[Level: 9]

  [Grade: E-]

  [Status Effects: Overheating, Enervation]

  [Race: Scourge Progenitor (Larva)]

  [Attributes: 13 STR, 6 DEX, 1 END, 5 PER, 1 INT, 0 CHA, 0 MYS]

  [Free Attribute Points: 0]

  [Health: 10 / 10]

  [Stamina: 110 / 110]

  [CEL: 2 / 2]

  [Biomass: 837]

  [Alpha Hive Capacity: 500 / 500]

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

  After a few days into the desert, Justin’s condition had eventually deteriorated to a point he was forced to look at his system screen for answers.

  Wiping a stream of sweat from his face, he looked at the status effect window for answers.

  ‘It’s gotten to this point? What am I, a popsicle? It can’t be more than ninety degrees in this desert. Has my body become that sensitive to temperature?’

  Justin closed the window, not seeing any opportunities to improve his condition.

  He had only leveled up once in the past few days, which had come as a bit of a surprise. Not from the level itself, but how slow experience gathering had become. He wasn’t being ungrateful, he realized that his speed of leveling on the first day had been blinding, but to see the experience dry up so quickly in the following days was unavoidably disappointing.

  He knew that he had a way around that, if need be. Simply by casting off bits of the hive and assimilating the rest of the survivors he could push himself to level ten, the touchstone for Voltas to choose their first class and daemons to undergo their first evolution, but there was no point at the moment.

  [Stage Quest: Assimilate at least (2) hosts from distinct suitable species.]

  [Time Left: 4:13:51:07]

  [Progress: 1 / 2]

  [Completion Reward: 5,000 Biomass]

  [Punishment for Failure: Level Lock]

  Even if he hit level ten in the next moment, he still wouldn't be able to evolve until he finished this damned stage quest.

  ‘Is this even possible? I won’t even reach the next city by that time, and I’ve already taken the natives that will be there as hosts. Unless there’s a second sapient species working within the civilization we missed, I’m screwed.’

  Justin wiped a film of sweat from his face as he thought of the possible solutions. In truth, it was harder than he would have thought to arrive at an answer, as even though he had the brains of five hundred individuals under his control, it was the seeds within them he was directly connected to, not the brains. While that might’ve seemed like a minor difference, it meant that he couldn’t use his assimilated hive to boost his own faculties, at least for the moment. For the moment the only thing they offered was their labor.

  Finally, the solution presented itself. Not from Justin’s musings, but when one of the soldiers at the forefront of the congregation suddenly caught sight of a movement up above.

  Below the mountainline in the horizon, a dried up river bed had once cut through the rocks and flowed all the way out here. It was long dead now, but within it, a surge of life was present.

  Justin’s body convulsed, half from the heat, half from excitement, as more and more soldiers arrived at the edge of the dried basin to give him their visual on it.

  ‘If that’s what I think it is…yes, a mutant beast! If it's all the way out here, I must be closer to the end of the desert than I thought!’

  The Jejune still stretched far beyond the horizon, its flat expanse allowing the hive to see the mountains beyond its reach, but Justin hadn’t considered if there was anything between the two.

  ‘Something that a river might originate from in a dry climate. Has the ocean cut thorough the mountains? No, remnants of the salt would have been deposited in the basin. A lake? Not likely either given how far this river has drifted out over flat land. I can’t imagine anything with the force to push it so far. Hmm…’

  Justin chewed on the details with the expertise of a mercenary who had been through plenty of investigations. Even when it wasn’t directly related to his situation, parts of his past job still bled through into his thoughts.

  Frankly, there wasn’t any natural biome that fit these circumstances. The real variable was the flat desert the stream had cut through. Given any typical ecosystem, water would always find the easiest way to travel, but there were exceptions on planets with atypical phenomena that influenced the environment.

  ‘It could be related to that.’

  Hundreds of soldiers fixed their eyes on the sole occupant of the basin.

  It was a mutant beast, as it was called, and Justin’s first time seeing one. The creature resembled a large disfigured arachnid, with a column of flexible hardened plates that came up and around in a curve. It gave it a tall but menacing build like a raptor, albeit with eight armored legs.

  From its head to its barbed tail, it most resembled a scorpion, though its large pincers that came around on each side evoked the resemblance of a deep sea creature. Given all of that and its size comparable to the male natives, Justin had to reconsider his previously-thought threat assessment of Lemus IV’s beasts.

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  Justin had fought daemons on dozens of planets throughout his career, but he had rarely seen anything like the creature below on a planet unacclimatized to the system. Without its interference how had such creatures even developed to this point?

  ‘A question for Harriet.’

  Justin sighed just as the four beady eyes of the beast started to move.

  Once it started to take in the silhouettes of figures cresting above the basin’s edge, the hundreds of soldiers moving to circle around it on all sides, its limbs rapidly shook off the stone dust caking it and spun to turn itself around.

  At once, it attempted to bolt out of there after seeing it was outnumbered.

  ‘Shit! I thought it’d stay and fight. Don’t tell me this thing made a rational decision!’

  With a near-instantaneous mental signal, Justin commanded all of the soldiers around the basin to chase after it.

  While a minority was left behind to keep their weapons trained on the captive survivors, Justin followed the mass of his hive down the slopes of the basin as they raced after the scorpion beast.

