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 claws tipped in monomolecular edges protruded from the Collector's fingers. The sharp edges would pierce, then the hooked, spiked body of the claws would dig into the wound, tearing it apart to cause severe internal bleeding.

The Collector clicked its black mandibles- the one thing it retained through all of its evolutions- and wondered at the immense muscular strength inherent within the daemon genes.

Even mightier than the hobgoblins.

Greatly compatible with ultrafiber musculature.

Far, far unlike the female daemon child accompanying it.

The female specimen must have been a runt of some kind for mere malnourishment alone would not explain how degenerated her physique was compared to the Collector.

'You…you're like me?' came the female daemon's psionic voice.

"Do not be mistaken," said the Collector. "Any genetic sample I utilize, I fashion into my form at the peak of its potential. You gaze upon the peak of what your species may become, no, perhaps even beyond that."

The Collector said this as it recognized even further differences. Four sets of black 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 black hair flowed down from the Collector's head in dreadlocks, one particularly thick lock protruding from the back of its head and tapering off into a solid black 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, the lack of accessible 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 rectangular pupils shone bright on the Collector's face while four yellow, smaller compound eyes dotted its forehead, acting as secondary ocular 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 holes comprising its olfactory systems.

Its mandible lined jaw was filled with sharp, bladed teeth – 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,' exclaimed the specimen as she stared at two large, claw-tipped, bat-like wings unfurling from the Collector's back.

They were coated in a thin layer of more flexible hyperalloy carapace, changing their original black 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.

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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 epigenetics," said the Collector. "Now that I have sufficiently analyzed it, I can determine that your genetic 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 slamming against the rock wall to propel it even further.

To maximize land-based mobility, the Collector had greatly enhanced the piscine lower body granted by the dullscale rohu with ultrafiber musculature, elongating it and making it capable of slithering across solid land.

Sleek, smooth white hyperalloy carapace coated with the waterproofing layer of the assassin bugbrute covered the tail, and, at a mental command, the Collector could will the countless spikes inlaid 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 becoming prey. Another weakness of you tinkerers.

Your minds are capable of usurping the conventional laws 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 flat, 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 genetic 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 claws and…and being strong? Even when I am so broken…so worthless?'

"You are indeed incomplete 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 flare up - this is the greatest symbol of your weakness.

Yet, you are not 'worthless'. I sense that word indicates a lack 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."

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