The Collector clicked its mandibles as it looked up at the champion.

The last 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 monomolecular claw sticking out straight through to the other side.

The champion's life blood, sourced straight from its heart, dripped down from the curved, glinting monomolecular claw, 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 from compromising 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 head lay embedded in the Collector's back, melting through the carapace and slicing deep enough into ultrafiber musculature underneath to moderately compromise movement of the front left leg.

The Collector had lured the champion in by withholding use of its claws.

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 calculative 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 black 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 place.

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 place 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 – 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 genetic material gained*

Stored Genetic Material:

-Black Ant

-Black 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 considering completing each successive 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 and larger, 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 become special.

The Collector clicked its mandibles in contemplation, 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 the complexity and compatibility of genes comprising 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 calculated the damage done to the leg, which specific bundles of ultrafiber musculature were damaged and their mobility functions, and compromised, 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 calculations 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 to compensate 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 implanted within it: that against its enemies, it should fight and fight, to kill and destroy and rip and tear until the battle was done.