By this point, Draug had been reduced to a few bones – all that was once left of the proud warrior hobgoblin.
The Collector leaped up a tree. It did so awkwardly, having lost three of its spider limbs, but it knew how to compensate for the lost limbs with expert ease, shifting its weight from side to side so that it could rappel up the tree at a speed that would have been hard to believe it was injured.
There, it curled up and began its evolution. At lower metamorphosis levels, it could not afford to be picky with the genetic material it had as growing stronger at any cost was its prime directive.
It would use what it had.
The Collector's body began melting, secreting a slimy ooze that formed a cocoon over it. It was more monstrous than before, with large, beating veins streaking across its glossy surface.
The Collector also did not melt into complete primordial liquid this time, instead condensing into a sphere that pulsated like a heart at the center of the flesh cocoon.
In its current state, the Collector could not construct a form utilizing more than three genetic bases. As it reached higher metamorphosis levels and gained more capacity to process the material, this would increase, but for now, it would have to make do with what it had.
There were two new pieces of genetic material: the black goblin and the black hobgoblin. However, the hobgoblin was simply superior in every aspect and so the Collector chose to switch out its rabbit genes with that of the hobgoblin.
Although it did not like assuming a humanoid form because bipedal humanoids evolved through a reliance on tools and not biological might, it was still the strongest base form it could achieve.
It retained its spider and centipede genes, useful as they were for extra limbs, compound-vision, webbing, and minor venom.
The metamorphosis would take close to thirty minutes this time as the Collector was undergoing significant physiological changes.
During this time, it searched the hobgoblin's memories using the keyword of "human".
Although the Collector had ignored the hobgoblin's angry bleating during combat, it had remembered his words.
Judging from the way the hobgoblin spoke about humans, it would seem they were an intelligent species, perhaps in direct conflict with these primitives.
If they were anything like the humans the Collector was familiar with, then this world would be a significant challenge to assimilate.
Humans were one of the spacefaring races that resisted the Collective, and though they had lost planet after planet to the Hivemind, they still survived and fought with a tenacity that belied the weakness of their fleshy forms.
By now, after nearly a century of warring against the Collective, the humans had developed weapons of war easily capable of wiping out the Collector in its current state.
Finding out more information about these humans was imperative.
The memories came. It was obvious that the hobgoblin held powerful emotions of humans, with many of his memories tied to that keyword.
They came like hazy recollections or half-remembered dreams, murky and almost surreal, lacking in many details, but still understandable.
____
A memory.
The hobgoblin running. It was young and small, no larger than the goblins it lorded over now. It was injured, with burns and cuts littering its body. Behind it stood the entryway to a cave, smoke curling out from within.
Powerful emotions of sadness and rage.
The humans had come and exterminated the hobgoblin and his kin. Their swords and spears had skewered many friends, decapitated his parents, and dealt him many painful wounds.
A vow of revenge against the humans.
Later.
The hobgoblin was grown, leading a large tribe of goblins and hobgoblins to a human village.
He rallied his kind, raising his club into the air. He promised death and destruction to the humans. Their food and women would be the spoils of war.
A cheer.
Later.
The hobgoblin lay bleeding under a tree, arrows skewered in his side. The battle had failed.
Strong humans had appeared.
Another vow of vengeance. He would find more goblins to his cause in the jungles, build up his strength and attack once more.
____
Though the memories were exceptionally unclear, fogged over by emotion and other useless baggage that the Collector did not have the capacity to adequately even feel or perceive, the Collector could still tell that the humans on this world were far different than those the Collective had encountered elsewhere.
They were far, far more primitive, wielding sticks and chunks of iron and little else more. It would not have to worry about blaster bolts that could tear apart its carapace.
Exosuits that had the strength to tear it in its current state from limb to limb.
Seeker drones that would track its unique biological signatures and dispatch it with arrays of invasive explosives too fast and too small to defend against.
Perhaps the humans of this world were a subspecies of human cut off from the main body. Or maybe they were a divergent but similar evolutionary line, for it was a fact that bipedal tinkerers seemed to evolve similarly throughout the stars.
