Likely, the Collector determined, the higher the Primal Density in a specimen, the more they became simr in presence to a function of nature or environmental disaster.


    >>>


    *Biomass gained (+5)*


    Biomass Level: 100/100


    *Gic 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 gic code, the Collector coulde to better understand the nature of these specimen known as ''Draconids''. There was an inherently powerful drive within them to seek out the challenge ofbat, and this was imnted into them at a gic 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 spection 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 in draconid, was yet another draconid.


    Very much simr in appearance to the one the Collector had defeated, but at the same time, different.


    This specimen''s physical dimensions were simr to its in 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.

 Chapter 120 - Returning Wind

    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 vtile 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 contemted 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 ck 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 Commonnguage 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 ent in the specimen''s speech that was deviant from that spoken from most Common tongue speakers it had encountered. Suggested familiarity but notplete 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 wed 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 blowbined 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 muscture 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 des.


    "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 itunched 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 metongue Smander''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 Collectorpleted its back flip, itshed out its tail, transferring back the blow of the draconid.


    Yet, a remarkable urrence.


    The draconid took the tail strike,prised of thebined 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 uracy.


    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.

 Chapter 121 - Destiny

    The blow was faster than before, elerated 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 calcte 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 heavilypromised, 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 calcted 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 topletely 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, ted head.


    Imperfectly, though. The strikes were bing 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 ¨C


    The Collector activated Chronostasis, massively elerating 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 topletely perceive, but at the very least, it could calcte 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 topletely blow apart the Collector''s chest carapace, splitting apart the hyper alloy carapace and tearing apart the longchain chitinous suyer 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 elerated 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 elerated 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 ocr systems on the draconid. Its sensory perception was hazy, with some sounds, sights, scents, and tactile inputs being numbed or registeringte ¨C 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 mncholy. "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,e 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, bing nothing more than a blurred dot in less than a second.

 Chapter 122 - Ascension

    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 woulde 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 simr to the fiery heat that had zed 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 upied a rung, it truly was still weak.


    It had to be 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 be 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 ming 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 sted 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, particrly 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 ming wings and peered at the sky. The fall of Grain was bing 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 thisnd 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 apany me," said the Collector.


    This was likely not aplete coincidence. If the draconid specimen had known of the Collector''s strength, in particr 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 be 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 bing 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 be 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 assimting this was truly a stimting hypothetical to entertain.


    A hypothetical soon to be 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.

 Chapter 123 - Evolution Beyond Compare

    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 pir of ice.??


    The arm was thoroughly muscled, the definition of the muscture clearly visible, each curve and indentation pushing against the skin.


    Across the skin, crystalline structures of ice protruded, with particrlyrge 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 hadrgely 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 ced 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 ocr systems traced the dark blue, nearly ck 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,tent 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 ess the upper echelons of might in this world.


    The Collector had always known that had it possessed full ess to the Collective, allowing its shard to gain adaptations from Infestor and Dominator Collector strains, it could have had half of this entire 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 arge scale and been immediately spotted by tinkerers with unfathomable abilities and firepower.


    Or perhaps it would have seeded, adapting magic to its diseases and mental maniptions 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 be 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 morefortable with these emotions and desires it now began to cultivate, more willing to ept 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 calcte 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 monomolecr w. 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, weing any challenger in turn that they mustered up against it.


    The Collector unsheathed its monomolecr de and made a rectangr incision through the Jotnar arm. The arm began to shake unpredictability, not because of any movement on the Collector''s part, but because the pir of underwater ice that supported the hand was slowly starting to crack and break apart under the arm''s weight.


    The ice had been generatedrgely 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 muscr, 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 inrge, 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 elerated 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 iparable to its new might.

 Chapter 124 - Jotnar Evolution

    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 ck, blue flesh that emitted the faint hum of magical energy, though had the Jotnar been alive and actively circting 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 arge 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 inparison 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 iparable to its new might. It was difficult to calcte how much biomass this Jotnar arm would grant, for certain parts of it were more magically charged than others.


    Regardless, the Collector calcted 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 gic ooze, ready to manipte 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 elerate 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 muscture 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, therger the cocoon became.


    The consumption process became a cascading effect, and as the cocoon grewrger andrger by the minute, the Collector began to analyze what gic samples it would utilize.


    Upon reaching the tenth metamorphosis level, the Collector could retrieve prior gic 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 gic samples that the Collector had at its disposal.


    First, there was the Jotnar genes that the Collector now assimted.


    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 regtor.


    Where the Firefly Shinchu sought to hunt and destroy individual beings that umted too much longevity, the Jotnar existed more for environmental regtion.


    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 particrly 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 elerated 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 be inhospitable or unbnced 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 itselfpact and less noticeable, but there would be times when enormous size would prove useful.


    The Jotnar''s size maniption would allow the Collector to ess 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 severelypromising 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 ording 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 ess 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 gic 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 gic samples. Thus, it had to think in terms of sheer utility.


    In terms of maneuverability, the Collector now had ess 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 elerate its movements in water, not to mention that the daemon''s genes would provide adequate flight regardless.


    The Collector could potentially decide to ess 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 outssed now, but it theorized that goblin gic material was of yet a vastly untapped resource.


    Even the elite''s genes were thoroughly degenerated from a muchrger, moreplicated 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 soone 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 gic 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 popte 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 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 wasprised of goblins, it should thus grant them some level of approximate familiarity by undertaking some of their gic code.

 Chapter 125 - White Voice

    The Collecotr finalized its selection of gic 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 elerating therger 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 mmed 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 theke 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, ck, and white, shining in the murky depths of theke 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 nothingpared to what it would emerge into.


    An hour passed, and the Collector sensed that it had be a singrity of sorts.


    Water started to spiral arounds it, drawing around it like a vortex, likely because the Collector''s tendrils,tched deeply throughout the length of the Jotnar arm, were absorbing magical energy at extraordinary pace, simting 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 be 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 simr 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 psionicmunication.


    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 formsprising the greater mind itself.


    There was also an aspect of gic 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 therger they were, the greater the degree of psionic strength of the space''s owner.


    Thus, when the Collector essed 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 assessmenty 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, thoughpared 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 maniptions.


    This level of space outssed even a Dominator-ss 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''s popce under control.


    The only psionic profile the Collector knew of that could outss this was that of the Collective Hivemind itself.


    Yet, the Collector was secure in its safety.


    When psionic profiles shed with each other, attempting to influence control or eliminate the other, it was simultaneously a battle of wills and psionic space avable 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 thebined 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 rm 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 theye, through the stars they must be purged."]

 Chapter 126 - Emergence

    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 copsed, immediately dissolving into a nothingness painted solely by darkness before the ck 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 bothrge and unstable.


    Yet, the Collector had not expected this. It had still expected to be fully submerged under theke 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 ater time.


    For instead of being within the dark depths of theke water, the Collector was now peering down at theke 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 theke, 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 theke 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 8>12


    Biomass Level: 0/100


    Stored Gic 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 tendrilsprised of Ultrafiber Muscture modified segmented, flexible tendons and pliable muscle fibers that allow forplex, prehensile movement.


    With engaged coilboosters, it is possible to generate elerated, 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 stimting cocktail of hormones and chemicals that massively elerate and enrich blood flow. Causes the host''s body to drastically enhance its physical capabilities.


    Side effects: Drastically increased internal body temperatures. elerated blood loss from wounds. Unless constant movement is generated to vent off built up heat, internal damage may umte. Constant usage deteriorates the capacity to utilize fine tuned movements.


    Neuro-Endocrinal Matrix Rank 1 > 5


    --Chronostasis: By overloading neuralworks withtent psionic energy, it is possible to enter into a state of heightened tachypyschia, temporarily slowing down the perception of time. Neuralworks must require periods of rest in between usages.


    --Hunter-Killer: Further developed mental processing has now allowed the host to utilize moretent psionic energy reserves. This adaptation allows the host tomit 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-Circtory Reserves Rank 1 > 5


    --Reserve Heart 1 [Total 4]


    --Reserve Brain 1 [Total 2] *NEW*


    Restorative Systems Rank 4 *NEW*: Allows for elerated cell growth that functions as regeneration.


    Note: current form possesses enhanced cellr 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 elerated cell growth to generate the creation of three cluster drones. Each cluster drone may incorporate the gic 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 Suyer


    --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>


    Monomolecr ws Rank 6.6 > 10.6


    --Extended Growth *NEW*: Monomolecr ws may be shaped into extended, scythe or spike like structures for greater range.


    --Reinforcement Sheathe *NEW*: Monomolecr ws strengthened via a synthesis of the protein sheathe structure developed by the Sensitive Hairs adaptation.


    Furthermore, monomolecr 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 ws fully.


    Pyrocatalytic nds Rank 5.4 > 9.4


    --Instant Trigger: Through the evolution of a chemically reactive tubr structure connecting both the pyrocatalytic nds and the biotrigger, there is no longer a dy between the activation of the nds and the emission of mes.


    Yet, instant activations willpromise uracy.


    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 muscture 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'' gic 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 ess 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, morepact form. The longer a Jotnar stays in theirpacted form, the more potential power they build up that is unleashed when they ess 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 iplete, 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 be one with. With this, no beast lower in strength than you will lift their fangs or ws 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 be, 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.]


    >>>

 Chapter 127 - Crown Of Light

    After analyzing the system, the Collector came to understand that it had already chosen its form and made certain modifications such as recing 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 gic specimen as a base, and because there were so many other bipedal gic samples included in its new form, it had thus be 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 ting like dense armor, with some parts of the carapace around its joints lighter andprised 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 muscture inherent in the Draconid, Jotnar, and royal Daemon genes.


    Extremely thick neck and back muscles from the Draconid genes made thetissimus muscles framing the sides of its back incredibly wide, encasing its body from the back in a strongyer of ultrafiber muscture. Its trapezius muscles started from the ends of its shoulders and formed a solid, triangryer 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 notpromise 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 gic 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 ck ws that could sh or hook. Each of those ws 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 des from the forearms, and two of the others possessed monomolecr scythe des 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 des 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 Spittery, a tubr construct of grooved Ultrafiber muscture that could eject hardened spines at speeds far surpassing sound.


    Once the Collector developed its psionic-electromaic adaptations, it could enhance the Spine Spitter further with a psionically charged maic eleration that would allow spines to easily surpass hypersonic speeds.


    The Collector had held off on evolving its psionic-electromaic capabilities because though they led up to psionically induced smabolts and smobaric wave explosions that were useful against any enemy, they required prerequisite maoreception and electromaic 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-elecromaics, potentially even devising a means to cause its electromaic pulse waves to disable mana flow in hostile specimens.


    On another arm, the Collector''s Superacid Bilespittery embedded. It was a bulbous sac of glowing green liquid attached to the forearm muscle, underneath the hyperalloy carapace.


    When inactive, the sac was deted 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 lipidyer around its skin that neutralized the acid.


    The Collector''s volcanite tipped pyrocatalytic nds were still housed inside of its stomach, which remained detachable. With more ess 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 mes from its pyrocatalytic nds 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 muscture, 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 monomolecr ws 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. Arge 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 skully 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 almostpletely ted andprised of carapace, making it seem more like a helmet than any organic head.


    Its armored jaw jutted out, the ''teeth''prised 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 ocr 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 ck 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 energyprising this crown was simr 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 essing more of it, ascending into what was ssified 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 simte 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 discedke waters from bearing down on them.


    The Collector attempted to channel amunicative link with its carrier unit, but found that there was none to be made.


    The unit had been killed.

 Chapter 128 - Expeditionary Force

    ===


    Unferth put a ck armored hand to his helmeted chin as he peered down at the pile of goblin corpses before him. His eyes shed 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 iid 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 allid 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 ughtered 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 ck 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 surveince. Allmunications 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 partictes such as this ''Grain'' severely impaired any external magic expression, it still meant that the fleet had no ess to its sensors or remotemunications.


    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 toe their way, and Fjall was known for its ferocious beasts.


    Especially across the mountain range known as the Rift. That was a ce of legend. No dwarven fleet ever dared to make its way there.


    And they were ufortably 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 onms 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 teames 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 ce 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 rtive secrecy, not informing the rest of the Sorcerer''s Order or the Adventurer''s League, but then again, politics wereplicated.


    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-ss bomb that had destroyed the shields of the mad daemon king''s pce 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 toote, until a legion of corrupted monsters knocked on the doors of a Common kingdom.

 Chapter 129 - Expeditionary Extermination

    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 ssify 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 inplete 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-ss 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 re 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 ¨C 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-ss 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 fleetprised of one Gunship and ten Seekers - smaller, more maneuverable airships ¨C 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 umon.


    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 ofva 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 tomand arge-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 unrted 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, notbat.


    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 unbing 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 ting.


    Each one of those teeth wererger than Unferth. The sheer scale of this¡­thing was immense. Asrge, no,rger 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 sh of white and blue rise up from the cliff face. It was an enormous open palm of ted white metal rapidly falling upon him like a meteorite.


    Then, nothingness.


    ==

 Chapter 130 - Expeditionary Extermination II

    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 simr 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 ayer of hyperalloy carapace ting, 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 elerated flight, but such was not required now. It lifted up its hand from the cliff face it had mmed it on.


    The pasted remains of two squished humanoids formed little smidgeons of cracked ck 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 gic material ordingly.


    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 circting 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 upied 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 ocr 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 wereprised of metals native to this and infused with mana.


    The possibility was greater that these were weapons natively developed here by tinkerers utilizing the resources avable 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 topensate 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 ocr systems adjusted to them.


    There was onrge ship, likely a centralmand 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 me 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, tant 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 ¨C


    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.


    Therger sphere-shaped ship started to glow red, and in turn, all the smaller ships glowed red. Then, they fired their weapons in synchronization. The tter of gunfire drowned out the howling of Grainfall. A sea of bullets streamed out from the aircraft in streams of little light.


    Bullets small andrge ttered 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 ck horns became charged with swirls ofvender energy.


    All ten smaller airships were enveloped by purple, frozen in ce, 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 simr too,prised 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 centralmand unit, which possessed enough magical energy to at the very least repel direct control from Sapia.


    After witnessing this, the sphere-shapedmand unit began to intensify its internal eleration 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 themand unit''s center opened up, revealing the mouth of an enormous cannon. The cannon wasprised of segments of rotating, mana charged metal, and as they began to elerate together, they generatedrge 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 mmed 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 wasunched 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 weed 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 asrge 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 shes 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 rootwork 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 lightprised 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 sted 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.

 Chapter 131 - Breath Of Life I

    The Collector watched as the fall of Grain obscured the lighting lit skies generated from its st.


    This was the draconid specimen''s most powerful attack. ??


    The draconid species were capable of generating electromaic fields around them through specialized cells, with the center of this fieldprising of their prominent back fin.


    This field could be extended outwards with the input of magical energy, and other living specimen that fell under the field would have their personal electrical activity such as their neurosynaptic functions read.


    This allowed for the limited precognitive ability the draconid specimen showed.


    Likely, the electromaic sensitive cells also assisted in navigation as they could also read the flow of environmental mana quite well, for pure environmental mana flowed in some way analogously to a maic field generated by aary core.


    These, however, were only the most basic abilities of these magically charged, electromaic cells.


    They could further be overloaded with magical energy, prompting them to color any mana that went into energy that was further converted into electrical output.


    When this output was maximized by circting the flow of charged mana through the dorsal fin, it gained even further abilities, ascending from mere electrical charge into a raw manifestation of a storm, creating dark clouds, rumbling lightning, icy hail fall, and surging winds that localized around the maw of the species, ready to be vented out as a beam or in wide range area of effect.


    This was a derivative of a primal magic ability called Eye of the Storm, though, notably as the system shard ssified, it was denoted as being (False), indicating an ipleteness.


    Likely, the true version of this power belonged to therger gic sample the draconids were derived from, of which the white maned draconid was likely a greater part of.


    Even so, when the inferior draconid specimen had unleashed its storm breath against the Collector and the goblins, it had generated enough force topletely blow apart a sizable swath of the cliff face.


    Now, when utilized by the Collector in its gigantified fifty meter frame and drastically enhanced mana reserves, the attack truly became an unparalleled storm of destruction. A targeted hurricane of wind forces and lightning.


    Such was the strength of the breath that the sphere shaped ship had disintegrated entirely, and this, too, was intentional.


    The Collector did not want any wreckage of these ships to be found by tinkerers. A fleet of this size would have its absence noted, and though it was impossible for this fleet to have received or sent outmunications through the Grain, it was likely that their destination was at the least logged.


    The Collector could not stay here. It may have even been that the ships had been sent out to scout for it directly. This, the Collector could find out now.


    The Collector stared down at the ball of crushed airships by its feet. Inside would be a few dwarven pilots to interrogate. It utilized its new Jotnar Shift ability, sizing itself down so as to minimize attention.


    Jotnar Shift would also allow the Collector to build up mana to further unleash when it gigantified, so spending more time in apact state would lead torger payoffs when it did expand into its full size.


    A misty, icy fog surged outwards from the Collector, through both its skin and through the miniscule pores in its carapace. The fog was thick,den with ice crystals that would have visibly glimmered under sunlight, and itpletely obscured the Collector''s towering form, leaving only its red eyes to faintly flicker before that light too disappeared.


    The temperatures emitted by it were also exceedingly low and could easily snap freeze most unprepared specimen.


    This emission of fog catalyzed the Jotnar Shift, and the Collector noted it could be utilized to easily obscure its presence and catch enemies unawares, disorienting them with a sudden shift in its dimensions along with the cold.


    The Jotnar Shift was a near instantaneous process.


    The Collector''s body temporarily be pure energy, and then it condensed down into a height that nearly reached three meters. The same height it usually upied when it was condensing its biomass prior, though now it could freely alternate betweenpacted and upacted biomass forms.


    The Collector now stood in front of the pile of crushed airships, watching as the ball of crumpled, crackling and sparking metal and wiring now stood taller than it. It was even dwarfed in the center of one of the great footsteps it had carved out in the snow previously.


    The most ring weakness of this ability was that the Jotnar Shift possessed a t rate cost of one fourth of the Collector''s total mana reserves, making repeated usages untenable.


    It also noted that when it transformed from its current smaller size to its gigantified form, instead of an inward condensation of energy, there would instead be an explosive outburst, making the transformation itself a formidable area of effect attack when needed.


    There were many things to consider now.


    The idea of this entity known as the ''White Voice'' came to the foremost of the Collector''s mind in particr. Yet, contemtion would have toe after safety was secured.


    The Collector approached the crushed ball of airships. At least a few of the piloting specimen were alive; it had made sure of that. It put a pair of hands on one of the cockpit windows and pried it open, the wrenching of metal filling the air.


    A dwarf was there, pinned by a belt to its cockpit with its legspletely crushed by metal pressurized by the Collector''s Sapia.


    "That injury is not fatal," said the Collector as it dropped the torn apart cockpit window to the ground. "Speak truth to me, and I shall grant you a painless death. Lie to me, and you will know agony unknown to any tinkerer on this."


    The dwarf looked up at the Collector, crackling pieces of technology screaming around it in malfunction. The dwarf specimen was covered in a suit of body armor. Sleek in design. Reminiscent of the United Front''s infantry armor.


    Specifically that belonging to the Federation of Humanity.


    A coincidence that did not escape the Collector. It would soon know, however, when it began to question.


    "Undeath Override," whispered the dwarf weakly, its voice mechanically projected in raspy manner through a filtration system in its helmet.


    When the dwarf uttered those words, a few mechanical patches on its body armor changed their glow from green to ck.


    The Collector reached out its hand to grasp the dwarf, but as it did so, the dwarf spontaneously exploded, blown apart by ordinance iid within its armor.


    The Collector was left grasping at a ck cloud of acrid smoke, and as that smoke made contact with the airship remains around it, a sort of mass self-destruction sequence initiated. The airships began tobust and break apart wherever it could via its engines or circuitry.


    All pilots within them further blew apart by their suits, regardless of whether they were alive or dead.


    Curious that these specimens would have the immediate and avable function to destroy themselves at a moment''s notice like this.


    Such a function was niche in its usage, with the Collector theorizing that it would be usefulrgely in times of war when the information held by certain individuals was sensitive.


    Yet, the word ''Undeath''.


    The Collector had heard this before and determined that it was something resembling some sort of pathogen or infestation that caused specimen to function after their primary processing systems had expired.


    Likely, then, an ''Undeath Override'' was meant to prevent bodies from sumbing to this pathogen, with the dwarf specimen conveniently utilizing it to escape the Collector''s questioning.


    An admirable quality, in some way. A willingness to throw away life for the sake of a misguided loyalty to a people.


    The Collector left the pile of now broken apart, ming ball of scrap to further deteriorate. It would fully destroy every trace of themter, but for now, it turned finally to the corpses of the goblin swarm.


    Corpses it had taken care of to not damage in its prior altercation.


    For the Collector now possessed an ability from the Jotnar it was eager to test.


    The Breath of Life.

 Chapter 132 - Breath Of Life II

    The Collector peered down at the pile of goblin corpses. They were considerably well preserved considering the low temperatures of this area, and because their skin and bodies were adapted to the cold, their internal organs still functioned to some small degree, though some were more expired than others due to varying degrees in the severity of their wounds.


    The elder unit was rtively well preserved, eliminated through three bullet holes through its stomach that had contributed to organ failure and blood loss.??


    The champions were considerably more damaged, likely having put up a significant fight. Many of them had their once musclebound body parts shredded down by the impact of bullets, withrger caliber bullets turning their limbs into shredded ribbons of freezing meat dangling from cracked sticks of bone.


    Some of them had lethal head injuries that were unsalvageable, with more than half their brain mass blown apart.


    Most importantly, however, the carrier unit elite had preserved itself well enough. It had lost all four limbs, and the gaping holes littering its body indicated that it had taken the vast brunt of therger caliber bullet fire from the airships.


    Likely, the champion had utilized [Guard] to take much of the deadlier bullets for the swarm and judging by the countless small craters riddling the area, it had also been subject to aplete aerial bombardment of sizable high caliber bullets from which it was utterly defenseless against.


    The elite unit had, however, likely hunched up and covered its head when the aerial attack started, thus preserving its brain matter well enough.


    Still, the Collector was on a timer. Just as it could not extract memories from specimen that had their brain matter expired for too long, it surmised that the nature of this Breath of Life ability would not work on specimen that had been too long expired.


    The Breath of Life functioned as such: the Collector, after storing enough mana, would be able to emit it in an icy breath that manifested the creation of ice crystals within bodies. These ice crystals wouldtch onto the biomass of specimens and meld with it, repairing wounds through a process simr to implementing prosthetics.


    The difference between the Breath of Life and ordinary cellr regeneration was that it possessed a psionicponent to it. When the ice crystals bound to a specimen''s biomass, it did not merely function as a ceholder for lost body parts and cellr degradation, but it also attached to nerves and neurons, bing part of the specimen at a fundamental level.


    This was restorative capacity that was almost unparalleled. Even the Collector understood that this was an extraordinarily impressive adaptation. Both the Collective Hivemind and the United Front possessed the means to essentially reanimate their fallen, but reanimation was not the same as resurrection.


    Tinkerers, especially the psionically capable xia, were capable of creating copies of the consciousness of their fallen warriors into mechanical constructs and the Human Federation was capable of implementing cybeics into their damaged units.


    However, in both cases, individuals were not truly resurrected. xian copied consciousnesses were merely copies; the originals were expired. The cybeics of the Human Federation salvaged brain matter when it could, but many times, it simply created specimen that were simply machines, the ''man'' part having expired.


    The mechanically oriented Xon of the United Front were likely the only one that had transcended this limitation, for they as a species had long since decided to make the drastic jump to simply upload their consciousnesses into an unified virtualwork, consequently making them the most troublesome of foes to wage war against on end of the Collective.


    For in a sense, the Xon were much like the Collective. When the species had first decided to be entirely mechanical, they implemented certain hard coded limitations upon themselves, one of which was that their psionic profiles would upy one specific mechanical construct as a main body, for the essence of an individual degraded the more it was spread out.


    However, when this main body was eliminated, the psionic profile would return to a greater virtual whole called the Gestalt, though this was predicated upon the main body possessing a connection to the Gestalt server at the moment of expiry.


    Like this, the Xon could indefinitely wage war and self-replicate, with theirck of biomass proving especially troublesome for the Collective.


    Yet, the development of psionically projected electromaic disruptions from the Collective inflicted great suffering upon the machine race, for the specialized disruptor pulses could sever the Xon from linking with the Gestalt, thus preventing psionic profiles from reincarnating, and the Xon possessed a far lower poption count than either the xia or Humans ¨C another one of their coded limitations.


    The Collector once would not have even thought of any parallels to tinkerers it had known, but now, it had to consider everything. The presence of technology that mimicked the United Front along with the fact that Unitan existed indicated there was potential that United Front tinkerers had promoted technological development.


    Yet, as the Collector still further noted, the technological development here seemed to be in some ways divergent than that of the United Front, incorporating native elements of magic to sustain it. At the same time, the uncanny parallels in weaponry and vehicr design meant it was unlikely there was no rtion between the United Front and some tinkering species here.


    Likely, the Collector theorized, these tinkerers, ''dwarves'' as they were ssified by the system shard, possessed some guidance from United Front tinkerers, whether that was through direct maniption or potentially ess to technological blueprints was difficult to truly ascertain.


    Regardless, technology was not spread evenly across this world, nor even among tinkerers. The dwarves were unique in their utilization of technology, it seemed, and had not shared their advancements with others.


    Indicated ack of true unity among the tinkerers.


    Good. The more disorder there was, the more gaps the Collector could find to exploit and hide within to grow ever stronger.


    For now, the Collector focused on the time sensitive issue of resurrecting the goblins. The spiral pattern of dark blue, nearly ck swirling around the golden orb on its chest began to emanate with energy. It had gathered enough energy from the outpouring of primal mana from its evolutionary cocoon, and with it, it had ample supply to utilize the Breath of Life.


    The Collector felt its body temperature begin to rise as it engaged its spirit roots and the Jotnar core that housed the Breath of Life ability.


    Like Sapia, the Breath of Life was an Inhera ability.


    Inhera was essentially the same as Primal Magic, both of them being expressions of race-specific powers. However, where Inhera was different was that it possessed an individualponent to it.


    Individuals in races would develop their own unique expressions of their Inhera that was directly tied to their core. Thus, where the projection of mana to create mental maniptions of matter was basic to Sapia, with all daemons capable of utilizing it, daemons could develop their own unique manifestation of Sapia as well.


    In essence ¨C all daemons could use basic Sapia abilities such as the Force Push and Pull, but individuals could develop specific expressions of it tied to their core.


    On that note, the Collector could not fully ess the female daemon specimen''s powers. It could only ess the basic abilities of Sapia. The female daemon specimen had not yet matured enough to develop her own unique Sapia power, but the potential to grow one was there.


    The issue was that for unique individual expressions of Inhera, the Collector had to fully meld with the corresponding core, feeling the emotion that triggered it. Thus, with Wonder that the Collector did not yet fully have the ability toprehend, it could not ess the female daemon specimen''s potential to develop her unique Sapian power.


    The Collector had decided that allowing such foreign emotions to envelop it would be heretical and difficult to control.


    Yet, it was now posed with a challenge.


    In order to restore the goblin swarm, the Collector had to channel the Jotnar core and its trigger of Mercy, another emotion it was not too familiar with. For the Breath of Life at a very basic level only created a breath that nourished life in an environment.


    The capacity to generate ice crystals that restored lethal wounds in specific specimens was unique to the Jotnar that had once possessed this core.


    The Collector would have to begin toprehend this emotion, this ''mercy'', to use the Jotnar''s power.


    But would it?


    Was the goblin swarm worth the risk of allowing a foreign emotion to fully overflow into it?


    Or, more importantly, as the Collector came to think to itself in lieu of all that it had experienced in this new world, was it even truly a risk, truly something heretical, to begin to feel?

 Chapter 133 - Mercy

    Regardless, the Collector would attempt this. It understood well that in some time, it would have had to allow foreign emotions within its system in order to engage certain abilities that were too useful to ignore. Now was an efficient and apt time.


    The Breath of Life was versatile, and some Jotnar could theoretically possess the capacity to utilize it in such a way to create constructs of autonomous ice that were quite powerful, scaling directly with the magical energy inputted into them.??


    This, coupled with the enormous reserves of magical energy already inherent in the species, meant that any construct that the Collector managed to create would be powerful and unlikely to fall behind its own strength to significant degree.


    The Collector''s Jotnar core was not capable of directly creating constructs, but it could charge cells with their nourishing ice crystals and improve the physical and magical capabilities of any unit enveloped in the breath.


    The benefits were double here. The Collector could return the goblin swarm to life, and it could greatly enhance their might with its Breath of Life.


    All the Collector needed was to begin to feel mercy in order to activate the Jotnar core. It looked over the corpses of goblins and hovered one of its four hands over them, its ck, metallic ws glimmering from the golden light generated from its chest orb.


    The Collector focused its intent, and as it did so, its senses sharpened to, honing on the Jotnar core ced within one of its reserve hearts. It focused upon the beating of the blue organ, at the specific type of magical energy within it, and attempted to unlock its power.


    The Collector could force the Jotnar core to input the necessary trigger emotion of mercy into it, but overloading its processing unit with a sudden surge of foreign emotions was still something it was hesitant to do.


    It first wanted to see if it could conceptualize the emotion on its own terms enough so that it could unlock the core by itself. If it could begin to understand these emotions on its own, it could master them and wield them instead of feeling overwhelmed at their foreignness.


    First, the Collector began to conceptualize what ''mercy'' was to it.


    Mercy, at a fundamental definitional level, was an act of restraint. It was the decision to show restraint when one was capable of inflicting suffering.


    The Collector was not a stranger to this type of mercy. In fact, it showed it in fair regrity, opting to grant this type of mercy in varying measures to multiple specimens that it sensed were capable of granting the Collector battle of worth.


    The greater the battle worthiness of the specimen, the greater amount of this type of mercy the Collector could manage to muster.


    However, the feeling attached to this type of mercy was not the same one required to ess the Jotnar core.


    No, the type of mercy the Collector was familiar with was predicatedrgely on desire, and judging by how the Jotnar core did not respond at all to the warmth of desire that the Collector routinely felt, it was suffice to note that the familiar desire the Collector knew was not that which fueled the mercy the Jotnar core understood.


    Worth a try.


    It would seem the Collector would have to force the Jotnar core''s specific feeling of mercy through its processing unit.


    The Collector did so, forcibly activating the trigger for the Jotnar core. Various emotions associated with ''mercy'' flowed into the Collector, and these were emotions it had utterly no experience with.


    Compassion. Forgiveness.


    It knew them through basic definitional framework in the same way a tinkerer would know the definitions of terms via written records ¨C through cold, observed knowing, not truly felt understanding.


    Yet, unlike before when the Collector felt foreign emotions swell up within it, when the female daemon specimen had allowed her emotions to flow into the Collector, it did not immediately suppress these emotions.


    The Collector would tackle them. Attempt to understand them. Know them.


    Understand them.


    This way, it could utilize its abilities to their fullest. It could not afford to constantly be overwhelmed and pause every single time it desired to use the maximal usage of the Jotnar core''s powers.


    The Collector let the emotions circte within it, and as it tried to understand them, an anomalous event urred. The emotions, as triggers for the activation of a core and therefore the cirction of magical energy, possessed a quality of heat that the Collector could physically feel swelling up within its body.


    Like the first time the Collector had felt mana swirling within it as a source of unidentifiable heat.


    The heat was intense, almost burning, and the Collector could sense instability in the flow of mana pumping out from the Jotnar heart. Its spirit roots were burning up, causing its internal body temperatures to rise and its mana to flicker in an unstable, crackling blue aura around it.


    Once the Collector understood these emotions better, the heat and magical instability would fade. For now, though, it focused its attention on understanding.


    The Collector had gathered enough experiences, it surmised, to form enough of a framework to begin to understand these things.


    But as the heat of the unstable, irregrly circting magical energy reached a peak, the Collector found its processing unit strangely overtaken. Its senses became enveloped at first in blinding white that also deafened its auditory systems and numbed its tactile capacities.


    Then, the Collector found itself somewhere else. No, not somewhere else, as someone else. It was viewing the memories of another ¨C


    ==


    Eru Wun Thamir. Or Eru of the Thamir bloodline, as the humans here would have called him. Had they been alive.


    Eru knelt down in the snow, his pale blue skin standing out against the dark fall of Grain whirling all around him. Crystals of ice jutted out from his back, merging into a formation reminiscent of cave stctites.


    From them, deeper blue light emanated, shining right through the Grain. It was through this light that the human corpses were visible. A dozen of them scattered across the top of the ritual cliff Eru had carved out long ago, when the Thamir n head had dered they were to enter the Cyclic Rest.


    The corpses were still fresh, many of them studded with sharp ice crystals that had led to their ends. They were men of thesends, Eru could tell from their tribal tattoos.


    Of the Wraith n, it would appear, judging by the skull tattoos imprinted on their shoulders.


    Or was it the Wraith n?


    It was difficult to remember. Human lives were short, and they changed so quickly and so often. They named themselves this n in one century, that n in another.


    There was a time that Eru, ever the curious one, had crossed the divide of the Rift to build things for the humans and make merry with their drinks and foods. But that was long ago. Three hundred years ago, maybe longer than that.


    When the grooves and wrinkles of time, even though they carved their lines on Jotnar faces far slower than they did on human faces, did not find purchase on Eru''s skin. When he was hopeful.


    Now, he was old. Reaching the twilight of his long existence, ready for his thinning blood and aching bones to return to the White Voice.


    Eru was still hopeful. Just a little more realistic.


    He no longer believed in teaching the humans the old ways, to connect with the world around them, to hear the White Voice and see where thend was sacred and where life was not to be tampered with. It was far toote for that.


    The sacrilegious gods had imnted their tendrils of influence deep into the humans like Facestealers, ensuring that the humans would never again make peace with the Jotnar.


    Now, the humans, like the ones he had killed in front of him, attacked Jotnar on sight, sending the mightiest among them known as ''adventurers'', believing them monstrosities of a nature that was unknown and to be feared, not known and revered.


    Their goddess of war personally brought untold misery and ughter to any Jotnar that remained below the Rift with the humans.


    How many Jotnar had fallen to her chaosden greatsword? A hundred? Two hundred? Too many.


    Eru wondered how things had gone so wrong in the span of his single life.


    Before him, when his father was the Thamir head, the White Voice began to fade, her guidance turning into whispers, then those whispers bing ever the less frequent.


    That was when gods began to drive the Jotnar out. When the war goddess began her ughter.


    When Eru became the head, taking the Shard of Session from his father, he dealt not with gods and men, but with the rise of the Draconids.


    Mighty, fierce creatures that knew only blood and battle whose zealous drive stemmed from a beholding to what they believed was the White Voice, though Eru and the Jotnar knew well that their voice was no true will of the world.


    But now, the Draconids were far too many and far too strong. The rise of that one, the one they called the Exile, the one that possessed himself a Shard of Session, was far too much.


    Eru''s Shard was dimming.


    Its power had been used far too many times, and unlike the Exile, he did not imnt the Shard within himself, for doing so was heretical to Jotnar tradition. He wielded it as a weapon, imnted within a staff.


    Thus, while Eru''s shard lost its light over time, unable to recharge itself with a slumbering White Voice, the Exile only grew more and more strength, like a storm gaining snow and wind as its own body nourished and cultivated the Shard.


    Perhaps the Draconids were the true sessors of the White Voice. They did have a Shard, after all.


    Perhaps not. The humans had stolen Shards as well, using them to fuel mighty weapons or structures.


    The presence of a Shard alone necessitated nothing.


    The only infallible truth was that the White Voice was gone, or if present, reduced to but the faintest of whispers.


    And because the White Voice was gone, the Jotnar knew well: the world was dying.

 Chapter 134 - Risen

    The gods and the humans might not understand, disconnected from the White Voice as they were, but the world would notst like this. There woulde a time when the great end would near, when the empires the gods had created with the great sin of stealing from the world woulde to haunt them.


    Everything would copse. Everything would return to one.??


    Thus, the Cyclic Slumber.


    The Jotnar of Thamir would rest, deep within the earth, within the waters between the realms where no gods nor men could reach, until this cycle ended, when everything returned to one. Then, they would emerge once more, seeding life as they were meant to.


    Eru himself had proposed this n when he saw that the other ns fell to the Draconids. But he could not shake off the feeling that this was simply the coward''s way out. He would leave the remaining Jotnar to fight against the Draconids and inevitably fall. He would leave the countless lives of the Common Body to face endless war and destruction.


    And he could not shirk the memories he had made with the humans.


    They were lives born and raised on this world too. Corrupted by the gods, yes, but still of this world, and Jotnar were meant to respect all life nourished from the womb and breath of the world.


    Eru did not know of a way to reverse the end of this Cycle, but he held out thest embers of hope within him that there was someone else that would.


    Perhaps one of the remaining warrior Jotnar would find a way. Perhaps a human uncorrupted by the gods would find a way.


    Somewhere, something ¨C this vagueness was what Eru hoped would save this world, and yet, it was the best he could do.


    Thus, Eru left his Shard embedded within his arm, guarded with Jotnar runic magic that no god could ever hope to pierce, not in this Grain, not in that deep ce so charged with remnants of the world''s life.


    Eru had not heard the White Voice for a hundred years now, but anything or anyone that could would be worthy to take the Shard from his arm and make better use of it than he had. To find him and his brethren in the waters between the realms and tell them that there was still hope for the world as they knew it.


    Eru yawned, feeling drowsy from preparing for the Cyclic Slumber. All that was to be thought aboutter. Now, he let his eye, a ball of gleaming blue light that trailed a smallet tail of faint white with its movements, settle on the human corpses.


    They had attacked Eru when he was weak, after he had spent his mana on the ritual and torn apart his arm, but he was still Eru Wun Thamir, the Fist of Winter, and no simple human was ever going to end him.


    However, he did not relish the feeling of ending these lives. There had been far too much death already, and the Jotnar were not a people meant to kill, they were a people meant to raise and give life.


    Eru took in a deep breath,rge wind currents streaming into his stony, statuesque face, causing the stiff hairs of his long beard of ice shards to quiver. Spiral patterns of dark blue around his chest and body began to glow.


    Potential.


    This was what Eru believed in.


    Every living thing had potential beyond their means. Beyond the physical capabilities they were given or the circumstances forced upon them. These humans, too, though they had struck at Eru, though they, like all Common lives like them, were ves to the whims of the gods, had the potential to be more.


    They also had the potential to be less. To waste the lives that Eru would grant them.


    But Eru was more optimistic than most. He believed that mercy brought out the best in others. That with mercy, you came to understand what you had to lose and how with the chance you were given, you could stand to achieve so much more, to have the potential to be so much more.


    Eru channeled this mercy and breathed-


    ==


    The Collector found itself abruptly ced back into its own body, analyzing what had urred. By opening the Jotnar core, it had been given ess to an embedded memory within it.


    The Collector had initially thought the core iplete in the sense that it had not directly devoured the heart of the specimen, and thus would not have included any direct psionic profile material within it such as memories.


    However, such was not the case.


    In lieu of the memories it had assimted, the Collector could ascertain that this was because when the Jotnar in question had sacrificed its arm, it had imnted within it a vast portion of its magical energy along with a ''Shard of Session'' that the Collector identified as the very same shard that manifested as a diadem of white energy crowned above its head.


    The magical energy that the Jotnar infused into its arm essentially retained a blueprint of its core and a vast amount of its original essence. No, to be more precise, the Jotnar had essentially transferred its core into the arm, meaning that shortly after that memory, it likely had expired, rapidly losing its memory, proper cirction of mana, and facing heart failure.


    Even then, the Jotnar had utilized itsst moments to breathe in life to humans that had been its aggressor.


    The Collector began to understand the Jotnar''s conception of mercy better now.


    The Jotnar believed that mercy was a means to grant another a chance to fulfill their purpose. A chance that could be utilized or squandered, but a chance none the less. The giant had feltpassion towards the lives it granted mercy to because they were misguided in striking it, and it felt forgiveness for them because they had the potential to be more.


    This, the Collector could begin to understand by trying to rte to it with its own memories and experiences. It could feel this very same mercy towards the goblins.


    The Collector already granted these goblins mercy.


    Mercy such that they were not utilized as mere pawns for bags of flesh to soak damage. In part because the Collector desired to utilize them at full operational capacity without a chance of dissent, but also because the Collector had felt it was right to some fundamental degree that it could not have grasped before.


    Now that the Collector had felt the Jotnar''s emotions, it came to understand what this fundamental degree was. It was in some small measure the idea ofpassion, though of a far more muted level than that which the Jotnar felt.


    But enough for the Collector to rte, and because it could rte, it could regte the Jotnar core far better, taking down the searing heat within it into a manageable warmth.


    The Collector would grant these goblins mercy to save them from death, for as the Jotnar had felt the potential of life, so too did the Collector feel that the goblins possessed the potential to fulfill their yet unrealized purpose.


    They had followed the Collector only for short time, and they had now just begun to grasp their purpose alongside the Collector.


    It was not their time to expire. They had yet more time to stand beside the Collector in unified purpose.


    The dark blue spiral patterns around the Collector''s chest glowed deeply, and then the Collector exhaled. A cloud of misty frost pooled out from the Collector''s maw, forming awork of crystalline glints that quickly washed over the goblin corpses.


    As these sparkling glints rested on the corpses, they collected on their wounds. Flesh began to knit back together as mana charged, life giving mana crystals embedded into damaged cells or formed entirely new ones.


    New muscle fibers formed, but instead of beingprised of ordinary, red and raw flesh, they were nor chords of hardened yet flexible ice. As the new artificial flesh formed, they pushed out bullet casings out and scattered them across the snow.


    Blood vessels became charged with the ice crystals, and they began to stimte the flow of movement, pumping blood now icy into hearts, circting the crystals further throughout the body.


    The goblin corpses shuddered and began to twitch and convulse as their hearts beat erratically, adjusting to the sudden overflow of magical energy. Their bodies altered, their white skin bing instead a pale blue as their wounds healed and crystal formations of ice began to sprout out from points in their skin.


    Their eyes became a deep, dark, almost gemstone blue, widening as they opened and started to light up with life.


    "Arise, my swarm," said the Collector as it pumped out magical energy of its own to elerate the process, its blue aura of Unity type mana meant for creating and healing fluxing outwards into thin, snaking paths thattched onto every single goblin specimen.


    The three goblin elites were the first to begin moving, stiffly starting to raise themselves to seated positions, though their nk expressions indicated that their minds had not yet fully been restored yet.


    "Once more, will you join me in our Great Purpose."

 Chapter 135 - Duel

    The Collector watched as the carrier unit was the first one to stand up in full control of himself, and, judging by the unbroken and normal wavelengths of mental energies transferred via the Higher Calling link, the specimen was in full control over itself.


    "Where¡­where am I?" mumbled the goblin elite as he shook his head slowly, feeling his senses return to him. He tried to take a step and stumbled before catching himself from falling. But almost as soon as he stumbled, he righted himself, and then his eyes, now blue instead of red, widened in surprise.


    The unit stared at his hands, at their icy white sheen, and cocked his head, his tusks of ice now tilting with him.


    "I thought I was dead," said the unit. "But I feel strong. Stronger than ever before."


    The carrier unit, as if to prove his point, stomped his foot into the snowy ground, driving up a small cloud of snow and shattered rock from the forceful blow ¨C a show of power that would have been impossible for it before.


    "You had faced systematic expiration," stated the Collector. "But with new adaptations that I have procured due in some part to the efforts of your swarm, I have no gained the capacity to reverse dramatic failure of internal and external systems."


    "My king, is that you?" said the carrier unit as he stared with fanged jaws agape at the Collector''s new form. He shook his head. "No, of course it is you. I can sense it."


    Immediately, the carrier unit knelt down to the ground with his head bowed. "You have saved me. Saved me from death itself. I do not know how you did it, I am too dumb to understand truly, but you have beat death."


    The specimen began to shiver even though the Collector knew that he was well equipped to deal with the cold, now more so than ever because of the enhanced cellr nourishment generated via the Collector''s Breath of Life.


    "Why is it that you exhibit signs of distress from lowered temperature? Such a reaction should not be possible given your current state of elevated capabilities."


    "It is not that, my king," said the carrier unit as he stared up at the Collector with a reverence that was unlike any that the Collector had perceived from him beforehand.


    This was the reverence that the Collector had seen when the goblin swarm perceived when it had conjured up its mes, defying the cold of this winter waste. It was a reverence that transcended the respect granted to figures of authority or simply those higher up on a socialdder, this was the type of awe that came to manifest when one believed another not just above, but truly transcendent.


    "I¡­I know I died. When the stone birds struck me with their pellets, I felt my blood leave my body, and then I went dizzy, and then the darkness came. I fell into it, I was gone. I was dead." The carrier unit held his arms together in vulnerabilitypletely unbing of it, but the feeling of oveing the finality of death must have been unsettling torge degree.


    "But you brought me back," said the carrier unit. He bowed his head in true reverence. "You are not only our king. To defeat death: you are a god. God over death."


    "Do not so easily categorize me with the entities that tinkerers bow themselves before," stated the Collector. "But you may refer to me any way you desire, so long as the terminology reflects satisfactory loyalty."


    "Loyalty? My life is owed to you many times over," said the carrier unit. "Loyalty is only the beginning of what I can give you."


    "That is satisfactory then," stated the Collector as it now noted that the two other elites, previously mindless and created from the Burial Tusks, had managed to stand now, gaining their bearings.


    The Collector could tell that the nature of their magical auras was different. Their flow was a little more disorderly which indicated that they were no longer mindless beings akin to drones.


    Instead, they were processing independent emotions that caused fluctuations in their magical energy, and this in turn allowed the Collector to surmise that they had broken free of being bound from the Burial Tusks, no doubt given moreplete life by the Breath of Life.


    "Brother¡­what is this?" said one of the elites as he put one of his hands to his head, rubbing it.


    The other elite grunted in response. "Both of us were torn asunder by the earth goddess. No doubt, we have entered the gates of Goblunn where warriors such as ourselves belong."


    "Far too cold and bleak for gates that promise paradise," came the response before both of them gained more of their senses and immediately stared at the Collector, sensing its pressure of magical energy.


    "Submit to my will," stated the Collector, utilizing Higher Calling for the twin elites, having been reanimated and gaining their minds back, had also broken free of any prior Higher Calling.


    Both elites felt the Collector''s words wash over them and knelt down.


    "There was no need to project your authority over us, good lord," said an elite.


    "We of the First Hand have always sworn to serve the voice of our lords. Through life and death," said the other.


    "He is no mere lord," said the carrier unit. "He is a king. A god king."


    "A god-king?" The elites looked up at the Collector and stared specifically at the shard primed on the Collector''s crown of white energy. "Has the great god Gob returned in the flesh?


    No, but this pressure, this presence, no doubt, there is some of Gob within you, O great one, and your crown of session cannot be questioned."


    One of the goblin elites punched a fist into the snow as a form of introduction. "My name is Goromir of n Zoll."


    The other elite followed. "And I am Kandak, also of n Zoll."


    In unison, they spoke, almost in a chant. "As elites of the First Hand, we shall act as your fists and tusks. As twins born of the same flesh, we have trained and been blessed with the Old Blood. We will rise to any challenge youy before us. We will serve your through life and death."


    "Hey, that is my role!" objected the carrier unit Thokk.


    "Who is this uncouth elite?" said Goromir as he gave a judging side eye to Thokk. "Who knows not proper etiquette?"


    "Tis'' true, brother," said Kandak. "Look at the way he carries himself. That is no trained elite. He knows not how the fight. No true elite can he be called. "


    Kandak stared at Thokk. "So how can you call yourself among the First Hand of the king?"


    "Huh!?" Thokk took in a breath, pumping his strength up. He no doubt was confused by many of the things the other elites said, for the elites showcased knowledge that indicated they hailed from a far different time.


    Yet, the intentions in the elites were clear. This was a sign of dominance, and the carrier unit was not going to simply let them usurp it.


    "You doubt me? I was with the king far before you two. Come on, I fight you now! Prove you two weak!"


    "Only one of us need to show you the immaturity of your mind and body," said Kandak. He nodded to his brother with a slight grunt, a throaty expression that the Collector perceived was part of theirnguage but lost among the current generation of goblins.


    "Show this upstart what it truly means to be of the First Hand, brother."


    "dly," said Goromir before he stood up and bowed his head to the Collector, sping his four fists together in ceremonial gesture that no doubt indicated great respect.


    "Do you grant permission for this duel, O great king? No, not merely king, for you are graced with the true light. O great Sovran?" said Goromir to the Collector. "It shall prove that we are truly worthy of defending you."

 Chapter 136 - Chaos And Flow

    The Collector listened to this request and determined the efficiency of acquiescing to it. Time was of essence right now, for the Collector knew not whether dwarven reinforcements would appear.


    Yet, simted calctions proved that reinforcements, though they likely would arrive, would do so slowly. The fleet had been utterly cut off from allmunications, and it would take an extended period of time for their absence to be noted.


    Judging from calctions extrapted by the level of messaging technology they likely had and their engine and thruster capacities for their aircraft, the Collector estimated it still possessed three days before any real external dwarven presence would be noted.


    What was difficult to consider, however, was that when the dwarven absence was made known among their kind, it was not only their kind that would respond, but also that this information would be disseminated among other tinkering variants such as the humans.


    The Collector had to leave this area and cross the Rift before then.


    Yet, before that time, the Collector had significant time to assess its new capabilities which included some level of further experimentation with its Higher Calling ability and its recovered adaptation to create drones.


    And beyond that, the Collector now had to consider the needs of the swarm, particrly with the development of the two elite units now having their own minds. There was the sh of pride in their eyes, and so too did this pride show with the carrier unit.


    Breaking off an engagement here would only further resentment between the units, for the desire to vie for pack supremacy was one the Collector was familiar with as it being a primal part of evolutionary development, though the Collector itself had never engaged in such for the Collective was a Hivemind wherein all hierarchical structure was permanently set and never questioned.


    "I will allow it," stated the Collector. It was also curious of the newfound battle capabilities of the goblins now that they were infused with the Breath of Life. In addition, the goblin elites, with their own minds, could also observe more strategic usage of their physical skills.


    It was apparent that the elites possessed a great deal more experience in wielding their bodies than did the carrier unit. How that difference was expressed the Collector was also curious of.


    The rest of the swarm were beginning to arise as well, and the Collector moved to organize them and speak to them such that they were not confused.


    Five minutester, and the Collector had an entire swarm of goblins bowing before it, proiming it as a deity. The elites and the elder hailed the Collector specifically as of the blood of Gob and a ''Sovran''. As to what that truly meant, the Collector would ascertainter.


    For now, after having calmed from the novelty of being pulled from death, the goblin swarm crowded around in a ring with the elite united Goromir and the carrier unit Thokk in the center, roaring and cheering on for a duel.


    The fall of Grain raged around two elites as they circled each other tentatively.


    Thokk was tense, pale white lips curled back in a half snarl as he kept his body tensed up.


    Meanwhile, Goromir moved with an air of ease, his steps light and casual about the snow, his body swaying and his breathing even with a smile on his face, almost as if he was ying a game.


    Of the two, Thokk was physically farrger and more imposing, being approximately eleven kilograms heavier and a head taller. In terms of magical energy levels, they were around equal, but with that being equal, Thokk''s physical advantage would grant him considerable leeway.


    Arger frame, thicker bones, and stronger, denser muscles from being born and adapted in this harsh environment would grant Thokk more resilience and striking strength.


    Goromir, however, was obviously more well versed in the martial movement of his body, to the degree that he exudedplete confidence.


    The elder presided over the circle, holding his wooden supporting staff in the air. Behind him, the Collector stood, observing.


    "A proper duel is one the likes of that has never been seen among this generation of Gob," said the elder, wrinkled hands visibly shaking with excitement. "The rules¡­ah, they escape me."


    Kandak spoke out from beside the elder. The elite''s arms were crossed as he peered at the battle with rather disinterested eyes. "It is simple.


    A duel among those of the same flesh line, especially that of the Elite, will fight with all that is allowed to them. They will fight with the resolve to kill, though death shall not be encouraged. As weapons have not been agreed upon, they will be forbidden, though that which is in the environment is fair game."


    Kandak scanned the empty snowynds around him. "Though there is not much to use regardless."


    "Yes, yes," nodded the elder, remembering. "That is it. Ah, to hear tales of duels such as this and to hear them once more. A true marvel! Now then, fight! Fight and tear each other apart!"


    "Battle to your utmost limits," reaffirmed the Collector. "By being bound to me through the life crystals that nourish your cells, I may charge these cells with my magical energy and simte elerated cellr restoration.


    Thus, so long as you maintain proximity to me, injuries shall be of no concern."


    "Hear that?" said Goromir. He shed a fanged grin to Thokk. "We can fight to our heart''s content. No excuses now, eh?"


    Thokk beat his chest with his fist. "I will win! Prove to Sovnar I am still leader!"


    Goromor pointed to Thokk''s head, where twin blue tendrils extended out in a dreadlock ¨C the sign of his connection with the Collector. "You are blessed by the Sovnar. But that is because the Sovnar has not had better, more suitable elites to choose from."


    "Enough talk!" said Thokk. "I show you power not with words, but with fists."


    "Anguage I am familiar with. Then get on with it. Show me what you have to offer." Goromir waved Thokk forwards with one of his hands.


    Thokk charged forwards, powering his legs with magical energy that sent him surging ahead. The color of Thokk''s mana was of red chaos like the Collector, so his preferred style ofbat would likely focus on explosive bursts of powerful movement and blows.


    A circle of snow crashed out from Thokk''s charge, and it was only when Thokk was right upon Goromir that the snow was making its way back down to the ground at gravity''s behest.


    With a roar, Thokk sent a double punch with his two right arms towards Goromir.


    Goromir saw the punchesing towards him and swayed backwards, dodging the attack. The wind pressure from Thokk''s dual punches sent Grain particles flying away, and he did not let up the attack, using his two other arms to shoot out two more wild punches.


    Goromir bobbed backwards, weaving his head from side to side to let each fist sail right by without hitting anything.


    Thokk grunted and began to unleash a mighty flurry of blows with his four arms, and to the average human observer, the rush would have been a blur of shing white as Thokk''s arms shot out at rapidfire pace.


    But Goromir swayed back, using precise head movement to evade head strikes and side stepping body blows withplete ease. The elite''s movements were extremely fluid, and magical energy flowed through his body in an aura of green, indicating a mana affinity of Flow that was suited for bnced, fluidbat.


    Goromir was like living water, his entire body coordinated and moving with a precise, efficient fluidity that let him evade attacks at thest moment. This waspounded by his superb flexibility and agility, and as Thokk''s red chaos mana surged, making his rush of punches even faster and wilder, Goromir adapted.


    At first, when the rush intensified, a few scratches appeared on Goromir''s face, chest, and arms as he struggled to keep up with the sudden burst of power, but he adapted, using his agility to the fullest extent now. He twirled around to evade strong blows, swayed backwards almost ny degrees to avoid two mighty haymakers, and pushed himself with a handstand to soar back into the air and make distance.


    When Goromirnded lightly on the snow on the tips of his feet,pletely bnced on a single toe, he was left smiling while Thokk huffed and puffed, his muscled barrel chest straining due to the explosively powerful yet inefficiently managed nature of chaos affinity mana.


    In terms of battle, if a chaos type mana user did not end a battle quickly or in a short burst of power, then they were left at an increasing disadvantage against fighters with Flow who could regte their mana far better, albeit with less powerful short term spikes in ability.


    "Your wasted movements are uncountable," said Goromir as he eyed Thokk up and down. "You arerger than me. Your flesh has grown used to thisnd of cold and scarcity. But you have no grace about you. It is known to me now that some time has passed since I and my brother wandered thesends proper."


    Goromir shook his head sadly. "It seems the art of Gobeira has not been passed down."

 Chapter 137 - Gobeira

    "Gob¡­what?" said Thokk. He looked to the elder, and the elder simply shrugged.


    "The martial ways of our people. The way of the our flesh that changes to anynd whether it scorches or freezes." Goromir rolled his four shoulders and exhaled, his body growing more limp and more fluid. "You see it now. With proper flow of mana and keen, trained senses, I utilize [Shifting Form], dodging your clumsy blows with the full breadth of movement afforded to me with this blessed body of mine."


    The Collector understood what Goromir spoke of. The goblin elerated an even amount of mana flow around his body while maintaining all of his honed senses on his enemy.


    By not explosively charging any one part of his body and coupled with his training and sharp observational skills, the goblin elite could respond to any attack, dodging with his extreme agility and flexibility.


    Like water that changes its form to fill the container within which it is ced, the goblin could shift his movements at a moment''s notice to any attack from any angle.


    The Collector noted the drastic difference in martial skill the elite known as Goromir observed as contrasted to when he had fought the Collector as a summon of the goblin lord.


    Then, when the specimen known as ''Goromir'' was mostly mindless, he did not possess the adequate ess to his memories and control over self to fully show his strength.


    Had both the twin specimens Goromir and Kandak fully possessed their martial skills in that fight with the Collector, the Collector would have spent significantly more time dealing with them and, as an extension, been less equipped to deal with the appearance of the golden winged humanoid.


    "Fancy jumps and spins." Thokk grumbled. "But no punching. Just running. Fight!"


    "You believe [Shifting Form] has no fangs of its own? I will show you how misguided you are." Goromir was the one that rushed in this time.


    Thokk grunted and kept his arms forward, ready to strike or intercept anything that came his way. He was like a wide oak rooted into the ground whereas Goromir''s leaner, more lithe body shot forward like a bullet meant for precise, lethal killing.


    Thokk, pumped up with anger and adrenaline as he was, fueled by the shouts of a swarm that had been his brethren for most of his life, did not shell up in a guard, instead, he struck again. Two twin punches converging on Goromir''s head and two other punches leading to the body.


    The crowd swelled in excitement as the strikes shot forwards, boosted by yet another burst of chaos mana, but then a collective gasp spread among them. It almost appeared as if Goromir had simply disappeared with Thokk''s twin strikes striking only air, wind whistling across his arms as his fists flew past nothing.


    The Collector''s sharpened senses, however, had easily perceived what had happened.


    Goromir was on the ground. He had slipped down backwards onto the ground, lying almostpletely t on his back to evade the strikes. Two of his fists were nted behind his head on the snow, and through these, he lifted himself up into a quick handstand.


    With his other pair of arms, Goromir struck two precise strikes on Thokk''s exposed ankles, buckling his knees and sending him spilling forwards with a pained grunt.


    Goromir pushed up powerfully with the arms supporting his handstand while straightening his body like a whip of energy, sending out a double kick that drove right up at Thokk''s chin.


    The blow sent Thokk flying half a dozen meters in the air, his head snapped back with shards of shattered and flecks of blood flying everywhere.


    Thokknded heavily on the snow face down, the ck Grain partictes growing even darker as the blood pooling from his mouth started to paint it.


    Goromir supported himself fully on one hand now, and then, to show off even more, one finger, holding his bodypletely upright upside down and vertically through nothing but the surface area contact made from that single digit.


    "This is the might of the [Shifting Form]," said Goromir. "React to any attack with movement. As our flesh shifts to match anynd thates before us, so too can our flesh arts react to any move, any strike."


    The crowd of the swarm was silent at first, marveling at the sudden development, but then they began to cheer and shout, excited by the disy of martial superiority. However, they bated their breaths again when the carrier unit rose up again.


    Thokk spat out shattered teeth chunks with a mouthful of blood. The liquid, now a near ck shade of blue due to the Breath of Life altering his physiology, did not freeze like regr blood, retaining its liquid state of matter even in the extremely frigid temperatures of this environment.


    Aside from a mouthcking proper dentures, slightcerations in the cheeks and lip, and a fractured chin, Thokk was still conscious and capable of fighting.


    The full force blow should have by all rights nearly knocked his head off his neck, and the Collector had been watching with close intent to quickly heal the carrier unit in the case that it had sustained a near lethal injury.


    "How he get back up!? His head should be gone!" came a questioning voice from the watching swarm, and many agreed with it and spoke among themselves.


    Goromir narrowed his eyes in analysis, and the Collector perceived that the elite had understood what had happened.


    "I thought my blow had struck strangely light," said Goromir. "You swayed back at the veryst moment instead of resisting the blow, reducing damage to yourself greatly."


    He nodded in respect. "Impressive. One''s instincts tells them to tense up when they see a strikeing their way, and that only makes the blow worse. But you instinctively flowed back with the attack with little to no training at all.


    Your martial instincts are sharp. Your attunement with your flesh is high. You have great potential."


    "Kind words will not stop me from fighting!" said Thokk. He shed a broken toothed smile and started to edge forwards, his rippling muscture tensed up as he readied to battle again.


    "Good." Goromir smiled too, battle lust overflowing around him as his green aura surged. He charged in with elerated mana flow, and Thokk raised a brow in surprise.


    Goromir closed the distance between them in an instant and then started to go down low.


    Thokk saw this, and the Collector agreed that Thokk''s martial instincts were sharp. Thokk would not fall for the same attack twice.


    The Collector predicted that Thokk would counter the same type of blow from Goromir as before.


    Thokk shot out his burly leg in a fast low kick, but he did not lean into it.


    A nonmittal move where he could easily move backwards or sideways to dodge unexpected attacks.


    An optimal strike in a situation where he did not know the full capabilities of his opponent.


    Goromir going low was a feint, however.


    When his hands touched the ground, instead of going up in a handstand and taking the low kick, he instead pushed up from his hands and flipped in the air, generating rotational momentum that drove into an axe kick towards Thokk''s head.


    The sudden transition from going low to a jumping axe kick was lightning fast, but Thokk was more prepared this time.


    Thokk used his upper two arms to form a guard above his skull, condensing red mana on them in a solid [Guard].


    Goromir''s heel mmed into Thokk''s arms with the solid crack not of flesh hitting flesh, but rock crashing against rock for both goblins'' flesh were enhanced by mana and further reinforced by Breath of Life ice crystals.


    Thokk''s lower two arms thrusted and grasped on Goromir''s leg at the calf.


    "Now you die!" shouted Thokk in pure excitement as he pulled backwards, using his prodigious size and strength to swing Goromir back, nning to then swing him forward, dashing him against the ground to crush him.


    Goromir became a blue-white blur as Thokk swung him backwards with high speed, but when Thokk roared and mmed him down, the Collector clicked its mandibles in understanding.


    Thokk looked down to the ground in pure surprise.


    When Thokk had swung Goromir back to make more distance to m Goromir down, Goromir had taken this chance to snake his legs around Thokk''s lower two arms.


    Goromir''s lower pair of arms then circled around and pinned Thokk''s upper arms, and finally, Goromir''s upper pair of arms wrapped around Thokk''s neck in a tight lock.


    This all happened in the span of a single instant.


    Aplicated series of movements and maneuvers performed with almost rote efficiency ¨C a telltale sign of having been practiced and honed from years of training.


    Thokk gurgled as he stumbled forwards, the breathing cut from his neck and all of his limbspletely bound by Goromir.


    Goromir''s muscles swelled and tensed as he put as much of his power possible into the submission hold, especially with the arms around Thokk''s neck.


    "You fought well. ept your loss," said Goromir.

 Chapter 138 - Mobilize

    Thokk''s eyes bulged as the blood stopped circting to his head, but he did not surrender. Instead, as bloody blue spittle frothed from his mouth, he leaped into the air and fell down on his back, crashing down heavily on top of Goromir.


    Goromir grunted at the impact, but held firm, his body reinforced by elerated flow. [Flow el] did enhance durability, speed, and strength, but because it boosted everything evenly and continuously, it was not nearly as effective as specialized mana applications such as [Guard] or [Dispersal].


    Thus, Goromir should have sustained good damage, especially considering Thokk''s raw power, but Goromir was trained to take pain.


    Thokk did this again. He did not have the energy to leap up this time, but instead mmed his back into the ground again, swiveling his head back into a headbutt. Thokk''s head made contact with Goromir''s nose and shattered inpletely, but Goromir simply breathed out clots of blood and bone and held Thokk even tighter.


    Then, it was over.


    Thokk fell unconscious, the breath choked out of him and his tongue lolling out through his shattered teeth.


    Goromir let go and shoved Thokk''s heavy body off of him with a deep breath.


    Goromir stood up and pumped two fists into the air, and the swarm cheered at the spectacle of a battle.


    "Ah, to revel in the cheers of a proper duel. It does bring me back," said Goromir. He nodded at the attention and then immediately knelt down by Thokk, checking his vitals with a hand to his heart and neck. "Alive. To be expected. You are a tough one. Stubborn, too."


    "Hear me, all you who are of the Champion bloodline!" said Goromir. "Your leader was mighty, and I do not wish to take his ce when his potential is such that it may even eclipse myself. Keep him close to you, for he knows you far better than I, a stranger from a stranger time still, does."


    "Then what was the point of the duel?" asked the elder.


    "To move my body properly after the centuries, I suppose," said Goromir. He then looked to the Collector and bowed his head. "And to prove my worth to the Sovnar."


    "Your worth as abat capable specimen has already been analyzed," said the Collector. "As has the potential of this entire swarm now that it has received the benefits of the Breath of Life."


    The Collector raised an open palm towards Thokk''s unconscious body. It closed its hand, its metallic ck ws clinking in contact. Magical energy flowed out from the Collector in ghostly blue strands, curling out from the fingers and into thin wisps surrounding Thokk.


    Thokk''s pale white body immediately rose up, fully conscious. His fractured jaw,cerated mouth, and minor disorientation from loss of oxygen werepletely resolved in a single instant. This was regenerative capability exceeding that granted by Higher Calling and did not requirepletely enving the specimen as well.


    Overall, the Collector determined that with the evolution of all the goblin specimen through Higher Calling along with the addition of the Breath of Life enhancing them at the cellr level, even the basic champion units were just shy of the four-star adventurer''s battle capacity.


    The elite units would pose a highly favorable fight against the four-star adventurer with the new elite units known as ''Goromir'' and ''Kandak'' defeating the adventurer in 90% of all potential simtions the Collector ran in its processing system, with the remaining 10% ounting for sudden surprises from the four-star adventurer''s varied abilities.


    A fighting force of this caliber would allow the Collector to easily overrun a basic human settlement such as that which it analyzed the outskirts of when it was in the biome of the Darkwoods. However, this swarm would still not be able to reliably fend against a strong individual unit such as the golden winged humanoid.


    However, with the infinite regeneration granted by the Breath of Life, the Collector could still conceivably utilize the units at the least as body bags and distractions, and with the significance of death having be less meaningful, they would as individuals be likely more receptive to it.


    In any case, the Collector would have to instruct the elder and the elites to inculcate more sentiment among the champion units to be more willing to expend their lives to death''s door in situations where such became necessary.


    For now, however, the Collector had to begin moving.


    "You are now in restored condition," said the Collector to Thokk. "You will remain as my carrier unit, for I sense that it has now be a title worthy of honor that I shall not strip from you."


    The Collector motioned to Goromir. "Yet, your victory shall not go unnoticed. You and your brethren elite specimen desire to be my personal guard. Agreeable."


    Kandak came up beside his brother and the two elites bowed their heads while crossing their fists over their hearts. "We serve as your First Hand, great Sovnar."


    "As the quantity of this swarm grows, so too will the need for more carrier units. First, we mobilize, for time is limited." The Collector began to move, and its intent spread throughout the swarm.


    "Towards the dungeon of the specimen once known as the ''Stormbear''. There, this swarm shall reconvene with the force left behind within the dungeon. I sense yet that the units in the dungeon are still alive, their vitals functioning properly.


    That indicates that the champion''s evolution into an elite has concluded, creating another strong body with potential to lead.


    When the entire swarm is gathered there, I shall utilize some time to conduct additional experimentations, ascending another unit to carrier status for I intend to split this swarm into two.


    One half of this swarm shall remain in thisnd and take control of the rest of the goblin tribes and bring them within the fold. It will conquer as many dungeons as possible, creating awork of surveince through which any tinkering attack or movement may be sensed ahead of time.


    The other half of the swarm will apany me in crossing the Rift."

 Chapter 139 - Goblin History

    The Collector made quick progress back to the Stormbear dungeon with its swarm. It did not move at maximal speed, however, which would have involved taking all of the goblins with Sapia and transporting them with its flight.


    This would have cost a great deal of magical energy. Approximately forty percent of the Collector''s total reserves for the full-length trip. An enormous improvement from before when any usage of Sapia would have greatly reduced the Collector''s mana reserves.


    The royal daemon''s blood was incredibly well attuned with Sapia, yet still highly specialized towards direct application of forces instead. However, the Collector estimated its force rted powers were essentially on par with its physical prowess by now, perhaps even exceeding them when pumping in prodigious quantities of mana to fuel them in short bursts.


    Even so, the Collector would not waste its mana on Sapia to move forces unless time was of critical essence, and there was still time that it calcted was enough to freely move to the dungeon and towards the Rift before tinkering presences intensified.


    Especially more so now that the goblin swarm had been enhanced with the Breath of Life, greatly increasing their physical capabilities and mobility. Even the elder had gained greatly enhanced functionality, restoring his blindness, ability to utilize magic, and regaining physical independence.


    While the Collector led the swarm towards the dungeon, it engaged in thorough discussion with relevant units for information.


    The Collector gleaned important information from the twin goblin elites known as ''Kandak'' and ''Goromir'' about the era of goblin dominance known as the ''old age''. Through them, the Collector came to know the history of the goblin species and the nature of the world surrounding them.


    The goblins were said to have been created from a deific figure known as ''Gob'', an entity that was one of seven specimens known as ''titans'' that the gods defeated to assert their dominance upon this world.


    Each titan possessed shards of the personified world''s will, the ''White Voice'' that the Collector hade to know and knew was embedded intrinsically within it, and when they were defeated, their shards were scattered.


    The goblin species became independent of Gob and retained a shard, utilizing its power to create a kingdom for themselves. They were friendly with the rest of the tinkering species for they shared manymonalities with each other, and their kingdom stood tall for slightly over five hundred years.


    However, when the Common Body was established, uniting all humanoid races, the goblins refused, for entering the body would force them to give up their shard to the gods. This led to severe retaliation, and the goblin kingdom was destroyed asunder in the matter of a few years.


    The goblin race was scattered across the world and forced to survive without the aid of their civilization, causing them to adapt and return to their primal ways as simpler, more bestial beings.


    Goromir and Kandak had perished a century before the goblins were properly attacked by the gods, but their bodies had remained in service through being entombed in the Burial Tusks. Yet, they did remember that the goblin race had always had some conflict with a specific goddess named Hwara.


    A goddess of earth, as she was called, and based on the elites'' ounts, possessed the power to create seismic disturbances easily capable of shattering entire mountains.


    Power the Collector could not challenge yet, though it was nearing that threshold.


    Another notable fact to note was that the goblin kingdom was not located in this realm. It was located in the realm known as Xin before its destruction, and there too, the goddess Hwara operated.


    Goromir and Kandak were doubtful that any trace of the goblin civilization was left behind, but they held out hope that remnants of their civilization remained in a state of stasis separate from harm in much the same way the Jotnar slept.


    This stasis was arge scale ritual called the Sarkophagos, and it was derived through the bone binding that allowed Goromir and Kandak to be fullypacted within their Burial Tusks.


    Or rather, Goromir and Kandak did not call it bone binding.


    They called it ''Spellweaving'', a mystical art that had been taught to their magically attuned kind that had been disciples of the Three Masks, a trio of entities that were all known as ''Facestealers'' and were also creatures that were born under Gob.


    The Collector determined that bone binding was a degenerated version of Spellweaving that retained only its basics, knowledge having been lost over nearly a millennium since the goblins had fallen.


    Sarkophagos involved first entering into a meditative sleep and then the construction of a cocoon through pieces of the fallen entity Gob''s flesh.


    The resulting flesh cocoon, highly attuned with primal energy for the titan was born directly of the world, would react with environmental pockets of high primal energy and transport those within into a theoretical area known as the ''White Space''.


    A space between the realms where supposedly the White Voice existed.


    Purely theoretical in the sense that the ritual was not well understood, having only been nned during Goromir and Kandak''s age, a full century before the goblin kingdom truly fell.


    Compounding this was the fact that as a prideful people, the goblins had even railed against their Spellweavers that had theorized the n in the first ce, believing they could still win against the gods over time.


    Thus, the Sarkophagus had likely not been fully researched and devised until the goblin kingdom was truly at itsst legs.


    Yet, as members of the First Hand, an elite guard that personally served lords and the king, Goromir and Kandak were privy to some details regarding the ritual should it ever happen.


    Specifically, they knew how many would be entombed in the case that their civilization fell.


    The goblin kingdom possessed thirty lords ruling five thousand goblins each with a single king above them all.


    The king had been in by the time the entombment ritual began, and this catalyzed the lords to begin their entombment to escape destruction from the gods.


    Thirty lords, the king, and hosts of elites and top spellweavers numbering ten thousand was the optimally nned number of entombed specimens to enter the Sarkophagus.


    Evidently, however, the process had not been perfect.


    The goblin lord the Collector encountered had possessed only a small dungeon,cking his entire host. The lord had to rely on pulling forces from the current generation of weakened goblins.


    Even Goromir and Kandak were simply akin to an item that had survived with the lord, for by that time, they had already been entombed in their Burial Tusks.


    Likely, most of the goblins had been eradicated by the time they had fallen back on the Sarkophagus.


    Goromir and Kandak did theorize, however, that though the lords in Terra, where the goblin kingdom''s heart stood, were likely fully eliminated, fringe lords that had reigned in other realms could still be asleep with their troops.


    These, the Collector could travel to and resurrect if it found the primal energy charged areas they had used to transport themselves to this ''White Space''.


    The Collector had thought the goblin species too weak to truly harness long term, but now it began to reconsider. If most of these lords and their hosts were intact, then the Collector could easily begin to obtain the might of a full realized swarm numbering into the thousands.


    Yet, a goal for the farther future, for neither the elites nor the Collector knew at all the specific locations of where the goblins had entombed themselves.


    The elder, however, theorized that the Facestealer that lived in this biome would know, for it had been a contemporary of both the rise and fall of the goblin kingdom.


    Thus, the Collector was further reinforced in its course of action.


    First, to travel past the Rift. Obtain power. Defeat the stronger draconid specimen. Take the shard from that specimen. Investigate the slumbering Jotnar to consume them or bring them to its cause. Investigate the World Dungeon where presumably the Collector now knew a titan wouldy.


    If that titan specimen still remained, the Collector would not hesitate in consuming it. It had taken all of the gods with theirbined might to defeat the titans, and if the Collector managed to obtain the form of even one, it would vastly outmatch almost anything upon this world in singlebat.


