Molting the Mortal Coil

Chapter 152: Metamorphosis

Floating with the darkness, Sage woke up. Still groggy it took him quite some time to realize that he was within his body. He wasnt viewing the world, he was only within his sea of consciousness. The usual sea and sky were nowhere to be found. Instead he was floating within a featureless darkness. After another unknown amount of time he realized he wasnt alone. That realization created a sudden light, illuminating another presence. It was another ghostly body just like his own consciousness, it had a serpentine lower body and a humanoid upper body.

My twin soul?

A moment later he realized he was wrong. The appearance was the same, but it was not under his control. A moment later, another light appeared along with another spirit. This one had a wide mouth and head, bulbous eyes with strange pupils and abnormally long legs. Another appeared with a horn on its forehead and armored plates on its body. The fourth one was hairless, wrinkly and bulbous with slim limbs and an enormous mouth. Sage quickly lost track, many lights flicking on at the same time, surrounding and disorienting him. When he recovered he found himself surrounded by eight different spirits, each of them a strange consciousness that appeared to be a mix of man and beast.

What happened? Whats going on?

As if to answer his question, the many spirits around him all started to cry out, each of them making different hissing, clicking, or croaking noises. The sound brought along with it a sense of power, one that dampened him. Sage felt squeezed, constricted, even drowsy. The questions in his mind fading, at least until another spirit manifested beside him. This one had large butterfly shaped wings on its back and little antennae on its forehead. It floated behind him and put its hands on his shoulder and the drowsiness flew away. He felt like a flame had been reignited within him, the sounds from the others were muted, little more than a droning in the background now. Suddenly, his memories returned to him.

The great plan was formed to solve a problem that Sage had run into some time ago. Many years ago, before he found the Timeless Masters cave, he had gathered up some eggs from an exciting ant species. They seemed to have stone like exoskeletons and they had a special caste that used Qi to slice through stone. The ant colony mined spirit stones and used them as food somehow. Unfortunately, there was a problem. The Lang Clan wasnt a clan that focused on cultivating swarms of insects, nor were there any special methods for controlling swarms in the true version of the Insect Immortal Index. In the case of the silverbees, Sage was linked to the queen and able to roughly order about the hive. All he needed them to do was attack specific targets and gather nectar, so it wasnt a problem.

This breed of ants, Stonecutters as he called them, on the other hand werent as beholden to their queen. The colonies he raised all had multiple queens in them and when he linked to a queen he learned that the species wasnt driven by any one creature. They were extremely communal, but also autonomous in their duties. Some ants went out to scout and left trails behind, while other ants followed the trails their scouts left and acted as the situation unfolded. If enemies appeared, all the ants in the area would move to attack in unison. If food or supplies were found they would pick them up and carry them back to the colony. Other ants were designated as nannies to hatch the eggs and raise the young. Others were farmers, sorting and processing the food brought back to the colony and using it to grow the special fungi that nourished the queen and the young.

The ants were assigned jobs and they did their jobs without any commands or orders necessary. When they grew older or more experienced they would switch to different jobs, which was really the only oversight the ants ever needed. They could somehow tell when more of certain jobs were needed and the most fitting individuals stepped in to fill the posts. It was quite astounding, but also frustrating as it meant there was no singular pivot around which Sage could control the whole colony. He didnt want to rely on using crude scent markers to try and manipulate so many bugs, it was far too crude to realize his ideas.

So, the great plan came about. Even so, the plan was actually quite simple, it was merely the stepping stone to putting an entire ant colony to the best use. He planned to merge with that very special species of toad. After many experiments, he determined that the toad could establish an almost complete control over the minds of other beings. The stipulation was that the minds had to be much weaker than its own. It also had to know where its target was. Sage wasnt completely sure as to its method, but from the examples when he purchased it and his own testing, it was pretty helpless when it couldnt see its target.

The ants, like most spirit insects, had very weak minds. With the power of that toad, there was a chance he could completely command the colony of ants as he wished! Despite his aversion to becoming more monstrous, the benefits were too much to resist, especially since he could use the Human Seal to seem normal. It was just too bad that this decision led to his undoing.

The second merge ended up even more tragically than the first. At least the first time he looked like a somewhat popular mythological creature. The new form was disgusting. Not an elegant shape like the naga, it was more like a toad had grown to the size of a man, grew a giant snake tail out of its backside, and somehow had giant warts bulging up between the scales on its back. The toad body with a snake tail combined in such a way that it had gained a large paunch of a gut. It stole away the grace of the serpentine coils and the strength of the powerful legs, appearing nothing more than slovenly and lazy.

If that was the only downside, it would have been manageable enough, but just like the Twin Ringed Soul Serpent, the Toad caused a change to his personality. That desire to be someone, to become influential, to grow powerful, to be rich it multiplied. His greed suddenly had no bounds. The only restricting factor was that he was living in the wilderness, many days away from any form of civilization. There was nothing to be worried about, for there was plenty for him to have right at his fingertips. He took out a Charming Lance Beetle and started a new merger.

Thats when the memories started to become hazy. After that third merger these memories Sage were viewing seemed like they were formed while under the influence. The hands on his shoulders gave a squeeze and things got clear again. Instead of reliving the memories, he was watching them from afar, like a movie shot through someone elses eyes. That new form had a horn and armor plating. It was a humanoid once again with two arms and legs, but it also had a large snake tail growing from its rear end and a face out of a nightmare. The combination of man, snake, toad and beetle.

Things only escalated from there, his mind growing more and more unstable, leading to his merging with even more creatures. Before long, hed combined with a Warp Worm, Chameleon Mantis, Steel Silk Centipede, Stonecutter Ant, and finally a Thorn Cloud Hornet. By about the fourth merger hed completely forgotten about the Human Seal and even about acting as a human. That was when The Beast started to kill everything it came across. He was able to keep enough of his faculties to hide from those stronger than himself. The memories he saw were disjointed and fractured, but he saw more than a few cultivators hunted down in cold blood and felt ashamed.

What did I do?

Somehow, his instincts led him back to his ancestral tomb, even that bestial mind knew there were great mysteries and power to be had within. The memory of him entering the tomb and being forced to merge with an egg was the last memory he saw. Thankfully the ancestor had done something to snap him out of whatever state he was in.

Wait, whats going on right now?