The Collector peered down at the pile of goblin corpses. They were considerably well preserved considering the low temperatures of this area, and because their skin and bodies were adapted to the cold, their internal organs still functioned to some small degree, though some were more expired than others due to varying degrees in the severity of their wounds.

The elder unit was relatively well preserved, eliminated through three bullet holes through its stomach that had contributed to organ failure and blood loss.

​​

The champions were considerably more damaged, likely having put up a significant fight. Many of them had their once musclebound body parts shredded down by the impact of bullets, with larger caliber bullets turning their limbs into shredded ribbons of freezing meat dangling from cracked sticks of bone.

Some of them had lethal head injuries that were unsalvageable, with more than half their brain mass blown apart.

Most importantly, however, the carrier unit elite had preserved itself well enough. It had lost all four limbs, and the gaping holes littering its body indicated that it had taken the vast brunt of the larger caliber bullet fire from the airships.

Likely, the champion had utilized [Guard] to take much of the deadlier bullets for the swarm and judging by the countless small craters riddling the area, it had also been subject to a complete aerial bombardment of sizable high caliber bullets from which it was utterly defenseless against.

The elite unit had, however, likely hunched up and covered its head when the aerial attack started, thus preserving its brain matter well enough.

Still, the Collector was on a timer. Just as it could not extract memories from specimen that had their brain matter expired for too long, it surmised that the nature of this Breath of Life ability would not work on specimen that had been too long expired.

The Breath of Life functioned as such: the Collector, after storing enough mana, would be able to emit it in an icy breath that manifested the creation of ice crystals within bodies. These ice crystals would latch onto the biomass of specimens and meld with it, repairing wounds through a process similar to implementing prosthetics.

The difference between the Breath of Life and ordinary cellular regeneration was that it possessed a psionic component to it. When the ice crystals bound to a specimen's biomass, it did not merely function as a placeholder for lost body parts and cellular degradation, but it also attached to nerves and neurons, becoming part of the specimen at a fundamental level.

This was restorative capacity that was almost unparalleled. Even the Collector understood that this was an extraordinarily impressive adaptation. Both the Collective Hivemind and the United Front possessed the means to essentially reanimate their fallen, but reanimation was not the same as resurrection.

Tinkerers, especially the psionically capable Klaxia, were capable of creating copies of the consciousness of their fallen warriors into mechanical constructs and the Human Federation was capable of implementing cybernetics into their damaged units.

However, in both cases, individuals were not truly resurrected. Klaxian copied consciousnesses were merely copies; the originals were expired. The cybernetics of the Human Federation salvaged brain matter when it could, but many times, it simply created specimen that were simply machines, the 'man' part having expired.

The mechanically oriented Xon of the United Front were likely the only one that had transcended this limitation, for they as a species had long since decided to make the drastic jump to simply upload their consciousnesses into an unified virtual network, consequently making them the most troublesome of foes to wage war against on end of the Collective.

For in a sense, the Xon were much like the Collective. When the species had first decided to become entirely mechanical, they implemented certain hard coded limitations upon themselves, one of which was that their psionic profiles would occupy one specific mechanical construct as a main body, for the essence of an individual degraded the more it was spread out.

However, when this main body was eliminated, the psionic profile would return to a greater virtual whole called the Gestalt, though this was predicated upon the main body possessing a connection to the Gestalt server at the moment of expiry.

Like this, the Xon could indefinitely wage war and self-replicate, with their lack of biomass proving especially troublesome for the Collective.

Yet, the development of psionically projected electromagnetic disruptions from the Collective inflicted great suffering upon the machine race, for the specialized disruptor pulses could sever the Xon from linking with the Gestalt, thus preventing psionic profiles from reincarnating, and the Xon possessed a far lower population count than either the Klaxia or Humans – another one of their coded limitations.

The Collector once would not have even thought of any parallels to tinkerers it had known, but now, it had to consider everything. The presence of technology that mimicked the United Front along with the fact that Unitan existed indicated there was potential that United Front tinkerers had promoted technological development.

Yet, as the Collector still further noted, the technological development here seemed to be in some ways divergent than that of the United Front, incorporating native elements of magic to sustain it. At the same time, the uncanny parallels in weaponry and vehicular design meant it was unlikely there was no relation between the United Front and some tinkering species here.

Likely, the Collector theorized, these tinkerers, 'dwarves' as they were classified by the system shard, possessed some guidance from United Front tinkerers, whether that was through direct manipulation or potentially access to technological blueprints was difficult to truly ascertain.

Regardless, technology was not spread evenly across this world, nor even among tinkerers. The dwarves were unique in their utilization of technology, it seemed, and had not shared their advancements with others.

Indicated a lack of true unity among the tinkerers.

Good. The more disorder there was, the more gaps the Collector could find to exploit and hide within to grow ever stronger.

For now, the Collector focused on the time sensitive issue of resurrecting the goblins. The spiral pattern of dark blue, nearly black swirling around the golden orb on its chest began to emanate with energy. It had gathered enough energy from the outpouring of primal mana from its evolutionary cocoon, and with it, it had ample supply to utilize the Breath of Life.

The Collector felt its body temperature begin to rise as it engaged its spirit roots and the Jotnar core that housed the Breath of Life ability.

Like Sapia, the Breath of Life was an Inhera ability.

Inhera was essentially the same as Primal Magic, both of them being expressions of race-specific powers. However, where Inhera was different was that it possessed an individual component to it.

Individuals in races would develop their own unique expressions of their Inhera that was directly tied to their core. Thus, where the projection of mana to create mental manipulations of matter was basic to Sapia, with all daemons capable of utilizing it, daemons could develop their own unique manifestation of Sapia as well.

In essence – all daemons could use basic Sapia abilities such as the Force Push and Pull, but individuals could develop specific expressions of it tied to their core.

On that note, the Collector could not fully access the female daemon specimen's powers. It could only access the basic abilities of Sapia. The female daemon specimen had not yet matured enough to develop her own unique Sapia power, but the potential to grow one was there.

The issue was that for unique individual expressions of Inhera, the Collector had to fully meld with the corresponding core, feeling the emotion that triggered it. Thus, with Wonder that the Collector did not yet fully have the ability to comprehend, it could not access the female daemon specimen's potential to develop her unique Sapian power.

The Collector had decided that allowing such foreign emotions to envelop it would be heretical and difficult to control.

Yet, it was now posed with a challenge.

In order to restore the goblin swarm, the Collector had to channel the Jotnar core and its trigger of Mercy, another emotion it was not too familiar with. For the Breath of Life at a very basic level only created a breath that nourished life in an environment.

The capacity to generate ice crystals that restored lethal wounds in specific specimens was unique to the Jotnar that had once possessed this core.

The Collector would have to begin to comprehend this emotion, this 'mercy', to use the Jotnar's power.

But would it?

Was the goblin swarm worth the risk of allowing a foreign emotion to fully overflow into it?

Or, more importantly, as the Collector came to think to itself in lieu of all that it had experienced in this new world, was it even truly a risk, truly something heretical, to begin to feel?