Alien Evolution System

Then see to it that you instill such beliefs into the swarm," stated the Collector. It knew well that the greater an intelligent creature's drive for a purpose, the more effective they were.

Even within the Collective Hivemind, this was true. The vast majority of Collective units were mindless, thus, this did not apply to them. However, among the Collector-class units and Queens, thorough and unshaken belief in the sanctity of the Great Purpose saw to it that even with granted intelligence and a degree of independence, that no unit would take a turn against the Collective, that all would stay cohesively unified towards one purpose.

This, even the Collector felt now. Even though it understood that it was now highly defective, capable of processing thoughts and emotions that were extremely erroneous, it still understood that it had to devote itself to the Great Purpose, for if it did not, existence itself would shatter, and then there would be no point in devoting physical or mental energies to any action.

If the elder could instill within the goblin units a thorough devotion to the Collector's purpose, then it could utilize them far more efficiently. Of course, their devotion would likely not be as great as the Collector's for it was not bred into them, but in appealing to their self-interests or in a desire to regain what they had lost or in a desire to prove themselves beyond their previously meager scavenging existences, they could maintain their loyalty upon the right path.

"We will move in thirty minutes when my mana reserves have been sufficiently charged and the entirety of this swarm armed with one solid light shard," stated the Collector.

==

The rest of the short path to Vimur was an uneventful one. A collection of Wraiths again did manifest against them Collector and its swarm, but now that they were all armed with Shinchu light shards, the wraiths became little more than a nuisance to deal with.

Vimur itself, however, was an interesting anomaly.

Five hundred meters from Vimur, the Grainfall dissipated entirely, but the pattern of its dissipation was aberrant in that it only faded within a set radial distance around Vimur. The black particulates stopped flowing almost right as the Collector and the swarm reached the edge of a sheer cliff of ice, and one hundred meters below, there lay Vimur.

The Collector saw as the swarm edged closer to the end of the icy cliff, awed at the sight of the strange environmental marker that was Vimur.

The cliff face ran down into a basin of water that was sufficiently large enough to be classified as a lake, and within the center of the water body, there arose an enormous arm. An arm so enormous in scale that it alone reached thirty meters in height, its splayed-out fingers reaching upwards, as if to grasp onto something.

The arm was bare and roughly humanoid in basic structure, but the skin was of a pale blue hue and dotted with crystalline ice formations. As far as preservation went, the arm seemed largely intact.

While the goblin swarm gawked at the arm, the Collector assessed the environment for any potential threats.

First, a physical assessment. Grain did not fall in this location, so visibility was not hindered. Interestingly however, the Collector noted it was not that Grain did not fall, but there seemed to be an upswell of magical energy from the lake that collected above, even higher than the cliff it was on, that formed a dome that caused Grain to hit it and slide away.

Effectively, a barrier made of magical energy.

Yet, the Collector noted as it threw a snowball made of Sapia down the cliff that the barrier did not keep out other physical objects.

The lake itself was surrounded on all sides by towering cliff faces of ice, which, combined with the Grainfall continuing to rage outside, isolated it quite well. Should Vimur have been placed on the surface, atop the cliffs, it would have been highly visible to all with the giant arm.

The perfectly circular structure of the lake and basin indicated that potentially this was no coincidence. It was possible that this place was artificially constructed with secrecy in mind. However, if secrecy was truly the only value that this location cared of, then it would have been far more prudent to remove this barrier that blocked Grain or to place the structure underground entirely.

No, if this area had been constructed, then it was made to be found.

Yet, not found by tinkerers, then, for Grainfall would prevent the vast majority of tinkerers from ever reaching this space.

Further scanning with ocular systems yielded no immediate threats. The lake seemed completely placid. There was a swirling, circular current converged around the giant arm, but the current was too gentle to be a threat.

The arm itself was dead. This, the Collector could sense. Living beings emitted trace amounts of psionic energy, a distinct signature, and this arm lacked that. However, it was preserved well enough that it would be a perfect genetic sample for the Collector.

Consuming the entirety of that arm would grant the Collector an enormous amount of biomass, not to mention the benefit of such a powerful genetic sample. If the Collector could fully devour that arm, it calculated that it could easily leap to a boundary of strength twice its current capacity.

The Collector encased its ocular systems in green magical energy best suited for tracking the flow of mana, and thoroughly analyzed the environmental movement of magical energy in the area. Intense concentrations of magical energy gathered into the center point of the giant arm in a swirling, spiral-like pattern.

The nature of this flow initially seemed like that of a dungeon's. In a dungeon, environmental mana flowed and condensed to the dungeon, but it was in the exact pattern of flow that there were marked differences.

The Collector had seen the flow of mana around dungeons before. It had learned how to accurately discern them with the female daemon specimen. And though its sample size of witnessed dungeons might have been low, it did note that there was no specific pattern for the flow of mana gathering around a dungeon.

However, in this case, the environmental mana formed a perfect pattern of a spiral. Large threads of blue tinted mana from above the cliff faces funneled down the cliff, and as they did so, the threads oriented themselves into a neat, controlled spiral pattern when they reached the basin.

The significance of this, the Collector did not know.

The Collector conveyed its intent, and Thokk, the carrier unit, approached with the elder on his shoulder.

"You are sensitive to the flow of magical energy," stated the Collector. "Tell me, does this pattern of environmental mana correspond with anything within your memory banks?"

The elder, though blind, could still sense the flow of mana through touch, and he held out his hand.

"A dungeon, it does seem, but so very neat. Not wild. It reminds me almost of a spell. A spell of the humans, perhaps, but ah, not so, the nature of it is quite different." The elder cocked his head, and then nodded to himself, as if remembering something. "What little I know of the Jotnar may be hearsay and folk tale, but I do know there are tales of the giants wielding their own magic.

Long ago, when the Jotnar still roamed the lands below the Rift, when they clashed with the humans and gods too.

Perhaps this too is a symbol of Jotnar magic."

"Do you possess any definitive knowledge of this magic?" stated the Collector. It presumed that the magic was independent of the gods, thus, it was not sorcery. In any case, sorcery could not function in this environment against Grain. 

"No…I am afraid not," said the elder. "All I know are tales. Fragments of tales. There is one of Dor-Runn, a Jotnar who attempted to reach beyond the skies on pillars of ice fashioned with his magic, yet, he failed when the gods struck him down.

This, however, is the only tale I know of the Jotnar with magic in it."

"I see," said the Collector. It understood that the elder's information had the potential to be highly inaccurate by virtue of being sourced from passed down, orally transmitted information across multiple goblin lifespans, rendering the tales more and more prone to error as time passed.

Thus, the Collector could not readily commit to fact anything the elder stated, though it could keep the information in mind and corroborate it.

The Collector was essentially operating on unknown territory, then, but it was used to this by now.

In terms of sheer information, the elder was far less useful than the female daemon specimen. She possessed such vast breadths of knowledge that the Collector could easily plan against any contingency or understand its surroundings and all its risks with immediate and thorough understanding.

Even in the case that she was unfamiliar with a situation, she still possessed enough background knowledge to adequately formulate accurate assumptions.

Had she been here, no doubt, the Collector would have navigated this biome to a far easier degree.

The Collector broke its chain of thought. It was unlike it to dwell on hypothetical scenarios that could never be made true. The female daemon specimen was dead, and death was an immutable end from which there was no return. 

It instead focused on a minor risk to benefit analysis for now. So far, aside from the anomalous patterns of magical energy that could be the base of some kind of spell, there were no threats. The benefits of devouring the Jotnar hand were enormous, on the other hand.

The Collector decided to press forwards.

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