The Collector observed that the carrier unit known as 'Thokk' to ensure that the specimen fulfilled its purpose properly. It did not create further mental hints to navigate the unit back to the main Holding Bay and it dropped off the unit some distance away from the bay intentionally.
This was so that the Collector could see whether the unit was capable of navigating the fortress utilizing only the layout of the fortress implanted into it. The carrier unit met the Collector's basic expectations and quickly navigated his way through a few intestinal pathways, warping three times to different locations of the ship as he jumped his way down to the main Holding Bay.
The unit only had to stop five times to pause and collect his thoughts, indicating a degree of familiarity with the fortress that would only improve over time, with an estimated three days of movement across the fortress granting the unit nearly complete innate knowledge of the fortress.
Impressive mental processing power for a unit with such a primitively constructed processing unit.
When the Collector saw Thokk warp into the main Holding Bay, raising his hand up to greet the rest of the goblins, it clicked its mandibles from its water filled Command Chamber and began on stabilizing, calibrating, and starting the other functions of the fortress.
First and foremost was movement away from this Rift before the Fang specimen could bring forth additional reinforcements. The Collector commanded the Vanguard unit to halt its assimilation of raw materials from a nearby mountain. It had already vacuumed up several hundred tons of primally charged snow, ice, rock, and even the biomass of living specimens that could all be incorporated into the Spawning Pools and Evolution Chambers.
The Vanguard unit began to float upwards into the sky. It flicked its enormous, carapaced tentacles down, and the wind pressure and force from that simple movement triggered an avalanche of cascading snow from the mountains around it.
Every single aspect of these magically charged mountains, the Collector repurposed for the Vanguard unit. In these mountains, there were rocks or large shards of ice that floated in the air through magical energy, and it was this same levitative force the Collector used to send the Vanguard airborne through seemingly no propulsion of its own.
However, this levitative force alone was too slow for the Collector's preferences.
As the enormous Vanguard unit floated above the mountains, it thrust its back tendrils behind it, and from their tips, flares of white magical energy blasted out, creating thrusters that generated appreciable propulsion. The Vanguard unit sailed through the air at speeds surprising for its immense bulk, for the Collector had appropriated the efficient design of the Collective's bioplasma thrusters meant for sustained deep space travel.
Like a miniature moon of ice, rock, tendrils and death, the Vanguard unit traveled the skies, casting an enormous shadow down wherever it went.
The Collector sent forth an announcement throughout the confines of the Vanguard unit's internals.
"All units, brace your minds and forms for imminent warp travel," said the Collector. "Significant physical discomfort inducing symptoms of nausea, digestive failure, sensory failure, and loss of motor controls is likely. Assume a seated position and anchor yourselves to a physical surface such as a floor, wall, or ceiling.
Initiating warp in five seconds…"
The Collector channeled the Vanguard unit's warp capabilities for the first time. They could only create a portal strong enough to funnel the Vanguard unit's immense bulk away for a distance of three kilometers, making it inefficient as a means of actual travel.
However, the Collector still needed to test this function, and it theorized that the warp capability could be calibrated to create many smaller portals at once capable of far more range, thus allowing for units to be transported en masse through various locations at the same time.
The Vanguard unit's spherical head of compacted ice and rock started to glow with a faint white aura. Enormous veins of glowing white became visible across its head, and they looked like cracks fissuring through a mean before its impending implosion.
Through these veins, magical energy beamed out, colliding together into one concentrated point that warped the space around it. After several seconds of the space warping and distorting, a portal bloomed. A gleaming white portal easily two kilometers in length, though noticeably unstable from its constant flickering around its circumference.
The Vanguard unit traveled through this, its body distorting and warping as it funneled into the portal. The portal closed behind the Vanguard unit, and for a moment, the Collector only saw darkness.
Then, snow and ice became visible again.
The Vanguard unit had passed the end of the Rift and officially entered into the beginnings of the land beyond the Rift known as the Wailwastes. There were no more peaks of enormous mountain ranges standing before the Collector, only an infinite expanse of deep fog.
The Collector was far too high above ground level to obtain a visual of the ground, and this was by design. The Collector had not wanted to warp into ground level so as to investigate it slowly and cautiously from above, for it did not know how hostile the ground would be, especially considering that it seemed that in this world, the vast majority of specimens favored land based dwelling.
The Collector first monitored the swarm. It saw that many of them were collapsed, this being their first time ever engaging in the disorienting experience of warping. But within seconds, their sturdy and adaptive bodies recovered, allowing them to shakily stand up. The elites had weathered the change with no ill effects, with the specimens known as Goromir and Kandak observing an ease of posture indicating they were familiar with warping.
In fact, the two brothers had their hands on Thokk's shoulders, helping him orient himself to get used to this novel experience.
The fighter known as Kui was unfazed, his arms crossed and his eyes closed as he sat cross-legged in meditative posture, cycling his magical energy within himself and restoring it.
After ascertaining that the swarm was in stable condition, the Collector began movement downwards.
The Vanguard unit's propulsion tendrils angled upwards, causing its bio-thrusters to generate force that pushed it down at a conservative angle towards the ground. As the Vanguard continued its descent, pores opened up from its spherical head shell.
These pores were meant for expulsions of Travel Pods, but they could also be utilized to intake environmental mana at a more efficient rate, send out gusts of wind to clear fog, or, as the Collector did now, even generate the primally charged fog of the Rift mountains, thus cloaking the Vanguard unit as much as possible in the impenetrable white fog.
This would be particularly useful in future engagements with tinkerers, for the fog was charged with primal energy that would deaden connections required to make use of their Sorcery, though it would not hamper their inherent power or technology that relied upon internal sources of self-sustaining magical energy such as the dwarven engines.
As the Vanguard unit traveled down, the Collector began calibration of its Spawning Pools and the creation of golem units. It could create two thousand five hundred (2500) golems total with the amount of raw materials it had amassed so far, and it did not waste time doing so.
In terms of sheer efficiency, the golem units would be the absolute best for the Collector to rely on. They were automatons that were highly replaceable, and though likely having weaker power ceilings than biological specimens, they could be mass produced and directed to maneuvers without any worries of their loyalties, desires, willingness to battle, and so on.
They were the perfect drones, and the Collector would use them as such.
The insides of the Vanguard unit began to vibrate in a low, constant hum, indicating that magical energy flowed throughout it. The fifty spawning pools started to activate. In design, they were large pits filled with the healing waters found in the mountains. These waters had the capacity to interact with biomass and, when injected with pure primal energy, could be manipulated into forming golems.
Above the pools of glowing, teal-green water was a ceiling filled with moving tendrils. Some of these tendrils ended in points, others in claws, others in bulbs, and so on. One of the bulbed tendrils drew down right above the surface of the restorative waters, and from it, droplets of pure, gleaming white primal energy squeezed out.
As they pattered in the water, their concentrated energy expanded out, and water currents around them swirled, forming the primal energy into visible, spherical cores. These cores stabilized after several seconds, generating enough heat to steam the water for a moment before cooling down, solidifying into balls of rocky white.
The formed, solidified core floated in the water, and from there, the tendrils from the ceilings grasped at it. Bulbous tendrils sprayed out icy matter and liquefied rock from the mountains. This matter layered over the cores continuously, creating over time the shape of a roughly humanoid golem.
Comments