Thus, the Collector sacrificed the daemon base, though in time, when it exceeded the tenth metamorphosis level, it could go back to genetic material it had sacrificed in creating forms.
However, the Collector desired to keep the daemon's magical capabilities.
It used its extraction point to take an adaptation from a native specimen to maintain the thel from the daemon genes, for Sapia was exceedingly useful and the thel was required to regulate it.
Now for three additional forms.
The Collector chose the goblin elite for its superb physical capabilities. The elite possessed a natural affinity with the ultrafiber musculature adaptation and would grant access to an additional pair of powerful arms.
Not only this, but the elite over time had the ability to adapt to environments. The Collector calculated that within the span of one week, the elite genes would develop cold-resistant properties.
At a higher metamorphosis level, perhaps the Collector would return to the daemon form and potentially utilize it to its maximum potential.
Then, it chose the Flametongue Salamander.
The salamander was itself not adapted to the cold, but it could maintain high internal temperatures and then expel them outwards on its skin via a series of external gills to generate a constant layer of flame around its body.
This, the salamander utilized to ward off predators on land where it was less mobile than in the water.
In the water, it would condense its heat generation on its jaws to superheat them for deadlier bites.
The Shinchu's light, if it was used offensively, cost an extraordinary amount of magical energy to maintain.
Thus, its reliability as a heat source was fickle after intensive combat.
In the case that the Collector's mana reserves grew low, it would require a backup source of heat to maintain itself.
This would be the Flametongue Salamander.
The salamander's aura of flame would only intensify with the Shinchu's light as well, effectively turning the Collector into a walking, endless bonfire in the snow whenever the temperatures grew too cold.
The Collector's Blessing of Mount Oe would also allow it to maintain this constant burning even on parts of its body that did not take have the salamander's flame-resistant lipid coating.
But perhaps the greatest value from the salamander was its regenerative properties.
The regeneration did cost mana, but it was still an invaluable resource. With it, so long as the Collector survived - something it excelled at doing – it could always maintain its bodily integrity for the next fight.
As for the last specimen, the Collector focused on obtaining genes that could traverse cold and aquatic biomes, even in the case that the Collector could not generate heat and light.
There were two powerful aquatic specimen the Collector could choose from: the Shockstripe Eel or the Shaker Fish.
Between these two, the Collector chose the Shaker Fish. It lived in the extreme, cold depths of deep waters, utilizing its vibration sensitive whiskers to sense prey in zero visibility environments and utilizing its earth-shaking powers to uncover subterranean prey on the seabed.
With its forms settled upon, the Collector decided upon how to regulate its magical cores.
It maintained the daemon female's core for access to Sapia. For the other two cores, the Collector maintained the thrall's bone binding mostly for its shockwave inducing powers that could amplify with the Shaker Fish's own abilities.
For its newly grown heart, the Collector slotted in the Goblin Lord's core, for there was a settlement of goblins nearby.
Utilizing the lord's Dominus-type primal magic to bend them all to the Collector's will would hopefully allow it to access more information about this environment and its threats.
Now for the mineral samples the Collector had procured through its conquest of the goblin lord's dungeon. Through the Metalloglottic ossifier, the Collector could as of now only generate small amounts of the mineral, encasing perhaps part of a single body with each sample at best.
The only exception was when the Collector swallowed small enough mineral structures whole.
These, it stored within itself intact and could retrieve.
The Collector surveyed its current lineup of samples.
>>>
Metalloglottic Ossifier Samples [5/5]
--Crystal Skull
--Volcanite
--Everfrost
--Abyssium
--Burial Tusks
>>>
The Collector utilized all five samples. It would manifest the crystal skull in a location upon its body that would make it visible as a potential target for tinkerers to strike, luring them into believing it was a vital area.
The burial tusks, it could cap onto the tusks it would naturally grow from assuming elite genes.
The Abyssium, it would encase upon its thel to significantly enhance its dominus-type capabilities.
Both the Volcanite and Everfrost, upon analysis, yielded themselves to be ores that could change their molecular structure depending on how mana was flowed into them.
Quite similar to the smart-steel utilized by tinkering battleships in the United Front, though significantly less flexible and durable.
But where these magical ores lacked in sheer tensile durability and shock absorbent proprties, they could made up for with the magical ability to change inherent physical properties about themselves such as their temperature, with the Volcanite emitting heat and the Everfrost emitting cold when mana flowed through them.
Thus, both ores were useful in that they scaled up to whatever entity was utilizing them.
An entity with powerful mana reserves would manifest far more impressive effects with the ores than an entity with less impressive ability. Though the Collector did calculate there was an upper limit to this.
If the Collector approximated roughly that star levels indicated mana levels and these increased in similar degrees per additional star among adventurers, then a six-star adventurer would find either Volcanite or Everfrost increasingly useless.
For now, both ores would serve the Collector well.
The Volcanite, the Collector lined across the biotrigger for its pyrocatalytic glands, allowing for any flames that emerged from it to react with the magical ore and enhance itself.
Like this, the Collector could now focus and extend the range of its flames or supercharge the biotrigger with mana, causing it to create an explosive, wider range burst of flames around it.
The Everfrost, the Collector would line across the knuckles of its four arms, allowing it to generate accelerated glaciation on whatever it struck with its blows.
Increasingly, there were entities that could deal with the Collector's monomolecular claws, for the weapons were still quite brittle.
It did not seem like magic utilizing tinkerers had figured it out against the Collector yet, but simply intensifying {Guard} so that the mana defensively covering a body part extended beyond the bare flesh would form an effective barrier against the claws.
The claws would tear through any flesh, no matter how strengthened it was, but it would not tear through even a thin layer of condensed mana above the flesh, for that functioned akin to a forcefield that required brute force, not exceeding sharpness to deal with.
In the case that the tinkerers did manage to catch on, having varied applications of brute force such as the bone binding shockwaves and now these glaciating punches would prove effective.
The Collector form, spread thin in a liquid state across its flat cocoon, pulsed once as it decided upon all the tools it would incorporate itself.
Now, it was time to splice its decided forms and truly evolve.
The evolutionary cocoon swelled and grew as it latched its roots of pulsating pink biomass into the frigid ground.
As the Collector's form within grew, the cocoon had no choice but to expand upwards, the heat emanating from it and the pressure of its expansion pushing against the many layers of snow above.
But under the snow, the Collector could at the very least hide its evolutionary cocoon until 85% completion.
And for good reason. The sheer breadth of genetic material it spliced together caused this evolution to take nearly two hours.
In large part, the delay was due to the fact that the Collector had to spend time processing the Firefly Shinchu genes, for the original specimen was incredibly powerful, far stronger than what the Collector's body could handle now, and thus it had to break it down to match the highest end of what its metamorphosis level could operate with.
At the end of its evolutionary metamorphosis, the Collector's cocoon formed a sizable, spherical ball of transparent flesh supported by a thick base of clumped tendrils.
The snow around it had melted away from the heat emanating from the cocoon's intensive, energy exhaustive biological processes.
But the Collector did not remain exposed for long.
Within minutes, the Collector burst out of the cocoon in its new form.
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