    Then, the Collector would traverse below the Rift and encounter the Facestealer. It would question the Facestealer or obtain information forcibly from it, potentially devouring it, and with it, the Collector theorized it would possess an enhanced version of Higher Calling that could allow it to evolve the goblins into heights that would easily match even the upper echelons of power in this world.


    Potentially even the capacity to bring humanoids other than goblins under its thrall.


    Then to gather the remnant goblins and evolve all of them. A mass army of evolved and undying specimen.


    At that point, the Collector could initiate a mass scale attack against these so-called ''gods'' and tear them limb from limb, devouring them and their immense power until it became the supreme organism upon this world.


    It would fight worthy battle after worthy battle, god after god, ripping and tearing until finally, it became a perfect being.


    And then when no more on this world could challenge it, it would -


    No. The Collector stopped its train of thought.


    It had to bring forth its Great Purpose.


    Once the Collector finished its goals past the Rift, it would return and infiltrate the city utilizing the Facestealer''s abilities. There, it would ess the greater warp gate within and contact the Collective, bringing forth a proper Dawning.


    This had been its initial goal.


    It did not know why it had strayed from them so greatly.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles and continued ahead to the Stormbear dungeon, increasing its pace.

 Chapter 140 - Reunion

    The time to the Stormbear dungeon was less than half it was going out of it to Vimur, for now the Collector no longer had to stop its flight for the rtively slower goblin swarm.


    To be certain, the swarm was still vastly slower than the Collector, but they were still faster now, fast enough that the Collector did not feel it was wasting too much inefficient time by staying in their midst.


    They sprinted through the snow with nigh inexhaustible stamina, for the Breath of Life ice crystals enriching their cells were highly responsive to primally charged environments, granting them increased metabolic function and mana regeneration in areas of Grainfall.


    The Collector flew over them, or rather, it hovered, utilizing the flight granted to it via its shard of session.


    On that regard, the Collector had attempted to glean as much information as it could about the nature of this entity known as the ''White Voice''.


    The elder, now with his memory a little more fresh due to rejuvenation via the White Voice, had more to say about this.


    The White Voice was the manifestation of aary will. If the Collector could equate it to any metaphorical element, it believed it apt to state that if aary core was its own independent specimen, then such was the White Voice.


    The analogue seemed urate in many ways. The White Voice was said to emanate from deep within the, presumably in an area approximated with a trueary core.


    Whether the White Voice was actually a core or a biological specimen proper was left undecided.


    This analysis, too, surprised the Collector in small measure, for it had grown to readily ept any exnations that just two weeks prior would have sounded logically impossible, breaching knowledge of all naturalws it had been imnted with.


    Now, however, the Collector understood the versatile nature of magic and how it could render once thought impossibilities as realities and simply adjusted its mode of thought to amodate it.


    The White Voice seemed to possess a regtory role among specimens on the world unrted to tinkerers.


    The more ''natural'' creatures, as it were. Primal energy was sourced from it, and because primal energy was simply the expression of mana from the environment, the Collector surmised that essentially, the pathways of environmental mana it saw all around it were like spirit roots for this ''White Voice'', with theary core, of course, being like a magical core as well.


    In that regard, the White Voice was the most powerful entity by far the Collector knew of, epassing an entire''s worth of mass and presumably magical energy. Yet, said entity''s expression of its power was vastly limited in many ways.


    Firstly, the White Voice seemed to operate mostly in a regtory manner that did not intervene, only merely keeping a bnce on its world surface. It did not truly have any biases among certain living specimen over others.


    This, the Collector could derive from how the elder revered the White Voice as a voice that ''spoke for all'', granting both life and death in equal measures so that the cycle of nature could continue unthwarted.


    It would seem also that the White Voice also functioned as a prototypical deity among more primitive tinkerers or intelligent creatures. However, vastly distinct from the ''gods'' which were implied to be spacefaring by the White Voice itself.


    The implications of that confirmation, the Collector had already processed but would not expand into detail yet.


    Secondly, the White Voice did could not exert enough direct power to defeat the gods which, ording to the elder and the elites, it was opposed to.


    The White Voice had raised titans to face the gods, implying that the White Voice could not independently destroy other beings, it had to rely on creations, ''children'' as it had put it.


    The Collector now being one of them.


    Thirdly, the White Voice was vastly weakened, though through what mechanisms, the Collector could not be entirely certain.


    The Collector knew for certain the White Voice was decayed simply from the short interaction they had together, and it also knew the Voice''s intentions as well for the Voice had projected its desire of eliminating the gods onto the Collector.


    A goal the Collector had found agreeable. It had already nned to ovee and devour these ''gods'' after all.


    But as for why the White Voice was deteriorated - a fact that was known not only among the goblins but also the Jotnar that sought advanced hibernation to awaken to an age where the Voice was renewed ¨C there was little evidence to glean.


    The elder had thought the White Voice had faded from the world due to the loss of the titans, her ''children'' as it was said, rendering her too weak, for she had split shards of her primordial essence among them, and now, these shards were scattered.


    This, the Collector could find as an eptable exnation and defaulted to it, though it was still open t others. Even with the elder''s memories ridden of the fog of senility, that did not change the fact that the elder''s knowledge came from hearsay and secondary sources such as orally transmitted folktale.


    True answers to all these, however, the Collector would find beyond the Rift.


    To the Jotnar.


    Activating the Jotnar core had not only allowed the Collector to glimpse the memories of its prior owner, but also establish a connection with the area the Jotnar had utilized to engage in their hibernation. They were transported elsewhere, but the Collector was confident by virtue of possessing their shard that it could still ess them.


    For now, however, the Collector began its experimentation.


    The Collector stood in the midst of the Stormbear dungeon, behind a raging bonfire where meat had been roasted and passed around freely.


    The Collector had granted the swarm one hour and thirty minutes to make merry at their reunion and to speak of their experiences and new appearances, particrly in regards to being brought from death via the Breath of Life.


    This was theoretically a waste of time, and the Collector itself did not engage in any of it for it saw no true purpose, but it did give orders for the elder to build up an image of the Collector as one that could transcend death, thus building up more reverence and more loyalty.


    In addition, the elder and the elites also gave the rest of the swarm some notion of what to expect in the future when the Collector split the swarm.


    In time, or already as it was with certain more fiercely loyal specimen, the swarm woulde to value their physical injuries less and be willing to be used more expendably by the Collector.


    But now, the time of nourishment and rest was over.


    The Collector looked in front of it where all its elites knelt.


    Goromir. Kandak. Thokk. And finally, the newly evolved Thrag.


    Thrag had, as the Collector theorized, be the new boss of the Stormbear dungeon, and the influx of magical energy had allowed it, coupled with the Collector''s Higher Calling, to ascend into an elite.


    The rest of the goblin swarm stood around and behind the fire in quiet, ready for their Sovnar''s words.


    The Collector spoke, its voice radiating outwards in a cool, calm, measured elegance underlined with a faint hint of a crackling rumble caused from the draconid''s vocal chords.


    "The elder has made this known among you already. This swarm shall be split. Yet, I will delve into further detail," said the Collector. "In two shall this swarm be divided. One force remaining here utilizing this dungeon as a central base,


    One force shall follow me as I cross the Rift."


    A general murmur rose among the goblins that had remained behind in the dungeon, for they all knew the reputation of the Rift as immeasurably dangerous. They worried for the Collector''s safety and the future of the swarm.


    "Do you doubt the might of the Sovnar?" said Kandak, his voice rising as he heard the whispers with a twitch of his pointed ear. "He goes now with purpose. Over the Rift. To conquer it. To make it ours. Do not question."


    "Small dungeons alone are not my goal," stated the Collector. "This territory, I understand has been a source of great pride for you. Yet, it is nothing in the scope of the Great Purpose which has been vested within me.


    For in the wake of the Great Purpose, this swarm shall y a role in not only conquering dungeons, but the very gods themselves.


    To challenge this world, however, I require power, and power, I shall find across the Rift. When I return, precious little will challenge us."


    "Hear the Sovnar''s words, brothers and sisters, all you who were once simpler and could not see beyond the next meal," said the elder as he tapped his waking stick, now more of a staff, into the stone floor. "We are on the eve of a greatness.


    It is not the Old Age, as I have thought, but a truly New Age for our people. Those of you that have listened to me thought my tales of a goblin kingdom and greatness as fanciful, but can you doubt them now that you witness how far we havee with the Sovnar behind us?"


    The goblin swarm looked among each other, and the Collector could find no dissent, only agreement.


    "That is what I thought," said the elder. He was still bald, but now the Breath of Life had granted him a thick beard of icy white that drooped down to his chest. "The Sovnar goes now to find the might to challenge the gods and bring the greatness that was once ours back to us.


    Those of you thate to aid him, fight for him with your lives, for as I and many others here are living proof that the Sovnar holds reign over death itself.


    Those of you that stay here, grant your prayers to the Sovnar."

 Chapter 141 - Drone Ascension

    The Collector continued, delineating its ns. Its ashen white figure stood tall, even with the slight hunch from its oversized back muscles. Itsrge dorsal fin jutted out from its back with arcs of faint electrical humming buzzing around it.


    The mandibles on the sides of its helmet-like carapace maw clicked together while its four red, slit-like eyes shed.


    "The swarm that stays here shall be a conquering force led under the supervision of the specimen known as ''Thrag''. Said specimen has evolved from champion to elite and possesses enough natural potential to be a secondary carrier unit," said the Collector.


    "Conquer? We fight the humans now?" came a wondering question from the swarm.


    "No," said the Collector. "The conquering force is to not engage with any tinkering force unless an explicit order has been granted by me. When engaging a tinkering force, escape should be of the highest priority.


    The time to conquer the tinkerers willeter, when I have returned from beyond the Rift with the necessary power to do so.


    What the conquering force below the Rift shall focus its martial efforts on will primarily be dungeons. It will begin to clear as many dungeons as possible while minimizing losses. Any severe wounds, I may heal remotely, but true resurrection requires my immediate presence.


    Thus, engage in moderate caution, but do not unnecessarily fear bodily harm. Should the newly appointed carrier unit deem so, it will send a mental distress signal to me, and I will respond with immediate healing.


    Focus on clearing the dungeons closest farthest from tinkering capability and work yourselves inwards, though not so close as to draw immediate attention."


    Thrag''s kneeling figure before the Collector spoke out.


    "Sovnar," said Thrag, having been educated on proper titling by Kandak and Goromir. "How will we know where to strike? For far too long, our people have avoided any dungeons. Never cared for them."


    The Collector signaled its mental intent to the elder, and the elder nodded and came forwards.


    "I will guide you," said the elder. He smiled faintly. "And with my magic restored, even aid you in battle. It has been long since I have whetted my magic in blood."


    "I am eager to see your might also, elder," said Thrag. "Even when we were unevolved, I had always thought you highly with your tales and knowledge. It isforting you will be by my side to lead our people here."


    "Hoh hoh," said the elder, nodding at the recognition. "It is heartening to know that there was such respect for me even when I was frail and weak."


    The Collector watched this interaction and felt satisfactory that now that the goblin swarm was more intelligent, it possessed far more recognition and deference to the elder, likely having understood to greater degree the extent to which the elder had guided the tribe from harm with his knowledge of wind currents, the patterns of the Great Storm, the passage of Shadows, and so on.


    Previously, the swarm had only recognized strength and treated the fragile elder as more of a convenience than someone to be recognized.


    The Collector would have preferred also to leave one of the twin elites behind to train this portion of the swarm, but the twin elites were deferent to tradition, and tradition as members of a ''First Hand'' made it such that they would never leave the Collector''s side, acting as its personal guard.


    A kingsguard equivalent, as the elites had put it.


    The Collector spoke again. "The elder will guide you, and Thrag will lead you inbat. You shall defeat and conquer the dungeons, and in each of them, assign a worthy unevolved one among you to stay within it and take in its energies, ascending to elitehood.


    As you reach elitehood, your connection to me will grow stronger, and through the trace amounts of warp energies inherent in dungeons, your connection will be further amplified such that you maymunicate directly with me.


    In this way, many of you shall be leaders of your own territory."


    The Collector looked at Thrag. "This shall necessitate that you abandon this post as this dungeon''s ''boss'' and grant it to another in this swarm, for you shall lead, not remain stationary."


    "I understand. And all the better for me," said Thrag. "I far prefer fighting and moving than sitting around." He paused for a moment. "A question, Sovnar."


    "Proceed."


    "I do not know how many dungeons there are, but will our numbers not eventually grow thin? When enough of us must remain in these dungeons," said Thrag.


    "That is certainly so. Yet, ounted for," replied the Collector. "The secondary purpose of the conquering force is to conquer further additional goblins. There are more among your species here, that is known to me. They are gathered under different banners and social groups known as ''tribes.''


    This too, is one of the reasons the elder shall remain. He will lead you to these tribes and usher them into the fold of this swarm."


    "They¡­they may not appreciate the rule," said Thrag. "Their minds have not been opened to you, Sovnar."


    "Another predicament that I have ounted for." The Collector raised an open palm towards Thrag''s kneeling figure. "Come forwards. Your ascension into a carrier unit shall remedy this concern."


    "It is an honor," said Thrag as he came forwards with his fist over his heart in reverent salute. Another form of etiquette taught by Goromir.


    "Bare your heart to me," said the Collector. "For I require ess to your cardiovascr system and spirit root cirction."


    Thrag bared his chest, and the Collector mmed a wed hand into it, easily cleaving through the flesh until its fingers reached the heart and gently held it. It surged magical energy colored red into its hand and enveloped the heart, initiating another sequence of Higher Calling.


    Thrag froze up, his red eyes growing dim as blood began to trickle out from his mouth.


    The Collector had researched the nature of Higher Calling and made modifications to it. It could not enhance elites into a further evolutionary form for it seemed that elites could not ascend to lords. Lords and elites were of entirely separate bloodlines that had surprisingly little ovep, which exined further why it seemed that the lords were so physically inferior to the elites.


    The Collector initiated Higher Calling on the elite specimen before it to make its biological form more malleable in a way not dissimr to how the Collector could reduce down into purely malleable biological ooze in its cocoon.


    Magical energy began to swirl around the specimen ''Thrag''s'' body. Mana colored red, green, and blue that formed a triple helix of threads that slowly built up and encased the specimen in a cocoon of fluxing energy.


    This way, the Collector could grow forth arger tendril on the elite''s head and also enhance it even further, allowing the elite to draw from the Collector''s own Higher Calling voice and impart suggestion to the goblins it encountered, though at a lower level than the Collector.


    Still likely enough to rally simple minded goblins to the Collector''s cause.


    In addition, the Collector could now do this ¨C


    Three pliomatter tendrils of pure, raw red muscle emerged from tes of carapace on the Collector''s back and curved around to point at the elite specimen. Their ends rippled as the muscle condensed down into tapered, sharp points, and then they dug into the mana cocoon, going further and stabbing into parts of the elite''s body.


    The moment the Collector had obtained its adaptation to create its Cluster Drones, it had theorized that with Higher Calling, it could simply create these drones as parts of goblins.


    Cluster drones by themselves were extremely unimpressive specimen. They were small, flying balls of biomass and gic material that were used primarily for utility, ejecting a projectile here or emitting a sensory field there depending on what gic material they were invested with.


    However, with Higher Calling making the gic structure of goblins malleable, the Collector calcted that it could simply make the goblins, especially the elites with their already sturdy bodies, as drones, grafting gic samples it no longer needed into them.


    One of the tendrils glowed red as it pumped in the gic code for the metongue Smander.


    Another tendril glowed a pale blue as it transferred the code of the Shockstripe Eel.


    The max number of gic samples any cluster drone could possess was two, and that limit did not stop here. Overloading this specimen with foreign samples was liable to cause an irregr mutation. In addition, the gic samples could onlye from those the Collector were not utilizing right now.


    In essence, it was as if the samples it possessedprised a pool, and any unit taking form that pool would have to return it for it to be usable again.


    The Collector chose these samples with purpose. Without the Collector warding away the Shadows with its Blessing, the conquering swarm would be left to deal with the Shadows. Thus, the metongue Smander genes to grant permanent light and further reverence among other goblin tribes encountering the elite.


    The Shockstripe Eel was to grant the elite aquatic capabilities and morebat power.


    With both of these samples incorporated and soon, Breath of Life to enhance both the elite and the conquering force''s stats, it was likely that no ordinary creature nor straying tinkering force would ever stand a chance against the conquering force.


    Of course, the conquering force was not primarily supposed to be a militaristic one. That was what the Collector presented their role as to them, for it sensed that the goblins were far more positively predisposed to beingbeled as ''conquerers''.


    In practicality, they were more surveince units to track tinkering movements in below the Rift so that the Collector knew what to expect when it came back down.

 Chapter 142 - Kingsguard

    The Collector finished transferring the gic codes and then withdrew its tendrils. They hovered around the Collector, awaiting an additional subject, for the Collector could create three drones.


    Thrag''s cocoon fully sealed, the triple colors of the mana swirling around him crystallizing and sealing his shadowy, barely visible figure within. It would take an hour for the specimen to build into his new form.


    "I grant power now to a select few," said the Collector. "Ascendant power that shifts the form much as I am capable of. I possess the capability to ascend two more specimen."


    The Collector chose.


    "The specimens known as ''Goromir'' and ''Kandak'' shalle forth," said the Collector.


    "Why!?" said Thokk as he broke from his kneeling stance and rose up in surprise. "Why not me?"


    "You possess immense potential that has not yet been fully realized," said the Collector. It had fully analyzed the battle between the carrier unit ''Thokk'' and the new elite ''Goromir'' ande to the realization that the carrier unit possessed an exceptional amount of inherent potential.


    Potential as that being defined by both capacity to grow in martial prowess and inherent biological capacity to take in more evolutions. All living specimen it seemed possessed a set amount of strength to which they were capable of rising towards, with this limit set upon birth by gics which also determined magical capability.


    However, the capacity to evolve into a different specimen was a different type of potential all together. It required the flesh to be particrly malleable to change by modifications such as Higher Calling, and among all the goblins, the carrier unit ''Thokk'' possessed a form that was most receptive to change.


    The carrier unit alone among the goblins had been able to truly ascend into elitehood with a simple push from Higher Calling. The specimen known as ''Thrag'' that would now lead the split conquering force required bing the boss of a dungeon, a status that greatly stimted evolutionary growth, to sustain such an ascension.


    This potential manifested elsewhere as well. As evidenced by the carrier unit being an exceptionally quick learner inbat. His knowledge was multiple degrees below that possessed by the twin elite units, but his potential to surpass them was incredibly high.


    "Because you possess this potential, you shall remain with your current form," said the Collector. "For once I graft foreign gic codes into a specimen, their capacity to shift their forms bes increasingly difficult, their biological capacity to hold gic ''data'' bing increasingly overloaded.


    Wasting your gic data capacity on simple samples that I hold within me now will be a waste. Until you have tempered your body to its true limits and until I have devoured sufficiently exceptional samples to share, you will remain as you are."


    "But-but I will be weak," said Thokk. "I lost to Goromir because I am not strong enough." He looked down at his pale hands. "I am just a goblin. If I can be something more, I can be stronger."


    "''Just'' a goblin?" Goromir came behind Thokk and pped his back in a friendly, rousing gesture. "Do not disrespect the blood of Gob like that! Come on, young one, the Sovnar has recognized your potential, and I too respect it.


    We will journey together, you, my brother, and I, and we shall teach you all there is to the martial prowess of the Gob elite.


    Learn and devote yourself to the way of the flesh, and you shall be strong."


    "You sure? I can be strong?" Thokk looked expectantly up to Goromir, and Goromir nodded with a smile that raised his tusk of ice up.


    "Of course. But do not expect our training to be easy. Kandak, especially, holds little kindness in his heart," said Goromir.


    "You nder me, brother," said Kandak. "I was trained with pain. Thus, with pain do I train others. It is simply the best way."


    Goromir gestured back at Kandak with a thumb. "See what I mean? And besides, young one, the Sovnar has made his will known. You will not oppose it, will you?"


    "No." Goromir nodded resolutely.


    "Oppose my will when you deem it fit to do so," said the Collector, and the goblins turned to him in surprise. "I do not possess a sufficiently developed sense of ego-based pride to believe mymands and information to be absolute.


    One of the primary purposes of allowing a swarm such as this to operate independently, besides eliminating the burden of mana cost, is that as drones invested with independent function, you may possess or gain knowledge that may contradict mymands.


    In such times, it is imperative that you transfer such knowledge to me such that I may adjust my calctions and ns ordingly."


    "Your generous will is known, Sovnar," said Goromir as he put his fist over his heart.


    "Agreeable," said the Collector. "Now approach me, the twin elites known as ''Goromir'' and ''Kandak''."


    The twin elites came forwards and knelt before the Collector.


    The Collector assessed the individual capabilities of either goblin, taking note of their builds and personalities as they knelt side by side before it.


    Goromir was built lean and of moderate height for an elite, standing a full head shorter than the carrier unit known as ''Thokk'' who possessed great size, almost reaching to the Collector''s own three meter height.


    This granted Goromir a far more lithe and agile build, and he expressed it greatly in his showcasing of the martial art ''Gobeira''. Speed and striking ¨C these were the elite''s specialties. If the elite had wanted, during his duel with the carrier unit, he could have used the de-like ice crystal formations jutting from his elbows and knees for even more lethal strikes, but had held back doing so.


    His twin brother Kandak, on the other hand, was as bulky as the carrier unit Thokk.


    Kandak''s body was riddled with discolored flesh shaped by scars, and these now manifested almost like stripes of grey upon his snow-white body, lining the curvature of his rippling muscles. In contrast, Goromir possessed far fewer longstanding battle wounds.


    Indicated that Kandak preferred a far more direct mode ofbat that involved taking greater damage. Likely that the martial art known as ''Gobeira'' had some variation that suited a build like Kandak''s better.


    The Collector selected the gic samples it would transfer.


    It stepped forward first to Goromir, and in preparation, the elite bared his chest, uncovering his hand from his heart.


    "I will make use of this new form you bless me with," said Goromir. "Truly, O Sovnar, you are the chosen of Gob, capable of blessing and shifting our flesh like this so."


    The Collector clicked its mandibles as it mmed its hand into Goromir''s chest, injecting Higher Calling energy into the elite''s heart. In hearing of the history of the goblins from the elites, it knew also that the ''Sovnar'', or one who possessed a shard once held by the titan Gob, possessed a boosted Higher Calling that could alter goblin flesh, not only ascending them, but changing their physical structures to make them more adapted for different biomes.


    One of the reasons the twin elites recognized the Collector to such high degree was that it seemed to possess this type of Higher Calling, though the elites confused the Collector''s innate evolutionary capabilities with it.


    Regardless, the inference was that the proper shard of Gob might allow for the Collector''s Higher Calling to vastly be enhanced, though this was a consideration forter.


    For now, the Collector stepped back and watched as a cocoon of blue, green, and red swirled around Goromir, encasing him in a crystalline structure of triple lights.


    The Collector stabbed its three tendrils into the crystal and pierced them into Goromir''s body, into his head, heart, and stomach. It began transferring gic sample codes.


    For Goromir, the Collector shifted the samples for the Windcutter Wildcat and Lurker.


    The Windcutter Wildcat was an exceptionally agile feline specimen that possessed ws and des that could generate shing winds, and they could also swirl winds around them or gather natural wind currents to rapidly elerate their movements.


    The Lurker would grant Goromir another dimension of movement, allowing for subterranean ambushes and quick assassinations of which Goromir was familiar with.


    Goromir had spoken some of his past. He was not only a frontline fighter but also a reconnaissance unit, observing others from stealth and knowing how to utilize weapons to quickly sh in and out, killing without being seen.


    He had even boasted of slitting the throat of a Godblood, a specimen possessed with blood from the entities known as ''gods'', though whether this was simply fabrication or a confirmation that divine blood alone did not necessitate great strength was uncertain.


    Overall, with the gic codes of these two samples, the Collector estimated Goromir''s directbat capability to rise by 80% with its utility rising even further.


    The Collector withdrew its tendrils and bid Kandak forwards.


    "I take your blessing, Sovnar," said Kandak, his voice more gruff and his words fewer than his brother.


    The Collector cut its hand into Kandak''s chest and infused Higher Calling into his heart as well. When the mana cocoon formed around Kandak, the Collector injected its tendrils into the elite and chose the appropriate samples.


    The Collector would grant Kandak the Grizzled Stormbear and Assassin Bugbrute samples. Both of these specimens were extremely durable,rge, and powerful creatures that relied upon their natural bulk, armoring, and sheer physical strength to beat down their prey.


    Kandak was also less prone to talk and crueler than Goromir, and would utilize the Bugbrute''s venom and corpse armor more effectively as well.


    Thus, Kandak would be significantly morebat capable than Goromir in a direct confrontation, but wouldck in utility.


    However, considering Kandak''s battle scars and his history as one who charged into battlefields with reckless abandon, ignoring any pain and pushing forwards, the Collector found it apt to appropriate the elite into a role he was familiar with.


    In any altercation, the Collector would utilize Kandak as a unit to soak damage and attention.


    This would be the two elites that would apany the Collector as its current personal guard. With these samples added to them, they were significantly more powerful than the four-star adventurer.


    The Collector''s own personal ''Kingsguard'' as the elites would have put it.

 Chapter 143 - Elite Rebirth

    The Collector waited for an hour until the three goblin elites would fully emerge from their cocoons. All through this time, the rest of the goblin swarm were nearly quiet, looking at the most powerful among them receiving even more power, their very flesh being altered.


    They looked with sheer reverence, and to a degree, the Collector perceived this as instinctual. There was something about the changing of flesh, of its modification into something higher, more evolved, that the goblins inherently respected and valued.


    Likely, the Collector surmised, it was because of their origins.


    Descended from the titan known as Gob. Neither of the twin elites knew the titan personally for by the time they walked this, Gob had been killed for five hundred years already. However, they knew much of what the entity should have been like ording to religious practices and stored knowledge.


    Gob was a ''god'' of flesh. A pir of towering flesh with a crown of a dozen faces. It interacted with the world through a countless host of tendrils, and it seemed to strike against its enemies with powerful physical blows, shapeshifting of the flesh into various forms and capabilities, and the modification of enemy flesh to cause elerated expiration.


    Extremely interesting.


    It would seem that this entity ''Gob'' was in possession of, or at the very least approximated the primordial ooze that the Collector returned to when it entered its evolutionary cocoon. Gob could freely change its form and that of others, hence why it was known as a god of flesh among the goblins.


    A specimen of note worth.


    In the age of the twin elites, they possessed remnant pieces of Gob''s preserved flesh, utilizing it to empower certain warriors or, in their final moments, seal themselves off. However, it was unlikely that any preserved flesh remained or, if it did, it was securely guarded under tinkering hands.


    Once the Collector began to face the tinkerers directly, ravaging their cities and ships and strongholds, it would seek out the flesh of ''Gob'', for it deemed that such a specimen was highlypatible with its own form.


    For now, the Collector watched as the trio of mana cocoons began to crack, the ground shaking as they oscited. The shadowy figures of the elites within began to shudder and move.


    "Still wish I could have been like them," said Thokk from the Collector''s side. "They grow stronger. They were already stronger than me, and now, I feel weak. I am going to follow you, Sovnar, to the beyond above the Rift, but how can I help you when I am like this?"


    "Learn and adapt," said the Collector. "There is no point wasting mental energies on what has happened. There is only to calcte and prepare for that which will happen."


    "I understand," said Thokk.


    "Do not sulk, Thokk," said the goblin elder. "You alone among our tribe could ascend into elitehood. You were a child of prodigy. None like you had ever been born to the tribe in over half a century. Should the Sovnar not have brought his reign upon us, there is no doubt you would have grown marvelously and led our tribe to incredible heights."


    "No," said Thokk. "I understand better now. How this world works. If the Sovnar had note, I would have grown strong, maybe even turned into how I am now, but then what? I would lead our tribe as the strongest, but what could we have done?


    We would raid the human camps. Two or three of them. Then the humans woulde and kill us all. That is it. We would not do anything more."


    Thokk looked to the Collector. "But with the Sovnar, now we can do so much more. The whole world is ours to challenge. The gods ours to fight and beat. But I must be strong enough to be worthy of a great goal like that."


    Thokk made a tight fist and held it to his chest in determination. "And I will."


    "Your words are growing more eloquent by the moment," said the elder. "You are learning. Learning quick. Frighteningly so."


    The Collector clicked its mandibles, drawing attention to the cocoons breaking now, but also to agree with the elder. The carrier unit ''Thokk'' possessed not just immense biological capacity to evolve, but also neural processing that evolved at a rapid rate, allowing him to learn and understand at a degree several times quicker than any of his brethren.


    Still primitive and slowpared to the Collector, but there was no pointparing a native born specimen here with the Collector.


    The dungeon rumbled as the three cocoons shattered in sync with each other. Shards of solidified mana crystals that glowed blue, red, and green scattered across the stony floor, dissolving quickly into pure light now that their purpose had been fulfilled.


    Three reborn elites emerged, their gazes facing downward and their breathing shallow as they adjusted to their new bodies.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles. The evolution had exceeded its expectations.


    Thragg lit up in mes crackling with electricity, lighting up the dungeon cave. His body more muscled than before, enhanced by additional biomass.


    A bright yellow stripe ran down the top of his forehead, following the curvature of his spine and leading down into a thick white tail of pure, muscled flesh lined with four sets of light yellow, almost crystalline fins that could fan out and spread electrical charge.


    Gills lined the sides of Thragg''s neck, fluttering as he took in breaths. A shiny sheen covered his body from the special oils of the metongue Smander that could sustain mes while negating any harmful heat from reaching underneath the lipidyer to the specimen.


    The frill-like red tendrils of the smander which could generate sparks and me gathered around Thragg''s back in the form of a ming cape in much the same way it had been with the Collector.


    More crystalline fines lined his forearms and back, crackling with bolts of electrical charge that coursed through the aura of me he emitted.


    Goromir retained his physical dimensions. Sightly over two meters tall with a lean, agile build. However, thin carapace covered his body now, clinging in a form-fitting, flexible weave of snowy white.


    The carapace formed a retractable helmet around Goromir''s head, granting him the appearance of an armored tinkerer, and the Collector hypothesized this was because Goromir''s own preferences had influenced the evolution.


    Long, sickle-like ws protruded from Goromir''s hands and feet, and thin wisps of wind flickered around them. His deep blue eyes now possessed slit, feline pupils. Above those eyes were two pairs of pure ck insectoid ocr systems.


    Twin antennae twitched from his carapace helmet, no doubt linked to his nervous system when the helmet was on.


    Thin hairs lined the seams of his carapace, granting him the wind-sensitive and air current harnessing capabilities of the Windcutter Wildcat.


    A series of six spines protruded from his back, bobbing in and out between seams in the carapace as they adjusted to a new body. Those spines could be retracted and freely extended at a moment''s notice, and they were spiraled in structure, perfect for drilling through rock.


    Goromir''s body shook intensely, vibrating at unnaturally high speeds, and the Collector noted this was his muscles adjusting to the Lurker''s capability to oscite its muscles at exceptionally high speeds meant specifically for parting and burrowing into dirt.


    Kandak was much like his brother, choosing to take upon an armored form, but he embodied the concept of an armored unit far better than his twin.


    His already prodigious size had bulked up even more with the Stormbear''s muscture and the Bugbrute''s sheer size, making him stand even taller than the collector at three and a half meters.


    Kandak was incredibly wide and stout, and his dense muscles were also padded under an insting, shock-absorbingyer of fat.


    The Assassin Bugbrute''s spiked carapace covered Kandak''s body in a thick suit of te, and unlike the form fitting weave of carapace around his brother, Kandak''s carapace protruded outwards, creating maximal protective power in exchange for some flexibility of movement.


    A helmet of carapace gathered around Kandak''s head also, and in his case, his helmet was lined on either side with an enormous set of crushing pincer mandibles. Twin antennae protruded from the helm''s top, twitching, sensitive for any changes in the air.


    Three pairs of eyes. One blue, the rest ck and insectoid.


    Between the seams of Kandak''s armor were thick tufts of white fur that flickered around him, forming into wavy clumps that channeled electricity. Underneath the elite''s carapace ting was in addition the Stormbear''s durable furyer and below that, dense muscles and fat.


    An enemy would have to pierce through all threeyers of defense to harm Kandak.


    Kandak''s hands possessed ws now, but notably, one of his arms was thicker than the others, the carapace at the forearm forming into a bulb that unsheathed the stinger of the Assassin Bugbrute.


    Additionally, the Collector perceived that with both Kandak and Goromir, they could withdraw their carapace armor to bare flesh and fur bodies, likely to preserve the integrity of their original forms better as they had more attachment to them than the Collector which had no real positive inclinations to any one form.


    Though the Collector did have certain minute preferences. Such as its mandibles. Yet, none so strong that it would shape its metamorphosis, potentially hampering efficiency, to retain a form it preferred.


    Regardless, the Collector was pleased with this evolutionary oue. The three elites had taken to foreign gic samples remarkably well, even exceeding the Collector''s calctions by 22%.

 Chapter 144 - Celebration

    The three elites had taken to foreign gic samples remarkably well, even exceeding the Collector''s calctions by a nigh inconceivable 40%.


    The Collector could not calcte the strength boost the elites would receive adequately because it was still experimenting with Higher Calling, and this was the first time it had truly melded together its own adaptations with magic.


    Partly, the Collector had not expected too much due to how Cluster Drones functioned originally.


    Cluster drones, as their name suggested, were meant to be used in clusters. They were individually extremely weak rtive to the Collector, making up for such weakness with numbers.


    In the Collector''s original form, at the height of its powers, it could field ten thousand cluster drones and expend biomass to continuously produce them.


    They would fly from gaps in the Collector''s carapace and flesh as an immense swarm, washing over smaller warships when their shielding was down, finding cracks in their armor, and wreaking havoc.


    Infestor-strain Collectors produced the strongest cluster drones and almost solely relied on them forbative capability, fielding hundreds of thousands of drones, but the Collector, as a Warrior-strain, could not create drones in the same number or strength, and thus used them instead to cull the weak.


    The Collector''s drones fanned out and ughtered tiny tinkerers in their powersuits or smacoil tanks or any starship below the Mammoth ss.


    This left the Collector to deal with powerful individual threats as it was adapted to, to revel in the battle that was worthy for it.


    But now,bined with Higher Calling and incorporated into stronger base specimen, the cluster drones were no longer simply meant to fan out the weak. They were truly potent units that could reliably engage inbat with the Collector.


    Or, as the twin elites had stated, to protect the Collector with their lives.


    "Truly, this is the flesh blessing of Gob," said the elder as he raised a trembling hand towards the three reborn elites, assessing their magical energy. His eyes widened. "Their mana levels are extraordinary. Two, no, three times higher than before."


    "To be precise, their total mana levels have increased by a magnitude of 2.66 times," said the Collector. "However, they must adjust to their newfound capacity and abilities. Judging from the mental processing I have observed from each specimen, I calcte that the one known as ''Thragg'' will take fourteen days to limate.


    The one known as ''Kandak'' will take five days. As would his twin specimen ''Goromir''."


    "Your judgement is keen and infallible as always, Sovnar," said the elder.


    "Not infallible," corrected the Collector. "My processing systems possess a density of neurons and synaptic connections that render the simple systems of your brains nigh obsolete, but there is never a certain calction.


    Probability cannot be absolute. Discrepancies in my calctions rise even further when I do notck necessary knowledge.


    As I have said before, this swarm operates with independence such that in times of need, they make make their own judgements.


    Do not be fearful of correcting any calctions I craft as well, for as part of my swarm, I consider your contributions as extensions of my own calctive ability."


    "Understood, great Sovnar," said the elder. "That you regard us so highly is heartening to hear."


    The Collector clicked its mandibles and then clenched its fists together, swirling out magical energy that funneled into its new drones. The magical energy came out in three separate threads of blue thattched on to the elites'' hearts, granting them magical energy with which to stabilize with.


    The blue colored mana of Unity. This, the Collector had adapted and figured out how to utilize when it tapped into the Jotnar core, for its affinity was that of Unity.


    Now there were but two mana affinities for the Collector to observe and utilize properly.


    That being Root and Void.


    The Collector could already understand how to utilize Root based mana, for it was in essence affinity to concentrate mana in single points at high densities. Highlyplementary with techniques such as [Guard], though the Collector would have to see more techniques in action in order to fully begin its own experimentations with it.


    Void, however, was still a mystery, and there were none around the Collector that knew of what it could aplish. Even the female daemon specimen had thought it an aberration of low probability.


    The three evolved elites in front of the Collector groaned in unison as they gained greater control of themselves, their consciousnesses finally getting used to their new bodies. They tentatively moved their limbs, looking at themselves with palpable surprise.


    Then, Goromir smiled, his helmet of carapace sheathing back to reveal his face fully.


    "What strength!" He clenched his fist and surged out his magical energy, green tides of power rippling around him in an intensity that he had never exhibited before. "With this might, I would never have fallen in the Shattering."


    "Agreed, brother," said Kandak as he too loosed magical energy, though his was painted red.


    Together, they made the dungeon tremble, shuddering at the waves of magical energy they unleashed.


    "Enough boasting, you two," said Thragg. He, despite his physical prowess and the tendency for goblin kind to fixate on it, was far more reflective than the rest. Introspective. "It is only due to the Sovar we have this power, and it is through the purpose he gives us that we use it."


    "You are right, young one," said Goromir. "To think a goblin of this new age could be so well spoken."


    "We are all the same people still," said Thragg. "Do not belittle us for we share the same threads of blood."


    "I apologize," nodded Goromir. "Old habits. When I walked across the realms, the kingdom of Gob culled all imperfect bloodlines, so it is easy for me to see others of Gob in terms of being lesser. But all of you are my brothers and sisters in not only life, but also death, united by the Sovnar."


    "United, but soon to part ways," said Thragg. "Sovnar, from how you order us to avoid the humans, I believe you too wish to evade them. It cannot be that you desire to remain long here. Do you wish to move now?"


    "If the three of you are adapted to your new forms enough and the swarm is prepared," said the Collector.


    "A moment, Sovnar," said Goromir.


    "Speak," replied the Collector.


    "There is still much meat left to eat, and the goblins that remained here still do not know us too well," said Goromir. "Let us all sit in peace and quiet, to eat and make merry ande to know the other, for moments like these will be all too rare."


    Goromir smiled to the rest of the goblins that had died and risen with him. "And we will be the first among all bloodlines of Gob to ever celebrate not simply our lives, but our deaths as well. I cannot pass up a chance like that."


    "You desire to create a moment of rest among the swarm so that they may cultivate greater cohesion among you through extended social interaction." The Collector analyzed this suggestion. It knew by now that the goblins were a highly social species, bing more and more interactive the more they evolved.


    The Collector itself had little conception of this social interaction, but it knew that it was useful in creating a stronger sense of collective unity among the swarm, especially as it wasprised of individuals and not mindless drones.


    And, as the Collector had noted before, it was here to take suggestions for calctions it could notpute properly. The realm of social interaction being one of them. This, the Collector trusted the elite specimen on.


    "Agreeable, then," said the Collector. "Ensure that this period of socialization does notst more than six hours, however."


    "Many thanks, O Sovnar," said Goromir with a deep bow, his fist over his heart.


    Then, Goromir spun around and raised his fists in the air. He went into the middle of the swarm, and with a shout, said, "Come on then! The Sovnar grants us time to make merry. And we shall make merry in the way of our peoples!


    All you men of this tribe, those that dare, at least,e forwards and fight me! Women, too, for might is blind."


    Goromir''s words roused the swarm, and they began to circle around the elite, passing around chunks of meat among themselves to watch aspetitors against Goromir came up to him to spar, testing out their own newfound physical abilities with the Breath of Life.


    When Goromir triumphed over a champion, the swarm reacted, talking among themselves, wondering how the champion could have done better or marveling at Goromir''s moves or, if one of the goblins had stayed behind in the dungeon, talking to exchange experiences on what had urred.


    The Collector remained aloof, recharging its mana and producing purifying light des to arm the goblins with, but it observed nheless, watching as the emotions coursed around the swarm and analyzing how they worked.

 Chapter 145 - Emotions And Life

    The Collector observed the goblins make merry. They wrestled with each other and shared food with each other. They remarked at each other''s strengths and praised each other. Theyughed together and talked together.


    Some of them grew angry at each other over a friendly wrestling loss, but no anger was allowed to remain for long as the elites broke things up and eased tensions.


    The elites showcased their newfound biological powers, emitting electricity or fire or burrowing into the ground in a novel disy that entertained the goblins.


    The elder spoke among some of the goblins that were more curious and schrly minded, telling them tales it knew and tales of the future, of what they were to do for the Collector.


    As time went on and wrestling energy dwindled, the goblins settled intorgely speaking with each other. They came to know each other on far moreplicated terms than what their simple minded brutishness had been capable of prior to their many evolutions.


    They came to respect each other, appreciate each other, and understand each other, and bonds began to form. Some goblins became more attached to others due topatible personality traits. Some less attached to others for the opposite reasons.


    Yet all still treated each other with a certain degree of respect for they were reminded of being bound to the Sovnar and to a unified purpose.


    They spoke about the purpose. Many of them felt great excitement at the idea of bing warrior conquerors, taking backnd from tinkerers who had in so many of them, of unifying the goblin tribes and ascending them.


    Some wanted to know what the world was like outside the snow. They wanted to explore down to the south. They wanted to go to other realms.


    Some contemted the nature of the great darkness toe. The darkness the Collector had prophesied and stated they would stand against in their Great Purpose.


    The Collector had told the Elder to cultivate among the swarm the idea that the great darkness was something that could be fought against for it knew that the goblins would take to the idea of a truly tangible threat the best.


    Thus, many of the goblins wondered what kind of incredible monster wasing that not even the Collector could handle alone. Some of them shuddered in fear, and then they wereforted and roused by others.


    Some of them resolved to get stronger, and their intentions were apuded and emboldened.


    As more time passed and the meat of hunted creatures grew thin, filling the goblins'' stomachs and making them more somnolent, they began to wish each other luck. They embraced each other, the goblins of the conquering force wishing the best for those that apanied the Collector and vice versa.


    The male goblins that had already pair bonded with some females spent theirst hours with each other, engaged in verbally and physically voiced appreciation in the alcove above the base level of the dungeon where they were secluded.


    Eventually, the goblins fell asleep, and the Collector counted that it had been long past the six hours it had initially granted them. It was almost twelve.


    The Collector allowed this, however, for it wished to observe and analyze.


    Emotions.


    The Collector could understand emotions that others felt on an academic level, but it could not truly empathize with them for it had never felt certain emotions strongly.


    It knew that emotions arose from certain external stimuli and, notably, that this stimuli was highly different depending on each individual.


    That meant that for the Collector to truly began perceiving emotions on its own, it would have to figure out exactly what external stimuli activated its emotions the greatest. Battle hunger had been the trigger for many of the Collector''s first emotional experiences, and it hypothesized it would continue to be significant in that regard.


    But perhaps there was more.


    The Collector was willing to experience emotions to greater degree. They did not seem entirely like defective side products of evolution that produced individuals.


    Certainly, individuality and emotions that arose with it caused inefficiency. A hivemind would always respond quicker, better, and more efficiently to threats or mobilize for purposes than any collection of individuals.


    However, it was in the value of life that the Collector now realized a massive difference arose.


    In a hivemind, the value of a life did not matter, for it was simply a small part of a greater whole.


    In an individual, however, no matter how lowly they were or how little their lives mattered in a greater scope, they would find that their lives were worth living and worth treasuring simply because of the emotions they could feel.


    Unless highly defective, the Collector came to realize that every single individual valued their lives, regardless of how weak or strong they were. Regardless of whether they followed a great purpose or not.


    Even the soldiers the Collector had ughtered in the forest had desperately clung to their lives, and the Collector had thought at first this was simple primal instinct, and indeed that yed a part, but now, it knew that it was also because they valued the potential of their lives to grant them more emotions.


    With their lives, they could continue to pursue happiness. Satisfaction. Emotions that nourished them.


    At first, the Collector had thought this a sign of extraordinary weakness among tinkerers. If even the lowliest among them clung to their lives, none would be willing to sacrifice their all for a purpose, let alone unify into one greater goal.


    In the vast majority of cases, the Collector''s thought process was affirmed. But in certain rare cases, the emotions and individuality, the valuing of the individual life, could allow individuals to break from the limitations they were born with and observe a strength of body or mind that a hivemind was unable to replicate.


    This, the Collector perceived with the four-star adventurer exceeding his limitations to battle the Collector.


    This, the Collector perceived even more with the goblin swarm that continued to develop and grow and seek to be more than what they were for the sake of the Collector not as hive drones, but as individuals.


    The Collector noted the elder''s words.


    The Collector possessed precious few lived experiences, and that was true. The elder had further stated that in time, it woulde to understand itself and its ''soul'' as it gained more experiences.


    At first, the Collector had not thought significantly of this, dismantling the logic behind it, but now it understood to greater degree, and it agreed.


    The rate it was changing its mind and adapting to emotions and mana, the Collector knew that it was almost an inevitability for it to truly experience life as an individual, but at that point, the question arose: would the Collective ept the Collector?


    No.


    Even now, the Collective would likely reset the Collector or make it anew, believing it a defect.


    The Collector still epted this, however, for it fully believed in the Collective''s Great Purpose and was willing to cast its life away for it.


    But the goblin swarm. Would they not be assimted and culled with the dawning of the Collective?


    Yet, the swarm would contribute to the Collective in fulfilling the Great Purpose also.


    But was that what the swarm truly wanted?


    Irrelevant.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles and focused its thoughts. Individual wants and needs came far below the greater need of the Great Purpose, for only with the Great Purpose did life at a fundamental level even matter, for without it, all life would end.


    The Collector¡­would not feel right sacrificing the goblins as they were now to the Collective, but it would not truly hesitate either.


    Its purpose was the same, even if in some aberrant asions its thoughts strayed to the desire of continued battle.


    But even now, it acted towards it.


    The Collector stopped its contemtion and spent the rest of the time the goblins slumbered to think ahead to more practical calctions such as how it would approach its movements beyond the Rift.


    ==


    When first daylight broke at dawn, the Collector sent out a mental signal among its swarm for them to arise and mobilize. The goblins awoke in groups, some of them faster than the other, more reactive, but within the span of ten minutes, the swarm was ready to mobilize.


    The Collector split the swarm as was promised. There were thirty-eight goblins in total, and the Collector split the swarm.


    The conquering force led by Thragg had fourteen champions, thus totaling to a host of fifteen. Among those fifteen many were females, for the goblin swarm did not desire for the women, bearers of offspring for the next generation, to face the unknown and harsher dangers of the Rift.


    The females that apanied the Collector''s group were those that had pair bonded with males in the group, and they totaled six in number. The remaining seventeen male specimensprising the Collector''s force included the carrier unit Thokk and the twin elites Goromir and Kandak.


    Militarily speaking, the Collector''s force was vastly superior, and appropriately so because the threats beyond the Rift were that much greater.


    In summary, the Collector''s conquering force totaled fifteen, and the Collector''s personal force totaled twenty-three.


    The Collector stood at the mouth of the dungeon cave with its force behind of it, watching as the conquering force to remain behind kneel in the cave before the Collector, granting it reverence and praying for its sess as it left.

 Chapter 146 - Testing New Powers

    The Collector allowed the goblin swarm a brief moment of time to say their farewells, for it had been advised by the elder that such things would aid in strengthening the mental fortitude of them swarm overall.


    Goromir and Kandak split off half of one of their tusks and left it behind with Thragg''s conquering force. This, the twin elites stated, was what all those who were of the elite blood did when they had resolved themselves of potential death and went forth to war.


    Thokk, observing this, scrambled to match the elites and did the same.


    And Thragg, taking the three tusk shards, returned the gesture, stating that he and his swarm were not merely resting, that they too were going forth in the Collector''s name to battle and make its name known.


    With that, the final exchange was made, and the swarm split into two as the Collector had intended.


    The conquering force under Thragg and his fourteen champions strong.


    The Sovnar force around the Collector numbering twenty-three with Thokk, Goromir, and Kandak.


    As time went on, the Collector would be able to keep surveince on the conquering force. Every single time they captured a dungeon and created another boss, potentially another elite, they could utilize the dungeon as a limited warp vessel to boost their mental link to the Collector andmunicate with it directly.


    Militarily speaking, the swarm was at its absolute peak given the Collector''s current capabilities. Every single goblin unit had been enhanced with the Breath of Life, and the Collector had tuned its Breath of Life regenerative settings such that it would provide minor amounts of sustained regeneration to every single unit even if they were far from the Collector.


    Every single goblin unit was further armed with purifying lightdes that would make them efficient dungeon clearers or, in the case of the Sovnar force, aid greatly against the ancient beasts thaty beyond the Rift.


    Judging by an initial assessment of the life forms in the biome known as ''Fjall'', the Collector estimated that the conquering force ranked among the strongest provided they worked adequately together. They would have no difficulty subjugating the remaining goblin tribes and securing dungeons.


    This way, the Collector could have a sizablework of surveince all across this area known as ''Fjall'' while it headed now to the north.


    To beyond the Rift.


    To the slumbering Jotnar.


    To the draconid that had turned the Collector into a challenger.


    ==


    The Collector flew from above as the Sovnar force underneath it sprinted. They were dramatically quicker than before, their each and everyrge steps sending them hurtling across the snow at a speed of three hundred kilometers an hour.


    If they sprinted at full force speed, utilizing their mana to do so, they could reach twice that speed for short bursts of time. However, the Collector determined it would be more prudent for them to save their mana forter.


    Geographically, the Collector knew that the Rift itself was a series of closely packed mountains separating Fjall from what was known as the ''Wailwaste''. Scaling the Rift by foot would be incredibly inefficient, so when they reached the base of the mountains, it would lift the goblins via mass Sapia.


    It did not take long before the Collector and its swarm reached far enough north that the fall of Grain started to cloud visibility. However, the Collector with its immensely boosted Primal Density felt no ill effects from it, and the Breath of Life too had charged the swarm with primal energy linked to the Collector that let the Collector urately grant its carrier unit mentalmands who then spread them among the rest of the swarm.


    A useful adaptation, for it was not long before the Collector encountered an anomaly.


    A flock of enormous avian specimen flew towards the Collector. They were simr to conventional avian lifeforms the Collector had observed in the forest biome, but they were easily at the size of the grizzled stormbear.


    White feathered with sharp, piercing yellow eyes and enormous ck talons wreathed in frosty magical energy. Icy winds channeled around them in spiraling patterns as they flew with their wingspacted by their sides, boosting their aerodynamic eleration.


    They were maximizing their speed, but not against the Collector.


    In fact, theypletely avoided the Collector, swerving around it.


    They were running from something.


    The Collector sensed it. A dual gathering of magical energy signatures that the Collector was quite familiar with.


    Two draconids rapidly approaching, cutting through the thick fall of Grain. Though judging by their trajectory, they were not intentionally targeting the Collector. Indicated that the draconids were traversing beneath the Rift for a reason.


    The Collector understood from the Jotnar''s memories that the Jotnar and draconids had been engaged in an intensive and lengthy war, and that the Jotnar had been beaten back, forced to seal themselves away.


    But now with the Jotnar gone, what were the purpose of the draconids? They likely numbered to a sizable host, and each of their individuals was exceptionally strongpared to the average specimen of this world.


    As beings also charged with primal energy, they were diametrically opposed to tinkerers.


    Eventually, there would only be conflict between them.


    Were they now scouting with an advance force for a potential war effort?


    Or were they searching for the Collector?


    Answers, the Collector would tear from their throats.


    The Collector signaled for battle readiness among its swarm below and then flew upwards, its two wings of light ring red as they elerated the Collector upwards, its magical energy forming a de that parted the Grainfall cleanly before it rapidly converged upon the two draconids.


    The Collector sensed that the draconids stopped moments before the Collector reached them, evidently also sensing the Collector through the grain with their magically charged electromaic sense.


    However, far toote.


    The Collector operated not with sight, but purely with its senses, utilizing its sensitive hairs, magical perception, and electromaic sense to create a far more efficient locating system than that which the draconids relied upon.


    It pinpointed the exact location of one of the draconids and mmed into its chest with a shoulder bash. The enormous impact of the blow sent out an explosive shockwave that blew back the slow falling Grain, temporarily revealing everything.


    The Collector flew suspended in the air, hovering in front of the second draconid that opened its maw in surprise as itspanion flew over a hundred meters backwards, spiraling in the air from the force driven into its stomach.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles. It was thoroughly pleased with its newfound strength. Leagues beyond its past form. Now then, for this one-


    The remaining draconid specimen bared its thick, icy blue ws and stretched out its dorsal fin. Glowing blue magical energy surged around the fin in electrical arcs as it opened its jaw wider, channeling a storm breath.


    The Collector reacted in an instant, shooting forwards in a [Dash] that ended with it uppercutting the draconid''s chin, snapping the creature''s head upwards and causing its storm breath to bellow straight up, targeting nothing.


    The stream of blue energy exploded high above, clearing the Grain even further.


    Now this one, the Collector would use to test the goblin swarm.


    The Collector immediately flew upwards so that it was slightly above the draconid and then mmed its two lower fists down onto the top of the draconid''s skull. The twin impacts loosed a concussive shock, drawing out twinworks of tears in the finer denticle scale weave of the draconid''s head before sending it hurtling straight downwards, over a hundred meters down like aet right into the ground where the swarm would be ready for it.


    That one, the Collector ordered the swarm to kill.


    The other one, the one the Collector had sent away with its tackle, was the one it would spare for questioning. Red energy red all around the Collector, and its twin red wings of pure energy red outwards on its sides like angry red eyes, shooting the Collector forward.


    A sonic boom left the Collector''s tail as it approached the draconid still mid-flight, feeling from the blow.


    Remarkably, the draconid could still react at thest moment, righting its violent surge backwards by expending magical energy to regain its bnce in the air. The damage done to the draconid''s chest from the Collector''s first tackle was not too deep, creating cracks in the dark blue, te-like scales, but not fully permeating.


    This one was stronger than the other one, but not by much.


    Not nearly as mighty as the white maned draconid specimen.


    Regardless, strong enough that the draconid specimen put its muscr arms up in a form of guard, hunching its head down so that its thick, ted neck would defend its face. Magical energy raged out of the draconid in chaotic whirls of red, dramatically enriching its muscles and scales, making them several times more durable.


    The Collector could not easily brute force a [Guard] like this, though the downside of using so much energy for [Guard] was that it limited mana to enhance other movements for counters or evasions.


    Which made the draconid a stationary target.


    The Collector aimed one of its right hands towards the draconid. The tes of white carapace around the forearms parted, revealing a fleshy, bulbuous green sac expanding rapidly into a grotesque, pulsating lump like an engorged tumor.


    The draconid specimen did not react adequately in time, believing mistakenly the Collector was purely a melee brawler.


    Before it could undo its [Guard] and evade, the Collector shot forth a torrent of superacid from its bilespitter.

 Chapter 147 - White Voice

    The Collector boosted its contractile muscle tissues supporting the nds in its bilespitter sac with concentrations of chaotic mana, thus increasing the muscr pressure unleashed and elerating the acid delivery several times fold.


    The main weakness of the Bilespitter was thatpared to the Collector''s Spine Spitters, the acid projectile was quite slow. However, with the assistance and incorporation of mana, this weakness could be subverted somewhat.


    The acid shot forth in a line of bright green which sshed on the draconid''s crossed arms. The draconid''s magical energy, yellow in color it seemed to represent the mana affinity of Root, red up, intensifying the [Guard] dramatically, mana particles infusing each and every muscle fiber until it was no longer the consistency of flesh but pure metallic ore.


    To double down on a stationary defense was simply foolishness, however.


    No metal in the known gxy could ever hope to fend against the Collective''s superacid. In terms of sheer offensive capability, the superacid was perhaps one of, if not the most fiercesome tool in the Collector''s arsenal.


    The green acid sshed across the draconid''s muscr arms and immediately began eating away at them, the sound of scales and flesh melting away in bubbling sizzles filling the air. It did not matter if the draconid''s arms possessed the most tensile durability out of any alloy on this.


    The Superacid broke the draconid''s arms down at the molecr level, and the acid was adaptive, constantly changing its structure to find a means to break whatever it struck down with the least path of resistance possible.


    The result was that the draconid was left very quickly left without the upper halves of both of its arms, both of them having melted away into bright green goo. Scales, muscles, bone ¨C all of it dissolved equally quickly.


    Had the Collector possessed its sub-adaptations, the superacid would also have been self-replicating, expanding its reach the more organic matter it consumed until even a single drop could utterly disintegrate an entire human.


    But for now, the damage was localized. At the very least, the acid was capable of halting any regeneration,pletely numbing the cells it came into contact with.


    The draconid looked down at itsck of arms, surged some magical energy into them, and saw that they did not regenerate. The draconid cocked its head once before it understood it could not heal and simply bared its jaws in battle readiness, its dorsal fin sticking out and charging up electrical energy.


    This was not because the draconid was mindless, not recognizing the severity of its wounds. No, it was because it reveled in the fight, caring not of its lethal wounds so long as it could enjoy itself and fall while crashing against overwhelming might.


    "Marvelous," said the Collector. "Your species knows the worth of battle."


    ''You are the one,'' said the draconid.


    The Collector felt the draconid''snguage through maic and electrical pulses emitting from the draconid''s dorsal fin. From fin to fin, the signals were transferred, and thenguage, the Collector knew.


    Not from the Collector''s own knowledge, for it had not been able to extract memories from consumption for some time now, but because of the shard of light graced atop its head. It acted as a form of trantor that allowed the Collector to connect with primally charged species.


    Not that it was actually needed here.


    The draconid tongue was akin to psionicmunication, transferring pure mental intent via electromaic waves to the dorsal fin. This was a vocally unspokennguage that made sense in context of the draconid species likely spending great amounts of time in aquatic biomes.


    ''The one the Exile has imed,'' said the draconid, its thin, beady ck eyes peering at the Collector''s shard in ever open stare due to ack of eyelids.


    ''You are open tomunication,'' stated the Collector. ''I am here to extract information. Grant this to me and your death shall be merciful.''


    The draconid growled. ''That is an insult. I will speak with you, Usurper, but you will never threaten me with a peaceful deathcking pain again.''


    The Collector clicked its mandibles in understanding. The draconid species as a whole exhibited an immense battle drive and hunger that manifested in their culture. Likely, they were cultivated from birth to be fighters, beholding battle and all that came with it, things such as pain and injury, to not be things to be feared, but reveled in.


    A wondrous mindset. A warrior-strain Collector utilizing the draconid specimen as a base would be quitepatible.


    ''Then it shall be so. I will grant you a worthy death, for I know well its value,'' said the Collector. ''But tell me first.


    What is it that your leader desires of me?''


    ''The Exile is among us most blessed and cursed,'' said the draconid. ''Only he among us has been able to pass the Rite of the Fallen One and gain immeasurable power. The shard within his heart. He is blessed with might that makes him untouchable by death.


    But only he among us is one ursed to never see a worthy end. The blessing that binds him grants that a peaceful death only shall he sumb to.


    But you are the one. The Usurper. The End. This, the White Voice has promised.''


    The Collector knew with the circumstantial evidence it had rued that the nature of the entity known as the ''White Voice'' was highly in question. There was the ''White Voice'' imbued in the Collector. Then there was the ''White Voice'' the Jotnar revered.


    Then there was the ''White Voice'' the draconids listened to, and the Jotnar believed the draconids beholding a false idol, with the ''White Voice'' within the Collector also warning of false voices.


    The Collector emitted its intent. ''This White Voice you speak of. Tell me of it. What manner of entity is it?''


    The draconid opened its jaws wide for a moment, and then its body shuddered and convulsed. White light zed out from its eyes, and then, a voice emanated from it. A physical voice that did not belong to it.


    "I knew you would be able to gather the Shard," said the voice. "And I am certain you desire more. Answers from my children, you will not have further, but I will tell you this: if it is answers you desire, power you desire, battle you desire, then stay to your course.


    Cross the Rift.


    Come for the Exile.


    Be the End."


    With that, the draconid''s body enveloped in blinding white light, umting a mass surge of magical energy that the Collector recognized as dangerous, forcing it to fly downwards. An explosion rocked from above as a surge of shot out light lit up through the Grain before fading away.


    There would be no more traces of the draconid remaining. A pity that the specimen had suffered such an ignoble death, bereft of its own will and capability to choose a worthy end at the Collector''s hands.


    The Collector flew downwards to the location of its swarm, clicking its mandibles as it processed the sudden interaction. It only took a few seconds for the Collector tond heavily upon the snow, crashing up a surge of snow from all around it as its two pairs of red eyes gleamed red, eyeing the sight before it.


    The goblin swarm had been victorious. The three elites Thokk, Goromir, and Kandak were circled over a draconid corpse, or rather, what was left of it. The physical integrity of the draconid specimen had been drasticallypromised due to the purifying light des the entire swarm now yielded.


    The shards were highly effective against the draconid, and once its scales were shattered and its bare flesh exposed, the shards could easily impact enough damage to ovee its regeneration and explode it from within, reducing it to a puddle of white flesh, shattered scale shards, and misceneous chunks of viscera.


    To be certain, the goblin swarm had not escaped unharmed. Far from it.


    Kandak was three arms and possessed a gaping hole in his stomach, his one hand held against it to prevent his entrails from spilling out.


    Goromir''s back was hunched from a shattered vertebrae and he hobbled on one leg, his other one having been torn clean off. The Lurker spikes on his back werepletely burnt, likely having faced the electrical wrath of the draconid''s storm breath.


    Surprisingly, Thokk was the least injured among them, having lost only but a single arm. Yet, the carrier unit seemed to be the most emotionally distraught, looking down and away, averting his gaze from the Collector.


    The bleeding had stemmed from the wounds of all three elites due to the regenerative factor the Collector granted them via its Breath of Life.


    Notably, the other goblins in the swarm were barely injured. The ones that were exhibited minor wounds mostly consisting of burns on their appendages or, in rare cases, ck splotches on their chest from contact with a magically intensified electrical charge.


    Likely, then, the Collector analyzed that Goromir, Kandak, and Thokk had defeated the draconid only among themselves, showcasing the vast difference in strength they possessed from before when not even this entire swarm could have hoped to defeat a draconid specimen.

 Chapter 148 - Risk

    "Your battle capabilities are worthy of praise," stated the Collector to the elites. "To engage an enemy that prior to your evolution would have reigned dominant over your kind and to defeat it in convincing manner allows me to understand the significantbative improvement you have made."


    The Collector raised a fist towards them and clenched it. Spiral patterns of blue mana started to gather around its arm, charging it a pale blue shade.


    Then, the injuries of the goblin swarm began to heal.


    Goromir''s shattered back and dismembered leg regenerated, the bones and alighting, new leg bones sprouting before flesh and nerves and skin padded it over.


    Kandak''s three mangled, burnt arms and hole in his stomach fully restored, the ckened and deadened flesh sloughing off to reveal newly grown biomass while the hole sealed over.


    The rest of the injuries across the swarm were also healed, but none of them were significant to any degree.


    "Yet," said the Collector. "It is imprudent to suffer such injuries in defense of a swarm that is also battle capable. Know that it is possible for me to expend magical energy to restore your injuries, no matter how severe they may be, but to bring you back fromplete expiry will require that your corpse is preserved, and though this environment is apt for such preservation, there is no guarantee that I shall always be immediately avable."


    "We understand, Sovnar," said Goromir with a deep head bow, cing his fist over his heart. "We know well that it is not always possible for you to bring us back from the dead, but my brother and I thought it best to save the rest of the tribe with our strength, for their lives are our own also."


    "Save the blood of Gob. That is what we train to do," said Kandak.


    The goblin swarm champions gave respectful nods to the twin elites.


    "But I wanted fight too!" came one shout among the champions.


    "When you can knock me down once in a match, then we can talk of you fighting a beast like that!" said Goromir with a chuckle. "Come now, I know we have all faced death together before, but throwing away the life your Sovnar has granted you again so easily?


    Your bravery is quite unmatched."


    "Guess you right," said the champion. "But next time, I knock you down."


    "Always wee for the challenge," said Goromir.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles in further understanding. It viewed the goblin swarm as a collection of units with the three elites being units of more worth that naturally should utilize the other champion units to defend themselves or as distractions.


    In optimal, efficient usage, of course.


    But because the swarm was a collection of individuals, and because the elites possessed their own codes of conduct and moral ideations, they would give their own lives before allowing the lesser units to expire before them.


    Of course, this was not entirely inefficient. The Collector was beginning to understand the perspective of individuals and how they could possess a different form of efficiency. By defending the champions with their lives, the elites inculcated further loyalty and drive.


    There would have been no need to do so in a hivemind, but the Collector understood that as a collection of individuals, they were attempting to approximate to the best of their capability the efficiency of a hive.


    This was enough to sate the Collector, for it had made the choice to utilize the swarm knowing there could be inefficiencies here and there. So long as they were minimized in some way, it could amodate.


    "Carrier unit," said the Collector, noting the unit known as ''Thokk''s'' aversion to meeting the Collector directly. "Your injuries are not severe."


    "I know, Sovnar, and I am sorry," said Thokk. He knelt down. "I tried to fight with Goromir and Kandak, but I was too weak. The beast nearly had me clutched in its jaws, and Kandak had to save me. My distraction let the beast charge its great breath, and so many other champions were burnt."


    "That is of little consequence," stated the Collector. "There are no deaths and marginal injuries. Miscing mental concern over issues of the past is also highly inefficient. Do not do so. Spend such processing power in future development to prevent potential inefficiencies."


    "Come now," said Goromir as he came up to Thokk and raised him up from his kneeling position. "We have not trained you fully yet. Exhaust your potential, then you can cry about whether you are weak or not."


    Goromir pointed a finger towards the whole swarm. "And that goes for all of you too. My brother and I will train all of you as we travel. Learn our ways, our flesh arts, and be strong. Show us you are worthy of the Blood of Gob. The rule of the Sovnar."


    A generalmotion of assent rose among the swarm, and the Collector clicked its mandibles as it noted this. "My flight speeds have already been calcted to adjust for two rests a day for your kind. One for sustenance, one for slumber. I shall extend such rest times for the induction of this concept known as ''training''."


    The Collector itself had little idea of what training was like. It was born knowing how to fight, and its observational and processing skills were sharp enough to learn techniques and movements with utter ease. It understood that tinkerers utilized ''training'' to approximate what the Collector did but over extended periods of time.


    Highly inefficient, and yet, the Collector was willing to spend the time to allow the goblin swarm to cultivate their strength.


    "But there is little time to squander now," said the Collector. "Draconid mobilization possesses the chance to indicate that they are searching for me. We shall take a longer route towards the Rift, crossing the mountain range through its eastern end where it will be farthest from draconid presences.


    Our travel time will reach thirty-four hours if moving at eighty percent efficiency. Follow my presence from above and take wary note of your surroundings. Do not hesitate to output a distress signal in the case that stronger enemies manifest."


    "Understood, Sovnar," said Goromir, and Kandak nodded.


    Thokk, too nodded, putting his fist over his heart in learned salute. "I will not disappoint, Sovnar."


    The Collector pushed off the ground, sending out a tremor of force as its white form of hyperalloy carapace shot into the air at rapid speeds, quickly forming a sonic boom that rippled outwards, scattering Grain. It flew high, but not so high that it was over the cloud cover so as to still benefit from the obscuring effects of Grainfall.


    Then, the Collector oriented itself to its new trajectory, and began to move, its twin wings of chaos red flickering as they fueled its flight. As the Collector soared through empty airspace, it pondered the nature of the ''White Voice''.


    The Collector knew by now that the ''White Voice'' was a manifestation of the, but the nature of a genuine ''White Voice'' was one full of uncertainties the Collector did not yet have information to glean.


    Evidence pointed towards the shard of the ''White Voice'' within the Collector right now as that which was genuine for it was the one the Jotnar worshipped. This, the Collector knew for the shard it possessed on its head was the same the Jotnar cherished.


    Yet, if a shard alone necessitated a quality of authenticity, then the draconids were not far behind, for they too possessed a shard.


    There was the possibility that there were multiple incarnations of the ''White Voice'', and this, the Collector gave some credence too, for when it had heard the voice from the draconid before it was forcibly erupted, it could sense that the psionic profile of the voice was not entirely the same as that which it had experienced from absorbing its shard.


    Simr in wavelength, but still variant. Variant enough to be distinctively separated into two different individuals.


    The Collector would understand more of this when it reached the Jotnar. To that end, taking the eastward path was actually more efficient, for the slumbering ce was located in a far eastern pocket of the Wailwaste.


    The only issue was that the Grainfall became thinner the more east the Collector went. Grainfall was sourced from the western half of the Wailwaste, generated by the corpse of a titan thaty approximately in that location if wind currents and movements were to be urately assessed.


    The meteorological phenomenon known as the ''Great Storm'' also contributed to the distribution of Grain, but it by now was located also in the western half of the Wailwaste.


    This meant that for a few hours as they traveled east, the Collector and the swarm would be exposed without Grainfall, but they would quickly regain cover as they approached northward to the Rift.


    For now, the Collector considered this an eptable risk.

 Chapter 149 - Undeath

    The Collector and the swarm moved northeast, the Collector cruising on high altitude directly beneath cloud cover while the goblin swarm took thend. Again, the airspace was rtively calm, for there did not seem to be many aerial specimen well adapted to this biome with its intensive meteorological phenomena.


    Only the sturdy draconids were reliable masters of the air, though as the appearance of the white feathered avians had suggested, there were likely more aerial specimen beyond the Rift.


    In general, there would be stronger, more well adapted creatures.


    Whether they would stand up to the Collector''s test was to be seen. It estimated that with the purifying light des and higher settings of Breath of Life regeneration, the goblin swarm could reasonably overwhelm swarms of singr stronger creatures.


    The issue arose in encountering multiple such enemies.


    Eight hours into travel, the Collector sensed a distress signal from the carrier unit. It immediately changed course, directing itself towards the swarm. It cut through the fall of grain like aet, sailing downwards at supersonic speeds until it reached a few dozen meters above ground, peering down with its advanced sensory systems for any anomalies.


    The Collector could make out the goblins standing tensely against a lone figure. Naturally, the three elites Goromir, Kandak, and Thokk were more forward than the others, but the champions were not far behind. All of them had their light des out, and their bodynguage indicated an extreme level of wariness.


    That wariness radiated even from the elites, indicating a sizable threat.


    Yet, the lone figure standing in that circle did not move against them.


    The Collector flew down to the ground, and as it approached, victorious cries arose.


    "The Sovnar is here! We beat the adventurer now!"


    As the Collector approached the elites, the champions started toe up too, emboldened by the Collector''s presence.


    "No!" shouted Goromir. "Champions, stand back. Only let the Sovnar forwards. This is Undeath, and the likes of you cannot risk being infected."


    The Collector clicked its mandibles as it came side by side to the three elites. It gazed at the lone figure before them.


    A specimen from the tinkering races, it was quite evident. But from a humanoid variant that the Collector had not yet observed.


    The tinkerer was taller than the average human and possessing of a slender but toned build. He wore sky blue robes, pants, and brown boots with a cloak of thick skins slung over his shoulders. The quality and design of weave of the robes was far different than that of the cloak, likely belonging to entirely different cultures


    The humanoid possessed sharp, pointed ears. Pale skin and gaunt facial features with a scattering of scales dotted on his forehead. His eyes were reptilian and shaded an opaque ck. His lips were curled up in a snarl, revealing sharp teeth.


    A long, scaled blue tail emerged from behind the specimen, and two fins dotted its end.


    The Collector knew what this specimen was. It remembered from tales of the world the female daemon specimen had told it.


    This was a humanoid known as a ''Yinlong''. A tinkering species that lived primarily in aquatic biomes.


    The humanoid gripped in both hands a lengthy de that curved slightly at the top. The de was a deep, azure blue, and droplets of frozen water hovered around it.


    "The specimen does not move," stated the Collector. It noted that Goromir had lost two arms, sliced cleanly off by the humanoid''s de. His arms were on the snow, and the cuts were truly precise, severing with a honed edge backed by equally honed technique.


    Goromir picked up the arms and attached them back with the aid of Breath of Life regeneration.


    "Yes, Sovnar. It was sealed," said Goromir. It jutted its chin forward, gesturing down to the humanoid''s feet.


    Around the humanoid was a circr series of sigils that glowed yellow. The Collector noted further that the light was dying down, with the break in the flow of mana in the magic urring at a spot where the seals had been smudged off of the ground.


    "But the seal is breaking," said Goromir. "This time, my fault. I sensed the magical energy surging from this Yin, and I struck first, believing it a threat to the tribe. I did not notice it was sealed, and my movements shattered it.


    Nor did I notice it was undead.


    I fear I may have afflicted thisnd with a great cmity."


    "Tell me of the nature of Undeath," stated the Collector, seeing if the twin elites with their ancient knowledge knew more.


    "In stretches where the world has died, where there is no mana, simply a nothingness, a corrupting influence rises from the dirt, cloying in the air. Those that imbibe it be Undead," said Goromir. "Nigh unkible. Infinitely regenerative mana. And their mere presence spreads their foul corruption.


    Only once in our kingdom''s five-hundred-year history did an Undead ever arise, and thank Gob it was simply a young child that had wandered into a pit of corrupting emptiness. Easy to eliminate.


    This one, however-," Goromir pointed his tusks at the Yinlong. "Not so. He is strong. Made ten times stronger by the Undeath curse."


    The Collector noted that the adventurer''s emblem had five stars studded upon it, but even a five-star adventurer was nothing to the Collector as it was now even with the most generous of calctions using the four-star adventurer as a base.


    "This specimen does not observe great degrees of intelligence," said the Collector, noting that the Yinlong only stared at the Collector and the swarm with unbridled, uncontrolled rage, its ckened eyes wide. "It is likely that simply by disengaging and moving around it, any confrontation may be avoided.


    If the specimen carries a form of pathogen, then such would be the most prudent course of action.


    I understand that the presence of ''Undeath'' also necessitates the appearance of tinkering forces to contain it. When we move around the specimen, we must move quickly lest the tinkerers track us."


    Just as the Collector said this, the seal around the specimen crackled and the yellow light of mana emanating from it died down.


    A sudden breach.


    Inconvenient, but manageable.


    The Yinlong snarled and lunged forwards at exceptional speeds, a re of yellow magical energy surrounding its body in a golden aura as it shed with its de, aiming for Goromir''s head.


    The Collector instantaneously stepped in front of Goromir and grabbed the de by the tip, its hyperalloy carapace hand unable to be pierced easily.


    "Go," stated the Collector. "Move beyond this specimen. I will deal with it. If it is a pathogen that infects this specimen, whether it be biological, magical, or psionic, then it will not affect me. Yet, I cannot guarantee certainty to your kind."


