//Writing Soundtrack - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGvCbBgWtJ8 / Shelter From The Storm 2022 Remake (The Stupendium)
When I finally woke up again, still sore like crazy and feeling unable to walk, I saw three identical [Hexclaw Hatchlings] stand next to me, watching me. If it wasn’t for my own mental connection to each of them I would have mixed them up immediately.
I had named the two new additions Beta and Gamma. Not that they seemed to care much for names, but it helped me be more comfortable with the situation.
Of course I hadn’t been entirely unconscious as I slept, since I had simply watched them through their own eyes, but it still felt like I was only truly there when I was in my own body.
“Well?”, I asked, grumbling, as I tried to get up on legs that felt like they shouldn’t obey me. The fact that I was still only sore after pushing two Eggs out was a miracle. And worst of all, while the trauma was definitely there, the feeling of laying them wasn’t actually too discomforting. In fact, I had found myself enjoying it somewhat. That had creeped me the hell out. Was I turning into an egg laying fetishist?
I quickly stepped away from that train of thought, entirely uninterested in the answer.
“We have gathered everything on this level and the level below. We still do not understand why we should not take the corpses. That is a lot of Biomass to just leave laying around”, Alpha said. She had kind of become the spokesperson for the Hive.
“Just… Don’t, okay? You don’t need to understand it, just follow the rules”, I said, not in the mood to explain myself.
The three Hatchlings nodded. Then they stared at me. I took it for about a minute before I growled, “Okay. You go and scout out the rest of the ship while I eat the pile you brought me.”
With that I sat down and began to eat all of the stuff they brought me.
What I hadn’t realised before was that the more I ate of something the better my intrinsic understanding of it became. By this point I could just about magic up all the silicone I needed once I finished today’s pile of stuff.
While I wouldn’t want to eat stuff I created myself, it would be nice for them to be able to get the materials they needed without needing to raid the entire base or whatever this place was. Especially if the Hive grew larger.
And so a few days went by with them scouring the ship clean and me eating. And eating. And eating. By the end of it I could reproduce pretty much every material that was present in this ship with my magic.
What I hadn’t really paid much attention to was the evolution requirements and as it turns out, none of them had made even a fraction of progress. They did fully adapt their skills, as did I by this point, but they didn’t make any progress to the next evolution. Since all of them had chosen [Hexclaw Fighter] they needed to fight to get there. At first I thought Alpha would go with [Hexclaw Worker] to get to the [Hexclaw Hive Princess] but as it turned out, that can be reached by any basic Hexclaw Evolution Path. And they wanted to protect me. I had to admit, that did kind of endear them to me a little.
Anyways. I hadn’t gotten in the habit of checking my status regularly, so it came as a kind of surprise that after three days a notification popped up.
Alert: Subject [Antimatter Hexclaw] NULL has fully adapted and finalised Skill formation.
Of course I immediately opened my Status to check my Skills.
NULL
Tier: 3
Species: Hexclaw Swarm Intelligence
Evolution Path: [Antimatter Hexclaw]
Cybernetic Enhancements: [ERROR], Unknown
Antimatter Hexclaw
Born from energy made physical, the Antimatter Hexclaw is a rare and dangerous species, capable of reshaping reality to their will and creating things out of nothing. Physically resilient, although not especially strong, their strength lay in their Creation and Antimatter Magick, as well as their high intelligence.
NULL diagnosis:
Level: 1
Physical Adaptation: 100.0%
Mental Adaptation: 100.0%
Cybernetic Adaptation: 100.0%
Skills:
[Universal Language Adaptation]: Enables you to understand any spoken and written language, although speaking them may take time to adapt to, depending on your vocal organs.
[Manasight]: Enables you to see Mana.
[Resilience to the Matter]: You were reborn from the energy that makes all with a greater understanding of how it works. You have increased resilience towards anything made from matter.
[The Heart of the Matter]: At the Heart of all lives energy. You were there when it remade you, now you can use those processes to remake yourself given time. You have increased regeneration as long as you are in a physical reality.
