Sage didn’t stop there. He went back into metamorphosis a few more times experimenting with the body features of the Golden Cicada and how they could be incorporated with the mantis. Then he moved on with his experiments and merged with the egg from Elder Manji. The Cloud Swallowing Thunder Eel was a magnificent creature. It was unique among all the beasts and insects that Sage had encountered so far in that it was the first with an immaterial body.

The Wind Elemental did not have a solid body either, but it was an elemental, not a Demonic Beast. While immaterial beasts weren’t impossible, they were certainly rare and the Cloud Swallowing Thunder Eel was the only one Sage had encountered so far. He’d always been eager to see if this sort of thing would work in the past, but the first egg he got from Manji had been stolen by that witch Hei Bai. He’d gone into constant battles after that and then when he saw Manji again he was getting married and didn’t want to delay things by a year when he was transforming. He had a chance more recently when raising his family, but he didn’t want to be vulnerable for so long. Now that his whole family was no longer beholden to him for protection he finally felt secure enough to perform these experiments.

The end result was both wonderful and disappointing at the same time. The Cloud Swallowing Thunder Eel could remain insubstantial at all times, with a body of living lighting. The downside was that if Sage wished to do the same, he would have to take the form of a complete Cloud Swallowing Thunder Eel. The shape of its body and the strength of its different features formed a very delicate balance to sustain this ability. If Sage wanted to change anything about it’s body then the ability to constantly remain in energy form would be lost. On the plus side, Sage only had to take a few parts of the Eel in order to gain a temporary lightning form. It was a far cry from a permanent lightning body, but it was also a very powerful addition to all the other abilities he’d collected so far.

He went through the metamorphosis process a dozen times testing out various forms and their effects upon the lightning body. Then he moved on to the final egg, which was the one from Sage’s true body on the outside world. The Genesis Spider and the Sea Locust bloodlines were pulled into his body along with a very deep and powerful bloodline. The Genesis Spider was not a newborn like most of the creatures he merged with, and it also wasn’t just a Spirit Insect. It was a true Demonic Insect, the first that Sage combined with and that made for a body many times more powerful than before. The process took much longer than usual and the cocoon grew many times in size. This wasn’t the first time that Sage saw a correlation between size and strength. He hypothesized it was something to do with quality. Unless a creature could improve its innate quality, there was only a certain amount of ‘power’ it could fit in its body and it would have to keep getting bigger to keep progressing.

So, if I could find a really small creature that is as strong as a Nascent Soul it would be of much higher quality then these beasts of equal strength that are the size of hills.

With some examination and comparison, Sage realized that he’d already found what he was looking for, sort of. The Golden Cicada was also a Demonic Insect, and when a bonded owner broke into the 6th rank it came along for the ride and fused with them. The Golden Cicada was more of a support type of creature, but its ability was extremely unusual and definitely a decent example. He was just looking for one that was aimed towards combat strength rather than a special ability.

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Merging with the third egg then led to a dozen more attempts at a new body until Sage finally settled upon something he liked. His criteria were many, but he prioritized a body that was as similar to that of the Jade Sky Mantis as possible in order to maintain as much compatibility as he could. With some testing, he found that the best way to do this was to keep the same basic body shape and meridian pathways as the Jade Sky Mantis. He also chose to keep the other matching organs and abilities as similar as possible. This way, his body was much like a Jade Sky Mantis except with a few additional organs, limbs and exterior pieces, and at a much larger size.

This new body of his no longer looked like a slim and deadly assassin, but a thick and heavily armored warrior. The long and thin thorax and abdomen of the Mantis were both blown up to larger and thicker proportions. Especially the abdomen, the lower body, of the mantis was segmented and resembled a lobster tail. Laying atop the long tail were two sets of folded cicada wings, rather than the one pair and cover that mantids and beetles have. Some of that extra space in the tail was devoted to powerful muscles for locomotion, some for spinnerets, while the remainder was actually an expanding reservoir for the fluid power system. It was a similar story for the thorax, as the chest area had to be enlarged to accommodate the fluid power system outside of the mantis’ other body functions. There were also a few extra organs he had to add on from the Cloud Swallowing Thunder Eel, and the result was a thicker and larger Mantis. Without its stick-like form, this new body was far from being an ambush hunter anymore, but Sage was no insect who cared only about hunting for food so he didn’t care about the ‘optimization’ of the original mantis form.

This new body also had the large tri-sectioned eyes of the Sea Locust as the Jade Sky Mantis did, but it also had six other smaller eyes. A normal mantis had three smaller eyes in addition to its large hunting eyes that were only used to sense light and darkness, but he added extra eyes to push it up to the eight total that his spider body had. Aside from the large uncovered wings, the other large departure was the inclusion of an extra set of legs. A mantis had six limbs, the two large forearms along with four legs for walking. The Genesis Spider had eight legs, and Sage felt a similarity with the Sea Locust. The new body had two large forelimbs and three pairs of legs. The most eye-catching thing was this new body’s brilliant golden carapace along with its immense size. It was quite a bit smaller than the small mountain that was the Genesis Spider, but it was many times larger than the Jade Sky Mantis. His new body was only half a city block rather than the two full blocks of his prior body.

The new body was somewhat against the rules he’d established before to focus on only a few key features, but he chose to give that up because of the Lang Clan and their mantis bodies. He changed his rule to be only a few key features added onto the default of the Jade Sky Mantis. It was definitely more muddled, but he chose to treat himself as a test bed. In the future, the best of the Lang Clan could be upgraded to match him. With that in mind he was going to find the perfect upgraded body through trial and error.