    "Will you be okay, Sovnar?" said Thokk.


    "The Sovnar knows what he says. Let''s go, young one," said Goromir.


    "Everyone. Move!" shouted Kandak, waving the rest of the swarm forwards.


    The swarm of goblins moved past the Collector and the Yinlong, sprinting at full speeds away.


    The fall of Grain was minimal in this area, indicating why the Yinlong specimen was here and why it could expel magical energy like this. Judging by the initial burst of power and the color of its mana, the Yinlong possessed an offensively oriented Root aura.


    The Root mana affinity, symbolized by yellow, was focused on concentration. It specialized heavily in a specific type of flow, meaning those that bore the affinity were supremely good at one thing.


    In this case, the Yinglong here was a master of offensively oriented mana flow.


    "Interesting," said the Collector as it held the de as the Yinlong continued to try and tug backwards, straining against the Collector''s immense physical might. "You are capable of outputting a maximal amount of mana over an indefinite period of time. Your mana regenerates as soon as it is lost, and yet, I cannot sense any threads from which you draw this mana, as if it is drawn from nothing."


    The Yinlong only snarled before it paused, driving its legs into the snow in a form of stance. Then, the de the Collector held glowed a bright blue, water starting to elerate around the edge at hyperspeed, forming a rapidly cutting edge that started to saw into the Collector''s carapace.


    Sparks flew from the constant rapid contact, but the Collector''s carapace was immensely durable, and its smartshock structure adapted to the trauma, forming grooves that deflected the edge of the water saw.


    "Your mana is infinitely regenerative, but your maximal output remains the same, and it is not enough to defeat me." The Collector twisted the de, shaking the Yinlong off bnce, and then shot out one of its hands and ced it on the specimen''s head.


    "I can sense no output of viral matter nor pathogen from you. Nor can I sense any form of magical or psionic corruption," continued the Collector as its hand closed around the head in a crushing grip "Odd."


    The Collector then pulled with a burst of red mana, and tore the head clean off.

 Chapter 150 - Undead II

    The Collector peered at the decapitated head in one of its arms with mild interest, its four glowing red eyes flickering as they scanned and analyzed, green magical energy enveloping them.


    Haze.


    This was what the Collector found from its mana scanning. The flow of mana from the specimen itself was clear, almost unnaturally clear.


    All living specimens'' bodies formed a natural dampener for the expression of their magical energy. Their skin and flesh encased their hearts, their core, and flowed mana within them, and thus insted them from outward observation somewhat.


    This was part of the principle of why it was difficult to directly affect an individual''s mana core from within. The rest of the body formed a protective barrier.


    However, this ''Undead'' specimen red out its magical energy constantly and with such rity that it almost seemed as if it was just a walking core,cking any dampening inherent to every magic capable living being.


    Yet, when the Collector attempted to sense where exactly this specimen was drawing its infinite supply of mana, it could find only haze. A faint ck haze that emanated all around the specimen''s form, but one that granted zero discernible information.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles in further risk analysis. The ck haze had no ill effect to the Collector, but its anomalous, unknown nature still made it questionable to deal with.


    At the least, though the Collector''s external form seemed immune, it was possible that consuming this specimen could createplications.


    The Collector suddenly felt the decapitated specimen''s body violently move backwards with a jerking motion, this time utilizing its water de in such a way that the rotational flow of water around the sword shunted it backwards with a slippery surface, allowing the body to break from the Collector''s grasp.


    "So you are capable of high function without a processing unit," said the Collector. It peered at the head in its hand and watched as it dissolved into ck particles. Then, those particles gathered around the headless body''s neck and reformed a new head.


    This time, the head was slightly paler, a few more sunken wrinkles setting in its face, causing it to look even more wild, even more unhinged.


    Regardless, the specimen snarled and fought again. This time, the specimen took a small leap backwards and sheathed his de while leaning forwards.


    Yellow magical energy surged violently around the specimen before heavily condensing into his body like a spring-loaded coil, ready to explosively shoot out.


    The Collector analyzed this technique.


    A stance meant to quickly withdraw the de at heavily enhanced speeds with empowered physicals to deal a single devastating strike.


    At maximum capacity, it was enough to even slice through the Collector''s carapace, though not much more than that.


    Then, the specimen altered its attack. It took in a visible breath and adjusted the thumb on the sword handle such that it stuck out.


    The specimen exhaled, and then cut the air in front of it in a horizontal, sweeping arc. From this sh, a crescent of highly pressurized water shot forwards at beyond supersonic speeds.


    The Collector predicted this and put one of its carapaced hands forward and condensed it with a moderated [Guard]. The crescent de of water crashed against the Collector''s hand and broke apart against the hard surface into spatters of ordinary water.


    "No true higher intelligence, and yet you retain allbat sense and readiness," said the Collector. "Anomalous. The mechanisms by which you replenish your mana reserves further maintain your bodily functions and processing to some degree, it would seem."


    The Collector took slow steps forward, further analyzing the specimen for anomalies and to see whether this would be a battle worth anything.


    The specimen took in an even deeper breath now, his chest heaving out, and then his mana spiked considerably. A temporary burst of triple capacity manifesting in a raging golden aura of flowing currents rising all around the specimen''s form.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles in interest. The specimen was overloading its own body with mana capacity, breaking apart its flesh and cracking its bones, and ordinarily, this would have been a highly self-destructive technique, but with its unending regeneration, it had no real downsides.


    The specimen took his de out and circled it around himself in a sort of preparatory ritual before holding it above his head, the tip of the blue de still pointed at the Collector.


    The immense amounts of magical energy around the specimen funneled towards the de, and it glowed bright blue, huge swells of water emerging from it and coiling around to form the head of a reptilian specimen simr in appearance to the Collector''s own head.


    A ''dragon'', the Collector presumed.


    The specimen then took a single heavy step forwards and swung down. Snow sted away from around it as power and mana surged outwards in one cataclysmic expulsion, all of it funneling into shooting out a torrent of serpentine, coiling water with the dragon''s visage at its head.


    The Collector crossed its four arms in front of itself and pumped them full of chaos mana in a heavy [Guard]. The water dragon mmed into the Collector with an enormous impact akin to the crashing of a waterfall.


    The attack was both slicing and concussive in damage, and the Collector skidded backwards several meters, a fairly deep cut sliced into its arm carapace. Water that froze into hail fell all around it from the geyser it had erupted into when it crashed against the Collector.


    The Collector beheld its sliced carapace and then used the draconid''s explosive regeneration to simply heal it.


    "Amusing," said the Collector. It unsheathed two purifying light des from its upper forearms. "Then like this?"


    The Collector then took in a deep breath, stimting its core to draw in vast amounts of magical energy.


    Then, it braced its abdominal muscles while forcing its heart to pump into overdrive, heavily elerating bloodflow and manaflow temporarily, massively enhancing its capacity to output magical energy in one burst attack.


    The Collector mimicked the sword wielding undead perfectly, drawing out a circle around itself with its light des first, using that movement to focus the flow of its heavily enhanced magical energy, and then when it raised its des overhead, the charged mana flowed into the des.


    Unlike the undead specimen, the Collector did not overcharge its mana to the degree it damaged its own body. Just enough to replicate the technique itself.


    Even so, the amount of mana that raged around the Collector far eclipsed that which the undead had mustered, shaking the earth and parting the snow around the Collector.


    The Collector''s red mana coalesced around the des into the visage not of a drake, but of the Collector itself, as a shade of its de toothed, four eyed head.


    The Collector struck downwards, ejecting forwards a beam of mana shaped as the Collector.


    The size of this strikepletely dwarfed the water dragon that the undead specimen had shot against the Collector by a factor of three, and when the Collector''s projection of mana crashed against the specimen, it caused an explosion that rattled the air, shattering the ground beneath the specimen in sizable crater while its body blew apart into countless small chunks.


    The Collector used Sapia to recover the many shattered chunks of the specimen''s blue de, hovering them into its maw for sample collection.


    >>>


    *Metalloglottic Ossifier sample obtained [1/5]*


    -Aqualite


    >>>


    The Collector observed as the undead specimen began to bring itself together even from nearplete bodily destruction. ck partictes gathered around first a core, and the core formed the specimen''s heart, and from there, everything else was built around.


    The Collector aimed its Superacid Bilespitter at the core and fired a burst of acid.


    Would the specimen recover fromplete molecr degradation?


    The green liquid doused the heart, searing it beforepletely eating it away in a a tenth of a second.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles.


    The heart started to form again from nothing.


    It was then that the Collector decided stop observing the specimen for data regarding its condition and further techniques.


    Because the specimen outputted so much magical energy that it did not hide, it would be a lightningrod to attract any investigative tinkerers, especially here where the Grainfall was low and bing lower by the moment.


    The Collector flew into the air, out of sight, and if its prior analyses of the specimen was correct, it would just forget about the Collector and move aimlessly forwards. The tinkerers would deal with it. The Collector had no obligation to destroy it.


    In the air, however, the Collector noted an interesting anomaly. Two hundred or so meters from the undead specimen, there was a small protrusion in the snow that the Collector''s advanced sensory systems gleaned.


    From the way the snow gathered around it, the Collector assessed that something had been buried by the heavy snowfall.


    The Collector allocated a minor amount of time to investigate this.

 Chapter 151 - Message

    The Collectornded beside the small, nearly imperceptible mound in the snow. There was no doubt about it. From further analysis of the fall of snow and the geometric orientation of how the snow had fallen in this specific structure, there was a specimen underneath.


    A still specimen that possessed no signs of vitals ording to the Collector''s immediate sensory investigation. Nor was there any hint of magical energy output.


    The Collector utilized Sapia to uncover the snow, purple wreaths of energy outlining the white matter and driving it away. Underneath a meter of snow was the body of a humanoid. A smaller humanoid, and judging by an analysis of its features, a female human that had yet to reach full maturity, likely being within ten to fourteen years of age.


    Her skin had be pale, tinted by the faintest shade of blue, and stiff, ice crystals having frozen her solid. She was curled up in a ball to preserve warmth, yet the elements had been too harsh for her to withstand. This was in spite of the fact that she wore thick animal hides and skins meant to prevent her from expiring due to exposure.


    Her eyes were closed, having entered a sleep of finality from which she would not awake.


    The Collector estimated that it had been slightly over one day since the specimen had perished. Because she was dead, her living body possessed no real core and mana flow with which to resist the Collector''s Sapia, nor could she have had she been alive.


    She was far too weak. A core''s innate protection against foreign magical influences only worked up to an extent. A sufficiently more powerful individual could still overpower it.


    The Collector used Sapia to uncurl the specimen. It shattered off an arm and consumed it to gain information, and from that, gleaned that the female specimen was a human adapted to this biome, possessing pale skin capable of withstanding cold, but Grainfall was dramatically colder than anything she was used to.


    Even the goblins had difficulty initially adapting to it, let alone a weaker human like this.


    Other than that, the specimen was unremarkable biologically, nor did she seem to possess an adequate quantity of spirit roots to indicate high magical potential.


    However, she held clutched in her chest a bag of leathery skin.


    The Collector investigated this, floating the skin towards itself and opening it up. Within, the Collector found a Volcanite shard meant for starting fires, a red lightstone meant to emanate heat, though it had long lost magical energy to do so, a sk for containing water, and a in blue crystal that still hummed with magical energy.


    The Collector telekically withdrew the blue crystal and noted a sigil within it. From analysis of its magical design, it could determine that the crystal was meant to be activated by inputting magical energy in it, and there was no encryption or deterrence preventing anyone from activating it.


    The Collector flowed in a small measure of mana to activate the crystal, sensing little to no threat from it. Even if the crystal was some kind of detonatable device, the amount of magical energy stored in it was so infinitesimal that it would do nothing to the Collector.


    The crystal glowed a faint blue before emitting a voice. A young male humanoid''s voice.


    A recording, the Collector noted.


    "Greetings, to any who has activated this record crystal, and thank you for listening to my message. My name is Liu Qian, five-star adventurer of the League, and I was assigned for the B-rank contract in the Guild of Middir.


    My objective was to find the lost daughter of the Boar-n''s chieftain, and I am quite pleased to say that I have been sessful on that end. She was being held by a tribe of Amoraks located in the Dark Zone some way north of the Signi Outpost of the Order.


    Exactly where, I cannot say, for the fall of Grain prevents me from conjuring any real magic to ascertain my location. I slew a great host of the Amoraks, but as to why they were keeping the chieftain''s daughter, I could not ascertain.


    It did not seem like they hungered for her flesh, nor did she have much meat on her bones in the first ce. Rather, they had painted her in their tribal colors, presumably for some ritual, but in the arcane arts, though I ampetent, I am not truly an expert.


    Thus, I cannot say.


    Regardless, know that Astrid did not meet her end between Amorak jaws. If¡­if she did meet her end, it was with a fellow Common being by her side."


    A brief pause. Then, the voice continued.


    "That is not the true intent of this message. What I am to convey signifies a threat that may potentially drown the entirety of thisnd in the curse of Undeath.


    In rescuing Astrid, it seems that I have fallen under the curse of Undeath''s ill effects. I do not know exactly how this came to be.


    It may have been that the Amoraks have somehow harnessed the curse against me, or that perhaps they themselves were ursed, or that I had stepped foot into a Null Zone where Undead energy flows strong.


    Regardless, my time is limited, and by the time I record this message, I fear I am a mere day''s time away from fully turning. The curse has slowed me down, and I fear I am still far from the Signi Outpost. The fall of Grain is still heavy, and I have run out of light crystals for warmth.


    Thus, I send Astrid now with this message.


    A message to the Order and the League that the foul presence of Undead may be brewing far north, in the depths of the Dark Zones where Grain obscures any investigation.


    Pray, I beseech the League and Order to investigate, but to also be wary.


    To those that hear this message and feel enough generosity in their hearts, I also ask of a few final wishes.


    I shall be sealed within a Sealing Array. Eliminate and fully seal my Undead self. If it is possible, take from me the Azure Edge, my de. It is a family heirloom, and I wish it to be returned to my home. It belongs to the Water Breath school of de Rippling headed by my father, the head of the Liu n in the River Province in Haiyang of Xia.


    I wish my family to possess at least one physical remnant of me before my soul now passes to the gods.


    Also, to any that find Astrid, if¡­if she has fallen, then know that she was a kind, sweet, and bright soul, and that she was destined for much greatness, and that this world has lost a great light in her falling.


    To her family, to her father Magni, chieftain of the Boar n, I can extend only my deepest apologies. I tried my best, and it has ended in failure.


    None other would take a contract to a Dark Zone, and I, as martial artist, thought myself suited to it, but s, I wonder much whether another would have been more capable than me.


    Grant Astrid all burial rites of honor. I have ensured that the Undeath did not spread to her. To Magni, I know that this is no rpense for her life, but I also bequeath the Pale Moon, one of six great des of the Liu family."


    The blue glow of the stone died down, indicating that the recording had stopped.


    The Collector noted this development with a click of its mandibles. The information was useful in assessing the nature of this ''Undeath'' as a threat. It was highly evident that based upon the goblin elite''s reaction and the tone of high urgency in this message that the phenomenon of ''Undaeth'' was perceived as an extraordinary threat by tinkerers.


    The mode of transmission for this pathogen, or ''curse'' as the tinkerer put it, seemed to be in proximity with an infected specimen or exposure to a ''Null Zone''.


    Yet, the Collector even with advanced and close exposure to the infected specimen had not suffered any il effects, nor did it believe it possible for pathogen biological or magical to effectively infect it, for the Collective had absolutely ensured against such possibilities.


    What the Collector could glean from this was that this area was likely to be a hotbed of extreme activity, for if the tinkerers could not sense the presence of undead in the Grain and allowed the pathogen to proliferate, they would have extreme difficulty in dealing with it when it emerged on their front door.


    To that end, it seemed that the dwarven fleet must have been sent here to investigate this undead outbreak.


    In other words, time was more limited than what the Collector had initially calcted to stay in this area.


    The Collector could not investigate further. It would have to leave now if the tinkerers were already aware of the undead and actively searching for it.

 Chapter 152 - Amoraks

    The Collector made preparations to leave. It utilized Sapia to leave the specimen exactly as she had been, covering her corpse, closing her leather bag, and returning her to her original position.


    Notably, however, the Collector took the record crystal with it, for in doing so, it would ensure that even if the tinkerers found the corpse and the undead swordsman, they wouldck significant context and thus have fewer ideas of how to investigate the undead threat approaching them.


    This would soften the tinkerers'' military might greatly while the Collector traveled beyond the Rift where it would be untouchable to them. Then, when the Collector emerged from the Rift with another Shard and more military might, it could more easily engage a weakened tinkering force.


    There were of course ramifications for this situation regarding the conquering force the Collector had left behind beneath the Rift.


    These, the Collector wouldmunicate withter and tell them to be wary of undead presences, and at the moment that one was spotted, to navigate a path northwards beyond the Rift to join the rest of the swarm.


    The Collector took onest gaze at the female human specimen that it had buried once more in the snow. In terms of physical capability, she was slightly above that of the female daemon specimen, butrgely, both were quite simr in terms of maturity and capability.


    This was what would have happened if the female daemon specimen had survived and gone with the Collector to this biome. She would not have survived even an hour in such a harsh environment with herck of resistance to the cold and no garments to wear to fend her against it.


    She would have sumbed to the elements just like this. At the least, she had died in peace knowing of the Collective''s all weing breadth unlike this specimen that had frozen alone.


    The Collector broke the lingering thought chain and flew upwards, its twin red wings of energy ring like the thrusters of a jet as it soared high before marking out a quick path northwards, back to the goblin swarm.


    If the adventurer''s record was urate, then in the area immediately beneath the Rift, where the swarm was headed now, there would be the presence of creatures known as ''Amoraks''.


    These, the Collector knew in slight passing from one of the goblin elder''s tales.


    Amoraks were bipedal and yet far more beast than tinkerer. They formed rough social units through tribes, but they functioned off of a basic hierarchy of power where an ''Alpha'' specimen controlled the movements of the pack and retained all rights to reproduction and child rearing.


    They were canid in appearance and possessed great strength, speed, and a heightened tracking sense that allowed them to hunt for creatures across vast swathes ofnd regardless of whether wind or snow obscured scents and tracks.


    Yet, it would seem that the adventurer could easily dispatch them, indicating that they were far too weak to challenge the Collector.


    The Collector was bing to realize that its power had now reached a threshold where a vast majority of specimen on this world could not stand up to it, but it could also sense that the higher it went, the higher it would have to reach, for the absolute zenith of power of this in the form of the gods was still dramatically higher than what the Collector could match now.


    The Amoraks would not pose much of a threat to the Collector, but they could potentially be a threat to the goblin swarm.


    The swarm could quite reliably fight them as well, with champions boosted by the Breath of Life''s physical stat amplification and regeneration likely matching the Amoraks and the elites far exceeding them, but if the adventurer''s hypothesis was correct in that they were infected with Undeath, then they posed more of a threat.


    As if to confirm the Collector''s train of thought, it received another distress signal from the swarm ahead, and it boosted its flight speed, easily surpassing the sound barrier as it shot forth as a blur of red and white.


    ==


    The Collector happened upon the goblin swarm engaging in a fierce fight with specimens the Collector could easily identify as Amoraks, for though the Collector had never seen them, it had enough description to quite easily identify them.


    The Collector observed from above.


    The Amoraks were stronger than what the goblin elder had led the Collector to believe.


    They were savage beings of primal muscture and ferocity. With guttural growls and savage yells, they surged forth with ws bared and lupine jaws bared. They were furred thickly in grey with bloodshot red eyes that gleamed through the fall of Grain.


    The champions and elites were fending them off. The champions seemed to be equally matched against each individual Amorak, of which there were approximately seven. Purifying light de shes rent deep and grievous wounds in the Amoraks, with slices reaching their flesh through their thick, armor-like fur causing explosive, caustic reactions that left their bodies riddled with holes.


    Yet, the Amorak kept fighting. Their cores were highlighted in red, visible through their fur and skin, pumping immense amounts of blood and mana through their bodies in overloading magical energy. They veins were highly visible, engorged with blood, acting as vessels to transfer power.


    The elerated blood flow even acted against them, making blood pour out from their wounds in free falling waterfalls and spurts, but the Amorak still fought, regenerating all the while.


    The Collector understood then: the Amorak specimens were all undead.


    Yet, curiously, the Collector noted that the goblins were not suffering from the Undeath pathogen. Many of them were getting bit, scratched, and wrestled with, and though ck splotches appeared on their pale white skin, the Breath of Life ice crystals encroached against it,pletely reversing the process.


    An indication then that the Breath of Life, an ability of the Jotnar to fulfill aary function to cultivate life where there was none, was the direct antithesis of Undeath.


    In essence: the Breath of Life rendered specimen immune to Undeath.


    Regardless, because the regenerative ice crystals had to cure the spread of Undeath, they could not aid in regeneration, and thus the goblins were slowly and surely bing overwhelmed.


    The elites beat back the Amoraks quite well with the exception of a single anomaly who was farrger and fiercer than the others, possessing a thick ck mane as well as surges of crackling mana golden mana that lined his every move.


    An ''Alpha'' specimen, or something close to it, the Collector presumed.


    Regardless, the Collector decided now to intervene.


    The Collector shot down into the ground, in the direct midst of a few Amorak, and the impact of itnding generated a shockwave that sted away the Amorak.


    "The Sovnar! The Sovnar hase!" came a shout.


    A roar of triumph spread among the goblins, and they pressed forward with renewed morale.


    "I will deal with these pitifully weak specimens," stated the Collector as it flexed out its magical energy, forming an enormous, swirling pir of red around it that lit up the entire battlefield with crimson.


    The undead Amorak sensed the Collector''s massive energy levels and stopped their assault on other goblins, instead lunging at the Collector, determining it a new threat.


    One Amorak snarled as it leaped in the air, snapping at the Collector''s throat.


    The Collector reached two of its hands out and jammed them into the beast''s mouth. The Amorak''s teeth clinked against the Collector''s ultra durable hyperalloy carapace, yielding no damage.


    Then, with a burst of red mana, the Collectorpletely tore the Amorak in half from the jaw down. A shower of red blood and entrails scattered all across from the bisected specimen.


    There were more Amorak approaching, and the Collector noted that the split halves of the Amorak were trying to merge together.


    An easy solution.


    The Collector took either half of the severed Amorak and whipped them at two other Amorak, sttering their skulls with the halves of their fellow specimen.


    With their heads exploded, the two Amoraks slumped down to their knees initially, though for only a mere second before they started to move again even with their pulped heads.


    The Collector unleashed its purifying light des and cut through the three Amorak corpses, blowing them up into bloody, heated chunks from which they would take far longer to regenerate. It puts its light de to its side, tensing its body and drawing in a breath, and looked ahead to the other Amorak charging at it.


    Then, the Collector shed forwards in rapid session, and each time, it shot forth a projectile de of purifying light. The adventurer swordsman''s technique.


    The crescents of purifying light shed into every Amorak with pinpoint uracy, severing them in half at the waist before initiating a cataclysmic explosive reaction in their bodies.

 Chapter 153 - Amorak Slaughter

    "Move,"manded the Collector, its deep yet calm, elegant voice resonating powerfully across the snow, reaching the ears of the goblin champions that had been downed or still panting and struggling from the Amoraks.


    Without hesitation, the champions gained a burst of energy and gathered behind the Collector, for though they loved the fight, they also felt great awe in witnessing the might of the one they revered as Sovnar.


    "Come, infected specimens, and meet your end." The Collector glided forwards, its arms outstretched to its sides in invitation as its voice projected even further, towards the undead the remaining undead Amorak.


    It could sense that they were approaching rapidly from the distance, through the swirling rage of snow and Grain.


    A full pack of twenty-three more.


    But what use was crashing ants against a tidal wave? That was the futility of these Amorak specimen fighting against the Collector.


    Before the rest of the twenty three could converge fully, the Collector first freed the three elites from their burden: the Alpha specimen.


    The Collector pointed one of its left arms to the snarling, maned, hulking mass of ferocity, and as Goromir dodged deftly under a swipe, the Collector fired a spine from its Spine Spitter.


    An immense collection of contractile muscles lining the pathway for the spine''s delivery elerated it at hypersonic speeds, and in an instant, the spine ¨C the size of a tinkerer''s de ¨C embedded into the alpha''s heart, punching right out the other side.


    For a moment, the alpha faltered, slumping down to its knees in inactivity. It was far more efficient to disable the cores than the heat, the Collector came to realize, for the cores, charged with foreign energy, were the source of the undead''s continued movement, fueling them like automatons.


    With the alpha''s constant and wild movements halted, the three elites gave a swift end to the alpha, digging their light des into the beast''s form and causing it to explode into smoking smithereens of charred flesh.


    The elites then leaped backwards, behind the Collector to rejoin the rest of the swarm and act as their guardian.


    The Collector used Sapia to take the regenerating remains of the Amorak it had killed and entomb them in a ball of snow. Chunks of flesh, half grown hearts, half formed skeletal systems, all of these swirled into one pulped mass that further encased in snow.


    The Collector closed its fist with a powerful movement, its carapace clinking together, and the Sapia intensified. The purple aura around the snow tomb intensified before condensing with cracks, the snowpacting into hardened ice that crushed everything within and kept it there for the foreseeable future.


    Snarls, growls, and howls echoed out in front of the Collector. Now just twenty meters away, and would rapidly approach in the next second and a half.


    A whole host of furred grey bodies striding forth across the snow on all fours with predatory ease, their movements so agile that their paws barely even made indents on the snow. These creatures, the elder had greatly feared before the ascension of the swarm.


    The goblins had thought them beasts of savagery and also measured intelligence that they absolutely had to avoid, for they preyed upon anything their jaws caught, including goblin flesh.


    But against the Collector, they posed no more threat than a litter of pups.


    The first Amorak leaped up at the Collector, snapping at its throat.


    The Collector tore this one in half too, ensuring the force of the tear would rupture its heart also.


    Another Amorak reached out to the Collector''s legs. This one, the Collector kicked with a burst of chaos mana, and the force of the blow was enough that coupled with the shockwave it emitted, itpletely eviscerated the upper half of the specimen''s body, sailing back chunks of sttered flesh, viscera, and shattered bone.


    Ten Amorak now circling the Collector.


    The Collector''s dorsal fin glowed with a ghostly blue electrical charge as it primed. When the Collector poured in its immense mana into the fin, it reacted explosively, glowing pure blue, almost white, as lightning crackled all around it in a screaming torrent.


    The bolts and arcs of electricity condensed and gathered tightly around the Collector, forming a ball of pure electricity, and this, the Amorak saw and began to step back a little, attempting to see how they could prate it.


    Yet, the Collector was not here to m up in a defensive shell. It was here to ughter them.


    The Collector mmed two of its fists together, and the condensed electrical energy shot out into multiple forks of lightning that pierced through the hearts of the ten Amorak,pletely eviscerating the organs before the electrical energy surged further and simply blew apart their torsos wholesale.


    Three Amorak lunged forwards at the Collector, seeing the lightning sphere gone.


    The Collector opened up it stomach maw and unleashed a torrent of its Pyrocatalytic nds. With its new Instant Trigger sub-adaptation, it did not have to wait for the biotrigger to activate against the nds. The entire system was adapted into one single mechanism, and the blue-white mes burst outwards in searing power, engulfing the three Amorak.


    The Amorak fell to the ground not because of pain, for they felt none, but because the mes melted their bones, flesh, connective tissues, tendons, and brains in mere instants.


    More Amorak lunging now from various different angles.


    The Collector performed a rapid, stationary spin, and the three Pliomatter Tendrils on its back extended and used the Collector''s rotational momentum to act as whips that traveled so quickly they simply sliced through the Amorak bodies wholesale, cutting them in half urately at their heart level .


    As severed bodiesnded around the Collector, they showered it in red, painting it in life blood, and the Collector''s carapace pores quickly drank it all, restoring it to its shining white figure.


    This was a symphony of carnage, a triumphant medley of body parts and destroyed hearts, and the Collector was its expert orchestrator.


    A particrlyrge, ck furred Amorak now appeared.


    Another maned specimen, and one that stood as tall as the Collector''s three meter height. It would seem that the ck-furred maned specimen were not the ''Alphas'', but more like submanders.


    Indicating that this force of thirty was not the full extent of the swarm. There was to be an ''Alpha'' specimen if the elder''s information was correct, though before the elder''s Breath of Life ascension, his memory had been faulty to some degree.


    This one also lunged at the Collector with primal, bestial savagery, but to face the Collector with such simple and predictable movements when it itself was the premiere master of all bestial fighting was simple and utter foolishness.


    The Collector cocked back a punch, and its fist began to rattle and vibrate as it channeled the Seismic Shock of the Shaker Fish.


    The Collector side stepped the lunge and then mmed the seismic punch into therger Amorak''s back, and the effects were quite exceptional.


    Boosted with the Collector''s formidable mana reserves, the seismic punch injected an enormous quantity of destructive shockwaves that channeled inside the Amorak, pinging off of its every internal surface in a whirlwind of damage.


    The Amorak''s body rapidly heated up from the surge of energy growing inside of it, turning a bright, molten orange for an instant before simply exploding into a shower of blood stters.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles, adequately having tested its newfound capabilities to satisfaction. The remaining Amorak, the Collector dispatched with quicker ease and less usage of its mana, simply blitzing through them with high speed flight, tearing out their hearts with its fists and its tendrils.


    "The Sovnar¡­is like god," said one of the champions as they simply stood back and watched the Collector unleash its might. "God of killing."


    Thokk smiled as he beheld the Collector''s power. "Our god."


    A murmur of reverent agreement spread among the swarm.


    The Collector ended this minor engagement, taking the corpses of the Amorak it had ughtered and once more sealing them shut inside of their tomb of ice. This way, they would pose no future threat and pursue the swarm, though eventually, they would break out of it.


    "We move again now," said the Collector to the swarm, and they followed.


    Goromir came up to the Collector and spoke a suggestion. "O Sovnar, if I may ask, will you not return these Amorak from their affliction? The life you grant can reverse the Undeath, something I have never known to be possible."


    "For what purpose?" said the Collector.


    "The Amorak are a fierce tribe, but they are long lived. They roamed the icy wastes in my age, and they still do now. I know not how much their ways have changed, but in my time, I knew they were beings of honor.


    Blood for blood, blood by blood.


    This was their way.


    If you save them from their affliction, I hope they will lend us aid in our journey."

 Chapter 154 - Alpha

    The Collector weighed the elite specimen Goromir''s suggestion. Notably, the elite only said it had ''hope'' that the Amoraks would aid the Collector, thus it was not an assured guarantee. Yet, the Collector could certainly make it closer to a guarantee.


    By reviving the Amoraks, the Collector had their lives in its hand. The Breath of Life functioned by growing regenerative ice crystals from the Collector into specimen, and these crystals formed new body parts and internal functions to sustain the revived specimen.


    Which meant that at any given time, the Collector could simply recall the ice crystals into itself or cease to fuel them, causing them to melt and consequently return the Amoraks into true expiration.


    The actual cost of the Breath of Life was quite high, approximately twenty percent of the Collector''s total mana reserves, but its mana regeneration was such that with pores open for efficient mana gathering, it could regenerate that amount in twenty minutes.


    "So be it," said the Collector. The rewards were variable, but the risks for reviving the Amorak were on the lower end.


    The Collector used Sapia to bring forth the two snow mounds of crushed Amorak corpses it had created. Each mound was easily the size of arge boulder, but the Collector''s Sapia easily levitated them before it. Then, the Collector engaged its Jotnar core, channeling the emotion of Mercy through itself.


    Mercy to allow beings to live up to their potential. Their potential to serve and aid the Collector.


    The dark blue spiral patterns around the Collector''s chest started to glow. Pure blue magical energy swirled around the Collector in shimmering, spiral waves that looked like the currents of flowing water. A marked contrast to the raging, fire like ze of chaos type mana.


    Unity mana was more controlled. More stable. More attuned in bnced flow.


    The Collector casted its Breath of Life, opening up its true stomach maw. Its chest split down from the middle, and the flesh and carapace parted to the sides like curtains, revealing a series of rotating sets of teeth and fleshy gums.


    From this hideous space in its stomach, the Collector exhaled deeply, loosing a bright white, glinting mist that washed over the two balls of snow. The cloud of white was full of brilliantly glimmering sparks ¨C the shine of ice crystals ready to nourish life.


    As the Breath of Life infused into the balls ofpacted snow, the Collector used Sapia to shatter them, baring the thirty Amorak specimen trapped within. They were just a mangled pile of half grown limbs, bones, and organs, but as they regenerated, they restored themselves not with the inexplicable restoration of Undeath, but the visible buildup of Breath of Life ice crystals.


    The ice crystals formed around the chunks of flesh, bone, and viscera, turning them blue and white as the crystals gathered around each and built upwards, creating new veins, new blood vessels, new muscle fibers, new organs, new hearts, and soon enough, entirely new specimens.


    Within a minute, the Amorak had been resurrected.


    All thirty of them. Their fur was snow white instead of grey, with therger specimens having manes of icy, crystalline white. Their once feral, gleaming yellow eyes were now a dark blue. The same color palette as that which the revived goblins possessed.


    The Amorak specimen stumbled forwards, many of them copsing on their knees or struggling to stand for they were unused to their bodies, but they adjusted to their forms far faster than the goblins had done the first time they were brought back.


    It was to be predicted. The Amorak, at their base level, were vastly physically superior to the goblins. Thus, they were quicker to adjust to their new bodies.


    Most importantly, the Amorak did not exhibit any signs of lost mental faculties inherent to the pathogen known as ''Undeath''.


    The Collector spoke to the Amorak, for the shard upon its head allowed it to directlymunicate with specimen that possessed higher levels of primal density. Approximately any specimen with primal density above the 30% threshold.


    "I have cured you of this ''Undead'' pathogen and know that the continuation of your lives are sustained entirely by me. With a single moment, I may undo the formations of life giving ice crystals continuing your existences," said the Collector.


    All of the Amoraks in unison went down low, on all their fours, and put their snouts to the snow and their tails down in sign of deference to the Collector.


    One of therger, ice maned Amorak spoke.


    "We know," said the Amorak. "When we were caught in the curse, we could still see. We could still feel. But¡­we just could not control ourselves. Caught in an endless nightmare. There was only darkness and pain and suffering.


    Thank you, Sharded One, thank you for freeing us."


    "It has been known to me that you repay ''blood for blood'' and ''blood by blood''. Render your loyalty to me in exchange for your newfound lives free from this pathogen," said the Collector inly.


    "We would be d to. But to do so, you must invoke the Blood Rite of Rulership with our Alpha," said the Amorak. "It is simply tradition, but as we stand by tradition, we are willing to die by it. You may ask our pack of anything else, to raidnds with you, to grant you knowledge of thisnd, or to feast upon our prey, but rulership is not our ce to grant."


    "Where is this ''Alpha'' specimen. I will eliminate it promptly," said the Collector.


    "I wish dearly that you do," said the Amorak. "A proper death is far better than what he suffers now."


    "The specimen is not with this group," said the Collector. "Lead me to him so that this Rite may bepleted with prompt efficiency."


    "Are¡­are you certain? Our Alpha too is under the spell of the ck Curse," said the Amorak.


    "Our Sovnar will beat your Alpha to a pulp!" shouted Thokk as he beat his chest. "Undead or not!"


    "I must agree," said Goromir, and Kandak grunted in agreement.


    "I have no doubts. The Sharded One is mightier than any I have seen," said the Amorak. "But this is different. Our Alpha lies within a ck spot. Facing him¡­may be more difficult than expected. I will not protest, however.


    A chance to free our Alpha from his ursed fate is one I will not let slip by.


    Come, then, follow me. I will lead you to him."


    ==


    The Collector and the goblin swarm followed the Amoraks for an hour, reaching quite nearly to the base of the Rift mountain range. They went deeper into the fall of Grain, so the Collector was less hesitant to spend time on this endeavor for their movements would not be tracked or sensed here.


    Here, the Amorak stopped around a yawning pit formed in the snow. Onepletely enshrouded in curling tendrils of foggy darkness, making any visibility belowpletely impossible.


    The pit wasrge, around twenty meters across, and from it, wispy ck air emerged, and this, the Collector could sense was likely the main mode of transmission of the Undead pathogen.


    This was further evident by the bodynguage of the Amoraks. They crowded away from the pit, their tails curled between their legs in fear as they beheld the put from a distance.


    In the distance, through the heavy fall of Grain, the Collector could perceive the towering spires of the Rift mountains that stood taller than any cloud.


    Its next goal was near.


    "When this pit opened up first," said the maned Amorak. "We thought it to be a Dungeon. Our Alpha went in to challenge it, to gain power for us, but soon after his entry, the foul ck curse choked this pit.


    A few of us more foolish were willing to leap into the pit to retrieve our Alpha, believing that if we did not spend much time within, the ck curse would not take root in us.


    We were wrong.


    Our Alpha did not return. But those that went to search, myself included, did. We savaged our own and made them join our endless nightmare. Thank the winds that we did not reach our dens where the young are."


    "You want our Sovnar to leap in here? To duel your Alpha?" said Goromir. His arms were crossed, and his brows furrowed. "He has already saved your lives, and yet you wish him to risk his own for this? I thought this would be a simple duel, not a rescue operation for a wayward, overconfident pup."


    The Amorak bared its teeth, but did not snarl, controlling its emotions. "I understand. But we simply cannot follow another Alpha when our own still lives."


    "Lives!?" Goromir pointed all four arms down to the pit. "You call being trapped in there living? Cut your losses and move on. Join our service for something better than this."


    "Tradition is our way." The Amorak bowed his head. "If it means you must kill us all, then so be it."

 Chapter 155 - Duel In The Depths

    "I have spent enough time tearing your kind apart limb from limb," said the Collector. "Your species has proven to be a formidable force to harness, and if securing this ''Alpha'' specimen''s death is what you so desire, then I first require additional information."


    The Collector floated above the pit of solid darkness, attempting to pierce through it with its senses. The pit was almost imprable to a nearly unnatural degree, not visible through sight, emitting no auditory signals, nor being perceptible to tactile sense.


    Magical sense, too, yielded little to no true benefit.


    "You have stated that you have entered this area before. Is it within your memory to recall the exact physical dimensions of this space?" asked the Collector to the maned Amorak.


    "I remember a little. It was not deep. Arge drop of several seconds, then a great expanse of darkness. That is all I recall, for the darkness makes my memories hazy," said the Amorak.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles before it bared its stomach maw towards the pit. It then ejected forth a burst of its pyrocatalytic nd mes, shooting forth a swelling torrent of blue-white me that funneled into the pit of darkness.


    Simultaneously, the Collector clenched one of its fists, enveloping the mes in purple Sapian aura.


    The mes passed through the darkness but did not affect it any. The intense light did not drive away any of the shadows, simply phasing through the dark as if it was a fixture in space.


    Yet, unmistakably, the mes had passed through.


    The Collector utilized the Sapia-wreathed mes like a scout, moving them around to figure out the dimensions below, and determined that the Sapia fell down exactly a dozen meters and could fan out in circr pattern before hitting walls.


    From the rate of travel of the mes and the time it took to crash against the walls, the Collector calcted the distance of the area beneath the fall to be roughly circr and twenty meters in diameter with a low ceiling of five meters.


    In essence, the pit was structured like a funnel, the initial drop leading into a wider and self-contained base.


    Within this area, the Collector''s mes also found a singr target, and this, the Collector hypothesized to be the Alpha. However, the Collector''s Sapia over the mes deteriorated rapidly within the pit, the magical connections and flow severing and breaking apart.


    It was not like Grain that simply insted and prevented the expression of magical energy outwards from those with too little primal energy. In the case of Grain, beings could still use their internal mana to reinforce their body, for there was no stopping them from flowing mana within themselves.


    Thus, a tinkerer that relied on reinforcing their body could survive in areas of heavy Grainfall.


    This, however, was aplete nullification of any and all magical energy flow. Spirit roots and cores would not be damaged, but they would be forced dormant, unable to channel any amount of magical energy.


    No tinkerer could ever survive here, reduced to their basic, physically feeble states as they would be.


    But the Collector was simply built different.


    "I will proceed," said the Collector. It analyzed the environment it would enter, nned a course of action, and determined its sess rate to near 99% provided the Alpha specimen was approximately as strong as the maned Amorak considering the Alpha would not be able to use mana to strengthen itself at all.


    "Sovnar! This¡­this pit reeks of undeath," said Goromir. "Are you certain?"


    "Weren''t you the one who said to believe in the Sovnar?" Thokk spoke up. "Believe."


    "Yes. Yes, you are right," said Goromir as he nodded to Thokk.


    "There are no objections, then," said the Collector as it hovered over the void of darkness.


    "If you bring the Alpha back, end his life, we will serve you with our lives, our blood, and more." The maned Amorak bared its ws and dug them into its forearm, splitting an artery and drawing out a stream of blood.


    The Amorak spattered the blood on the ground. "By my blood, I swear it, and a blood oath is sacred to us."


    "By my blood, I swear," came a collection of chants from the remaining twenty-nine Amorak as they wed their forearms and spilled their blood in a ritualistic gesture.


    Then, the Amorak closed their fists and flexed their arms, forcing the muscles to squeeze the cuts tight. They also possessed a natural healing factor that repaired their severed veins in quick order. A cost-efficient, constant healing factor that did not require any magical energy, but in return, was slower and less explosive than the draconid''s regeneration.


    "I see that these symbolistic gestures affirm your loyalty. Agreeable. I will note them for further interaction with your kind." The Collector then dove into the darkness like a red bullet, disappearing in an instant of surging aura and squalls of wind.


    ==


    Passing the barrier of darkness caused the Collector to initially enter what it thought was a biome of water. There was darkness everywhere, simr to the darkness caused by an absence of light in abyssal zones of vast aquatic habitats, and there was a certain liquid heaviness and resistance everywhere reminiscent of water pressure.


    However, the Collector found no difficulty with oxygen respiration, though it did not need it to function. In a tenth of a second, the Collectornded on the base of the pit, its feet sinking into solid, firm ground reminiscent of stone.


    When the Collectornded, its magicpletely disappeared.


    It had no more ess to its multiple mana affinities and the vast variety of powers and physical enhancements they granted. All of its magical weapons systems werepletely disabled,pletely neutralizing a host of powers that would haveprised a sizable list.


    Truly, the Collector noted with clicked mandibles, this area would bepletely inhospitable to the vast majority of any creature upon this.


    No mana. No magic. No power.


    But to the Collector?


    This was simply functioning as normal. As it had functioned prior to entering this world and taking magic for its own.


    This marked the difference between the Collector and much of the life on this world.


    Even without magic, the cold fact did not change that the Collector was an apex predator bred with the deadliest adaptations known throughout its gxy.


    Mana or no mana, the Collector was still a killer.


    A deadly killer.


    The Collector''s visual systems were utterly useless here as a pure absence of light meant no wavelengths with which to perceive, but its sensitive hairs urately mapped out its immediate surroundings, and it perceived arge form barreling towards it.


    Auditory signals were distorted in this area, and the Alpha''s paws as it tracked across the firm ground loosed out crackling buzzes instead of a typical click of weight and ws upon stone.


    The Alpha was still on fire from the Collector''s pyrocatalytic nds, and the heat it emanated allowed the Collector to further map its movements with precision, utilizing its thermal sensitive capabilities and hairs.


    The Collector unsheathed its monomolecr des fully for its purifying light des lost their light and efficacy here. The Alpha leaped upon the Collector, its form sizable at four meters in length, but its strength was severely stunted by ack of mana.


    The Collector utilized its three pliomatter tendrils to m them from above in the Alpha''s head, disorienting it and crashing it into the ground. The Alpha''srge body skidded several meters past the Collector, and the Collector reacted quickly.


    It used its muscr coilboosters to dash a short distance in a near instant, ending up in front of the downed Alpha before it could defend itself or even stand. The Alpha''s head severed off of its body, cut clean by the monomolecr des.


    However, if it was affected by pathogen known as Undeath, then it was likely that the specimen would not perish from that wound alone.


    The Collector grabbed the Alpha''s headless body and turned it over with ease, its immense muscr strength toppling the one and a half ton body like a sheet of paper.


    With surgical precision, the Collector used its monomolecr de to carve into the Alpha''s chest, and then tore out its heart. All regeneration caused by this Undead pathogen seemed to center around the core, so taking it would disable the specimen for the immediate moment.


    Before the Alpha specimen could fully begin to regenerate around the core, the Collector leaped into the air, boosting its jump with coilboosters, and scaled the dozen meters to the top with ease.


    The Collector passed through the veil of darkness and into the snowy, frigid, and open air of Fjall, and here, its magic returned with a vengeance, huge swirls of red magical energy crackling around it as it hovered again in the air, this time with the Alpha''s ckened, beating heart in one of its hands.


    "Here is your Alpha specimen," stated the Collector as it tossed therge, pumping heart onto the snow before, the Amoraks.

 Chapter 156 - New Alpha

    The Amoraks scrambled back at the sight of the ck heart, at its grotesque, rapid beating. Already, flesh was beginning to wrap around the heart due to the regeneration provided by the condition known as ''Undeath''.


    It was not that the Amoraks were unused to the sight of viscera, for they were wild specimens that likely ate their prey raw and live, but more that they were instinctively repulsed by the presence of the ckened heart.


    The Collector, too could feel this to a degree. The parts of its body that were enriched and relied upon magical energy instinctively ssified any Undead presence as a threat which made sense in that the origin of this pathogen seemed to nullify any magic, not to mention the capacity for its spread.


    Layers andyers of flesh and blood vessels perfectly reconstructing themselves around the heart, and as the Collector observed for an additional second, it began to make note of a crucial fact from analyzing how the other Amorak specimens, when they too were infected, restored their bodies.


    It was not due to simple cellr regeneration, elsewise their regenerative patterns would have all been the same.


    Rather, it appeared that Undead specimen regenerated in a way akin to reversing time. Their body parts restored themselves in the order they were destroyed, with the only exception being the case that their core, their heart, was directly removed.


    In this case, the Collector noted, the rest of the body would deteriorate and disintegrate while a new form was created around the core.


    The significance of this, the Collector could not adequately glean yet, only merely note, but it did understand that this was the first instance of temporal-spatial maniption outside of Warp Gates that it had observed.


    Regardless, the Collector could not simply allow the Alpha''s infected core to simply regenerate again. Instead, it activated a lower charge of its Breath of Life, utilizing only 10% of its total mana, funneling out a thin, steady stream of misty white fog from its maw that collected directly into the beating ck heart.


    The white mist slowly but surely drove the ckness from the heart''s flesh, painting it over instead with a pale, icy white that then turned a deep blue. Crystalline structures began to form all around the heart, embedding in the flesh and glimmering under any exposure to light, granting the heart a nearly prismatic quality about it.


    The Collector initially found it difficult to optimize the Breath of Life due to how much energy it took to channel, but now that it had utilized it several times, it could begin to regte its output, though it seemed that even to fully restore a being from the Undeath pathogen via directly targeting their core, it would still take 10% of its max mana.


    The purified heart regenerated its flesh more organically now, with cluster growths of ice crystals sprouting out from it spurring the generation of blood vessels, then flesh, then bones, and so on until the Alpha stood once more in its original state.


    The Alpha, white-furred and blue maned, was distinctively more imposing than any of the other Amoraks, likely possessing mutations for both increased magical energy output and muscr hypertrophy.


    At four meters tall, the Alpha towered over every single being in the immediate vicinity, being a head taller even than Kandak with his Grizzled Stormbear and Bugbrute genes granting him increased muscr mass and size.


    The Alpha''s fur also constantly fluxed with magical energy, granting it an almost me-like flickering texture.


    It no doubt had been the premiere of their species, possessing a host of battle scars running under its fur that showcased the many battles it had undergone both among its own kind and among others in defense of its pack.


    The Collector, from its battles with the Amoraks, had a good grasp of their abilities.


    They possessed extraordinarily sharps senses, particrly regarding scent which allowed them to fight even with their ocr systems destroyed, and they were primarily physical fighters, relying on speed and strength.


    Their magical energy was utilized solely to boost their physical might, though they did have one unique application of it.


    By overloading their hearts with an initial deposit of magical energy, they were capable of manipting their heart beat, blood flow, and consequently their mana flow to vastly enhance their physical movements, though this would over time tax their cardiovascr health and lead to heavier bleeding.


    Had the Alpha not been in the depths of the pit with its own magical energy limited, then it could have exhibited a marvelous disy of physical might that the Collector could have enjoyed, though not much.


    The Collector had simply grown too strong to encounter any real threats below the Rift.


    Numerically speaking, if the Collector had to roughly evaluate the beings around it in mana output and physical strength, it determined that the average goblin champion was a 10 and the twin elites a 50, with Thokk hovering at 35.


    This was, of course, vastly better than how they were unenhanced by Breath of Life, for before then, they might as well not have been registered on this numerical scale.


    The average Amorak specimen ranged from 20-30 with maned specimens reaching 50 and the Alpha specimen at 100. The average draconid ranged from 60 to 80.


    The Collector, in this scale, would be at a 600. The golden winged humanoid at a 400.


    All rough estimates, of course, and pure physical power and raw mana output did not evenprise 50% of a specimen''s truebat capability where factors such as skill, experience, instinct, equipment, andpatibility had to be considered.


    The golden winged humanoid with its weaponry could easily cut swathes through dozens of Amorak alphas even though from a purely numerical standpoint, four Alphas had the same level of total mana and strength.


    The Collector, too, if it entered its giant form, could easily spike up to over 1000, because it would massively increase its strength and mana output, but that would not ount for it bing a massivelyrger target withpromised agility of movement and stealth capacities.


    Combat wasplicated. Raw numbers did it no justice.


    Regardless, a reflection onbativeparisons was secondary to addressing the current situation.


    The Collector noted as the sizable Alphaid down low on all fours, its tail curled between its legs in sign of pure submission. It bowed down its head, baring its neck.


    "Thank you for freeing me," said the Alpha. "And now, you must kill me or exile me, for I have fallen in the Rite. Take of me my wives and the children too, if you so desire."


    "I shall not expend time rearing the offspring of weak specimen," said the Collector inly. "From my observation, your kind uphold greatly to this notion of ''tradition''. Thus, I shall assume that there is no other option than your death or exile.


    You are, however, a capable specimen of considerable strength. The terms of this exile, exin them to me."


    "I lose the rights to the females and rearing the children," said the Alpha. "I must leave the pack


    "Simple terms. Room for additional circumstance and maniption of them, then," said the Collector. "All of you are now collected to some degree to me and the rest of the swarm by the Breath of Life. You will know the general directions of where my carrier units are regardless of whether you are the same species or not."


    The Collector gestured to the rest of the Amorak pack. "You now recognize me as the ''Alpha'' specimen, yes?"


    "There is no question," said the Amoraks.


    "Then you will take your pack and travel to the carrier unit below this Rift and reinforce his forces," said the Collector. For now that the Undead threat was here and the tinkering presence soon to intensify, Thragg and his conquering force would require more military assistance.


    "As for you, the Alpha specimen," said the Collector. "You shall be exiled. If exile necessitates merely that you are geographically separate from your pack, then it will be done. You will cross the Rift and assist me, for your strength to be squandered is a waste of efficiency."


    The Collector gazed at the Amorak pack and clicked its mandibles. "Are there objections to this course of action?"


    The Amoraks looked among themselves, then to the old Alpha, wondering whether exile ounted for the Alpha traveling with the Collector who technically was the new Alpha and part of the pack.


    "Remember that I may end your lives in a mere instant," said the Collector. "I understand that tradition is a value that you believe throwing your lives away for. Yet, shall you throw away your lives for a ''tradition'' that is merely not followed to exact specifications?


    Wage the cost and benefits to your decisions well, for without your assistance, the young you no doubt rear will all perish, and I possess no obligation to preserve them."

 Chapter 157 - Conquering Force

    This was the final push that allowed the Amoraks to agree with the Collector, and they all uttered low, non-threatening growls in affirmation.


    The Collector, with the white shard atop its head, could understand their words, for the Amorak possessed sufficient primal density above the twenty percent threshold that allowed the Collector to easilymunicate with them and even seemingly exert an influence upon them.


    It seemed that any creatures that had sufficient primal density understood somewhat the nature of the shard upon the Collector and granted it deference, though deference was not the same as obeyance.


    For now, however, the Collector determined that the Amorak were sufficiently beholden to the Collector, though not to the same degree as the goblins were because the Collector could not exert Higher Calling upon them.


    Thus, the Collector still kept the option of immediately taking back the Breath of Life reanimation it had granted them at a moment''s notice if it found that their loyalty was faulty.


    "The carrier unit and the elite specimen know the approximate location of where the conquering force will be," said the Collector to the Amorak pack. "Now that you possess stamina that can consistently be replenished, your travel speed should be considerable enough to reach them in two days worth of travel."


    The Collector mentally projected itsmand to the three elites, and they stepped forwards to the Amoraks.


    "Inform them of the conquering force''s movements. Have this pack convene with the conquering force at the location of the Frostfish goblin tribe whilst taking an arcing path from northwest to south for optimal and extended coverage under Grain so as to prevent tinkering interferences," said the Collector.


    The elites were privy to the general movement patterns and future battle ns that the Collector had formted, so they were more than capable of enlightening the Amorak pack of what to do and where to go.


    "And you, great Sovnar?" said Goromir. "What will you do in the meantime?"


    The Collector focused ahead, northwards, where 500 kilometers ahead, the great mountains of the Rift arose. They were covered by Grain, but their size was so prodigious that they showed even from this distance.


    This was the next great obstacle for the Collector challenge.


    "I will scout ahead," said the Collector simply as it began to hover in the air. Red mana partictes started to flicker around it as wind and snow swirled beneath it as it generated power. Then, its twin wings of crimson energy red to its sides, and it was gone, shooting into the distance at such a speed that within moments, it was a fading blur in the distance.


    "That''s our Sovnar!" said Thokk to the Amorak as he pointed a finger to where the Collector had flown. "Strong and fast. Don''t know why you challenge him, heh."


    ==Conquering Force==


    Thragg and his fourteen champions trekked their way across Fjall in a march of resolute determination. Though they could still eat and hunger, they could go without food and drink for days and days, perhaps a week, perhaps even forever, so long as the Sovnar kept them alive with his magical energy.


    At first, Thragg had wanted to use this and marched them force without any stops, butints had forced him to reconsider.


    Thragg had the will andmitment to cast away his physical desires and push forward, but the others were not the same.


    It had always been like this, though.


    Even before the Sovnar had ascended the tribe, Thragg had been different.


    He was among the few goblin young that took the time to listen to the elder''s rambling stories, picking up moments of excitement and wonder in the sea of memories the elder hadmitted to himself.


    He was perhaps the only one aside from Hrunt, the next in line to be elder, to have greatly respected the elder even with his frailty and weakness.


    For the elder represented the beyond.


    Always, Thragg had wanted to be more than what he was. He heard the elder''s stories about goblin kingdoms and old ages and champions and elites and lords and kings and heroes, and he wanted to be that. He did not want to spend his entire life hiding and scavenging.


    Thragg''s mind was simpler back then, but even then, he knew this. He had not been able to conceptualize it as well, but when he went on hunts with the hobs, when he fought for meat, when he hid from monsters and adventurers, he had always thought: why was he doing this?


    What was the point of living like this?


    To eat, sleep, have a child or two, then grow old and die?


    Was that it?


    That was why Thragg had been resolutely determined to kill the champion of the tribe at the time, training and honing his skills, and once he had the tribe under his control, he would try his best to be like the goblins the elder spoke of in yore, rallying arge force of other goblins.


    Back then, Thragg had thought maybe he had desired power. Power over many goblins. Power to raid humans.


    But that was not it.


    It was now that Thragg realized that the question he asked himself had shifted to this: who would remember him?


    Thragg wanted to be remembered, and he wanted to be remembered far and wide not because of a sense of pride, though that might have factored into it, but because of a sense of purpose. He was given life, now a second one, and what was the point of life if there was not a great purpose to fulfill?


    A great purpose that all would remember Thragg for?


    This was what Thragg wanted when he thought about being more than he was. He wanted to be remembered. For future generations of elders to speak of him as one who had changed the course of history and made his mark upon the whole vast wide world.


    That was why Thragg had respected the elder so. The elder had the beyond within him, in his mind where he kept the memories of eras and goblins past far beyond the rotting of their corpses.


    The Sovnar had given Thragg a new life, a new purpose, and thus, a new chance to be remembered.


    Thragg would not waste it.


    Still, that did not mean the other goblins had the same level of conviction as Thragg. They were loyal to the Sovnar, yes, but their wills varied in strength.


    At the least, it was easy enough to hunt for food now, and Thragg used the same method the Sovnar did before he had granted Thragg his mes.


    Using the mes Thragg could generate, he lured in Snow Sprites, and the Snow Sprites lured in animals that looked for shelter from the cold. He regted the output of the mes so that it would not attract too many Snow Sprites so that humans would not appear, for the Sovnar was absolutely clear that no interaction with humans should be made.


    Even so, Thragg did not coddle them. He pushed them as much as he could, and in good pace, he made it back to the Snowmound that they had first met the Sovnar at.


    There was no winter storm this time, but it was around the same time.


    Afternoon. A few hours before the sun set and the Shadows became a danger.


    The fateful time when the Sovnar had appeared with overwhelming might and ughtered their champion in an instant.


    When Thragg had seen that happen, when he was one of the hobgoblins standing in circle around the Sovnar and the champion, he had felt awe.


    Awe beyond measure.


    Once, Thragg had thought the elder the greatest symbol of the beyond, but no, that had not been it. His world view had simply been too small.


    The Sovnar represented the beyond far, far better.


    The Sovnar was light. Overwhelming might. And, as Thragg could sense, a bearer of great purpose, his every single move and action driven towards a singr goal, a purpose invested into him that he fulfilled absolutely.


    That was the kind of purpose that Thragg had always desired. And, as Thragg heard more of the Great Purpose, of how it was meant to stand against the eternal dark that threatened the entire world, he knew that it was a purpose he was proud to devote himself to.


    For what better way to be remembered than to stave off a dark to end all things? If it would mean giving his life to the purpose to save this world, to carve the memory of his noble sacrifice to all, to never truly die and fade away in memory, he would dly give up his life.


    The Snowmound, as expected, was upied.


    Thragg could trace the scent of goblins. This was no surprise. The Frostskull tribe that Thragg belonged to had taken the mount from the Frostfish tribe, and with their absence, the Frostfish tribe had taken it back.


    But that was back during the time of petty tribal quarrels.


    It was now time for the Frostfish tribe to join the Sovnar in Great Purpose beyond themselves.

 Chapter 158 - Another Duel

    Thragg turned down his aura of mes and stepped up to the Snowmound. He raised one of his webbed hands up to gesture for the fifteen goblins behind him to stay behind him.


    "Thragg, do you intend to use the Sovnar''s voice to bend them to us? Or will you duel their champion?" said the elder.


    "I will do what I must," said Thragg. "But I know how our kind is. We respond best to force. I will put fear in them, then soon that fear will turn to loyalty."


    "Ah, to think that we are now the ones to conquer the Frostfish tribe," said the elder. He tugged at his long, icy beard as he looked into the distance at the Snowmound. "When before, when we were simpler and smaller, the Frostfish goblins were the ones that drove us away.


    Takingke Aska and the fish for themselves, leaving us to scavenge in the cold wastes with only this Snowmound as our refuge."


    "They took our Snowmound too," said one of the champions. "We take it back."


    "Remember one of them. Made my ear hurt and bleed. Now I never hear from it," said another.


    The Frostskull tribe and the Frostfish tribe had a conflict ridden history, and Thragg knew it well. Unlike Thokk, Thragg had lived enough years to know the various goblin tribes, and the Frostskulls were not even close to the strongest.


    Not that power mattered much now. Thragg was confident in that regard he alone could defeat the entire Frostfish tribe with utter ease.


    But in an environment where might made right, it was a simple fact of life that the other goblin tribes had long forced the Frostskulls to the fringe.


    When the goblin lord had called, the Frostskulls were the only tribe to join because they were simply desperate to expand out, for in time, they would dwindle and waste away after being driven away from theke and more temperate, preyden areas.


    Yet past conflict could not color this conquest.


    "We must put aside our pasts," said Thragg. "All of us are more evolved and stronger than we ever were. The life we had is one we no longer live now. What happened then is beneath us.


    And when we take in the Frost tribes, they will be our own. We must tolerate them."


    The champions grunted in understanding, and Thragg took this as a sign to advance forwards.


    When Thragg reached close enough to the Snowmound, hobgoblin scouts around it spotted him and pointed at him, leaping up and down and shouting.


    "Monster! Monster!" shouted the hobgoblins, and soon, a whole host of them piled out of the Snowmound''s entrance.


    Thragg beheld the Frostfish goblins. They hadrge barrel chests and blocky stomachs meant for holding in deep breaths, for they had adapted to swimming into the depths ofke Aska for food. They also had the ability to take in great breaths and unleash them in concussive, mana charged sts.


    There were fifty Frostfish goblins in total that swarmed out. Many of them had roughly carved Everfrost weapons in their hand, likely from Everfrost shards that broke off from underwater caverns in theke and floated to the top.


    There were probably a hundred fifty more inke Aska, with these goblins simply being a hunting party.


    "I am no monster. I am one of you," said Thragg as he spoke in their tongue. "You are hunting, no? Instead of fishing. That means you are seeking red meat to honor a new champion."


    The hobgoblins tentatively looked at Thragg, knowing his power, and fearful of the new form the Sovnar had granted him. They gazed at his thickly muscled, yellow striped eel tail, at the golden fins lining his back and limbs, and the fiery red frilled tendrils that hung down from his back.


    "What tribe you from?" said arger goblin as he shifted forward to the head of the crowd. A champion, judging by his size, and wielding a club of Everfrost almost asrge as he was.


    "I am from the Frostskulls," said Thragg.


    Augh rose among the fifty hobgoblins.


    "Frostskull? Your tribe supposed to be dead! We kicked you out ofke and then you all disappeared! Thought monster ate you. What you want now, huh? Food? We don''t give it," said the champion, grinning with his tusks out.


    The champion narrowed his yellow eyes and stared at Thragg, then at the fourteen champions and elder behind him.


    The champion''s attitude became much more somber. Serious. He understood that they were vastly outmatched.


    "What happen to you? You have four arms. So many champions. Did the lord do this?" said the champion.


    "We do not want food, Thur" said Thragg, remembering this champion''s name. "And no lord did this. It was the greatness of the Sovnar that ascended us."


    "¡­Sovnar?" said Thur with confusion.


    "You wille to understand." Thragg took another step forwards, and the hobgoblin crowd tensed up, raising their weapons. "I am here to take the Frostfish tribe into our own. We can do it the traditional way, with us ughtering most of your tribe and forcing the rest in, or we can make it much easier, with all of you willinglying with us.


    I can guarantee that we will treat you well, for that is the Sovnar''s will."


    Thragg had been vested with some of the Sovnar''s voice, but it was not so strong that he could bend them all to his will with a mere word. He required them to willingly submit to him first before his voice could truly reach them.


    "You will take this tribe from me only if you kill me," said Thur. "And we have two more champions. We can fight."


    "Three champions against fourteen?" Thragg shook his head. "You are not that stupid, are you? The math does not work toward your favor."


    "Don''t matter. My tribe." Thur said this simply, willing to die before he gave up his power.


    "Bring forth your elder. He will recognize my form, and he will know that I bring to you greatness akin to the Old Age," said Thragg.


    "No elder. I killed him," said Thur. "


    "What?" Thragg''s deep blue eyes narrowed.


    "Elder was tiny and weak. Why keep him around? Useless. So I killed him. We haveke, anyway, and withke, we don''t need elder to tell us where to go. What to do."


    "Your elder was the only one among you who knew anything beyond the miserable lives you led," said Thragg. "So many memories and stories just lost like that. All because of one stupid champion that believes himself lord of a littleke."


    Thragg shook his head and stepped up. "Come on, then, Thur. Fight me. Show me the strength you believe gave you the right to kill your elder."


    Thur hesitated, obviously knowing that Thragg would obliterate him, but his tribe was behind him, and his pride and power was at stake.


    "Fight me!" roared Thragg as his magical energy explosively radiated out in yellow streaks.


    Thur gripped his club tight and charged with a growl. His muscr body trudged bulldozed through the snow as he leaped into the air, ready to m the club down on Thragg''s head.


    Thragg raised one of his arms up and caught the club in his palm. The club strike was true and made with the entirety of Thur''s might, but it might as well have been as effective as a summer breeze.


    Thragg jerked his arm to the side, easily overpowering Thur and tearing the club off of his grip.


    Thragg tossed the club away and stood right in front of Thur, looking down at the champion with nothing but disappointment.


    "Concede your tribe," said Thragg. "They are wasted under yourmand. They have the potential to be so much more, but your simple-minded foolishness-,"


    Thur punched Thragg in the face while he was talking, but the full force punch only made Thragg''s head tilt back a few centimeters at best.


    In response, Thragg mmed a palm into Thur, sending the champion skidding a dozen meters through the snow, groaning painfully.


    "Get up," said Thragg as he walked up to Thur. Every step Thragg took, the hobgoblins of the Frostfish tribe stepped back in fear and awe.


    Thragg looked down at Thur''s pain-wracked body as the champion sucked in deep breaths, recovering the air that had been squarely knocked out of him from Thragg''s casual blow.


    "Get up," said Thragg.


    Thur managed to get on to a knee, then raise himself up with shaky motions. The moment the champion got onto two feet, Thragg mmed a palm into him again, sending him flying once more, this time into a group of hobgoblins.


    Thur''s great weight and size sent the hobgoblins he crashed into falling, and the hobgoblins shrieked as they scrambled away from Thragg''s advance. Thur coughed as hey limp on the snow, multiple ribs shattered by now with all the fight solidly beaten out of him.


    Thragg stood over Thur again. "So this is it? This is your power? Your strength? This is what you were proud of? This is the might that made you think you were somehow better than your elder?"


    "Enough, Thragg," came the elder''s voice as he stepped to Thragg''s side, putting a wrinkled hand on the elite''s shoulder. "Too much fear will only break them."


    "You are right, elder. I got carried away. But at the least, I may use this fear to make them submit." Thragg raised his voice, and it reverberated like the Sovnar''s. "I have won over your champion. Your tribe holds two more, but there is no point in struggling further against me.


    You will only lose your lives. Join us, and we will guarantee you will be treated right, provided for, and made stronger with bodies like ours."

 Chapter 159 - Crossing The Rift

    The Frostfish hobgoblins shrank back from Thragg, staring at him in a mixture of unbridled fear and awe, as if they were staring at a natural disaster, and Thragg almost pitied them. They knew so little of the world. If they reacted like this to Thragg, then how would they react to the Sovnar himself?


    Regardless, it was Thragg''s job to ensure that the Frostfish goblins were loyal. His Voice was not as powerful as the Sovnar''s, and it required the goblins to submit to Thragg''s voice consciously. However, this was not a difficult thing to do.


    "If you do not join us, we will kill you. The choice is up to you," said Thragg, ring out some of his yellow golden magical energy in threatening aura. He likely actually would not have killed them for when the Sovnar returned, they would submit regardless, but to make them submit now, the fear of death was best.


    Because when faced with the choice to either serve or die, the answer was often quite obvious, even for the unevolved goblins.


    No, perhaps because they were unevolved and valued their simple lives above all else, they were guaranteed to submit.


    "Yes! Yes!" The hobgoblins mored their agreement, some dropping to knees, many nodding their heads up and down wildly, for they knew they could never oppose Thrag and his champions.


    "Good. Then lead me to theke where the rest of the Frostfish tribe stands," said Thragg, his voice reverberating and now reaching fully into the goblins now that they had willingly submit to his might.


    Thragg did not like handling things with violence and the threat of death and fear, but the Sovnar had been sure to emphasize that time was of essence, and Thragg was not one to oppose him. This was the fastest way Thragg could think of to have the goblins bind themselves to his, and by extension the Sovnar''s, service.


    ==


    The Collector soared right behind the cover of clouds, gazing at the enormity of the Rift mountain range below. The mountains were tremendous in scale to a degree that physical and naturalws should have made nigh impossible.


    Each mountain wasrge enough to have been easily visible from orbit, and they created a chained link that spanned over ten thousand kilometers. There were approximately twenty-five mountains total, and the mountains closest to Fjall were the smallest.


    The height and size of the mountains increased prodigiously the further they reached into the Rift, with the tallest mountains forming nigh imprable barriers whose peaks easily surpassed cloud level, likely reaching into the mid atmosphere.


    Every single one of these mountains was packed with snow and ice formations, and therger mountains that ascended past cloud cover were less mountain and more cier, formed almost solely of ice that resisted the bright rays of the sun with almost zero loss of mass to evaporation.


    Likely, this was due in part to the fact that the icy peaks of theserger mountains emitted their own meteorological phenomena, creating an intenseyer of chilling fog charged with even more primal energy than the fall of Grain.


    From space, it would have seemed that this area was a mass of blurry white,pletely obscured in vast quantities of fog expulsion. The fog would provide adequate cover against prying tinkering eyes, but what piqued the Collector''s interest further was that each of these mountains were dungeons.


    It was obvious enough to tell by reading the flow of environmental mana. The mana clustered around the mountains, funneling into their hearts. However, one anomalous element: the concentrations of magical energy were not focused, and they were far lower than what the Collector had expected.


    Some analysis and calctions allowed the Collector toe up with the likely conclusion that the dungeons had been cleared of their bosses. That did not mean that the mountains themselves were cleared of specimen.


    Frequently, as the Collector scouted and flew, it encountered multiple specimens of many kinds. The flying, white feathered specimens from before.


    Animated structures of ice and snow molded into the shape of roughly hewn humanoids.


    Slithering, white-scaled serpents that fired concentrated beams of freezing energy when they spotted the Collector.


    Upright canid specimen quite simr to the Amorak Alpha, though these seemed to be far more feral,rger, and solitary, living in caves.


    All of these, the Collector took samples of.


    >>>


    -Snow Surge Roc


    -ciated Serpent


    -Primal Amorak


    >>>


    The animated ice humanoids, however, provided no biomass, and were not threatening to the Collector, lying dormant and not recognizing it as a threat.


    The Rocs too did not consider the Collector a threat, likely due to the shard above its head.


    Notably, however, when the Collector made an offensive move against the specimens, it was then that they retaliated and struck at the Collector or fled.


    The ciated serpents, however, seemed consistently hostile, possessing a surprisingly high enough primal density that they could ignore the Collector''s aura. The serpents, however, were not entirely impressive specimens.


    They were on average around the four-star adventurer''s level and were eyeless, slithering creatures that lived in the depths of the mountains and came out asionally to bask in sunlight. The Collector further determined thatrger and stronger variants of their speciesy within the mountains themselves.


    The animated snow and ice beings were quite powerful and faced the Collector in battle for approximately thirty seconds before falling.


    These animated ice humanoids were easily ten meters tall and more than capable of damaging the Collector, though they were too slow to tag it.


    The Primal Amorak were around the same level as the ice golems, but where they possessed great speed, their strength was not adequate to significantly damage the Collector. It was an easy process to disable and eliminate them with monomolecr w swipes.


    The Rocs were the weakest of the specimen, and they did not inhabit the further ranges of the Rift mountain range, spending time equally on the lower mountains and Fjall.


    The Collector in general determined that not many creatures meandered on the surface of these mountains, for the conditions could grow dramatically inhospitable quite quickly. Weather pattern movements were unpredictable at these heights, and the powerfully flowing environmental mana meant that storm surges and snap freezes were amon sight.


    The Collector analyzed all of this information and returned down the Rift to its swarm below. There were several factors to consider.


    The immediate issue was that the Collector had calcted it would take an inordinate amount of time to pass the mountain range on foot. Passing up and down through varying elevations would extend the distance of the Rift over twenty-fold, and it was already a sizable distance to travel in the first ce.


    This was not an issue for the Collector, but it certainly was for its ground force swarm.


    There was great potential to further evolve the goblins throughout the Rift for the air there was far more nourishing, far denser with magical energy, and the malleable and adaptable nature of goblin blood meant if they survived long enough, they would adapt to the power level of the new area and eventually scale up to it.


    In addition, not all the dungeons in the mountain range were cleared. There were two that still radiated with magical energy, indicating that if they were cleared, the Collector could spread the energy to its swarm to evolve them to even further heights.


    The only predicament was moving the ground force at a reasonable pace.


    The solution was obvious and yet fraught withplications to implement.


    Utilizing Sapia, the Collector could create arge tform of ice and transport the swarm this way. However, this would cost magical energy over time, and the Collector desired to at least be at 70% of its magical energy capacity at all times so as to bebat ready.


    For until the swarm limated to the Rift environment, they were too weak to adequately survive. The main brunt ofbat would have to be dealt with by the Collector until then.


    Thus, the Collector calcted it would have to take frequent breaks to meditate its magical energy back while it traveled.


    Estimated time of arrival to cross the Rift: three days.


    Yet, far more preferable to a ground force that would take over a month otherwise to cross it.


    The Collector spotted the swarm on the ground andnded in front of them, sting out snow and ice on itsnding zone and causing the swarm to stop.


    "What did you see, Sovnar?" said Goromir.


    "The mountains are too expansive for your current movement capabilities to adequately cross in reasonable time," said the Collector. "All of you will now engage in aerial transportation through application of my magical energy."


    "We will get to fly! I have always wanted to fly!" said Thokk with a beaming smile. He calmed himself after he realized the rest of the swarm did not share his exuberance. "Of course, Sovnar. I am ready to fly by your side."


    "I will transport all of you upon one tform of ice," said the Collector. "In the case that you are attacked or fall off, hold your light des, for it is through those I may lift you back up if I am capable. The nature of threats in the mountain ranges are not severe, but they are strong enough that they will pose significant challenge to you."

 Chapter 160 - Flight

    "We will fight anyone, anything for the Sovnar!" said Thokk with unbridled enthusiasm. He was almost giddy to try and see what flying in the air was like.


    "Sovnar, unlike yourself, we cannot fly," said Goromir. "It will be difficult to aid you in the air. Nor even realistically to defend ourselves if flying monsters beset us with attacks."


    "That is understandable and ounted for," said the Collector. "The tform of ice utilized to transport you will be shielded by my Sapian magic in the case that extreme difficulties arise. None of you will fight unless my attention ispletely taken by unforeseen circumstance.


    This is not an under evaluation of yourbative capabilities. Rather, as the one known as Goromir states, it is due to the fact that there you are currently unsuited to aerialbat and due to the fact that the weather conditions on the mountains are considerably more frigid.


    The Alpha Amorak specimen can weather it, but you goblin specimen must spend approximately thirty five hours to adjust to the temperatures."


