Outside of the white medical tent, there hadn’t been a sound for a few minutes. The guard on duty had been trying to listen in previously, just out of pure curiosity and boredom rather than any actual suspicion, but now couldn’t help but actively lean in closer in attempts to hear something.

  FWWSH

  The tent flap suddenly opened, startling the guard who hadn’t been expecting anyone.

  “Uh…Captain Browne? How can I help you, sir?”

  The soldier knew he shouldn’t have addressed his superior before he spoke, but he couldn’t help it when the man had suddenly turned to face him only a couple feet away.

  The man just nodded to himself, the soldier wasn’t sure why completely, but it felt as if the Captain had learned or remembered something.

  “How much longer are you on guard for, soldier?”

  “About twenty more minutes sir, then my shift changes and Private Harrison should be replacing me.”

  The Captain stroked his chin.

  “Alright, leave your rifle and helmet with me and go inside the tent.”

  That warranted an eyebrow raise.

  “My helmet too, sir?”

  But even though it was a strange order, the guard realized he shouldn’t have questioned it. He merely shut up and gave his equipment over to the Captain.

  Justin, through the eyes of Browne, watched as the man entered the tent, exiting one field of his vision and entering the next.

  Captain Browne then left the proximity of the medical tent and started to look around the encampment, searching for one structure in particular.

  A lucky benefit of Justin’s circumstances, as it had turned out, was that he had assimilated one of the highest-ranking members of this battalion, and had killed the only guy he was supposed to report to in the vicinity. That gave Justin’s mind in the Captain’s body pretty much unrestricted access around the camp. So long as he didn’t run into anyone who knew the Captain too well.

  Who that was would be hard to determine since he didn’t have anything like convenient access to his hosts’ memories.

  ‘There. Early space-age radio station. Primitive technology, but it shows they’re not too far away from developing early FTL. Maybe a few decades or a hundred years at most’

  ‘Captain Browne’ walked into a large rectangular tent that had a satellite dish sticking out of the top. In the desert, far away from the rest of the countries’ main inhabited centers, it was what they were using to communicate with top brass.

  “Hey, Browne. How’s Sark?”

  As soon as he entered the tent, one of the men there immediately spoke up.

  ‘Fuck.’

  Justin thought. This was exactly what he was trying to avoid. If the similar epaulettes and uniform were any indication, this man was also a captain, and likely knew this host somewhat well.

  He could blow it right here if he wasn’t careful.

  ‘But who is Sark? The…Major?’

  “Irritable today. You know how it is…”

  Without knowing precisely how Browne usually acted around the other soldiers, Justin went with a neutrally friendly approach, something he quickly had second thoughts about when he saw the confused look on the other Captian’s face.

  “Oh…yeah. Yeah he sounded pretty uptight on the comms over here. Guess a ‘war hero’ wouldn’t be too happy with being assigned to the Jejune no matter what they found here.”

  Thankfully the other man didn’t seem to think his behavior was too unusual, as he quickly resumed talking to Justin in a casual manner.

  “Well okay then, I’ve got to do something in the tent now, you know, Major’s orders…”

  Justin had never been so awkward in his life, it seemed, but the other soldier appeared to understand something. Whatever it was, it involved the context of their battalion that Justin had no way of knowing.

  “Alright, see you around. As long as you’re here I can leave. Don’t need more than two of us in the communications tent. Soon as you’re done, holler at Henderson to replace you. God knows that guy hasn’t done anything since we arrived.”

  “Sure thing.”

  Justin breathed a sigh of relief as he was finally left alone in the tent. Well, actually, he wasn’t totally alone.

  There was a single other soul left in the tent. A radio operator engrossed in the station that had been set up underneath the dish. He gave a quick salute to Justin before putting his headphones back on.

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

  Justin closed the tent.

  …

  Back in the white medical tent, Justin’s main body was now looking at itself once again.

  The Major’s body, after fully converting it from dead flesh to what the system abstractly called biomass, gave him one of those units.

  As such, Justin was able to realize that completing the stage quest would give him the equivalent biomass of consuming around five thousand people, but he was still unsure of whether that would be helpful. Stage Quests usually were, as their purpose was rewarding people with potential to grow and restrict those without, but Justin had also never seen a daemon’s system before.

  Regardless, he had been given attribute points to invest after his level up, and it had come time to address them. Up until now he had avoided investing them for fear of the ramifications, but as he could only access the system through his main body, he felt secure enough in exploring the system partially.