[Understanding of the Matter]: Live and Death, energy and matter, all things must exist in balance. You have seen what can happen when that balance shifts. Enables the use of magick in the Matter and Antimatter Categories.
[Taking Control of the Matter]: You were reborn from the fundamentals of existence and have the knowledge and wisdom to use it. Creation is but a thought away and given time reality will bend to your will. Enables creation of matter and antimatter at will.
[Matter of Storage]: From matter to energy, from energy to matter. You have learned to do both, enabling you to store vast amounts of things as information in the energy around you. You have your own storage space. Any item stored there will be saved as information, being rebuilt the exact same way once you withdraw it.
[Chosen Prime]: The Hive has decided. You are the Prime, the ultimate authority and the only priority. You were not born this way, but you adapted to it. You have full authority over your Hive and nothing can change that. For the multitude. For the Hive.
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[Wisdom of Life and Death]: Awoken in an unfamiliar body, in the middle of a place you do not recognise, you find yourself unsure of reality. Yet, this is but the beginning. You have faced your demise and pulled through. In time all will make sense, and you know how to survive long enough to have the time necessary.
[Self-Enhancement]: With understanding comes wisdom, with wisdom knowledge. You have gathered enough knowledge about the materials around you to enhance your own body. Enables creation of Cybernetic Enhancements in your own body.
Alert: Insufficient information on [ERROR]. Use at your own risk!
I couldn’t help but whistle. While I haven’t gotten as many Skills as I thought I would have from the structure so far, what I did get was amazing. [Self-Enhancement] alone was worth it, but with [Matter of Storage] I could do so much more now.
There was something that irked me a little, however. While [Chosen Prime] kind of said that I didn’t have to fear losing control of the Hive, the last part of it felt ominous. For the multitude. For the Hive. It had a definite bad omen vibe to it.
For the moment I put it aside. I couldn’t do anything about it anyways and I felt it was finally time to do more than sit around and eat.
My three Hatchlings had all gotten the same Skills between them, outside of Alpha who got one additional Skill, [Liaison] which she said might be a prelude to the authority Skills that a [Hexclaw Hive Princess] will gain.
Anyways, it was time to move. I didn’t know any of the upgrades I could do, outside of storage, so I planned to do that later. For now I wanted to explore the complex we were in, mostly so that my three Hatchlings could evolve.
None of us had left the ship ever since I came aboard, but now it was finally time. With myself in the lead we made our way downstairs to the exit and then climbed down the side, until we reached the ground.
The three hatchlings immediately saw the corpse of the [Progenitor Hexclaw], but they didn’t approach. Honestly, I didn’t really care if they ate that one, since it wasn’t human, but I didn’t push them either.
I kind of felt like a duck with her ducklings, since the Hatchlings were only about a metre tall by this point. They would grow a little taller eventually, but I doubt they would eclipse me. I did make them as small as possible after all. And honestly, I would probably die if I didn’t. This body wasn’t exactly made to give birth to giants.
We made our way carefully through the giant room, or maybe I should call it a hangar. Once we reached the door through which I entered originally the three Hatchlings immediately took point, walking ahead of me.
Only when we reached the locked door at the end of the following hallway did they let me step forward, and I touched the door once more. Again I got the same alert as the very first time I interacted with anything, and again I gave my mental assent.
The door opened slowly, the Hatchlings immediately pushing me behind them, and we all peaked through the growing slit of the opening door.
The room behind was mostly unchanged, although the opposite door was utterly destroyed and there were tracks of something big running around the room. I had a general idea of what had made those tracks and while I haven’t seen it directly, the indent it had left in the door it smashed through had me more than willing not to change that anytime soon.
“Be careful. Whatever that was is most likely still around somewhere”, I whispered to my Hatchlings, who just listened and looked around.
Once the door had opened sufficiently we stepped through, the Hatchlings once more taking point. It wasn’t a bad idea either, since they were the ones that needed to level. Not that I had made much progress levelwise, but I was Tier 3 while they were still Tier 1.