    The Collector clicked its mandibles as it hovered its hands forward, its palms open as purple magical energy began to radiate out from them. "None of you will attempt unprompted attacks. Focus merely on survival and staying upon the transportation tform. The transportation process will take approximately three days.


    During this time, there will be strategically ced ten resting points to charge my magical energy reserves. In these times, the tform will be grounded and you will have the duty to guard me. Then, may you fight.


    Is this agreeable?"


    "Of course," said Goromir.


    Kandak grunted in agreement.


    "Always ready to protect Sovnar," said Thokk with a beat of his chest.


    The goblin swarm joined in with their own grunts of agreement, and the Amorak Alpha growled lowly to indicate agreement.


    "Agreeable, then," said the Collector. "Then it is time to move."


    The Collector closed its four fists, and the earth began to tremble. Snow atop the ground shuddered, osciting and hovering in mid-air as Sapian force began to form a circr outline around the swarm. The deep, rumbling cracking of shattered earth echoed through the air as the Collector''s Sapia carved out a tform capable of fitting all of the swarmfortably.


    The Collector flew up in the air, and as it did so, the tform arose off the earth. Slowly, tentatively, at first, snow and ice spilling off its edges. The goblins murmured among themselves as they felt the earth underneath them shake and raise them into the air.


    Soon enough, the goblins were all gathered around the edges of their circr tform, pointing down and gawking at the enormous crater left behind from the tform''s raising.


    "I will move fast," said the Collector. "Return to the center of the tform and dig in with the best of your bnce. I will provide minor Sapian shielding to prevent individuals from spilling over from excessive gravitational forces, but I expect you all to adapt soon enough."


    With the Collector''smand, the goblins returned to the center of the tform, but they mostly gazed around themselves, at the novelty of hovering in the air, at seeing the ground beneath them ¨C ground that they had never left in all their lives - slowly start to shrink.


    Only Goromir, Kandak, and the Alpha were serious in anchoring themselves, with the twin elites using their light des as picks and the Alpha digging itsrge ws into the tform.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles and determined they would learn from experience.


    With a massive re of magical energy that emitted a concussive shockwave, the Collector shot forwards like a red-wreathed bullet, and the Sapia tethered tform followed rapidly behind it.


    The Collector did not move at maximal speeds significantly exceeding the speed of sound, but it did move fast enough where on the tform, the average uplifted champion would perceive everything as a dizzying blur.


    The Collector rapidly covered hundreds of meters of altitude within seconds, and the goblins groaned and grunted as they tumbled around, hitting the Sapia barrier and scrambling to try and bnce themselves.


    When the Collector was high up in the air, right beneath the cover of clouds, it stopped, giving the goblins a chance to properly bnce themselves now that they understood its necessity.


    The goblins took a moment to stop their dizzying before they followed their elites, digging their des into the tform and holding on for dear life.


    Thokk, however, unlike the rest, dug his light des in at the very edge of the tform, still wanting to look down with unbridled curiosity. Likely, the Collector determined, because the specimen had been ascended into an elite when it was essentially a child in its maturity stage, retaining some characteristics of that stage of growth.


    "Amazing!" shouted Thokk as he peered over, eyes widening as he looked at the vast wide world beneath him. "Up so high, everything seems so small! The air is so fresh! This must be how the birds feel!"


    Thokk''s enthusiasm leeched to the others, and the Collector sensed desire from the rest of the swarm to look down as well.


    The Collector spoke. "I will stop for thirty seconds. You may utilize this time to perceive the environment below. Sate your curiosities, for I sense this will allow you to better focus on future objectives."


    The goblins nodded and went to the edge, peering down now that they were hundreds of meters up.


    Goromir, Kandak, and the Alpha did not move, however.


    "I have flown before," said Goromir as he noted the Collector''s gaze. "Upon the back of a Winged Tendril. A wriggling, snakey leech beast with scaley wings. They were amon mount in our time, though Kandak here was a little too fat to ride them well."


    "Not fat. Muscr. Not skin and bone like you," said Kandak. "And there was no point in me riding in the air. I fought on the ground. Where the battle truly was."


    "Haha! In that regard, I was never far behind you, brother. I just knew when to not get hit," said Goromir.


    "And you?" said the Collector to the Alpha. "You do not possess curiosity of this phenomenon of flight?"


    "I scared of heights," said the four-meter-tall ball of muscle that was the Alpha as it shivered with its tail between its legs.


    "You will be conditioned against this fear soon enough," said the Collector. "It will simply take time."


    The Collector waited out thirty seconds and projected its intent and, for good measure, voiced itself as well. "Return to your positions and brace yourselves."


    The goblin swarm did so, even Thokk returning to the center now that his curiosity was a little more satisfied.


    Once everyone was in position, the Collector sped forwards again, and the tform followed right behind it, a purple line tethering it to the Collector''s tail.


    The Collector moved with expert agility across the mountain scape. It was aplicated ce to maneuver, for though there were twenty five mountains, they possessed multiple peaks and heads of varying heights from cier growths.


    Many of these reached above cloud cover, and so the Collector had to spin, swerve, and rotate around to dodge around them. It ounted further for the tform behind it, but even with its calctions, it could not guarantee afortable ride to those on top, and many times, the goblins were left dangling upside down, holding onto the tform from their lightde picks for dear life.


    After one hour, the Collector stopped and entered its first resting point for it had reached 40% of its magical energy reserves,rgely from having expended them before. From this point onwards, it would only ever reduce down to 70%.


    Itnded the tform at the base of a pristine white cier, beside a cave that the swarm could clear out and use for shelter as snap freezes could ur that would instantly ce the swarm under cryostasis.


    There was arge basin of water funneling down from the cier, and it sparkled with an azure glow.


    There was no fall of grain here, simply an ever-present fog that was just as dense with primal energy.


    Every part of thisnd was supercharged with magical energy, the Collector noted.


    The goblin swarm would grow incredibly strong here if they persisted and survived.


    "Scout the cave and report any anomalies," said the Collector to the mass of dizzied and stumbling goblins as they oriented themselves on t ground. "This environment will be harsh to your kind as you adapt. The air will be too thin. The magical energy charged in the atmosphere may cause some of your spirit roots to overload, causing blood vessel rupturing.


    I will ensure these wounds are not fatal. With consistent exposure, you will begin to absorb the power in this area and adapt to its strength level. Simply survive until then."


    The Alpha was the first to leap off the tform, pawing the solid ground on all fours with a relieved sigh.


    "Understood, Sovnar," said Goromir. He hopped off the tform with Thokk and Kandak and waved everyone else down. "You heard the Sovnar! Get a grip of yourselves and move!"


    The goblin swarm groaned and followed themand, tumbling off of the tform in varying states of disorientation.


    "I will charge my magical energy here," stated the Collector. "As my magical energy reserves have grown tremendously, the rate of my energy recharge has not scaled up to it. Thus, it will take some time to fully restore my reserves.


    The exact amount of time, I must constantly calibrate as I investigate more efficient means of restoration. But an estimation would be five hours with a margin of error of thirty minutes."

 Chapter 161 - Cavern Investigation

    "Five¡­five hours?" came some protests from the goblin champions.


    The Collector peered at them and saw as the champions hunched over, some falling down to their knees. Many of them clutched at their chests, some of their deep blue eyes became even darker, the blue blood vessels lining them bing more prominent as blood flow elerated dangerously.


    This was not due to the effects of the Collector''s rapid airborne travel. Rather, this was because the champions did not possess adequately strong enough bodies to handle the very air they breathed. The environment here was heavily charged with magical energy, and the density of primal energy was such that it manifested harmful effects.


    Some of the champions began to cough blood due to internal bleeding, and two passed out. This was also one of the reasons why the Collector had not decided to bring the elder specimen with it here, for the elder with its uniquely weak constitution would have fared drastically worse in this environment.


    "The five hours includes the continued mana I must expend in order to fuel your bodies'' regenerative properties, reducing the bodily difort you suffer as you adapt to this new biome," said the Collector.


    "Noints, all of you," said Goromir. "The Sovnar sacrifices much to keep us alive. And have you no pride as peoples of the blood of Gob? We will adapt to this just as our kind has adapted to forests and deserts alike.


    And when we have adapted, we wille out of this much, much stronger."


    "For the first two recharge stops," said the Collector. "I will maintain a minor Sapian shielding field in a small area within the tform. Here, you will not be exposed as drastically to the environment. Utilize this area if you believe your condition too deteriorated, but utilize it sparingly, for I have calcted that the more direct exposure you face, the faster your blood will evolve and adapt."


    Some of the champions eyed the circr room of shielded purple energy on the tform with temptation.


    "We are strong, no?!" shouted Thokk as he saw their eyes. "Then why surrender so soon?" Thokk raised one finger. "One hour. Hold for one hour. Goromir, Kandak, and I will hunt for food and bring it back. You can have most of it. If you hold out for one hour."


    The Collector noted that the three elites were not adversely affected by this biome nearly at all. They certainly strained to some degree, their blood vessels building under their skin, but they were maintaining themselves iparably better than their lesser champion brethren.


    They would adapt sooner and better. In one day, the Collector estimated. The champions between two to three days.


    "Within ten hours, you champion specimens should have adapted enough to function at fifty five percent efficiency. Five percent margin of error. Above fifty percent efficiency, you will not suffer direct bodily harm, merely some level of mental and physical difort."


    "See that? Twelve hours. All it takes," said Thokk as he beat his chest, rousing some confidence into the goblins. "We suffered cold and hurt for days and days back when we were smaller and weaker. When the storm came and we got lost.


    And we can''t take some hurt now? Come on, I will hunt with the twins, and the meat will make us all feel better."


    "Huh? When did we get roped into this hunting mission?" said Goromir.


    "I do not mind." Kandak spoke. "Eager to test my new powers. I want to kill something."


    "Oh, brother, sometimes you do worry me with your murderous tendencies," said Goromir. He turned to the Alpha Amorak. "Will you join us, Amorak?"


    The Alpha grunted. "My name is Loktal."


    "Then, Loktal, my invitation still stands," said Goromir. "Of course, you may stay here as you wish."


    "I will go," said Loktal. "Make myself useful for the Alpha. But be careful. I smell some of the Old Kin here."


    "Old Kin?" queried Goromir.


    "My kind descends from these mountains," said Loktal as his white nostrils red, taking in scent around him. "We wererger and stronger but did not have packs. Alone. I have much of the Old Kin blood in me, so I know their scent.


    An Old Kin is as strong as I am. The greater ones much more so."


    "Then now you have toe with us. That nose of yours will lead the way for us," said Goromir. "These are strangends for us. It will be good to have one that knows of its ways by us."


    "This ''Old Kin'' of yours are also known as Primal Amoraks," said the Collector. "So ssified due to an abundance of primal energy infusing their bodies. They are wilder, more savage, and more attuned to a solitary, bestial nature as the Amorak known as ''Loktal'' states.


    Their threat level is considerably high, but with your purifying light des, you will be capable of defeating one. This, I have assessed from a calction derived by ughtering one of them."


    "You¡­you killed one of the Old Kin? With no wounds upon yourself?" said the Alpha in visible surprise, his fanged jaws slightly agape.


    "Do not be surprised by the Sovnar," said Thokk. "He is strong, knows much, and does much. You will get tired of being surprised soon enough like this."


    "That, I agree with," said Goromir. "Now then, Loktal, let us go hunting!"


    Loktal grunted out an agreement.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles and drew their attention. "The cavern that lies beside the water basin before us. Hunt in there so that you may investigate its depths. I have identified that all of these caverns lead into the depths of these mountains, and each individual mountain held a dungeon within it.


    Yet, all but two of these dungeons, including this one, has been cleared of their magical energy. Investigate this.


    If there are any specimens, objects, or environmental markers that are also of note worth, ry them to me immediately.


    For this specific mission, I will be utilizing a greater degree of mental ess to the Carrier Unit, linking my ocr systems with his own vision."


    "Got it, Sovnar," said Thokk. "Anything I see, you will also see."


    "Agreeable, then," said the Collector. "As I will be monitoring you directly, you need not signal for assistance unless you determine it absolutely necessary. If it is such that I observe that enough threat faces you, then I will move of my own ord.


    Now go."

 Chapter 162 - Remote Dungeon Dive

    The Collector began its mana recharging meditation, drawing into a still pose upon the icy snow. The goblin swarm had retreated into the shelter of the cavern for a snap freeze had floated its way over the location.


    The freeze manifested in the form of a thick, condensed fog of white that washed over with howling, raging winds,pletely neutralizing visibility and rapidly introducing temperatures so low that they neared dangerously close to the point of absolute zero itself.


    The Collector itself instantly iced over when a freeze like this passed over, ice instantly forming around it in clustered chunks, but that did not damage its vitals at all for the Collector maintained a measured Flow of mana within itself that kept its bodily functions continuing.


    In fact, the ice even formed somewhat of an instingyer around it, and the highly magically charged air of the freeze leeched in even further into the Collector through the ice.


    By bing encased in ice while its pores were open and dedicated to funneling in magical energy, the Collector increased its magical energy regeneration. The only downside of course was that it was obviously trapped in ice, and indeed, had an ordinary specimen such as a tinkerer seen the Collector as it was now, they would have thought the Collector expired, perished in a tomb of ice.


    But the Collector was fully conscious within and could simply surge out its magical energy to break itself free at any given moment of time.


    While encased inside itsyer of meditative ice, the Collector watched the movements of the carrier unit and his hunting party.


    The first part of the carrier unit''s foray into the cavern had been uneventful. The cavern itself was empty, though the Amorak Alpha known as ''Loktal'' had noted that there was the faint scent of a Primal Amorak. However, the scent was so faint that the Alpha had determined that quite likely, the Primal Amorak had left the area long ago.


    This left the initial cavern a perfect resting ce for the goblins and allowed them shelter against waves of snap freezes.


    The cavern funneled downwards, and the further inside, the warmer it became, with the structure ending with a pool of clear, glowing cyan water. This water had incredible healing properties, allowing the goblin swarm to drink of it and maintain themselves far better over time.


    The water also was tinged with warp energies, and when the carrier unit and his group had entered them, they were transported down to the firstyer of the mountain''s dungeon. Here, the carrier unit found himself traveling through long, winding pathways of ice-studded rock.


    The Collector transmitted mental directions to the carrier unit, for the Collector could perceive where the primal energies of thend congregated towards its heart.


    The firstyer of the dungeon was one littered with ciated Serpents that lived in these mountains. The serpents would lie dormant on the ground, attached to walls, or stuck on ceilings, their white, icy scales camouged in the environment.


    When the elites approached a dormant serpent, it would be active and aim its eyeless, angr head towards them and fire a bolt of bright blue energy.


    This bolt was exceedingly dangerous, capable of immediately freezing an entire limb,pletely destroying it at the cellr level by rupturing every individualponent with an outburst of ice crystals. In essence, the opposite of the Breath of Life''s restorative ice crystals.


    The carrier unit had lost an arm to an ambush like this and had been forced to shatter the limb, with the Collector immediately restoring it with a minor input of magical energy. However, the serpents were not difficult to kill for they possessed high levels of primal energy with weakparative physical bodies.


    Thus, the elites made short work of them with their purifying lightdes, turning the serpents into exploded, fiery chunks. From then onwards, the Amorak Alpha focused its scent on detecting the serpents, for after it had taken in the scent of one fallen serpent, it couldmit it to its memory.


    There were no traps in thisyer, only arger cavern to which all the paths fed out into. Evidently, judged by its arena-esqueyout encircled with towering, spike-like ice crystals, something of a secondary boss room.


    Here, the elites encountered their first major hurdle.


    ==


    Thokk held on to his purifying lightde.


    Unlike Goromir who preferred twin daggers and Kandak who used a spiked club, he wielded a longsword. This, he had requested from the Sovnar for the Sovnar was also a master of artistry and crafting things.


    Thokk had seen an adventurer''s sword a long time ago, when he was still a small goblin, and he had thought it was such a wonderful and new thing, and he had asked the Sovnar to replicate it. He talked about how the de looked so smoothly carved, how there were fancy fire patterns on the crossguard, and how the handle looked so sleek to hold.


    The Sovnar had replicated all of these requests perfectly, giving Thokk a long sword that any tinkering smith would have marveled at due to not only the artistry of the mes rendered along its cross-guard but also how well it was bnced and structured, as if forged for sheer efficiency.


    With this sword, Thokk would never let the Sovnar down. He watched as a massive wolf man thing attacked Kandak. The wolf man, a Primal Amorak as the Sovnar had said, was terribly strong, beingrger than Loktal by only a little bit but somehow being so much stronger and faster.


    At first, when Thokk and the rest had entered this boss area, they had seen the Primal Amorak nearby arge pool of healing water at the area''s end,pping at it to tend to a severed arm. Upon sensing them, the Primal Amorak had reacted with immediate hostility, and it moved with such speed that Thokk had trouble perceiving it.


    The booming sound of the Primal Amorak''s audible heartbeat echoed throughout the cavern. All of its veins bulged out from under its skin and through its fur, and steam simmered around it in a hot aura as it moved with savage ferocity.


    The Primal Amorak had run circles around them in this state until Loktal had entered a simr one, also making his heart beat louder to make himself stronger. Loktal had managed to tackle the Primal Amorak down before being flung away, but this was enough time for Kandak to toss his club away and grapple the Primal Amorak.


    Thokk was six meters away from Kandak as he roared with his arms encircled around the Primal Amorak''s waist. Golden energy surged around Kandak''s heavily armored, carapaced body, concentrating especially on his hands as they dug into the Primal Amorak''s back, at the center of the monster''s gravity to try and control it.


    The ground under Kandak shattered as the Primal Amorak roared and struggled shing at Kandak''s exposed but armored back. Sparks skittered off Kandak''s back carapace as the Primal Amorak cut into it with its one remaining arm.


    Thokk took a step forwards, but he did not run forwards to strike with his lightde longsword, trying to find an opening to strike, but the Primal Amorak''s reddened eyes were also keenly aware of Thokk and Loktal, ready to counter them.

 Chapter 163 - Primal Amoraks End

    Thokk heard Kandak''s deep, booming voice ward him away, and he stood there helplessly, the blood vessels on his two hands bulging as he clenched the handle of his lightde longsword.


    Why was he so useless? Why could he not attack?


    Kandak continued to roar as he wrestled with the Primal Amorak. He was not utilizing Goromir''s swift and agile Gobeira movements, and at first nce, it would seem like he was simply using brute force, but in reality, there was a massive host of technical applications involved in his wrestling that made it just aspetent and deep as Gobeira.


    By cing his hands at the back of the Primal Amorak''s waist, Kandak could exert force directly on the Amorak''s center of bnce. Kandak''s stance was wide, with his two feet apart and deeply rooted into the ground of the dungeon that now cracked and split apart under force.


    With the center of bnce controlled, Kandak could sense, roughly, how the Amorak was going to move based on shifts in its bnce. Thus, whenever the Amorak went for a swipe with its one remaining left arm, Kandak knew to push to the right against it or push into the Amorak, making the swipe miss or cut half as deeply as it should have.


    Whenever the Amorak reached down to snap at Kandak''s head, he could sense this too, and ducked his head and lowered his center of gravity, bending at the knees while he surged forwards, attempting a takedown to the ground.


    The Primal Amorak, however, though it had no martial techniques, was incredibly fast, incredibly strong, and incredibly reflexive, and no takedown attempts worked on it before it righted its bnce. However, though Kandak''s spiked armor was not sharp enough to easily cut into the thick, shaggy fur of the Primal Amorak, but it did prevent the beast from attacking too deeply.


    If this was solely a war of attrition, Kandak likely would have won, for his stamina was infinitely refreshed by the Sovnar''s magic, but the Primal Amorak was simply stronger than Kandak, ever so slowly pushing Kandak back, etching out deeper and deeper cuts into his carapace armor, and jaws reaching dangerous close to the goblin elite''s neck on more than one asion.


    Seeing this, Thokk had nothing but praise for Kandak. Gobeira avoided pain and unleashed it. It was fast and elegant.


    This¡­this was brutal. This was might against might over an excruciatingly long period of time.


    The willpower it took to engage in this kind of fight was truly astounding.


    But that made Thokk all the more aware of how useless he felt. He was here only for a finishing blow, because he was weak and inexperienced enough that he was a liability if anything went wrong.


    Still, he had to wait. Wait for the n Goromir had etched out at the beginning of the fight.


    "Loktal!" shouted Kandak as he finally made some ground. He had seen an opening when the Primal Amorak had reared back his hand, balling it into a fist to try and apply crushing force. The fist went down, but the moment it did, Kandak had broken his grapple and grabbed the fist and twisted and locked it in two of his own arms, hyper-extending it to the joint''s limit of motion range.


    This movement also brought the Primal Amorak down to his knees from the sudden pull at his arm as his power was used against him.


    Loktal was circling around the two on all fours, his crystal blue eyes gleaming bright as his lips curled up to bare a snarl. His fur was now tinted red as his heartbeat explosively boomed through the air, matching in harmony with the Primal Amorak''s deeper, louder heartbeats.


    Upon hearing Kandak''s signal, Loktal leaped on the Primal Amorak''s back and bit its neck before pulling backwards, preventing the Primal Amorak from reaching forwards and biting Kandak''s arm or head off.


    At this moment, now that the Primal Amorak was immobilized from both ends, Goromir''s six back spines emerged from the ground, piercing into the Primal Amorak''s legs and chest. However, not deep enough. The Primal Amorak''s thick fur and incredibly durable muscles made any prating force difficult, but this was enough to wound it and bare its flesh.


    "Thokk!" came Kandak''s cry.


    Thokk surged forwards with all his speed and might, unleashing a battle cry that rung throughout the cavern as he mmed his gleaming golden longsword into one of the shallow cuts that Goromir''s spines had etched out.


    The longsword sunk only a few inches into the Primal Amorak''s chest as it realized what was happening and tensed up the muscles of the impact area with mana in the form of a [Guard]. However, even just a few inches was enough.


    The purifying lightde unleashed its devastating effects upon those with highly charged primal energies in quick course. The flesh around the Primal Amorak''s chest lit up a bright, molten orange before starting to swell up like a balloon.


    "Away! Away!" Kandak broke his hold on the Amorak''s arm and leaped away, as did Loktal and Thokk.


    The Primal Amorak was left clutching at his chest and snarling in confusing. The engorged, highly visible and bright red blood vessels that spread mana and blood all across his body at massively enhanced rates worked against him, circting the purifying light within him, lighting up every vessel in gold.


    The Primal Amorak turned off his enhanced heartbeat, but far toote. His entire body started to grow molten orange, swell and distend, and then multiple explosions blew out from various points in his body. The beast went down to his knees with one final snarl before his body exploded from within, scattering chunks of charred flesh in every direction.


    Goromir unburrowed from the ground, popping up in the air andnding on his two feet. He left a neat, circr, Goromir-sized hole where he had been.


    "Good job, everyone," said Goromir. "That was executed wlessly."

 Chapter 164 - Old Gods

    "All you did was stay underground," said Kandak. As usual, his voice was rather emotionless and gruff, so it was difficult to tell whether he was bantering or criticizing.


    "Haha! I merely acknowledge that you are the best at bruting your way into fights and holding things in ce, brother," said Goromir. "You did well, Loktal, and you too, Thokk."


    "I did nothing," said Thokk. "But strike the final blow."


    "And without you to strike it, we would have had a far longer, far more grueling battle," said Goromir. "Your role in this battle was as integral as any of ours was."


    "Really?" asked Thokk. "Even though all I do was hit at thest moment?"


    Goromir smiled and nodded. "Of course! You think too little of yourself, young one. Had you notnded that precise strike, the mighty beast would have broken free of us, and then our n would have copsed upon itself."


    "Guess that makes me feel a little better," said Thokk.


    "No, you should feel more than better. We have just triumphed over a mighty foe," said Goromir. He gazed at Loktal, at how the Amorak stared at the charred chunks of what must have been a creature somewhat rted to him. "I am sorry if you felt any connection to him."


    "None at all," said Loktal. "It has been close to five hundred years since my kind broke off from the Old Kin. I merely wonder why he was so savage. So feral. He was not undead, but he would not speak to me. Our tongues are still the same, ordained to us by Amorakius."


    "Amorakius?" asked Goromir.


    "Our god. The Old Wolf. He is said to reside here, and from him, all wolven kind descend," said Loktal.


    "A¡­a god?" said Thokk. "We will have to face a god?"


    "Not exactly," said Goromir. "The gods you know, the Twelve of the Protectorate, the Four Gatekepeers, and the Ascended are New Gods. Gods that came upon this world from afar or their descendants. What Loktal speaks of is an Old God.


    Gods derived from the world. By nature itself. The one we mention as Gob was also an Old God.


    Of Amorakius, I am somewhat familiar, though I thought him slumbering or in by the New Gods."


    "That is true to my knowledge," said Loktal. "But Amorakius was not killed. At the least, he was alive five hundred years past, when our peoples split.


    The New Gods purged many of the Old, but the Old Gods of the Northrgely escaped their wrath for Common flesh dares not intrude on this harshnd."


    "Then your god is still here? Alive?" said Goromir. "As are all the Old Gods of thisnd?"


    "Not here, exactly. Simply in the Rift, or perhaps beyond, I know not." Loktal shrugged. "From what our shamans tell, Amorakius entered a deep sleep from which there was no waking.


    As did most of the Old Gods of the North. Many of them waiting for an age without the New Gods or, as some said, to awaken and face the New Gods in final battle. That was one event that our shamans were fond of speaking about.


    The end of the New Gods. The Eternal Winter where Grain falls upon the world and drives away the New to bring back the Old once more. The Fimbulvintr."


    Loktal twisted his head from side to side. "Just stories of course. Those of us that split from the Old Kin so long ago knew that the Old Gods were never waking.


    But if Amorakius was asleep, his whispers should still reach the Old Kin here, for the Old Kin are closest to Amorakius, able to divine his words and intent through their dreams. They should know our tongue, our existence, and at least try to be friendly with us.


    This one was utterly savage and feral. No better than a normal beast."


    "That is odd indeed," said Goromir. "I should guess that your kind here have lost the guidance of their god, but then does that mean he has been killed? What possibly could fell the might of an Old God? To even find the Old God in the first ce?"


    The question hung in the air for several seconds as the goblins and Loktal attempted to piece together what could have possibly killed an Old God or even found one.


    For Goromir knew well the might of an Old God. All seven of the Titans of old were Old Gods that had been uplifted even further by the world''s will, and theirbined might was enough to greatly threaten the entirety of the New Gods and the stability of all the realms.


    But a powerful Old God was immensely strong, embodying a environmental aspect or natural force that made them nigh untouchable to any ordinary being. Yet, there was arge range of Old Gods, and their power was variable.


    Some Old Gods held power over just one forest, or perhaps were the guardians of ake. They were not all kingdom ending threats. Of Amorakius, Goromir knew not too much, for he was no schr nor had he ever had assignments to this area.


    Still, even the weakest Old God was more than capable of decimating the vast majority of beings.


    If Goromir had to roughly guess, he would have put the Sovnar on the low to mid end of the Old God power spectrum, though again, he was no expert, and he knew that the Sovnar had infinite potential for growth.


    "We must still fulfill the Sovnar''s will," said Goromir. "And explore this dungeon more, for direct danger, we are yet to face."


    "Right," said Thokk as he took a step forwards before freezing, his expression turning nk, then concerned.


    "What is it?" said Goromir.


    "The Sovnar¡­the Sovnar tells us that the rest of the swarm ising towards us. That we should guard them here."


    "Guard them? What?" Goromir cocked his head.


    "The Sovnar faces a threat. A great one."

 Chapter 165 - Tale Of A Legend

    ==


    In the realm of Xia, there stand tall three great countries across three major continents.


    The first of thesends is known as Hono.


    A fierce, chaotd known for its towering ranges of rumbling volcanoes, its frequent earthquakes, and its crystal clear, soothing hot springs and geysers said to be able to cure any illness.


    The me winged, feathered Karasi upied thisnd, their hearts filled with fire and drive to match the world around them.


    The second of thesends was known as Shui.


    A calmer continent half-submerged in water and marked by inds that floated atop water and air alike, great waterfalls in the sky crashing down upon gentle grasses and marshy forests.


    Here, the scale crowned Yinlong lived, swimming through their vast waters with elegance and poise.


    The third continent was far iner than the others. A vast stretch of earth, towering mountain ranges, and savannah. These mountains of thisnd were said to house old spirits, having wills of their own, moving and colliding with each other.


    Upon this rockynd lived the Hwara, a stripe-furred people with tough andrge bodies.


    Among all the realms of the Common Body, there was one nigh indisputable fact.


    If one wanted to learn Martial Arts, they took a pilgrimage to Xia, for each of its three peoples had cultivated and developed various fighting styles honed to perfection over millennia, far before even the descent of the New Gods.


    Countless schools of martial arts thrived in Xia, and with the right dedication and effort, one was bound invariably to find a school that suited them. If a warrior''s mana affinity was painted in raging Chaos, many Karasi schools could allow them hone and channel their explosive power to great benefit.


    If a warrior''s mana affinity was that of Flow, then the Yinlong were masters of utilizing their bodies to flow with all the grace and efficiency of the ebbing and flowing tides that guided them.


    If a warrior''s mana affinity was that of the Root, bound to either strict offense or defense, then the Hwara knew best the ways to manipte such straightforward mana affinities with their simple but brutal training.


    There even were expert schools of healing for the rare few that possessed the Unity affinity.


    Countless martial geniuses have risen from Xia, many of them bing high profile Adventurers, though just as many chose to pursue paths of personal strength, only ever teaching Adventurers and never truly going into that way of life.


    For that was what martial arts were to them - a way of life. A way of being. Both a tool to utilize and a philosophy to behold themselves to.


    Yet martial arts has always been a way tied inextricably with notions of strength, and is it not inmon nature to desire to see who is strongest?


    Thus, routine tournaments were held across Xia, countless schools from each of the three continents pitting their best and finest to see who truly stood at the top. The best schools earned great praise from their respective rulers, earning both coin and political support.


    Among these tournaments, the greatest was the Tournament of Three Paths where each continent sent their finest representatives.


    Adventurers and outsiders were also allowed here provided they fought only with their fists in the unarmed category or dedicated weapon in the armed category, for this tournament was to prove who was the mightiest with their martial ways.


    With the advent of the New Gods, those that were recognized in the Tournament of Three Paths were also often offered the chance for Ascension, bing lesser divinities joining the halls of Aetheria as guardians of all the realms.


    Every ten years, the Tournament of Three Paths was held.


    In 1550, the Tournament of Three Paths was halted for the first time in seven centuries due to the Red Night and the attack of Kinthas, the Mad King, and the Daemons and Vampyrs across the realms.


    Now, in the year of 1560, the Tournament of Three Paths was to be held once more, and great excitement buzzed around it, not only because of the tournament''s return, but because all three continents, no, all realms of the Common Body wished to see who would win and potentially ovee the legacy of the previous winner.


    The winner of 1540. And 1530. And 1520. And 1510.


    For the winner of each of those four decades was just one Yinlong.


    Li Kui of Shui, the former head of the now abolished school of unarmed martial arts known as the Guiding Current.


    There was not a single martial artist alive throughout every single realm that did not know of the legend of Li Kui.


    Li Kui the Gentle Wave, so called for he ensured that with his throws, none ever died, for he did not believe in taking life.


    The Tournament of Three Paths, and indeed, most of the tournaments below it did not rule against killing one''s opponent, but Li Kui alone possessed an undefeated record of over 1000 fights with no losses and not a single opponent killed.


    Seriously injured, yes, but killed? Never.


    Not a single martial artist in the one thousand five hundred years of recorded history since the arrival of the New Gods and the Convergence, when all realms were linked, had ever replicated Li Kui''s record.


    Especially not in the way that he did.


    The only time Li Kui ever struggled was in hisst tournament of 1540, when he faced against the Hwaran prodigy Ryu-Ja whose single blows could shatter entire mountains.


    Bute to thend of Xia, especially to the water wreathednd of Shui, and ask of Li Kui.


    You will be asked to keep your voice down. To not speak of such a name so openly. If you are a foreigner from another realm, then perhaps the Imperial Peacekeepers will forgive you for your ignorance and only berate you.


    For there is not a single Yinlong that has taken the lives of so many of his own as Li Kui.


    None know why it happened. How it happened. Merely that it did.


    Li Kui the Gentle Wave entering the grounds of school after school and throwing every single fighter that came his way. And this time, his throws were not held back. They shattered spines. They broke necks. They turned bodies into puddles of unrecognizable blood and flesh.


    His blows copsed school buildings until one hundred schools had fallen under his limbs.


    His rampage did not end there. He killed every single Imperial Peacekeeper that came his way and set his sights upon the Imperial Pce where the Azure Emperor ruled.


    The Adventurer''s League branded him as a Monster, emunicating him from the Common Body, and so came waves upon waves of Adventurers to halt him as he made his way directly to the Imperial Pce.


    First, five-star adventurers that died like flies.


    Six-star adventurers that died like cockroaches.


    Seven-star adventurers that died like cattle.


    Finally, it was Xie Zhen, nine-star representative of Xia for the Adventurer''s League High Council and one of the undisputed strongest across all of the realms, his swordy reaching the level of the major gods themselves, that halted Li Kui''s advance.


    None knows what happened exactly to Li Kui, for Xie Zhen refuses to give his ount of the legendary battle, but it is presumed the mad warrior was felled.


    But the carnage had been done.


    At the end of Li Kui''s five-day rampage, he had reached up to the gates of the Imperial Pce. His warpath hadid waste to one hundred and eight schools of martial arts and the death of over a thousand warriors.


    And that is how Li Kui the Gentle Wave became known now to be Li Kui the ughtering Storm.


    -An excerpt from the Compiled Histories of Martial Arts in Xia by Lim Shin-Ha

 Chapter 166 - The Challenge

    The Collector shattered itself free from the ice encasing it, red curls of magical energy flickering from its ashen white body as they forcibly broke apart remaining chunks of ice stuck in carapace crevices. It checked its mana reserves.


    It was operating currently at 55% of its total mana, having restored 15% over the past hour. This was not at all the 70% threshold the Collector wished to be at for any altercation with a powerful being.


    And this being, this tinkerer, was powerful.


    The Collector could sense it with utter ease.


    The tinkerer standing before the Collector was tall for an average tinkerer, standing at slightly over two meters tall with a wide, stocky build padded with muscle.


    He was of the same tinkering variant as the Undead adventurer had been with pointed ears and blue scales framing his forehead.


    Some differences, however. Aside from possessing a sturdier build, this specimen seemed to possess more reptilian features. His blue scales were more prominent and grew also on his chin, framing it with a roughly sharp edge. Scales grew on his hands and feet. His tail was thicker and more muscr.


    Waves of thick, unkempt ck hair speckled with strands of aging white flowed from the tinkerer''s head and reached down to his shoulders in a shaggy curtain. His slit pupiled, deep blue eyes were sunken in with dark bags and deep crease-like wrinkles under them.


    The tinkerer wore flowing, pale blue robes simr in design to that worn by the Undead adventurer, though the material was far superior, beingposed of a pliable ice not dissimr to Everfrost but much sturdier and much more flexible than it.


    The tinkerer was not armed, nor even equipped with anything.


    No essory to hold tools with nor to carry supplies in. He was barefoot and his robes were not at all adequate enough to protect him from the elements.


    Yet, the tinkerer waspletely fine. Even here in this wintry waste so cold that the breath of life uplifted goblin champions had difficulty adapting to it.


    The tinkerer''s magical energy was absolutely hidden, obscuring his presence also and allowing him to reach the Collector unawares.


    The Collector sensed that the specimen was strong not because of his magical energy, for it was hidden, but because for a tinkerer to be here, to be unaffected by this environment and in good health indicated a vast amount of strength.


    Even more so than an ordinary beast, for a tinkerer here would have to rely solely upon their own internal might due to the projection of their mana being thoroughly blocked.


    "In all my meditation, I have never seen anyone like you. But I can tell you are blessed. What manner of creature are you, exactly?" said the tinkerer. His demeanor waspletely calm with arms hanging limp to his sides, though ready to be raised at a moment''s notice. His eyes were almost dead in their stillness andck of expression.


    "A being of evolutionary merit unsurpassed upon this world," said the Collector. "Not a mere ''creature''."


    "Hoh¡­is that so?" said the tinkerer as stared at the Collector with unexpressive eyes and deadpan voice.


    "I do not sense hostility from you," stated the Collector.


    "No," agreed the tinkerer simply.


    "And yet, it cannot be that I can allow a tinkerer affiliated with the ''Common Body'' to return and inform them of my presence," said the Collector.


    "So, what will you do about it?" said the tinkerer.


    "You must be eliminated," said the Collector. The Collector''s four glowing red eyes honed in on the tinkerer and sensed that an abnormal amount of primal energy was umted within him. At a level far exceeding that any tinkerer could ordinarily take in.


    The Collector estimated the tinkerer''s primal density to be at 50% where the normal tinkerer could not even begin to gain 1%.


    This made the tinkerer even more dangerous, for he could project his mana unhindered, but at the same time, made him an anomaly possibly separate from the broader Common Body of tinkering species.


    "Yet, you are an abnormal specimen," said the Collector. "Possessing of energies that far remove you from tinkerers."


    "That is true," said the tinkerer, and as his lips parted, the Collector could see that the tinkerer possessed sharp, lengthy teeth belonging more to a predator than a tinkerer.


    A standoff began as the Collector stared down the tinkerer, its four arms tensed and ready forbat.


    Finally, the tinkerer said more than a few words. "I am not here to hunt you, creature."


    "Again, I am no mere ''creature''," stated the Collector.


    "Apologies. Then, Strong One, I will say this now. I am not here to hunt you. And to the eyes of the Common Body, I am as much a monster as you are." The tinkerer spread his legs in the snow in a stance, his wide feet digging into the ice and his right hand forward with open palm. "But I do desire to do battle with you."


    "If you are willing to engage in conversation, then tell me this: what is the purpose of this battle?" said the Collector.


    "A test of strength. For that is what I am. One who tests. To test others and myself in battle. I sense that you, too, know what it is like to feel a desire a battle. So, do you ept my challenge?"


    "And in the case that a hypothetical arises wherein I refuse?"


    "I must still test your strength and soul. But I am willing to lend you my aid across the Rift if you ept. For in battle, I may know whether your soul is pure or not.


    If it is pure, then I will guide you across the mountains, for I know its ways well and would not mind a travelingpanion. I will protect also those goblins you lead," said the tinkerer. "There will be no killing in this match, should you ept. Hm.


    Rather, I should say I will not kill you, no matter what. You may try to kill me as you wish. I do not care."

 Chapter 167 - The Trial Of Strength

    "If battle is inevitable, then it is battle you shall have," stated the Collector with equal calm as the tinkerer. "Yet, I shall say now that you should not withhold your strength against me. For doing so may well lead to a lethal end for yourself."


    "An end I have been prepared to meet for the past twenty years. I advise you also to not stay your might, Strong One, for all must be bared within this trial." The tinkerer''s toes curled, digging into the ice as he anchored his stance in. "I, Kui, shall test your worth.


    Nowe at me."


    The tinkerer known as ''Kui'' began to finally project his magical energy. It shimmered around him in thick green aura, indicating his mana affinity was that of Flow.


    The density of the magical energy was intensive, such that it managed to warp the ends of space around the edges of the aura, and yet, the Collector knew this was not the full extent of this tinkerer''s might.


    However, the Collector had precious little information to off of regarding this specimen''s true strength, for he seemed to possess the capacity to regte the flow of his mana to such a fine tuned degree that it was impossible to see any fluctuations that gave hints as to his true power.


    It was impossible to discern whether this was his mana output at 50% of his maximum strength, 70%, or 100%.


    Kui''s breathing was even. His stance solid and firm with no openings. His blue-scaled hand was extended forward, littered with scars and calluses.


    The Collector unsheathed all four of its des with metallic clicks. Two monomolecr, dark grey protein-cased des from its upper two arms and its purifying light des on its lower two arms.


    It had no defined stance, but that made it all the more dangerous, for its wealth of knowledge, bodily coordination, and mana control allowed it to enter any form and stance at a given moment.


    The wind howled between the two.


    One, an alien conqueror that stood at the pinnacle of evolutionary might.


    The other, a fighter of legend whose reputation and might had barely known equal in a thousand years.


    The two did not know this of each other.


    But they each recognized each other as strong, and what did the strong do?


    They fought.


    This, they understood on a deeply primal level.


    From one warrior to another. From fighter to fighter.


    The Collector made the first move.


    Chaos mana fluxed around its body in a raging pir that extended a dozen meters into the sky, blowing away snow, ice, and chunks of rock.


    Then, the Collector surged forwards in an impossibly fast [Dash], engaging its Coilboosters and flight capacities into the movement as well to easily surpass the speed of sound.


    An instantaneous end to the fight was what the Collector desired, aiming its monomolecr des at either of the tinkerer known as ''Kui''s'' arms to sever them, keeping him alive for information.


    ording to the Collector''s calctions, there was no known humanoid on this world yet that could begin to react to this strike.


    Not even the golden winged humanoid. Even the white maned Draconid would find itself hard pressed to easily avoid this strike.


    Yet, in the next second, no, not even a tenth of a second, the Collector found its vision tilting as it was thrown and mmed into the ground at a speed that surpassed its capacity to react.


    The impact of the throw was tremendous, shaking the entire mountain top as if an earthquake had mmed into it.


    Huge fissures cracked outwards from where the Collector etched out a fifty meter wide crater, high geysers of snow erupting around its circumference, upraised from the mere shockwave of the blow.


    Deep rumbles echoed throughout the mountain as the shockwaves traveled down its monumental length, causing multiple avnche to start across several areas down the mountain.


    There had been absolutely no time for the Collector to effectively defend against the blow. It had only been able to put up a reflexive [Guard], utilizing Chaos mana to shield its back to break the fall as much as it could.


    Even then, the damage had been massive.


    The Collector instantly raised itself into the air, levitating with its two red energy wings red out. Cracks lined the entirety of its back carapace, and chunks of ashen hyperalloy carapace fell and pattered on the ice.


    Fractures across multiple vertebrae of the spine. Impact had also torn outrge portions of the spinal muscles. Would significantly hinder mobility.


    Magical energy funneled into the Collector''s back, triggering its Draconid explosive regeneration, immediately healing its wounds as they covered in bright blue mana.


    "Draconic regeneration is it?" said the tinkerer known as Kui. He gazed up at the Collector. "But you are no Draconid. I have killed enough to know by now."


    The Collector did not respond, instead attempting to analyze what had urred. It had been thrown, and from the position at which it hadnded, it determined biomechanically that it likely had been thrown from one of the tinkerer''s arms with the tinkerer slinging the Collector over his head and into the ground.


    But how had the tinkerer generated so much speed? To execute such a series of motions against the Collector without even granting the Collector time to react?


    Because the Collector could not observe the blow either, it could not adequately analyze it.


    The Collector could use its Chronostasis psionic ability to slow down its time perception, but doing so was incredibly risky, leaving its reflexes slowed after usage. Preferably, it would analyze and break down this tinkerer''s martial arts without it.


    For that, the Collector needed more speed.


    The Collector activated its Blood Boost adaptation. The sac containing a potent cocktail of stimting hormones and chemicals by the Collector''s heart pumped the mixture into its heart, directly spreading it throughout its bloodstream.


    This would dramatically raise its reflexes, physical strength, and speed. On top of this, the Collector mmed its chest with its palm, using Higher Calling on itself to mimic the ability of the Amorak to massively elerate their core and cardiovascr functions to further boost its power.


    The Collector''s blood vessels began to bulge as its muscles swelled and engorged with fresh, energy and chemical filled blood. It grewrger, its muscles more pumped, and its heartbeat became highly audible. Superheated steam vented out of its carapace pores, regting its internal temperature.


    "And the Heart Burst of the Amorak?" noted the tinkerer, no, the fighter known as Kui. Yet, despite witnessing a variety of powers from multiple species, he remainedpletely unfazed. "All things I have seen. Surprise me, Strong One, if you can."

 Chapter 168 - A True Battle I

    The Collector''s pliomatter tendrils also swelled up in size as the blood flow and bonus magical energy reached them, and with these, it tested the fighter known as Kui''s capacity to defend against ranged attacks.


    The Collector swiveled to the side while extending forth one of its tendrils, sending out whipping forward in an arc meant to slice the fighter in a perfect forty-five-degree angle down from the shoulder to the waist.


    This attack, too, far surpassed the speed of sound, and by observing at range, the Collector determined it had a higher chance of being able to glean what it was that this fighter was doing.


    Kui reacted withplete ease as he raised his forearm up to block the pliomatter tendril. He stepped backwards, skidding across the snow so that the whip did not simplysh around his arm and hit his back.


    Instead, the very tip of the whip struck his forearm, and green energy melded around it in the form of a [Guard].


    A [Guard] strong enough to almostpletely neutralize the damage, leaving only red marks on the skin. Highly impressive for a fighter with a Flow mana affinity that was bnced in all things but not especially potent in any one field.


    That single swipe had beforepletely cleaved through the bodies of dozens of Amoraks. It would have even been enough to grievously wound the golden winged humanoid.


    Kui then used his other hand to grab the tendril and pull the Collector inwards. Incredible force jerked against the Collector, and the Collector resisted the push by emitting force against it through its capacity for physically unbound flight.


    In terms of sheer quantity of physical force, the Collector couldfortably match this fighter and, with a burst of chaos mana, even overpower him, thus winning any direct physical confrontation such as this tug of war.


    However, the Collector found that as it red out chaos mana and pulled against the fighter, its calctions were incorrect.


    When it pulled backwards, it felt itself inexorably pulled in towards the fighter, only slightly being able to reduce the rate at which it flew into melee range.


    No amount of force sent backwards to resist the pull worked, in fact, the Collector could sense that the more power it exerted, the less effective its efforts were, causing it to lose its bnce in the air, to twist awkwardly and give more ground to the fighter.


    That was when the Collector''s analytical abilities managed to perceive what exactly was going on.


    It was not that the fighter was dramatically physically stronger than the Collector.


    No, rather, it was that the fighter''s control of the flow of power was exceptionally fine tuned down to a level that surpassed any level of perception the Collector had ever observed in this world before.


    By only having a grip on the Collector through its pliomatter tendril, the fighter known as ''Kui'' could sense every single flexion of the Collector''s muscles, every single minute direction of flow of mana spreading throughout its many spirit roots, and thus determine the Collector''s movements to an uracy that honed down to the individual muscle fiber and spirit root.


    Knowing this, the fighter could then exert force that broke the Collector''s bnce or, when the Collector shunted out excessive energy, manipte ever so slightly his grip on the tendril such that he transmitted force that prevented the Collector from maximally exerting its force.


    Any physical attack started with a chain of energy transfer.


    A punch followed from a kic chain of energy that traveled up from the drive of the leg muscles, gaining more strength with the flexion of muscles across the back, then to the shoulders, then traveling down to the fist.


    What this fighter did was essentially ''break'' the kic chain the moment it began by exerting minimal yet highly targeted force via a point of contact such as a grip.


    In essence, it could bepared to interference that halted arger attack that took time to charge up.


    However, the fighter had honed down this counter movement to the point where he could control the flow of power from the Collector almost before it even began with a predictive sense nigh akin to precognition.


    The fighter''s uracy and precision in this specific field, in this control of the flow of power, was so developed that it matched or even exceeded the Collector''s own processing power.


    In essence, this was not something that even the Collector could immediately replicate with its natural capabilities alone.


    The fighter was not born with the Collector''s immense processing power.


    He had made up the differential, then with sheer training.


    How long had this fighter trained? To what intensity?


    The answer was difficult to calcte, for the Collector had never needed in its existence to ever ''train'', for it was born perfect, and if it wascking in any field, could simply consume and evolve.


    The Collector allowed itself to be drawn into the fighter''s range this time, but as it was pulled in, it shot forth a machine gun volley of purifying light shards from its central light orb. As expected, the fighter tugged at the Collector''s tendril, sending it off bnce and causing the shards torgely miss.


    However, the Collectorpensated with Sapia, turning the shards into homing projectiles.


    The fighter let go of the Collector and stepped backwards, raising up both his hands and sheathing them in green mana. He then rapidly deflected the volley of supersonic light shards that numbered well over a hundred at hyperspeed, individually striking all of them down.


    Because the fighter''s hands were wreathed in strengthening magical energy, the shards could not pierce them and enact their purifying damage, instead ttering off his hardened hands like low caliber bullets against reinforced Smartsteel.


    The Collector closed its fist and usedrger scale Sapia, causing a fifty-meter radius of the ground around the fighter to glow purple. Then, the snow and earth around him caved in before surging upwards in an omni-directional geyser that then copsed inwards like an avnche.


    The massive pile of ice and rock crashed onto the fighter, burying him as he stared expressionlessly ahead.


    The Collector knew this would not even be close to putting down the fighter, and it used this moment to circle behind the fighter.


    The pile of condensed ice and rock exploded outwards as the fighter surged out his magical energy in a shockwave, exhaling deeply with the maneuver. He was staring straight ahead where the Collector had been, but not at where the Collector was now.

 Chapter 169 - A True Battle II

    The Collector knew its loud heartbeat would give it away within a second, but in a battle as high scale in power as this, where both fighters moved at unfathomable speeds, even a single heartbeat''s worth of time was enough time for a surprise.


    The Collector rushed in with its monomolecr des, aiming at the fighter''s heart and head simultaneously, flying forwards with its arms extended.


    Now that the Collector was now fully engaged in battle. It could feel its heart pumping wildly not only due to the Amorak power of the Heart Burst, but also because its primary core of desire, of desire for battle, was fully opened, spreading heat around its body that roused it for this gloriousbat.


    A battle that truly was worthy. A true battle that upied a scale that the Collector had never before perceived upon this world. Nor one that it had ever perceived in the entirety of its existence and stored memories.


    When the Collector was in its original form, it was certainly stronger than it was now, butrgely through sheer scale of size and the heightened physical adaptations that came with it. But right now, even though its form was sopact, it moved with strength and speed unrivaled.


    No living organism could manage to outpace the speed of a rail assisted bolter that fired hypersonic armor piercing slugs. React to, yes, but fully outpace? No.


    But the Collector was fully confident it could react to and deflect such bolts through its sheer martial and physical prowess alone.


    The fights on this world were thus more personal in scale. It was notrge armies crashing against the Collector''s nigh invulnerable hide, shelling it with bombardment and energy weapons that it simply ignored, but they were duels.


    Proper fights between mighty individuals. There was a face to each fighter that the Collector deemed worthy, and behind that face, there were vast years of training, dedication, and natural talentpiled to create that worth.


    These fights, these duels, these were far more rewarding, far more nourishing than any conflict against a star fleet.


    The Collector was now within the fighter''s striking range, a mere meter away, and he still looked away. Yet the Collector knew that very likely, the fighter would just easily counter the Collector''s dive with another throw, but this time, emboldened by the desire for battle flowing hot through its hyper efficient veins, the Collector was willing to make sacrifices.


    It activated its Chronostasis adaptation, its four glowing red eyes gleaming even brighter as its brain and reflexes were simted to their absolute maximum extent with psionic power.


    The Collector knew how the fighter could control its power flow, but how it managed to perform its counter attacks at a speed beyond the Collector''s perception was one it needed to figure out early in the fight rather thanter when it sustained too much damage to fight back.


    It was willing to use any amount of mana to explosively regenerate itself to take the full brunt of this throw and a continued onught taking advantage of its slowed reactions post-chronostasis so as to properly analyze it.


    It would shell up defensively, analyze, calcte, then - dismantle.


    In the next instant, right as the Collector''s monomolecr des were a mere inch away from the fighter''s back and head, ready to carve both heart and processing organ out, the Collector observed everything that urred, its perception of time slowing down to a crawl.


    The fighter''s magical energy flow, which usually was kept at a minimal level, suddenly explosively surged, a massive pir of towering green magical energy cascading out of him, its sheer quantity exceeding even that of the Collector''s in that concentrated single moment.


    The fighter had essentially been keeping his flow of mana nigh-imperceptible so as to store it for one powerful burst, thus mimicking the way Chaos mana could explosively exert itself.


    However, the fighter did not just explosively and inefficiently exert its mana.


    Chaos mana by nature was inefficient. In exchange for a sudden burst of sheer power, there was some ''leakage''. A punch thrown with chaos mana did not efficiently utilize 100% of the mana used to empower it.


    The average trained tinkerer that utilized it, the Collector observed, could extract about 50%, with training potentially honing it up to the 70% threshold barring anomalous prodigies.


    The Collector with fine tuning and calibration could exert 84%, and that number would only continue to grow over time, likely when it observed higher caliber martial artists attuned with Chaos mana.


    In this case, however, the fighter''s simted chaos burst was efficient to zero fault, for it was simply controlled flow loosed in a controlled manner, like a nned demolition of a dam to release a tidal surge to power a generator.


    The fighter''s sudden elerated flowsted for the barest of instants, and in that mere shade of an instant, he utilized every little piece of the explosively generated energy perfectly into the movement of a throw.


    The execution of the throw was marvelous, without a single shred of lost efficiency, as if the fighter itself were a machine, or, perhaps, like the Collector itself.


    The fighter twisted and grabbed the Collector''s extended de, the one that reached for his heart, between two fingers. He swiveled his head to the side to dodge the de that sought his brain.


    The moment the fighter made these evasions and obtained a hold of the Collector''s de, he exerted his own control of power flow over the Collector,pletely redirecting the trajectory of the Collector''s attack with the point of contact simply being his two fingers.


    The Collector found itself directed to the fighter''s front before he used his other hand to grab the Collector''s shoulder and then execute a full throw, this time tossing the Collector over his shoulder and into the distance.


    Because he could control the Collector''s flow of power, he redirected the force of the Collector''s charge into his own throw, thus essentially exponentially increasing its power.


    This was very simr in principle to the Collector''s technique of taking in an attack, letting the energy flow through it, and then redirecting it into an empowered counter.


    Except with several moreponents added to make it significantly moreplex as a movement.


    The Collector''s time perception steadied, and its vision blurred due to the side effects of Chronostasis and because it had been sent hurtling through the air at speeds that easily broke the sound barrier, turning into a living, booming projectile that traveled hundreds of meters in a a mere few seconds, sting through clouds and parting them before finally stopping when it mmed into the side of another mountain.


    The Collector was like a living meteorite, and the impact of the throw carved out an enormous crater in the mountain face, lining it with hundred-meter-wide cracks that caused yet again another chain of avnches below as it shook the enormousndmark of rock.


    The damage to the Collector, however, was minimal, for though the Collector had not been able to react to the throw itself as its body was simply too slow, it had been able to adjust to being thrown, allowing it to break its ''fall'' by shooting out a Seismic Shock enhanced punch right before it hit the mountain face, allowing it to counteract some of the force of the throw.


    Huge chunks of rock shattered off the mountain face and fell, hurtling down to the foggy depths hundreds, no, thousands of meters below.


    The Collector mitigated its Chronostasis drawbacks by using explosive draconid regeneration to repair fried neurons in its two brains, but even then, it would take a few more seconds before its reflexes were back up to par.


    But now, the Collector understood the mechanisms of the fighter''s abilities, and from here on out, it was only a matter of adapting to them and devising a means to dismantle, and, perhaps, utilize them for itself.


    The fighter appeared from the distance. He was taking great leaps in the air, sheathing his feet in green mana to create temporary tforms to jump off of to simte flight.


    Finally, he stopped when hended at the top of the mountain the Collector had been thrown into.


    "You are holding back," said the fighter known as ''Kui'' as he peered down at the Collector with arms hanging limp by his sides. "You are unused to fighting at this level. This power you have, it has been recently obtained, has it not?"


    The Collector obliged the fighter in conversation to wait out its Chronostasis drawbacks.


    "Indeed," stated the Collector, and it knew that the fighter was correct. Its body was not entirely used its own full capabilities, for there had not been a single enemy unit capable of challenging the Collector to its maximum threshold yet.


    Thus, it did not have perfected calctions and analytics run on the full extent of its power. "Yet, it is observable that you too are withholding your strength."


    "True," said the fighter. "I could have killed you on the first throw. Thrown you straight through the entire mountain. But that is no test, and I do not kill for no reason. You are also not at your full strength. You have barely half your mana.


    It is no fair test unless I too am withholding my power."

 Chapter 170 - A True Battle III

    "Then there is no further need for words," said the Collector as it clicked its mandibles and steadied its stance, its raging heart beat breaking the monotony of the howling winds. "We both engage in battle to the extents of our limited capacities."


    "Yes," said the fighter simply. He looked down from atop the thin peak of the mountain at the Collector with calm expression.


    The Collector resumed the fight, its neural processing systems now having nearly fully recovered, allowing its reflexes to operate back at a threshold of 93%, enough for it to feelfortable engaging in furtherbat.


    One observation that the Collector had made was that the fighter did not have proper airborne capabilities. He possessed the ability to ''walk'' on air by creating momentary tforms of magical energy on his feet, but aside from these, he had no way to independently project force to propel himself through the air in a wieldy manner.


    In an air battle, the Collector with its varied flight capabilities was highly superior. Yet, the fighter specimen did not have to take to the air unless it desired to, for the Collector''s ranged capabilities were weaker than its melee attacks and could easily be deflected by the fighter.


    Then how about this?


    The Collector mmed all four of it fists into the mountain face it had crashed into, using seismic shock on its arms to generate immense amounts of permeating force. The shockwaves drilled through the mountain, sending deep cracks running across its length while it rumbled.


    The tip of the mountain the fighter stood upon shook as it began to break apart. This forced the fighter to leap into the air, and this was when the Collector attacked, flying upwards towards the fighter. Mid-flight, the Collector fired several volleys of purifying light shards, but instead of directing them straight at the fighter, used Sapia to circle them around omni-directionally.


    Meanwhile, the Collector flew forwards with its monomolecr des. Now, the fighter would have to deal with the Collector and the countless shards encircling him.


    "Kai!" The fighter roared as he surged his magical energy in a massive eruption before reacting to the Collector''s multi-pronged by opening a palm and thrusting it into the air before him. This was not a directed attack against the Collector, but instead one that sent out the fighter''s immense burst of mana outwards in a green shockwave.


    The shockwave crashed against the Collector, sending it hurtling dozens of meters backwards before it steadied itself in the air, and the light shards that closed in on the fighter were scattered and broken apart into nothingness.


    Such a maneuver was expensive mana wise, the Collector noted, but the fighter did have much more mana to spare than the Collector, and the Collector was not going to calcte its battle ns based off of the fighter''s words of honor to hold back.


    The fighter air walked away,nding square on the face of another mountain side. His toes dug into the vertical face of the mountain, keeping himpletely anchored.


    The Collector observed the fighter and noted his mana levels had dimmed again to near nothingness, meaning he was once more ready to emit it outwards in a single explosive moment.


    Knowing this, the Collector rushed in again with what was seemingly a conventional dash attack. Yet, the Collector had understood one crucial factor.


    The fighter''sbat style was focused on countering through throws, utilizing the enemy''s own force against them. However, counter oriented strategy relied on the fighter''s honed predictive instinct to make it work.


    The fighter''s observational skills were truly remarkable. Those eyes of his could determine and predict the movements of the Collector''s every physical movement without the need for a magical crutch like Sense which projected a noticeable aura outward, wasting magical energy and leaving the self vulnerable to mental attacks.


    But it could not have been that the fighter truly was seeing the future. Its predictive sight was based off of some physical anchor, and the Collector had ascertained that this was in muscr movement. The fighter''s immensely gifted observational skill had been, through countless hours of training, specialized entirely to reading physical movements, seeing how every single individual muscle fiber moved, twitched, and interacted with each other.


    This, the Collector could tell because the fighter was an expert at controlling power flow, and power flow, even if it was enhanced by mana, came from the flexion of the muscles themselves.


    Then how to circumvent such excellent kic-muscr vision that exceeded even that possessed by the Collector?


    The answer was simple.


    The Collector dashed inwards, and when it was in striking range, the fighter ready with his hands forward to counter with a throw, the Collector struck. However, the Collector did not strike with its own muscr force. Instead, it used Sapia to move itself externally.


    Purple outlined the Collector''s body as its two monomolecr de arms sliced towards the fighter''s head while its two lower light de arms aimed to gut the fighter.


    The fighter''s eyes widened as his time window to react dramatically shortened. Still, he managed to react, for the Collector''s Sapia controlled movements were not as fast as its raw physical stats. But the lost time prevented the fighter from executing a throw, and instead, he had to use his explosive charge of power to hold back the Collector''s monomolecr des.


    It was likely sheer instinct that told the fighter that those des were instantly lethal, and he deftly held both of them between the fingers of his two hands. Yet, this left his stomach open for the light des.


    This, too, the fighter managed to deal with, concentrating magical energy around his abdominal muscles while flexing them to tense them with a solid [Guard]. The light des shattered against the [Guard], dealing no prating damage capable of initiating its flesh destroying abilities


    With expertly applied force, the fighter shattered the Collector''s monomolecr des with his fingers, but any motion the fighter spent not throwing was motion free for the Collector to make its own attacks. Its two upper arms were upied, but its two lower arms, even if the light des were shattered, could still punch.


    The Collector drove a dual punch powered with chaos mana, coilboosters, seismic shock, and blood burst.


    A deafening explosion-like sound rocked the air as the Collector''s fists smashed into the fighter''s [Guarded] stomach, driving him into the mountain face he stood upon. The mountain shook as the fighter was sent drilling through the mountain, carving out a sizable tunnel deep into its sturdy face.


    The Collector calcted that this would have been enough to deal significant damage to the fighter, but not enough to neutralize him. The permeating shockwave force of the punches would travel past the [Guard], but the damage would still be mitigated to some degree, not to mention the significant inherent durability of the fighter himself.


    The Collector therefore did not enter the tunnel it had carved out by punching the fighter into it. Instead, the Collector made some distance, hovering back in the air where it would have a better view of the mountain top.


    A hole smashed open from a facet of the mountain, and out of it, the fighter leaped outwards, standing back on the surface again. The light blue robes he wore were torn around his stomach, and the blue scales lining his flesh were shattered. Swelled, purple flesh indicated significant bruising.


    "Impressive," said the fighter as he projected his voice outwards with mana. "But now that I have seen your trick, it will not work on me again."


    The Collector understood this. The fighter''s analytical and observational skills were superb, and now that he knew the Collector could use Sapia for its movements, all he had to do was adjust his timing for it.


    Regardless, any wound the Collector inflicted wassting while the fighter''s throws would have their damage healed so long as the Collector possessed enough mana for it.


    The Collector engaged in another ranged attack, attempting to assess how much the damage it had inflicted affected the fighter''s capabilities.


    The Collector hovered in the air as it fired off volleys of purifying light shards. This time, the fighter did not deflect them, but instead began to run down the face of the mountain, dodging them at super speed. Each of his steps allowed him to cover dozens of meters in instants, carving out tiny craters in the rock, and in sheer running speed, he wasparable to the Collector''s flight speed.


    The Collector flew downwards to match him but kept its distance, continuing to fire light shards. It analyzed the pattern of the fighter''s dodges, and after three seconds, made a prediction of its own and fired off a hypersonic spine from its Spine Spitter arm.


    This was several times faster than its light shards and an ability the Collector had yet to reveal.


    As a result, it surprised the fighter, and though he managed to react again at the veryst moment to avoid it from piercing his heart, he could not fully evade the damage, and the spine shed through his shoulder, leaving a gaping gash within it.


    The fighter did not react and continued to move downwards, now into thickening fog where visibility would be low.

 Chapter 171 - Fog Of War

    The Collector continued to chase the fighter as he scaled down the verticals slope of the mountain with rapid grace.


    The fighter disappeared into the foggy depths below, his extreme speed parting out a puff of fog as he entered the thick veil of white. This was likely to limit the Collector''s range of vision and therefore its rangedbat capabilities.


    No matter, however.


    The fighter''s kic-muscr vision was dependent on establishing a clear line of sight, and in this fog, that would be limited, though the Collector did estimate that a fighter of such a caliber would not be entirely crippled by this fog either.


    Regardless, the Collector had an advantage in a direct melee confrontation because it did not need sight, for it was capable of relying on its sensitive hairs adaptation topensate more than adequately enough.


    The Collector flew downwards, also breaking through the fog, and its ocr systems only saw blinding white. It started to rely upon its sensitive hairs adaptation with a minor application of Sense, extending the reach of the hairs to a fifty meter radius around it.


    Using its superior hearing as well, the Collector could track exactly where the fighter was moving from the heavy footsteps he cracked into the mountain side.


    The Collector pursued and continued to fire volleys of light shards, and the fighter managed to dodge them, zig-zagging, decelerating and elerating his flow in irregr intervals to throw off the Collector''s timing.


    It was evident then that the fighter too possessed hearing and tactile senses great enough to be unperturbed by the fog.


    The Collector fired another Spine Spitter shot, and this time, the fighter adapted, dodging it narrowly enough that the spine only carved out a small cut across his face.


    By now, the fighter and the Collector had scaled thousands of meters down the mountain, reaching to its middle where there was far more t and solid ground to stand on.


    The fighter dodged another volley of purifying light shards, this time bynding on t ground and hiding behind a cier easily the size of a fifty-meter ss star ship. The shards embedded into the ice, etching out countless cracks into it, but did not pierce through it for it wasprised of Everfrost ¨C amon substance on these mountains.


    The fighter was behind the cier, using it as further cover, and the Collector started to circle around for a better angle to rain down projectiles, for even though the fighter could change his rhythm of movement to evade, the Collector could keep up with its processing ability, and soon enough, the Collector would have read every single possible permutation of movement from the fighter until he could no longer evade the Collector''s ranged onught.


    The cier shook, and massive lines of cracks lined its base. Like a great oak being felled, the cier tipped over towards the side of the fighter, and the Collector realized that the fighter had struck it to break it.


    When the cier fell atop the fighter, he performed a spinning kick that sent it hurtling towards the Collector as an oversized projectile.


    The fighter used his explosive burst of power for this, and the fifty-meter cier sped forwards with the speed of a bullet.


    The Collector crossed its arms in front of it in the form of a [Guard] to take the initial, heavy impact as the cier mmed into it and drove it back through the air.


    The fighter''s physical strength was immense.


    Unlike the four-star adventurer with the Flow affinity who used agility, this fighter known as ''Kui'' favored power. Efficiently regted power, of course, but still power nheless.


    In terms of absolute strength, the Collector calcted that the fighter was equal to it, and, in short bursts, superior.


    An extremely impressive feat considering that in terms of raw, brute strength and physique, the Collector had never before known a match upon this world.


    The Collector weathered the initial cier impact and then used its arms to push itself up above the cier.


    This was when the Collector saw that the fighter had not used the cier as a warding projectile to make further distance, but had used it as both a cover and mode of transportation, hitching a ride on it the moment he had struck it towards the Collector.


    Now, the fighter was rapidly closing in on the Collector, sprinting across the length of the cier with his arms held forwards, ready to grab and throw the Collector in a dedicated offense.


    The Collector had thought the fighter primarily one that relied upon counters, but it would seem that the fighter possessed strong confidence in constructing his own offense as well.


    The Collector opened up its stomach maw and fired off its Pyrocatalytic nds, specifically triggering the Volcanite infused upon it to cause the me to expand outwards in a more expansive and explosive impact.


    A massive tidal wave of blue-white me washed over the cier,pletely engulfing the fighter, but he parted the crashing wave of fire with a chop, projecting out slicing force that split the wave of heat into two.


    However, the Collector had merely been using the me as a smoke screen.


    Its Superacid Bilespitter was already aimed at the fighter, and the bulbous green sac condensed and clenched as the contracticle muscle tissues lining it flexed to their maximum.


    A stream of bright green acid shot forward at elerated speeds, and the fighter reacted by thrusting his palm forwards, projecting out a burst of pressurized air that split the acid stream apart.


    However, a little toote with aim that was sub-optimal on ount of the fighter having less time to react due to the distraction of the mes.


    Splotches of the acid caught on the fighter''s left forearm, and even a few drops were capable of causing severe damage, for the Collective''s Superacid had nothing it could not eat away at. The acid sizzled into the fighter''s skin, melting away scales and flesh until the bone of his forearm was visible.


    The fighter stared down at the exposed bone for a moment before resuming his charge, his face stillpletely unfazed. His arms were still extended forwards, and by his posture, the Collector determined that the fighter was moving as if he had no injuries to weigh him down, indicating further that the fighter possessed some means to circumvent disabling injuries like this.


    The distance between the Collector and the fighter was too small for the Collector to attempt a quick escape. Instead, it braced itself for the correct timing.


    Getting thrown was a foregone conclusion.


    The fighter''s individual strikes and movements were exceptionally fast, especially when coupled with his explosive mana bursts, but his throws were on another dimension of speed entirely. It was such that the disparity between his throws and all other movements was almost utterly unnatural.


    If the fighter''s ordinary dodge or strike moved at the numerical rate of a ''5'', then his throws were executed at the speed of a ''50''.


    Far beyond the Collector''s capacity to perceive and react to ordinarily, but it had already seen it happen in slowed time perception once. Its calctive systems processed the timing of the throw, extrapting how much faster it would be in ordinary time, and the Collector prepared itself.


    The fighter went into range, and the moment he did, the Collector found the world around it spinning.


    In the next instant, the Collector was outside of the fog, having been thrown upwards at extreme velocities that parted the fog entirely.


    It sped through the air at such speed that friction against the air itself caused its carapace to heat up to a molten white before it mmed into the side of another mountain.


    The Collector braced for impact, enveloping its entire body in a powerful [Guard], and it tumbled through the mountain, drilling through the rock for several seconds until it finally broke into arge cavern.


    Here, the Collectornded heavily upon rocky ground, shattering out a sizable impact crater, but that was where the throw ended.


    Through more than five hundred meters into the air and a hundred meters through solid, dense rock.


    The Collector registered severe damage across its entire body. Pieces of its carapace fell off around it like rain.


    The Smartshock carapace had altered its structure to best weather direct impact, but even then, with it reducing the damage of the throw by nearly 50%, the Collector still weathered the damage of dozens of fractured bones, muscle tears, and internal bleeding from concussive impact.


    This throw was strong enough that the Collector had significantly impaired movement, and it immediately expended its magical energy to explosively regenerate the damage it had taken.


    A few secondster, and the fighter broke through the same path that the Collector had carved out in the mountain,nding in the cavern.


    "You are the very first in all realms across a century to have ever countered my [Circling Storm]," said the fighter.


    He was a dozen meters away from the Collector, and his right arm was mangled.


    It hung limp at his side, the flesh across the upper arm and shoulder having been blown off, leaving nothing but charred chunks of uneven, exposed muscle and burnt, ckened bone.

 Chapter 172 - Agreement

    The Collector''s four red eyes glimmered with flickers of crimson as they zoomed in on the fighter''s arm injury and assessed the damage.


    This was an injury so grievous that the fighter could not simply weather through it. He had lost a sizable chunk of muscle mass and connective tissue in his right arm, rendering it useless biomechanically.


    On top of this, because nerves and muscle fibers acted as physical anchors for spirit roots, the amount of magical energy that the fighter could exert on his right arm was now cut at by 64 percent.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles in wariness, for the fighter still had another arm to fight with, and his strikes were nothing to underestimate either. In addition, the Collector could not afford to perform the maneuver it had to inflict this wound upon the fighter.


    The Collector could not react to the speed of the fighter''s throw, but at the very least, it could predict when it was thrown and how it would be thrown and attempt to counter attack during it.


    The fighter was always wary of the Collector and threw it in such a way that its upper arms possessing the monomolecr des never endangered him.


    Thus, when the fighter threw the Collector, it had unsheathed its purifying light des at the moment of the throw, causing them to skid across the fighter''s right arm. The fighter''s throws were so quick that even the fighter himself actually did not properly react to them.


    Rather, he performed them with almost rote, mechanical precision, having memorized their movement to such a practiced degree that the throws were as natural a movement as breathing to him. This allowed him to massively elerate the speed of his throws because he did not waste time thinking about them.


    Thebination of pre-programmed throws along with massive short term bursts of Flow eleration allowed the fighter to surpass the limitations of his natural speed, but it also meant he could not adjust the mechanics of the throw once he initiated it. He relied entirely upon the fact that the throws would be too fast for anyone to counter as his sole defense.


    The Collector, however, was perhaps the only living organism on this entire world that had the necessary processing capabilities to obtain the correct timing for a predictive counter. Its purifying light des had carved into the fighter''s right arm, and deep enough that their explosive effect registered, for the fighter could not react in time to use [Guard].


    The fighter''s primal density of 50% which allowed him to use mana in this environment now worked against him, dealing him a grievous wound.


    Yet, the Collector was still at a severe disadvantage.


    The Collector''s mana reserves were running at 5% now. It only had enough for one good engagement. No more explosive regenerations. Only one strong attack. If it had to be thrown during this attack to sustain a severe wound, then so be it.


    The ground rumbled suddenly, and the Collector and the fighter both turned their attentions further into the cavern where a sizable ciated Serpent emerged. A dozen timesrger than the ordinary serpent quite easily. It was eyeless like its brethren, but it was engorged in primal energy, granting it a shimmering white and blue aura that emanated from its pale, smooth and snowy scales.


    The serpent was easily twenty meters long, a creature of considerable bulk dwarfing either the Collector and the fighter, and it loosed a shrill, siren-like roar as it sensed two intruders in itsir. The serpent flitted out its dark blue forked tongue, getting a sense of its environment and the location of the two intruders, and then swiveled its head to the Collector, sensing its magical energy levels as being lower.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles in annoyance at this distraction. A mindless beast that disturbed the battle the Collector had devoted itself to. And the fact that this creature thought itself capable of defeating the Collector just because the Collector operated on minimal magical energy was foolishness.


    The serpent rushed towards the Collector, opening its maw while firing off a crackling bolt of blue energy that would sh freeze anything it came into contact with.


    The Collector weaved through the chaotic arcs of the beam''s movement, flying upwards until it was upon the side of the serpent''s head in an instant. It then clenched its fist, powering it with its coilboosters, blood burst, and a minimal amount of chaos mana. Its arm muscles swelled up to nearly twice their size before the Collector mmed the engorged limb right into the serpent''s head, sending it rolling through the cavern.


    Cracks lined the side of the creature''s scaled head as it squealed and rolled towards the fighter.


    The fighter intercepted the serpent mid-tumble with its good arm, grabbing at a tendril-like white whisker protruding from the serpent''s face. Then, the fighter performed its instantaneous throw again, his [Circling Storm] as he called it.


    In the next instant, the serpent was gone, having been thrown through the tunnel that the Collector had drilled through when it was thrown here initially.


    The sound of rock shattering as therger bulk of the serpent broke through the tunnel resonated through the air before it disappeared, the serpent likely now flying through the open air before plummeting down to the depths of the mountain bases below.


