The clearing was unusual, or rather it was not exactly normal, but nothing too exciting by the standards of most forests in the world of Eria. Yellowed grass gave way to a large field of delicate and plump mushrooms, interspersed with a few hardy purple flowers. Near the edge of the clearing lay a rotted tree that hosted a hive of honey bees, and at the center of the clearing, there was a crack in the earth. In said crack resided a lesser monster that the locals called a Thrall-Maker Spider, a spider that wove few webs but had the uncanny ability to dominate small animals to serve its will.

For instance, say a colony of bees could be dominated and made to serve as a security force for the Spider's territory. Swarming any bear or boar that could serve as a potential threat. Said hypothetical Spider could also build its lair beneath a field of highly toxic mushrooms. Choke Spore Mushrooms specifically, anything less dexterous than a spider would struggle to navigate through the field without causing the fungi to burst and release clouds of toxic spores. Sadly, these rather clever defenses did not account for hyper magical objects falling from the sky.

This is what the Conquest Seed did as it smashed through the trees and hit the exact center of the clearing. Along with this rather shocking arrival, a lot of highly complicated but also rather simple things happened at the same time as the Seed smashed into the ground.

* Error: Unstabilized Conquest Seed, activating Adopt Focus

* Adopt Focus: A single-use power that lets a Conquest Seed define its nature and destiny using the existing magic of the reality it has chosen to subjugate.

When the Seed hit the forest floor, every single Choke Spore mushroom exploded to release their deadly clouds, but they were instantly smothered as the Seed liquified itself upon contact with the ground. In a moment the entire clearing became coated in the slime of liquified metal and flesh that the Seed became. The Thrall-Maker Spider didn't even have time to flee or call its dominated hive of bees into service as the entire Hive had been drowned in moments and the spider was soon absorbed into the mass as the slime that ended up underground became hardened cables that pulled it into the undulating bio-mechanical mass.

* Warning: Minimal Mana Concentration Found within the chosen Focus Sources. Automatic sacrifice of Apocalyptic Rank to compensate!

* Thrall-Maker Spider: Webs, Domination, Predation. Low-Ranked Monster

* Choke Spore Mushrooms: Poison, Decomposition, Network. Barely Magical Fungi.

* The Common Honey Bee: Fertility, Social, Production. Non-Magical Fauna

* Grave Blossoms: Survival, Scavenging, Growth. Barely Magical Flora

* New Focus Created: Sovereign Swarm

* Power: Adopt Focus: A single-use power that lets a Conquest Seed define its nature and destiny using the existing magic of the reality it has chosen to subjugate.: Has been Lost

* Trait: Apocalyptic Potential: The Infinite Potential of Conquest and the End concentrated into a singular existence.: Has been Lost

* Trait: Reality Resistant: Innate Resistance to the Antibodies of Dimensional Membranes.: Has been Lost

* Trait: Quantum Biology: The Conquest Seed's Biology is whatever it needs to be.: Has been Lost

* Title: Conquest Seed: A Seed that carries the power of an Apocalypse.: Has Been Lost

* New Trait: Bio-Mechanical Swarm: You are an unholy combination of fungi, flora, and fauna that has been crossed with transcendent machinery. You are immune to magic solely meant to interact with only one of your component forms of life.: Has been Gained

* New Trait: Adaptive: Your Swarm grows and changes like life itself guided by the mechanical precision of technology. You may alter 1 + Rank + Tier worth of units per day within the scope of your swarm's capabilities. Swarm Units have a basic sense of self-preservation.: Has been Gained

* New Trait: Non-Centralized Lifeform: You are a single existence no longer. To destroy you the entire swarm must be destroyed with you. You can be reconstituted from something as insignificant as a single Unit.: Has been Gained

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* New Power: Infection: Through attacks, you can infect living beings with: Swarm Toxin, Swarm Toxin converts the life form into a Swarm Unit given enough time.: Has been Gained

* New Power: Reinforce Unit: You can reinforce a Unit against physical damage for a time.: Has been Gained

* New Power: Toxic Cloud: This attack power can be used through Swarm Units to unleash clouds of fungal-floral spores.: Has been Gained

* Title: Sovereign Swarm: You are the Swarm of Dominion, all that is not you will become you or bow before you. All life exists to feed you and become part of your glorious majesty. This title cannot be removed, only altered.: Has been Gained.

The onslaught of notifications hit the mind of the Sovereign Swarm like a freight train, a concept which it didn't even bother to try to consider why it had been thought of. The Sovereign Swarm reeled from all of this information which in some cases it barely understood, all the while it could feel its body changing as it consumed all life in the clearing. The Swarm felt how the last remnants of its slime sank through the roots of the flowers and the mycelium of the Mushrooms. The withered grass and the released toxic spores were instantly consumed to serve as biomass for its ongoing transformation. Same with the myriad of lesser bugs and mollusks in the earth of the clearing, none of them were present enough to have been included when Adopt Focus was activated.

When all life in the clearing had been consumed, then the real transformation began as the Sovereign Swarm felt its mind divide as the liquid mass began to harden and separate. It was not a hard divide in the sense of a split, but more like her mind divided and then immediately started holding hands. Her? Before that thought could be explored the first of its new bodies emerged as the bio-mechanical slime shaped itself into a significantly larger spider than the Thrall-Maker.

The spider was about the size of a warhorse but that is where the normality ended. The tips of the spider legs were hardened metal which made loud clicking noises as the spider shook of the remnant bio slime and stepped onto the barren soil of the clearing. The eyes of the spider glowed with a malevolent crimson color, which helped disguise the fact that half of the eyes weren't eyes at all but camera lenses. Several plump toadstools stood out of the back of the spider, and its underbelly had a hidden layer of plant vines underneath the chitin. The Spider was largely the color of mercury interspersed with purple dots and the cap of the mushroom was a sickly green color.

Next came the bees, their once vibrant yellow color now replaced with a duller more greyish yellow. Thousands of bees flew out of the undulating mass as more and more of the initial swarm became defined. Each individual bee had a growing fungal spore sack within its chitin, and a web sack in addition to the stinger. The stingers of the bees had also been outfitted with an extra metallic reinforcer, but compared to the spider their alterations had been relatively limited beyond that. No Queen or Drone came out with the Swarm, they all seemed to be the same uniform worker bee.

After the bees had fully disentangled themselves from the undulating mass, then the remainder of it sank into the earth to expand and enhance itself into a network of roots and mycelium stretching throughout the entire clearing. The hybrid roots had small flagella and an increased elasticity that let the swarm stretch and dig through the earth at an accelerated pace. In time the swarm could feel that there would be flowers and mushrooms growing out of the ground where it's influence touched.

When the entire transformation was done and all remnants of the Conquest Seed had been consumed to create the Sovereign Swarm, the clearing ended up being rather eerily silent. Aside from the buzzing of thousands of bees flying in a circle that is and the quiet intakes of breath coming from the massive spider standing in the center of the swarm.