The Collector made quick progress back to the Stormbear dungeon with its swarm. It did not move at maximal speed, however, which would have involved taking all of the goblins with Sapia and transporting them with its flight.

This would have cost a great deal of magical energy. Approximately forty percent of the Collector's total reserves for the full-length trip. An enormous improvement from before when any usage of Sapia would have greatly reduced the Collector's mana reserves.

The royal daemon's blood was incredibly well attuned with Sapia, yet still highly specialized towards direct application of forces instead. However, the Collector estimated its force related powers were essentially on par with its physical prowess by now, perhaps even exceeding them when pumping in prodigious quantities of mana to fuel them in short bursts.

Even so, the Collector would not waste its mana on Sapia to move forces unless time was of critical essence, and there was still time that it calculated was enough to freely move to the dungeon and towards the Rift before tinkering presences intensified.

Especially more so now that the goblin swarm had been enhanced with the Breath of Life, greatly increasing their physical capabilities and mobility. Even the elder had gained greatly enhanced functionality, restoring his blindness, ability to utilize magic, and regaining physical independence.

While the Collector led the swarm towards the dungeon, it engaged in thorough discussion with relevant units for information.

The Collector gleaned important information from the twin goblin elites known as 'Kandak' and 'Goromir' about the era of goblin dominance known as the 'old age'. Through them, the Collector came to know the history of the goblin species and the nature of the world surrounding them.

The goblins were said to have been created from a deific figure known as 'Gob', an entity that was one of seven specimens known as 'titans' that the gods defeated to assert their dominance upon this world.

Each titan possessed shards of the personified world's will, the 'White Voice' that the Collector had come to know and knew was embedded intrinsically within it, and when they were defeated, their shards were scattered.

The goblin species became independent of Gob and retained a shard, utilizing its power to create a kingdom for themselves. They were friendly with the rest of the tinkering species for they shared many commonalities with each other, and their kingdom stood tall for slightly over five hundred years.

However, when the Common Body was established, uniting all humanoid races, the goblins refused, for entering the body would force them to give up their shard to the gods. This led to severe retaliation, and the goblin kingdom was destroyed asunder in the matter of a few years.

The goblin race was scattered across the world and forced to survive without the aid of their civilization, causing them to adapt and return to their primal ways as simpler, more bestial beings.

Goromir and Kandak had perished a century before the goblins were properly attacked by the gods, but their bodies had remained in service through being entombed in the Burial Tusks. Yet, they did remember that the goblin race had always had some conflict with a specific goddess named Hwara.

A goddess of earth, as she was called, and based on the elites' accounts, possessed the power to create seismic disturbances easily capable of shattering entire mountains.

Power the Collector could not challenge yet, though it was nearing that threshold.

Another notable fact to note was that the goblin kingdom was not located in this realm. It was located in the realm known as Xin before its destruction, and there too, the goddess Hwara operated.

Goromir and Kandak were doubtful that any trace of the goblin civilization was left behind, but they held out hope that remnants of their civilization remained in a state of stasis separate from harm in much the same way the Jotnar slept.

This stasis was a large scale ritual called the Sarkophagos, and it was derived through the bone binding that allowed Goromir and Kandak to be fully compacted within their Burial Tusks.

Or rather, Goromir and Kandak did not call it bone binding.

They called it 'Spellweaving', a mystical art that had been taught to their magically attuned kind that had been disciples of the Three Masks, a trio of entities that were all known as 'Facestealers' and were also creatures that were born under Gob.

The Collector determined that bone binding was a degenerated version of Spellweaving that retained only its basics, knowledge having been lost over nearly a millennium since the goblins had fallen.

Sarkophagos involved first entering into a meditative sleep and then the construction of a cocoon through pieces of the fallen entity Gob's flesh.

The resulting flesh cocoon, highly attuned with primal energy for the titan was born directly of the world, would react with environmental pockets of high primal energy and transport those within into a theoretical area known as the 'White Space'.