    The fighter exhaled calmly before he turned to face the Collector, his legs driving into the rocky ground of the cavern in a stance. Surprisingly, he managed to move his mangled arm, readying it in his usual stance, though this time, he had switched his forward hand to his left hand.


    The Collector encased mana around one of its eyes to observe what was urring and analyzed that the fighter was manually directing the flow of magically energy throughout his body. In essence, he created individual threads of magical energy that reced the function of the countless muscle fibers and nerves he had lost, thereby manually moving his arm.


    This was simr to how the Collector could utilize Sapia to create artificial blood flow to patch up a grievous wound. However, that was only possible because the Collector''s exceptional processing power could mimic the function of the countless nerves and muscle fibers required topensate for a severe enough wound.


    "I apologize for the distraction," said Kui. "And though I may take my stance, I do so only out of caution. For I offer you now the chance to end this trial. If not, then we may continue to fight, but now that we have both been pushed to extremes, I can no longer guarantee that in a fight for our lives that either of us will survive."


    The Collector knew that the fighter was right. The Collector calcted it had a 77% chance of inflicting another deadly wound on the fighter known as ''Kui'' when he executed his next throw, one that would likely lead to his death, but at the same time, if the fighter performed a throw with the maximal amount of his magical energy instead of what he had been withholding, then the Collector had no guarantee it would survive either, nor did it have enough mana to reliably regenerate itself.


    This was a stalemate. The first the Collector had ever encountered.


    "It is prudent for both of us to end this altercation if we are to sustain our continued existences," said the Collector. "If there is no need for further battle, then I find it agreeable to cease hostilities. Provided that this ''trial'' of yours has been proven satisfactory."


    The fighter known as ''Kui'' broke from his stance, resuming his almostzy standing position with his arms dangling to his sides. "You have passed resoundingly. You are worthy of the shard that you bear. You are worthy of the fated destiny to bring forth the one True End."


    "True End? borate further," said the Collector, but the fighter raised up a hand.


    "Later. For now, let us take the time to share a meal. It is only right after such a fierce battle. The likes of which I have faced only twice in my life," said the fighter.


    ==


    The Collector watched as the fighter known as ''Kui'' sat cross-legged in the snow, tearing off chunks of arge ciated Serpent he had additionally caught on the way back to the cavern where the goblins were. Unlike tinkerers, the fighter ate the meat raw, his sharp, bestial teeth chewing through the tough and stringy white flesh with ease.


    "These creatures are quite ugly, and yet, their taste is quite profound. It reminds me of the Seashell Crabs of my home province. Ah, the memories of home do call to me sometimes," said Kui, his face still emotionless.


    A distance away and visibly wary of him, the goblins sat in their own circle, eating the meat that Kui had brought.


    They, however, preferred cooked meat, and they had improvised a way to make it in these frigid conditions by gently scraping the Collector''s purifying light des along the meat to gently sear it.


    "Are you sure you will not eat?" said Kui as he eyed the Collector. The Collector sat in meditative pose in front of the Collector, restoring its magical energy reserves.


    "No. I have already devoured that specimen, and the biomass that it provides is negligible enough that it is not worth time lost entering this state of enhanced mana regeneration," said the Collector.. "Now that you are consuming sustenance, exin to me further the nature of this true End and what you deem a ''fated destiny'' upon me."

 Chapter 173 - Fated Destiny

    "Your fated destiny?" said Kui. He chewed off another chunk of white serpent flesh and mulled over his thoughts as he chewed, his bestial teeth making quick work of the meat. He nced at the Collector with an expressionless side eye before his pupils raised a little, zoning in on the glowing white shard atop its head. "There is your destiny right there."


    "borate further. Vagaries make only for inefficiencies and defeats the purpose of evolving the capacity for vocalizedmunication," stated the Collector.


    "My apologies. I was simply being dramatic," said Kui. He put down the serpent tail he was eating. "The World is dying, her life blood drained by the gue of the gods. Once, at the beginning of convergence history, the world brought forth seven champions, seven titans, to cleanse her body of the invading gods.


    She invested her life and soul to these champions, splitting a vast amount of her essence into twenty-one shards among them.


    But when these titans were defeated, the gods took the shards for their own, fueling the Tethers that keep all realms converged.


    Yet the true purpose of these shards has always remained the same ¨C to bind to worthy hosts capable of defeating the gods and restoring the world. That you possess a shard now is simply proof that you are chosen by the World-will to bring forth the End."


    "Is this ''World-will'' analogous to the entity known as the ''White Voice''?" said the Collector.


    "World-will, White Voice, Earth Mother, the Snow Root, all of these are her names, and all refer to her," said Kui.


    "And you are some emissary of this White Voice?" queried the Collector. "You are capable of hearing her voice and interpreting it?"


    "I have only managed to hear faint whispers, once," said Kui. "But no, I cannot truly speak for her, nor do I truly hear her. I merely understand that there are three shards beyond this mountain range, in thend of the Rift, and I do not let any unworthy of bearing them cross.


    That is the purpose of my trial."


    "Yet you had already seen the shard upon me," stated the Collector. "There was no necessity in enforcing such a trial upon me."


    "Ah, but it is because you possess the shard that you must be tested," said Kui. "For inbat, I may see into the hearts of those who I sh with. And it is all the more important that I know a shard bearer is one of strong intent to bring forth the End of all things.


    In that regard, you are remarkably well suited. Much like Valtr."


    "Then it must be that you have also enforced this ''trial'' upon the white maned draconid specimen," stated the Collector.


    "I have. We battled beyond the Rift and like you, drew to an even match. Though I will warn you that your unnatural talent for the martial arts may have allowed you near my level, but it will not serve you as well against Valtr," said Kui. "As you are now, you are no true match for Valtr."


    "I have analyzed this specimen known as ''Valtr''" stated the Collector. "And determined that unless he is concealing a vast amount of power, that this current form is enough to yield a sizable challenge to him."


    "Indeed, it initially will be. But you wille to know what I mean when you face him again. And you inevitably shall, for neither of you will ept that there will be two champions to bring forth the End." Kui watched his mangled arm, and the Collector also observed that he was slowly regenerating.


    The primal energy dense atmosphere was sending out white partictes into his body, reforming his destroyed body bit by bit, though full recovery would still take approximately eighteen hours.


    "It is curious that as a tinkering specimen, you possess such high levels of primal energy reserved to creatures of the wild," said the Collector. "Further more curious that even as a tinkerer, you would desire the end of your ''gods'' and, subsequently, the ends of countless of your species."


    "Like I have said, I am no longer of the Common Body," said Kui. "Officially, I am designated as a monster. I have no ce among the Common Realms anymore. I only see beyond, to the good of this world as a whole, and I know that the gods must be stopped."


    "And what details have you analyzed that allow you to reach this conclusion?" said the Collector.


    Kui looked up. They were above cloud level, but the tips of the Rift mountains projected thick fog that created an imprableyer of white above. "Everything the gods have created cannot be sustained.


    Before the Convergence, the realms were not nearly as linked as they were now, and this created bnce.


    There is only so much of the World-will''s presence she can project to nourish and protect all the realms.


    When the gods forcibly connected the realms by stealing her power, they knew not then, but they doomed not only themselves, but all realms. They continue to create Tethers from the world shards they have taken, forcibly linking the realms so that they may have morend to rule for themselves.


    But this has taken a toll.


    Without the World-will''s presence properly nourishing the realms, the gue of Undeath grew, and continues to grow. So long as the gods continue to steal the World-will''s essence, Undeath will keep growing, and the world will crumble into rot before long.


    And Undeath is merely a symptom. A prelude of the greater darkness toe."


    Kui''s eyes narrowed as he seemed to be seeing beyond the fog wall above, to the stars and void of space.


    "Again, borate further without wasting time on inefficient gestures," said the Collector.


    "My apologies," said Kui as he looked back down to the Collector. "It is a habit of mine when I speak of this subject, though I have not with another soul in many years.


    There is a darkness out there, beyond this world, in the darkness of infinity, that awaits and lurks. I know¡­little of its true nature, for I have only glimpsed the slightest feeling of it, the faintest of its cold whispers.


    But I call it the Devourer, for from it, I could sense only a bottomless hunger that perceived everything, every living entity, anything that radiated the warmth of life and existence, as prey.


    The World-will and her essence envelops this world and its realms, hiding it from the Devourer, but as she fades, so too will her protection.


    That is why the End must happen, and it must happen soon. Before the gods drain the World-will fully, they must be eliminated, and bnce must be restored."


    The Collector clicked its mandibles and began to formte the hypothesis that it was entirely possible that this fighter specimen had somehow foreseen the arrival of the Collector and the Collective. Were that the case, then it was entirely possible that the ''gods'' had been prepared for the Collective, and yet, also uncertain.


    The ''high king'' of the gods seemed to understand that a foretold end wasing, but he had felt surprise in that it came in the form of the Collector. It was unclear what this surprise indicated. It could mean that the Collector was not expected at that time or that the Collector was not the ''Devourer'' among many more possibilitis.


    In addition, this fighter specimen linked this ''Devourer'' to the presence of Undeath which neither the Collector nor the Collective possessed no true ties to.


    "How is it that you havee upon this information?" stated the Collector. "And if it is so that the ''gods'' know of this entity, then how have they not enacted countermeasures against it?"


    "The highest level of martial arts is not the pursuit of strength, but in the pursuit of the state of being that is known as the Void," said Kui.


    "The Void affinity?" said the Collector.


    "Rted, yes," said Kui. "The Void affinity is one that epasses the temporal and spatial flow of existence. Yet to control time and space itself is impossible for a fragile mortal.


    Hence, the Void affinity is one that is supremely rare, and even in the case it does manifest, those that bear it can never utilize it, for to tap into the powers that shape the fabric of reality itself sunder their mind and destroy their bodies from within.


    Martial arts, or at least those passed down in Xia, are meant to create a state of oneness. Oneness with the self. Oneness with nature. And, finally, Onenness with the Void, with the fundamental bases of existence itself.


    No martial artist in existence has ever truly reached the Void, for to do so would likely subsume them into a higher existence where their physical bodies have no true anchor in any single point in space and time. For to be one with the Void is to cast away all that the self is.


    All unnecessary emotions are pared away until there is nothing but absolute calm. All attachments are cut. All desires extinguished. When the self bes nothing, then the self bes everything.. The self ascends past the chains of the physical body and mind, its needs and wants, and reaches beyond, far beyond, into the infinite vastness of space and time itself."

 Chapter 174 - A Dark Vision

    The Collector clicked its mandibles and assessed what this fighter specimen spoke of. The Collector possessed the Void affinity, it knew this, but it seemed that to truly tap into it required a state of artificially induced ''nothingness'' detailed by the specimen.


    "And you have obtained this state of discarded base carnal and mental desires so as to reach the state of the ''Void''?" said the Collector.


    Kui shook his head firmly. "Not even close. Perhaps closer than most, but to truly enter the Void? To leave the confines of my body and ascend my consciousness throughout space and time? No.


    The closest I came to this was when I underwent a journey of meditation in the realm of Zerul, before it was closed off after the Red Night."


    "Exin to me what this phenomenon known as the ''Red Night'' is," said the Collector.


    "You do not know?" Kui raised a brow, indicating that this ''Red Night'' was some monumental event that any and all should know of, but then nodded, not questioning any further. "The Red Night urred in 1549. There, under a blood red moon, the realm of Zerul invaded all others. The Gatekeeper Kinthas, king of the daemons, spread daemons and vampyrs across the realms, and they caused great misery and destruction before they were defeated by the rest of the Common Body.


    The conflictst just shy of ten years, and at its end, Zerul was sealed off from realm travel by the gods for thest act of Kinthas was to unleash an imprable concentration of Undeath.


    But I know little else other than this bare summary. I was emunicated from the Common Body almost a decade prior."


    "The measurements of your years yield little knowledge to me for I possess no temporal reference to base these numerical ssifications from," said the Collector.


    "The current year is 1570," sad Kui. He continued on with his prior line of speech. "In Zerul, the forces that bind all of us down to the earth are not so constant. In some areas, one bes weightless, floating, in others, they became even more rooted to the earth.


    There is a spire of myth known among martial artists known as the Undir in Zerul. A small mountain enshrouded in permanent darkness and danger that takes an orbit beyond the range of this world itself. For a brief moment, the Undir bes the highest point of this world, ascending even beyond it, floating free in the darkness of the starry void itself.


    Many martial artists have desired to sit atop it and meditate as it enters the void, for they believe that in the starry void itself, they may obtain the closest connection to the Void proper.


    Yet, the way to the Undir is dangerous and unwieldy, and even I lost my life nearly more than once. But in the end, I seeded, and as I sat upon the end of that spire, watching as I beheld nothing but the void of stars, reaching my consciousness out as far as I could, that was when I heard the whispers.


    The whispers of the Devourer.


    Thus, I came to know that the Devourer not only hunts prey who are not protected by the Worldwill''s aura, but also that it is a disaster thates from the void.


    Many philosophers, astronomers, and mages have debated the nature of other worlds visible in the skies and whether lives such as ours teem on them. They wonder of the other stars, so many of them in the night sky, all of them likely possessing worlds of their own, and yet, why has it that no other life has reached us?


    The answer is unknown, but I believe it is the Devourer. All life that reaches to the point that they take over their Worldwill and drain it leave themselves bare to the Devourer, and the Devourer consumes them.


    Thus, there is only the emptiness of death across the void of stars and worlds."


    "And the nature of this threat spurred you to search for a being that could bring forth the demise of the gods?" said the Collector.


    Kui loosed a derisiveugh. "No, when I took this pilgrimage, I was still of the Common Body. This was years before Zerul was sealed off, at the height of my fame among the Common Realms. I took my knowledge to the Azure Emperor who ruled over my home of the time.


    I wasughed off, and perhaps I would have resigned the whispers that had affected me so deeply to merely being figments of my imagination. But the Shade, ascendants of the gods that move in the shadows, assassinating and coercing to secure their rule, approached me, warning to keep my silence.


    That drove me only to search for more answers, and in time, I happened upon a movement hidden well among the realms, one that sought to topple the gods from within, because a select few knew: it was not that the gods had simply chosen to ignore the decay of the world to Undeath.


    No, they possessed a solution to it.


    One called the Selection.


    The Realms, now forcibly connected for so long, are irrevocably tied together, but there is not enough power in the Worldwill to sustain seven entire realms together in the same space. Undeath will continue so long as the realms remain as they are now, and it is toote to undo the Convergence.


    Thus, the gods have chosen the reverse. They intend to maximize the Convergence, to bring forth every realm into a single one, but the results would be disastrous. Seven entire worlds worth of lives crammed into the space of one world is a nigh impossibility.


    Hence, the Selection. The gods choose which lives to enter Aetheria with them, and when they have chosen all the loyal souls they need, they will merge the realms, purging all those that were not selected. This, too, would also rid them of the problem of Zerul and the Undead, for they would simply purge the realm and all Undead to begin anew."


    "I see," said the Collector as it clicked its mandibles. "And in reducing the poption and surface area ofnd, they would also be able to utilize enough of this ''Worldwill''s'' inherent energy to properly nourish the new popce and singr realm while also shrouding them from the entity known as the ''Devourer''," said the Collector.


    "Precisely so," said Kui. "When I came to know of this, the Shade, too, knew of my knowledge. My family was taken apart piece by piece, and the Shade, too, attempted to seize my life. I took theirs instead, and many, many more.


    I forsook the ways of the Gentle Current and let the tempests of rage wash over me. It is a day that I of regret, and the day in which I was emunicated."


    Kui wiped his bloody hands on the snow and got up. His arm was in better condition by now, though still far from fully healed, but notably, the Collector observed that the light blue robes he wore had patched up on their own, the fabric seemingly reforming from the fall of snow adhering to it.


    "Let us cross the Rift," said Kui. "For is it not your purpose to do so? And I have promised to apany you and protect your people."


    "I must recharge my magical energy reserves," stated the Collector.


    "Hm. You are so capable of replicating and reading techniques of an exceptional level, and yet you do not know of how to meditate and draw in mana whilst moving?" said Kui as he put a hand to his scraggly beard. "No matter. I shall teach you."


    ==


    The Collector did not choose to cross the Rift, but instead chose to apany the swarm along with the fighter known as ''Kui'' down to the dungeon of the mountain they had been exploring. For the Collector was curious of the nature of these ''Old Gods'' and the possibility that remnants of their presence or biomass would be present in the heart of theserger mountains that possessedplex dungeons within them.


    In the meanwhile, the fighter did teach the Collector how to restore mana while moving, and it was an easy technique that the Collector replicated after one observation. It involved utilizing bursts of [Flow] to circte mana strongly within the body, building up heat and power, and then rapidly dissipating it in an instant.


    Done properly, this would not leak any mana externally, but it would cause mana from the environment to gather into the Collector faster in a manner simr to osmosis.


    However, this was not a technique sustainable in the middle ofbat. It merely allowed for movement while recharging mana.


    "That you are capable of mastering the [Gathering Stream] after one observation is astounding," said Kui. "It takes a decade for the average trainee to intensify the flow of mana in their body and then dissipate it in quick instants without losing mana of their own. The timing and focus required for such is one that is learned and trained, but you have merely observed and known."


    "Such is the inefficiencies of your tinkering kind," said the Collector as it floated forwards, now in the cavern where the elites and the Amorak had been before they had retreated to the Collector. "You require extensive time and training for even the most basic applications of your natural abilities.. Yet, I cannot deny that at the highest ends, your kind through training may thoroughly exceed the limitations of their bodies and minds."

 Chapter 175 - Dungeon Dive Redo

    "Words of high praiseing from you," said Kui. "I know not what species you hail from, but I can tell that your heart is still young from our sh. Your desire for battle is pure, and the feeling of your aura is pure."


    "You are capable of discerning age from fluctuations in magical energy?" stated the Collector. The Collector noted the elder goblin specimen, too, was capable of discerning this value by assessing the Collector, though even now, the exact mechanisms by which this was performed was not truly known to the Collector.


    The Collector, even with its vast processing power, could only discern the quantity and quality of mana emanating from a being and determine how weak or strong they were or what techniques they were utilizing and how they were performing them.


    "Mana emits from one''s trained muscles and the beating of the heart, yes, but fundamentally, it is an expression of the soul, for it its one that draws off emotion and the mind to fuel," said Kui. "It is possible to discern the ''quality'' of a being from reading the purity of their mana. A mind too clouded will produce a clouded aura.


    Yours possesses a sharp, almost jarring purity. Such as that seen by children whose emotions are not tainted byplexities."


    "The Sovnar is no child!" said Thokk from behind. He had always looked suspiciously at Kui, not quite trusting the man. "You insult him."


    "No, it is merely an observation," said Kui, his voice still calm and steady. He stared forwards, at therge pool of glowing, reflective blue water in the cavern. "Ah, waters of restoration. Useful indeed."


    Kui dipped his injured hand into the waters, and the glowing blue liquid started to swirl around his arm, traveling up its length and rapidly healing his wound, growing new flesh over scabbed and raw flesh, patching cracks in bone, and creating new skin and scales.


    "What is your purpose for entering into this dungeon?" said Kui as he looked into the glowing water.


    "To ascertain the nature of the ''Old Gods'' and the state of their presence among these mountains," stated the Collector.


    "The Old Gods, I see," said Kui. He mulled the word about in his head for a few seconds before continuing. "The Old Gods are dead. I know not which of them that slumbered in these depths, but they are no more."


    "The Old Wolf is dead?" said Loktal with a grunt of concern.


    "All are dead," confirmed Kui. "Do you not see that the flow of the mana around you is irregr? A dungeon with a proper center, a proper vessel to anchor it, would not have such erratic and weakened flow."


    "Their capacity to perceive the flow of mana is not as developed," stated the Collector.


    "It is, I can see!" said Thokk, rather obviously lying to project a confidence in abilities that did not yet exist.


    "What specimens were capable of defeating these beings known as ''Old Gods''? Contextual evidence leads me to believe that these ''Old Gods'' were beings of significant power," said the Collector.


    "Old Gods upy vast ranges of power," said Kui. "They are merely mighty monsters vested with much of the Worldwill''s energy. They are all strong, yes, but not as strong as you would think. Some are weaker than us, the same, stronger ¨C it depends.


    As for you-," Kui eyed the Collector, assessing the Collector''s capabilities. "You upy the lower to middle rung of Old God strength, perhaps ever so slightly waving forwards into the higher rung."


    "This form will evolve, adapt, ande to surpass all ''gods'' in time,'' said the Collector.


    "Indeed," said Kui simply before he returned to his original line of speech. "And it was the Draconids that killed the Old Gods."


    "For what purpose?" stated the Collector. It knew that the average level of strength for a draconid was not especially high, but it seemed that draconids upied an incredibly wide range of power. It was entirely conceivable that entire armies of stronger specimens could overpower a being akin to the Collector in might.


    "To harvest their cores," said Kui. "They, like you, are capable of change over time, especially when that change is fueled by a dungeon and the heart of an Old God. All of these mountains became chambers from which felled Old Gods infused into draconids, ascending them.


    Those draconids that took in the might of an Old God ascended into what they call a ''Fang''.


    Twenty three of twenty-five old gods are felled, so twenty-three Fangs running among their ranks."


    "To what end should these specimens attempt to gather such power?" stated the Collector. "These dungeons have been destabilized for a timeframe between ten and three hundred years, some destabilized far earlier than others.


    This indicates a consistently nned and pursued course of action, and yet, with the power garnered, the draconid specimens make no usage of their power beyond their biome beyond the Rift."


    "They are gathering strength for an invasion," said Kui. "I told you. They desire the End. What they are waiting for or what they pursue, I know not what more power they must gather, for I am no true friend to them."


    "You sure about that?" said Thokk. "They cross and pass from here, and you do not fight them but you fight our Sovnar?"


    "You did not think to defend the Old Gods?" said Loktal with a snarl. "Aslumber many of them were, but their lives are still marks of thisnd. Sacred to the snow and ice."


    "Your Sovnar is right. The vast majority of the Old Gods were felled in a timespan ranging three hundred years ago. I may look old, but I am not that old," said Kui as he tugged at his long, scraggly beard. "I have only been here for three decades. And in that time, they invaded a dungeon only but once. I stood against them, but I was repelled by their leader."


    "A fighting specimen such as yourself was repelled? To what degree of ease?" stated the Collector.


    "It was a hard fight for him, but not one I could sustain," said Kui. "Quite like my fight with you, yet, different in nature."


    "You will not tell us his powers?" said Thokk.


    "A fight between two Endbringers, and such a fight is now inevitable, must be decided upon grounds as fair as possible," said Kui simply.

 Chapter 176 - Dungeon Dive Redo: II

    "It sounds like you are helping the draconids," said Thokk, suspicion leeching from his voice. "How can we trust you? When you hide so much?"


    "I have ced it upon myself to guard the Rift so that it may bring forth the End. I care not how the End is brought. If it was that the End was such that these Old Gods were all to be awakened in eternal winter, as is foretold among some peoples of thisnd, then I would not have stopped it," said Kui. "But if it was that the Old Gods were to be killed and their power taken for the purpose of another Endbringer, then I will not truly stop it either.


    In battling Valtr, the leader of the draconids, I came to understand that he, too, possesses pure intent to bring forth the End."


    "The End?" said Goromir. "But the Sovnar only wishes to bring forth his rule."


    "A rule that involves the end of the New Gods, no?" said Kui. "That is what the End means to me. That is what your Sovnar desires, and by extension, what you desire. Our goals are not separate. There is no need for hostility."


    "The Old Wolf was sacred to our people," began Loktal.


    "And the Old Wolf may still be alive," said Kui. "There are still two active dungeons. Two that the draconids either could not prate or found nothing they could hunt and harvest. It may very well be that the Old Wolf is still alive."


    "Regardless, these details must be elucidated with further investigation," said the Collector. "We will enter this dungeon and ess its core. From there, further analysis will yield more information."


    ==


    The path down to the dungeon was not one of any real difficulty. There were the asional hostile specimen, mostlyprising of ciated serpents of various sizes. The environment within the mountain became warmer than the outside, more insted and heated by the remnants of mana flowing from the core, and thus, the goblin swarm did not struggle as much either.


    In an hour''s time, the Collector and the swarm reached the core of the dungeon after passing through tenyers, sinking through the glowing ponds of water that acted as localized warp gates for the dungeon.


    Here, the Collector and the swarm found themselves in an enormous, dark cavern two hundred meters in diameter. At the center of the cavern, there had been a sizable, dozen meter wide indent in the ground surrounded by faintly gleaming blue ice crystals that formed the structure of a circr nest.


    In that sizable nest, there was nothing, though the Collector, as it hovered in the air to analyze, saw fragments of pale white, silvery egg shells. These shell fragments, it devoured, and they were not so much biomass as they were mineral sample, and thus, were recorded as such.


    They were shell shards of an old god specimen known as the ''Eyeless Scale'', presumably a mighty variant of the ciated serpents, for this mountain seemed solely upied by ciated serpents with the primal Amorak located at the surface likely being a recent and temporary addition.


    "Ah, True Frost," said Kui as he touched the nest of gleaming crystals. "The strongest material known to the north. Any that strike one wearing it risk their entire bodies freezing over."


    Kui rested his palm t against a sizable crystal, closed his, and surged out his mana. The ice crystal shattered into dust, and the kes of glowing crystal scattered around and into his robes, infusing them with their power.


    "Like that," said Kui as he turned to the goblins. "Truefrost responds to the magical energy of a worthy wielder. If you desire to make this Truefrost yours to wield, you do it like that. Project your mana in, shape it to your will, and expand it outwards."


    "I try it," said Thokk as he immediately put a hand on an ice crystal, because even if he did not trust Kui too much, he could not help but want new weapons and new armor.


    "Well, should we all not?" said Goromir. He waved over the swarm. "Come, my brothers and sisters. Let us arm ourselves!"


    The Collector floated in the air as the goblins tried to bend the Truefrost to their will. It had already devoured a significant sample of the Truefrost to incorporate into its carapaceter. It focused more on the environment, attempting to get a read of what had happened.


    There had been an egg, but no fully grown specimen. The egg had been imbibing the dense magical energy of this dungeon core, and it had been well guarded by ciated serpents and a durable but now defunct barrier, if the flow of concentrations of mana in the area were to be believed.


    But other than these details, the Collector could not make out much more. Because an egg was helpless, there was no real signs of a confrontation, and the environment would likely have patched itself together regardless over time.


    It had been approximately fifty years since the egg''s demise, predating the fighter ''Kui''s appearance to the Rift, so no further clues could be extracted from him, either.


    If there were clues to be found of the draconids, then the Collector could have to investigate the two mountains with active dungeon cores.


    "So¡­this is where you are," came a resonating voice.


    The Collector immediately turned to its direction. It came from the entrance to the cavern that stood high up, leading to a drop down into the cavern.


    The source of that voice took that drop andnded with a heavy crash on the cavern''s ground, etching out a crater of impact. The goblin swarm immediately reacted by withdrawing their light de weapons, and Kui stepped forwards, posturing to protect them as he had promised.


    The Collector, too, flew down in front of the swarm, and watched as the intruding specimen stepped forwards.


    A draconid.


    But one of immense power, the Collector could tell, and judging by her aura, one that was muddled. It seemed almost to be like the auras of two individual beings mashed together, and throughout both, there was a chaotic rage of flow that caused blue unity type mana to whirl around her with the raging instability of chaos mana.


    "That is a tainted aura," said Kui. "Tainted not only by an instability of emotion, but also by a power that is not one''s own.. A Fang."

 Chapter 177 - A Fated Journey

    Within a storm of whirling Grain, there flew something in the skies that should not have been there: a ship.


    No dwarven ship, either, that relied on internal engines to fuel their way through the effects of Grain, but a ship that precious few across any of the Common Body had or would ever see.


    A ship from Alo, the realm of eternal waters whose denizens and ways were still a mystery, their realm unreachable even through the Convergence, with not even the New Gods capable of reaching them unless they desired it so.


    The ship appeared as a pearl white pod fashioned from the shell of an aquatic creature, and translucent, jellyfish-like tendrils emerged from its back, whipped back and forth to push the ship through the air in a movement that did not resemble flying so much as it did swim through the air.


    "This is the area," said na, an Aloan, another rare sight.


    Her upper body was rtively humanoid, dressed in scale and shell clothing drawn tight to her body for hydrodynamic purposes. Her pale white arms had fins emerging from the forearms, as did a dorsal fin from her upper back. Her grey hair floated in the air in slow waves, as if underwater, despite the fact that there was no water to be seen anywhere.


    Gills lined her neck, but they were closed for they needed not to breathe in water for now.


    Her lower bodyprised of a lengthy fish-like tail of emerald green scales that curled around the smooth white floor of the ship.


    na''s gleaming yellow eyes tracked the screen made of floating water bubbles and vapor in front of her. The bubbles, foam, and vapor formed images of the surroundings of the ship, and they even projected color through bioluminescent microbes within them.


    "But sonar shows no wreckage of a dwarven fleet, let alone anything resembling a monster and a daemon girl," said na. Her voice had a small undtion to it, as if permanently underwater. She crossed her arms and cocked her head. "Odd."


    "Are you sure? Try again," came the gruff voice of a powerfully built, sizable human, and though the scars on his face and his tree trunk like arms indicated the build of a warrior, the decorated purple robes he wore showed that he was instead a mage.


    He scratched his head in annoyance, his fierce eyes narrowing in frustration. Wrinkled crow''s eyes fanned out from under his eyes, indicating age.


    "Why do you bother scratching your head, Thorian?" said na. "You have no hair."


    "An old habit," said Thorian.


    "You have not had your hair for decades, my friend. A little toote to be clinging on to old habits, no?" said another human, just as old as Thorian if his greying hair was to be believed.


    A tall, thin man in baggy white robes with darker skin indicating heritage from the desertnds of Utu. He leaned against the ship''s wall with a wooden staff in his hand.


    Not the stave of a mage, but a staff meant for martial usage, meant for beating and striking rather than waving around to channel mana.


    "Quiet, Hazi," said Thorian, though he did crack a faint smile. But it soon faded into seriousness. "The Sorcerer''s Order and the Adventurer''s League are going to investigate this area soon.


    We need to find Kr fast."


    "Dubious. And you are sure that you can find her? Even through this dense primal energy?" said na. "Aloan ships and magic travel and shine through primal air, but the same cannot be said of your Common magic."


    "Trust me," said Thorian as he clutched a pendant at his neck. A ck metaled pendant holding a lock of glowing purple hair within, linking a resonating signal to the soul of the hair''s owner directly.


    An artifact of exceptional rarity made from the lost Coresmithing techniques of Zerul, one that functioned in both primal andmonnds.


    "I can back him up," said a far younger face. A young man with conventionally good, dashing looks, though dark bags under his eyes and gaunt lines in his cheek indicated he had seen far better times.


    His hair was long and frayed. One of his arms was fashioned from metal that gleamed with the glowing green lines simr to circuitry. "Vera''s Paths are still active, so I know she is alive, and she was here with that monster.


    Though beyond here, I cannot tell, for the fall of Grain is too strong."


    "Interesting. It always astounds me that your League and Order can be at once so efficient and yet so stupid at the same time," said na bluntly. "The League will not listen to your words, so you resort to us."


    "Resort? na, that is the wrong word," said Thorian. "We, the members of the All-Tree, are now the first line of defense to save your people, our people, and all the realms from the Selection.


    Furio''s words were not believed for a reason. There is a purpose to this. The gods know, they always do, and they are plotting something.


    As for Kr''s location, her soul still emanates a signature, though-," Thorian looked to his pendant, feeling the signature recalibrate her location.


    ''Wait for me, Kr,'' he thought. ''I wille to find you, and together, we will talk to your mother again.''


    But even this hope seemed to dim as Thorian read the signature emanating from the pendant.


    "But she is farther north now," said Thorian, his voice solemn.


    Hazi raised an eye. "How far north are we talking here?"


    "To the Rift, at least," said Thorian.


    "You are willing to travel to the Rift?" said Hazi incredulously. "Make no mistake, I am not doubting our strengths. na''s magic will allow us to fight in primal air if only for a little bit, and certainly, most of us are strong, but the Rift is no ce for idle chatter.


    Even finding food there will be a mighty struggle, let alone a wild chase across its unexplored depths."


    "We must go," said not Thorian, but a woman. A grey skinned woman d in skin-tight ck clothing speckled with red eyes. From her protruding fangs, bat-like wings, and blood red eyes, it was obvious she was a Vampyr.


    "No, it is far too dangerous," said Hazi. "I, Hazi, know well of the dangers of primalnds. They are not to be trifled with. In fact, I am surprised that Kr''s soul still resonates. I would have thought her dead a thousand times over by now.


    Are we not certain this is no diversion? No distraction? Soul magic is certainly rare, but are there not rare creatures that delve in it? Such as the Facestealers, one of which lies within thesends?"


    "If a Facestealer has Kr''s soul, then we kill it and take it back," said Saerish tly. "If none of you will do it, I will. I know I am strong enough.. Because without her soul, there is no way into Zerul, let alone into the Royal Pce, and that means no Duskfall, the crux of our entire n to stand against the gods."

 Chapter 178 - The Fang

    "I cannot agree with this," said Hazi. "We are the roots of the All-Tree Order. If any of us falls, then the resistance against the gods falls also. If na falls, we cannot hide from the Shade with her magic any longer. If I fall, then our information into the Adventurer''s League falters. If Thorian falls, then our ties into the Sorcerer''s Order fall."


    Hazi pointed his staff to Saerish. "And if you, Saerish, fall, then what of New Zerul and its people? What will they do with their queen now lost to them? The stakes are far too high."


    "What else would you suggest?" said Saerish. "That we wait until the Selection begins, wiping us all out? It is only a matter of time before the gods find the Dawnbringer, and that is one half of the Apeiros Engine.


    If may very well be that with it, they can retrieve the Duskfall from Zerul, and then, the engine isplete. Selection begins. But with the Duskfall, with but a sample of Kr''s royal blood, I may stand against the gods and personally make them pay for the suffering they have wrought upon my peoples."


    "I will go with her," said Furio as he gripped his wrench tightly in his metal arm, the sound of metal creaking against metal echoing in the confines of the ship. "The All-Tree does not need me. I am just a disgraced adventurer."


    "Vengeance clouds you, Vampyr Queen," said Hazi. "It makes your judgement dull. Same to you, young adventurer. What will you aplish? You possess great talent, yes, and you have gone to great lengths to strengthen yourself, but you are still far weaker than us, and even we would struggle in the Rift and beyond.


    There is no point throwing away our lives for no real benefit."


    "Futility. Undeath will find us all anyway. Even Alo''s waters rot and cken now," said na. "If too much of it bes foul, then I fear my people may not be able to channel them."


    "Do you hear that?" said Saerish. "Her magic is on a timer, and we need that to go into Zerul without turning into Undead ourselves. If we wait now, our chance is lost forever."


    "Thorian, you are technically the leader of his order," said Hazi as he nodded over to Thorian. "What do you make of this? I have voiced my opinion, and so have all others aboard this ship."


    Thorian grew silent for several seconds, pondering. He shook his head and spoke. "Hard decisions. So many to make. So many I have made over the past years."


    "And this one? What shall you make of this one? Choose carefully, old friend," said Hazi. "For though I will apany you anywhere you go, a waste of life, especially the lives of those as important as that on board this ship, is one I will be hard pressed to condone.


    I will follow you, but know well the consequences your choices may have to bear upon not only us, but the entire world."


    "I know. I know well," said Thorian. "And this is my decision: we press forwards. We are so close to taking back Kr, and with her, hope for all of us. It is now or never."


    "So be it, then," said Hazi. "I suppose falling in battle is not so unpleasant a fate, though I did not believe that I, Hazi, ever so cautious, ever so careful, would be one to fall in conventional glory."


    "I understand your points too," said Thorian. "And I do not wish tomit too strongly, for indeed, you are right: the lives aboard have too much at stake to risk so freely. na, how long are you capable of hiding us at maximum degree before your mana and this ship starts to falter?"


    "Counting. Maybe ten days?" said na. "Provided I do not fight or spend mana on helping any of you fight."


    "Then for eight days, and eight days only, we search," said Thorian. "The remaining two, we spend in escape back to Middir. These will be the most monumental eight days of our entire lives."


    "I will take it," said Hazi. He looked around to the crew with his green eyes. "Take care not to die or throw yourselves into foolhardy situations worthy of death."


    ==


    The Collector peered at the female draconid specimen. Indeed, the Collector could tell now what Kui meant by auras that were pure and impure. This draconid specimen''s affinity was that of Unity, one calm and steady much like Flow, and yet it fluxed with the instability of Chaos.


    "The emotions she taps into to generate her mana, to trigger her core, are uncontrolled," said Kui. "Not to mention she harbors whatever Old God she has consumed within her as well, further tainting the essence of her mana."


    The Collector clicked its mandibles as it observed the draconid specimen surging her mana even further, easily rising to a levelparable to the Collector''s. However, this was in sheer quantity only. In terms of fine-tuned application and control, she fell far behind the Collector and even further behind Kui, for as Kui stated, shecked any real control over her immense mana pool.


    "He-he told me not to hunt you," said the draconid, her voice rumbling the cavern. "But why!? Why can I not tear you apart!? To prove I am better than you!? Why has he chosen YOU to kill him and not me!?"


    The draconid was scaled entirely in white, the same white shade as that of the ciated serpent''s, and her body was sleeker and thinner than the males of her species, and yet, still powerfully armored and built. Her head and neck were longer and sleeker, more serpentine, and from all around her body, an intensely freezing aura emanated, wreathing the ground underneath her in frosty ice crystals.


    The draconid hovered in the air, her tail writhing and curling in rage as her eyes, pale blue like ice, honed in on the Collector.


    "I will assist you in this battle," said Kui. "As I have promised."


    "Then we will make quick work of this hostile specimen," said the Collector.

 Chapter 179 - The Fang II

    "Well said." Kui took a step forward and assumed his stance. His arm was essentially healed by now, with the muscture and nerves fully grown with just some skin and scaleyer requiring patching. But in exertion of power, he was still in optimal shape.


    "I possess little magical energy to maintain any measure of extended confrontation," stated the Collector, assessing that even with Kui''s technique to continuously gather mana while moving, it was still more inefficient than static gathering and, coupled with the Collector''s enormous mana pool, meant it had restored only up to 15% of its total mana.


    "No problem." Kui inched forwards with his stance, keeping his legs wide. His toes, driven into the ground with such force that they cracked into it, carved out patterns in the rock as he now settled in front of the Collector.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles in analysis. The fighter known as ''Kui''s'' perception allowed him to understand that the Collector desired to save its abilities for a surefire attack, thus meaning that the fighter specimen was to shoulder the initial attack so as to scope out this draconid specimen''s abilities.


    "You-you too, you impure blooded THING!" shouted the draconid as her eye head snaked to Kui''s distraction. "You hurt him, you hurt my mate, you think I have forgotten about that? You will pay too!"


    With that, the Fang shunted out an immense burst of her chaotic blue aura, and as she did so, the color of it changed to a pale white, the Unity aura using itspatibility with healing and creation to generate a mass aura of pale, foggy white around it.


    The aura shaped into a raging sphere approximately ten meters in radius around her, as if she had enveloped herself in a whirling storm of fog and ice.


    The Fang was dozens of meters away, but even from this distance, the Collector could feel the intensely cold temperatures of her aura shield. Anything approaching her would instantly be sh-frozen to a level dangerously close to the point of absolute zero itself.


    The freezing capability of this aura was the most potent that the Collector had encountered so far, far exceeding that the environment itself offered.


    The Collector flew into the air, attempting to provide air support.


    Kui stopped mid-charge, narrowing his blue eyes, his pupils narrowing to reptilian slits as he assessed the aura. He was twenty meters away from the Fang, but her freezing aura shield projected caused the ground underneath him to crack and freeze over in ayer of ice.


    The air chilled noticeably throughout the entire cavern, and everyone''s breaths came out in the form of visible fog.


    The Fang saw this hesitation from Kui and pointed a white wed finger towards Kui. A small orb of pale blue crackled in front of her finger before shooting forwards in an arcing beam. This was the ice beam of the ciated Serpent, but on a scale far more deadly.


    Yet, there would be no issue from the fighter specimen. The ciated Serpent''s ice beams were vtile in their trajectory, making them difficult to aim, and this was further exacerbated by the Fang specimen''s own chaotically flowing mana that hindered fine-tuned precision.


    Kui readied to dodge, his bnce shifting to the side, but then he nced back at the goblin swarm behind him. If he dodged now, that bolt would strike the goblins, and he did not know they could be restored with the Collector''s Breath of Life.


    Instead of dodging, Kui took in a breath and wreathed his arms in a casing of his bright green mana, readying to deflect the beam like he had with the Collector''s own ranged projectiles.


    Kui swatted the bolt at the perfect angle to divert it upwards, sending it streaking into the cavern ceiling in a chaotically fluxing arc. When it struck the ceiling, it created an enormous structure of instantaneously generated ice crystals, all of them capable of sh freezing.


    Kui kept his distance as he continued to assess the Fang. His right arm, the injured one, was the one he had used to block the bolt, and despite perfect timing and a [Guard], the bolt had still managed to encase a circr chunk of his forearm in ayer of ice crystals deeply embedded within the muscle, likely causing countless micro-fissures across the fibers and debilitating function.


    This was going to be an incredibly difficult battle, the Collector came to realize. By encasing its ocr systems in flow mana, wreathing them in green, and zoning in on the Fang specimen''s physique, the Collector could tell she was not a physically powerful specimen.


    Certainly, she far outstripped the average denizen of this world, butpared to specimens that relied on physical might such as the Collector and Kui, there was a world of a difference. Her muscture was not as developed nor suited for flowing mana through them, causing also her scales to be less durable.


    But the Fang specimen was a master of projecting her aura outwards, and because it was specialized for creating, she operated purely on a ranged basis, and to cover her melee weakness, she generated her aura-shield of freezing temperatures.


    This was an issue ofpatibility. This specimen was uniquely suited to beating fighters that engaged in meleebat.


    "Fire!" shouted Kai, and the Collector immediately responded by opening its stomach maw and unleashing a concentrated st of its pyrocatalytic nd mes. The blue-white stream of roaring me crashed into the sphere of raging white, freezing mana.


    The Collector theorized that if it had been frozen oxygen or hydrogen, the mes would generate an explosive effect on contact, but again, it hade to know by now that physicalws did not operate properly when mana and magic were involved, and in this case, the mana sphere was a self-contained field of cold.


    Instead, the mes swirled around the ice before soon dying out, all of their energy and heat draining rapidly. But the mana sphere did thin in thickness, and Kui rushed in past it, allowing himself to take in the freezing energy if only for the tiniest of moments required for him to perform his throw.


    Kui''s forward right handtched onto the Fang''s shoulder, and then she disappeared. A huge crater in the ceiling of the cavern and the rumbling of rock shattering and parting from above indicated to the Collector that the Fang specimen was well on her way out of the mountain.


    "My apologies for the hasty attack," said Kui. He turned to the Collector with a right arm stiff, almostpletely frozen over in a cloudy white, icyyer. "But further fighting here, in this tight space, only risked your goblin friends."


    "If saving the goblin swarm was your intention, then you have performed it," said the Collector as it gazed down at the swarm. They were a suppressive force meant to fan out and deal with targets the Collector did not find worthy to deal with itself.


    In the case of high scale battles like this, the Collector knew they were useless. The fighter known as ''Kui'' had made the right decision on the assumption that the Collector would not have simply sacrificed all of the swarm for a counter-attack.


    The Collector knew thatpelling the swarm to do so would severely lower loyalty among them, so it did indeed prefer to keep such drastic measures only to when its life was directly threatened.


    "My throw was not at full power. The cold halted the full extent of my strength. But she should not emerge from that unscathed," said Kui. "Go and take care of her. I must heal my arm, then I will rejoin you."


    Kui closed his eyes in meditation, elerating the flow of mana throughout his veins, nerves, and muscle fibers, shattering the ice crystals imprisoning them bit by bit and rising his body temperature to try and thaw himself.


    Countless green streaks of magical energy following the curvature and structure of his muscles and nerves formed around his right arm, gleaming brighter and brighter by the moment, steaming as they melted off ice, but even then, the Collector estimated an approximate forty seconds of lostbat time.


    "We can fight, Sovnar, while he is resting!" shouted Thokk as he eagerly stepped forwards with his gleaming golden longsword.


    Goromir and Kandak both dragged Thokk back by the shoulder.


    "Ah, the fiery blood of youth and the impulsiveness it brings," said Goromir.


    "Yes," said Kandak.


    "Young one, this fight is beyond our scale. Far beyond it. If we intervene, we will only slow the Sovnar down," said Goromir. "There is no shame in allowing the Sovnar free reign to fight."


    "The elite is correct," said the Collector. "Stay within this area and allow the fighter specimen known as ''Kui'' to provide protection for you. I will engage the hostile draconid."


    With that, the Collector sped forwards, loosing a sonic shockwave as its red wings red and it traveled through the tunnel the Fang specimen had drilled out from Kui''s throw.

 Chapter 180 - Fang III

    The Collector broke through to the outside of the mountain in quick order, emerging from the face of the mountain in a shockwave that scattered out rock and ice. It flew high in the air, immediately gearing its senses high to perceive where the Fang specimen had went.


    The Collector''s sensitive hairs immediately triggered, and it registered an attack rapidly approaching it from behind it. From the speed and dimensions of the attack, it determined that it was another beam of ice. It performed the absolute minimal amount of movement required to dodge, swerving just a meter to the side as the beam arced past it, shooting forward far into the distance at high speeds, almost into the horizon, before exploding outwards in a nova of bright blue that quickly turned into an enormous sphere of giant ice crystals.


    The beams were easy to avoid, but their area of effect was great and their damage and scale was severe enough that even one shot was likely going to be an incapacitating one.


    "Stay still and freeze!" screamed the Fang specimen.


    The Collector turned to her direction. She was floating in the air above the Collector, her rapidly rotating sphere of icy white mana still encasing her in an absolute defense. She started to charge up multiple ice beams, a sphere of pale blue forming at either hand, one in front of her open mouth, and one at her tail.


    A total of four beams shot forth, and the Collector jetted through the air, dodging past them. They shot far behind the Collector, some creating huge ice formations in the air, some crashing against the surface of the mountains and creating giant ridges of frost-wreathed ice.


    The Collector retaliated with projectiles of its own, shooting out a volley of purifying light shards from its chest orb while rapidly flying around the Fang specimen. The Collector was faster than the Fang specimen, capable of out-maneuvering her in the air, but her defense was powerful.


    The purifying light shards, when they passed through her barrier, froze over, dimming and negating their destructive light and turning them brittle. When they hit the Fang specimen''s scales, the shards shattered apart without dealing damage.


    The Fang specimen turned around again and again, trying to keep up with the Collector''s erratic and fast movements.


    "Running and running and running!" The Fang specimen shouted in frustration. She sped her hands together, the scales of her palms cking together in impact, and she gnashed her teeth. Her blue aura surged around her sphere of icy white, forming into spikes of ice.


    Over a hundred spikes of ice created all around her.


    "Run from this!" said the Fang as she sent the spikes flying all around her, in every single direction, and it was not just one volley. She continuously refreshed the volleys over and over again, creating a veritable rain of ice spikes traveling far past the speed of sound.


    The volleys were fired in such frequency that they seemed to merge together,pletely clouding the sky and creating a near unbroken wave of projectiles. This was unavoidable by all means, though the ice shards were not nearly as deadly as the beams.


    The Collector sheathed its four arms in a casing of magical energy as the fighter specimen known as ''Kui'' did, and replicated the fighter''s deflections. At hyperspeed, the Collector parried and deflected every single ice shard sent its way, its four arms moving at blurring speeds.


    Shard after shard after shard of ice came to the Collector, and all of them deflected behind it. Even so, the torrent of icicles was such that the Collector was gradually forced backwards, focused entirely on deflecting.


    The torrent also drove the Collector downwards, eventually driving it to the ground to one spot where it continued to deflect.


    The Fang specimen was utilizing enormous amounts of magical energy, and inefficiently at that. She had to run out of mana at some point, but the Collector also knew that relying on a strategy of attrition when it itself was running now at 13% magical energy reserves was not advisable.


    For now, the Collector stalled for the fighter known as ''Kui''.


    The rain of shards stopped once the Collector was several hundred meters away from the specimen. When it ended, the entirendscape had changed. The mountainnds all around the Collector werepletely and utterly studded with spikes of ice.


    The only space untouched by the spikes was a neat three meter by three meter circle around the Collector''s deflection zone.


    The Fang specimen''s mana surged again, reaching critical levels far surpassing anything she had outputted so far. Her dorsal fin was glowing with energy, and pale blue magical energy was crackling and swirling around her open mouth.


    She was not without strategy after all. She had simply made distance to charge up a stronger attack against the Collector.


    Was this the Eye of the Storm ability of the draconids?


    No, something far more. That ability had been merged with the Old God''s ice generating abilities, and the sheer scale of it was iparable to anything that the Collector had witnessed from weakling draconid specimens that it had encountered prior.


    "Run from this!" The Fang draconid''s voice screeched through the air as she unleashed her breath attack.


    A wide range beam of blue headed down to the Collector in a crashing wave so massive it wasparable to a tsunami.


    The sheer volume of the breath attack must have easily beenparable to the scale of a localized natural disaster, and its respectable speed of delivery meant that the Collector would not be able to dodge this attack simply by flying upwards.


    The wave of blue crashed into the Collector like an avnche and spilled all around it, sshing upwards in a sky-reaching formation extending upwards a hundred meters in a few seconds.


    Then, the blue energy stabilized, transmuting into pure ice that was of a far bluer shade than the ice around it, emitting a freezing aura that ensured that anything kept within the boundaries of its chilling embrace would have no chance of escaping.


    Within the scope of a single attack, the Fang draconid specimen had created an entirely new naturalndmark.. A whole cier formation stacked atop the surface of a mountain.

 Chapter 181 - Fang IV

    The Fang specimen hovered in the air for a moment, tense, her barrier of swirling, freezing mana still raging around her to guard her against any physical attack. She stared at the cier she had forged, and it utterly dwarfed her, the top of its wave-like structure reaching far into the sky.


    The scale of the attack had been enormous enough that the Fang was confident she had finally frozen the disgusting false dragon, the one who Valtr had dared to choose over her. Anything frozen in here would never escape from its boundaries, and it was only a matter of shattering the cier with her magic topletely destroy all living creatures within.


    Yet, the Fang specimen could not shake off a sense of unease. Her animalisticbat instincts telling her the fight was not yet over. She waited for a few seconds, projecting faint blue tendrils of mana outwards. Lighter colored strands that were meant to scout areas where they touched.


    In her near vicinity, at least, nothing was there. The false dragon had no way to turn invisible, it seemed.


    Feeling more confident, she flew down to the ground, to the base of the cier, and touched it with her hand and focused, seeping in her scouting tendrils of magical energy to see behold her prize: the frozen form of the false dragon ready to be shattered into oblivion.


    The Fang waited and waited, her scouting mana permeating throughout the entire cier, making it glow from within with a ghostly blue light, and then realized: the false dragon was not here. The moment she realized this, the ground behind her broke apart.


    The Collector emerged from underground, shooting forwards and stabbing directly into the heart of the Fang specimen with its monomolecr de. Because the Fang specimen had been extending her mana far out from her body, the personal barrier she possessed was thinner, and this surprise attack, it calcted over a ny percent chance to secure a fatal blow.


    The Collector knew immediately that it could not evade the enhanced ice breath, not with the small amount of time it had, so instead, as it tidal wave of freezing energy bore down on it, it had drilled down into the ground, using Sapia to create a spiral of excavating force to burrow it.


    Then, the Collector had merely bided its time underground, waiting for the Fang specimen to confirm her kill. When the Collector sensed her movements above, it had emerged to strike her. It aimed directly at her heart to secure as lethal a blow as possible while the Fang specimen''s ice barrier was as thin as it could get.


    The Collector felt its de easily slice through the Fang specimen''s white scales as if they were made of paper, but the Collector''s calctions were proven inurate.


    The monomolecr de, exposed to sudden intensely cold temperatures, lost the full capability of its peerless edge, and though it was still supremely sharp, it lessened the speed at which the Collector could prate the Fang specimen and reach into her heart.


    That miniscule dy had allowed the Fang specimen to perform a move wherein right before the de pierced her core, her body shifted into a form of pure moving ice simr to that of the [Mistborn] spell of the Frostborn Thrall.


    Except, however, this was different in that where the thrall''s spell was one of continuous, sustained intangibility, the Fang specimen performed a short range, instantaneously quick dash wherein she broke herself down into particles of ice and phased backwards a distance of ten meters.


    The dash allowed her to evade the monomolecr de from killing her right then and there, and the Collector immediately flew backwards and into the air, rubble from being underground falling off of its body.


    The arm it had used to try and stab the Fang specimen''s heart was frozen solid even from that split instant of contact with her barrier. The level of freezing was severe for the Collector''s carapace had not had time to adequately adapt against it.


    Thus, the Collector simply shattered its own arm by smashing down on it with a fist. Chunks of frozen carapace, muscle, and bone scattered down to the ground, and then, blue magical energy explosively wreathed around the stump of its arm before simting explosive regenerative growth, creating an entire new arm within a second.


    "You hurt me! The only one allowed to hurt me is the him!" screeched the Fang, her voice booming through the air.


    "Your vocalizations are loud but utterly simplistic in their variety," said the Collector. "Why expend the effort to speak at all if your words are meaningless?"


    "I will shatter you!" shouted the Fang specimen as she stood atop the ground dotted with ice shards from her prior attack. As she moved, her barrier of ice broke apart the shards around her and reconsolidated them back into the structure.


    She turned and pointed a w at the Collector, firing multiple arcing beams of ice.


    The Collector dodged in the air, predicting the easily read trajectory of the beams with ease. It analyzed the Fang specimen for weaknesses and noted a few elements it could capitalize upon.


    Firstly, the Fang specimen did not fly as of now, likely because her core had been minorly damaged by the Collector''s monomolecr w. Its explosive regeneration, too, was severely hampered, limited down to a slow, continuous tissue repair that would take ten seconds to fully patch theceration in its heart. In addition, her ice barrier was not as thick and protective for the same reason, but still strong enough to render any physical attack highly dangerous.


    This was when the fighter known as ''Kui'' emerged, leaping through the air with his air walking ability until he came to the Collector''s side in mid-air, swerving to dodge an ice beam also. His eyes were encased in green mana to analyze the Fang specimen, and he nodded when he saw her.


    "You have managed to disrupt the flow of her mana, but not for long," said Kui. "We must end this within the next few seconds. Come, I have an idea."


    "Die! Die! Die!" The Fang specimen continuously fired beam after beam after beam towards them, and though they could easily dodge the beams, it was still difficult to get close, not to mention her barrier.


    The Collector had initially reasoned that this Fang specimen''s inefficient usage of her mana would lead her to bleed out quickly, but it was not so. She drew upon vast mana reserves, arge portion of which was not her own, likely belonging to the Old God she had assimted.


    A war of attrition was not going to be possible, for it seemed the Old Gods could rapidly regenerate their mana reserves in this environment they were native to.


    "Speak your method of action," said the Collector, and Kui nodded before pushing off the air and leaping down to ground level.


    "Stay there!" shouted Kui as hended on the ground. "And set me ame! As much intensity as you can muster!"

 Chapter 182 - Falling Star

    The Collector did not hesitate and opened up its stomach maw. It pumped in explosive chaos mana into its volcanite lined pyrocatalytic nd biotrigger and generated a mana-fueled ignition of white hot mes.


    The stream of fire engulfed Kui,pletely drowning out visibility of his figure in blinding bright white.


    The Fang specimen saw what was urring and started to target fire at Kui,bining three of her ice beam orbs into a triple cluster that fired multiple arcs of freezing energy at Kui, likely to try and overpower the mes instantly and sh freeze him while he remained stationary.


    The Collector immediately understood what was happening from the Fang specimen''s bodynguage. Her movements were far too telegraphed and uncontrolled, for she did not possess the fluidity of motion and emotion presented by a proper fighter specimen such as Kui.


    The Collector had to remain stationary in the air, however, to fully output its mes, but it diverted some of its magical energy to guard the fighter specimen by using a high output of Sapia. Its thel hovered in the air, the fibrous wires of hair gleaming with bright purple.


    Even now, with Royal Daemon blood, the Collector still could not efficiently utilize Sapia, and this was a field within which it would have to perform some investigative experimentationter on, but with enough mana output, inefficiency could bepensated for.


    The Collector''s mana reserves were low, but it closed two of its fists, generating a barrier of Sapian energy around the fighter specimen. The purple barrier stood tall as the beams of bright white crashed into it.


    Furthermore, the Collector generated the Sapian shield with a level of rotational spin, thus creating a surface by which the ice beams did not so much resist as they bounced off of, shooting out into the air instead of exploding around the shield and encasing the fighter specimen''s surroundings in ice.


    Meanwhile, the Collector observed as the fighter specimen breathed in, taking in the mes around him in a massive inhtion.


    Kui''s internal body temperature spiked massively, and the Collector noted that he utilized the flow of mana to spread the heat evenly inside of himself and to a fine-tuned degree so as to minimize the damage to himself.


    This,bined with his inherently significant durability that would have allowed him to survive the mes regardless, meant that Kui was now glowing with a white-hot aura, a thin, membrane-like aura of flickering white fire dancing atop his skin and scales.


    "Good," said Kui as he breathed out, super-heated air distorting the space in front of him in ripples. He took his stance against, and this time, as his feet drove into the ground, they carved out molten indents. "Now, let us end this. Grant rest to the Old God she has usurped."


    The Collector flew over the Fang specimen as she prepared another volley of ice beams towards Kui. In turn, the Collector unleashed suppressive fire upon the Fang specimen, bombarding her with purifying light shards.


    Because the Fang specimen''s ice barrier was thinner, the light shards, though they still froze over, did not be as brittle, and etched out dents and cracks into her scales. Yet, not enough damage to turn her attention away from Kui who now charged her.


    This, the Collector predicted, and primed and shot its Spine Spitter. The spine was sizable, almost half a meter long with an elongated tip suited for armor-piercing while also being over five times faster in velocity than the light shards.


    The Fang specimen did not expect the spine, and she found herself screaming and clutching at her now skewered eye, the end of the spiked, grooved spine jutting out from the side of her head.


    The spine had frozen over, reducing its sharpness somewhat, and the rotational velocity of her ice barrier had reduced its speed enough to prevent a clean shot straight through her head, but the pain of a skewered eye and very likely some brain damage caused the Fang specimen to stop any attacks on the fighter specimen.


    The brain damage did not seem to be enough topromise her functions, though it seemed that the Fang specimen was not utilizing much of the organ in the first ce.


    Kui rushed in as the Fang specimen reeled in pain, prevented from countering his advance.


    He breathed in, elerating his flow, and closed his eyes as he pierced the veil of the ice barrier. The heat charged into his body allowed him to move without instantly freezing over. He did not need sight to perform his throw, for he had practiced every singlebination of it countless times until they were etched into the memory of his cells themselves.


    This was the mightiest technique that Kui knew. The throw that transcended the oceans reached into the stars themselves.


    The [Falling Star].


    In the next instant, Kui performed his throw at the maximum output of his power, and the Collector could see now what the fighter specimen had meant when he had held back with his first throw.


    In the moment of the throw, Kui''s mana levels spiked to tremendous levels that caused a raging pir of green to st outwards and reach into the sky, parting the low hanging cloud cover. With this instant of spiked mana, he threw down the Fang specimen straight into the ground.


    An explosion of fiery red emanated out from Kui not due to the Collector''s mes, but because he moved at such an extreme speed that he ignited the air around him. Following this sudden burst of fire and light, the Fang specimen was no more to be seen, a smoking crater the only trace that she had stood atop the surface of the mountain.


    The velocity and force of the throw was such that there was no explosion, no shattering of rubble, but instead, the Fang specimen had carved out a molten hot tunnel down the mountain, for the speed of her descent instantly turned the durable rock into superheated liquid state.


    Then, the rumbling began from deeper in the mountain as he Fang specimen continued to drive through the mountain, loosing small earthquakes all across the length of her descent, and her descent was significant indeed.


    The Collector calcted she fell downwards several hundred meters, then a thousand, and more and more until she finally stopped, noticeable from the rumbling in the mountain halting. The Collector calcted that she had traveled downwards up to ten thousand meters, and it was a testament to her durability that the initial impact of the throw itself had not reduced her into a stter.


    Regardless, there was going to be no surviving this.


    "The deadliest and most revered technique of the Gentle Current," said Kui. "The [Falling Star]. There has only been one to ever survive it head on. I doubt


    "I will confirm the Fang specimen''s death," said the Collector, intending also on consuming her as well.


    "Go ahead," said Kui as he breathed out. White mes bellowed out of his breath, and his bright white glowing body dimmed down and sizzled as heat rapidly faded from it. His eyes were bloodshot and much of his skin was burnt, some red splotches underneath indicating internal hemorrhaging.


    He folded his arms into his robes and closed his eyes, meditating. "I will take some time to rest."


    The Collector flew straight downwards into the tunnel the Fang specimen had carved out. The first few hundred meters of descent were lined with melted rock, but as the Fang specimen continued to travel down, she had lost velocity, and soon, her path of descent was lined with more roughly shattered stone.


    The Collector flew down multipleyers of the mountain, past caverns, past arge basin of water, past a nest of ciated Serpents, past an area filled with gleaming crystals, and so on, until it reached near to the bottom of the mountain where the Fang specimen was.


    Or should have been.


    The Collector instead saw at the bottom of the descent a hollowed out sculpture of ice fashioned in the visage of the Fang specimen. She had one more trick to y, it seemed, involving rapidly molting while using her capacity to temporarily render herself into ice partictes.


    This allowed for the ability to break out of the fall mid-way. Yet, she had still weathered the initial impact. She should be grievously injured regardless, and her regeneration was slow. She could not be far from here.


    The Collector tracked her scent, her mana signature, and began to fly upwards until it stopped at theyer in the mountain that was filled with gleaming crystals. These crystals were highly charged with magical energy and would allow the Collector to easily restore itself to 100% once it consumed them, but for now, it focused on the search.


    It zipped through the cavern of crystals to the end where the Fang specimen''s trail ran cold.. There was a swirling warp gate there, one fashioned seemingly from icy, circling winds.

 Chapter 183 - Dragon Slayer

    The Collector beheld the portal and analyzed it, shrouding its four ocr vessels in green flow mana. The mana flow of the portal was highly unstable and roughly created. Its mana signature also did not match the pattern of flow surrounding its environment, indicating that it was not created by the dungeon itself.


    In addition, because it was personally created, the portal possessed far less total magical energy inside of it than what a dungeon could sustain.


    In essence, the portal was a hastily made creation soon to copse. Mana signature matched that of the Fang specimen, and because the portal did not possess much magical energy inside of it, the Collector estimated that the Fang specimen could not have traveled extensively far.


    The danger lied in the fact that the exact coordinates of the Fang specimen''s warp was unknown. She could have warped into reinforcements or a fortified location.


    The Collector''s Hunter-Killer ability to track the psionic signature of a target over a vast breadth of space was also already upied. Specifically, by the coordinates of the Jotnar species when theyst upied this realm and entered into a state of hibernation in what was known as the ''White Space''. This, the Collector gleaned from memories sourced by the Jotnar core within it..


    The value of the Jotnar race far outstripped that of the Fang specimen, for there were many like her to consume if it was such that were there as many Fangs as there were killed Old Gods. In addition, conflict between the draconids and the Collector was soon to be inevitable regardless.


    They would meet no matter what.


    The Jotnar, however, would prove to be an immensely valuable source of strength and information provided they submitted to the Collector, which, considering the Collector possessed their Shard of Session which determined rule in their social hierarchy, was not unlikely.


    If they did not submit, then the Collector would consume them, for among specimen, the Jotnar was the absolute most efficient for biomass, possessing enormous amounts of physical flesh and dense spirit roots.


    The Collector let the swirling portal crackle and fade away, and instead flew upwards, towards the cavern where the mana infused crystals were. Here, it opened up its stomach maw wide and used Sapia to break and draw in all the crystals, vacuuming them in at an extraordinarily quick rate.


    As the Collector consumed the crystals, its highly honed digestive system broke them down, reducing them into pure mana, and that mana was circted into the Collector''s core and spirit roots at astounding efficiency, quickly charging it to 200% of its total mana, though the excess would slowly leech out over time.


    With the cavern emptied of crystals, it lost its light and became nothing more than an empty, hollowed out, dark space, and the Collector left it, bursting out in a shockwave of speed as it sailed higher and higher through the mountain and out to the top where Kui was.


    Kui sat cross-legged on the snow, his hands drawn together in meditative pose and his eyes closed. He seemed to have channeled out the fire and heat in his body, and his wounds were repairing with his natural healing factor.


    Without opening his eyes, he asked, "So? Has my [Falling Star] felled her?"


    "No," said the Collector immediately. "The specimen utilized her capacity to break down her body into a moving mass of wind currents and ice to significantly mitigate the force of the fall. She then constructed an instantaneous warp gate to escape."


    "Ah, so that makes three that have survived the [Falling Star]," said Kui. "Though for the sake of my own pride, I will not count this, for she did not truly take the blow." Kui exhaled. "Hm. Decades after breaking my vow never to kill, I am still amused at the irony that the mightiest technique of the Gentle Current was one meant to absolutely kill."


    "Such a vow escapes my logical reasoning," said the Collector. "A restriction to not end lives would only severely hamper one''s capacity to defend themselves or to aplish a multitude of goals."


    "All life is precious. Some lives have small ripples, othersrger, some even are great waves, but we are all part of the same ocean of life. Any one drop is sacred," said Kui. He sighed. "That is what the Gentle Current''s philosophy is supposed to be, but with the Selection looming near, promising mass genocide on a scale never before seen, it does not make sense to withhold killing intent, yes."


    The Collector clicked its mandibles and began to fly away from the fighter specimen to check up on its swarm. The fighter specimen''s conditions to support the Collector were predicated upon the Collector defeating the white maned draconid, taking his shard, and bringing forth what was known as the ''End''.


    Yet, the Collector surmised that the fighter specimen would not be so inclined to assist the Collector should he know that the Collector would bring forth the end of not only the gods, but also of all life that the fighter knew, for he would likely protest all life bing subsumed into the breadth of the Collective.


    As the Collector flew away, the fighter specimen followed, following through on his words to aid the Collector through the Rift.


    ==


    The Collector came into the cavern where the swarm was and found them all kneeling to receive him.


    "The Sovnar is now a dragon yer!" said Thokk.


    "In the time of Gob," exined Goromir. "Those mighty goblins that could y even the weakest and smallest of dragonkind were hailed with the highest of honors. They were enshrined as aspects of war and upon their deaths, entombed with honors befitting even a lord.


    That you have returned, Sovnar, means that you have in that foul dragon and be a dragon yer."


    "The draconid specimen has escaped," said the Collector. "I did not y her."


    There was a brief moment of silence as the goblins wondered whether that actually made the Collector a dragon yer, but then Goromir shrugged.


    "Causing a dragon to flee also counts," said Goromir. "The old ways are long past, some changes can be made."


    "Yes," said Kandak simply.


    "Goblins ying dragons?" said Kui as he put a hand to his beard. "I have never heard the like. Even now, as I gaze upon your kind, I see that you are stronger, nobler, and smarter than any I have evere to know.


    Even in Xia, where it is said the mightiest of goblin kind, the Oni, live, the stronger ones do not consider themselves goblins, they consider themselves Oni."


    "Oni?" said Goromir. "I have never heard their likes. But it has been long since I have walked these realms. Likely, however, they are descendants of the old blood of Gob."


    "Fascinating," said Kui. "You are then goblins of a bygone age?"


    "Raised from the beyond by the Sovnar himself," said Goromir.


    "You possess the ability to raise the dead?" asked Kui, visibly showing shock for the first time as he turned to the Collector,


    "I can only breath life into freshly expired corpses to restore their neural and bodily functions," said the Collector. "These elite specimens were brought forth not by my power, but through goblin capabilities."


    "Hm. I did not know that goblins had possessed such a diversity of power and forms," said Kui. "To even be able to ovee the finality of death, even to small extent, is no small feat. One that not even the New Gods cannot replicate.


    Only one Old God, the Facestealer, do I know of that can do such, but even it may not truly restore the dead, only create shells within which it can ce souls."


    The Collector clicked its mandibles. The Facestealer, along with the Jotnar, were the two targets that the Collcetor wished to encounter and devour.


    "You have stated that the Old Gods have been systematically wiped out by both draconids and New Gods in this area," said the Collector. "Yet, I possess information to indicate that this ''Facestealer'' specimen is still alive."


    "The Facestealer lies beneath the Rift, so it is beyond the reach of the draconids so far," said Kui. "And as for the New Gods, if they could destroy the Facestealer, they would. But the Facestealer cannot be killed by ordinary means.


    It is said that Eljudnir, the Howling Mountain and domain of the Facestealer, is guarded by an old magic so ancient that it renders it indestructible and untouchable by the New Gods. The nature of it, I do not know, for I have never had interest in exploring it."


    The Collector clicked its mandibles. It seemed that information regarding this Facestealer specimen would continue to be scarce. It would search for more as it traveled beyond the Rift, but it would also signal the conquering force to scour for potential information regarding it as well.


    As the Collector processed this thought, it received a distinctive signal from the conquering force. Not one of immediate distress, but one of significant urgency.

 Chapter 184 - Conquering Force: Taking Lake Aska

    Thragg beheldke Aska with a faint smile upon his face. Theke was a thing of beaty, and Thragg, when he was unevolved, had not been able to behold it and appreciate it to its truest extent. Theke stretched into the far distance of his vision, a jewel of clear waters that swayed with the direction of the strong winds of thisnd.


    Sunlight shone through the clouds overhead, the rays reflecting in glimmering, jewel-like luster atop the surface of the water. Snowfall gently drifted down, melting as it kissed theke and became part of it.


    Hills surroundedke Aska, and beyond them,rger formations that could be considered small mountains. Unlike in other areas of Fjall, the hills here were topped with trees and actual green, for they were sustained by water vapor that rose from theke in regr intervals, for the earth underneath theke rumbled every so often, loosing great heat.


    This madeke Aska and her surroundingsnds rich with life and far enough away from Common beings that it was a safe haven for various nonmon creatures that ranged from monsters and beasts to tribal creatures such as goblins and lizans.


    The goblins upied the southern end of theke, and the lizans, a tribe of bipedal reptilians, upied the northern edge, and they rarely interacted with each other so as to prevent conflict because of how evenly matched the two tribes were.


    "Lead me to your champions," said Thragg, and the recently subjugated Frostfish tribe goblins ahead of him grunted in affirmation..


    The goblins led Thragg first to the southern bank of theke where, out in the open, a sizable number of Frostfish goblins were practicing swimming and fishing. Already several piles ofrge fish were stacked up high on the bank, holes punched into their heads to stop them from flopping around.


    As the goblins on the bank saw their own kind approaching, they perked up first in familiarity, but when they saw Thragg''s unfamiliar face and the champions behind him, they raised an immediate rm. One of Frostfish goblins raised a shell to his lips and blew into it, letting out a trilling rumble that immediately alerted all of the goblins.


    The Frostfish goblins gathered together in a haste while sending off their women and children for the hills where their burrows were. The men on the bank, numbering a solid fifty in number, tensed up as they saw Thragg''s conquering force approaching.


    A champion among them, noticeable from hisrge tusks and bigger frame, barked orders to them, and several of the hobgoblins there took out slingshots with pellets of ice in them, drew back the slings, and fired.


    "Move aside," said Thragg to the Frostfish goblins in front of him. They were in the line of fire, for it seemed that their brethren on the bank believed them to be turncoats whose lives were not worth saving.


    Not entirely inurate, but these foolish goblins simply did not know of the glorious purpose that Thragg would bring upon them.


    The Frostfish goblins in front of Thragg immediately scrambled to the sides for their lives, for a well sharpened ice shard shot by apetent sling was deadly enough to easily lodge into a brain or painfully into the flesh.


    This, Thragg knew very well. He had suffered the same pain once, when the Frostskull tribe, back when tribes meant anything, had tried to take overke Aska and were met with cowardly attacks from afar, whittling down their numbers.


    The rain of ice pellets flew in neat arcs,nding like a volley of arrows against Thragg and his champions. The pellets thudded against Thragg''s skin and bounced off uselessly. Some shattered against his hard skin entirely.


    The champions behind him, too, were utterly unfazed.


    Mere little slingshots would not do anything to Thragg anymore. There was only purpose to bring forth to these misguided goblins.


    When the Frostfish hobgoblins saw that their slings were not doing anything, they cast them aside and drew out weapons. Weapons stolen from the asional raid to a human vige, some of the strong ones possessing clubs or des crafted from Everfrost, some having sharpened tusks from Frostboars, and the like.


    "Champions. Arm yourselves," said Thragg.


    Thragg and the champions in unison withdrew their purifying lightdes from belts or string tying the weapons to their backs. The des all gleamed with a golden shine that far, far outmatched anything the hobgoblins wielded.


    As Thragg and his champions drew closer, the Frostfish goblins became ever more fearful, taking steps back as they noticed they were outmatched in weaponry and size. Only the champion of the group remained standing forwards, his hands sped around a greatsword piged from some adventuring corpse, most likely.


    "Who you?" said the champion.


    "I am Thragg, once of the Frostskull tribe, not part of a much greater force. I am here to take you into our new tribe, the tribe to unite all," said Thragg as he stopped when he was a few meters away from the champion.


    Face to face like this, it was even more evident how outmatched the champion was. Thragg was a head taller, exuding a magical energy pressure that greatly eclipsed the champion''s by several magnitudes. In fact, the average champion behind Thragg was already several time stronger than this champion, let alone Thragg himself.


    "You look strange," said the champion as he eyed Thragg''s new form and then nced at the dark blue eyed champions behind him. "All of you look different. Much, much stronger. How is this?"


    "We have found a Sovnar," said Thragg. "A Sovnar to grant us new forms, new power, and new purpose."


    "Sovnar?" The champion tilted his head in slight confusion.


    The Elder stepped forwards. "You remember the call of the Lord, do you not?"


    "Yes," said the champion. "We ignored it. Dumb to follow. Would have us all die."


    "The Sovnar is far beyond the lord. He is the ruler of the Old Age meant to unite all goblins under one," said the Elder. "You are part of this purpose. The Sovnar extends his unity to you to join us."


    "Or else?" said the champion.


    "Or else I fight you for the right to im your people, as is tradition," said Thragg. "But you can stand down, join our ranks, submit, and live and be greater as we have."


