Thus, the Collector realized, it would have to make more thorough use of language 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 to communicate with tinkering species for either they razed them all or succumbed to their weapons - the very concept of parlaying 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 manipulation, 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 enslaving 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 to communicate 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, placing their genetic 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 places.

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 claws gently on the human's arm. The skin easily yielded to the monomolecular edges of the claw and started to bleed.

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

She did not even possess any of the genetic enhancements and bodily implants 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 becoming increasingly likely that the 'humans' of this world were a divergent but similar evolution of bipedal species. Such similar evolutionary paths were not unheard of, after all, especially among tinkerers that all tended to evolve similarly.

"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 in comparison to the Collective's process of assimilation 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. "Your language is sufficiently complex, 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 too lacking for me to gain information through conversation. Your lack of neural complexity and adequate grasp over communicative language 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 slashed forwards, taking wide, arcing swings with its deadly claws extended. It was a slaughter. Each swipe cleaved multiple goblins into multiple pieces, their body parts flying in the air and their blood splattering 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 claws. 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's language.

"Please," the human whispered.

The Collector could not understand the human's weak vocalization. It was evident the human did not speak the language of the goblins, nor did it speak the language 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 glazed 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 of complex biomass, after all.

More useful, however, were the memories and knowledge.