No matter. The Collector would consume them all in due time. That they were weak and primitive would only hasten their ends.
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The Collector burst from its cocoon and immediately fell from the tree. It had grown far too large to scurry about on treetops, being almost two and a half meters tall. It oriented itself before it crashed into the forest floor, making sure to land on its two feet.
The Collector grunted as it moved its body, flexing its muscle and wriggling its extremities to improve blood flow that had been stemmed during metamorphosis.
It did not like assuming a bipedal form. All the races the Collective had destroyed had been bipedal tinkerers too weak to use their natural strength. Bipedalism came to be a symbol of relying on tools over biological might.
But no matter. It could easily discard this current form following its next evolution.
As of now, the Collector looked far less hideous. It was a towering mass of muscle plated with smooth, bony carapace tinted black from hobgoblin's genes.
Once more, six arachnid arms ripped out from its back. They were stronger now, thicker and padded with more muscle underneath the sleek, black carapace.
This, coupled with the innate hydraulic movement system inherent to arachnid legs, would mean that these six limbs were far faster than its regular mammalian arms, though to maintaining the efficiency of the blood based hydraulics meant sacrificing some muscular mass.
A plus about this hobgoblin genetic base was that it was extremely compatible with the Collector's natural ultrafiber muscle adaptation as the main reason the hobgoblin was so much more muscular and stronger than the normal goblin was due to a mutation that affected its muscular hypertrophy and bone density.
It was simply a matter of assimilating that gene into its ultrafiber muscle adaptation. In this manner, it was possible to upgrade and enhance adaptations the Collector already had.
This was the sort of continuous evolution and improvement that the Collective did, though on a far smaller scale.
The Collector's head was a mix of insect and humanoid, being humanoid in shape but armored entirely in black carapace. Two long, black antennae emerged from its forehead, dotted with its sensitive hairs adaptation.
It retained its mandibles which sloped down from its temples to its proper mouth, acting like chin-guards.
It checked its status.
>>>
Metamorphosis Level 2>3
Biomass Level: 100/100>0/100
Stored Genetic Material:
-Black Goblin
-Black Ant
Adaptations:
-Ultrafiber Muscles Rank 2>3
<External Systems>
-Sensitive Hairs Rank 2>3
-Organic-Hyperalloy Carapace Rank 1>2
<Weapons Systems>
-*NEW* Monomolecular Claws Rank 1
Current Form:
Jungle Spider/Striped Centipede/Black Hobgoblin
>>>
The Collector was pleased with its new adaptation. It would console the fact that it had to assume a humanoid form with the opportunity to develop one of its natural abilities that it had missed the most: monomolecular claws.
It watched as almost metallic-white claws curved like scythes emerged from its fingertips and protruded from its feet.
It generated larger spikes on its elbows to use as stabbing and slicing weapons, compensating for the inefficiency of having so many frail and tiny bones in its hand – a common trait among tinkering species.
Monomolecular claws were one of the crowning evolutions of the Collective, being extraordinarily powerful tools and yet incredibly genetically efficient.
To put it simply, they were composed of the same durable organic-hyperalloy base as Collector's carapace, but their edges had adapted to a different structure sourced through an unique predatory species on a harsh, metal dense planet where metal and flesh melded together.
The result was that the claws thinned to a razor sharp, monomolecular edge capable of splitting apart substances at the molecular level, resulting in a sharpness unparalleled across the cosmos, capable of matching any superheated plasmoid blade or vibrosaber.
As of now, the Collector's offensive capabilities with its claws was devastating.
Even at the height of its power, the sharpness of its claws was the same, making it one of the most efficient adaptations it could have obtained.
The only reason it had not obtained it before was because it had prioritized the carapace for survival.
The biggest flaw of these claws right now, however, was the fact that their durability was tied to their rank level, meaning that though they could slice through any known matter, they were brittle, capable of breaking apart by sufficient or appropriately applied force at the correct angles.
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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.