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 were compromised 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 particulates of ice in the wind.

What the Collector could rely on was thermal imaging with heat sensors in its ocular system, but this yielded nothing of note worth. It had walked for five minutes now, but the landscape did not change from this endless wasteland 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 to later.

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 becoming 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 contemplation.

Calibrating back to prioritizing survival.

Five minutes until lack 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 a lack of lifeforms in the area.

Regardless, there was no choice, for finding any form of shelter in this homogenous landscape 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 calculations 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 a completely new nexus?

Did it mean that the Collector was in a new universe entirely? If so, then the implications were immense.

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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 access 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 explanations, but the Collector knew it could never settle upon any single one, for it simply lacked 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 overcome.

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 in layers 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 become 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 snow layer in a flatter, 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 insulating layer 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, completely hidden under a blanket of white.

Now was the time to evolve. To begin a new hunt in a new land with a new form.

It checked its status to assess its resources:

>>>

Metamorphosis Level 6

Biomass Level: 330/100

Stored Genetic 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 available on the status update page)

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-Frostborn Hobgoblin Thrall

-Vineswinger Goblin Champion [Core]

-Flametongue Salamander

-Windcutter Wildcat

-Shockstripe Eel

-Shaker Fish

-Firefly Shinchu

-Lurker

-Goblin Lord [Core]

-Goblin Elite

Adaptations:

-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 Sublayer

<Weapons Systems>

-Monomolecular Claws Rank 4.4

-Pyrocatalytic Glands Rank 3

Current Form:

Assassin Bugbrute/Daemon/Dullscale Rohu/Jumping Arakka

<<<Magic Status>>>

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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 accumulated already from consuming the four-star adventurer's weapons, the Collector would ascend not just one, but two metamorphosis levels.

Prime genetic 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 genetic 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 genetic 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 explain the power she had shown against the humanoid.

That power had no record within her genetic record itself.

No, that power must not have come 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 classified as a 'Blessing'.

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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.

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