It turned out that more scorplings had survived than Justin had first realized.
Killing a mother prematurely in the late stages of its pregnancy would have naturally meant the death of most if not all of the brood, but there had been stragglers that had surprisingly survived.
Like the one the seedling had been able to latch onto, some had already been on the boundary of full-gestation. From that, it became clear that the scorpion beast had just been about to give birth, which perhaps was the reason it had been so far out in the desert to begin with.
Regardless, a total of 27 scorplings had survived and were assimilated by Justin in short order. From a brood of over two hundred, it was a pleasantly surprising number for Justin who hadn’t been familiar with scorpion or mutant biology, but he had supposed ‘the larger the animal, the more babies it would have’ idea made sense, and he was humored to find the scorplings’ bodies turned the same corpse-yellow shade when they were assimilated that was mirrored in the assimilated humans’ eyes.
But still, Justin’s overheating problem still hadn’t stopped, though now after more than twelve hours of following the dried river further south, he was beginning to see hope.
Unbothered by the 27 scorplings crawling all over his main body, with each being 3 inches in length, the march of the entire congregation suddenly stopped as he lurched forward. The number of captives by now had further reduced to less than twenty in all. Still though, his hive remained strong.
‘I was right. The riverbed has grown wider in the past few miles. It’s begun to get wetter, as well. Signs of rain? Or was this area filled not too long ago?’
Such changes in water level were cause for suspicion, or at least curiosity, but in Justin’s heat-affected delirious mind all he could muster was a ravenous excitement for any change in his situation.
Anything that gave him a potential for survival.
‘GO!’
Justin shouted internally. The hive around him was spurred once more, and even the survivors who were looking starved due to unexpected complications moved along with them.
They moved forward for miles, then for miles more, and miles more.
[Health: 5 / 10]
The dried basin seemed to increase ever more in width, prompting Justin’s hungry advances into the southern territory that was growing wetter and wetter.
When all of a sudden, as the appeal of the march was just beginning to wane, the sight of treetops cresting over the horizon entered several of the soldier's eyes.
It was just a few more miles, and then, it came.
‘HA! I KNEW IT!’
Justin had finally made it out of the desert.
What greeted him as he looked at the landscape before him now, was…a marsh.
A dense, black swampland. A wide swath of moor that served as the sticky boundary between the dusty wastes of the Jejune and the snow capped mountains that sat on the other side of it.
Justin knew that on the other side of those mountains were the largest cities of the Republic. He wondered if they sat comfortably, if they were unprepared for something like him.
‘Finally!’
Justin greedily eyed the first body of water he came across as they moved further into the tree line.
‘Let me down.’
Justin thought to the soldiers who had been carrying him for the bulk of the trip, sighing in relief as they set him into the bog before letting him slip into the water.
‘My god, this is just what I needed all along.’
Justin thought as he let his head dip below the surface. He knew that there was really no point in worrying about catching a breath with the way his body functioned now. Given the parasite was the one with control, he just needed to leave a few tentacles out of the water in order to pull in oxygen for it.
He had subconsciously accepted at this point that his body was basically just a mass of tentacles as the Origin, and this thing he thought of as ‘Justin’s body’ had only kept its appearance so far because of the damaged mechanical suit that was still wrapped around it.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
It was no more delusional than calling an egg an egg because of the shell around it, when in reality it wasn’t yolk that filled it but tomato soup.
Justin swam deeper into the swamp, with the soldiers following behind on the sparse regions of stable dry land. The scorplings’ squishy bodies were buoyant enough to paddle on the surface of the marsh to follow him.
Eventually, Justin realized he had come to the edge of the lake, and opened up his status screen once he reached the bottom of its depths.
[Level: 10]
[Grade: E-]
[Status Effects: Enervation]
[Race: Scourge Progenitor (Larva)]
[Attributes: 13 STR, 6 DEX, 1 END, 5 PER, 1 INT, 0 CHA, 0 MYS]
[Free Attribute Points: 3]
[Health: 4 / 10]
[Stamina: 94 / 110]
[CEL: 3 / 3]
[Biomass: 6103]
[Alpha Hive Capacity: 500 / 500]
[Beta Hive Capacity: 27 / 1000]
[Skills: Assimilate (E-), Consume (E-)]
[E-Grade Evolution Available!]
