With the main structure of his new body laid out, Sage left the most time consuming task for last. This was his first experience with the Swamp Genesis Spider and so it had many ancestors that he knew absolutely nothing about. In the past he had already investigated the lines of the other creatures that made up his body. Most of them he had been working with mutating and breeding many times before ever attempting to merge them into his own body. Since he already forged a connection and wished to retain the Spider’s strength, he skipped a few steps of his usual process and jumped right into a union.

Sage liked to think of it like a genetic roadmap. These wisps represented different species or offshoots from a beast’s ancestors and from his testing in the past, sometimes a beast would be born with a greater connection to one of those ancestors. He surmised it was what was referred to as a ‘strong bloodline’, and for his previous merges he had bred many hundreds of eggs and then tried to choose out the ones with the strongest ancestral connections he was looking for. Of course, the problem was that the Mutate technique wasn’t nearly as effective and precise when he used it on others. Only when he used it upon himself during metamorphosis was he truly able to work with a great degree of control.

Since this was his first encounter with the Swamp Genesis Spider’s ancestral line, it meant there was much for him to observe and many things he could do wrong. On the other hand, since he was already undergoing metamorphosis, it meant he also would be able to observe these ancestors up close. While he wasn’t able to pick and choose to try to find a descendant with the strongest bloodline, he was able to sort through this fresh territory with the greatest amount of influence he could get. He also wondered if his breeding experiments caused anything to be lost along the way. Maybe by trying to chase a certain trait, it also caused other remnant abilities to be destroyed. Of course, he wouldn’t know that without doing many merges with a single species, something he didn’t have time for right now.

Each of the wisps of bloodline seemed to have more wisps inside of them, but he could only catch a vague hint of them. As a test he took the strongest seeming one from the spider’s line and tried to empower it. As he did, the Swamp Genesis Spider started to change and the bloodlines inside it also grew more powerful. Then he let that one slowly fade and tried the other. After examining the changes it seemed to form a sort of roadmap to mutation. Of the strongest lines, one of them was a sort of fishing spider that walked on water and plucked creatures out from below. Another was a more normal orb weaver style of spider, but of immense size, being the size of a building when it hit maturity. Even more strangely, there was a third powerful line that wasn’t a spider at all, but a filter-feeding crustacean with many spindly limbs like a spider.

Sounds like quite the sordid romance between a spider and a crab… or something like that.

While it was interesting to learn of its ancestors, neither of the three were all that impressive. His goal was actually to find ancestral memories or techniques and he started to systematically study each of the ancestors to look for signs of them. He could easily mutate the spider to better match these old lines, but unfortunately these wispy bloodlines had no indication of whether or not they carried any ancient memories. The other problem was the sheer number of bloodlines muddied the waters. It was like trying to single out an individual grain of rice. As he reached for it, the others slid and shifted, making it very difficult for him to even keep track of one at a time, let alone trying to study it.

There was a solution, but it was drastic. In order to make it easier to sift through the bloodlines, he had to destroy the others. It might be hard to pluck a specific grain of rice out of a giant bag, but what if it was just a spoonful? By eliminating the others, his task would become many times easier. The problem was that he didn’t know which ones were good and which were bad. He could just as easily wipe away the greatest ancestors and end up with the most mundane, and he wouldn’t know which was which until after he finished the metamorphosis.

That was what brought him to this slow process. When he focused upon the bloodlines, he saw a remnant image of their bodies and could feel a hint of their traits. It wasn’t perfect, but he had little to go on. Currently, there were already bloodlines associated with the traits he had infused into his desired new body shape, and he was just sorting through the others. He was planning on following his prior findings that being focused meant greater strength and the best way for that to happen was to clear out everything unnecessary. He thought about leaving in all of the useful abilities from his old bodies, but he still had a whole vault full of insect eggs to preserve those bloodlines. If he wanted them back, he could just merge with them again.

This time he was truly going to go all out and try to build the most pureblooded beast possible. The new body he planned would hopefully just be like mutations to a strong and ancient beast’s bloodline. He just had to figure out how to pick the right bloodline! Before initiating the merge, he created an egg with the Swamp Genesis Spider’s line, so he wasn’t worried about losing it all, but it was still going to be a gamble. As soon as he started wiping away the other bloodlines, he wouldn’t be able to go back.

Giant Orb Weaver, Fisher Spider, or the Crustacean?

After a moment of hesitation, he chose the most unusual course. He wiped away the other two and started choosing again. He swept through the next layer and saw a vibrant multi-colored carapace and felt a vicious energy to it. Then he wiped away the others and found another ancestor with an even stronger viciousness to it. He didn’t know why, but he kept repeating the process. At some point, he finally stopped. He’d already gone as far as he could and couldn’t strengthen this bloodline any further. He could only get an impression of this creature and what he saw he could only describe as a sea bug out of a nightmare. The bloodline was a little too faint for him to make out exactly what it was, only seeing dark armored plates, many vicious limbs, shifting colors, and huge orb shaped eyes staring with an alien coldness.

Without any further deliberation, that thin bloodline was left to mix in with the others and like a wolf among a flock of sheep it pounced upon them and herded them into a corner. Sage was immediately worried, but after a closer look he was relieved to see that the body he’d crafted was still intact. It also started to slowly shift, but he used the Mutate technique to ensure the changes he wanted remained while the ancient bloodline shifted the rest to its liking. The frame of the spider sprouted many smaller secondary limbs from underneath the abdomen and its face shifted to properly support the next change, two of the eyes were extruded into two short eyestalks with those same giant orb shaped eyes he’d seen before, creating quite the contrast with the other six small black eyes. The shiny black carapace changed to a far more boring shade of brick red, and a band of segmented plates appeared over the abdomen, hanging down to either side like an armored skirt, or the shell of an armadillo.

At that point, Sage’s consciousness faded into slumber, and the metamorphosis process proceeded in full.