『 more OP』
The silence of the barren plain was a physical presence, a thick blanket smothering the memory of the hive's furious song. Leo walked, his footsteps the only sound in the vast emptiness. The hollow feeling from the queen's self-annihilation had not faded; it had crystallized into a permanent part of him. The obsidian staff in his hand was no longer a symbol of power, but a grave marker.
[Sage,] he thought, his internal voice flat. [The compass. It's quiet. Why do I still have it?
It was a practical question, a small anchor in the sea of his existential drift. The compass had led him to the leviathan bones and then to the hive. Its purpose seemed fulfilled.
[The artifact's alignment was to a source of significant power. That source has been neutralized. Its current state is inert.] [Sage] paused, a beat longer than usual. [However, its material composition is unique. To discard it would be… inefficient. It may yet serve a purpose.]
The answer was logical, yet it felt incomplete. Leo didn't press. He simply absorbed the compass back into his body, letting it float beside his core, a dormant, bronze eye in his jade-green depths. He didn't need it, but letting it go felt like abandoning the last piece of a puzzle he hadn't finished solving.
Then, the integration began.
It was not like the clean, distinct acquisition of the Titan's Terrakinesis or the Leviathan's concept of Flight. This was a flood. A tsunami of data.
As he had returned from the state of non-existence imposed by the queen's final blast, his Adaptive Immortality hadn't just made him immune. It had, by its very nature, recorded the blueprint of the attack. And that attack was a composite of every ability, every spark of power, from every ant in the hive.
He wasn't just gaining "Hive Immunity." He was gaining the Hive itself, in fragmented, duplicate pieces.
[Processing assimilated data…] [Sage]'s voice, for the first time, sounded strained. [Volume of data exceeds standard parameters. Multiple iterations of similar abilities detected.]
Leo stumbled, not from weakness, but from sensory overload. His mind's eye was flooded with a billion flickering images.
He saw through the compound eyes of a thousand Soldier Ants, all sensing the same "threat" from a thousand slightly different angles.
He felt the simple,instinctual Terrakinesis of ten thousand Borer Ants—not the profound mastery he possessed, but a rudimentary, biological command to "dig" and "tunnel." He had ten thousand copies of the same basic skill, each one weaker than the last.
He felt theHeat Resistance of a Magma Ant, a specific biological adaptation to withstand its own internal furnace. Then he felt it again. And again. And again. A million times, from every Magma Ant that had sacrificed itself. The same ability, stacked upon itself, creating a wall of redundant data.
He felt theChitin Hardening of the Soldiers, the Acid Resistance of the Spitters, the Sonic Dampening of the Disruptors. Each ability existed in thousands, sometimes millions, of nearly identical copies. It was like inheriting a library where every book was the same, printed in slightly different fonts.
[Analysis: The hive's power was not in individual strength, but in mass specialization and redundancy. You have not acquired new, fundamental abilities. You have acquired a statistical model of their entire biological arsenal.]
[It's… noisy,] Leo thought, his consciousness struggling to find quiet amidst the psychic echo of a dead civilization.
[The data is inefficient in its current state. It is causing system lag and cognitive interference. Proposal: Initiate data compression and skill refinement.]
This was new. [Sage] was not just observing or guiding. It was proposing active management of his very being.
[Do it,] Leo commanded, desperate for the internal noise to stop.
What happened next was a process he could not perceive, only feel. [Sage], the fragment of the World's Voice, began to work. It was not combining the skills like ingredients in a soup. It was performing a fundamental analysis, finding the core principles behind the endless duplicates.
The ten thousand copies of rudimentary Terrakinesis (Dig) were not added to his own mastery. They were analyzed, their simple biological imperative understood, and then their data was used to reinforce the foundation of his existing, Titan-level Terrakinesis. It didn't make his power to move earth stronger in scale, but it made it more efficient, more instinctual, requiring even less conscious thought.
The million-fold Heat Resistance was not stacked. [Sage] isolated the fundamental principle—the manipulation of molecular motion to dissipate thermal energy—and integrated it into his core adaptive matrix. He didn't gain "more" heat resistance; his very nature now understood and negated heat on a more profound, axiomatic level.
This was the secret [Sage] was hiding. It wasn't just a helper. It was a Compiler. It could take the chaotic, raw data of the world and translate it into the clean, efficient code of Leo's slime nature.
[Refinement in progress. Consolidating [Chitin Hardening] data into foundational durability parameters… Integrating [Acid Resistance] principles into core chemical negation protocols…]
As the process continued, Leo felt the "noise" begin to fade, replaced by a deeper, more resonant hum of power. He wasn't gaining a list of new skills. He was becoming more absolute. The hive's collective existence had served as the ultimate stress test, providing trillions of data points that [Sage] was now using to optimize and harden his very being.
But [Sage]'s analysis went deeper than just the ants' obvious abilities.
[Anomaly detected within the assimilated genetic memory,] it reported. [All Formica Colossus organisms possess a latent ability: [Adrenal Evolution]. When near death, their biological and magical capabilities experience a temporary surge, allowing for rapid adaptation and increased power. This is a lesser, system-bound version of a core slime property.]
Leo considered this. The ants could adapt and grow from near-death experiences. He adapted and grew from any experience, especially lethal ones, and made them permanently irrelevant.
[It is a shadow of what you are,] [Sage] stated, its tone final. [Attempting to stack or combine this with your innate [Adaptive Immortality] is illogical. Your nature already adopts, subsumes, and transcends any such lesser adaptation. It would be like trying to pour a cup of water into the ocean to make it wet.]
The process took hours. When it was complete, Leo stood straighter. The hollow sadness was still there, a memorial to the hive. But internally, the chaos was gone. The billion sparks had been refined into a steadier, brighter flame.
He was now, for all intents and purposes, immune to the combined elemental and biological arsenal of an entire civilization. Not because he had a list of resistances, but because the fundamental concepts of their power had been analyzed and added to the list of things his existence simply would not allow to harm him.
He looked towards the dark forest. The compass within him was still silent. He had no destination. But he had a purpose, given to him by the hive's sacrifice: to understand the weight of his own crown. He was not just a slime. He was a king whose every step could erase kingdoms. And with [Sage] as his guide and compiler, he was learning how to walk without leaving only ashes in his wake. The journey was no longer about finding the next fight; it was about understanding the consequence of the last one.