A space between the realms where supposedly the White Voice existed.

Purely theoretical in the sense that the ritual was not well understood, having only been planned during Goromir and Kandak's age, a full century before the goblin kingdom truly fell.

Compounding this was the fact that as a prideful people, the goblins had even railed against their Spellweavers that had theorized the plan in the first place, believing they could still win against the gods over time.

Thus, the Sarkophagus had likely not been fully researched and devised until the goblin kingdom was truly at its last legs.

Yet, as members of the First Hand, an elite guard that personally served lords and the king, Goromir and Kandak were privy to some details regarding the ritual should it ever happen.

Specifically, they knew how many would be entombed in the case that their civilization fell.

The goblin kingdom possessed thirty lords ruling five thousand goblins each with a single king above them all.

The king had been slain by the time the entombment ritual began, and this catalyzed the lords to begin their entombment to escape destruction from the gods.

Thirty lords, the king, and hosts of elites and top spellweavers numbering ten thousand was the optimally planned number of entombed specimens to enter the Sarkophagus.

Evidently, however, the process had not been perfect.

The goblin lord the Collector encountered had possessed only a small dungeon, lacking his entire host. The lord had to rely on pulling forces from the current generation of weakened goblins.

Even Goromir and Kandak were simply akin to an item that had survived with the lord, for by that time, they had already been entombed in their Burial Tusks.

Likely, most of the goblins had been eradicated by the time they had fallen back on the Sarkophagus.

Goromir and Kandak did theorize, however, that though the lords in Terra, where the goblin kingdom's heart stood, were likely fully eliminated, fringe lords that had reigned in other realms could still be asleep with their troops.

These, the Collector could travel to and resurrect if it found the primal energy charged areas they had used to transport themselves to this 'White Space'.

The Collector had thought the goblin species too weak to truly harness long term, but now it began to reconsider. If most of these lords and their hosts were intact, then the Collector could easily begin to obtain the might of a full realized swarm numbering into the thousands.

Yet, a goal for the farther future, for neither the elites nor the Collector knew at all the specific locations of where the goblins had entombed themselves.

The elder, however, theorized that the Facestealer that lived in this biome would know, for it had been a contemporary of both the rise and fall of the goblin kingdom.

Thus, the Collector was further reinforced in its course of action.

First, to travel past the Rift. Obtain power. Defeat the stronger draconid specimen. Take the shard from that specimen. Investigate the slumbering Jotnar to consume them or bring them to its cause. Investigate the World Dungeon where presumably the Collector now knew a titan would lay.

If that titan specimen still remained, the Collector would not hesitate in consuming it. It had taken all of the gods with their combined might to defeat the titans, and if the Collector managed to obtain the form of even one, it would vastly outmatch almost anything upon this world in single combat.

Then, the Collector would traverse below the Rift and encounter the Facestealer. It would question the Facestealer or obtain information forcibly from it, potentially devouring it, and with it, the Collector theorized it would possess an enhanced version of Higher Calling that could allow it to evolve the goblins into heights that would easily match even the upper echelons of power in this world.

Potentially even the capacity to bring humanoids other than goblins under its thrall.

Then to gather the remnant goblins and evolve all of them. A mass army of evolved and undying specimen.

At that point, the Collector could initiate a mass scale attack against these so-called 'gods' and tear them limb from limb, devouring them and their immense power until it became the supreme organism upon this world.

It would fight worthy battle after worthy battle, god after god, ripping and tearing until finally, it became a perfect being.

And then when no more on this world could challenge it, it would -

No. The Collector stopped its train of thought.

It had to bring forth its Great Purpose.

Once the Collector finished its goals past the Rift, it would return and infiltrate the city utilizing the Facestealer's abilities. There, it would access the greater warp gate within and contact the Collective, bringing forth a proper Dawning.

This had been its initial goal.

It did not know why it had strayed from them so greatly.

The Collector clicked its mandibles and continued ahead to the Stormbear dungeon, increasing its pace.