We walked through the room, noting the changes in more detail. The remains of the Egg were gone, and it looked like they had been eaten. The rest of the room was much the same, although in a little more disarray than before. It seemed that whatever decided to barge in here wasn’t big on cultural heritage.
We walked slowly and carefully. I didn’t think whatever came in here would be easily overlooked, but one could never be too cautious. And truth be told I was almost shitting myself with fear at this point. I had never been a courageous guy, or girl now I guess, and this was getting uncomfortably close to real life horror stories. And I hated horror stories.
The thought of one of those things sneaking up on me and jumping me was enough to give me a heart attack and I didn’t fancy the idea of dying so soon after I just skipped out on the first death.
My hatchlings couldn’t care less about anything going on it seemed like. They didn’t show any signs of fear nor concern, outside of their concern for my safety of course. It made me feel… a little weird. Almost like… motherly pride? Okay, okay, this is getting hella weird, snap out of it, idiot!
Shaking my head to calm my nerves, not that it helped in any way, we continued until we were in the middle of the room. I had no plans to go through the busted-in door and see if we could find whoever was responsible for it being busted-in, so I decided to walk over to the third door.
Of course it didn’t have power, so I touched it and hoped that [ERROR] would do its usual. Which of course it did. The alert message was the same as with the other door and part of me thought I’d slowly get used to it by now, as I mentally assented and the door opened, as painfully slow as the other had been.
Eventually we could step through, Alpha taking point while Beta and Gamma remained behind me until the door closed behind us.
We found ourselves in another hallway, same style as before, although this one was in a little worse state than even the one with half a starship rammed through it.
It had collapsed about a hundred metres in, leaving only one other door accessible. It was far less fancy than even the normal storage room doors and had big letters and a few symbols on it. After a moment of looking at it I was able to read it thanks to my wonderful translation skill.
WARNING: Industrial Fabrication Area. Access for Authorised Staff only!
Huh. Well, Industrial Fabrication Area sounded like something with lots of resources, and since we didn’t really have anywhere else to go, not unless we wanted to walk straight into the lion’s den, I decided to check it out. Touching the panel of the door produced the same alert message as usual and after my mental assent the door hissed open much quicker than the other doors have moved so far.
Inside was another hallway, much less fancy and much more utilitarian, with dozens of pipes, cables, and whatever else lining the walls which led in a gentle downwards slope to a giant ass room easily the size of the hangar, although by far not as tall.
All around the walls were a multitude of machines, probably some form of fabricator, industrial oven, or what-have-you necessary to create stuff. In the middle was a giant block of metal and optoelectronics, probably a Computer of some kind. Of course everything was shut down and in darkness, not that it mattered much for us.
My three Hatchlings fanned out, examining the room in more detail, while I walked towards the giant Computer block in the middle, curious as to what function it had. In front of it, at normal human working height, was a big control area with lots of panels, buttons, touch screens, and whatever else control modules necessary to run the place. It reminded me a little of the videos I’ve seen from nuclear power plants control rooms.
Touching the biggest touchscreen produced another notification.
Alert: Computer Module has lost all power. Reactivate the power grid to reinstate normal Computer functionality.
Alert: Insufficient mana to reinstate permanent functionality.
Alert: Sufficient mana to reinstate temporary functionality.
Alert: Functional AI Core found.
Alert: Use [ERROR] to initiate contact?
Y / N
This was new. An AI core? That could be helpful, since I really don’t know of anything here. The Hive-Mind knows a little, but by far not enough.
After weighing my options for a moment I mentally assented.
Alert: Fabrication and Administration Intelligence Orion-501 reactivated.
Alert: Fabrication and Administration Intelligence Orion-501 functionality reliant on [ERROR].
I waited for a moment, not sure what to expect, when something rang in my head. It wasn’t words, more like a string of information that I had no idea how to understand.
“Ah. I apologise, I was unfamiliar with the hardware. I would not have thought to be running on meatware, therefore I haven’t introduced myself in a proper language. My name is Orion-501, Fabrication and Administration Intelligence. How may I be of service to you?”