The Collector gazed upon the heart in its hand. It had grown so pale that it had become a purplish shade of white, and it felt cold and stiff to the touch, almost brittle.

Visible through the icy flesh was a ball of glowing green and rainbow light – the summation of all the spirit roots wound up and condensed within.

"It is now time to transfer this into a suitable osseous vessel. The 'thrall' utilized a skull, and I sense that it is most apt in being able to contain the most data." The Collector looked down at the human female's corpse.

With all the roots and core from it retrieved, the corpse had almost completely shriveled up, as if desiccated from centuries of frozen storage. The skin had withered down into pale wrinkles that barely clung onto the bones, leaving the clothes surrounding them to be baggy and oversized.

There were no facial features distinguishable anymore, and the specimen's hair had decayed away into nothingness.

A quick analysis of her clothes indicated nothing of note worth to consume nor material for its Metalloglottic ossifier.

It looked at the patch with three gold stars stitched on it. So this was a three-starred adventurer.

The Collector had far evolved past her means.

Her tricks, the trinkets she stored away and withdrew as weapons, they certainly would have dealt grievous wounds to the Collector in its prior metamorphosis levels.

And now, a four-star adventurer proved to be nothing but a minor challenge. If the entire group of adventurers had faced the Collector head on, even somehow gotten a surprise advantage on it, then the Collector calculated that they potentially possessed a 58% chance of defeating it.

But in picking them off one by one, the Collector had assured its victory, even granting it margins of error to toy with the four-star adventurer a little, drawing out perspective for his strength.

And with this information, the Collector understood-

The Collector was beginning to outpace the strength of these mortals faster than their tiering system could keep up with it.

Good.

It seemed that each successive star rank indicated nearly exponentially greater strength between them. However, with the assistance of magic, the Collector's growth too would only become more varied and more pronounced.

It clicked its mandibles in consideration of the heights of strength it could achieve until it dampened these emotions in understanding that if it was successful in letting the Collective dawn upon this world, none of that would matter.

Then what was the point of this? The Collector stared at the heart in its hand.

It knew from the beginning that this procedure meant nothing if the Collective successfully dawned, and taking this female specimen's magic would not aid the Collector in direct combat.

For bone binding was highly limited.

Even if the Collector compacted the entirety of the female's essence into a bone such as the skull, it would only allow it to manifest a single ability, a single spell, and it had determined the capacity to interface with a hyperspace storage was the most efficient and practical in the long run.

But what if there was no long run?

No, the Collector had to create contingencies. As it had always done. As it would continue to do until its mission was completed.

That it could even think like this, with what it perceived as something beginning to resemble doubt, was sickening.

The Collector cupped the female corpse's dried head and popped it from her spine.

Utilizing Sapia, it tore the flesh from the skull, and there was no resistance to the Collector's manipulations anymore now that there were no roots nor life within the body.

"Now you will assist me in transferring the roots into the structure of this skull," said the Collector.

'I-I'm sorry,' began the female daemon.

The Collector clicked its mandibles as it sensed the daemon fall down to the ground, onto her knees, and began to dry heave, her breathing deep and her eyes wide in panic.

"I sense signs of great mental distress through this psionic tether between us, and with it, the accompaniment of physiological distress," said the Collector. "This is compromising your functions."

'I-I know…,' said the daemon. She glanced at the corpse in short glimpses before she turned away, wincing. 'At first…I was just so curious, so happy to see new things like soul shears and bone binding, but…but when I started to go into the body and pick at it and pull things from it…it just hit me…memories…all of it- it's so very much like what they did to me.

The shining man. With the shiny strings - pick at my skin and peel it, take chunks from me, then put everything back together-I-I-,'

"Your mental and physiological signs of distress are only growing more severe. Yet, I have analyzed the nature of this tether between us. I will now mitigate these signs of distress," said the Collector.

The daemon widened her eyes, not in panic, but in surprise. She breathed in easier. 'You-you shared a feeling with me…this feeling…it's calm. The kind of calm you always have.'

"I have merely allowed you to sense in some small measure the mental state of the Collective unbound by excess emotion. This, you perceive as 'calm'.

I sense that with this treatment, your mental state has returned to stable functioning.