  [Level: 3]

  [Grade: E-]

  [Status Effects: N/A]

  [Race: Scourge Progenitor (Larva)]

  [Attributes: 2 STR, 3 DEX, 1 END, 1 PER, 1 INT, 0 CHA, 0 MYS]

  [Free Attribute Points: 0]

  [Health: 10 / 10]

  [Stamina: 80 / 80]

  [CEL: 1 / 1]

  [Biomass: 0]

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

  Ultimately Justin had to keep survival in mind before he could think about something as luxurious as specializing, that was why he had invested mostly in dex, which raised the stamina of the system user, and could make them more agile.

  It was odd, knowing that he was managing the system of someone, or something else, but that was precisely why he hadn’t invested in intelligence or endurance.

  Justin felt both those stats carried the risk of making the parasite in his brain healthier or more intelligent, and possibly subverting his own control. He didn’t understand the idea of the soul fully, so he couldn’t take the chance that the system was able to influence something like that, which Justin knew was more likely than not.

  So the spare points were spent mostly for the sake of strengthening the tentacles he had control over. They would make assimilation faster than it already was, which could be vital to him in a pinch. Though the cost of this was an increased burden on his body. No matter what he increased in the system menu, the parasite inside him would grow stronger, a problem he would have to address sooner rather than later given its innate physical superiority to his human body.

  Like voltas, daemon’s abilities were based around stats, however they didn’t have classes like voltas. Their relative strength worked entirely off of their innate racial attributes, and revolved around race evolutions instead of class promotions.

  Though as simple as that sounded, even then it could become more complex.

  Typically, voltas unlocked the ability to subclass after reaching the A grade, but for daemons it was different.

  He had heard of both unique evolutions occurring for some higher level daemons. Special bloodlines, or ones given a specific purpose even had access to strange powers, like taking on the abilities of elements or ideas. This could have been the path of the Herald’s progression had Justin’s team never arrived.

  His guild, Seventh Heaven, was only in the mid levels of strength in the galaxy though, and took on contracts belonging to the C grade or below. That made them giants around civilians, but his team had never come into contact with anything stronger than the upper realm of C+ on purpose. Seeing how their last contract turned out however, he realized even that hadn’t been cautious enough.

  Regardless, with the parasite’s racial characteristics, Justin could hardly guess what could happen in the future. For now though, he would just focus on remaining in control.

  “Hey, coming in…oh?”

  Just as he was paying attention to his system, he heard a noise from the front of the tent.

  Doctor Meyers was suddenly met with the focused gazes of Justin and the guard, who had turned in unison to assess him.

  “Uh…is that you Private Randall? Can’t really tell with your hat like that.”

  The doctor scratched his head. Thinking it odd perhaps that the soldier had on a hat from the medical tent instead of his helmet.

  “How’s our guest doing? Did the Major order you to take care of him or something? Speaking of which, where is Major Sark?”

  The Doctor looked around in confusion for a moment, before his gaze met with the pile of clothes on the floor. His expression suddenly drained.

  “Aren’t those…?”

  As he looked up, he caught the side of the guard’s head next to Justin, where a now-dried leakage of blood had clearly trickled from. It had been dripping from the hole in the side of the guard’s head, which Justin had carved to assimilate him. It was now covered by a hat, but he hadn’t had time yet to wipe off the blood stain.

  In combination, these two oddities made the doctor all too fretful for his own good, and he quickly turned white as a sheet as he thought of possible explanations.

  Just as he was beginning to back out of the tent slowly, the broad form of someone’s chest bumped him from behind.

  “Ah?! Captain Browne!”

  HOCAK!

  Doctor Meyers’ widened eyes rolled to the back of his head as he was impaled by a tendril coming from the Captain’s wrist. Before he could fall however, the guard quickly approached him from behind and stuck a swollen finger in his ear.

  His body writhed as it instinctively attempted to fight back against the insertion of the hive seedling, but ultimately the struggle was in vain.

  Like the rest of the tent’s occupants, his eyes finally glazed over to a pale yellow after a moment, and he slowly stood back up.

  ““““Alright…oh?””””

  The four men in the tent stopped speaking just as soon as they had started. Justin had accidentally spoken through all of his bodies, including the two in the comms tent.

  Yes, that was right. Justin had given the Captain’s body two seeds, one to implant within someone in the communications center of the encampment, which happened to be the tent the satellite was under, and one more for that person to implant within someone else.

  The other host had ended up being the Captain that had been spoken about, someone named Henderson. He had been slovenly and careless upon arriving at the tent, and his lazy nature had made it easy for the radio controller to gain the upper hand in assimilating him.

  Now Justin had access to the camp’s communications, and their medical supplies. All that was left was to take the armory. With two captains taken care of, out of the four total in the camp, each leading each company of 250 men, he had more than enough prepared to carry out the next step of his plan.