The Collector settled itself within the clean, incised gap of flesh it had carved out within the Jotnar arm.

All around it was flesh.

​​

Bloody, almost black, blue flesh that emitted the faint hum of magical energy, though had the Jotnar been alive and actively circulating its mana, then surely, its mana surges could have made the earth rumble.

Here, the Collector would knit its evolutionary cocoon.

The evolutionary cocoon could itself consume and devour organic matter near it to fuel it, so in the case that the Collector evolved in a large breadth of biomass, it could continue to consume without exiting its cocoon and therefore skip metamorphosis levels effectively.

And in the case of this Jotnar arm, the Collector knew it had ample quantities of heavily magically charged flesh to evolve again and again and again, for it never had to exit the cocoon until all the flesh around it was consumed.

The danger of possessing too few spirit roots in comparison to its metamorphosis level could also be circumvented here for technically, the Collector underwent multiple evolutions, simply not exiting its cocoon as it did so, and each time, it would reset the counter for its spirit root consumption.

Ordinarily, that would not have meant much, but here, where there was a glut of root rich flesh to devour, the Collector could keep up it spirit root count with its physical development.

The Collector did not know the full extent of strength it would gain, merely that its current state would be utterly incomparable to its new might. It was difficult to calculate how much biomass this Jotnar arm would grant, for certain parts of it were more magically charged than others.

Regardless, the Collector calculated that even with the lowest estimates, it would reach the tenth level of metamorphosis, skipping two levels entirely.

It curled up its form as much as possible, shrinking and condensing itself, letting the oxygen pumping its blood and muscles dissipate out from its pores.

Then, the evolution began.

Flesh colored ooze flowed out from the Collector's carapace pores and skin, engulfing itself and attaching to the raw muscles and flesh all around it in a webwork of tendrils.

The Collector's form began to break down into genetic ooze, ready to manipulate itself into a truly ascendant domain of might.

In this enclosed space, the Collector's initial metamorphosis cocoon was small, making the initial evolutionary process slow, but in time, as the cocoon came to bore into the Jotnar flesh with its consuming tendrils and digestive juices, the process would accelerate further and further until this entire arm, all fifteen meters of it, was broken down into fuel.

All that was left of the Collector's once imposing figure of skulls and ashen carapace and musculature was now just a small, meter wide sphere of flesh, the cocoon beating in the dark of the Jotnar flesh.

Tendrils of flesh stabilized the cocoon's position in the Jotnar arm, and then began the consumption process, drilling into the hardy Jotnar flesh and breaking it down with digestive enzymes.

The more that was broken down, the larger the cocoon became.

The consumption process became a cascading effect, and as the cocoon grew larger and larger by the minute, the Collector began to analyze what genetic samples it would utilize.

Upon reaching the tenth metamorphosis level, the Collector could retrieve prior genetic samples it had utilized for former evolutions, diversifying its options, but ultimately, the decision was rather simple, for there were just a few overwhelmingly mighty genetic samples that the Collector had at its disposal.

First, there was the Jotnar genes that the Collector now assimilated.

The Jotnar genes were incredibly useful, with the original specimen having been a thirty-five-meter-tall giant that, like the Firefly Shinchu, operated in some capacity as an environmental regulator.

Where the Firefly Shinchu sought to hunt and destroy individual beings that accumulated too much longevity, the Jotnar existed more for environmental regulation.

The markings etched into the giant's skin were not manually applied, but biologically manifested, and were like lightning rods for mana that locked it in vast quantities, being particularly suited for drawing up mana from the environment.

When the mana was stored, it could be emitted via the Jotnar's breath into energy that nourished life and accelerated the growth of fauna and flora.

The essence of the Jotnar was thus pacifistic.

Because the environment itself possessed a flow of mana to it, excessively chaotic flows could manifest in natural disasters or cause certain areas to become inhospitable or unbalanced as a biome due to heavier or lower concentrations of atmospheric mana that magical species relied upon to survive.

Jotnar found these spots of instability, took in the unstable environmental mana, then converted it into life giving breath that re-stabilized biomes.

Hence, the elder's tales of the Jotnar interacting with tinkerers, building them cities or fending them against the cold.

The Jotnar even had the ability to shrink down its form to that matching the size and shape of humanoids, and, conversely, expand its form to its original titanic mass.

This would also prove extremely useful.

The Collector condensed its biomass to keep itself compact and less noticeable, but there would be times when enormous size would prove useful.

The Jotnar's size manipulation would allow the Collector to access what would likely be a forty-meter-tall behemoth of a form when it needed to, massively enhancing its might and durability at the cost of severely compromising its maneuverability and stealth.

Yet, also notable that the Jotnar were now no longer present below the Rift.

Driven away by tinkering presences, likely, with the gods themselves, at least according to the elder's tales, intervening against them.

Then, the draconid genes it had taken.

They might not have been the prime material of its kind like that which belonged to the white maned variant, but it still possessed exceptional powers the Collector would greatly benefit from, the most notable of them being magically induced high speed regeneration.

The Collector would retain its Firefly Shinchu genes.

It had not been able to access the full breadth of the sample's powers for it had been beyond the Collector's metamorphosis level, but now, it was confident that it could fully incorporate the specimen's strengths into itself.

Then, the Collector would retrieve back the daemon genes.

Those genes were of a prime genetic stock that the Collector could not fully manifest, but with more levels, it could scale to them better and express their might to a far higher degree.

There were no other samples that came close to matching the Collector's other magically rich genetic samples. Thus, it had to think in terms of sheer utility.

In terms of maneuverability, the Collector now had access to airborne and aquatic biomes through the draconid genes, for it had the capability to utilize magical energy to generate a field around it within which it could 'swim' through air or accelerate its movements in water, not to mention that the daemon's genes would provide adequate flight regardless.

The Collector could potentially decide to access subterranean biomes through the Lurker genes still within it, and yet, it had to weigh those genes against those belonging to the goblin elite.

The goblin elite's strength might have been far outclassed now, but it theorized that goblin genetic material was of yet a vastly untapped resource.

Even the elite's genes were thoroughly degenerated from a much larger, more complicated source code in the very same way that the draconid's genes were sourced from something far greater, something that belonged to the Rift that the Collector would soon come to hunt down and make it its own.

The Collector could only construct hypotheticals as to what a primordial goblin specimen was like, before countless generations of degeneration into the parasitic specimen that relied on humanoid females of other species to propagate.

Yet, the Collector could not deny that the genetic code of the goblins were extremely versatile, capable of short term evolution that manifested in the span of weeks to months, allowing them to escape hunting from humanoids and populate a vast variety of biomes.

In some ways, the goblins represented the ideal of evolutionary adaptation far better than the other specimen the Collector harnessed.

There was an origin to this remarkable trait that no other species on this planet seemed to exhibit thus far.

This secret, the Collector believed it could glean from the entity known as the Facestealer far west of this biome.

The histories of the goblins and the Facestealer seemed to be intertwined across a millennium of time. If there was any entity to know what the true origin of the goblin species was, then it was the Facestealer.

And, the Collector did not know why, but it felt right that because its swarm was comprised of goblins, it should thus grant them some level of approximate familiarity by undertaking some of their genetic code.