Like a water-cooled computer, his heating problem had been solved by the pool of murky water. His status of fatigue still remained, but now he realized the source of it had to be something internal, and not the work of the desert environment
Just as an experiment, now that he was in a better state of mind, he let seventeen members of the hive go, the exact number of survivors he had left to replace them, if need be. Several soldiers above the pool of water collapsed as they stepped forward. Their equipment and biomass would be collected later.
As soon as they fell though, the status effect left him, and Justin’s body once again felt as strong as it had in the encampment. Even stronger actually, considering the stat points he had invested since then.
The status of enervation had halved the utility he had gotten out of each point, so now he was more than twice as strong as he had been a few days before.
With that solved, Justin held off on assimilating the survivors for the moment. He had reached level ten in the last twelve hours, but he knew to wait until he was in a safe location for the racial evolution.
Like a class promotion, a billion little things could go wrong if he was attacked during it, or if he were subject to status effects. He also had to wait for his natural regeneration to kick in and replace the parasite’s health, as that could affect the evolution too. Despite his open contempt for it, if he planned to evolve alongside it, the parasite’s health was critical for the upcoming process.
As of now, he had only speculated at the possible routes the Origin’s evolution could take, but now he would be able to see them. From that, he would be able to guess what the effect could be on his own mind.
More than anything, he had to plan his evolution with control in mind. Improving the strength at his disposal would only come secondary.
Justin opened the options.
[Evolution to E-Grade]
[Scourge Progenitor (Pupa)]
[After an initial period of assimilating hosts and devouring biomass, a Scourge Progenitor in the larval stage will eventually evolve to this stage. A straightforward path for the daemon, in the next stage of maturation it will gain comprehensive boosts to its assimilation and consumption abilities, as well as its influence over individual hosts. If this natural evolution path is followed, the fully mature scourge has a chance to advance to a more significant level of life, and be given a mission by its species’ patron, advancing it to the level of a Daemon Herald.]
[Per Level Bonus:]
[+2 DEX, +1 END, +8 PER, +6 Free Attribute Points, +1 CEL]
…
[Scourge Corruptor]
[An atypical route for the scourge species, this particular hivemind has chosen to forgo the quantitative benefits of a network and consolidate its mass into a single, gargantuan hive entity. By forsaking the benefits of potential omnipresence, the individual will have explosively high cellular energy and a much easier time picking up conceptual traits at higher levels of life.]
[Per Level Bonus:]
[+2 STR, +9 END, +1 PER, +6 Free Attribute Points, +5 CEL]
…
[Patron Slave Mind]
[Considered as one of the ultimate servants for its patron, this rare class of hivemind has completely cast away its own will in deference to its ancestral master. Entirely subsumed within itself, the slave mind lends its bodies to the whims of the patron which can take control over directly. This hive has a high cellular energy level by the necessity of sending its mind through great distances of space.]
[Per Level Bonus:]
[+1 PER, +2 CHA, +9 MYS, +6 Free Attribute Points, +4 CEL]
…
[Synchronic Intellect]
[A subspecies of scourge scarcely found in the galaxy, this hivemind has chosen to evolve itself in the pursuit of task efficiency. By directing the bulk of its hive through unconscious thought, it saves its complete sphere of conscious deliberation for advanced processes. Recorded instances of this subspecies have shown its technological prowess usually benefits from this, but its network is unavoidably beholden to the fatal flaw of a single vital point.]
[Per Level Bonus:]
[+5 END, +5 INT, +6 Free Attribute Points, +2 CEL]
…
[Perpetuating Swarm]
[A hivemind in all aspects of the term, this entity has traded all natural traits typical to carbon-based life in exchange for influence over its environment. Nigh undetectable even to the most advanced scanners, this being stretches its cells throughout any organic material, regardless of its sentience or cellular compatibility. In turn, this weakens the physical strength of the hive by a drastic margin, which makes them at this life level often unnoticed and mostly harmless to the world around them.]
[Per Level Bonus:]
[+15 INT, +6 Free Attribute Points, +0.01 CEL]
From the list, Justin immediately realized that the options necessitated much more deliberation than he had anticipated.
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