Alien Evolution System

Chapter 210 - Striders

When enough layers of liquefied ice and rock were sprayed over to core to grant it a rough shell of a humanoid, grasping and hooked tendrils dropped down from the flesh ceiling and held up the humanoid shape by the limbs and back, and the half-made golem hung limp on the tendrils like butchered meat on hooks. 

The first golem the Collector would create would be the standard type that the mountains could create. By thoroughly observing the flow of magical energy inside the golems it had encountered, the Collector could quite accurately tell the exact blueprints of how to construct these golems from the ground up. 

In principle, it was rather simple. Golems were essentially a matrix of interconnected threads of magical energy webbing around a core. This operational matrix provided a 'skeleton' around which the 'flesh', that is, the compositional material of the golem itself, could form and solidify.

Therefore the most important aspect of a golem was first and foremost the stability and quality of its core, for that was the raw engine from which the golem's total power and capabilities could be derived.

After the core, and equally important, was the Operational Matrix. The webwork of mana threads sprouting from the core acted like both a physically supportive skeleton and circuitry programming the functions and behaviors of a machine. Thus, the Operational Matrix was what defined a golem's abilities whereas the Core defined how strong these abilities would be.

The Collector could ascertain that to an ordinary tinkerer, the act of fashioning a golem would be one of labor intensive mental processing for even a simple golem possessed over a thousand mana threads that had to individually be carefully constructed and considered in terms of their structure for their layout determined how much energy they received from the core, how they interacted with each other, how vulnerable they were, and so on. 

But to the Collector, this was a simple and mundane task. It had memorized the Operational Matrix of ordinary mountain golems and simply replicated that pattern of mana threads. This was, in many ways, quite similar to Bone Binding as well, and the Collector hypothesized that since Bone Binding and by extension Spellweaving were Primal Magics that tapped into the environmental super-entity known as the 'World' and not New Gods, that they had striking similarities to the creative processes of natural golem formation which too was nurtured by the natural environment. 

Tendrils tipped in sharp, thin and elongated spikes like needles hovered around the limp shell of ice and rock. The spikes glowed bright white with primal energy, though unlike the hyper concentrated droplets of energy used to form the core, these were more diluted, less bright.

The tendrils then stabbed into the golem shell, injecting in mana threads of primal energy. Around fifty tendrils worked at rapid speed, injecting threads in one location, then turning the golem over and injecting threads in another, and so on until over a thousand mana threads were inputted. 

The golem began to glow with a faint white glimmer as the mana threads became visible under its structure. Like veins in a living creature, the threads charged with primal energy shone bright against the dark, damp atmosphere of the Spawning Pool. 

The Collector used holding tendrils to douse the thread infused golem into the Spawning Pool's waters, and the waters sizzled as they cooled down the high temperatures generated by the primal energy. The waters also acted as healing and stabilizing agents to bind the threads fully to the golem's core.

After a quick dousing, the golem shell was withdrawn, and now the mana threads were no longer visible, fully integrated into the golem as they were.

The holding tendrils moved the golem from above the Spawning Pool to solid ground, and the golem began to move. The Collector had programmed it with basic intelligence, for that was all it was capable of.

Still, surprisingly competent intelligence that could allow it to react to external stimuli, sensing hostile intent and defending itself and guarding life forms it was programmed to recognize as friendly. In terms of directives, the Collector implanted a prime directive to simply patrol the Main Bay as a kind of guard, though mostly this was a filler program just to see how well the golem would function.

The golem trudged out of the spawning pool with precise, robotic steps, knowing the layout of the ship for all golems possessed an innate knowledge of the mountains they were born from, and in this golem's case, the 'mountain' that had birthed it was the Fortress Vanguard. 

As the golem phased out of the warp door, the Collector clicked its mandibles at the resounding success. 

Yet, the Collector was not satisfied with these basic units. It 99.99% certain that it could create Wraiths and Elementals as well, with the latter requiring significantly more time and draining multiple Spawning Pools of their energy for several days, but these were specimens that essentially had presets that the Collector could work with.

By being fused with what was essentially the mountain, knowledge funneled into the Collector regarding the mountain's abilities, and included in this were structural presets for creating units such as the Wraiths, Golems, and Elementals. 

However, the Collector desired to go farther than these simple presets. It knew how the cores were formed and how the Operational Matrices were built around the core to the point it was confident it could navigate the 'programming language' of the mountain.

Then why not create entirely new specimen? 

Why not attempt to replicate the efficiency of the Collective itself?

The Collector created a new spawning project. It formed a core again, the bulbous tendrils containing concentrated primal energy to form cores squeezing out a droplet into the Spawning Pool's teal green water.

Just one drop was needed for this core, the Collector calculated, though because it was working with entirely unknown processes, it would have to constantly recalibrate its calculations over trial and error. 

In comparison, the roughly made golem required three drops of charged primal energy. 

The droplet of blinding white sank into the teal green water, sinking like a solid before expanding in the water in a hazy, unstable sphere. Once again, the Collector directed water currents in the restorative water to swirl around the unstable sphere, essentially kneading it into a more solid structure.

The initially formed core was brought up and again encased in layers of liquefied ice and rock.

However, this time, the Collector did not create the shape of a rough humanoid. It created the shape of a quadrupedal specimen approximately one and a half meters in length, less than half the total size of the ordinary golem. 

For its bones, it layered on stronger, stiffer rocks and minerals from the mountain, though it did not utilize Everfrost and Truefrost yet so as to conserve those more finite resources for later when it was more comfortable with this creation process. For musculature, it utilized layered sheets of softer ice and for a circulatory system a gelled, nearly solid liquid lined with mana crystals for greater flow of magical energy. The carapace was fashioned from the most durable minerals in the mountain and encased in crystals as well for the utilization of techniques such as [Guard] that required mana channeling. 

However, the Collector was certain to ensure that the creature was lightweight, sacrificing utilizing heavier minerals to preserve mobility. 

When the Collector was done, it had created a four-legged creature that had a low center of balance. Its digitigrade legs could allow for impressive acceleration on land surfaces, and each of its three toed feet were lined with sharp claws possessing serrated edges for greater traction and to inflict greater misery when they sunk into flesh.

The creature was lean, clearly visibly built for agility with a thin ribcage and a sleek body. Its tail was fairly muscular as a means to stabilize its balance at high speeds and to push off the ground with, for upon its back were four light blue insectoid wings made from ice crystals shaped into lattice structures. 

Its head was heavily armored with jaws were lined with razor edge teeth and protruding, sickle-like mandibles meant for slicing and tearing. At its head jutted out a single curved horn meant for ramming into creatures, goring them and holding them in place while the mandibles and jaws tore into other flesh. 

Overall, this specimen, to a tinkerer would have appeared to be some monstrous abomination of a canid specimen. 

This was the Strider, a mobile ground unit from the Collective that could utilize its speed and wings to flutter across battlefields with superb mobility, capable of scaling walls at ninety degree angles, leaping over most barricades, and goring ground infantry in swarming numbers while possessing reflexes sharp enough to evade artillery bombardment. 

The Strider was held up by holding tendrils, its body and four legs dangling limp, and the Collector attempted to craft its Operational Matrix. 

This was when the Collector encountered an anomaly: the sound of the entity known as the 'White Voice'.