‘No. That’s just fear speaking.’

  If it were true, then it could be dire, but only much later on.

  Logically, Justin knew that such an eventuality had no impact on his situation right now, so there was no reason to give it more thought than it deserved.

  It seemed though, that the reversion back to E-Grade and the evolution which had cemented the change had also impacted his personal psyche. He no longer had the consistent, unshakeable assurance of a C-Grade volta, the lack of which he was beginning to notice.

  Regardless, Justin was well-adjusted to the vernacular of starfish’s similar style of mental emissions, so he knew the gelatin creature was asking for clemency just as he had expected it would.

  But something as adaptive as it couldn’t be afforded the kind of freedom it wished for. Dealing with the now-conceptually much greater threat of the starfish below would have to come later. For now the being in front of him took priority. With razor focus he shut his mind off from communicating with it.

  ‘It’s a faux plea.’

  Justin resolutely assured himself.

  ‘This thing has clearly been experimented on, or is the result of an experiment itself. It must have been bred to be a master of deception. Even now, it's accumulating power behind its back. It's either unaware of my capabilities, or has become arrogant from its own advancements.’

  Justin could see the sliver of evidence on the creature's body that exposed its deception. A morsel of flesh on its backside had a hue unlike the rest of it.

  Instead of green, it was an electric shade of blue dashed in grey that was slowly expanding to the rest of its gelatin.

  The hue of Justin’s own body had been reflected by his opponent.

  He had his own theory, but it was still unnerving. It must have absorbed his tentacle, and used it to adapt further.

  What the height of such an ability was, Justin didn’t know, but he wouldn’t let this little monster continue any further.

  ‘Either it's using the material of the Synchronic Intellect’s flesh, my flesh, as a fuel for reconstruction, or another more terrifying possibility could be true.’

  That it was using it not as a fuel, but a blueprint. Could it replicate cellular energy as well? The ramifications of an ability to tap into his own genetic code were too colossal to think about for now, but Justin had made his decision already.

  With a snap of his body, all of the tentacles sprawling out from him overlapped and intersected, again and again.

  He cut through the defenseless creature while burning from the acid of its flesh. Tearing up the creature until it had been reduced to small fragments, the armor that had been forming on the outer layer of its skin was shattered and cast away.

  With it, went the density of its composition as it was liquefied and subsumed by the cave water. The light level of the surroundings finally fell back to normal as the remains could no longer give off the light they had absorbed.

  Justin couldn’t be sure he was rid of it even then, until he felt a familiar refreshment wash over his body.

  Justin closed his eyes, soaking in the moment before being confronted by the system.

  ‘I hadn’t expected that to net me a level…wait, what is this?’

  [Feat Recognized!]

  [Feat Class: Remarkable (I)]

  [Reward: +1 Level, Talent Selection]

  [Remark: Awarded for discovering and subduing a unique organism native to a subnatural ecosystem.]

  ‘Are you kidding me? A feat!?’

  Justin let out a laugh. He almost couldn’t believe it. What he had been so helpless to achieve in the confines of the caverns had just been handed to him by circumstance.

  ‘Fate is a crazy thing. Perhaps I’m meant to escape these caves after all?’

  Justin looked over the system notification. Feats were ranked independently from the Grade system that the system normally used. Though he had been awarded the lowest level, it had still come with incredible rewards for his level.

  Yet if anything, the benefits only spoke to the rarity of achieving something the system recognized as a Feat. Justin hadn’t been expecting to earn one on Lemus. Nor anywhere else, for that matter.

  But he had done not only that, but obtained a talent and level at the same time. One of those he was significantly more excited about than the other.

  For all he knew about the system from theorizing over the course of years, he still couldn’t anticipate the ramifications an increase in intelligence would have on the hive.

  [Level: 11]

  [Grade: E]

  [Status Effects: N/A]

  [Race: Synchronic Intellect]

  [Attributes: 13 STR, 6 DEX, 6 END, 5 PER, 6 INT, 0 CHA, 0 MYS]

  [Free Attribute Points: 9]

  [Health: 90 / 90]

  [Stamina: 140 / 140]

  [CEL: 5 / 5]

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  [Biomass: 5978]

  [Alpha Hive Capacity: 237 / 3K]

  [Beta Hive Capacity: 21 / 6K]

  [Skills: Assimilate (E-), Consume (E-)]

  The points into intelligence and endurance had been invested automatically by the level up. He couldn’t do anything about that.

  Justin just prayed it wouldn’t lead to anything major.

  …

  The Dreadmoore, outer wetlands. More than 800 feet above Justin’s location.

  For the past day, a region of the swamplands had become busier than ever before.

  It had been invaded and combed through by a throng of soldiers. Who, divided into silent cohorts in their search across the wetland, looked for a cave entrance like a swarm of vermin seeking warmth.

  As a consequence the section of the swamp had quickly become a hotspot for the local fauna’s curiosity.

  Not more than an hour had passed since the hive’s central controller had been swallowed by the earth, yet beasts of all shapes and sizes had started to come out of their burrows to prey on the outsiders.

  Centipedes as long as the trees around them, frogs that spewed toxic bile, and mosquitoes as big as a fist and as hard as steel.