    "Okay," said the champion without too much hesitation. He put his greatsword down on the snow as a sign of surrender. "I am no match for you. I will serve."


    "Good. You are reasonable among your kind," said Thragg. "What is your name, champion?"


    "Ban," said the champion.


    "You will not regret this choice, Ban," said Thragg.


    Thragg then spoke to the rest of the hobgoblins behind Ban. "All of you! Submit your wills as your champion has. Or face death!"


    Without much hesitation, the hobgoblins all dropped their weapons and fell on the ground in non-threatening disy, for they knew that to ever challenge Thragg or any one of the champions was to immediately court death.


    "Then you are all now bound to the service of the Sovnar. Open your hearts, and let my words take root," said Thragg, his voice projecting outwards as he used what fraction of the Sovnar''s authority he could.


    As his voice radiated outwards, washing over the Frostfish goblins, they fell under Higher Calling for they had willingly epted it.


    "Now, one more champion left, is there not?" said Thragg. "And the rest of your people. Come, let us unite the Frostskull and Frostfish tribes properly."


    ==


    Thragg stood at the peak of one of therger hills borderingke Aska. He stood in the midst of a shallow pond thaty at the center of a grove of trees that formed a natural circr perimeter thirty meters in diameter. The water of the pond rose up to his shins, and though his body was far resistant to cold, he knew that the water here was colder than usual.


    This area was magically charged, and this point likely crystallized environmental mana and cold into Everfrost.


    This was a sacred dueling spot where a chieftain, the strongest of champions among the Frostfish tribe, was elected in trial bybat, as was the usual way of rule among goblins.


    Here, Thragg stood against the chieftain, a champion known as Drogan. An older champion, his beard white. He was dressed in aplete set of Fjan armor fashioned from Coldsteel, lined underneath by Frostboar and Snowdeer hides while a cloak from a in Frostbear flowed from his back.


    A proper armor set was incredibly rarity among goblins, and this, Drogan had acquired by actually paying a human cksmith in a vige, for outer viges among the humans often did interact with nonmon tribes, trading and exchanging services to survive.


    Drogan wielded shield and arge de, and his physique was excellent despite his more advanced years, allowing him to stand just as tall as Thragg despite Thragg being an elite that naturally wasrger and stronger than a champion.


    Drogan knelt by the edge of the pond, his helmet on the grassy ground where snow white lilies sprouted, ready to be painted red in blood. He faced away from Thragg and drew tribal markings on his face with dried ck dye.


    All symbolic gestures to show that the chieftain was now ready to face a battle for his title.

 Chapter 185 - Conquering Force: Taking Lake Aska II

    The chieftain finished marking his face with ck streaks gathered under his eyes, making his deep stare that much more piercing. Crow''s feet clung to the sides of his eyes, showing that his ferocity as a fighter was tempered by years of age, for no goblin, not even a champion, survived long unless they had some wisdom to their ways.


    Thragg observed with respect, knowing that one of the reasons the Frostfish tribe was able to survive so long and so well was because they, despite the foolish champion that Thragg had killed, were overall united under Drogan''s keen and wise rule.


    Drogan was known for making peace with humans when he had to, and that had allowed his tribe of goblins to escape targeting from Adventurers for the many years of his rule. When he first came into power and approached a human vige, wishing to hash out terms of co-existence with their elder, he had at first been reviled by many, ridiculed as weak by tribes including the Frostskulls.


    But over the years, Drogan''s way of rule had shown its merits. The Frostfish tribe flourished, allowed to inhabitke Aska''s rich bounty, and because they could get armaments, items, and food from human viges, they prospered where tribes like the Frostskulls struggled under harsher winters, strong storms, and the onught of Adventuring retribution whenever they tried to sack a vige.


    "I am ready. My apologies for the wait, Frostskull warrior," said Drogan. His way of speaking was dignified andplex, far more capable of speech than the other goblins..


    "There is no ''Frostskull'' anymore," said Thragg. "It is only the banner that I introduced myself under to make us familiar to your tribe. A Sovnar has arisen to unify us, and I carry out only his will. Soon, the names of our tribes will not matter."


    "A Sovnar?" said Drogan. "Hah! I would never have believed you were your forms not so different, exuding with power. Even you, challenger, possess blessings from so many different monster bloodlines, as if Gob himself had blessed your blood."


    "You know of the title of Sovnar? Of Gob, our old god?" said Thragg.


    "Of course. I learned as much of our history as I could from our elder," said Drogan.


    "The elder that one of your champions killed,"mented Thragg.


    "For that sin, he was beaten to near death and sent to exile for twenty days alone," said Thragg. "He managed to survive, and though I have taken much favor with him, he still was a champion necessary for my tribe''s safety.


    I respected the elder, I truly did, for I was his pupil, but he would have wanted this tribe to prosper."


    "So that is why your words are so varied. You have taken the time to study thenguage of Gob," said Thragg. He noted several bone nes and bracelets on Drogan as well. "And you know how to Bone Bind."


    "All that I could learn from the elder, I did," said Drogan simply.


    "You care for your tribe, it is evident, and you are wise enough to see beyond yourself and to a greater purpose: that of your tribe''s well-being. You were willing to discard old notions of pride to make peace with humans and adopt new ways." Thragg raised an inviting hand towards Drogan. "Why not join me without the need for this old, bloody ritual?"


    "What kind of chieftain would I be were I not to fight for the right of my tribe?" said Drogan. He raised his shield and sword in resolute determination. "This, I must do."


    "I understand," said Thragg. He clenched his fists and lightly emanated his magical energy, a golden aura beginning to form around him.


    "I, Drogan, chieftain of the Frostfish tribe, now grant you, great challenger, right to face me," said Drogan as he surged his own aura, one colored blue in the form of the Unity affinity.


    Thragg began a slow charge forwards, intentionally limiting his strength to grant the chieftain a bit of a fighting show before taking him down.


    Drogan wreathed his sword in blue mana, swirls of energy encasing it in a sheathe, and then shed forwards, sending out a slicing arc projectile.


    Thragg held out a hand and easily blocked the arc of solidified mana, causing it to shatter against his durable hand.


    Drogan took that moment to use bone binding. Several bones, fangs and tusks, around his ne glew bright before shattering into dust that seeped into his body. His muscture became more pronounced and defined and his aura surged, signaling a boost in strength.


    Bone bindings of Frostboars and Frostbears for a strength and durability boost, it seemed.


    With this, Drogan sent out another ranged sh to cover for a charge he made.


    Thragg swatted away this sh, sending it into the waters below where it cleaved out a deep incision into the rocky base of the pond. He watched as Drogan came forward with his shield held out, wrapped in blue energy.


    "Hah!" Drogan bashed his shield against Thragg with all his might, explosively releasing the energy imbued in the shield in the form of a projected shockwave.


    Thragg skidded back a few meters from the blow, but he was utterly unharmed.


    "So this is the might of the Sovnar''s blessing," said Drogan with a defeated chuckle, but he did not lower his shield and sword. "It is a wondrous event that I may test my might against that of the Old Age."


    Drogan put his shield up, generating a mana barrier in front of him, and behind it, he thrust out his sword again and again, shooting out piercing bolts of mana at rapidfire speed.


    Thragg used his four arms to individually deflect and knock away all of the dozens of bolts withplete ease before he rushed forwards, disappearing from Drogan''s vision.


    "Wha-," began Drogan as Thragg''s fist suddenly crashed into his shield with tremendous impact the likes of which he had never faced before.


    ==


    Drogan skidded across the water, hurtling back and moving out of the boundaries of the pond and mming into a tree. The tree trunk snapped from the impact, and Drogan slumped down and became still, the breathpletely knocked out of him.


    Drogan''s greatest aplishment was ying a former four-star adventurer who had turned bandit, growing mad and savaging human viges. He in turn hade toke Aska, ughtering many of the tribesmen, and that was when Drogan approached the viges the adventurer had attacked and proposed a hunt.


    The Frostfish tribe would help the viges and their ragtag group of fishermen and foragers turned makeshift fighter to help them hunt the ex-adventurer and his group of bandits.


    When they raided the bandit''s base, the sh ended with Drogan facing off against the adventurer in singlebat.


    The adventurer had fallen behind on his training over years of being a bandit, that was to be certain, but it was still a hard-fought battle and a victory that no goblin in the past one hundred years could have ever hoped to match.


    Drogan still bore scars across his chest and legs from the adventurer''s tricky twin daggers which hade close several times to slitting his throat. It was only because Drogan was an impressive defensive fighter naturally countering the adventurer''sbat method that Drogan had managed to win.


    But this goblin was far stronger than the adventurer. The two were not evenparable.


    Drogan coughed weakly, trying to steady his breathing to regte the flow of his mana.


    The broken tree behind Drogan creaked, and its upper half started to fall towards Drogan''s head. He looked up and weakly began to raise his shield, but he was too weak. The challenger''s single punch had shattered through his mana barrier, broken many of the bones supporting his shield arm.


    Drogan raised his sword and tried to infuse mana into it to form a barrier, but toote.


    ==


    Thragg grabbed the falling tree, holding it up with one arm with as much ease as if it was a mere feather. He looked down at the chieftain''s surprised face, at his half-raised sword arm, and extended an arm to him.


    "This battle is over. I understand that a proper duel, especially one that leads to rule over the tribe, is one that ends with death," said Thragg. "But there is no need for that. Those are the old ways, and the Sovnar promises ones new.


    And think of this, Drogan, your tribe still needs you. You are the one that has brought prosperity to them. They believe in you and value you.


    Submit to the Sovnar''s rule, and you may continue to lead this tribe for the Sovnar."


    "Heh," coughed out Drogan as he grabbed Thragg''s hand. Thragg helped him up. "I suppose you are right. I was the first to break from older ways, and here I am stuck in them, willing to throw my life away for an old dueling rule. It is good that you have knocked some sense into this old head of mine."

 Chapter 186 - Conquering Force: Adventuring Intrusion

    Thragg looked upon the Frostfish tribe goblins kneeling before him and Drogan. They were still at the pond atop the hill, but this time, Thragg had been marked with the ck dye upon his forehead as a signifier that he had wrested control Drogan.


    At the same time, Thragg raised Drogan''s arm up in the air in triumphant posture.


    "All of you are now under the rule of the Sovnar!" said Thragg. "But do not fear, for new and great purpose will be given to you. Your chieftain, Drogan, a wise one of Gob as he is, shall still lead you, for I him, you have ced great trust and faith.


    You know Drogan, and you know how much he has done for you. If he did not believe that the Sovnar''s rule would grant you greatness and plenty, then he would have fought to the death to continue leading you.


    And now, he shall still lead you, only under the Sovnar''s banner."


    "The title of a ''Sovnar'' is one of great importance," said Drogan.. "There has only been one Sovar in all the history of Gob, that being the very first blood of Gob to rule over us all, the one to raise our kingdoms and might in the Old Age.


    A Sovnar is a title that brings forth a golden era. That we serve under one now is a blessing."


    "Where is the Sovnar?" said one of the kneeling goblins.


    "Far north. Gaining power. But soon, he will return, and when he returns, not even the gods themselves will stand to his might," said Thragg. "Until then, I shall guide your people into uniting the rest of the tribes under us."


    Thragg knew that there were five more tribes to conquer. These tribes, however, were ones that Frostskulls and Frostfish tribes had little contact with, for they were farther west and farther north. They had adapted and evolved differently to their colder, more mountainous regions and had not been seen in over a century.


    It was likely they were vastly different than the goblins were now, but the blood of Gob would still speak to them regardless.


    Thragg heard amotion from the back of the goblin crowd, and soon enough, he saw the goblins parting way to make a path for three panicked hobgoblins. They stumbled over their steps, crumpling down in exhaustion when they saw Drogan and Thragg.


    The three hobgoblins were noticeably wounded. Arrowheads stuck out from their backs, burns lined their arms and legs, and one of them had a blood red w pierced through his stomach in an inevitably lethal wound.


    "The goblins on watch duty," said Drogan with urgency as he stepped forwards, meeting the goblins.


    The most wounded hobgoblin copsed on the ground before Drogan before he could speak.


    "What is it!?" said Drogan as he immediately tended to the most wounded one,ying him on the ground in a morefortable position.


    Drogan hovered a gauntleted hand over the lethally injured goblin, and strands of his blue Unity mana formed and flowered into the hobgoblin''s body. Wounds began to patch up, burns knitting over with new flesh, and the arrowheads fell out as new flesh pushed them out.


    But the crimson red w remained embedded in the hobgoblin''s stomach. Yet, with Drogan''s healing, the hobgoblin would likely survive for some time more.


    The other hobgoblins spoke on behalf of their fallenrade.


    "Adventurers, chieftain!" they said with urgency.


    "Adventurers?" Drogan stood up, his tone pondering.


    "Did you not have peace with the surrounding viges?" said Thragg.


    "Yes, and I do not think the viges would have easily broken it," said Drogan. "We are a buffer between the viges and the Lizans to the north of theke, and the Lizans do not take as kindly to humans as I do."


    "You trust the humans?" said Thragg.


    "I trust them to the degree that they trust me, no more, no less, and that degree is one that should not be breached by a betrayal such as this," said Drogan. He grew still for a few seconds, thinking, for it seemed that Drogan was one that never acted without atleast spending some time to ponder his actions.


    A rare butmendable trait for goblins. "I suspect that it is a party of rogue adventurers. Ones that desire our cores and flesh for materials, for I do not know of much other reason why they would hunt us unprovoked."


    Drogan tightened the strap on his shield and steadied his de in his hand. "Regardless, we shall see."


    The threat in his voice was heavily evident.


    Thragg cracked the knuckles on his four arms. "Yes, we shall."


    ==


    Down by thekeside, Thragg and Drogan approached, taking a more hidden route around the hills. The rest of the goblins along with ten champions were left behind by the hills to be guarded and because they would not be able to fight adventurers of any real strength.


    This left Thragg, Drogan, and four champions as a strike and scouting force against the adventurers. ording to further information from the hobgoblins, the adventurers had approached with an ambush attack, ying the goblins with ease.


    It was a group of five adventurers, and they had easily dispatched and killed seven of the ten goblins that had been on watch duty. The adventurers were of significant strength, but then again, it was difficult for hobgoblins who had not seen much of what true strength was to determine how exactly mighty these adventurers were.


    They only knew that the adventurers were ''strong'' and had varied abilities. One used magic, one a mace and an axe, one a bow, and finally the strongest a strange weapon of living flesh that fired red ws.


    They had gotten the star rating of the strongest one, and it was at 5 stars which immediately worried Drogan, but Thragg had assured the chieftain that a five star adventurer would be of no consequence.


    This, Thragg was confident in believing, for he hade across three-star adventurers in his time and knew that as he was now, he could defeat a hundred such humans with no real issue.


    Thragg might have a more cooled, measured battle lustpared to his brethren, but that did not mean hecked it. He was rather eager to test his might against proper adventurers to trulypare his and the champions'' might against the star rankings of the adventurers.


    The adventurers had also evidently been looking for the rest of the goblins and were notably confused when the vast majority of them were gone, having been summoned to watch the duel between Thragg and Drogan.


    Thragg knew that the Sovnar''s orders were to absolutely avoid tinkerers at all cost, but at the same time, he could not simply abandon these goblins. If he needed to, he was willing to see the greater purpose and force the goblins to leave with him, but at the same time, if the adventurers were weak, then he believed this was a prime opportunity to capture the adventurers and gain information from them.


    After all, soon enough, the adventurers would one of the greater threats that the Sovnar would face. Gleaning their movements and purposes would be of great tactical usage to the Sovnar in the future.


    It did not take long for Thragg, Drogan, and the champions to find the signs of the adventurers on thekeside. Thragg''s group had circled around theke and first found signs of the carnage the adventurers had wrought, but the adventurers themselves had left some time ago, taking care not to leave tracks, as if they were stalking prey.


    Seven dead hobgoblin bodiespletely dried out into desated husks, their skin turned brittle and wrinkled, the blood and liquid utterly drained out of them.


    Drogan knelt by the corpses, nodded in respect for their loss, and then snapped out a tooth from one of them. He grasped the tooth tight in his palm, blue mana flowing out from him and starting to gather around his palm.


    Then, his eyes lit up with a faint blue sheen.


    "I see the path they have taken," said Drogan. "They have gone to the hills, but they do not know the way to our homes and burrows. I have no doubt that they asked the vigers for our locations, but the vigers have granted them false leads.


    One that leads to a ravine where there is no escape with a proper ambush."


    "Then we will show these adventurers that taking the blood of Gob is not a crime to be punished lightly," said Thragg.

 Chapter 187 - Conquering Force: The Hunt

    "Goblins¡­goblins¡­I see no damned goblins," said Arav, leader of the Coiled Serpent, a five star adventuring team based in the Sundan empire in the realm of Terra. His ck pupils were rimmed in striking, glowing white as he trudged through a tree-nked path through the hills borderingke Aska.


    "Is this really worth the detour at this point?" said Ais, a small, slender woman with long ck hair tied back into a ponytail. She was recognizable by glittering, iridescent faerie wings that sprouted from her back and the leafy green robes characteristic of the realm of Foraoise.


    "I agree," said Federic, a sizable specimen of a man d in thick, gleaming metal from head to toe, marking him as a man hailing from the United City States, specifically the city of Metallo known well for their Coresmithing techniques and their high affinity with Metal magic blessed by their patron god Ilmar, the Eternal Hammer and smith of the gods.


    In Federic''s hands were arge mace and a massive greatshield, and his every step loosed heavy cks as his armor moved with his heavy and bulky frame. "I have never experienced one myself, well all should know from our basic teachings that in an Undead emergency, time is of essence."


    "Aye," said Erik, a Fjan native. A broad shouldered man that stood a head taller even than Federic with tribal blue tattoos mimicking serpents etched into his pale body. He wore fur skin armor and held a massive battle axe in both wide hands. "Arav, I understand your weapon needs blood to work, but we cannot waste more time here.. Are seven hobgoblins not enough?"


    "Not even close," said Arav. He held up his right arm where a strange weapon that lookedprised of liquid muscle wrapped around it. It was shaped like a tendril that curled around his arm, ending with a four petaled tip surrounding a solid, crystalline red w. The entire weapon almost seemed like it was alive, gleaming with crimson energy. "I need twenty at the least for another two hours of usage."


    "That thing still disgusts me," said Ais as she floated in the air, turning her head away from the tendril.


    "It would be a sacrilege to the Coresmiths of Metallo," said Federic. "Working with cores and flesh from those of the Common Body seems¡­distasteful."


    "Not the Common Body any longer," said Arav with annoyance. "The Vampyrs and Daemons are emunicated. Did you forget this because Metallo was safe behind their towering walls when the Red Night hit?"


    "I meant no offense," said Federic. "I understand how much Sunda lost at that time. It simply feels wrong to gaze at such a weapon, especially as the son of a Coresmith. It is as if you took a Faerie''s heart and turned it into a weapon.


    I understand that the coresmiths of Sunda are willing to be more experimental, but it does unsettle me."


    "Why am I being made an example here?" said Ais.


    "Or any other Common peoples, you get my point," said Federic.


    "I don''t like it because it doesn''t seem practical," said Erik. "It is strong, aye, but it needs to blood to feast upon to work, and it is greedy. While this here-," He twirled his Coldsteel battle axe ¨C so called because it was created by tempering Everfrost into the Folding process of normal metals. "Is reliable at any time."


    "Remember that the only reason our team is ranked at five stars is because of me and this weapon," said Arav. There was pride in his voice, but it was measured, rtively rational. "I do not put down your skills, but I am the only five star adventurer here. Most of you are at three stars.


    Yes, our teamwork ys a part in everything, but my raw power coupled with Bloodspike is why the League assigns this star rating to us.


    If I am not at 100%, then our ability to hunt stronger monsters goes down significantly. Were it any other contract, then I would be fine not having Bloodspike drink to its fullest, but this is an Undead Alert that called for adventuring teams five stars and up because the League deemed any teams below to be a liability waiting to be turned into more Undead.


    We are on the cusp of being five stars: a risk. If we do not want to end up infected, then we need to be operating at all our strength. Not only for the tempting coin award, but also for our safety."


    "He is right," said Yua, the archer of the team. She was of slender and tall build that exuded grace and agility. She wore long red, orange tinted robes from her home of Honno in the realm of Xia. As a Karasi, ck feathered wings emerged from her back, and her orange eyes held split pupils in them reminiscent of the piercing stare of a falcon.


    "We will hunt the goblins, but Arav, do not let this take more than another half hour. Time and further lives are of essence, and our presence is needed at the Westward Boundary."


    Yua was also an experienced four-star adventurer, easily the second strongest on the team. A recent addition serving on a hired contract, but the rest of the team deferred to her decisions as much as they did with Arav due to her experience and sharp wits.


    "Got it," said Arav, a little peeved that someone else was telling him what to do on his team, but necessary. Yua was much stronger than their past archer and well worth the coin used to hire her. Still, that she impeded on his authority as the leader did irk him a few times.


    "How is the trail?" said Yua.


    Arav''s white rimmed pupils dted. This was the Inhera of the Sundans called Far-Seeing Eyes; a blessing passed down by their patron god Ajna that granted certain Sundans incredible capacity to perceive the flow of mana around them.


    "The trail is still cold, but this is the path the vigers told us to take," said Arav.


    "Maybe they were lying to us?" said Ais with a shiver. "I''d like to head to the Outpost soon, please. This ce is far too cold for a fae like me to be in."


    "Beautiful bodies, you fae lot have, but so fragile! Perhaps I will visit your realm and show them what real men are like!" remarked Erik as he puffed out his muscled chest,pletely immune to the cold as a Fjan native.


    "Oh please, a musclehead like you would really not be the popr type in Foraoise," said Ais.


    "Why in the name of the gods would the vigers lie to us about the goblins?" said Arav. "One would think they would be all too happy to see their goblin pests exterminated."


    "Perhaps the goblins have struck some form of peace with them," said Yua. "In Xia, it is not unheard of. Oni, though not quite goblins, have been friendly with farmers, hunters, and vigers that live in the outskirts of our territories."


    "Trust me, you do not know the goblins here," said Erik with a grunt. "They are foul, savage creatures that know nothing but the next meal, regardless of whether they tear it from a child''s throat or from a rotting corpse."


    "Is not the leader of these goblins rumored to wear armor? Wield a sword and shield?" said Yua. "That disys intelligence. Bartering and trade, too, it would seem."


    "More like he looted it off a corpse," said Erik.


    "¡­" Arav remained silent as he kept forwards at the head of the group, passing tree after tree. They had been on this cold trail for ten minutes now, making good ground, but they had not encountered a single goblin.


    Arav''s Farsight eyes could only track magical energy, and energy above a certain threshold at that, but it was enough to perceive the movements of hobgoblins, especially the mana sensitive ones.


    So why were there no goblins?


    He felt a distinct sense of unease, but he ignored it, because he knew that they were far above the point of needing to worry about goblins. The Undead were a much more pressing threat to think about.


    It was then that Arav stepped out from the trees and stepped into water. Before him was arge basin of shallow water dotted with trees. The basin was nked by towering hills that surrounded it, making it aplete dead end were it not for a group of three hobgoblins at the end, huddled by a rocky hill wall with no way to escape.


    "They must be goblins that ran from us. They have cornered themselves here," said Federic.


    "Stupid lot, the goblins are," said Erik as he raised his battle axe.


    "Alright, let us make this quick," said Arav as he flicked his hand out, the tendril of Bloodspikeshing out and gleaming, ready for blood. "


    "Wait, look at this area," said Yua. "Closed off on all sides with the hobgoblins so far in. They may be luring us into an ambush."


    "This does not feel right," agreed Ais.


    "An ambush of what?" scoffed Erik. "More goblins? We could ughter a hundred with no issue."


    "Erik is right," said Arav. "Petty goblin ambushes are a thing to be feared for lesser starred adventurers, but we are far beyond that point."


    Yua withdrew her bow, a slender construct of ebony wood with a drawstring of bright red, and narrowed her eyes, her pointed, feathered ears pricking up. "I still do not like this."


    "We move forwards. We kill the goblins and drain their blood. If an ambush hits us, we kill them too," said Arav. "If the numbers are such that they waste our time, Federic can create tforms for us to scale the hills with."


    "Understood," said Federic as he raised his enormous shield.


    "Prepare some area of effect magic in case, Ais," said Arav.


    "¡­Alright," said Ais with some hesitation as she held her hands out to her sides, faint green magical circles emanating from them.


    "Now, we hunt," said Arav as he dashed forwards, his team in tow behind him.


    ==


    "Now, we hunt," said Thragg as he heard confirmation from the elder that the adventurers had left to attack the hobgoblins left in the basin as bait.


    Thragg and Drogan both broke out into a sprint, leaving the elder and two champions behind by the edge of the treeline. The two other champions were hidden in the hills, ready to drop down and defend the hobgoblins.

 Chapter 188 - Conquering Force: Adventurers End

    ==


    Arav sprinted across the basin, his legs wreathed in flickers of red mana. His dark brown leather boots crashed out little geysers across the water as he cleared the length of the wide basin with utter ease, easily almost twice as fast as anyone else, nearing the three helpless hobgoblins with Bloodspike''s tendril wriggling out towards them with hunger.


    As the leader of the Coiled Serpent, Arav made it a point to always charge in first when it was possible to. His team was diverse and at first had doubted his ability for he was from Sunda.


    The Sundan Empire was not particrly known for fielding strong adventurers so much as they were known for being some of the best and brightest researchers in the fields of magic. Their coresmithing was not as sturdy as that of Metallo''s, but it was far more experimental, diverse, and unique in the breadth of magic they utilized.


    Their golemancy was second to none, capable of fielding mighty automatons easily as strong as powerful adventurers.


    But adventuring was an upation was seen as one that those who were too brutish to attend Sunda''s finest magical academies went to. Where second or third sons of noble families took up arms to make a name for themselves outside the boundaries of their suffocating families..


    Regardless, though Sunda had the fewest amount of adventurers ranked seven stars and up, it was a mistake to consider them inferior in terms of power.


    The Sundan empire''s renowned All-Magic, divine magic from their patron god Ajna that allowed them to use any field of magic provided there waspatibility with it. All elements were known to Sundans, and Arav proudly wielded the power of me.


    Arav jumped in the air, a burst of me from his feet igniting propulsion that sent him high up as he aimed Bloodspike down at the hobgoblins.


    The hobgoblins cowered, their backs pressed against the walls and their eyes wide as they trembled for their inevitable deaths toe.


    Arav primed Bloodspike, surging magical energy into the tendril. It gleamed with a crimson tint as the w embedded at the center of its flesh petals jutted out, ready to be fired. He narrowed his white rimmed eyes, carefully analyzing the mana flow of the hobgoblins to predict their movements and hit them dead on.


    Right as Arav thought about firing, it was then that he felt a heavy impact m into his side, sending the world spinning. In the next moment, he crashed heavily into the water with a ssh, grimacing as he put a hand to the cracked scaled armor at his side.


    Judging from the dull, warm pangs of pain, Arav had been hit by blunt force, strong enough to have severely bruised him. Thankfully, his ribs had not broken nor was there any internal damage.


    But what in the name of the gods had hit him?


    A goblin ambush? Impossible. No goblin was strong enough to break past his natural durability, let alone through his pangolion scale mail. He immediately got up, leaping in the air andnding on his feet inbat ready stance, showing off his agility.


    "What?" Arav could not believe his eyes.


    In front of him were two more goblins. They were big, standing at slightly over two meters tall. Their height, developed muscture, and tusk length indicated that they were champions, and yet, something about them was incredibly off. Their skin was pale white, the color of snow or ice, and their eyes were a deep dark blue shade gleaming with hints of magical energy.


    "Goblins¡­?" said Ais as she hovered in the air with cocked head and narrowed green eyes. Her hands and forearms were lit up in green circuits indicating devotion to Grainne the Winged, the faerie goddess. The magic circles she had prepared for area of effect were still there, though Arav could immediately tell by the strength of these champions that area of effect was not what they wanted.


    "These goblins are strong," said Arav immediately, feeling the pain of his bruise stinging at his side. "Far stronger than any goblin I have ever seen. Erik, what type are they?"


    Erik, the Fjan native, grunted. "I do not know. They are unlike any I have seen or heard before."


    Federic came to the head of the group andid down his greatshield with a heavy m, sending out a wave of water rippling away from him. "I, too, can sense their strength. Two strong enemies. Vanguard formation, then, Arav?"


    "Yes," said Arav. Vanguard formation involved Federic at the front with his natural durability while Ais and Yua fired from range. Erik and Arav were flexible, changing from defending allies or attacking key targets.


    "No," said Yua. "These goblins are strong. At the least, as strong as I am. They are likely the strongest champions that have been bred in this area for centuries, and if this is an ambush, we cannot discount the fact that the entire rest of the tribe maye swarming.


    We must escape."


    "We escape by pushing through, killing the goblins in front of us, and scaling the hills," said Arav.


    "It is better to trace our steps back," said Yua.


    "It is better that you die here," came a goblin voice from behind them.


    The adventurers turned their heads to see four more goblins approaching them from behind. Two incrediblyrge ones, one of which had four arms, a tail, mes wreathed around its back, and electricity crackling around golden fins ced around its body. The other was armored from head to toe and armed with a sword and shield, emanating impressive amounts of blue mana.


    The remaining two goblins were identical to the goblins in front of them. Champions, but far stronger than the normal kind.


    "What in the name of all the gods is that¡­thing?" said Ais as her eyes widened at the sight of the four armed goblin. "A goblin with four arms? And everything else about it-,"


    "No, just sense the magical energy from it," said Yua. "It is exceptionally powerful. In the range of six-star adventurers. We cannot win this fight."


    Arav''s mind and heart raced.


    Was he going to die here? Against goblins, of all things? He, a five star adventurer? After he had spent his family''s entire fortune crafting the Bloodspike? How would he ever pay back his debts on top of that? No, the debts would move down to his little son, dooming him to a life wasted paying for his father''s irresponsibility.


    "How did you not sense them, Arav?" asked Erik as he gripped his battle axe tight. "Are your eyes not blessed to track the flow of mana?"


    "My eyes should have picked up on them, I know it," said Arav, questioning this too.


    "You are not the only ones that can wield magic," said the armored goblin champion. "We hid ourselves from you using magic far beyond your means, that hailing from the Old Age itself."


    "Your Common is good," said Arav to the armored one, potentially thinking of a way to negotiate out of this.


    "I have taken the time to learn," said the armored goblin simply.


    "You must be the chieftain of this tribe," said Arav. "I have heard of you. An armored goblin that knows how to make peace with humans."


    Arav extended a conciliatory hand towards the chieftain. "How about now? We are adventurers assigned to contain the threat of Undeath north of here, and if we cannot go, it will no doubt spread here. Not to mention that should you get rid of us, the League wille bearing down upon you."


    The chieftain hesitated for a moment, and Arav smiled, knowing that the might of the Adventurer''s League, particrly in threat of retribution, was more than enough to make these goblins cower.


    Then, the four-armed goblin put a hand on the chieftain''s shoulder and spoke to him in a tongue that Arav knew nothing of. It sounded deep and guttural, with sounds made from the base of the throat. They spoke for some time, enough time to pass that the tension in the air became almost palpable, Arav feeling sweat drip from his forehead with the unease of his party rising by every second.


    "The era of adventurers is over," said the chieftain, finally. "The times we have spent cowering under your threat, always hiding, always running, are over."


    "Are you sure of this, chieftain?" said Arav. "You will doom all of your people to die. A few among you may have managed to obtain power, but do you think power of this level is enough to truly challenge the League?"


    "You attack us with no care for our lives for you knew us as weak. The moment you see our strength, you try to negotiate, but even now, you do so with a threat. You care not for our ways and our lives for you had power to trample them," said the chieftain. "But that ends now. I only ask for fair treatment, and since you have taken seven of our lives, we must take seven of yours.


    There are only five of you here, but your lives will suffice for the crimes you havemitted."

 Chapter 189 - Conquering Force: Adventurers End II

    "You think our lives on the same level as yours, goblin!?" said Erik. He grinned broadly, his animalistic canines jutting out as his expression twisted with battle hunger and rage known wide among Fjall and its human natives. He powered up with golden mana purely geared towards offense, his massive muscles bulging in flexion as he empowered his body with magical energy. "You wille to know your folly!"


    "Erik, wait-," began Arav.


    "Break through and run," said Erik more quietly. "I will hold them."


    Arav understood then. Erik was sacrificing his life so that the others could escape. A noble, honorable thing to do, doing the name of the Fjan warriors and their adherence to the nobility of battle more than enough justice.


    And Arav was not going to hesitate and waste it..


    "Move, move!" said Arav as he pointed forwards, towards the two champions ahead of them. "Spear formation ¨C pierce through!"


    Arav sprinted ahead of all of his team to act as a siege breaker to overwhelm the two champions with sudden power. Federic would then m into them and use his metal magic to suppress then. All the while, Yua and Ais would use suppressive fire to prevent the champions from retaliating.


    "[Forest Strength], [Woond Speed], [Wild Frenzy]," said Ais in thenguage of the gods, channeling her circuits and flowing magical energy into Arav in the form of enhancements that boosted his physical power, his agility, and his pain tolerance.


    Aravnded between the two champions, and they withdrew gleaming des of crystallized light from leather sheaths at their waists. He dodged under one swing and then mmed Bloodspike into one of the champions, knocking it away several meters with heavy impact.


    Bloodspike was not only a projectile weapon. Its fluxing, malleable muscle structure could be rigid and act as a bludgeoning weapon depending on how Arav put his mana into it.


    The champion guarded the strike at thest moment, so it would not do much more than bruise his arm. But this gave Arav time to deal with the second champion. He ttened Bloodspike''s structure into that of arge de and sliced at the champion''s head.


    The champion shed with Arav with his lightde, holding the two together in a sword lock. However, Arav had no time to be in a lock of any kind. He surged his red mana to his limits, empowering his body explosively to overpower the champion.


    The champion surged his own red mana, countering Arav''s explosive mana with his own.


    Annoying. A fight between two individuals with chaos mana was about finding the right timing to use one''s explosive burst of power or forcing a burst out from an enemy without using one''s own. But in an equally matched lock like this, both parties just wasted time and mana.


    The champion even slowly started to overpower Arav, cing both his hands on his de to exert as much force as possible whereas Arav could only use one arm''s worth of force for Bloodspike as it was not a weapon with any handle to leverage another grip off of.


    But that was the champion''s mistake.


    Arav manifested his Arcana: the Bluefire de.


    On his empty left hand, bright blue mes sputtered out, curling around into the shape of a lengthy de of solidified, superheated energy. He shed upwards with the de, easily searing through one of the champion''s arms, severing it.


    The champion grunted in pain, and Arav kicked the champion with his buffed stats, sending the oversized goblin hurtling backwards.


    Now, one more remaining.


    The other champion roared as he stabbed in his glowing golden de at Arav''s back, but he flipped in the air to dodge. Federic took his spot, mming the champion with a shield bash, and the goblin skidded back a few meters before easily beginning to overpower Federic, putting his icy white hands onto Federic''s greatshield and crumpling the metal with his grip strength alone.


    Golden mana geared for offense raged around this goblin, and he used it now to convincingly beat back Federic, a giant of a man whose strength was enhanced fivefold by his armor. But even Metallo coresmithing and their famed power armor that imparted the strength of monsters into their wearers was not enough to best this goblin.


    Several ming arrows homed across Federic, spinning and changing their trajectories to hit the goblin champion in the neck and chest with a few arrows aimed at the eyes dodged at thest moment. The other arrows pierced deep, forcing the goblin to divert his mana from power into defensively guarding his muscles to prevent them from skewering his vitals.


    This gave Federic a brief reprieve to shout and push back, shoving the goblin champion a small distance away. Federic crumpled to one knee, his armor nging with the heavy moment, and his breaths werebored.


    "[Entanglement]" said Ais as she pointed her palms towards the champion. From the ground, roots wreathed in green flow mana sprouted outwards, tangling around the champion''s limbs and trying to pull him back to the ground in an imprisoning bind.


    The champion resisted this too with his prodigious strength, tearing the roots from the earth, but Arav took this moment to sh at the champion''s legs with his Bluefire de, severing tendons at the ankles necessary for any movement.


    This made the champion buckle forwards, crashing face first into the ground.


    "Now! Up the hill!" said Arav as he sprinted forwards. He heard his team''s footsteps trail right behind him, passing by the goblins.


    "Federic, steps!" said Arav.


    Federic pointed his mace at the face of the sheer, rocky face of the hill, and his arms crackled with grey energy as his greyed circuits red, showing connection to the god Ilmar. He fired off a bolt of grey energy into the hill face, and it ran up its length, creating metallic steps from the rock.


    Arav began to scale up the hill, leaping from step to step with expert agility

 Chapter 190 - Conquering Force: Adventurers End III

    Arav saw the top of the hill near him as he moved up and up. Freedom was right there. If he could get up there, he could report this entire situation to the Adventurer''s League, and these goblins would get exterminated as soon as the Undead issue was properly dealt with.


    It did not matter how strong these goblins thought they were. They had let their pride get to their heads, and now they truly thought they could match up against the might of the Common Body. The Adventurer''s League woulding bearing down, and because Arav was a known five star adventurer, they would take his words seriously.


    They would send a seven star adventurer here at the very least, and what would these goblins do in the face of that might?


    Nothing.


    Nothing except roll over and die as goblins should.


    Arav gritted his teeth, annoyed that he had to lose Erik in a ce like this to goblins of all things. Erik was important to soak damage and deal it with Arav.. Losing another piece like that in the team was going to take some time to patch up.


    Not to mention that after this incident, there would no doubt be ill rumors spread that the Coiled Serpent team was so ipetent that they had even let goblins get the better of them. Precious few strong or talented individuals who had their own best interests in mind would ever want to join the Coiled Serpent with that rumor looming around.


    Already, as Arav took thest few steps up to the top of the hill, he thought about how to word his report to the Adventurer''s League so that it would make him look better. Perhaps by saying that the four-armed goblin was some kind of aberrant monster? The spawn of some lost millennial beast, perhaps.


    Arav leaped up to the top of the hill with one final jump, but just before his feetnded on solid ground, he saw something that made his eyes widen in surprise.


    Another odd goblin with icy white skin. This one, however, was far older than the others with a slightly hunched back and visibly deep wrinkles lining his face. The aged goblin leaned on arge walking stick, and he was still big, easily as big as a champion were he to stand up straight.


    A long white beard made of crystals of ice drooped down from his chin, and his deep blue eyes stared at Arav with pity as he raised an open palm towards him.


    The goblin''s thin arms were lined with glowing blue markings fashioned in the shape of snowkes. Circuitry, it seemed, but of a kind Arav had never seen before. Regardless, there was a spelling, and Arav readied to strike the old goblin.


    Toote, however.


    A st of wind and ice gusted out from the aged goblin''s hand, sending Arav sailing backwards, falling straight down into the basin. The goblin tapped his staff into the ground, causing chunks of ice to suddenly emerge form the face of the hill, destroying the metal steps Federic had made and forcing everyone else back to the basin.


    Aravnded on his two feet with grace, but he gritted his teeth in increasing rage and desperation. His chance to escape was gone.


    He turned to meet the goblins they had fled from, knowing now that they were forced to fight their way through. But they might stand a chance. With two of the champions disabled, there were only four to worry about, and if escape was all the team focused on, then it was possible for one or two of them to escape with their lives.


    "What?" murmured Arav in shock as his arms hung limp at his side, the fighting will drained from him.


    The two wounded champions werepletely fine. Their wounds were knitted over with crystalline white magical energy, healing them to near perfect condition.


    What was that healing? It was not something ever recorded before among goblins.


    Where did ite from? Was it magic? No, Arav''s eyes did not sense a spell being cast on them.


    The hobgoblins the champions guarded were now securely behind the domineering force of four immensely powerful champions, the chieftain, and the impossibly strong four-armed goblin. It would be impossible even to use the hobgoblins as hostages or distractions now.


    The four-armed goblin had Erik''s brawny figure impaled on a fist, and the goblin grunted as he tossed Erik''s corpse far away, sending it sshing into the water of the basin. Erik''s body floated upwards face down, dead.


    There was not even a single injury on the four armed goblin, not even one that had healed over. Erik, a newly minted four star adventurer, a man from Fjall no less, famed for its hardy and tough warriors, had fallen just like that?


    In just one single blow? Without even granting his opponent a ncing scratch?


    ==


    Thragg was disappointed by these humans. They were weak. Far, far weaker than him. He marveled at the power the Sovnar had granted him, at how before, he would have fled for his lives at even the faintest scent of humans like this.


    "Stand behind me. I will deal with them," said Thragg. "They are strong enough to wound you. But not me."


    "It is right for me to bring forth punishment for the lost lives of my own tribesmen," said Drogan.


    "We are all of the same tribe now, Drogan," said Thragg. "And you do not have the same healing power invested unto us by the Sovnar. Your injuries, you may be able to heal yourself, but a lethal one, none of us can mend.


    I will not have more of us injured now that I know the strength of these adventurers."


    "Understood," said Drogan with a firm nod. "I trust you to bring forth justice in my name."


    Thragg smiled. "Certainly."


    The goblin elite stepped forwards, hisrge body makingrge sshes through the water as he trudged towards the adventurers. Each of his steps had a heavy pressure emanating from it, his blue eyes fiercely poised forwards in a stare that promised nothing but a swift death.

 Chapter 191 - Conquering Force: Adventurers End Final

    Thragg stepped forwards with his four bare hands spread out to his sides, inviting the adventurers to strike at him. The mes wreathing the feathery tendrils at his backpped at the surface of the basin''s water, causing it to steam up and cover him in a threatening fog where the glow of his blue eyes was made ever the more apparent.


    "Arav, what do you propose?" said Federic as he stepped up to the forefront of the group, mming his massive steel shield down in front of him like an imprable wall.


    "Shed Skin Formation," said Arav with a heavy terseness to his voice, and a silence befell the team as they understood the gravity of that formation. It was a formation meant to be used inst ditch efforts when they encountered a monster that far outssed them.


    One involving putting up distractions so that at the least, one or two team members could escape and report to the League.


    That Coiled Serpent had a n like this that its members were willing to engage in was indicative of its status as an aplished team, for in lesser teams the bickering over who would sacrifice their lives and who would live would make such a n impossible to implement.


    Thragg, of course, could not understand what these humans were saying for he had never learned Common, but he could perceive their bodynguage well enough to know they were plotting something. That did remind him: he should probably learn Common as well, likely with the elder''s aid..


    "[Iron Wall]!" shouted Federic as he crashed his shield into the water. Grey circuits lining his muscr arms glowed through his mail weave and te armor, and in fact, his armor amplified his connected spirit roots, granting them stronger output.


    Small pirs of metal emerged from the ground and shot forward at Thragg, aiming to m into him and drive him back.


    While this happened, Yua leaped into the air, and her ck wings spread outwards as mes zed around her body, allowing her to hover in the air. She drew back her bowstring and in her empty hand, an arrow of manifested me formed, solidifying into a shing orange and red construct.


    "[Razor Petals]!" said Ais as she too hovered in the air, evidently believing that Thragg had no airborne capabilities. Her green mana sparked around her, forming into the shape of multi-colored rose petals that floated for a second before shooting forwards, their edges lined with whirring saw-like edges of infused mana.


    Thragg crossed his arms in front of him and casted [Guard], concentrating his golden mana defensively throughout his tensed muscles, solidifying them against any and all impact.


    The mana affinity of Root was one that was best described as adept at concentration. Like the roots of a mighty tree, it is most efficient at firmly gathering and anchoring mana. Thus, it was best suited for defensive fighters and applications like [Guard] which involved concentrating mana.


    Unlike Chaos which can freely flux from defense to offense in powerful bursts, Root has little malleability. One cannot easily shift their concentrated mana from a [Guard] to a [Flow eleration], andpatibility with moves that require incredibly fine detail tuning such as [Dispersal] also bes more difficult.


    Thus, for most Root affinity users, they will either be specialized in concentrating their mana for offense or for defense, but in general, Root affinity fighters are known for their hardiness and usually tend towards being physical fighters for a durable body with an iron hard fist was still a sizable offensive threat.


    Thragg was, surprisingly, more geared towards defense, and he showed his power now.


    The cloud of sharp sawing petals from the faerie scratched against his iron hard skin, skidding out sparks as they deflected harmlessly before dissolving into remnant mana.


    Yua''s ming arrow managed to eke out a shallow dent in Thragg''s shoulder, piercing just enough to draw a trickle of blood, but no more.


    Federic''s pirs of iron crashed into Thragg''s arms with the solid impact of metal mming against incredibly durable flesh, and it was the iron pirs that broke, not Thragg''s skin, shattering and crumbling against his defense.


    As the iron pirs shattered against Thragg, they formed a natural cloud of debris that temporarily blocked Federic from rushing in and mming his mace down on Thragg''s head.


    Thragg lifted up one of his arms and blocked the mace strike, holding the head of the weapon up with a palm. His arm trembled slightly from the initial impact, and he got a feel that the armored adventurer had enhanced his strength greatly for this attack.


    But nothing out of Thragg''s capability to deal with. The water around Thragg and the adventurer parted from the downwards shockwave of the strike.


    "One hand? He blocked that with one hand?" asked Ais in disbelief.


    "Focus!" said Yua as she knocked a triple volley of arrows this time. "Remember: suppression!"


    Ais nodded, snapped back to the situation at hand, and cast another spell. "[Sleep Pollen]"


    From her pale hands, a cloud of glimmering green sparkles trickled down, gathering around Thragg in a haze of misty, green-speckled air.


    "[Iron Priso-]" began Federic as he tried to cast a spell to bind the mighty goblin before him to let the sleep inducing pollen to take effect, for a powerful monster like him was more than likely able to inhale the pollen for some time without falling under it.


    Thragg, however, countered. He punched forwards with his two right arms, aiming to gouge out two holes in the armored adventurer''s stomach. The armored adventurer understood this and stopped casting his spell mid-way, shoving the shield in front of him.


    Thragg''s punches sent Federic flying backwards as if blown back by a bomb. His armored form ttered as it sshed heavily in the basin, crashing into the ground with a solid impact that sent geysers of water upraised around him.


    "Lighter than it seems," said Thragg as he now held the armored adventurer''s shield in his right arms. He knew immediately that something was off: the adventurer with the blood draining weapon had disappeared from sight.


    Likely in a bid to save his own life while utilizing some form of stealth based spell, it seemed. But Thragg did not worry. There was no way the adventurer could have managed to travel so far in this short a span of time.


    Instead, Thragg leaped high into the air, escaping the cloud of green around him, and closed his eyes to hone his senses. The Shockstrike Eel embedded in Thragg''s form was capable of detecting fields of mana given off by beings even when they tried to hide it ¨C a necessary adaptation to survive in the depths of darker, lower visibility waters, especially with the eel''s own near blind eyesight.


    If that adventurer had escaped through the trees, then he would have sshed out a path in the water. If he had teleported outside, there would have been some noticeable tell of mana activation. No, more likely, the adventurer had turned invisible through some item and was now trying to scale the hill while the rest of his team distracted Thragg.


    With his magical sensitivity, Thragg confirmed that the adventurer was trying again to scale the hill wall, his body''s physical visibility obscured. But no matter.


    Thragg gripped the shield in his arms tight and then tossed it forwards as a deadly, spinning projectile that whirred in the air, whistling with impressive speed.


    The shield smashed into the invisible adventurer''s legs with a sickening crunch of impact, and the adventurer''s body became visible as he fell down from high up on the cliff, crashing into the waters below with two legs so broken that bones jutted out from the knees.


    That one, Thragg had identified as the leader and one likely with the most information. His weapon, too, Thragg desired. That one, he would keep alive for information.


    The rest would die.


    "Escape with your lives!" shouted Yua. She charged up her magical energy, and it red out in mes all around her, her breath steaming. She gathered the mes into her three arrows and fired them. "There are no formations anymore, only survival!"


    Thragg intercepted the arrows with his hands, but as he gazed curiously at their ming forms, they exploded in his face,pletely covering his form in smoke and fire.


    With that, Yua pped her wings and began her own escape. Ais, the other flight capable adventurer, did the same, immediately turning to follow Yua.


    Thragg surged out his own mes, fanning out the smoke from around him to reveal he was unharmed. He saw now that the adventurers were attempting a full on, shameless escape. The two flyers were trying to escape in the air where the other goblins could not reach.


    The armored adventurer was far slower and could not fly, it seemed, and he merely ran towards the hill face, trying to scale it.


    Thragg acted quickly. He dealt with the flyers first. Before they could gain much more altitude, he aimed his hands at them and channeled the Shockstripe Eel''s capacity to generate electricity. The golden, crystalline fins lining his arms shone brightly, conducting magical energy that arced into bolts of yellow power that screamed and crackled chaotically.


    Thragg took in a deep breath and focused, remembering how the Sovnar could channel mana so beautifully. The Sovnar had such a massive pool of mana that fluxed with raging chaos most of the time, and yet he could channel and direct its flow with such grace that it reminded Thragg of a gentle stream.


    Though Thragg''s own Root affinity meant he had difficulty fine tuning his mana flow, he tried his best, flowing the electrical energy into stretched out fingertips that he then fired the energy from.


    Twin streams of lightning shot forth, mming into the faerie.


    The faerie seized up in the air as she lit up in a cascade of shocking power before falling to the ground. The other one, the ck winged one, was more agile, and managed to dodge at thest moment.


    Thragg steadied his breath again. Focus on the flow.


    Remember the Sovnar. Remember how he breathed and how he maintained his calm at all times.


    Thragg generated another bout of electrical energy and fired it from his fingertips once more, and this time, he struck true, hitting the ck winged adventurer straight in the back and sending her hurtling down.


    Thragg congratted himself with a closed fist and a nod. Surely, if the Sovnar had seen this, he would have praised Thragg.


    But it was not time to dawdle. There was justice to be made.


    Thragg surged forwards to kill the armored adventurer, punching a hole straight through his back before the human could muster up any real resistance.


    The two flying adventurers sshed into the water, paralyzed by the energy bolts that Thragg had fired, and the stronger adventurer that had tried to run groaned in pain as he looked at his shattered legs with widened eyes.


    Thragg had won. Now, he would have answers.

 Chapter 192 - Eljudnir

    I see now," said the Collector as it clicked its mandibles. For the past thirty-two minutes, it had received information from the secondary carrier unit known as ''Thragg'' that operated with the Conquering Force.


    It was valuable information that gleaned the movements of the tinkerers below the Rift.


    ording to Thragg, the full subjugation of the Frostfish tribe had beenpletely sessful. There had been no losses involved with the Conquering Force, and that was to be expected. In terms of calcting battle prowess, the Collector knew that the carrier unit and his fourteen champions were easily more than enough topletely overpower the goblin tribes provided they did not have any abnormalities to them.


    The Collector did know that the newly subjugated goblins were incredibly weak. The Collector could uplift the smaller goblins into hobgoblins and likely a majority of hobgoblins into champions and further utilize the Breath of Life to empower them, but beyond this means, it had no ability to further evolve them.


    This would change as the Collector continued to umte might and further experiment with its Higher Calling ability. In particr, when it reached the Facestealer specimen, it believed it could implement new adaptations that could ascend Higher Calling into a truly impressive ability capable of creating apetent force from weakling scraps..


    Beyond the subjugation of the Frostfish tribe, however, was the more concerning news that Thragg had encountered adventurers.


    The Collector had warned the carrier unit known as Thragg to shy away from any contact with tinkerers and to avoid them when possible, but it understood there was leeway to operate around this order. If tinkering presence came to the conquering force, for example, then there was no choice but to face them and exterminate them to prevent information about the conquering force from leaking.


    Regarding this, the Collector was satisfied with Thragg''s judgement, for though the carrier unit had taken unnecessary risk in actively engaging the adventurers, he had ensured that the adventurers were dealt with, properly killed with the exception of a single individual who, after some exposure to pain and maniption by the elder''s magic, had given information regarding the movement of tinkerers overall.


    As the Collector had calcted, the undead adventurer it had left behind below the Rift had spiraled into a greater problem. It seemed that undead specimens projected a certain ''haze'' around them that could infect beings with no primal density to fend themselves, turning them into undead.


    The ''haze'' dissipated when an undead specimen''s core was destroyed but would inevitably condense and return over time provided the undead regenerated itself.


    The Collector could easily decimate that undead adventurer over and over again, limiting his production of the aerial undead pathogen, but the same could not be said of ordinary tinkerers, the majority of which were likely to be weaker than the adventurer in the first ce.


    This caused the undead adventurer to a massive amount of creatures with no primal density and two viges worth of human tinkerers before the tinkering organizations known as the ''Adventurer''s League'' and ''Sorcerer''s Order'' had stepped in.


    They had issued what was known as an ''Undead Alert'' or ''ck Sign'', rallying all nearby adventurers over five stars and sorcerers that were specialized in spells that created barriers and seals. An order of sorcerers known as the ''priestesses of the paths'' were also heavily employed for they possessed the capacity to manipte space to some degree, generating warp ways into sealing locations.


    In addition, the loss of the dwarven fleet had been noted and attributed to the undead adventurer, causing another fleet to appear.


    This massive, concerted effort against the rapidly spreading undead gue focused on the center of thend known as ''Fjall'', vastly far from the Collector but concerningly close to the Frostfish tribe.


    The tinkerers first eliminated undead specimens as well as they could without being infected themselves, sealing away creatures and individuals and corralling them towards arger quarantine zone. The zone was square shaped and massive in scale, easily spanning over a hundred kilometers, and each side of the square was formed of a channeled barrier that required protection.


    The Sorcerer''s Order and Path Priestesses performed the channeling, and the Adventurer''s League and dwarves provided the protection.


    This granted the Collector great insight into the degree of forces these tinkering organizations could muster and how quickly they were able to do this. It calcted that should it perform any realrge scale attack on tinkering civilization, it would have to respond to a coordinated response against it within the span of two days with increasinglyrger threats mounting every day after that.


    Surprisingly quick response time. Meant that the Collector would have to establish a vast amount of strength before even considering an attack.


    In addition, the Collector obtained another important piece of information: the presence of a location known as ''Utgard''.


    It was apparently called a ''Null Zone'' wherein no magical energy flowed. A patch ofndpletely devoid of support from the world, barren of both life and mana. The area was normally closed off by the Sorcerer''s Order to study, but it was now heavily defended to prevent undead specimen from intruding into it.


    The null zone attracted undead naturally and in there, undead specimens could grow exponentially stronger and nigh untouchable to any tinkerer.


    The nature of this zone was something the Collector was incredibly eager to experiment with itself, for any capacity to fully neutralize the magical flow of tinkerers would render the Collector unbeatable inbat against them, even against the gods that surely utilized vast amounts of mana to power themselves.


    The Collector would obtain more information about this ''Utgard'' location over time and determine whether in its inevitable attack it would be a location worth taking to study before engaging in a greater, full confrontation against the gods.


    "What is the matter, Sovnar?" said Goromir.


    "The conquering force has encountered adventurers but has eliminated them and remained unseen," said the Collector. "I have bid them to move westwards, away from further tinkering presence. There, they will assimte the rest of the scattered goblin tribes and investigate the Facestealer specimen that is said to reside in the area."


    "The Facestealer, you say?" said Kui. "Will mere goblins be enough to challenge it?" He crossed his arms and looked to the elites. "I do not mean to state you are weak, but the Facestealer is an Old God who has survived purges from the New Gods for over a thousand years.


    Not much is known of its true might, but it is said to be easily on par with the Protectorate."


    The Collector clicked its mandibles. The Protectorate was a collection of the twelve strongest gods, ones who had remained stable in their titles since the beginning of their history. This was in contrast with the Gatekeeper gods that seemed to rotate their titles every five hundred years.


    This was secondary information that the female daemon specimen had imparted to the Collector that it had stored forter usage.


    "Do you possess any significant information regarding the Facestealer specimen?" stated the Collector.


    Kui shrugged. "As I have said, the Facestealer is a mystery beyondpare. All I know is that it resides in Eljudnir, the ck mountain of spirits where it is said that the souls of the fallen manifest once more."


    "No significant details exist of tinkerers that attempted to enter this territory?" said the Collector.


    "There have been some forays into the area," said Kui. "They have ended with no returnees or adventurers thate back with no memory of what they perceived.


    Not even the new gods dare to intrude upon the space, for the one time they did was the first time that a god of the Protectorate was in, and they intend to keep that that thest time such an urrence ever came to pass."


    "Ah, I do remember. The death of a Protectorate member - one does not forget that so easily," said Goromir. "It was slightly before our age. There was tale of Samas, the god of wind, attempting to hunt down the Facestealer for he was known as a god that prided himself in ying old gods and millennial beasts.


    Samas did not return from his hunt to Eljudnir, and none truly know what happened to him, merely that he met the same fate as countless others that wandered into its depths."


    The Collector clicked its mandibles. Nobody seemed to possess any real, tangible information regarding this Facestealer specimen, and its threat to the Collector was only increasing over time as it heard more about it.


    "The Facestealer is of the blood of Gob, that is known," said Goromir. "An inheritor of one of Gob''s shards as well, and one whose teachings were said to have created the magic that our Spellweavers use.


    But even in my age, the Facestealer was a mystery whose presence and whispers were known only among the highest of Spellweavers."

 Chapter 193 - Two Mountains

    "None of you possess any more tangible knowledge of the specimen known as the ''Facestealer?''" asked the Collector, its voice resonating throughout the cavern to address all in it. The finality of tone within its voice indicated that should there be no further relevant information, then the Collector was going to end the line of conversation and proceed forwards.


    "I am sorry, Sovnar," said Goromir. "But even in our age, tales of the Facestealer were merely whispers of the past. There is also that my memories are not as clear as they could be."


    "Nor mine," agreed Kandak.


    "Your resurrection granted us second life and mastery over our bodies once more, but our centuries long sleep has rotted some of our memories," said Kandak.. "Some are hazy, some are utterly gone, but I assure you, Sovnar, we have not lost so many memories that we are unable to serve."


    "Yes," said Kandak.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles in understanding. The goblin elites had been resurrected from a status that was more akin to dead than alive. Their beings had beenpacted into burial tusks, but that process coupled with erosion from the centuries had rendered their minds damaged.


    The Collector''s Breath of Life could restore the bodies of the elites to their fullest, original extent, but merely restoring synaptic connections and neural pathways alone did not bring back memories, it would seem. For the goblin elites to possess the fullest extent of their memories, the spell weaving ritual utilized to bind their beings into their tusks would have had to beenpletely perfect, preserving thempletely.


    However, it was highly evident that there the spell weaving ritual was not capable of such a feat for the goblin elites were manifested as mindless husks of themselves when they were bound to the burial tusks, incapable of recalling anyplicated motor function capacity such as martial arts, let alone any semnce of higher thought processes or memories.


    It was a marvel that the elites even possessed arge portion of their memories to begin with.


    Which brought the Collector back again to contemte about the Facestealer. One of the adaptations that the Collector strongly desired was one that would allow it to freely manipte the minds of tinkerers regardless of the mana guarding them and divine protection.


    This, it seemed, was within the domain of the Facestealer also. Yet information regarding this entity was preciously low.


    "Sovnar, if you desire more of the Facestealer, then shall I suggest restoring the rest of the blood of Gob that still slumbers?" said Goromir. "There are Spellweavers among them, I am certain, and they were thest to hear the direct whispers of the Facestealer in learning their sacred art."


    "An untenable option," said the Collector simply. "I have processed the rough coordinates of where you believe the rest of your kind''s burials have been. The vast majority are located in the realms of Mercia and Xia, and other realms are difficult to ess without entering into a major civilization gateway."


    And the Collector knew that once it entered a major civilization''s gateway, a warp gate strong enough to cross realms, it would have the necessary processing power to signal the Collective once more. The course of action to restore the rest of the goblins was one that was therefore redundant to its final objective, but at the same time, in the chance that the Collector could not send out a proper signal even with therger warp gate, then it was a course of action it could more heavily consider.


    "Hm. You do not have to go that far back," said Kui. "All I know of the Facestealer is myth and legend, and you do not strike me as one that dabbles in uncertainty."


    "No," said the Collector simply.


    "But I do know of a tale wherein the Jotnarmuned with the Facestealer," said Kui. "It is one known only to me, for I have traversed the Wailwaste beyond the Rift and the Jotnar ruins that lie among its cial heights. However, I merely know that theymuned, not what thismunion was about nor its significance."


    "Then the path of this swarm is now clear," said the Collector. "First, an investigation of the two mountains within this range that still emanates with magical energy at their centers. Then, movement to Jotnar civilizations."


    ==


    The two mountains that the Collector had noted before as still possessing significant reserves of primal energy swirling around their centers were located directly beside each other, and as the Collector approached it from the air and obtained a greater visual of it, it came to know that the mountains were actually attached to each other.


    The Collector still maintained the Sapia tform of ice it used to transport the swarm, and this time, Kui was on it. He had fully taught the goblins how to shape their mana properly in order to harness Truefrost, and now the elites had managed to quickly make the rare substance their own, wreathing themselves in blue, almost teal material.


    Unlike Kui, the elites preferred to shape their Truefrost into bulkier armors and furred shapes akin to skins, granting them a sturdier, more bestial look.


    The rest of the champions struggled with utilizing the substance for it required a level of mana control that their talent was insufficient to truly tap into, though Kui was patient in teaching them regardless.


    Kui possessed a belief that enough practice and dedication would allow the self to ovee any deficiency in gicposition, and this, the Collector disagreed with in its mind, but allowed the fighter to exercise with the goblins to see whether his philosophy had any tangible merit.


    So far, none in sight.


    "Why have the Draconids not taken these mountains?" stated the Collector to Kui, its voice resonating downwards to the ice tform. "There is enough magical energy condensed within these to power the evolution of two more Fang specimen."


    "There are no Old Gods in them," said Kui as he looked down at the mountains with crossed arms. "Thus, no beings to assimte. Beyond that, the Draconids cannot seem to enter into the mountains'' deepest depths. Jotnar magic guards against it."


    The Collector clicked its mandibles. "You state that the Jotnar civilization is now but remnants, likely from the devastation wrought by conflict with the Draconids."


    "That is so," said Kui.


    "Then how is it that they have not weaponized this manner of barrier, one capable of repelling Draconids for extended periods of time, to their cities?" said the Collector.


    Kui just shrugged. "I do not know. I did not ever travel the mountains deeply. Only in search of food. My role was to test challengers, not to dig through history. Even in the Wailwastes, I traveled only to search for an Endbringer among the Jotnar, but by my time, the era of the Jotnar was at an end."


    The Collector clicked its mandibles as it scouted an entrance into the twin mountains,ying the ice tform t on a swathe of rocky ice. It hovered over to the entrance, sensing directly the threads of primal energy that traveled through it and deeper into the mountain, to its heart where there was undoubtedly something of significance to be found.


    From the Collector''s stored memories in its Jotnar core, it knew that the Jotnar had been gone for at the very least one century. There were wisps of magical energy emanating from these twin mountains that the Collector could very faintly sense not as environmental flow of mana, but manipted by Jotnar magic, and this maniption had urred roughly around the same time as the Jotnar retreating into their own eternal slumber.


    Odd, however. The Collector could perceive the flow of magical energy, particrly that wrought by Jotnar hands, in this area with incredible rity, as if it called out to the Collector specifically. It felt its Jotnar heart beat faster and the shard atop its head flicker.


    There was no doubt there was strong coincidence with these two events. One that would likely be of vast importance to the Collector considering its next goal was to ess the point in space the Jotnarst gathered at before warping themselves to the conventionally inessible area known as the ''White Space''.


    "Follow me," said the Collector. It could see with extreme, unnatural rity the path it needed to take to reach the depths of the mountains. It was akin to the psionic sense it possessed at the goblin lord''s dungeon.


    Aspect of the Collector, its Jotnar core or perhaps the Shard of Session at its head, were heavily linked to this area, and the sensation that it felt as it perceived the magical energy of the Jotnar was one of beckoning, bidding the Collector further in. "All of you. Within, I sense that there will be protection against Draconid influence, and further Draconid interference is a distinct possibility considering the escape of the Fang specimen. Remaining in the open is an unnecessary risk that I shall not replicate."

 Chapter 194 - Golems

    The Collector led the way for the swarm into the Jotnar mountain. It hovered near the entrance of the cave leading into the mountain''s depths and did a preliminary scouting check for any hostilities within. It had already learned how to incorporate the martial art technique known as [Sense] that involved projecting out one''s magical energy aura in a wide area, and it had further evolved it so that instead of projecting an omnidirectional, circr aura that wasted potential surface area, it could send out directed tendrils of investigative energy.


    The mana type that the Collector used was of the Flow type best suited for picking up minute fluctuations in mana, andrge green tendrils snaked out from its four arms as they winded their way down the tunnel, faintly illuminating it.


    Kui watched with his arms crossed and a head nod. "I knew this from when I fought you, but you are an All-Affinity."


    The Collector extrapted that ''All-Affinity'' was a title granted to those that could use all the mana forms, and while it searched the mountain, it engaged the fighter known as ''Kui'' for further information..


    "Is the incidence of this ''All-Affinity'' rare?" said the Collector.


    "Very rare. But not as rare as one would think," said Kui. "I have met a few talented fighters who were All-Affinities. The difference between them and you, however, is the degree of affinity. Those with All-Affinity hold but one or two affinities close to their heart. The others, they can exert only in small, minute capacity.


    Yet here you are using the overwhelming might of chaos, the sensitivity of flow, the healing of unity, and the defensiveness of root all in equally mighty measure. I should say that there has not been any as talented as you among the Common Body in a thousand years."


    The Collector clicked its mandibles. "It is a self-evident statement to posit that mere tinkerers are unable to match the breadth and depth of my processing power and natural biological might. Yet, the term ''All-Affinity'' does not seem to capture the affinity of ''Void''."


    "The more I wonder upon the Void, the more I believe that it is not a power a mortal being can harness," said Kui.


    "Yet there are ''god'' specimen that utilize it. The existence of gods known as ''Gatekeepers'' that regte each of the affinities necessitates that there is one god specimen capable of harnessing it," said the Collector.


    "There is Niva, the goddess of Paths and Peace," said Kui. "Through her, her priestesses may make great distances short or create spaces of holding."


    "So is this specimen, this ''Niva'', the Gatekeeper of the Void?" said the Collector.


    "No. She is one of the Protectorate, but she is not a Gatekeeper," said Kui. He tugged at his ck and white speckled beard. "The Gatekeeper of the Void is known as the Oracle, and he among all gods is one of greatest mystery.


    He has never before appeared among the Common Body in a flesh form. Nor has he even spoken his voice to us. He does not seem to revel in lordship and rule of Common folk."


    "The ''Gatekeeper'' to my knowledge is a title that cycles after five hundred years," said the Collector. "That indicates that prior to the appearance of this ''Oracle'', there were others that bore the title. Yet, none of those specimen have made themselves known to the Common Body that these ''gods'' rule over?"


    "The Oracle is an exception," said Kui. "It is true. Gods chosen to bear the torch of Gatekeeperst but five hundred years, ascending into the Beyond, but the Oracle alone has held the Void Gate since time immemorial. He was here when the Convergence began over a thousand years ago, and he is still here now.


    Many believe that the High King of the gods is that which bears the Dawnbringer, but simply put, the Dawnbringer is simply a mighty de. A shiny stick that a Gatekeeper wields every once in a while, bearing its light so the masses can gawk at it.


    The true ruler in mine eyes of the gods is the Oracle, that which has stayed in the shadows untouched, unchallenged, and still does now."


    "He speaks truly," said Goromir. "Even I remember that among the gods, there was one known as the Oracle. And as he says, the Oracle never once descended from Aetheria."


    "What information do you possess of this ''Oracle'' specimen. Are you familiar with itsbat capabilities and its biologicalposition?" said the Collector.


    "No," said Kui simply. "But I have heard its voice. I have traveled to Aetheria once when the gods invited me to join the ranks of the Ascended. Kneeling in their pce of splendid white and gold, I heard his voice, for his form was not visible.


    He offered me position among the Ascended, and I refused. That was the end of it. I was free to return home, and they did not bother me further."


    "In essence, you do not know any pertinent information of the Oracle specimen," said the Collector.


    Kui shrugged. "No."


    The Collector clicked its mandibles. Perhaps it had grown too used to the inefficiencies of tinkering talk, but at the same time, there was no other way to extract information other than such speech anyway.


    During the talk, the Collector''s scouting tendrils of flow energy had mapped out the general path down to the heart of the mountain until the point that it hit a warp point. This warp point was localized, serving only to grant ess further into the mountain, and the Collector could not use [Sense] through warp points.


    The way from the cavern entrance to said warp point, however, was safe, guardedrgely only by the animated constructs of ice that did not strike against the Collector unless they were provoked first.


    "The area of the firstyer is without harm," stated the Collector. "Follow my form."


    ==


    The way through the cavern was spacious and packed with glowing white mana crystals packed with primal energy. For those that could imbibe primal energy and convert it into personal mana, this area would have been one of practically infinite mana, and the Collector, using Kui''s technique of breathing ni mana while moving, maintained its mana level at 200% of its total reserves.


    The goblins, too, were starting to adapt to primally dense environments, and indeed, they were bing nourished by them. The ice crystals embedded in their cells that empowered them were constructs made from a species that liberally used primal mana, and so as they breathed the primal energy around them, their cells were nourished, strengthening and enhancing over time.


    This coupled with their natural adaptiveness meant they would emerge physically twice as strong once their cells were fully saturated with the primal energy of this environment, though once they reached a peak level of saturation, they would no longer be able to grow stronger in a purely physical manner.


    Of course, there were variances in peak saturation for each individual goblin, and the saturation of their cells alone would not allow them to exceed their evolutionary state as a champion.


    Notably, however, the elite specimen known as ''Thokk'' took to the primal energy well, breathing it in with big gulps and eximing how wonderful it felt. The champions, on the other hand, felt suffocated, drawing in shallow breaths as their bodies adjusted to the sudden influx of power.


    Near the end to the first warp point, the Collector entered an enormous, lengthy cavern space reminiscent of a hallway. Crystals of white ice lined the rtively low ceiling of the hallway, lighting the space in a ghostly, pale glow.


    nking the sides of the cavern were the ice constructs that the Collector had sensed. There were twenty four of them. Twelve on each side of the cavern. Approximately five meters in height and built like roughly shaped humanoids, their limbs made clumsily into rounded ends with their faces being featureless, as if a child had tried to shape a man with snow.


    Yet there was no mistaking the concentration of mana emanating from each of these ice constructs.


    The Collector estimated that all of them were at the level of a five star adventurer, and because the high primal energy in the area meant they had infinite mana, they were near the same level as the undead adventurer from before.


    Referencing from the previous ice construct the Collector had fought when it first investigated the Rift, it knew that these constructs were limited in their battle capabilities, relyingrgely on regenerative ability and uncoordinated physical bulk.


    At the same time, these ice constructs were not hostile to the Collector unless provoked, so it floated forwards.


    The goblin swarm hesitated, however, sensing the sheer physical brawn and power emanating from each of the golems.


    "Rx," said Kui. "Your Sovnar is correct to be unconcerned. These are Guardian Golems that will not harm those without ill-intent. If your Sovnar remains unharmed, so will you."

 Chapter 195 - Great Destiny

    The Collector, however, did not agree with the fighter known as ''Kui''s'' observation.


    The goblin swarm, emboldened by Kui''s words that the golems were of no harm, began to step forward, the elites treading first to set an example for the champions behind them.


    The Collector, however, raised a hand in the air to halt them. "No. Remain as you are as I initiate further analysis."


    Kui crossed his arms and narrowed his eyes as he began to reconsider his prior statement, taking the Collector''s cue to do some analysis of his own. His eyes lit up with a green aura as he began to analyze the golems more fully..


    "I cannot sense anything amiss with them," said Kui as his eyes scanned up and down the body of one ice structure, then another. "These golems seem to me the same as any that are naturally urring. Defensivendmarks for the environment. To those of us enriched with the essence of the World, with primal energy, they should not hold ill will against us."


    The Collector hovered towards the first golem in front of it and assessed it more closely. It created a scouting tendril of green flow mana and sent it towards the golem, wreathing the construct and analyzing it at every minute level.


    Initially, the Collector had agreed that the fighter specimen was correct in his judgement that the golems were not threatening. Yet, the Collector desired to ensure this was true.


    The green tendril of translucent energy from the Collector''s hand wrapped around the golem, transferring information from the construct to the Collector, and even with this detailed analysis, the Collector could find nothing aberrant about its magicalposition.


    As the fighter specimen had said, the golem was simply an environmental defense system. Comprised of Everfrost and Truefrost held together by primal energy that animated it. Exactly the same as the golems that the Collector had destroyed outside the cavern in its initial scouting.


    So long as these constructs sensed a sufficient threshold of primal energy from a specimen, they would not engage in hostile behavior.


    But the cement of these golems lining this hallway-like cavern that led into a crucial warp point to furtheryers of the mountain indicated they were not here merely to protect the environment, but to specifically guard this warp point.


    In that sense, it did not make sense that they would not observe hostility against creatures that had primal energy. In addition, the Collector noted a remarkable absence of any living specimen within this hallway or around it.


    The nature of the Rift mountains were such that damage done to them would regenerate fairly quickly over time, the primal energy of the environment building back rock and ice at a scale of months, not eons as routine geologic timescales would dictate.


    The Collector physically touched the golem''s snow and ice formed chest, and the goblins held their breath, sensing the unease in the air.


    That was when something remarkable urred.


    Spiral patterns of dark blue rotated outwards from the Collector''s hand, spreading across the golem and wreathing it in a blue aura of mana. This unity mana was not the Collector''s. It was imbued mana from another specimen.


    A Jotnar.


    A voice boomed across the cavern, making the goblins jump and unsheathe their glowing light des in rm, but the Collector projected a mental order to remain calm, causing the goblins to stay still. Kui was far more rxed, merely observing what was urring because he knew even if the golems became threats, he was far too powerful to be felled by them.


    "Wee, Jotnar," said the voice. It was a neutral voice that was neither male nor female, reminding the Collector of the synthetic artificial intelligence voices that often guided Federation starships.


    "Maintain your hand upon the golem," said the voice, and the Collector assessed that the voice was projected from every single golem equally,bining into what seemed like one looming, dominant voice that rumbled across the entire hallway of rock and ice.


    "Reading¡­," continued the voice, and the Collector understood that the golem was analyzing the Collector''s magical energy signature.


    "An anomaly has been detected," said the golems. All of a sudden, the white crystals lining the ceiling tinted a shade of threatening red, and the golems began to shake in initial stages of movement. "Mana signature is impure. Sensing Draconid impurity."