  SCREEEEE!

  He frowned at the shrill cry of the beast as the group took potshots at the beast’s natural armor-plates.

  Despite its protests, most of the bullets were harmlessly deflected off, while the armor-piercing rounds fired by the snipers from a distance only broke small fragments off of its carapace.

  Justin extended a hand to his side. Diverting his will into the tentacles there, they exploded outward and firmly clasped around a soldier at his side. Justin reeled back from his heightened position and swiped forward with all his weight. With a crack through the air he catapulted the hive worker in the direction of the beast.

  DONK!

  SCREEEEEEE

  ‘Ha! That slowed it down, next I’ll….oh shit.’

  Justin’s elation at having briefly held back the creature vanished as the assimilated soldier in question was pierced by the beast’s stinger. Before he could blink, the man exploded in a shower of sizzling gore.

  His affected remains in turn, killing many other soldiers that had been nearby who were merely touched by the venom on their skin.

  ‘Damn!’

  Digging the soldier’s below him into the ground with a cloud of dust, Justin immediately stopped following with his main body. Still, he commanded the charging hive to continue.

  The Origin’s tentacles were tough, and had the capacity to break through thick armor if the Herald had been any example, but if the mutant scorpion’s venom was at such a potency, he didn’t want to risk entangling with it directly.

  His system abilities gave him a strategic edge over any natural-born creature on Lemus, but in terms of pure strength, he now knew was still far from being an opponent to many.

  “Ah!”

  Justin couldn’t help but let out a groan during the chase, as a searing pain suddenly washed over his body.

  [Health: 9 / 10]

  ‘What? But I’m so far away? Don’t tell me it's because I’ve lost some of the hive soldiers?’

  No, that wasn’t it, Justin realized as he found the cause for his sudden pain.

  The effects of overheating and enervation, an effect similar to fatigue, were still being shown in his system screen.

  For some reason, whatever was causing him to overheat hadn’t gone away. Instead his ailment had progressed to the point where he was starting to take damage, and Justin couldn’t wait for another searing flash to figure out why.

  ‘I need to focus on the beast right now. Assimilating it could give me the chance to figure out why this is happening.’

  Was it another symptom of his connection with the parasite? Justin wouldn’t be able to investigate if it was. All he could do right now was focus on coordinating the soldiers’ movements from afar, directing them carefully to avoid attacks from the beast’s stinger, while also avoiding the puddles of lethal remains its venom had left in its wake.

  Carelessly spending rounds from afar had been useless, but as the hive had gotten closer to it that became a different story.

  Eventually after throwing enough of the hive’s dispensable members at it, he had slowed down the creature enough to succeed in an encirclement this time.

  After chasing it through the desert for more than ten minutes, it finally had nowhere to run.

  SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

  Justin waited with cold patience as hundreds of bullets from rifles and LMGs rained down on the exoskeleton of the beast every second, beating its body ever deeper against the stone ground of the desert. He didn’t want it dead. Just weak enough for a seedling to be able to get inside.

  ‘Hopefully, this thing will fulfill the quest requirement.’

  Eventually, the mutant beast lost the ability to avoid most of the machine gun fire. Then it lost the ability to use its legs completely, rendering it a sitting duck.

  Justin frowned at this, but was more concerned with fulfilling the vital requirement of his quest than having something useful afterward. So the barrage continued under his measured focus.

  After losing its mobility, eventually the cracked exoskeleton of the beast gave way under the stress. Large pieces and chunks began to fly off, which exposed spongy and vascular muscles.

  Again, Justin didn’t want to actually kill it, so he withheld some of the gunfire at that point.

  Still, it was too dangerous to approach the beast himself when he hadn’t determined its capacity to resist yet, so he loaded another member of the hive with a seed, a soldier who had just been assimilated from the ever-decreasing reserve of survivors and who had a low rank.

  This made him quite the dispensable piece, so in short order he was sent down into the river basin that the creature had followed during the pursuit.

  As the young member of the hive approached with dead-yellow eyes, the beast’s own quickly darted to regard it. The heaving movements of its body had become slow, dulled by the bluntness of pain, and its breaths heard somewhere beneath the remains of its chitin armor were labored.

  Justin’s mind guided the movements of the soldier's arm forward and pressed it against one of the beast’s eyes that had been punctured by a lead round. A squirming grub soon emerged from the flesh of the palm, burrowing into the hole in the scorpion’s head.

  Obviously, that was a step too far for the beast to take, as it quickly started to writhe, emitting a high-frequency screech that was louder than anything Justin had heard so far.

  SHREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!

  ‘AH!’

  [Health: 8 / 10]

  The Origin within Justin squirmed for the first time as it took damage in unison with the beast’s cry. Though Justin’s own vision swam, his own mind was focused on the matter of the scorpion.

  Though he had to strain to look out from his main body, as his focus had briefly been retracted away from the hive.

  Whatever game the beast had been trying to play, perhaps feigning a weakened state before it struck back, had clearly been blown back into its face the moment it felt the seedling parasite enter its skull.

  With a muscular spasm, it punched a hole through the responsible soldier’s face with its stinger, showering the closest soldiers in liquid death(1).

  Justin watched anxiously as the beast emerged off of its legs he had thought were immobile.