[Bonus Chapter #1 for meeting powerstone goals last week. 1 more to be released over the week]

The Collector, now in privacy, shaped its Command Chamber. It shaped it exactly accordingly to how it would look in a typical Vanguard unit. This cavern hallway was already in its isolated dimension that used the center of the Vanguard as a physical anchor, though even if one destroyed that anchor, this dimension would still exist.

First, the structure of this hallway had to change.

The Collector stomped its foot, sending out threads of its mana into the ground. The hallway changed its structure into a spherical room, its ceiling and walls morphing and shifting in a nearly fluid efficiency. The walls became more organic in texture, turning into dark, ribbed flesh filled with pores and glands that filtered oxygen and occasionally emitted bursts of steamed healing water. 

The ground underneath the Collector broke apart and opened up, and atop an upraised platform of clawed black flesh was an enormous orb of pure glowing white. The orb was several times larger than the Collector, easily ten meters in diameter, and though it was once pure mana, it now had a solid structure.

It was as if one had taken all that magical energy, that flickering, crackling, chaotic mass, and placed it within a glass container. Veins and tendrils from the flesh platform holding the orb attached to the core, fully linking it to the rest of the Vanguard Fortress.

The veins and tendrils glowed white as energy from the core flowed into it, spreading throughout the walls of the spherical room, lighting up a webwork of veins laden inside the fleshy walls with bright white.

Now, the core was fully linked to the Fortress Vanguard, powering its functions.

It now time for the Collector to interface with the core. It floated upwards, hovering right above the glowing white orb, and then sunk into it. As its feet approached the core, flesh tendrils wrapping around it unlatched and tangled around the Collector’s form, fusing into its own biomass until it was integrated within the orb itself.

Its legs were now gone, replaced by the orb, leaving only its upper body exposed. All of its veins lit up with white energy that shone through its carapace. A few blood vessels popped, and some areas of the Collector’s carapace began to crack as it attempted to process the burdensome psionic load of controlling such a vast unit.

The Collector had, however, accounted for this. Healing water pooled into the spherical room from flesh tubes, and soon enough, the entire space was submerged, nourishing the Collector, preventing its body from breaking down and keeping its neurons in stable condition, essentially preventing it from mentally and physically ‘overheating’.

Now, the Collector was integrated as a Dominator class Collector would be with a proper Vanguard unit, though of course, at a far smaller scale. For the first time, the Collector could think in terms of respecting the sheer psionic power of its Dominator class brethren that could handle Vanguards more than ten times this size, operating the deployment of warp gates, millions of combat units, evolutions, unit creation, combat, defense, and more.

Beforehand, the Collector had simply thought in terms of function. It was adapted to fight, and the Dominators were adapted to control. That was that. There was no ‘respect’ to be given for functions that simply were.

The Collector took its implanted memories of its Dominator brethren and utilized them as a basis for which to strive for.

The Collector’s consciousness was now melded in the Fortress Vanguard, allowing it to monitor the insides and outsides of the enormous unit. There were several bulbous eyes that the Fortress Vanguard could spontaneously generate on its outer shell from which the Collector could obtain visuals of the outsides, and for now, it saw that the Fortress Vanguard was properly floating in the air, and judging from its perspective, its physical dimensions were relatively accurate according to the Collector’s calculations.

Five thousand three hundred and fifty meters in diameter (5350 meters) though the Fortress Vanguard was more of a half sphere, its lower half comprised of lengthy tendrils that did not have carrying capacity for troops. These tendrils were used primarily for mobility, ejecting streams of magical energy, but they could fire beams of ice or force or be used as interactive appendages from which to harvest raw material and even biomass.

The vanguard unit possessed an enormous, beak-like set of jaws that led into a destructive digestive system that could break things down into base materials and funnel them into different storage centers for varying purposes.

Biomass for the evolution chambers. Raw materials for the golems. And so on.

Agreeable, thought the Collector. The Fortress Vanguard’s physical dimensions were correct and it had no defects to speak of. It moved according to the Collector’s will and already, it began harvesting, latching onto a nearby mountain head and breaking apart tons of rock and vacuuming it in with its sizable maw.

The Collector could not stay here long, especially not with the enormous surge of magical energy it had unleashed to create this unit, but the short time it was here, it would still use to gather raw materials when it could.

Meanwhile, the Collector simultaneously projected its consciousness into the holding bay where the swarm was. An eye sprouted from the ceiling of dark blue flesh lined with mana crystals for lighting. Through this eye, it saw the swarm was looking around in wonder, tentatively touching the walls of coiled flesh or looking at the living ground that pulsated with veins.

“Do not remain too idle,” said the Collector, its voice projecting through the innards of the Fortress Vanguard. “This Fortress Vanguard will provide you with protection, but it does not guarantee your lives. Now, with my core Overloaded, the risk is even higher that any fatal wound you sustain cannot be restored.

I will now transmit information to the carrier unit for he possesses the greatest psionic potential and closest link to me. Carrier unit, follow the mental directions I grant you to the nearest Evolution Chamber.”

Hearing this, Thokk smiled and looked around triumphantly. “Sovnar chooses me!”

“Take care not to fail him, young one,” said Goromir. “But knowing your potential, I doubt failure will be something you taste much of.”

“Heh,” said Thokk, proud of the compliment.. He marched forwards, taking the Collector’s mental directions to the nearest exit of the Evolution Chamber, a circular warp door comprised of viscous warp capable waters reappropriated from the mountain.