    The Collector adjusted its mana flow, sealing off its other cores magically and physically by limiting their mana flow and also by internally stopping their heartbeats. It left only its Jotnar core beating, surging blue unity type mana across its body in a rich blue aura.


    It harnessed the trigger of Mercy once more, thinking again that to spare life was to spare it for its potential, that allowing potential to grow to serve purpose was the greatest mercy. This opened the core further, causing an explosive pir of blue to surge around the Collector''s body.


    "Reading¡­"


    "Jotnar signature identified and read."


    The Collector watched as the dark blue spiral patterns that emerged from its hand and around the golem spread out even further, spontaneously manifesting on every single one of the golems. The ceiling crystals changed their shade from red and synchronized flickering parts of them to a dark blue to mimic a moving spiral pattern.


    "Eru Wun Thamir. Your will has been recognized and read. ess level: Sessor recognized¡­"


    "Disabling all security systems¡­"


    The golems remained still again, as if they had never threatened to move with crushing force in the first ce.


    "Removing false warp point¡­"


    The swirling pool of glowing white water at the end of the hallway, the supposed means to reach the nextyer, stopped moving, and its glow faded. It became merely a normal pool of water, having lost all its warp capabilities.


    "Constructing additional warp point ording to the specifications set by Protocol: Session of the End."


    Crackling echoed from the end of the cavern, and a small, distorted point in space formed before flowering out into a swirling, spiral-patterned portal of crackling blue and warped space.


    "Wee to the Urth Vault, O great Sessor. May you find the beginnings of your Destiny within."

 Chapter 196 - Golem Control

    The Collector immediately noticed a shift in its senses. It had an unnatural connection to this twin mountain range in the first ce, capable of sensing its heart through a psionic tether like that it possessed from the goblin lord''s dungeon.


    This meant that the Collector knew the shortest possible path towards the heart, but if the shortest path changed, then the tether would update positional information ordingly. It did so now. The Collector sensed that to enter the portal at the end of the hallway would lead near directly to the heart of the mountains.


    The portal beforehand had been a proxy. A much longer, much more roundabout path that likely would have even led to dead ends..


    There was a reason that the Draconids had not been able to explore these mountains. To ess it required Jotnar blood, and brute forcing the mountain by attempting to destroy it would do nothing. To truly ess the heart of the mountain was to enter into a warp point that, from information that flowed into the Collector during the identification process, was actually in a separate, conjured space of its own.


    Much like the personal storage space that the Collector''s crystal skull could produce.


    That space was anchored to the heart of the mountain, but if one drilled through to that location physically, there would be no portal to enter into the dimension.


    "Sovnar¡­you are a giant?" asked Goromir.


    "A Jotnar? You?" said Kui. "I had thought thest of your kind had entered into eternal sleep. No, there is something different about you. I could sense it from the very beginning. Your form is not that of one, it is that of many blended into one."


    There was no hiding any bodily or magical information from Kui, a master among masters of flow mana, so the Collector spoke freely.


    "No." The Collector addressed Goromir. "I am capable of harnessing the forms of others. This, you have observed already during my ascension into this form when you utilized your lives to guard me."


    "Yes, Sovnar," said Goromir. "And there was no prouder day of my newfound life than to fall in noble battle, fulfilling my true duty as your Hands, your rightful guard."


    "Yes," said Kandak simply.


    "Same here!" said Thokk as he beat his chest to emphasize his point.


    "Hm." Kui ced a hand on his chin and observed the Collector. "I do not pry. It is not my thing. But I am left to wonder. Your questionings about the Facestealer, is it because you are rted to it? Of all creatures I know, I know that only one ¨C the Facestealer ¨C is capable of harnessing multiple forms."


    "No," said the Collector in a single word response, and Kui nodded, not pressing into the matter any further.


    "Eru Wun Thamir¡­" pondered Kui, mulling the name over in his head in new train of thought. "Ah, I remember now. In a ruin. Is that not the name of thest Jotnar sessor?" He nodded slowly as he gazed at the Collector''s crown shard. "So, you have taken his form and his shard."


    "Yes," said the Collector.


    "Hm." Kui paused. "Hm," he said again, brows furrowed in deep contemtion the likes of which were uncharacteristic for his usual emotionless calm. "This¡­has great consequences. You are not only the Sovnar of the goblins, but by right of the Shard, you are Sessor to rule of the Jotnar as well. The Jotnar whose bodies and breath were the only cure to the Undead."


    Kui nodded to himself and bowed his head, sping his hands together and extending them towards the Collector in a cordial gesture.


    "What manner of bodynguage is this?" stated the Collector.


    "I have told you the purpose I had invested unto myself. One to test those worthy to bring the End and to prevent the Common Body from crossing the Rift to harvest more Shards," said Kui. "I had upheld myself to neutrality, willing to support any Endbringer capable, but now I am certain: you are the Endbringer that is most right.


    You can not only End the New Gods, but with the Jotnar blood and breath, you may erase the Undead gue ¨C sign of the disease that is the New Gods - also.


    The World will find new beginning under you the likes of which cannot be said for the Draconids that only know destruction and battle.


    To you, I pledge my service. I, Kui, fourteenth head of the Gentle Current, swear this."


    "Your allegiance is acknowledged," said the Collector as it clicked its mandibles. If the fighter known as ''Kui'' would continue to fight alongside the Collector, then its military might would exponentially increase. Kui was immensely powerful, the strongest being the Collector had encountered so far, and his power would be invaluable as a resource.


    The only issue that the Collector was keenly aware of was that ultimately, the purposes that the Collector and the fighter specimen shared were fundamentally different.


    The Collector desired to bring forth the end of the New Gods to allow the Collective to assimte this.


    Kui desired to bring forth the end of the New Gods to save this and maintain the lives on it as it had once stood.


    This was a fundamental difference that the Collector knew would lead to an inevitable sh, but it was better now to harness the fighter specimen''s power and loyalty and deal with himter if the need arose.


    The Collector hovered forwards, over to the newly formed portal, and the swarm and Kui followed. Not only them, but the golems also followed, shuddering as they animated themselves to movement.


    The goblins at first jumped in surprise, but the Collector calmed them with a mental suggestion as it came to realize that the golems were non-threatening, merely following the Collector.


    Spiral patterns of dark blue were spread across their chests, and the magical energy was all directly linked to the Collector.


    They were now under control of the Collector.

 Chapter 197 - Urth Vault I

    The Collector raised a fist into the air and red out its unity type mana, focusing on it intently to analyze and guide its flow. It could feel the countless threads of invisible connection weaved between its Jotnar core and the golems and marveled at the efficiency of this link. It was one that had unlimited range and no mana cost to upkeep while having an upper limit of units capable of being controlled easily exceeding a thousand.


    The Jotnar had evidently spent much time honing their link to golem units to an exceptional level of efficiency, indicating also that the Jotnar relied heavily upon golems in their civilization.


    The Collector had had to utilize its vast processing power and significant amount of experimentation to forge its Higher Calling capability to near this level of connective control. If any ordinary specimen had attempted to take the Collector''s ce and fully control its swarm, maintaining mental tally over so many specimens, then they would have their minds rend asunder through the sheer mental strain.


    The Collector with two processing units on top of vastly more efficient processing capability could handle this strain with ease.


    Even then, however, the Collector had to utilize carrier units to streamline the process of swarm control, and it did not actively link itself to the minds of every single individual unit, relying on the Carriers to do this for the Collector so as to save magical energy.


    The connection to the golems, however, was one that required no mana to upkeep. The only real weakness was that it was solely connected to the Collector''s Jotnar core, so if that heart was damaged, control over the golems would be lost also..


    The Collector unfurled the fingers of its fist, and as it did so, a wave of blue mana shot out from it, washing over all the golems.


    The golems moved from their dormant positions, the ground shaking with the weight and magical mass of their movement. All of them were hunched over, but the Collector bid them to stand, and they did so, easing their weight onto their pir-like legs of ice as they towered over all in the room, their faceless visages staring straight at the Collector in primed attention.


    "Agreeable," said the Collector as it clicked its mandibles. "The golems are now under my control."


    "As expected of the Sovnar," said Goromir with a deep nod. "There is truly nothing beyond your grasp."


    "Sovnar amazing!" said Thokk.


    The Collector began to hover towards the swirling spiral portal of blue at the end of the cavern.


    "I will leave the golems here as sentries for any intrusion," said the Collector. "The rest of you, follow."


    The swarm and Kui followed the Collector as it hovered right in front of the portal. The portal sent out surges of magical energy that made the Collector''s sensitive hairs stand on end.


    "Warning. Sensing multiple mana signatures nearby. The warp is engraved only to the signature of the Sessor."


    The Collector clicked its mandibles. It would have to leave behind the swarm here, rtively out in the open, but at the same time, the fighter specimen known as ''Kui'' would prove to be an apt defender of them should he keep his word.


    As if sensing the Collector''s thought processing, Kui spoke. "Go ahead, Endbringer. As I have said, I will defend these people of yours."


    "We need no protection!" said Thokk with bravado.


    "Now, young one, we have been protected by this one many times now," said Goromir as he extended a cordial fist towards Kui. "And he has fought with the Sovnar also. I also know when one is a master in the martial ways, and you-," Goromir''s eyes narrowed as he beheld Kui. "Are a monster among monsters."


    "A monster? Yes," said Kui solemnly. "But no more than that."


    "You humble yourself," said Goromir. He turned his had to Thokk. "And humility is a trait quite valuable, young one. It allows you to know your limits, to acknowledge the strengths of others, and to better the self over time."


    Goromir paused with a fanged grin as he nced at Kui. "But the urge to test my might surges within me. How about it? Do you wish to spar while the Sovnar fulfills the destiny ced unto him by the mythical giants themselves?"


    Kui gave a casual half shrug, his expression emotionless and calm as usual. "I do not mind."


    The goblin swarm murmured to themselves as they found a new fight to be excited over, and they thronged around Kui and Goromir as the two prepared to fight.


    The Collector, seeing this, assessed that it was unlikely for the fighter specimen to possess any ill intent, and made its way into the warp point. From what it could tell of this warp point, it was more stable than that created by the Fang specimen, but it was equally limited in its projective capability, linking only to one fixed point in space.


    The Collector passed through the blue spirals, feeling cold wash over its body, and felt momentary darkness invade its ocr systems as the familiar feeling of warp travel strained at its body. A sensation of weightlesness, even a faint feeling of nausea due to the fact that the Collector''s body was not as sturdy and primed for warp travel as it once was.


    The moment of darkness faded, however, leaving the Collector in an entirely new space.


    The Collector floated in what truly was a space fashioned by giants. Everything was crafted with colossally sized beings in mind. It flew in what seemed to be a cylindrical space approximately three hundred meters in diameter and five hundred meters in height.


    The walls of the cylinder were fashioned from smoothened, pale white ice tinged with teal indicative of Truefrost, not the blue of Everfrost. The ceiling was t and circr and etched with countless sigils that the Collector recognized as ''Runes'' ¨C the script that the Jotnar utilized that was highly distinct in marking from tinkering scripts.

 Chapter 198 - Urth Vault II

    The runes glowed faintly with a deep dark blue, maintaining the link between this ce and the mountains while also enshrouding this hidden area with concealing energy. It was simr in kind to the barrier surrounding the Jotnar hand in Vimur, one that blocked out any outside interference and hid all that was within it.


    But beyond this, the Collector could immediately sense the vast quantity of magical energy it had felt beforehand from outside the mountain. A concentration of mana befitting of the core of this twin mountain range.


    Said mana source emanated from the only source of light within the room, or the ''Urth Vault'' as it was called: a single floating rune fashioned of glowing dark blue, almost ck energy. It was suspended in hovering animation in a pir of holographic, pale blue light projected from two pirs that emerged from the ceiling and ground respectively.


    The Collector floated up to the rune, and its sheer size dwarfed the Collector. Had the Collector been in its Jotnar sized form, then everything here would have been appropriately sized, perhaps even rather cramped.


    However, the Collector had to save its Jotnar transformation time. The ''stored energy'' built up within the transformation was nearing its peak, but if the Collector transformed, even if it chose not to shunt out that stored energy in explosive fashion, there would still be leakage..


    The voice of the artificial intelligence the Jotnar employed rung out again, this time from the rune.


    "Wee, Eru Wun Thamir¡­," began the voice.


    A pause urred, and the Collector remained tense, for it knew that the concentration of magical energy in the rune was immense, and that if any abnormalities urred such as some form of cataclysmic eruption of power, then it was in risk of undertaking significant damage if it was prepared.


    After all, it had been centuries likely since the Jotnar''s technology had been maintained. It was entirely possible that defects existed due to the ravages of extended time, even when the remarkable, nature defying phenomenon of magic was involved.


    "Protocol: Session of the End fully initiated," said the voice.


    A swell of magical energy crackled out from the rune, and the Collector deftly dodged chaotic waves of shunted out power.


    The rune stabilized, however, and from it, a new voice emanated. A male voice, and one that the Collector thoroughly recognized. From the memories that had shed into its processing unit from the Jotnar core, it recognized this voice as that which belonged to the prior Jotnar sessor.


    The one known as ''Eru Wun Thamir''.


    "Wee, my Sessor. If you have reached this far, then that means you must have taken my Shard. For that, Imend you. This message does not contain anything resembling my consciousness, and it is simply one recorded in await of your arrival, but know that should you be hearing this, you have justified the visions I bore.


    You are to seed where we have failed.


    You, an outsider, will bring life back to this world where we could not."


    The Collector clicked its mandibles in analysis. This was a pre-recorded message, so there was no point in interacting with it. However, the nature of the message itself was one of note worth. It was one that had expected the Collector''s arrival, and at the same time, one that had predicted that the one to bear the Jotnar''s Shard would not be one of them, but an outsider.


    Whether the term ''outsider'' indicated a being not of this was one the Collector was unsure of.


    "You have taken the Shard I had embedded in my arm," said Eru. "And you have not turned it in to the Common Body. Thus, the Shard has led you here. This is merely the first step of your Destiny, O Endbringer.


    As an outsider, it is likely you have questions of our peoples, for if my visions were correct and not a figment of a drunken haze, then it will have been centuries since our disappearance.


    Thend that it known harshly as the ''Wailwaste'' to the Common Body, perhaps the same body that you hail from, is one we Jotnar have made our home since time immemorial. Jotnarhelm as we called it. And too difficult for Commoners to find life in, but one we Jotnar beheld as the wellspring of all life, where the breath of the White Voice flowed freely.


    But you know by now that the World hangs at the edge of destruction. The ursed thing known as ''Undeath'' spreads, and though the New Gods try to contain it, convince their Common Body that it is no threat, that it is the cause of some monster or that to ce me, the end of all that is known does not care of excuses.


    The White Voice, the will of this world and the source of all life, withers, her breath and voice fading into nothingness, and as she falters, Undeath continues to rise.


    We the Jotnar are uniquely blessed to breathe life into dyingnd, to patch away Undeath, but Undeath is a terrifying threat.


    It is not constant. It changes. Shifts. Evolves.


    Five hundred years past the convergence, my father, Bel Wun Thamir, first saw Undeath and recognized its terrifying nature. When he saw that our Breaths began to falter against it, he sent our kind out beyond Jotnarhelm, across the realms of the Common Body, to seek knowledge and to teach the Commoners of the nature of Undeath and how to truly halt it.


    But the New Gods did not take kindly to this, for it is they who bring this disaster upon the world. It is they who by usurping the World Shards and Converging the Realms, stretch the White Voice''s veil of life thin, causing Undeath to poke its ugly head through the thinnestyers, spreading its rot.


    In just over one hundred years, the New Gods ughtered our kind and drove us back to Jotnarhelm, but even then, my father Bel held hope that with the knowledge our kind had sacrificed to obtain, that we could alter our Breaths, perhaps create an Artifact capable of channeling it in a way to directly destroy the Undeath or raise the White Voice to full power.


    For otherwise, the fate of the world was inevitable. That which we had thought was mere myth for thousands upon thousands of years became increasingly likely to be reality.


    Ragnar-Uruk: the End of the Rock that all life stands upon.

 Chapter 199 - Urth Vault III

    Ragnar-Uruk. When the Collector heard that vocalization, it felt an immediate sense of connection draw it towards that term. It was as if a sense of alertness had washed over it, the same kind of predatory awareness that made its hairs stand on end, its sense sharpen, and its killing drive hone down to a razor''s edge.


    That term, though merely a tinkering vocalization, lingered with the Collector, and soon, it came to process why the word had such strangely significant impact upon it. This was a word of power, one that signified a great end and new beginning, and this word was one meant solely for the Collector.


    This was the ''destiny'' that the fighter known as ''Kui'' and this Jotnar spoke of. This was the destiny that they believed the Collector would bear. Yet, was this destiny one that the Collector could reconcile with the duty invested unto it by the Collective?


    The Collector determined it was so. This concept of ending and beginning was one that the Collective would enforce regardless. An end of all life on the as was known now. A new beginning within the Collective..


    And yet, as the Collector formted these thoughts, it could not shirk an underlying sensation that no, this destiny and the Great Purpose of the Collective at some level was fundamentally ipatible. The end and beginning the Collective promised was not that which Ragnar-Uruk promised.


    Regardless, this was a matter of semantical thought that the Collector would waste time considering for it had no real impact upon its goal of destroying the existing divine power structure and obtaining might towards that end.


    "Ragnar-Urukk shall happen," said the voice. "This is ordained. The White Voice may falter, grow weak, and even die, and then this world shall plummet into the clutches of Undeath for an unfathomable amount of time.


    But always, the cycle of life and death will continue. The New Gods will die at the hands of the rot they have created and all reams will be devoid of life. Over time, however, life will return in new shape and form, and that life, we shall shepherd, guide, and grow when we awaken.


    But Ragnar-Urukk need not be an End of such massive scale. Lives may yet be saved.


    The End of the New Gods and the restoration of the World Shards ¨C this will be End enough to restore the White Voice, the world, and, consequently, nourish life that exists now.


    To that end, you require power. That is why you are here, searching for threads of our once great civilization for power that may yet be salvaged.


    I tell you now that there is no power pure enough to challenge the New Gods but the pure might of the Shards themselves. Should you still have the might the challenge the New Gods and topple them, without the Shards, you cannot restore the World.


    To that end, when this message ends, this Origin Rune ¨C the rune from which all others flows ¨C shall be engraved into your being. With this rune, you may essall our artifacts, magic, and marvels, what little of them remain from the devastating wars and plundering that the Draconids have wrought upon our people over the centuries should you find them.


    The Origin Rune, coupled with your Shard, shall also grant you connection to all other Shards of the World. You shall know where they are so that your journey may be guided properly.


    The Shard you possess already grants you connection to the gateway we utilized to enter our slumber. That gateway, however, is sealed, and no power exists within it anymore to prevent any with ill intent to reach us as we dream of a better world.


    However, the Origin Rune shall be both a key and a catalyst, inputting enough mana into the gateway to allow you to reach us and to bring us back when the time is right, when the world is cleansed of the New Gods and ready to be seeded with new and proper life once more.


    Or, if you require our war power, we will be d to aid you, especially in a fight to im the Shard that the Draconids have taken upon themselves.


    On a journey to harness the Shards, the only information we can provide is that which pertains to thisnd.


    There are three Shards in this wintrynd. One, the Shard of Session of my peoples, you hold now.


    The other lies in control of the Draconids.


    The final one in the clutches of the Facestealer.


    Of the Facestealer, we hold little record of, for it has never left its territory for over a millennia and a half. To obtain their Shard is one that will be a mystery, but one that we are hopeful will be one unraveled as your destiny fulfills itself.


    The Draconids, however, you will find that we have vast and bloody knowledge of.


    As a people, they emerged five hundred years past the Convergence. They came from the corpse of the Great Winter Dragon Fimbulvaltr where a winter storm surges so strongly that not even we Jotnar, masters of this icynd, could pierce.


    We know not how they were formed, and it is a mystery that confounded us all the way to the day we decided to enter our slumber. Their appearance was too quick, too organized, and their purpose so geared unifyingly geared towards destruction when natural life is meant to propagate and restore that many of our Seers thought they were creations of Fimbulvaltr''s remnant hate against the New Gods.


    Yet, that should mean that the Draconids would hunt only the New Gods, but they set their fangs upon us, and from them, our peoples that had known only peace, never truly fighting, never developing magic and artifacts meant for war, knew only great misery and suffering.


    The Cataclysm rose, a conflict between Draconid and Jotnar thatsted five hundred further years, a conflict of immense scale and yet one that is known not by any others in this world, not the New Gods, not the Common Body, none. Hidden as we are in thesends so shrouded with its primal veil.


    There is one trait of the Draconids that we understood thoroughly, and one that made them impossible to fend against over time.


    They were creatures of change. Over generations, perhaps even faster, they could change their forms, suiting themselves to destroy us.


    The great golems our people can create, constructs meant to build cities and homes, were purposed to war, and for the first century, the golems ughtered Draconids by the many thousands.


    Then, a change in the tides of war. The Draconids developed a magical, electrical pulse capable of rendering our connections with our proudly fashioned golems inert, and from then on, they surged against us.


    They created their own leader, one known as Valtr, one who had managed to take a Shard of Session from the Great Winter Dragon''s corpse, and they devised means to enter the slumbering spaces of the Old Gods, devouring them as they slept, usurping their powers for their destructive end.


    With this might, the Jotnar were doomed, and soon, our Shard was to fall to them.


    But we could not let that ur. For the Draconids are not a force for the good of this world. They are solely destructive. They im to hear the White Voice, but theirs is a false one, one that spurs them only to war.


    The White Voice destroys, but she also builds. She represents the Cycle of Life and Death, but the Draconids know not life, only death.


    The Draconids and their false White Voice cannot be allowed to stand. They may bring forth an End, but it will be an End that may well raze life in its entirety from the world and its realms. They will fight the New Gods and they may ughter many, but the wake of their destruction will only leave Undeath to reign supreme.


    To defeat the Draconids, our peoples have devised one final hope, though far toote for us to wield it.


    In our travels, we secured a piece of the Scalebane: a gue the New Gods once developed to fell the ancient dragons, but one that should fell the Draconids also, for as they are birthed from the Great Winter Dragon, so too should they bosses that dragon''s blood.


    The few fine Seers left in our midst have made their own changes to the Scalebane gue, ensuring that it willy waste to the Draconids, and this is the final and greatest treasure I can leave unto you."

 Chapter 200 - Scalebane

    The Collector clicked its mandibles as it heard this new information and processed it. The presence of a pathogen known as the ''Scalebane'' was one of extreme value to the Collector, and one that the Collector understood as possessing of exceptional potency considering what it knew of dragons.


    As the species known as ''dragon''s had been long extinct, the Collector did not know personally of their biological and magical capabilities to assess and analyze theirbat potential. What the Collector did know was simply hearsay derived from haphazard information recalled from the goblin elder.


    Yet, what the Collector did hear was worthy of note. The dragons were the premiere species upon this world before the arrival of the gods, dominating it and acting as a natural buffer by which tinkering civilization could not advance strongly beyond a certain point.


    The dragons were an intelligent species but at the same time highly individualistic and solitary, thus limiting their own capability to consolidate their power and authority.. However, due to their overwhelming individualbative might, might that was said to be capable of calling upon natural disasters upon entire kingdoms, and a sense of pride in being recognized as a dominant species, they did not allow tinkerers to consolidate either.


    When a tinkering civilization grew too strong, the dragons razed them or subjugated them, though never did the dragons ever rule tinkerers for extended periods of time.


    The advent of the New Gods, however, ended this power dynamic. The New Gods, ording to the elder, ''rained great fire and thunder upon their great heavenly fortress'' upon the dragons, and dragons fell in countless droves.


    This caused the dragons to finally cast aside their pride and unite, and initially, they turned the tides against the New Gods. The New Gods arrived with seven great floating fortresses, and all but one of them were destroyed.


    However, the actual nature of how the New Gods defeated the dragons in the conflict known as the Draconomachia was stated by the elder as a brave blow by the first high king of the god. One struck against the leader of the dragons in a proper battle.


    Yet, this did not seem to be the case ording to the Jotnar intelligence. There was no upfront fight, only tinkerers devising a pathogen to fell enemies too mighty for them to force their way against.


    This was significant because it indicated more reference points for the Collector to determine the strength of the New Gods. It was difficult to ascertain any proper information about them for any tales of them seemed to be heavily steeped in myth that functioned simr to propaganda, painting the gods as those with limitless powers and adhering to noble values shared by the tinkerers.


    However, if the New Gods had required a pathogen to defeat the dragons instead of pure force, then it indicated that in terms of raw, directbat potency, they were weaker than the dragons. At the same time, it had been over a thousand years since the Draconomachia if tinkering timekeeping was to be believed, and certainly, the New Gods could have advanced greatly since then.


    Yet, also unlikely. The New Gods did not seem to have uplifted any of their tinkering civilizations to starfaring capability which would have entirely been possible had they devoted themselves to innovating their technology, especially with the flexibility of magic.


    The New Gods also seemed to adhere to archaic principles of organization and deific worship that prioritized staying upon this, not expanding past it.


    This, the Collector could not fully grasp, for it seemed that if the New Gods had possessed even the slightest desire of expansion outside of this world, then they could easily have.


    Or, perhaps, the New Gods intentionally wished to stay on this world and halt innovation for a specific reason. This reason, the Collector did not know, and did not care of so long as it did not affect its mission to destroy the New Gods.


    As for the Scalebane itself, at face value, the pathogen would be exceptionally useful against the Draconids for the Collector hypothesized with great deal of confidence that the Draconids were descended from the dragons not only in naming but also in their gic makeup.


    From the beginning, the Collector could tell when it synthesized the draconid genes that they wereprised of a much older, moreplex ''base'' that had long degraded over time. This base likely being that of the extinct dragons based off contextual clues the Collector had garnered.


    The degradation had urred for so much time that the Collector could not extract the original gic base that made up the original dragons, but there was another thing the Jotnar voice spoke of that rted to this: the origin of the Draconids.


    The voice had stated that one of the theories revolving around the rise of the Draconids was that they had formed from the corpse of a dragon. If the Collector could find this deceased specimen and sample it, then it coulde to ess the original and vast power of the species that hadpeted directly with the New Gods.


    Regardless, that was merely a theory on the part of the Jotnar. More information required on that end.


    For now, the Collector would focus on obtaining the Scalebane sample the Jotnar had synthesized, for if it was an intact one, the Collector would have no difficulty incorporating it. If it was a particrly dangerous andplex pathogen, then the Collector would utilize its evolutionary cocoon to break it down and incorporate it.


    There was also the likelihood that if the Collector could obtain the Facestealer specimen''s ability to seemingly alter the state of physical forms and minds, then it could cross apply their abilities with Higher Calling to create differing strains of the Scalebane that could affect other species.


    All of this, of course, was nning for the future, but to the Collector, these myriads of thoughts urred in the span a lightning quick instant. At its essence, however, this new information did not alter the Collector''s current trajectory too drastically.


    ess the Jotnar''s site of slumber. Gain any strength and reinforcements along the way. Obtain Jotnar allegiance or biomass. Attain the Scalebane. Then, draw conflict with the Draconids. Subdue the Draconids. Investigate their site of evolution for the corpse of a dragon. Harvest their Shards and the Old Gods they have absorbed. Then, defeat the Facestealer or, if sufficient power was already garnered, attack the city known as ''Middir'' to forcibly break into their warp gate.


    "The Scalebane is held in the ruins of our capital city of Gimli," said the rune voice. "When you bear this Origin Rune and enter the city, regardless of how destroyed it is, you will gain ess to the Bifrost: a final vault within which we have stored our greatest military treasures.


    All of our mightiest war capable golems, armor, and weapons that we have abandoned for our slumber. Among them all will be a small piece of the Scalebane. Just enough to infect one Draconid, but our Seers have said that the disease spreads quick like the Great Storm''s winds.


    Infect the correct one, and you can inflict a grievous blow upon the forces of the Draconids. Afflict this disease upon Valtr the Exile, and you can cut the head off the beast in one fell swoop.


    But it is up to you to decide what you wish to do with it. And when it is done, when the destiny of Ragnar Uruk is fulfilled you may find us.


    Just beyond Gimli, you will find our site of sleep. It will be and seemingly of nothing, simply more snow and ice. Bute to the zone with this rune, and you will know that we are there.


    I shall be honest. We as a fighting force number barely a thousand. We are on the brink of annihtion ourselves, hence, our decision to slumber. We cannot help you in your battles. We cannot fell the New Gods. We cannot even defend our own homes from the Draconids.


    But you, Sessor, if you can fulfill your destiny, if you can bring down the New Gods, if you can unite the Shards, then you will know to turn to us for we alone may seed new life into this dying, hurt world."


    The Collector clicked its mandibles. Technically, if the Breath of Life was the only prerequisite to counteracting the strange phenomenon known as ''Undeath'', then the Collector alone could likely deal with it provided it managed to find the necessary adaptations to project the breath over wider areas.


    There was no need to pay with the Jotnar to restore this world, for when the Collective dawned and the Collector restored its connection with the Hivemind, they would gain ess to its stored gic materials and mass produce new units with the Breath of Life if Undeath was deemed any real measure of a threat.

 Chapter 201 - A Choice

    "All of this is the destiny of Ragnar-Uruk," said the voice from the rune. There was a distinctive shift in the voice''s tone that the Collector immediately noticed. The voice went from powerful projection more fit to inspire action among subordinates to one of softer tone generally indicative of personal speech patterns among tinkerers.


    "But know well that this need not be your destiny," said the voice. "We, the Jotnar, and life upon this world and its realms, would find you as a shining star of hope should you undertake this destiny.


    If you can rid this world of the New Gods in great End and bring forth a new Beginning from which life can truly flourish once more, then yes, we would feel heartened that there was one that could use our Shard and our might to realize what we could not have.


    Yet, I, Eru Wun Thamir,st king of the Jotnar, do tell this to you, O great Sessor, Sessor thates from the Outer.


    Destiny fulfills itself, but it is not anyone''s master.


    It does not force you to follow its steps. It does not bind you to what it desires.. It is a flowing river whose currents are gentle. You can follow them to their end, you can resist them, or you can step to the side and watch the waters flow without resisting or following.


    It is up to you, Sessor, up to your choice to do with the power you have been invested with. Ragnar-Uruk is foretold, and whether it will be a great End that sets this world back to nothingness, waiting millions of years for life to sprout back once more, or one that ends merely with the fall of the New Gods is up to you.


    Whether you even decide to bear this destiny is up to you.


    You are free to do with the Shard and the remnants of our scattered powers however you wish. I know from my visions that you are not of the Common Body, not of any known body known to me, and that makes you free.


    Freedom ¨C this, I have learned is the greatest treasure of life and one that has lost its meaning over time, both in the Common Body and the Wild as powers converge against each other, forcing one to side with this or that or fight here or there or against that man or that woman.


    But though I make you aware of the destiny of Ragnar-Uruk, I also will not take your freedom away from you. It is your choice to bear the destiny or use our power for your own purposes. I cannot stop you.


    None of us can, for we are all aslumber for the faulty of our weakness.


    The Origin Rune is shaped in form of a Spiral, and whether you choose to follow the ends inwards to a destiny converged of Ragnar-Urukk by many other threads of fate, or whether you choose to escape the spiral outwards, to create your own destiny of infinitely expanding possibility, is up to you.


    Above all, know this, Sessor, before I grant you this Origin Rune after my long rambling: there is always, always, a choice."


    With that, the voice of the rune faded away.


    The Collector stood in front of the enormous rune, its pale white hyperalloy carapace tinted a faint shade of blue from the light emanating from the massive letter. The holographic pir of light suspending the rune in animation in the air began to flicker.


    As the light flickered, so too did the surroundings of this vault. It began to crumble apart, the crystals in the ceiling beginning to shatter. Cracks started to line the walls of the vault, and surges of flickering blue magical energy crackling around the air indicated to the Collector that this space was on the verge of copsing.


    It had been created entirely by Unity-type mana and removed into its own dimensional space through Jotnar magic, with its extra-dimensional nature sustained by the magical energy of the Origin Rune. With the Origin Rune discing itself, this temporary dimension now copsed due to ack of magical anchors.


    The Origin Rune shot forth arcs of crackling energy, and theytched on to the Collector''s body. The dark blue spiral pattern emanating outwards from its shinchu light core started to glow, drawing in the threads of energy from the run, and it was as if the Collector''s body became a ma for the rune.


    The rune started to hover towards the Collector and as it approached, it shrank rapidly, fitting the size of the Collector''s own body. When the rune was a meter in front of the Collector, it was just about its own size, and there, it broke apart into pure energy, pooling into threads of glimmering blue light that fed into the Collector''s four eyes.


    The Collector felt an enormous surge of magical energy rush through its body in a raging whirlwind. Its carapace cracked, its muscles tore, and blood vessels popped, spurting blood as the power overwhelmed the boundaries of its body.


    White blinded the Collector''s vision, and the Collector regted the surging flow of magical energy within itself as best as it could. It did not try to resist the energy for it was fundamentally nourishing. It was simr to the Breath of Life in that it was energy that enriched the cells, and in the Collector''s case, it functioned exactly like biomass.


    Thus, the Collector circted the torrent of energy through its body as best as possible, attempting to nourish every single one of its cells to their absolute limit. Threads of white magical energy tinted at their ends with blue sparked out from cracks in the Collector''s carapace, and its body began to glow brightly as the vault around it darkened and copsed.


    >>>


    *Biomass Gained (+100)*


    Biomass Level: 8/100 > 108/100


    >>>


    An ordinary being would have likely spent hours attempting to process this power, but the Collector absorbed it within the span of ten seconds. The damage it had undertaken in doing so quickly patched up with explosively boosted regeneration.


    The Collector now glowed with a permanent aura of white, making its hyperalloy carapace nearly incandescent in its shine. Its four eyes were still colored a bloody red, but where before theycked pupils, they now possessed ck pupils fashioned in the shape of ck spirals.


    The spirals faded away as the Collector made the Origin Rune dormant. It seemed that they were essentially like markers for biometric scanning, and if the Collector desired to use the rune to ess Jotnar technology or magic, then it would have to manifest the Origin Rune in its eyes.


    In addition, the Origin Rune granted the Collector an exceptional boost to its Breath of Life adaptation. From an analysis of the ability, the Breath of Life was a personal adaptation among Jotnar that differed in functionality based on each individual, tied to the unique expression of their core.


    In the case of the Collector''s current core, the Breath of Life nourished cells and healed damage. Now, however, the Collector could ess what was essentially a collection of all the Breath of Life abilities that the Jotnar as a species had developed.


    Unfortunately, the vast majority of these abilities were entirely unsuited tobat, functionally being the exact same as the Collector''s current breath except significantly weaker in output. There were, however, a few Breath of Life expressions that were of noteworth.


    It also came to know that these Breaths were named, uniquely grown and specialized with the Jotnar that had trained them.


    The Collector tallied that a total five Breath of Life variants were both strong enough and useful to keep at hand, for the Collector could only ready one Breath of Life expression at a time, with a switch out requiring several hours to prepare.


    Life Bringer: This was the Collector''s current Breath of Life enhanced to its maximal potential with the Origin Rune. It enhanced the body strengthening process and allowed those nourished by the breath to freely use the ice bound to their cells, generating weaponry or armor with them.


    Death Mist: This involved funneling the breath into a deadly fog that would elerate the growth of destructive, not nourishing ice crystals within the body, causing rapid death from the inside out.


    Immortal Legion: Among the Jotnar, it seemed that many possessed the ability to use their breaths to form their ice crystals into golems. This provided the fundamental base by which they could create and maintain their golems.


    The vast majority of these Breaths were underwhelming, capable of only creating weaker golems, but there was one named Legion that stood far above all others.


    This was capable of constructing immensely powerful golems known as Einherjar, though it seemed for them to be cost-efficient, they required the aid of Jotnar technology to stabilize them with a proper ''core'' so that the Collector would not have constantly funnel them with energy.

 Chapter 202 - The Final Breaths

    There were two more Breath variants that stood out to the Collector. These were abilities that the Collector ssified as ''top-ss'', indicating that they were developed by Jotnar that were uniquely powerful among their kind and had the necessary individual traits to hone a Breath into a usable form.


    The Origin Rune was essentially a ''matrix'' by which the gic expression of a vast number of Jotnar Breaths was stored. The total number of stored Breaths totaled seven hundred and sixty six (766), indicating that the Rune was essentially like ast minute gic depository that the remaining one thousand or so Jotnar contributed to directly before engaging in their hibernation.


    By analyzing the variety of Breaths the Jotnar possessed, the Collector could tell quite easily that the entire species had been extremely pacifistic in nature. They possessed prodigious size that allowed them to fend against the vast majority of hostile specimens, but in terms of truebative adaptations, they were severelycking.


    98% of the Jotnar possessed Breath of Life variations meant solely for restorative purposes.


    Some focused on restoring nt matter better, others flesh, others the environment, and so on, and because of this, they were unusable to the Collector because the Life Bringer breath from the specimen known as Eru Wun Thamir, the king of the species, was the most advanced in terms of restorative capability.


    Even now, the Collector could see capacity to develop Eru Wun Thamir''s Life Bringer Breath to higher heights, perhaps even being able to fully resurrect specimen or construct new ones in a manner akin to the Spawning Pools of the Collective''s Hivemind. .


    There were Jotnar, however, that were essentially gic deviants that manifested Breaths that were incredibly different from mere restoration, and even then, the majority of them were simply defective, unable to properly express that Breath at significant scales or possessing Breaths that actively harmed them.


    Of the deviant Breaths remaining, the Collector could identify two more that it could keep in consideration.


    Breath of Self: This breath possessed the odd function of not restoring the physical bodies of others, but instead constructing a replica of one''s own self. Due to theplex nature of the Breath of Life ice crystals and how they could quite effectively approximate evenplex biomechanical functions by mimicking muscle fibers, bone structures, nerve endings, and so on, the Collector estimated that by using this ability, it could construct an ice crystal replica of itself that possessed up to sixty percent of itsbat capacity.


    There remained faults in the replication process such as the fact that it could not replicate certainplex and specialized biological systems such as the Collector''s pyrocatalytic nds or superacid bilespitter, but its raw, physical power, it certainly could replicate to high degree.


    The clone could also even function with its own neural processing unit and formed around a stabilized core, meaning that it needed minimal mana support from the Collector to sustain its existence. The only major downside was that this Breath could only conjure one clone at a time, and the creation process of constructing a clone took several days.


    Regardless, this Breath would allow the Collector to now function in two ces at once, and the applications of that were incredibly varied and useful.


    The final Breath variant the Collector took note of was one that it deemed the most useful at the moment.


    Fortress Breath: This breath was unique in that it ''scaled'' up to the user wielding it. All other Breaths tended to have a fixed output that was hard coded into the gic makeup of their respective Jotnar, making many of them too weak for the Collector to use.


    Fortress Breath, however, directly scaled to the Collector''s vast mana reserves. With this, the Collector could create a moving fortress of ice. This breath was a deviant of the typical golem creation breath, but instead manifested into constructing a defensive stronghold.


    The original Jotnar that possessed this breath was quite frail as a specimen, as it seemed that Jotnar that developed deviant Breaths possessed other gic defects that rendered them physically weaker, smaller, and more prone to ailments.


    Thus, the Jotnar did not have the natural mana reserves to make strong use of this ability.


    Under the Collector, however, this ability could be used to its absolute maximum potential. The Collector determined that in sheer functionality and utility, this ability was the absolute strongest Breath in its arsenal, for with it, it estimated it could create a fortress capable of housing a force of up to five hundred with strong defensive capability that could weather attacks from even Fang Draconids.


    The Collector tallied up its new abilities and watched as the dimensional space around it fully copsed, the walls breaking apart to show darkness that soon swallowed over the Collector. The darkness faded in a quick instant, dissipating to reveal the Collector back at the location of the cavern hallway.


    The Collector floated in the air and saw Goromir on the ground, several craters littering the floor as Kui stared at the goblin elite with bored expression.


    "How do you manage to do this!?" eximed Goromir. "You stand so perfectly still, then in the next moment, I am thrown. No matter how much I try to react, there is nothing I can do."


    "Attempting to react is a faulty and inefficient approach," said the Collector as it hovered forwards. Evidently, its reappearance had been one that was silent and without any significant influx of magical energy. Thus, the goblins were absorbed in watching the sparring. "The fighter specimen known as ''Kui'' moves at a speed beyond his own physical reflexes.


    This is because he has trained fixed patterns of throws and movements to such repetition that they can automatically be performed, transcending his physical limitations and any dy required for conscious thought. The speed of these throws is thus such that even I cannot physically react to them.


    However, this also means that the fighter possesses only a select number of attack patterns he can utilize at any given situation. By knowing which attack pattern he will select, it is possible to strike as you are thrown or before."


    "Far easier said than done," said Kui with a nod. "Though you are correct. But I have mastered enough throws such that I can throw at any angle in both defensive and offensive situations. That you could manage to predict exactly which throw I would use at a specific time is beyond mortalprehension."


    "Because the Sovnar is beyond any mortal!" shouted Thokk proudly.


    "As expected of the Sovnar," said Goromir as he shook rubble and dirt off his back. "You fought a monster like this and managed to best him."


    "It was not a decisive victory," said the Collector. "The margins of error present during the battle presented more than enough variance for myself to be defeated. In addition, the fighter specimen did not utilize the full extent of his strength from the onset ofbat."


    "Nor were you fully charged with mana," said Kui. He narrowed his eyes as he sensed the Collector. "But now, you are in prime condition. No, even beyond it. You are ready to grow stronger. Your aura reminds me of a martial artist that is primed for a breakthrough."


    So the fighter specimen could sense whether the Collector was ready to move on to its next metamorphosis stage or not.


    Kui faintly smiled. "But no matter. If ever we are to duel again, I have learned from our past fight. Even should you grow mightier, you will not find me so easily defeated."


    "You would turn against the Sovnar?" said Thokk usingly.


    "No," stated the Collector. "The fighter specimen merely wishes to engage inbat for recreational purpose. Combat forbat''s purpose."


    "Yes. Anyone who has walked the path of martial arts knows how long and weary it is. The farther on travels through it, the lonelier one bes. It is a rare and fine opportunity to sh with another who walks the path at the same level," said Kui with a respectful head bow to the Collector.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles. From the very beginning, the emotions it had managed to formte had all revolved around and developed from the primal concept of ''desire'', specifically the desire for battle in the Collector''s case.


    Thus, the Collector knew well what the fighter specimen felt.


    "When my purpose is close to its end, perhaps we may engage in another duel," said the Collector.


    "Perhaps," said Kui with his faint smile.

 Chapter 203 - Fortress I

    "So, then, Endbringer," said Kui as he crossed his arms again. "You have taken the power stored within this mountain. Power that the Draconids no doubt have tried to ess but failed to. I had suspected this before, but now I know: that shard upon you, the shard that grants you audience with the White Voice, that is the shard of the Jotnar, is it not?"


    It truly was a difficult ordeal to hide anything from the fighter specimen. Not that the Collector was actively attempting to conceal anything of itself other than perhaps the full details of its Great Purpose, but it came to calcte that in the future, the fighter specimen''s perception might prove to be a risk.


    Yet, as of now, the fighter specimen''sbat ability and allegiance significantly outweighed hypothetical risks.


    "It is so," said the Collector.. "Tell me, fighter specimen, what information do you possess of the Jotnar species?"


    "Little to none," said Kui. He sighed deeply. "I have heard tales of them, yes. Those in Xia who try to attune themselves to the wilderness, to the world proper, know well of the great Cycle. Life and deathe in equal measures like the ebb and flow of the tide, and both are equally important to the greater good.


    Thus, the monsters that kill and the monsters that breathe life are the same. Simply reflections of the same shade.


    It is in this way that I had heard tale of the Jotnar as one of the great beasts that heralded the Life cycle. But only tales, for they are native only to the realm of Terra."


    Kui shrugged. "In my decades wandering the Wailwastes, I had remained hopeful that perhaps the Jotnar still remained, though I knew that they had suffered greatly under the Grand Hunts initiated by the New Gods.


    But by the time I walked the Wailwaste, it truly was a wastnd. There are naught but ruins of their great peoples,id low by Draconid lust for wanton chaos."


    "Of these ruins, were there any remnants utilizable forbat purposes?" stated the Collector.


    "None I could tell," said Kui. "But then again, I did not travel far into Jotnar territory. There may yet be remnant cities deeper into the east that still hold some fragment of their former glory."


    The Collector clicked its mandibles, understanding that the fighter specimen known as Kui had truly simply just wandered with no clear purpose in sight for the Wailwaste. But now, the Collector would make use of the fighter specimen''s strength.


    "The Jotnar Shard that I possess is one that has allowed me ess to their magics," said the Collector. "It functions as an identification factor that will allow me to tap into any functional defensive systems, artifacts, and any other hidden facets of their civilization."


    Kui put a hand to his beard in understanding. "Ah, so you are their true Sessor. I thought I could sense familiar mana from you. The type that lingers faintly in the winds of Jotnar ruin."


    "You will not ask how it is that I havee to possess this shard of Jotnar power?" said the Collector.


    Kui shook his head. "I care not the nature of your power and how you havee into it. I merely care how you will use it, and for now, you fare the best chance to bring forth a rightful End of Draconids, New Gods, and Undeath."


    "Our paths are agreeable, then," said the Collector. It projected its voice louder so that the goblin swarm could hear it. "I have formted our next course of action. These specimen known as ''Jotnar'' hold significant armament hidden in their capital city known as ''Gimli''.


    This city will require a significantmitment of time to reach and there is a ny nine percent chance that we will encounter considerable amounts of resistance from the species known as the ''Draconids''."


    "For the Sovnar, no threat is too high, no task is too low for us," said Goromir. He smirked. "And I myself would like to be a ''dragon yer'' too."


    "Yes," said Kandak.


    "Me too!" said Thokk,


    "Know this, fellow blood of Gob!" shouted Goromir. "In our time, those that slew monsters possessing even a shade of draconic blood were considered warriors of the finest and best caliber! Worthy of respect and treasures for the rest of their lives!


    The Sovnar understands tradition. He will ensure your glory and bravery is recognized."


    "Indeed, said the Collector. "All of you shall bememorated in great reverence in fulfilling the Great Purpose. Any material desires you require until then shall be met freely, for I require nothing rted to the such."


    "The Draconids may not be as fierce an opposition as you believe," said Kui.


    "Exin," said the Collector.


    "From what I can tell, they are unified, but not organized. They number a great many, but the vast majority of them are not of any meaningful power. From the beginning, I suspect that it is their ability to rece their numbers so quickly and so freely that allowed them leverage against the Jotnar." Kui shrugged. "The twenty-five Fangs are certainly impressive, and fifteen of them lead tribes of Draconids whose numbers can easily overwhelm any ordinary army.


    But they possess no concept of military stratagem. They are forces of nature loosely yoked together and sent vaguely in a direction, not aimed and controlled like a proper army. There is no true sense ofmunication between Valtr, their leader, and the rest of them, even the Fangs.


    Each Fang does what they want, and Valtr cares little of exerting any mass control over them."


    "How is it that you havee into possession of this knowledge? Of a seemingly significant understanding of their military organization and stratagem?" said the Collector.


    Kui shrugged. "Just a guess. I killed hundreds of them on this mountain for several weeks before one of their Fangs challenged me. When I defeated the Fang, it took several more days before Vatlr himself appeared.


    After I proved Valtr''s worth, I escaped beyond the Rift to secure my life, for even I cannot face against multiple Fangs at once. But though I would find Draconids here and there, defeating them, there was no organized force meant to seize me.


    When I asked Draconids of what they were doing and what they desired, many of them did not even know of my existence. There is no typical ''chain ofmand'' wherein information flows through."


    "I see," said the Collector.


    "But I would not stay here long as you have said," said Kui. "The Fang we have defeated is one of few that are closely tied to Valtr."


    "In what manner?" asked the Collector.


    "Ten of the Fangs are Valtr''s wives," said Kui. "Thus, they posses a stronger bond than he does with the other Fangs. His wives possess no tribes under them, but are absolutely devoted to his being and cause. It may very well be that the Fang we defeated desires to bring forth Valtr and the other nine Fangs, particrly considering she seems to possess some level of displeasure against you."


    "Your deduction matches mine to eptable degree," said the Collector. It filed the information of the Draconids to mental note and then considered the impact the information would have on its current ns.


    In the long term, not much. The goal to reach Gimli was still clear. However, theck of coordination and organization on part of the Draconids meant that there was now far greater flexibility within which the Collector could potentially levy strikes against the Draconids or spend additional time investigating ruins or other areas of interest.''


    "The immediate decision to leave this area is one that I shall enforce now," said the Collector.


    "And what of the other half of the magical energy present in this mountain?" said Kui. "Twin ranges with twin hearts. One half of the mountain''s power is now imbued within you, but the other? Will you leave it?"


    "I have already calcted how to utilize the remnant magical energy," said the Collector. Kui was correct in stating that the Origin Rune possessed only one half of the manaden inside of the mountains. The other half was spread throughout the mountain, utilized all throughout to keep Draconids from essing the Origin Rune by hiding it in its own dimensional space.


    "Oh?" said Kui.

 Chapter 204 - Fortress II

    "Gather within this hallway. Do not step beyond its boundaries," said the Collector. It started to surge its magical energy, and brilliant, massive arcs of blue crackled out of it in thick bolts that mmed into its surroundings.


    Its carapace cracked and its flesh sizzled as it poured out immense amounts of stored magical energy. The magical energy came not only from the Collector''s current 200% reserves but also by the immense amount of overcharged energy that was gathered inside of the Origin Rune. The amount of energy it channeled, when counting the Origin Rune, was at a sufficient enough quantity that even the Collector could not urately harness it without harming its body over time.


    Initially, the Collector had desired to utilize the magical energy to force a further evolution for all of the goblin swarm, but now, it could utilized it for a different purpose that was likely to be far more useful.


    The Collector channeled the overwhelming magical energy within itself and ran it through its Jotnar core, coloring it blue in the form of the Unity affinity. The Unity affinity was the most suited for creation, and creation was what the Collector needed to do now at thergest scale it had ever done so in this world.


    The bolts of blue energy arcing from the Collector did not just crash against the walls of the hallway, but instead funneled into them, permeating throughout the structure of the mountain andtching onto the flow of magical energy imbued inside of it.


    Essentially, the Collector was hijacking the magical energy of the mountain by attaching its personal threads of magical energy into it. The hallway started to shake and rumble, rubble falling from the ceiling as the white ice crystals that provided light flickered.


    The Collector then began to utilize its Origin Rune. Its four red gleaming red eyes flickered, their normally pupil-less ocr systems filling in with spiral shaped dark blue pupils. The spiral patterns threading outwards from the Collector''s golden light core.


    Within the Collector''s mental processing, interfacing with the Origin Rune was in many ways quite simr to interacting with the Collective''s Evolutionary matrix. If there was a means to create a visual approximation for the process, then it would have been like sifting through a collection of flickering blue lights that floated in the darkness, with each of these lights representing the individual core of a Jotnar.


    It would have taken an ordinary tinkerer hours or, at the very least, an inordinate amount of time to sift through the number of cores to ess what they desired, but the Collector had memorized every single core''s capabilities and knew easily which one to select.


    The Collector selected the Jotnar core that possessed the Fortress ability. It belonged to a Jotnar that had been named Dor Run Thoom. The core itself possessed a trigger of ''Hope'', and this emotion, the Collector was only vaguely familiar with.


    The Collector would have to artificially open the core and allow the trigger of ''Hope'' to flow into itself for now, and thenter, perhaps it would attempt to try and rationalize the emotion and develop it in its own terms.


    By now, the Collector was far less averse to allowing emotions it did not understand into itself for it was confident that it could rationalize them and understand them, or even if it could not, it hade to know that emotions, even those that it could not fully grasp even now such as the trigger of ''Wonder'', did not infallibly corrupt it or make it defective.


    Certainly, emotions at first value were irrational and antithetical to pure efficiency, but the Collector was beginning to realize that though some of them did not follow rational boundaries, that they like any body part could be understood, harnessed, and mediated.


    Thus, the Collector channeled Hope, and it felt the emotion forcibly entering its processing system. The hope that the specimen that this ''Dor Run Thoom'' had felt was one that looked forward. Where there was darkness and death all around him, he could use this ''hope'' to see ahead, to conjure up an image of a brighter future in spite of the countless variables around him that made such a future a nigh impossibility of probability.


    It was hope in spite of his weakness. Hope in spite of his environment.


    As the Collector channeled the emotional trigger and opened up its newly slotted Jotnar core, the spiral patterns extending out from its shinchu light orb shifted. The spiraling pattern of dark blue shifted instead into a series of rectangr patches of blue, as if six dotted lines had been drawn across the Collector''s chest.


    The core was now fully stabilized and active, and the Collector could feel the heat of a newly opened core flowing through its body. It closed its four fists and focused its magical energy. The tethers of unity mana it had created totch onto the cavern walls grew in size, and the Collector could feel that it had wrapped around most of the magical energy remaining in the mountain.


    Now, it was a matter of using Fortress.


    The Collector breathed out through its skin pores, and chilling, thick air akin to fog vented out of its body.


    "Impressive," said Kui as he watched with crossed arms, his robes billowing from the wind pressure of the Collector''s outwardly projected energy. "To amass this amount of magical energy remotely is a feat that I have never seen before."


    "As expected of the Sovnar," said Goromir with a nod.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles. It also was not powerful enough to manipte magical energy at arge scale like thispletely remotely. But its control was greatly aided by the fact that it possessed the Origin Rune.


    The rune acted as a storage of Jotnar gic memories and core data, functioned as an identification marker for Jotnar magic and technology, and also was a ma for Jotnar based magical energies, and in this case, the entirety of the magical energy remaining in the mountain was the remnant of a now brokenrge scale spell meant to create its own pocket dimension.


    This energy, the Collector now repurposed. It gathered the immense amounts of magical energy into itself drawing it in directly to its Jotnar core. The cavern stopped shaking and the light crystals above dimmed downpletely, drained of magical energy.


    All of the magical energy was now condensed inside the Collector''s Jotnar core, and the heart located in its stomach area glowed a bright blue that was seen through hits carapace and flesh.


    Now, it was a matter of shaping it using the Jotnar core.


    At a fundamental level, Fortress took magical energy, shaped it into a functioning core, and then using that core as a stable foundation, built a fortification around it. Thus, the quality of the initial core was the absolute most important factor in determining the strength of the fortress. Not only the durability of the fortress, but potential to customize its capabilities.


    The original Jotnar could only create an icy shell of defense approximately fifty meters in radius around himself, but the Collector''s vastly superior processing ability and infinitely better gic and magical potential meant it could add in offensive capabilities, mobility, and even localized warp capabilities provided it could ess a sufficiently developed energy source for the formation of a high quality core.


    The magical energy in the mountain, however, was easily enough for the Collector''s purposes. The Fortress it could create would be on a scale easily rivaling a Dreadnought ss starship. But the Collector would never shape a vessel that carried it into anything resembling that the tinkerers utilized.


    Instead, the Collector knew perfectly the biological blueprints of what it desired to construct.


    The Collector hunched over for a moment, stabilizing the vast amounts of magical energy circting in its Jotnar core, and programmed exactly what it would build before standing up straight, releasing the stored energy in a blinding burst of light.


    The light made all the goblins close their eyes and shield them with their hands, but Kui continued to watch with no issue. The cavern started to break apart as the magical energy gathered into thick blue aura that attached to the cavern, the stone and ice breaking off and funneling into raw material for the creation of the Fortress.


    Within ten seconds, it was as if the entire mountain was being transmuted, its thousands of tons of rock and ice flowing like water as it swirled around the Collector, taking up a new form as the Collector''s personal mobile fortress.


    Or, more specifically, the Collector shaped its Fortress into that of the Vanguard Unit of the Collective. This was the primary unit the Collective used to transport its troops across the vast expanse of space.. It was an enormous sphere-shaped mass of smooth, armored flesh lined at the bottom with enormous tentacles lined with biosma thrusters that granted it mobility.

 Chapter 205 - Fortress III

    Within the Collective, only two units were superior to the Collectors. The first were the Queens that acted as secondary Hiveminds or essentially as Carrier units to the Hivemind itself, directingbat operations far from the Collective homeworld.


    Queens were granted a level of individuality that was nearly on par with the ordinary tinkerer, though they still possessed an ingrained absolute loyalty to the Collective.


    The other were the Vanguards. They were, as their name suggested, the frontal Vanguard of any Collective force. They were responsible for housing troops across deep space and opening warp gates, making them the primary utility unit of the Collective whereas the Collectors were the primary offensive units.


    The Collector circted the streams of raw stone, ice, and magical energy floating around it in a whirling sphere around itself. The sphere epassed the hallway-shaped cavern, but outside of it, the rest of the upper half of the mountain had beenpletely broken down, its raw materials now floating around in broken down form ready for recreation.


    The Collector replicated the form and functions of a Vanguard unit.


    First were the internals.


    Like the grooves of a brain, the insides of the sphere of flesh were densely packed together in folds, and each fold could house Collective units within it, often in stasis cocoons that preserved them until the Vanguard unitnded upon a target location for battle. These groove pathways, however, the Collector would alter such that they were more spacious, sacrificing efficiency to grant the goblin swarm more space to move with, for from its initial observations, the Collector understood that the goblin kind as a species functioned well with free space to roam with and to interact with each other.


    There were also evolutionary chambers and spawning pools where units could enter to regenerate their wounds or be directly adapted into higher forms. The Collector could not replicate these directly, but it could somewhat approximate them by using the mountain''s own magical resources.


    It created ''spawning pools'' using the glowing healing watersden throughout the mountain. Within these pools, units could enter to fully restore their wounds. In addition, the Collector used the warp capable nature of the water and spread it in specific areas around the Vanguard, creating ''doorways'' of this warp sensitive water solidified into a fleshier, gel-like membrane that units could phase through to reach different areas of the Vanguard.


    ''Evolutionary chambers'' could be fashioned through the Collector''s ability to interface Higher Calling with heavily condensed pockets of primal energy such as dungeon cores to create cocoons out of them. With these, the Collector could significantly increase its drone production, though the quality of the drones would be far worse than the carrier units it had already created, capable of splicing either with genes from weaker and more bodilypatible creatures or only mixing small aspects of variant genes together.


    Thergest Vanguard units could easily reach beyond ten thousand kilometers in total length, beingparable to moons, and house enough units to easily swarm and overtake entires. They were autonomous units capable of thinking on their own to a simple degree, following coordinates and warp trails, but they usually required the presence of a Dominator ss Collector which would mesh with the Vanguard in a symbiotic rtionship, acting as the enormous creature''s ''brain''.


    The Vanguard the Collector created now was far smaller, being only two kilometers in length with the spherical holdingpartment, or the head of the fortress, being just shy of one kilometer in diameter. Regardless, this was still enough to house thousands upon thousands of units.


    Vastlyrger then any army the Collector fielded for now.


    And though the Fortress was smaller, its structure and functioning would be rtively simr.


    In typical Vanguards, the Dominator would fuse with the Vanguard deep in its defensively fortified center, a center known as the ''Command Chamber'', and from there, psionic and flesh pathways would link to the Dominator and allow it to manage very aspect of the Vanguard, deploying units, generating warp gates, and the like.


    The Collector could not create a warp capable Vanguard at nearly the same scale, but it could repurpose the dimensional magic that the mountain''s mana was previously being used for to allow the Genesis Chamber and the Fortress Core to be in its own isted space, thus requiring hostile forces to possess some way of breaching dimensional barriers to fell the Fortress.


    For without the core''s destruction, the Fortress could constantly restore itself by absorbing environmental mana, though outside of primal energy rich areas, this regeneration would dramatically slow.


    In addition, the Collector could have the Fortress channel small scale gates akin to that generated by the Fang specimen, having a maximal range of thirty kilometers, though there was only a set amount of warp based energy the Fortress could use before it had to be recharged.


    Regardless, when all was said and done, the Collector had created an enormous flying fortress, repurposing the material of the entire twin mountain ranges, condensing the countless tons of rock and primally charged mass into immensely sturdy carapace, flesh, and offensive armaments in the form of enormous tendrils that could fire sts of concentrated freezing force or raw concussive bursts of pure mana.


    The process of creation took no more than ten minutes, and to the outside beholder, it truly must have seemed like nature itself was bending and moving to the Collector''s will. The enormous twin mountains that cracked apart like the shells of fragile seeds, spilling out all the mass within: unfathomable measures of rock, ice, snow, and a flood of stored water within that all swirled around the Collector in a rotating mass that likely was easily visible from space had not the area been properly obscured by fog.


    All the golems that were hidden in the mountain, too, were taken up, and aside from those already in the cavern hallway, the remaining force numbered up to two hundred golems. The Collector quickly began to realize that the majority of its fighting force was going toprise of automated golems, and to that end, it would have to use the Legion Jotnar core to enhance them, modifying them to grant them both superior strength and flight capabilities so that they could properly maneuver around the Vanguard Fortress.


    Because the Collector had essentially just transmuted two mountains into its new Fortress, the Collector now also had ess to a reliable and infinitely replenishing force. There were certain creatures that were manifestations of the environment such as the golems of snow that naturally formed on the primally charged mountains.


    These creatures, the Collector could not simply will to spawn provided it was in the Command Chamber. The Fortress possessed a finite amount of magical energy, however, so continuously spawning golems would eventually drain the Fortress''s magical energy reserves. In addition to the golems, the Collector also had ess to other types of creatures the environment could naturally crate such as Wraiths and particrly mighty specimen known as Elementals that were living manifestations of elemental energy.


    The Collector calcted that the Fortress could only generate three Elementals at a time, but in terms of sheerbative power, they were almost on par with the Collector, though because they were unstably created masses of pure energy, they burned out over a short period of time.


    The Collector finalized the creation of the Vanguard, finally programming behavioral patterns inside of it, though nothing asplicated as a fully functioning processing unit for the Collector could only make the Fortress as autonomous as a golem.


    That is to say, the Collector could leave the Command Chamber and have the Fortress follow it or float towards a specific direction, but for any truerge scale orplicatedmands and controls, the Collector would have to manually direct.


    The presence of an additional Carrier unit to control the Fortress when the Collector was away was one that the Collector realized would be greatly helpful, and to that end, utilizing the Jotnar core of Self Breath to generate a clone of itself would be useful.


    At the same time, the Collector realized that utilizing the Jotnar cores to this degree burned them out severely. The magical threads of energy spooling out from its body broke apart, fading away as the creation of the Fortress entered its final phase, the mass creating the sphere around the Collector shaping into the specifications the Collector had programmed.


    The heart in its lower stomach, that of the Jotnar core, sizzled with smoke, and the Collector could feel that the core waspletely dysfunctional. No regr regeneration would restore it.


    "You have Overloaded your core," said Kui.. "Though you have multiple Cores, so your life should not be in danger."

 Chapter 206 - Fortress IV

    "There is no issue," said the Collector. "I shall restore this damaged core with little issue."


    "Impressive," said Kui coolly. "An Overloaded core is considered a death sentence for any martial artist, adventurer, or sorcerer. It cannot be healed with magic, and those that survive Overloading are rendered cripples that can barely breath.


    Yet here you are standing tall, capable even of healing an Overloading."


    "The Sovnar is made different!" said Thokk. "He strong, and he always win!"


    "The regenerative process will still take significant time," said the Collector. "And during this time, my capability to provide healing to your bodies is nullified. I have also lost the capacity to restore your forms from severe injury. I will send a mental signal to the Conquering Force to caution for additional alertness.


    The swarm here, however, will remain adequately defended by the shell I have created around us."


    The Collector clicked its mandibles as it analyzed itself.


    The core''s spirit roots werepletely deadened, and because explosive regeneration required mana to use, only natural healing could work on the heart. However, the damage of ''Overloading'' was both corrosive and debilitating, preventing the Collector''s natural healing factor from working well either.


    It would take two days before the Collector could use the core again, though this, the Collector had predicted and formted a n against. Its biomass level was full, so all it had to do now was evolve once more.


    The process of evolution was one the Collector knew possessed immense risks now because it took enormous amounts of time. Thus, the Collector had created the Fortress, for with its dimensionally sealed chamber, the Collector could evolve with all of its troops, golems, and the durable shell of the Fortress Vanguard to guard it.


    The Collector could even interface with the Fortress Vanguard while in its evolutionary cocoon, thus allowing it to have offensive capability even as it evolved.


    Thus, the Fortress was the perfect defensive adaptation that the Collector could currently utilize, optimal in both housing troops, developing forces, and defending the Collector during moments of vulnerability such as evolution.


    Certainly, the Collector could have used the mana infused into the mountain for other purposes. It was still ''colored'' by Jotnar magic, so it would have beenpatible with practically all of the Jotnar core variations. The most notable other usages of the mountain''s mana would have been with the Legion or Self Breath cores, creating immensely powered golems nearly on par with the Collector or several copies of the Collector.


    However, none of those provided the level of security and functionality during evolution as did Fortress, and in higher metamorphosis levels like now, the Collector needed functionality as its evolutions, particrly in synthesizing magically charged biomass of high caliber, would take far longer than usual.


    Thus, the Collector finished the creation of the Fortress, and the rumbling and shaking hallway cavern stilled. It had finished creating the Vanguard Fortress outside, fully generating the grooved internal pathways, functional localized warp points, spawning pools, evolution chambers, and the like. It also had taken into ount the needs of the goblins and created private quarters for them and many more for additional troops. There were also the presence of several bays that could be used for storage purposes or function as recreational arenas for sparring.


    The Collector estimated it could house up to 10,000 troopsfortably within the Fortress Vanguard with another additional 5,000 for golems.


    The golems, though generally significantlyrger than any goblin specimen, could bepacted into cocoons or embedded in the walls of the Fortress Vanguard because they did not require any space or consideration of quality of life to function effectively.


    Of course, the Collector did not possess nearly enough troops to reach 10,000.


    At best, if it united every single goblin tribe, it estimated that there was potential to have between 1000 and 2000 troops, but any remaining space would be filled by additional loyal specimens or mass construction of golems. If most of the empty space was taken up by goblins, then the Collector estimated it could have a war-capable force of 10,000 golems once the spawning pools consistently created them.


    To that end, the Collector had to find raw materials. The spawning pools could create golem cores, but the actual raw material the Fortress Vanguard had to create them was limited.


    As of now, the maximum amount of troops capable of being fashioned was up to 2000.


    Yet, there was plenty of raw material in thisnd. These mountains alone possessed massive deposits of Everfrost and Truefrost, and these, the Collector would harvest before it left.


    "To be more specific: I have created a mobile holding unit known as a Vanguard," said the Collector as it floated downwards, touching the ground. "It is easily capable of housing every single being within this cavern and thousands more. To exin its specifications and internal pathways would take significant time for none of you possess the processing power to instantly memorize theyout and abilities of the Vanguard.


    In time, I will impart the knowledge into the elite units, and they will teach the rest of you which warp doors to take in order to navigate the innards of the Vanguard properly. For now, I require istion.


    The Collector swiped the air with its ws, and a portal opened up generated by the power of the Vanguard. It crackled with blue energy, its outer rims lined in rapidly spiraling blue.


    "This warp door leads out to a holding bay," said the Collector. "Gather there and collect yourselves. Do not wander outside lest you risk losing your sense of direction."


    "Yes, Sovnar," said Goromir immediately with military training while the rest of the goblins were wide eyed and awed at the sheer amount of magical energy the Collector had been outputting. "You heard the Sovnar! We must leave! Go! Go!"


    Goromir waved the goblins in, and theyplied, until finally, the elites themselves left, leaving the fighter specimen known as Kui.


    Kui watched the Collector with arms crossed and a brow raised. "First, you obtained a crown, thus making you Sovnar. Now, you have a fortress befitting that crown." He nodded to the Collector before stepping towards the portal. "Looks like I chose my champion right."


    Kui stepped into the portal and disappeared.. With that, the portal closed, fizzling away.

 Chapter 207 - [Bonus ] Integration

    [Bonus Chapter #1 for meeting powerstone goalsst week. 1 more to be released over the week]


    The Collector, now in privacy, shaped its Command Chamber. It shaped it exactly ordingly to how it would look in a typical Vanguard unit. This cavern hallway was already in its isted dimension that used the center of the Vanguard as a physical anchor, though even if one destroyed that anchor, this dimension would still exist.


    First, the structure of this hallway had to change.


    The Collector stomped its foot, sending out threads of its mana into the ground. The hallway changed its structure into a spherical room, its ceiling and walls morphing and shifting in a nearly fluid efficiency. The walls became more organic in texture, turning into dark, ribbed flesh filled with pores and nds that filtered oxygen and asionally emitted bursts of steamed healing water.


    The ground underneath the Collector broke apart and opened up, and atop an upraised tform of wed ck flesh was an enormous orb of pure glowing white. The orb was several timesrger than the Collector, easily ten meters in diameter, and though it was once pure mana, it now had a solid structure.


    It was as if one had taken all that magical energy, that flickering, crackling, chaotic mass, and ced it within a ss container. Veins and tendrils from the flesh tform holding the orb attached to the core, fully linking it to the rest of the Vanguard Fortress.


    The veins and tendrils glowed white as energy from the core flowed into it, spreading throughout the walls of the spherical room, lighting up a webwork of veinsden inside the fleshy walls with bright white.


    Now, the core was fully linked to the Fortress Vanguard, powering its functions.


    It now time for the Collector to interface with the core. It floated upwards, hovering right above the glowing white orb, and then sunk into it. As its feet approached the core, flesh tendrils wrapping around it utched and tangled around the Collector''s form, fusing into its own biomass until it was integrated within the orb itself.


    Its legs were now gone, reced by the orb, leaving only its upper body exposed. All of its veins lit up with white energy that shone through its carapace. A few blood vessels popped, and some areas of the Collector''s carapace began to crack as it attempted to process the burdensome psionic load of controlling such a vast unit.


    The Collector had, however, ounted for this. Healing water pooled into the spherical room from flesh tubes, and soon enough, the entire space was submerged, nourishing the Collector, preventing its body from breaking down and keeping its neurons in stable condition, essentially preventing it from mentally and physically ''overheating''.


    Now, the Collector was integrated as a Dominator ss Collector would be with a proper Vanguard unit, though of course, at a far smaller scale. For the first time, the Collector could think in terms of respecting the sheer psionic power of its Dominator ss brethren that could handle Vanguards more than ten times this size, operating the deployment of warp gates, millions ofbat units, evolutions, unit creation,bat, defense, and more.


    Beforehand, the Collector had simply thought in terms of function. It was adapted to fight, and the Dominators were adapted to control. That was that. There was no ''respect'' to be given for functions that simply were.


    The Collector took its imnted memories of its Dominator brethren and utilized them as a basis for which to strive for.


    The Collector''s consciousness was now melded in the Fortress Vanguard, allowing it to monitor the insides and outsides of the enormous unit. There were several bulbous eyes that the Fortress Vanguard could spontaneously generate on its outer shell from which the Collector could obtain visuals of the outsides, and for now, it saw that the Fortress Vanguard was properly floating in the air, and judging from its perspective, its physical dimensions were rtively urate ording to the Collector''s calctions.


    Five thousand three hundred and fifty meters in diameter (5350 meters) though the Fortress Vanguard was more of a half sphere, its lower halfprised of lengthy tendrils that did not have carrying capacity for troops. These tendrils were used primarily for mobility, ejecting streams of magical energy, but they could fire beams of ice or force or be used as interactive appendages from which to harvest raw material and even biomass.


    The vanguard unit possessed an enormous, beak-like set of jaws that led into a destructive digestive system that could break things down into base materials and funnel them into different storage centers for varying purposes.


    Biomass for the evolution chambers. Raw materials for the golems. And so on.


    Agreeable, thought the Collector. The Fortress Vanguard''s physical dimensions were correct and it had no defects to speak of. It moved ording to the Collector''s will and already, it began harvesting,tching onto a nearby mountain head and breaking apart tons of rock and vacuuming it in with its sizable maw.


    The Collector could not stay here long, especially not with the enormous surge of magical energy it had unleashed to create this unit, but the short time it was here, it would still use to gather raw materials when it could.


    Meanwhile, the Collector simultaneously projected its consciousness into the holding bay where the swarm was. An eye sprouted from the ceiling of dark blue flesh lined with mana crystals for lighting. Through this eye, it saw the swarm was looking around in wonder, tentatively touching the walls of coiled flesh or looking at the living ground that pulsated with veins.


    "Do not remain too idle," said the Collector, its voice projecting through the innards of the Fortress Vanguard. "This Fortress Vanguard will provide you with protection, but it does not guarantee your lives. Now, with my core Overloaded, the risk is even higher that any fatal wound you sustain cannot be restored.


    I will now transmit information to the carrier unit for he possesses the greatest psionic potential and closest link to me. Carrier unit, follow the mental directions I grant you to the nearest Evolution Chamber."


    Hearing this, Thokk smiled and looked around triumphantly. "Sovnar chooses me!"


    "Take care not to fail him, young one," said Goromir. "But knowing your potential, I doubt failure will be something you taste much of."


    "Heh," said Thokk, proud of thepliment.. He marched forwards, taking the Collector''s mental directions to the nearest exit of the Evolution Chamber, a circr warp doorprised of viscous warp capable waters reappropriated from the mountain.

 Chapter 208 - Tracts, Pods, And Evolution Chambers

    The Collector watched remotely from within the Command Chamber as the carrier unit known as Thokk made his way to the nearest Evolution Chamber. Overall, within the structure of the Fortress Vanguard, there were thirty (30) Evolution Chambers and fifty (50) Spawning Pools. There were ten (10) major holding bays, one of which functioned as a main rendezvous point for the goblins to gather.


    This one, the Main Bay, was meant for the goblins to utilize for social interaction and to fight within when needed.


    Thokk passed through a warp door, and as soon as his body pushed through the glowing blue, viscous membrane, he was transported outwards to a narrow corridor of grooved flesh. There were mana crystals lining the muscr grooves for lighting and to facilitate with projecting the Collector''s consciousness, though for now, their lighting function was turned off because the goblins all possessed adequate vision in the dark.


    Guided by the Collector''s psionic call, Thokk made his way across the corridor. Spaced in five meter intervals on the ceiling were individual tendrils of flesh that dangled, glowing with a faint blue glimmer. By pulling on one of these, a unit could ask the Collector for a travel pod.


    The tendril would create a temporary cocoon around the unit and then whisk it upwards into the ceiling, from where it would then be moved at high speeds across the innards of the Fortress Vanguard and out of its many tentacles or beak-like maw. The travel pod, filled with cushioning, viscous liquid and a durable, shock absorbing outer shell, would guarantee safending before breaking apart and unleashing the unit held within.


    The Collector required some tuning for the travel pods, however.