  Against those varieties of creature, the soldiers fell quickly with mere guns at their disposal.

  But that mattered little. For the greatest strength of any scourge was the vastness of its hive. The quality that quantity had the potential to produce could outmatch any potential strength from an individual.

  The hive had soldiers to spare, and the soldiers the strength to fight.

  No matter if it was a puddle or a pond, any sacrifice they made in blood was returned tenfold by their enemies.

  Justin didn’t even need to be there for any of it. Not any longer.

  Fed by their controller’s desire to be free, the hive had been compelled to search for him. So when the single-minded task of fulfilling their controller’s desire had been threatened, the hive didn’t even need an order to instinctively fight back.

  Just as moving a branch to expose a path through the trees was instinctive to the unthinking hive, so was clearing other obstructions. Whatever they may be.

  The local beast population was that obstruction now, and after a few hours of fierce conflicts with the ever-present wildlife, a great swath of the swampland had been burned to cinders.

  By then, dozens of beasts the size of vehicles and small homes laid still or in pieces, and that section of the swamp had become barren of all life but the hive.

  All it had taken were little over two hundred soldiers and some scorplings to give themselves for the cause.

  It came at roughly that time, when the soldiers that were left standing had gone back to the quiet search through the swampland for their leader, that a great fluctuation of energy flooded the bodies of all members of the hive.

  Oddly enough there hadn’t been many changes to the vast entity of the hive during its controller’s independent evolution, but this level up was strangely momentous for it.

  In that brief moment, behind each of the soldier’s corpse-yellow eyes a formerly-absent presence stirred.

  Among the bodies of the men and women left, that presence began to shrink.

  From two hundred bodies, to fifty, to ten, and then to one.

  The greying body of a man far past his prime years, yet he had a stoic semblance that evoked connotations of wisdom or strength. Or could have, had he still been thinking independently of the hive.

  It was that man, one Justin had already forgotten the name of but many in the military would have known him as Captain Gerber, that the presence lingered in. Behind the man’s eyes, the presence stirred.

  The quick burst from the level up faded at the same time, and the soldiers around it got back to their task.

  But the presence didn’t fade.

  Without warning, Gerber began to shake. Beneath his fatigues, his skin started to wriggle as the muscles below them spasmed erratically. The sound of snapping nerves and gurgling, bubbling flesh rang out as several hard masses swam underneath his skin’s lining.

  From somewhere in his head they originated and plunged down, all the way to his feet until the pumping noises stopped. In one moment, the Captain had become bloated. Not with fat but unnatural tissue.

  Filled by elongated masses, his bodily structure had become an abnormally muscular thing.

  Perhaps he was still passable as a diseased bodybuilder, but no longer was he conceivable as a member of the military. It was clear from the distention of the Captain’s skin in several places that something ought to have been suspicious.

  Yet after all of that, the most significant transformation still came a moment later.

  The captain blinked, and the yellow eyes of a corpse turned alight.

  The burning yellow orbs swam for a few seconds longer within their pockets in the skull, before the whole sick medley of bodily movement was brought to a halt.

  Everything under his skin suddenly stopped moving.

  The being straightened its back.

  With a slow, measured confidence that elicited several snapping cracks, it popped the joints in its body loose.

  Starting at the wrists, then to arms, its neck, and finally its back with a twist, it appeared like someone preparing to go for a jog in the midst of hundreds of synced hive soldiers.

  The being exhaled then, a cloud of caustic malodor instantly polluting the air around it.

  “So this is the target, huh? Got to say, it's not much of a scenery.”

  The being in the Captain’s skin looked around the scorched swampland unimpressed.

  “Though I suppose I’ve got a better view now than I had under the continental plate. So many years waiting…I’m surprised they haven’t progressed from the planet yet.”

  The being’s illuminant eyes then glanced at the rest of the hive around it.

  It appeared to be half-annoyed, half-amused as it took in its surroundings and the state of its new form.

  That was until its expression changed like it had remembered something.

  “Oh! I almost forgot, I don't need this anymore, do I?”

  With a fluid motion, the Captain’s former body spread its mouth impossibly wide open, before unceremoniously diving its hand past the yellow rows of teeth and the putrescent interior.

  Cutting with its nails upward into the roof of its own mouth, the being pushed upward until it hit something that felt like a rock. It clawed around the base of its skull for an entry point, before grabbing hold of something soft within it.

  Bleach!

  The being pulled its hand from its mouth and cast aside the writhing grub. A large worm-like parasite, curled into the shape of a ball with a hide that looked like the surface of a brain.

  It was what had been acting as the assimilated Captain’s brain, or at least its connection to the hive, until the being had emerged within.

  “Alright. Now to find this moron that’s trying to ruin everything. Oh, he must be so beside himself by now without…what was that girl’s name?”

  The being refreshed its memory.

  “Ah, right…Harriet. Heh.”

  It chuckled. Reminding itself of the girl and Justin’s history before walking off into the swamp.

  Someone was in need of its attention after all.

  An amateur who needed a wake-up call. There was work to be done yet, and the very mind in the seat of things could not afford to act so hesitantly.

  It was fortunate that it had woken up before the hive’s momentum slipped even further, the Parasite thought.