Now, assist me in this procedure," said the Collector, bringing the skull closer to the daemon.

"So…so that is what the...the Collective is like," said the daemon with a wondering nod. She looked at the skull with determination. "Okay, let's do it."

__

A few minutes later, and the Collector stared down at the skull. The curves and outline of its structure flashed with a faint rainbow light. The second forging process was quite similar to the first one.

The core - the heart - essentially acted as a preserving space where the roots could be gathered for in normal circumstances, the roots would expire with the corpse.

But by freezing the heart into a magical stasis, the roots too could be preserved.

Inside the heart, the roots would also absorb the essence of the core.

Then, the Collector and daemon had unspooled the wound-up root threads and lined them across the structure of the skull, imbuing the bone with both the roots and the core.

However, because roots and cores reacted flexibly only with living stimuli and because the bone was no living matter, the skull could store only but a few spells: a smattering of snapshots of magic frozen within the skull.

In this way, spells were stored within the bone, and the bone was what casted and brought forth the magic at little to no cost to the Collector.

First, however, the Collector had to now ascertain whether it was safe to utilize the magic imbued in this skull.

Certainly, from the thrall, it seemed there were no risks to it, for it utilized magic stolen from tinkerers with no discernable risk to itself.

Yet, this was different, for it involved warp-based capabilities.

It was possible that whatever hyperspace this skull linked to was under another entity's dominion, some 'god', and that would prove troublesome.

The Collector used its psionic-sensitive capabilities to sense the nature of the warp-based power inherent within the skull.

For psionic power and warp capability were intrinsically linked together; a fact that allowed the Collective Hivemind with its enormous psionic processing power harvested from countless life forms to generate its own large-scale warp gates.

It saw and felt psionic threads wriggling from the skull, anchored constantly to a hyperspace, and in analyzing that space -

It clicked its mandibles in understanding. This form of hyperspace was essentially a limited space dedicated to single individuals.

In this case, the female specimen, and now, the Collector if it so desired. Trinkets and tools left by the female specimen still remained here.

Further analysis of this space. Sweeping scan for any psionic tethers to other hyperspaces or entities.

None.

And the warp-sensing that the Collective imbued within the Collector, even in its limited processing power, was extensive.

More than extensive enough to give the Collector confidence that the hyperspace this skull linked to was its distinct, separate space. This kind of space for storage which would be useful in preserving certain biological and mineral specimens.

The Collector clicked its mandibles. Its thought process and warp-sensing had taken up the span of merely a few seconds. The ring of flames it had generated before to ward away insects flickered closer, their heat palpable now.

Just in time.

The Collector took the skull and devoured it, assimilating it into its metalloglottic ossifier where in its next adaptation, it could manifest the bound bone into its own biological structure to have a constantly available, regenerative source of hyperspace storage.

>>>

*New metalloglottic ossifier sample obtained*

--Lightstone

--Runewood

--Bone Binding Skull

>>>

The Collector turned its head down to the daemon girl who looked up at him with wondering eyes, looking forward to what the next thing they would do would be in almost childish expectation.

"I will now enter this 'dungeon'. Continue your assistance in maintaining the integrity of the temporary Sapian structures I have erected to support my wound." The Collector unfurled its daemon wings. "You will be able to sense my intent in combat. You are primarily to support my own usages of Sapia.

If your mind is capable of keeping up with the rest of my combat processing, then exercise judgement in assisting me, though if there is the slightest shred of doubt that you will hinder me, do not act at all."

'I-I got it!' said the daemon, nodding to herself and the Collector. 'I…I won't disappoint you.'

"'Disappoint' is an emotion I have sensed only in dealing with tinkerers and challengers that had the potential to rise against me and yet failed or fled. I will not feel 'disappointment' in your failings, merely an adjustment of calculations to compensate," said the Collector.

It clicked its mandibles and beat down with its wings while pushing with magic-infused power with its tail, soaring high into the air.

Like this, it would avoid the sea of inferior insectoid specimen below from blocking its path.

In the air, the Collector could perceive the dungeon in the distance. A circular pit emanating with a faint blue glow – the only strong glow remaining now in the Darkwoods - and began its flight to its next and potentially final destination.