    The Collective used the same design to drop units down, but there was no design to bring units back up, because when a unit was sent for battle, it was essentially sent to die as any unit lesser than a Collector strain had low probabilities of surviving a confrontation with the firepower of the United Front.


    It was in sheer numbers and swarming tactics that the Collective''s lesser units obtained victories and ground from the United Front.


    Yet here, the Collector''s individual units were important, and though its golems were expendable, sending units that could think for themselves out with no way back would significantly reduce their morale and continued incentive to fight for the Collector.


    The solution to this would be flight capable golems designed solely for medical and evacuative purposes depending on how flexible the Collector''s creative control was over the formation of golems.


    Regardless, this would all be tasks that the Collector would initiate after it had familiarized the goblins with their new home. Once the goblins were settled into the spaces the Collector had set out for them as their personal nests, it would be time to initiate mass spawning of golems.


    The mountains the Collector had utilized to create the Fortress Vanguard could only create simple golems that were hulking masses of physical strength. However, the Collector calcted that it could easily apply the structure and principles of Collective unit creation utilizing Genesis Protofluid - the very primordial ooze that the Collector broke down into during its metamorphoses - to vastly enhance the flexibility of the creation process.


    The Collector bid Thokk to stop before a drop tendril and bid the goblin to pull it.


    Tentatively, with awe in his eyes, Thokk grasped the tendril and yanked down. The bulbous end of the tendril split apart in four segments, vomiting out cocoon fluid. Glowing blue liquid spat down from above, circling around Thokk before forming into a cocoon around him. Thokk, by now, was used to the cocooning process, and simply closed his eyes and remained still.


    When the cocoon was formed, Thokk''s body bing visible only as a shadow within the gleaming membrane, it was pulled upwards by the tendril and into the innards of the Fortress Vanguard. This pod would not send Thokk out of the Fortress Vanguard, but instead was personally directed by the Collector to the nearest Evolution Chamber.


    In terms of internal mobility for troops, the Collector had determined that it could not permanently have units stuffed into cocoons inrge Incubation Chambers, moved only when they were needed. Usually, all the pathways inside the Vanguard unit were tight andpact, minimized in space for absolute efficiency, meant only to push cocoons here and there through strong muscr contractions.


    These pathways were adapted from the enormous andplex intestinal tracts of the Vanguard unit.


    The Collector increased the size of these tracts to createrger corridors within which units could actively walk through. These walkable paths, the Collector had deemed the "Large Tracts", with eachrge tract connecting to each other via physical proximity or warp doors. A unit could navigate the entirety of the Fortress Vanguard using therge tracts, but it would take significant time bordering on hours.


    However, by entering into a travel pod, a unit could ess high speed transportation throughout the internals of the Fortress Vanguard. They would get sucked into what the Collector deemed the ''Small Tract''. Intestinal paths that were smaller and more denselyyered with muscle, meant purely for contracting and pushing out pods at high speeds throughout select locations in the Fortress Vanguard.


    However, where the Large Tracts were rtively fortified, capable of withstanding internal assault, the Small Tracts were pure, exposed muscr flesh more susceptible to damage which wouldpromise the high-speed transportation pathways as a whole, and so units that could ess them would only be those the Collector granted permission to or those with approved gic signatures.


    For now, the Collector had approved only the elite goblin units, but would recalibrate the permissions over time.


    Thokk was spat out inside an evolution chamber, his pod splitting open and sending him hurtling down from the ceiling in a shower of liquid. He spun in the air and righted himself,nding on a knee as he shook liquid off himself.


    The carrier unit looked around in surprise at the space around him. The Evolution Chamber was a sizable cavern filled with pirs of coiling flesh lined with veins that glowed bright white. The entire ce felt alive, buzzing with energy, each of the pirs pulsating to their own beating rhythm. All of these pirs were linked to high concentrations of primal energy necessary for evolutionary changes, and they were linked psionically to the Command Chamber.


    By attaching a specimen to them, it was possible to initiate evolutions with them provided the Collector was present in the Command Chamber to direct them, though it could also program automated evolutions.


    The Collector observed with eyes that could freely manifest in any location of the ship, and it projected its physical voice down.


    "Carrier unit, ce any part of your physical body upon one of the Molding Pirs," said the Collector.


    "Yes, Sovnar," said Thokk as he pped a palm onto a pir. The glowing white veins in the pir burst out of their cages of dark blue, nearly ck flesh and snaked around Thokk''s hand like white roots. Through these, the Collector transmitted memories and knowledge, for Thokk was the only one in the Fortress Vanguard that had direct capability to psionically mesh with the Collector.


    Thokk closed his eyes as the Collector inputted the blueprint of the ship into his head and the basic functions of every area, but it kept the location of the Collector''s Command Chamber from it so as to absolutely ensure its own safety.


    Certainly, since the Collector was technically enclosed in its own pocket dimension, it was not vulnerable to physical harm, but said dimension still had to be physically anchored to a point inside of the Fortress Vanguard, and it was theoretically possible as the Collector had done to enter the Urth Vault that with the right type of magic, if a hostile specimen found that anchor, they could use it to gateway into the Collector''s Command Chamber.


    Integrated as the Collector was, it was defenseless in the Command Chamber, not to mention that the immensely valuable core of the Fortress Vanguard was located there.


    "Got it," said Thokk as the white veins slid away from his arm. He nodded several times to himself, cocking his head this way and then that way. "It''s a littleplicated, but I think I know now."


    The Collector clicked its mandibles in its underwater chamber. The carrier unit had some difficulty mastering theplexities of the Goblinnguage it was being taught by the elites and the elder, but that belied its actual mental processing capabilities.


    That it could adequately memorize theplexyout of the Fortress Vanguard was impressive, though the Collector had copsed that information as much as it could to digestible format.


    "Utilize another Travel Pod and return to the Main Bay," said the Collector. "Inform the swarm of where their personal nests are and teach the basics of navigating the Large Tracts. The fighter known as ''Kui'' is included in thismand."


    "You got it!" said Thokk with a smile as he watched a Pod Tendril unfurl from the ceiling before yanking it.

 Chapter 209 - Golemic Creation

    The Collector observed that the carrier unit known as ''Thokk'' to ensure that the specimen fulfilled its purpose properly. It did not create further mental hints to navigate the unit back to the main Holding Bay and it dropped off the unit some distance away from the bay intentionally.


    This was so that the Collector could see whether the unit was capable of navigating the fortress utilizing only theyout of the fortress imnted into it. The carrier unit met the Collector''s basic expectations and quickly navigated his way through a few intestinal pathways, warping three times to different locations of the ship as he jumped his way down to the main Holding Bay.


    The unit only had to stop five times to pause and collect his thoughts, indicating a degree of familiarity with the fortress that would only improve over time, with an estimated three days of movement across the fortress granting the unit nearlyplete innate knowledge of the fortress.


    Impressive mental processing power for a unit with such a primitively constructed processing unit.


    When the Collector saw Thokk warp into the main Holding Bay, raising his hand up to greet the rest of the goblins, it clicked its mandibles from its water filled Command Chamber and began on stabilizing, calibrating, and starting the other functions of the fortress.


    First and foremost was movement away from this Rift before the Fang specimen could bring forth additional reinforcements. The Collectormanded the Vanguard unit to halt its assimtion of raw materials from a nearby mountain. It had already vacuumed up several hundred tons of primally charged snow, ice, rock, and even the biomass of living specimens that could all be incorporated into the Spawning Pools and Evolution Chambers.


    The Vanguard unit began to float upwards into the sky. It flicked its enormous, carapaced tentacles down, and the wind pressure and force from that simple movement triggered an avnche of cascading snow from the mountains around it.


    Every single aspect of these magically charged mountains, the Collector repurposed for the Vanguard unit. In these mountains, there were rocks orrge shards of ice that floated in the air through magical energy, and it was this same levitative force the Collector used to send the Vanguard airborne through seemingly no propulsion of its own.


    However, this levitative force alone was too slow for the Collector''s preferences.


    As the enormous Vanguard unit floated above the mountains, it thrust its back tendrils behind it, and from their tips, res of white magical energy sted out, creating thrusters that generated appreciable propulsion. The Vanguard unit sailed through the air at speeds surprising for its immense bulk, for the Collector had appropriated the efficient design of the Collective''s biosma thrusters meant for sustained deep space travel.


    Like a miniature moon of ice, rock, tendrils and death, the Vanguard unit traveled the skies, casting an enormous shadow down wherever it went.


    The Collector sent forth an announcement throughout the confines of the Vanguard unit''s internals.


    "All units, brace your minds and forms for imminent warp travel," said the Collector. "Significant physical difort inducing symptoms of nausea, digestive failure, sensory failure, and loss of motor controls is likely. Assume a seated position and anchor yourselves to a physical surface such as a floor, wall, or ceiling.


    Initiating warp in five seconds¡­"


    The Collector channeled the Vanguard unit''s warp capabilities for the first time. They could only create a portal strong enough to funnel the Vanguard unit''s immense bulk away for a distance of three kilometers, making it inefficient as a means of actual travel.


    However, the Collector still needed to test this function, and it theorized that the warp capability could be calibrated to create many smaller portals at once capable of far more range, thus allowing for units to be transported en masse through various locations at the same time.


    The Vanguard unit''s spherical head ofpacted ice and rock started to glow with a faint white aura. Enormous veins of glowing white became visible across its head, and they looked like cracks fissuring through a mean before its impending implosion.


    Through these veins, magical energy beamed out, colliding together into one concentrated point that warped the space around it. After several seconds of the space warping and distorting, a portal bloomed. A gleaming white portal easily two kilometers in length, though noticeably unstable from its constant flickering around its circumference.


    The Vanguard unit traveled through this, its body distorting and warping as it funneled into the portal. The portal closed behind the Vanguard unit, and for a moment, the Collector only saw darkness.


    Then, snow and ice became visible again.


    The Vanguard unit had passed the end of the Rift and officially entered into the beginnings of thend beyond the Rift known as the Wailwastes. There were no more peaks of enormous mountain ranges standing before the Collector, only an infinite expanse of deep fog.


    The Collector was far too high above ground level to obtain a visual of the ground, and this was by design. The Collector had not wanted to warp into ground level so as to investigate it slowly and cautiously from above, for it did not know how hostile the ground would be, especially considering that it seemed that in this world, the vast majority of specimens favorednd based dwelling.


    The Collector first monitored the swarm. It saw that many of them were copsed, this being their first time ever engaging in the disorienting experience of warping. But within seconds, their sturdy and adaptive bodies recovered, allowing them to shakily stand up. The elites had weathered the change with no ill effects, with the specimens known as Goromir and Kandak observing an ease of posture indicating they were familiar with warping.


    In fact, the two brothers had their hands on Thokk''s shoulders, helping him orient himself to get used to this novel experience.


    The fighter known as Kui was unfazed, his arms crossed and his eyes closed as he sat cross-legged in meditative posture, cycling his magical energy within himself and restoring it.


    After ascertaining that the swarm was in stable condition, the Collector began movement downwards.


    The Vanguard unit''s propulsion tendrils angled upwards, causing its bio-thrusters to generate force that pushed it down at a conservative angle towards the ground. As the Vanguard continued its descent, pores opened up from its spherical head shell.


    These pores were meant for expulsions of Travel Pods, but they could also be utilized to intake environmental mana at a more efficient rate, send out gusts of wind to clear fog, or, as the Collector did now, even generate the primally charged fog of the Rift mountains, thus cloaking the Vanguard unit as much as possible in the imprable white fog.


    This would be particrly useful in future engagements with tinkerers, for the fog was charged with primal energy that would deaden connections required to make use of their Sorcery, though it would not hamper their inherent power or technology that relied upon internal sources of self-sustaining magical energy such as the dwarven engines.


    As the Vanguard unit traveled down, the Collector began calibration of its Spawning Pools and the creation of golem units. It could create two thousand five hundred (2500) golems total with the amount of raw materials it had amassed so far, and it did not waste time doing so.


    In terms of sheer efficiency, the golem units would be the absolute best for the Collector to rely on. They were automatons that were highly receable, and though likely having weaker power ceilings than biological specimens, they could be mass produced and directed to maneuvers without any worries of their loyalties, desires, willingness to battle, and so on.


    They were the perfect drones, and the Collector would use them as such.


    The insides of the Vanguard unit began to vibrate in a low, constant hum, indicating that magical energy flowed throughout it. The fifty spawning pools started to activate. In design, they wererge pits filled with the healing waters found in the mountains. These waters had the capacity to interact with biomass and, when injected with pure primal energy, could be manipted into forming golems.


    Above the pools of glowing, teal-green water was a ceiling filled with moving tendrils. Some of these tendrils ended in points, others in ws, others in bulbs, and so on. One of the bulbed tendrils drew down right above the surface of the restorative waters, and from it, droplets of pure, gleaming white primal energy squeezed out.


    As they pattered in the water, their concentrated energy expanded out, and water currents around them swirled, forming the primal energy into visible, spherical cores. These cores stabilized after several seconds, generating enough heat to steam the water for a moment before cooling down, solidifying into balls of rocky white.


    The formed, solidified core floated in the water, and from there, the tendrils from the ceilings grasped at it. Bulbous tendrils sprayed out icy matter and liquefied rock from the mountains. This matteryered over the cores continuously, creating over time the shape of a roughly humanoid golem.

 Chapter 210 - Striders

    When enoughyers of liquefied ice and rock were sprayed over to core to grant it a rough shell of a humanoid, grasping and hooked tendrils dropped down from the flesh ceiling and held up the humanoid shape by the limbs and back, and the half-made golem hung limp on the tendrils like butchered meat on hooks.


    The first golem the Collector would create would be the standard type that the mountains could create. By thoroughly observing the flow of magical energy inside the golems it had encountered, the Collector could quite urately tell the exact blueprints of how to construct these golems from the ground up.


    In principle, it was rather simple. Golems were essentially a matrix of interconnected threads of magical energy webbing around a core. This operational matrix provided a ''skeleton'' around which the ''flesh'', that is, thepositional material of the golem itself, could form and solidify.


    Therefore the most important aspect of a golem was first and foremost the stability and quality of its core, for that was the raw engine from which the golem''s total power and capabilities could be derived.


    After the core, and equally important, was the Operational Matrix. The webwork of mana threads sprouting from the core acted like both a physically supportive skeleton and circuitry programming the functions and behaviors of a machine. Thus, the Operational Matrix was what defined a golem''s abilities whereas the Core defined how strong these abilities would be.


    The Collector could ascertain that to an ordinary tinkerer, the act of fashioning a golem would be one ofbor intensive mental processing for even a simple golem possessed over a thousand mana threads that had to individually be carefully constructed and considered in terms of their structure for theiryout determined how much energy they received from the core, how they interacted with each other, how vulnerable they were, and so on.


    But to the Collector, this was a simple and mundane task. It had memorized the Operational Matrix of ordinary mountain golems and simply replicated that pattern of mana threads. This was, in many ways, quite simr to Bone Binding as well, and the Collector hypothesized that since Bone Binding and by extension Spellweaving were Primal Magics that tapped into the environmental super-entity known as the ''World'' and not New Gods, that they had striking simrities to the creative processes of natural golem formation which too was nurtured by the natural environment.


    Tendrils tipped in sharp, thin and elongated spikes like needles hovered around the limp shell of ice and rock. The spikes glowed bright white with primal energy, though unlike the hyper concentrated droplets of energy used to form the core, these were more diluted, less bright.


    The tendrils then stabbed into the golem shell, injecting in mana threads of primal energy. Around fifty tendrils worked at rapid speed, injecting threads in one location, then turning the golem over and injecting threads in another, and so on until over a thousand mana threads were inputted.


    The golem began to glow with a faint white glimmer as the mana threads became visible under its structure. Like veins in a living creature, the threads charged with primal energy shone bright against the dark, damp atmosphere of the Spawning Pool.


    The Collector used holding tendrils to douse the thread infused golem into the Spawning Pool''s waters, and the waters sizzled as they cooled down the high temperatures generated by the primal energy. The waters also acted as healing and stabilizing agents to bind the threads fully to the golem''s core.


    After a quick dousing, the golem shell was withdrawn, and now the mana threads were no longer visible, fully integrated into the golem as they were.


    The holding tendrils moved the golem from above the Spawning Pool to solid ground, and the golem began to move. The Collector had programmed it with basic intelligence, for that was all it was capable of.


    Still, surprisinglypetent intelligence that could allow it to react to external stimuli, sensing hostile intent and defending itself and guarding life forms it was programmed to recognize as friendly. In terms of directives, the Collector imnted a prime directive to simply patrol the Main Bay as a kind of guard, though mostly this was a filler program just to see how well the golem would function.


    The golem trudged out of the spawning pool with precise, robotic steps, knowing theyout of the ship for all golems possessed an innate knowledge of the mountains they were born from, and in this golem''s case, the ''mountain'' that had birthed it was the Fortress Vanguard.


    As the golem phased out of the warp door, the Collector clicked its mandibles at the resounding sess.


    Yet, the Collector was not satisfied with these basic units. It 99.99% certain that it could create Wraiths and Elementals as well, with thetter requiring significantly more time and draining multiple Spawning Pools of their energy for several days, but these were specimens that essentially had presets that the Collector could work with.


    By being fused with what was essentially the mountain, knowledge funneled into the Collector regarding the mountain''s abilities, and included in this were structural presets for creating units such as the Wraiths, Golems, and Elementals.


    However, the Collector desired to go farther than these simple presets. It knew how the cores were formed and how the Operational Matrices were built around the core to the point it was confident it could navigate the ''programmingnguage'' of the mountain.


    Then why not create entirely new specimen?


    Why not attempt to replicate the efficiency of the Collective itself?


    The Collector created a new spawning project. It formed a core again, the bulbous tendrils containing concentrated primal energy to form cores squeezing out a droplet into the Spawning Pool''s teal green water.


    Just one drop was needed for this core, the Collector calcted, though because it was working with entirely unknown processes, it would have to constantly recalibrate its calctions over trial and error.


    Inparison, the roughly made golem required three drops of charged primal energy.


    The droplet of blinding white sank into the teal green water, sinking like a solid before expanding in the water in a hazy, unstable sphere. Once again, the Collector directed water currents in the restorative water to swirl around the unstable sphere, essentially kneading it into a more solid structure.


    The initially formed core was brought up and again encased inyers of liquefied ice and rock.


    However, this time, the Collector did not create the shape of a rough humanoid. It created the shape of a quadrupedal specimen approximately one and a half meters in length, less than half the total size of the ordinary golem.


    For its bones, ityered on stronger, stiffer rocks and minerals from the mountain, though it did not utilize Everfrost and Truefrost yet so as to conserve those more finite resources forter when it was morefortable with this creation process. For muscture, it utilizedyered sheets of softer ice and for a circtory system a gelled, nearly solid liquid lined with mana crystals for greater flow of magical energy. The carapace was fashioned from the most durable minerals in the mountain and encased in crystals as well for the utilization of techniques such as [Guard] that required mana channeling.


    However, the Collector was certain to ensure that the creature was lightweight, sacrificing utilizing heavier minerals to preserve mobility.


    When the Collector was done, it had created a four-legged creature that had a low center of bnce. Its digitigrade legs could allow for impressive eleration onnd surfaces, and each of its three toed feet were lined with sharp ws possessing serrated edges for greater traction and to inflict greater misery when they sunk into flesh.


    The creature was lean, clearly visibly built for agility with a thin ribcage and a sleek body. Its tail was fairly muscr as a means to stabilize its bnce at high speeds and to push off the ground with, for upon its back were four light blue insectoid wings made from ice crystals shaped intottice structures.


    Its head was heavily armored with jaws were lined with razor edge teeth and protruding, sickle-like mandibles meant for slicing and tearing. At its head jutted out a single curved horn meant for ramming into creatures, goring them and holding them in ce while the mandibles and jaws tore into other flesh.


    Overall, this specimen, to a tinkerer would have appeared to be some monstrous abomination of a canid specimen.


    This was the Strider, a mobile ground unit from the Collective that could utilize its speed and wings to flutter across battlefields with superb mobility, capable of scaling walls at ny degree angles, leaping over most barricades, and goring ground infantry in swarming numbers while possessing reflexes sharp enough to evade artillery bombardment.


    The Strider was held up by holding tendrils, its body and four legs dangling limp, and the Collector attempted to craft its Operational Matrix.


    This was when the Collector encountered an anomaly: the sound of the entity known as the ''White Voice''.

 Chapter 211 - Collective Return

    The Collector heard the White Voice ring inside of its processing unit in mentalmunication akin to psionic telepathy. However, the Collector could immediately tell that this voice was not ''alive'' as it had been during the time the Collector had been transported into the White Voice''s psionic space when it had first obtained the Jotnar''s Shard of Session.


    "(My breath you wish to shape, and as a bearer of a Shard, I grant you ess to this fragment of mine body. Secondary Life Authority is granted to you. With this, you are free to mold primal energies to shapes and forms of your desire)"


    The Collector''s gleaming white shard above its head sparked for a moment, lighting up in the murky water of its Command Chamber before dimming down to its usual shade of bright but not overwhelmingly shy luminescence.


    This was a pre-programmed response meant to be ryed to any creature bearing a Shard that wished to tap into the primal energies of an environmental marker particrly concentrated with the energy source. The nature of ''Life Authority'' was something the Collector did not fully grasp, but it did know now instinctively that it could shape the primal energies outside of the presets the mountain had locked into it, allowing it to freely customize golems.


    When pondering this message more, the Collector came to the hypothesis that not all creatures that wished to harness primal energy was granted ess of its full uses. Certainly, it seemed that all specimens could tap into the immense, concentrated corepoints of energy within significant environmental areas such as the Rift mountains, but not all specimens could actually use that energy fully.


    Likely, those that could ess it torger degree were beings like the Old Gods and now, the Draconids. Yet none of them possessed the ability to actually shape the primal energy around them, they merely took it within themselves.


    It was apparent then that the Collector, by virtue of possessing a Shard, was granted greater ess to primal energy, which allowed it to question further the nature of the energy itself. Originally, the Collector had thought primal energy simply a ''colorless'' type of energy that could be used to power anything such as the evolutionary cocoons of the goblins or far simpler functions such as simply reinforcing the body.


    But now, the Collector was beginning to recognize that primal energy had a link to life. The ''Secondary Life Authority'' granted to the Collector could not create entirely new biological life forms, only golemic approximations, but there was further as of yet hidden potential for primal energy to create life itself.


    Growth of muscle fiber, bone, circtory systems, neural processing units, and the like were all possibilities for primal energy, though the Collector was as of yet unsure as to whether it could be used to create entirely new psionic profiles.


    In words of those native to this world, the creation of a ''soul''. Whether this was part of a higher level of life authority was uncertain. However, the Collector predicted that the being known as the ''Facestealer'' possessed this, and by devouring it and assuming said power, the Collector truly could approximate the Collective itself as a backup in the case that the Collective could not be reached.


    For now, though, the Collector made liberal use of its newfound control over primal energy. It began to shape operational matrices for the Striders, replicating the behaviors and movements that they would have had in the Collective.


    Extreme aggression. High speed reflexes. Wariness and sensitivity to the surroundings. A keen understanding of danger and a willingness to utilize mobility to retreat or escape. A tendency to travel in swarms for safety and enhanced offensive capabilities. A tendency to target the wounded and weak or those isted.


    All of these behaviors, the Collector inserted into the Operational Matrix it created, and countless tendrils injected mana threads of primal energy inside the Strider specimen, infusing it with the programming that would allow the specimen to move and interact with the world around it.


    Once the mana threads were inserted, forming a glowingwork of white, vein-like lines around the quadrupedal creature, the Strider was lowered into the healing waters, stabilizing the creation process before it was raised up and allowed to leave.


    The Stridernded expertly on all fours and stretched its muscles in a bow before fluttering its wings, shaking off excess moisture. It clicked its mandibles and left the Spawning Pool after the Collector gave it the same temporarymand to guard the Main Bay.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles, pleased. It could now freely create Collective units it was familiar with, though it could not create units that had special adaptations that the mountain''s raw materials could not replicate.


    Basic physical functions granted by such fundamental building blocks such as muscle fibers, bones, and nerves, the Collector could replicate, but higher level adaptations that required the creation of specific chemical cocktails, high levels of psionic energy, and physical abilities that exceeded the limits of the mountain''s materials, the Collector could not fully fashion.


    Thus, the Collector was left with spawning only basic units, but even these would be far more useful than the slow, lumbering and clumsy design of the golems. The Collector was also limited by a maximum number of presets it could input for the Vanguard unit, and this maximum capped out at ten unique specimen types, though this was subject to increase as the Collector developed more psionic capabilities.


    The Collector therefore began further creations.


    It booted up all of its Spawning Pools and began mass creations of Striders. It then started to formte and create the operational matrices of three additional units.


    Spitters. These were arachnid-like units that utilized eight hydraulic fueled, segmented legs ending in serrated ws to track along any surface at high speeds, granting them leverage for their fleshy, orb-like bodies to spit spines at impressive speeds. They possessed stalks with eye clusters that could track even the faintest of movements at considerable distances so that their spines always struck true.


    This was the origin of the Collector''s Spine Spitter adaptation, though the Spitters had to devote far more biomass to the construction of their Spitters, their entire main body being a vessel for spine creation and delivery, limiting them nearly solely to rangedbat.


    Breakers.


    These were far heavier quadrupedal units than the Striders. They were thickly muscled and ted in heavy amounts ofyered carapace that granted them weight necessary for their primary purpose: engaging in powerful charges to break enemy defensive fortifications. They possessed incredibly powerful hind legs engorged with coiled muscles, and this was where the Collector''s Coilbooster adaptation was sourced from.


    With coilboosters, they could use their heavy weight and ting like a battering ram, and once they broke through an enemy defensive line, they could wreak havoc with enormous scythe-like des that were repurposed from sizable tusks that the original species possessed before they were uplifted into the Collective.


    Abductors. These wererger flying units that were insectoid in appearance, possessing bulbous abdominal sacks that could carry units or toxins, though because the Collector''s current limitations, these sacks only possessed unit carrying capabilities. Their thickly muscled, wide necks housed a prehensile, extendable and retractable tongue of pliable muscle matter ¨C the source of the Collector''s Pliomatter Tendril adaptation,


    These tendrils possessed a hooked spike at their end meant for gouging into enemy units and abducting them into acid filled stomachs or dropping them into the Collective swarm. These tendril tongues could also be used supportively, retracting the spike and recing it with an adhesive covered bulb that wrapped around allied units to whisk them away to safety.


    These units, the Collector began to mass produce, and it spent the next twenty four hours constantly mass producing them.


    In the meanwhile, the Collector had mentally signaled the carrier unit of the goblins to engage the rest of the swarm to sharpen theirbat senses in sparring, and the fighter specimen known as Kui taught them in his style of fighting while the elites known as Goromir and Kandak taught their own styles as well.


    At first, the swarm was surprised by the sudden influx of strange new creatures, but they became used to them, and a few of the goblins even formed some level of affection with the new units, treating them like pets.


    In hour intervals, the Collector had to slow down its spawning process for it would overload its psionic capabilities, causing its nerves to suffer damage and its spirit roots to degrade. This required ten minute rest periods where it would ''cool down'', and then it would boot up its production process again.


    Until it had a sizable force ready for deployment, the Collector would not stop, for once it was detached from the Command Chamber, the Fortress Vanguard was only capable of spawning basic golems remotely, requiring the Collector''s direct presence to create Collective units.

 Chapter 212 - The Wailwastes

    The Collector continued mass spawning of units. It could field approximately two thousand golems before it ran out of raw materials considering the additional resources it had to invest in spawning units that were not simply giant and roughly shaped chunks of raw material. The Collective units that the Collector were now creating might have been smaller in physical dimensions, and they did take up less raw physical materials, but they required more concentrated primal energy to give them animatedmands as they possessed far moreplex behaviors than the rtively simple ones manifested by ordinary golems.


    As a result, the Collector created eight hundred units in total. The vast majority of these were Striders, though it did create a sizable host of Spitters and Abductors also. The fewest amount of specimens it created were the Breakers for they were the most resource intensive to create on ount of their fortified carapaces and bulk.


    The Fortress Vanguard could use some level of psionic power to beam up units when needed, and indeed, the Collector''s own Sapia could be channeled through the Vanguard as well when needed. However, Abductors and their potential to carry units in their stomach sacs would be more cost efficient overall provided they were properly utilized.


    The Collector did not use up all of its raw materials because it wanted to wait for its Jotnar core to regenerate naturally to slot in via the Origin Rune a Jotnar core that was highly specialized for golem creation such as that of the Immortal Legion, for this would allow the Collector to take golem creation to a dramatically higher level where it would be capable of recreating even the moreplicated and higher strains of Collective units.


    As for why the Collector did not simply undergo metamorphosis now, it held off because it did not possess any significant gic samples it wanted to incorporate into itself, and gaining additional levels actually did not grant it too much additional strength at this point.


    Right now, the Collector''sbat capacity was determined mostly by its mana capabilities for they fueled both its physical stats and its magical powers, and its ability to consume and adapt spirit roots into itself was no longer limited by level gates.


    This meant that if the Collector leveled up, it woulde to ess more of its prior natural adaptations, and indeed, many of them were useful, but not useful enough for the Collector to undergo a lengthy metamorphosis period that wouldst up to the span of an entire day cycle during which time any significant attack to the Vanguard unit would be left unanswered.


    The Collector could still field golem units tobat while in metamorphosis, but these units, though they could swarm other units of simr strength, would not be able to handle the might of a single superpowered individual nearing the level of the Collector or the fighter specimen known as Kui.


    Thus, the Collector had to weigh the benefits of waiting three days until its Jotnar core naturally healed or evolving now and waiting the better part of a day cycle to regenerate its core while leaving the Vanguard defenseless against a strong unit.


    For now, the Collector desired to save its metamorphosis for better specimens to incorporate, because at this point, it was not the Collector''s levels that mattered so much as it was the enormous strength of specific specimen''s gic samples it could incorporate.


    These included Fangs that had Old Gods imnted within them, the corpse of the ancient dragon, and the Facestealer among many other potentially powerful beings in the Wailwastes.


    The Collector spent twenty four hours creating units, refining and fine tuning its creation process over countless trials, but when it finished, it had streamlined the creation process to an efficiency level where it could create one hundred Striders per hour, easily reaching a production speed where unit creation would be gated not by spawning rate, but the raw resources avable.


    The Wailwastes themselves were not that noteworthy. When the Vanguard unit went below fog cover to scout out thend, the Collector saw that the Wailwastes seemed even more devoid of life than Fjall. There was less snow and instead vast swathes of pure ice, with this ice likely floating upon a frigidyer.


    Condensed fog and cloudyers above enshrouded this area in a near permanent state of darkness, though surprisingly, the Collector could not find any Shadow specimens in this area despite it seeming to be the perfect environment for them.


    In this deste, darknd of ice, the Fortress Vanguard floated alone, its vast wide bulk seeming like a tiny little antpared to the immenseness of the empty environment around it.


    The Collector estimated that it was now at the poles of this world where temperatures and environmental conditions reached their lower peak, and indeed, some deep pockets of ice flickering with hazy, smoky energy reminiscent of the wavelengths of Undeath could reach just shy of absolute zero.


    There were pockets of depressed ice leading into deep trenches of icy waters that glowed with primal energy, and these, the Collector had the Fortress Vanguard suck out, draining them of primal energy.


    Primal energy was the most valuable resource for the Collector to collect for now.


    Primal energy reserves needed to naturally recharge over time, though it could be absorbed from the environment and condensed inside the Vanguard or directly absorbed from heavily charged areas. Raw material was not too much of an issue for the Collector could constantly absorb ice and rock in plentiful amounts around itself.


    Thus, for most of the twenty four hours, the Collector kept to its namesake and collected. The Vanguard drained primal energy deposits when it could, absorbed plentiful amounts of Everfrost, Truefrost, and an unknown type of magically charged ice that came from the shadow wreathed ice pockets.


    With this much additional raw materials, the Collector repurposed one of the stomachs of the Vanguard unit from a Holding Bay into an Armory for its units, creating banks of Truefrost and Everfrost where goblins could do as they wished, fashioning arms for themselves or attempting to bend Truefrost to their will.


    It was past the twenty hour point of consistent travel where the environment became different.


    There arose forests, yet, none like any the Collector had ever observed before. They were not forests of any known nt matter, but instead collections of ciers shaped in the visage of trees. The smallest ''trees'' were fifty meters high, and the tallest could easily reach up to two hundred meters, breaking into the cloud and fog cover ahead easily.


    These trees generated their own type of fog, and their trunks and branches glowed with an eerie white shine that ran through their bodies likeworks of vein ¨C pure primal energy flowing through them. Every so often, the Vanguard unit would stop, biting into a branch and sucking out primal energy like drawing out nutritious drew from an ordinary tree.


    The Vanguard unit had some difficulty navigating through this area on ount of its bulk, and at the twenty four hour point when the Collector was done creating its initial fighting force, rested the unit in the branches of one of these cier trees.


    At this point, the Collector finally detached itself from the Command Chamber. The mounds of flesh and tendrils tethering its lower body to the glowing white core of the Vanguard unit detached, and the Collector pulled free, floating in the restorative waters for a moment to heal any leftover damage it had sustained exerting itself to create units.


    Once healed, the Collector flew upwards, towards the ceiling of the spherical chamber where a spiral shaped pattern was etched into the flesh above. When the Collector touched the spiral, its form phased through it, allowing it to leave the dimensional space that housed the Command Chamber.


    After a full day of being separated from the swarm, the Collector began to sense some levels of unease among the goblins even with the carrier unit assuring them of the Collector''s well being.. The Collector would have to tend to the goblins to assuage their concerns, it seemed.

 Chapter 213 - Moon Grasp

    The Collector utilized Transport Pods to move itself around to the main Holding Bay. Prior to this, it had ryed a psionic signal to the carrier unit known as Thokk to gather the rest of the swarm in the Holding Bay.


    When the Collector fell into the center of the Holding Bay, liquids from traveling across the internals of the Vanguard unit dissolving around it, it saw that all the units had been promptly gathered around, eagerly awaiting the Collector''s appearance.


    Dotting the swarm were the newfound presence of additional Collective units. Primarily Striders that hopped about, weaving between the goblins or staying by their sides. All the Collective units were currently under a generalmand to patrol the insides of the Vanguard and guard the swarm units within, but other than this general rule, the Collector did not have the psionic capacity to control all of them at once.


    Instead, the Collector could tell when units perished and their general location, but specifics such as seeing through them, it could not handle as that required deeper psionic connections such as that which it had forged with carrier units, and that necessitated a mana cost too steep for the Collector to establish on arge scale.


    The goblins were nervous around the Collector, it seemed. They did not approach it and instead made a ring around the Collector that they did not dare to break. This included the elite units.


    Kui perceived that the Collector was analyzing this and casually stepped forwards, breaking this ring of reverence for his constantly calm and unamused face indicated that he had seen far too much to ever truly get shocked by anything.


    "They believe you a god," said Kui. He put a hand to his pointed beard. "Rather, they had always believed you some higher being, capable of bringing them back from the dead, but now that they see you create new life, they believe you truly a god."


    "The Sovnar is Gob reincarnated," said Goromir, his head bowed as Kandak grunted in affirmation beside him. "No other can bring forth true new life. Not even the New Gods."


    "The New Gods cannot shape life because they cannot harness primal energy, the essence of life," said Kui. He shrugged before gesturing towards the Collector. "So, are you a god? An Old God?"


    "The term ''god'' indicates a being that is elevated beyond certain others due to worship, capability, or both," said the Collector. "In the barest definition of that word, it may well be that I am considered a ''god''."


    The Collector clicked its mandibles. "Yet, that term is inurate. There are many ideations of what an entity known as a ''god'' can be. An ''Old God'', a ''New God'', and so on. To answer this, I shall state that I am neither Old nor New God."


    "Ah, so a new new god," said Kui, his voice so calm and deadpan that it was hard to determine whether he was being sarcastic or not.


    "A joke," exined Kui, and a few goblins turned to him because they did not expect any form of levity from the permanently serious Yinlong. "It matters not whether you are Old or New God. Your people believe you are. Will you not take that title?"


    "No," said the Collector. "I possess powers and capabilities far beyond yours, it is true. But that does not necessitate my status as a ''god''. Worship around entities perceived as ''gods'' possesses direct and observable causation with a loss of critical thinking.


    Were you a swarm of units bound seamlessly to a Collective, a loss of independent thought would be efficient. Yet, as you are specimens withrge degree of independent thought, it is better to maximize your decision making processes and the benefits that they may realize.


    Thus, when among you it is observed there are certaincking wants or errors in my judgement, do not hesitate to voice any correction so that I may more thoroughly and urately calibrate my calctions."


    The goblins pondered this in silence for a few seconds before one of them spoke out.


    "Then¡­can we get more light? Very dark here all the time."


    "You dare to ask of the Sovnar such a light request?" began Goromir, his tone stern.


    "It is fine," stated the Collector. It projected its voice throughout the goblin swarm. "Your species are capable of easily surviving without light and are adapted towards darkness as well. However, I sense that the presence of additional light sources contributes to greater quality of mental health. Does the majority of this swarm agree that additional lighting will allow for greater standards of living?"


    A general murmur went among the swarm, and the definitive answer that the Collector felt from them was a ''yes.''


    "Then it is done. When I return to the Command Chamber, I will induce further growth of light crystals approximating the day cycle of this world," said the Collector.


    "Then-then can we make rings to fight in? Make weapons?" said one of the goblins.


    "I have nearly finished the conversion of one of the Holding Bays into an Armory within which you may fashion Everfrost and Truefrost to your liking. There is also the presence of a darker ice material that you may experiment with," said the Collector. "As for clear delineations of boundaries within which to spar with-,"


    The Collector held up a hand, and it gleamed with purple energy.


    Using Sapia, it carved out grooves inside of the Holding Bay. Threerge forty meter diameter arenas marked in the flesh of the Vanguard meant forbat purposes.


    "Smaller rings too," said Kandak. "For wrestling."


    The Collector clenched its fist, and a series of smaller ten meter diameter rings formed beneath therger ones.


    "Sovnar¡­," began a goblin nervously.


    "State your request," stated the Collector. "If it is within efficiency and reason to grant, it shall be done."


    The Collector began to realize that the goblins had far more desires than it had thought. It had originally simply created the Vanguard with the idea that they could survive of the barest efficient minimum of what they required, but evidently, this was not optimal for their sustained mental status.


    At this rate, the Collector would grant the carrier unit Thokk additional privileges to shape the Vanguard unit to a small degree so that he could amodate the goblins without them having to reach the Collector.


    "Can we go out? To hunt? Or see world around us?"


    The Collector clicked its mandibles. "A difficult request to grant. By now, within the pressurized, controlled environment of this Vanguard, all of you have adapted to the environment of the Rift, granting you greater physical fortitude.


    However, the environment around you, this space known as the ''Wailwastes'', though environmentally the same in terms of harshness, possesses threats as of yet unknown to me."


    "If it will help," said Kui as he raised arge, calloused and blue scaled hand. "I will guard them when they desire. I am also familiar with the Wailwastes to some degree. I sense now from the feeling of the air that we have reached the cial Forests.


    I know this area well, for I have meditated within it greatly."


    "In controlled groups amounting to more than ten at once, you may apany the fighter specimen in excursions outside the Vanguard unit," said the Collector after it assessed the risks. It clicked its mandibles and addressed the fighter specimen. "And you shall inform me further of this environment."


    "I have all the time in the world," said Kui.


    "I have something," said Goromir as he looked at Kui, then at the Collector. His posture was more rxed, less tense to ask of things from the Collector now that everyone around him was doing the same.


    And judging by the grin in Goromir''s face, an expression that manifested primarily when he was indulging inbat rted topics, this was a request rted to fighting. Fighting between the Collector and the fighter specimen known as Kui.


    "Speak," stated the Collector.


    "Sovnar, can you break Kui''s Moon Grasp?" said Goromir. "I must have tried a hundred times by now when you were creating these little ones."


    Goromir absent-mindedly patted a Strider''s head, and the Strider bowed its head before scampering off.


    "But I have never been able to break Kui''s hold," said Goromir.


    The goblins began to murmur among themselves, excited at the prospect of the Collector challenging the fighter known as ''Kui''.


    "Of course the Sovnar can do it!" said Thokk. "He can do anything."


    "But remember, the Sovnar said they were evenly matched," countered a goblin.


    "Sovnar always wins," said a goblin.


    "Do you not listen to the Sovnar? They tied!"


    "I am open to the challenge," said Kui with a shrug. He nodded to the Collector. "And judging from how quickly you learn, I would not be surprised if you grasped the basics of the technique after witnessing it."


    "You are not wary of me assimting your techniques?" stated the Collector.


    Kui shrugged. "I like to style myself the head of the Guiding Current, but my school is long dead, purged from history. I have no new disciples and never will among the Common Body, and all my students have been killed or have forgotten their arts. In that regard, I have failed my ancestors over ten generations.


    For a school that does not pass its strengths down is one that has failed to flow with the currents of time."


    He extended a hand towards the Collector, one that was equally inviting and challenging. "But if you are capable of absorbing and learning my techniques, I do not mind sharing them. Rather, it will fulfill one of my duties as a head to see my knowledge live on beyond me."


    Kui paused for a moment. "And perhaps, that is one of the reasons why I chose you as the Endbringer to champion. You have all the talent in all the realms to learn the techniques of my school. Valtr certainly had the talent also, but-,"


    Kui motioned around to the Collector, to the goblins. "Valtr does not care for his people. You do. You will pass down my ancestral knowledge, if only for the sake of bettering the strength of your army, but at the least, the memories and efforts of those that came before me will continue to live."


    "Agreeable, then," said the Collector. "You will transfer your knowledge and skills to me."


    "Ah, that is not how it is done," said Kui, the faintest of smiles tugging at the edges of his scarred lips.


    "Exin," said the Collector.


    "I do not give them to you," said Kui. He leaped across dozens of meters andnded square in the center of one of the smaller arenas the Collector had carved out.. "You will take them from me."

 Chapter 214 - Eye Of The Mind

    "Agreeable," said the Collector as it felt twinges of warmth echo from its main core at the sound of challengeden within the fighter specimen Kui''s words.


    The Collector floated over towards Kui andnded within the smaller arena. A straight groove in the center of the circle indicated a divide splitting the arena into two halves which the Collector and the fighter specimen known as Kui upied at either ends.


    The goblins all excitedly gathered around the small arena as they awaited the confrontation between their revered Sovnar and the mighty Kui, but as the two took their positions in the arena, the goblins began to instinctively back away, giving the two far more space. Even the elite units did this, their honed instincts telling them to move away, that the two mighty warriors before them required far more space than what the arena''s lines indicated.


    The Collector and Kui were not far apart, but strangely, the distance between them seemed to be unfathomable to the goblins as their innate magical energy started to emanate outwards. The small space between them, wrapped up in curls of red energy from the Collector and green from Kui, began to distort, as if a heat haze had decided to gather.


    It was not the physical distance that was far, the goblins realized, it was the sheer power emanating from the Collector and Kui that made that distance seem farrger than it was, pushing the goblins away, making them instinctively feel that they had no ce being even within the proximity of such powerful entities.


    Kui held out an open hand. It was arge, brick-like hand almost the size of the man''s head with thick, scaled fingers possessing a grip strength easily capable of shattering most materials and alloys. Calluses and scales hardened by countless processes of breaking and regrowing like bones binding together stronger after fractures lined the Yinlong''s hands, indicating the vast years and intensity of training that had gone into fashioning those deadly hands and the skills behind them.


    "The goblins could not break from my Moon Grasp," said Kui. "You are familiar with it already. Allow me to grasp your arm, and from there, you shall attempt to break free of my grip before I throw you."


    "I sense that this engagement is one controlled and confined under certain parameters," said the Collector. "What resources am I capable of utilizing to break your grip?"


    "Anything barring direct attacks upon me," said Kui.


    The Collector held out one of its hands, and Kui grasped the Collector''s carapaced wrist in a tight yet controlled hold, one that would allow Kui to make any adjustments as needed.


    The Collector kept its senses sharp and its eyes covered in green flow aura, ready to analyze how the fighter specimen known as Kui utilized his power. This ''Moon Grasp'', the Collector indeed was familiar with. It had experienced it during its duel with Kui when the fighter had grasped its pliomatter tendril or whenever the fighter made a solid grip with any limb of its body.


    It felt as if the fighter specimen hadplete control over the Collector''s movements,pletely countering his movements and controlling his power simply with minute adjustments in the grip.


    For now, however, the Collector kept its ocr systems trained on Kui''s hand, but in the next instant, the Collector found itself surging upwards as Kui whirled the Collector''s body in the air with a simple sideways flexion of his wrist, keeping his grip on the Collector''s arm to use it as a lever to manipte the Collector''s physical form.


    It did not matter that the Collector weight nearly a ton or that the Collector had been actively attempting to resist any force on its body. The fighter specimen known as Kui could masterfully push the Collector off bnce and manipte its body as if it weighed as much as a sheet of paper with the slightest of movements using only its grip and immense knowledge of how to apply force. c


    Likely, Kui would then use the Collector''s current imbnced state to then m the Collector into the ground or the ceiling.


    The Collector immediately countered by using its flight. Because it could generate flight based energies anywhere on its body, it could counter any force it felt on itself with a counter-force generated by the flight energy.


    Its red energy wings red as the Collector suspended in animation in mid-air, perfectly countering Kui''s grip. Kui''s hand shook slightly around the Collector''s wrist as he kept a hold of the Collector''s body. The ground rumbled beneath them, and though it might have seemed like that both the Collector and Kui were simply remaining still, that no power was transferring between them, the opposite was entirely true.


    The Collector was using nearly the full extent of its supersonic capable flight speed and Kui was using just as much grip strength to counter it.


    Kui nodded, giving a signal for the Collector to stop exerting itself, and the two broke off from the clutch. The Collectornded gracefully on the other side of the arena, and Kui tugged at his pointed beard.


    "The Moon Grasp is the most basic technique in the Guiding Current," said Kui. "The Guiding Current''s throws are as varied and as flexible as the many currents of the oceans, and yet, there is always, always one element that must be performed before any throw: the hold.


    The hold grants you leverage over your opponent. With a powerful and trained grip, you exert your own force over a foe, breaking his bnce, and thus, you can throw him.


    That is the basics of it. Any grappling or wrestling art knows this. You-," Kui pointed at Kandak''s hulking form. "Know this particrly well."


    "Gobuk teaches how to grip and how to hold," said Kandak, exining one of the basic principles of the goblin wrestling art known as ''Gobuk''. This style, the Collector had noted as one that involved taking strong blows and overpowering enemies with powerful holds, throws, and submissions followed by savage blows. "But not like this. We hold. Grab around the waist. Anywhere with strong bnce. Break the bnce. Use our power. Force the enemy to the ground. Crush them.


    But with you, you do not use power. You grab, and somehow, you make us move."


    "The principle is the same. I hold and I manipte the flow of your strength," said Kui. "But your art is ''hard'', focusing on overpowering with brute strength where mine is ''soft'', focusing on the delicate control of power. Particrly in using your own power against you.


    At the basic level, the Moon Grasp is an ordinary grip and hold. At the highest level, it is far more, breaking the flow of your foe''s power, and from there on, he bes little more than a petal dancing in the storm of your control, his each and every movement to resist you only adding on to the winds that toss him so."


    "How?" said Kandak.


    "Perception," said Kui. He motioned to his eyes. "To see and feel precisely is the key to any soft maniption of strength. When you see a Sorcerer or Adventurer exerting their magical energy around them, making it visible, you can easily tell their state of being.


    The stability of an aura, its color, its flicker, its brightness, its volume ¨C all of these can indicate the strength of an aura and, at a higher level, shows what it is preparing to do, whether it is channeling into a stronger attack, forming a defensive barrier, and so on.


    This external output of mana is called Aura Flow, and it is the easiest to read.


    But what of the flow of mana within the body? The type that nourishes all the little parts of our body? The type that manifests in every flexion of our muscles, in the stability of our bones, in the flow of our blood, and the movement that is chained from all these physical parts chaining together?"


    "[Sense]," said Thokk. "You use [Sense] to see. Makes it easy to tell what other person is doing."


    Kui nodded. "Correct, to a degree. Certainly, by using [Sense] and encasing your eyes in magical energy, you can more deeply see into the body of another. You can see the flow of the power they generate from their muscles, watching how parts of their body be brighter than others, how this brightness chains from their feet up to their hands in a punch, and so on."


    Kui then shook his head. "But at the same time, this is not enough. [Sense] is slow. It takes up considerable mana, more so than any [Guard] or [el]. It takes up your mind, forcing you to think and react after the foe has channeled their strength.


    True perception is one that can be done with the eyes alone. By simply watching the posture of an enemy, the twitch of his movements, the tenseness or ck in his body, the demeanor in his eyes, the speed of his footwork ¨C you can tell how he channels his power.


    By knowing the fundamental principles of how force is generated, how every punch is made, every kick is thrown, every hold forced and throw performed, it is possible to not only perceive the flow of strength in a foe, but to know what he will do before he ever moves.


    This level of perception is known among the martial artists of Xia as the [Eye of the Mind], and I can count on my two hands the number of martial artists who have mastered it fully."


    "And you consider yourself one of them?" said Goromir with crossed arms. He sized Kui up but also gave the Yinlong a respectful nod, fully acknowledging his strength.


    "Of course," said Kui in a calm, matter of fact voice, as if stating a simple truth. "Among martial artists, I would say that my [Eye of the Mind] is at the highest level, surpassing or matching the gods."


    "Heh, and I thought the Yinlong were supposed to be humble," said Goromir. "Maybe things have changed since Ist walked the realms."


    "Oh, we are," said Kui. "But the truth is the truth. Humility that veils over the truth is simply deception, and I have no need for such a thing."


    Thokk cocked his head, his brows furrowing in thought. "You said using [Sense] is bad and makes you slow, but the Sovnar uses it all the time. Even now, he used it against you."


    "Your Sovnar is simply different," said Kui. "Even when he does not predict his foe, when he is relying on pure reflexes and using [Sense] which should burden his reflexes even more, his ability to react in timely fashion is unparalleled.


    The speed at which his mind moves is simply incalcble. At the very least, it far outstrips any Common being that I know. And that does not mean hecks predictive ability, either.


    Your Sovnar also possesses a [Eye of the Mind], though he may not call it that.. [Eye of the Mind] is simply the ability to predict your opponent reliably, and for martial artists, this is formed through both talent and countless hours of training, but in your Sovnar''s case, it is inherent in his mind already."

 Chapter 215 - Mastery

    The Collector clicked its mandibles as it listened to the fighter known as Kui while simultaneously working out the mechanics of this technique known as the ''Moon Grasp''. The fighter specimen was speaking about how to develop full usage of the Moon Grasp, a specimen required a high level of predictive insight, and indeed, that was certainly true.


    To control how another moved using the grip alone, one needed to know how their foe would move beforehand so as to adjust the grip to amodate for it. Yet, this did not exin how the fighter specimen could affect the Collector''s body to such arge degree through a simple and small point of contact like the grip alone.


    If the fighter specimen gripped the Collector''s shoulder, then it made sense that it could have some input into the energy flow on the Collector''s arm and, perhaps considering the fighter specimen''s mastery and remarkable predictive insight, his [Eye of the Mind] as it was called, the fighter could reliably affect the Collector''s bnce on that one side of its body.


    But the fighter specimen was capable of remotely affecting the Collector''s body seemingly at any point regardless of where he gripped the Collector.


    "I have sufficient data to formte a nearlyplete hypothesis regarding the mechanisms of this ''Moon Grasp''," said the Collector, interrupting Kui''s martial arts lecturing. "I merely require one more simtion in order to fully analyze this ability."


    The Collector held out its hand. "Again."


    Kui faintly smiled and grasped the Collector''s wrist again in his firm yet reserved hold.


    This time, without much warning, the Collector mped its own grip down on Kui''s forearm and pushed off the ground backwards, utilizing its flight propulsion to st it backwards with even more force.


    Kui''s calm andposed expression did not change, and he reacted instantaneously. He grasped the Collector''s wrist tight and twisted it before the Collector''s flight sent both of them hurtling into the air. Like this, Kui used the initial burst of momentum from the Collector and redirected it into whirling force against the Collector, sending the Collector tumbling through the air.


    This time, however, the Collector kept its own grip tight on Kui and used its own version of the Moon Grasp, or at the very least, a version it thought approximated it, countering Kui''s maniptions and forcing both of them to start surging through the air in rapid circles, like a Federation fighter ship spiraling out of control in an atmosphere with a shattered wing.


    How would the fighter specimen deal with this? When his grip, the very thing he relied upon to control the Collector, was used against him using forces capable of airborne movement?


    Kui twisted the Collector''s wrist again, and this time, a surge of magical energy became sensible from him. This time, the Collector felt itself driven to the ground with Kui taking a dominant position atop the Collector.


    The Collector mmed into the ground of the Vanguard with significant yet controlled force, shaking the Vanguard with a heavy crash that lined out a sizable, fissured crater.


    The Collector loosed its grip on Kui, and Kui did the same. Kui leaped out of the crater while the Collector floated in the air. The crater began to seal up, flesh regenerating and forming anew to patch up the minor wound to the Vanguard.


    Kui patted away chunks of solidified, rock-like Vanguard flesh from his robes and nodded to himself with a broad smile, one far broader than any he had ever exhibited before.


    "You¡­you have used it. You used the Moon Grasp," said Kui. He shook his head, more at himself than anyone else. "No, I should have known you would master it quickly. Your perception, your ability to master the martial arts, it is truly unfathomable and unsurpassed.


    I should say that there has been none ever born in this ream or any others that possess your level of martial insight."


    "That is the Sovnar for you!" said Thokk.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles in understanding.


    "The Moon Grasp is a simple technique. Far simpler than I had initially conceptualized," said the Collector. Through a more thorough analysis using [Sense] and multiple chances to more closely view and experience the technique, the Collector could grasp the mechanics of the technique.


    Just as the fighter specimen had said, the Moon Grasp was a basic technique in principle.


    Itprised of the grip, then a sheath of magical energy around the grip, and using the hold generated by the grip, the sheath was thinned out and transferred around the enemy the hold was initiated on.


    Using that extended sheath, the fighter specimen could essentially extend additional points of contact to manipte the Collector''s body. It was as if the fighter specimen''s grip was projected all around the Collector, putting the Collector figuratively in the palm of the fighter''s hand.


    However, this technique had significant hurdles needed to ovee to make it practically usable. As with Sapia, any form of controlling energy that served topletely epass another living being was difficult to maintain, especially against beings with simr or higher mana levels.


    The greater the area of magical energy enforced upon another living being directly, the more difficult it was to sustain that energy.


    What the fighter specimen did was far more precise. He used only the barest amounts of projected magical energy to affect only the most critical areas for instantaneous moments. Thus, he used his grip and initial strength to knock the Collector off bnce and then surgically directed points of magical contact in various locations around the Collector''s body to send it whirling through the air or continue to knock it off bnce.


    "Come," said Kui as he extended another hand, this time outside of the boundaries of the ring. His green aura of flow emanated around him in curls of flickering, flowing strength. "You have reached near mastery of the Moon Grasp. Topple me in a test of grips, and prove to me you are worthy of a status as a master."


    The Collector floated over to Kui and they entered the same grip contest from before, with each of them holding the other''s forearm. The Collector perfectly replicated the mannerisms of Kui''s grip, the firm yet reserved hold that had enough fluidity to ''flow'' with the enemy''s movements and react against them.


    This was in contrast to Kandak''s ''hard'' grasp that sought to enforce a tight grip and power to overpower an enemy, robbing them of their movements and forcing them to submit.


    The Collector''s red mana surged outwards around itself in fiery peals, gathering around its hand and curling around Kui''s body, running up his blue scaled arms and invading his own green aura. In response, Kui''s aura also moved its way around the Collector''s arm, traveling in stream-like strands of flowing green, carving out paths in the Collector''s zing aura of red chaos.


    In a contest of ''soft'' grips like this where both the Collector and Kui sought to try and manipte the other''s movements through projections of mana utilizing perception and prediction, whoever saw ''furthest'' would win.


    Whoever could out-predict the other would have the upper hand.


    Kui twisted the Collector''s arm, trying to send the Collector whirling sideways again, but the Collector twisted Kui''s arm in the opposite direction,pletely negating the move. Next, Kui dug his fingers into the Collector''s carapace, easily cracking it, and attempted to drive pressure forwards.


    Flowing streams of Kui''s projected mana curled around the Collector''s back and knees, trying to force the Collector to bend backwards and copse on its knees.


    The Collector did not use flight anymore. It wanted to best the fighter specimen purely on even grounds.


    The Collector countered by using Kui''s forward strength against him, rxing for a millisecond and allowing Kui to temporarily overpower him, causing Kui to slouch forwards due. The Collector tensed up immediately afterwards and used Kui''s strength now against him.


    Flickering red tendrils of red mana zed around the Collector''s body, taking over the green streams of Kui and redirecting the force imbued into them against Kui. The me like red tendrils extended to Kui''s lower back and legs, breaking his bnce.


    The Collector twisted its grip and sent Kui hurtling into the air, but Kui kept his grip tight on the Collector and countered this, spinning backwards and using the eleration of his spin to pull the Collector off the ground and m it behind Kui with a backflip.


    The Collector soared in an arc over Kui''s head, a mere moment away from mming head first into the ground.


    This entire exchange, this battle of grips where the Collector''s red tendrils of chaos mana vied against Kui''s smooth flowing streams of flow mana,sted mere instants, but in those few instants, the Collector had calcted countless possibilities for how Kui would react.


    Kui, on the other hand, did not actively calcte so much as he relied on his own honed instinct, innately knowing by how the Collector moved how to react due to training to the point where every possibility in a scenario like this was ingrained into his being.


    In a tight battle like this, one single miscalction would be lethal, leading into a throw that would deal severe damage or an opening for a counter-attack. To the goblins that could barely keep up with the battle, it felt as if they were watching two natural disasters attempting to overpower each other.


    Would the wildfire burn through the storm? Or would the storm douse the mes?


    This was, however, the decisive moment.


    Before the Collector mmed into the ground, it twisted Kui''s forearm in mid-air, breaking the flow of the throw and sending Kui off his feet. The Collector then pushed down, aiming to send the now mid air Kui mming into the ground faster than the Collector.


    Kui broke free of his grip and mmed his free palm into the ground while taking a knee, stopping himself from falling face first into the ground at high velocity. Kui''s palm made a powerful cracking sound as he broke his fall, the shockwave of the blow reverberating across the Holding Bay.


    The Collector let go of Kui''s arm and stood over Kui in clear sign of victory.


    "Marvelous¡­," said Kui. He cracked his neck and stood up tall, almost meeting the Collector''s eyes with his own prodigious bulk. His eyes had widened to uncharacteristic emotional expression that exhibited clear admiration. "Simply marvelous. You have mastered the Moon Grasp. Like the moon that controls the ebb and flow of the tides, the grip controls the ebb and flow of movement and power in the body."


    "You seem to express positive emotion in the fact that I have been able to assimte your abilities and surpass you in them," stated the Collector.


    "Of course," said Kui. "It is a pleasure reserved only to a master to see a student be a master themselves. It is a pleasure I had long forgotten, one taken from me, one I had thought I would never make mine again."


    The Collector clicked and before it could respond a protest about the questionable dichotomy of ''student'' and ''master'' cing the fighter specimen definitively above the Collector, a disturbance brought attention to the Collector.


    The Vanguard unit''s internals shook as if struck from severe external impact.


    There was no mistake about this: this was an attack.

 Chapter 216 - Attack In The Forest

    "What is that!?" shouted Thokk as the ground rumbled beneath him. He bent his knees a little to steady himself, for the shaking was significant.


    "Calm yourself, young one," said Goromir, and Kandak grunted.


    The rest of the goblin swarm scrambled to alert, some of the less coordinated ones picking themselves up from the ground with quite the struggle, for the innards of the Vanguard shook tremendously. The fighter specimen known as Kui, however, simply stood with perfect bnce, his arms crossed with his usual unamused expression.


    "The Fortress Vanguard suffers attack," stated the Collector in its usual absolute calm. It began to link with the Vanguard''s senses to see outside of its colossal body.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles as it saw the scene outside.


    Draconids.


    A massive host of them, their white scaled, icy bodies thronging in a massive crowd all around the Vanguard unit. The Collector manifested a multitude of smaller eyes throughout the Vanguard''s body so as to see the full breadth of the attack.


    The Collector rapidly counted all of the draconids it saw and determined that there were five hundred and seventy seven draconid specimens. However, because of the Vanguard unit''s colossal size, even the draconid host of nearly six hundred strong were concentrated only in one spot of the Vanguard unit, specifically the back of its semi-spherical head out of the reach of its grasping tentacles and powerful beak maw.


    The draconids smashed against the Vanguard, mming into it with hammer fists and stomps with powerfully muscled limbs to try and crack into it. Their individual blows lined cracks through the Vanguard''s carapace, but because the Vanguard unit''s carapaceyer was so thick, it would take them hours of a sustained siege to make any sort of real progress.


    The Draconids were different, the Collector noted. Physically, they were just as muscr as the regr variant that the Collector saw, but it seemed that their forms had different in evolutionary growth. Theycked any fins or gills, their aquatic adaptations almostpletely erased.


    Their forms were far more mammalian, almost simian with oversized, heavily muscled arms with five fingers that included opposable thumbs for enhanced and more delicate grip. As they moved, their hands hung low and nearly dragged on the ground.


    Their grey scales had fused together to form intorge tes. The ordinary Draconid possessed a durable weave of strong scales that were flexible enough to warp around their joints, but here, therger te structure functioned like tinkering armor almost, with gaps and seams around the joints to notpromise mobility.


    Through these gaps, long tufts of white fur peeked out, swaying in the air with their savage movements. Their legs were not digitigrade but instead ntigrade, further cementing their more mammalian appearance, and their tails were thinner, meant less for navigating through water and more for grasping.


    Their enormous jaws and reptilian heads, however, remained rtively intact.


    "Draconid specimens," stated the Collector. "A collection of five hundred and seventy seven, though it is likely more may approach."


    Kui put a hand to his beard in wonder. "Hm. Judging from feel of mana in the air, this seems to be at or near the cial Forests, no?"


    The Collector immediately assumed from contextual clues that the ''cial Forest'' that Kui spoke of was the enormous collection of spiked ciers that formed the environment around the Vanguard unit now.


    "Indeed," stated the Collector. "What of it? Does this environment indicate ack of Draconid specimen in your observational experience?"


    "The cial Forest marks the separation of the central Wailwaste to its eastern cial ranges," said Kui. "The Draconids had always made their nests in the western tundras. Never once had I seen any make their way this far west.


    Especially not with the Dweller."


    "The Dweller? Exin further," stated the Collector.


    "The Dweller is a Millennial Beast whose movements could shake this entire forest," said Kui. "But I personally had never seen it. My journey throughout the Wailwaste was limited to meditations here and to the eastern ranges, exploring Jotnar ruins, and even in this forest, I have only felt the Dweller''s presence, for it is quite reclusive."


    "Any specimen that is ssified in the ''Millennial Beast'' range has always been one spoken of as possessing enormous strength," stated the Collector.


    "For good reason, too. A Millennial Beast is capable of destroying an entire kingdom by themselves. In Adventuring rankings, they are the very minimum an A+ ranked threat, requiring a group of seasoned A rank adventurers to reasonably contend with or a single trained S-ranker," said Kui.


    "And this specimen has not warded away these annoyances as it has done before?" The Collector clicked its mandibles at the aggressive Draconids trying to beat their way into the Vanguard''s carapace. They indeed were mere annoyances, especially in this low a number.


    What the Collector desired to know more of was the presence of this ''Dweller''. "Or made contact with the Fortress Vanguard so far?"


    "I have not been past the Rift in over a decade," said Kui. "It may well be that in that time, the Draconids have defeated the Dweller and made thisnd their own."


    The hypothetical scenario formted within the Collector''s mind that it was possible that the Draconids had assimted the Dweller and that there was a Fang level specimen among them that housed the Millennial Beast''s powers, easily rendering it a sizable threat to the Collector.


    That meant that extermination of these current Draconid specimens was of utmost priority.


    The Vanguard unit shook again, and the Collector analyzed once more the outsides of the Vanguard. It understood that thending of nearly six hundred Draconid units could cause an initial impact capable of shaking the Vanguard, but to do so again when the Vanguard was now tensed up and ready to deal with strikes indicated that it was not a mass of units creating an impact, but a single unit generating significant force in one centralized point.


    The Collector quickly found the unit in question.


    Another Draconid specimen, but this one was far different than the others. It was twice the size of the average Draconid, easily reaching four meters in height, and physically quite different. Where the other Draconidscked aquatic adaptations, this one possessed even more of them than the ordinary variant.


    The Draconidcked scales and instead possesses softer, leathery dark blue skin coated in a shiningyer of slime. Its arms were still muscr with webbed fingers and more than enough power to shatter deep chunks into the Vanguard unit''s carapace. Its legs had fused into a single tail and six powerful dark blue tentacles sprouted from its back.


    The Draconid''s jaw hadpletely changed, turning instead into a circr mass of tentacles with a serrated, round maw underneath. Its eyes lost their reptilian, slit-pupiled gaze, with the pupils turning into squares.


    This specimen was dangerous, the Collector immediately noted. Not quite at the level of a Fang, but still dramatically more dangerous than any ordinary Draconid.


    The tentacled Draconid raised its fist in the air and brought it down again, shaking the Vanguard unit once more.


    "They cannot get away with hitting our home like this!" shouted Thokk indignantly. He pulled out his lightde longsword. "We will fight, Sovnar! Show the intruders not to mess with you!"


    "Your will is superb, but we must fight with information, first," said Goromir. "Sovnar, how is the battlefield?"


    "All of you may fight," stated the Collector. "Engage any Draconid you see possesses white fur. These ones, you should find a worthy but manageable challenge. You will join them, fighter specimen."


    "Understood," said Kui.


    "There is a singr specimen possessing tentacles that I will engage myself," said the Collector.


    "But there are six hundred of them!" came a goblin''s nervous voice. "We are not even thirty. How will we fight them?"


    Loktal, the Amorak, growled. "I smell fear. A pack that smells of fear before they even set a foot into the fight is a pack that is destined to lose."


    "You believe the numbers disadvantaged against you, but I attribute this to your limited memory and excitement due to sudden emotional stimuli." The Collector raised a hand to the air.


    Countless created Collective units started to swarm outwards.


    Striders, Spitters, Breakers ¨C all of them began to emerge pour into the Holding Bay until the entire ce was nearly packed with them, their jaws, ws, and weapons systems cking and ttering.


    "You are no longer alone. You are part of a greater Collective," stated the Collector.. "And within the Collective, there is no fight that is taken alone."

 Chapter 217 - Charge

    The Collector waved one of its hands, and from the ridged ceiling of the Holding Bay, several tendrils fell down. Each of these were tendrils meant to allow units within to ess transportation pods.


    "Pull on these to enter transportation pods," said the Collector. "You will receive a psionic message within your minds that will ask of you what your destination is. This should be obvious: it is below to destroy our enemies.


    Do not fear for whether this mode of transportation is safe. It is at the very least capable of allowing your kind to survive entry within an oxygen richary atmosphere from high orbit. This level of fall will cause no damage, though it is advised to brace yourselves mentally for impact."


    The Collector''snguage automatically simplified down into an understandable form to all the goblins via its Shard of Session, and the goblins all nodded as they hovered by tendrils.


    "A portion of the units I have created that are ssified as golems shall apany you as well in these pods, and the remainder will assist you if the battle bes significantly disadvantageous enough that reinforcements are required. Now gather your armaments for battle," said the Collector.


    "Fight for the Sovnar, and without this fear you feel," said Goromir with a threatening snarl. "Without him, you would not even be alive. Without him, you would still be hiding out in the snow, eating rotting carcasses while you cry and mewl at the very sight of an adventurer.


    Without him, you would be weak.


    Use your strength, fellow blood of Gob, strength that the Sovnar has granted you, and show these lizards your strength!"


    "Fight!" said Kandak simply, his deep voice booming throughout the confines of the Holding Bay.


    "Battle to the best of your abilities but maintain an adequate sense of self-preservation," said the Collector as it projected its voice with Higher Calling. Sapping away the goblins'' free will entirely drained far too much energy and made the goblins less capable of fighting effectively, but the Collector could reduce their inhibitions and fear such that they fought more emboldened.


    "Fight! Fight! Fight!" shouted the goblins together as they raised their glowing light de weapons up and down with the rhythm of their war cries.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles. "I shall join you soon. Now go."


    The goblins roared as they pulled down on the tendrils dangling from the ceiling. They were whisked up one by one into the ceiling where the ridges opened up and swallowed them, encasing them in transportation pods to funnel them below where additional Draconids were while some would fight on the body of the Vanguard Unit to clear it of Draconid pests.


    All the goblins, leaving a notable exception with Kui who stood with arms crossed as he stared at the Collector with deadpan expression.


    "So, how much do you want me to fight?" said Kui bluntly. "If you and I fight seriously, we can kill every single one of those Draconids with ease."


    "That is true," stated the Collector.


    "But you want to test out their strength, correct?"


    "That is a correct observation."


    "Then I will moderate my strength," said Kui. He put a hand to his beard as he thought about it. "Enough to make the goblins fight hard, but not enough to seriously put them in harm''s way."


    "Your judgement is sound and within the boundaries of the expectations I was to ce upon you," said the Collector.


    "I am beginning to learn more of how you operate, Endbringer," said Kui. "But still, these Draconids are unlike any I have seen before. I knew they changed their forms quickly, adapting to the world around them, but I had never seen a kind like this before.


    It was my impression that they changed over the scale of centuries, not mere years."


    "The baseline gic code of the Draconidscks the sufficient flexibility to enact these forms of changes," said the Collector. "It is likely that they have melded with a specimen that is capable of inducing evolutionary change in the same way that certain noteworthy specimens among them have merged with the beings known as ''Old Gods''."


    "Well, we will find out, will we not?" said Kui. He pulled on a tendril, and in an instant, he was whisked away.


    The Collector clicked its mandibles as it flew upwards, the ceiling opening up for it. It did not need a transportation pod for it could control the Vanguard unit at will.


    ==


    Thokk felt ferocity surging through his body in the form of an unquenchable heat. His muscles, his heart, all of it burned for battle. The initial transportation pod thing was a little ufortable, what with a sudden mass of flesh and gooey liquid wrapping around him, encasing him in darkness before violently booting him out of the big monster ship.


    But the insides of the pod were surprisinglyfortable. Apanying Thokk were three goblins and five Striders with the Striders curled up intopact balls to make for efficient spacing. Thokk''s stomach lurched as the pod moved rapidly down for Thokk had chosen to defend further down on therge ice tree that the ship rested on to prevent more Draconids from moving up to the monster ship.


    Thokk felt weightless as he floated in the pod''s liquid, but this feeling onlysted for a few seconds before the pod crashed into the hard surface of the ice branch below. He braced for impact just as the Sovnar had told him to, but surprisingly, there was almost none of it.


    He felt the outsides of the pod rattle, but the strange gooey liquid inside stopped the rattling from reaching and hurting him. Another one of the Sovnar''s miracle creations.


    The pod split open at the top, peeling apart into four quarters. Liquid sttered out, revealing Thokk and the goblins. All of them shook in unison, getting the goo off their bodies, though it strangely did not make them wet and cling to them, instead sliding off their bodies automatically.


    "Weapons!" shouted Thokk as he raised his longsword, the one had had gotten the Sovnar to personally hand craft, while keeping his free to arms to his sides, ready for attacks at any angle.


    And there were definitely attacks from every angle. Maybe fifteen white fur Draconids cirled around the small crater the pod had gouged out.


    "Got it!" shouted one of the goblins, and they all huddled close to each other, their glowing golden light shard weapons held in their hands tight as they covered each other''s backs. Goromir and Kandak had taught the goblins over time about military strategy and martial arts, and this, standing back to back when circled, was something they had learned and now put into practice.


    The furred Draconids growled as they stared at Thokk and his small group. Their fangs were highly visible, and their enormously muscled, thickly furred arms rippled as they readied to smash.


    "We are circled. Not good," said Thokk. "When one of them attacks, I kill them and then charge. Break their circle and make it so that they have toe to us one by one."


    "We will follow right behind you," said a goblin female. In her hands were two daggers, representing that she had shown significant skill to be rewarded more than one light de.


    "Shel," said Thokk, remembering her name. She had been a fighter and hunter back in the tribe, too, when they upied the Snowmound. Leanly muscled, fast, and flexible. "You are fast. Cover me when I charge."


    "If you don''t slow me down," said Shel.


    Thokk grunted. "No, I won''t. Here theye!"


    The Draconids started to lunge towards them. All fifteen at once. This was going to be difficult, Thokk realized, to break their ranks with pure force alone, but then the Sovnar''s words rung in his head again in remembrance.


    "Within the Collective, there is no fight taken alone."


    The Striders uncurled from their balls and loosed shrill cries as they sprinted off, their insect-like wings fluttering and powering their leaps as they hurtled straight into the Draconids. Each of the Striders was tiny, less than a third of the weight of an individual Draconid, but the Striders had abnormally powerful leg muscles which, coupled with their wings, allowed for immensely powerful charges.


    Every single Strider collided with a Draconid, sending the bulky lizard creatures hurtling backwards while the Striders used this opportunity to stand on top of them, shing down at them with their mandible jaws and razor sharp ws.


    This left just five Draconids charging towards Thokk and his group.


    "Hold!" said Thokk.


    The Draconids all lunged towards them. Thokk immediately swung at one that lunged at him, slicing apart the Draconid diagonally across the midsection. The force of the swing blew back the Draconid, and soon enough.


    The Draconid''s skin was tough, but the Sovnar''s light de cut right through it, gouging out a massive gash in the monster''s chest. That wound filled up with golden light, and Thokk fully expected to see the Draconid blow up.


    However, the Draconid instead roared as it curled up. The wound started to bubble up, as if ready to pop and explode, but then it simmered down, the golden light fading away and turning into smoke. The wound had not healed, instead cauterizing, but the Draconid had not exploded either.


    "Wh-what?" said Thokk.


    "Sovnar''s weapons not working!" shouted the other goblins as they watched as the Draconids they shed at and drove back also growled and stopped their dagger wounds from turning into lethal explosions.


    "Doesn''t matter!" shouted Shael. "Go, Thokk, go!"


    Thokk grunted and charged, shoulder bashing the Draconid he shed at while the monster still recovered.. He drove the monster back a dozen meters and more while the rest of the goblins followed behind him, covering his back so that no further Draconids could swarm ahead of them and block them off to circle around them again.


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