A Hive of Bone and Chitin [A Biomancy and Hivemind Litrpg Adventure]

Medea landed into a heap and I tried not to think about the fact that at this point, it had more grace while being dropped by a teleportation spell than I had while relaxing. Simply no point in dwelling on that. It straightened out its long limbs and skittered over until it was right besides my bed. Then, it gently disgorged three large eggs into a basket. These weren't from the three legged magic ravens, no, just simple poultry eggs. And then came three much smaller spider-scorpion eggs. I reached out with a hand that eventually managed to grab on to the rubbery wet thing I was looking for.

My temporary abode had a few new additions. Large red cylindrical objects with flat wide rings of white encircling them to capture heat, light and mana. Veins of pink marked patterns across the rings that pulsed as if an unseen liquid was pumping itself through them. At the very bottom of them, cartilage formed valves and taps. These things were indisputably alive but like so many primitive forms of life, didn't have the 'weight' to their existence to have a system. Fleshbanks. Not ones I had made on my own as actually creating them was far beyond my skills. They looked simple but were actually biologically ageless and perpetually growing. Replicating that meant creating self-repairing telomeres, undoing mitochondrial stress damage in cells, and more things that essentially boiled down to essentially making something biologically immortal without inherent skills. I couldn't do that, not even close.

These fleshbanks were just three of Mitria's that I had repaired after they threw them away for being outdated. My work had been shoddy. They would start to fail soon enough but until then I could use them. The largest cylindrical fleshbank had globules of meat attached to its sides. The ravens that Medea had hunted earlier, all preserved for when I would need to use them.

I couldn't walk, not anymore, not yet, but reaching a hand over to steal the blood out of them was more than doable for me. Blood flowed into mana into the spider-scorpion eggs until needles formed and impaled the bird eggs. The contents of both types of eggs mixed within the larger bird eggs; their shells darkening, and hardening. I let them be. Hopefully, I would have larger spider-scorpions and not the world's grossest scrambled eggs when they hatched.

'This one thinks these will be stillborn. The First Mother's line is strong but this is beyond this one's kind.' Medea, ever the voice of optimism piped in.

'You might be correct but it's not like just seeing the resulting failure wouldn't be interesting either way.' I would have shrugged if that wouldn't have pulled some muscle that was regressing again.

'This one feels that is suboptimal.'

'Shh. Where is your spirit of enquiry?'

'This one lacks such an instinct.'

With that riveting scientific argument about the potential outcomes of my experiment done, I still had a few hours to kill before my daily biomantic physiotherapy with Mitria. Fahria couldn't come today because of some Shakirn obligation or the other and Selene was still with her. I could summon Selene but in all honesty, I didn't need Selene around at the moment, at least not until I had a plan for its development that I was reasonably confident in. Just grafting stuff and letting tier ups take care of it was lazy and probably suboptimal. I had time, I could do things better than before. Selene was unnecessary beyond her existence as a swarm general.

Fahria on the other hand, she was basically carrying Selene through the stabilization of her tier up on her own, and thus by extension, getting me experience. She still insisted on visiting me every day for some reason. I mean I get it, she felt bad about the fact that she hadn't noticed how I had been unknowingly ruining myself or she was seriously impressed by the performance I had put in and wanted to ensure that I was going to help her with her succession war-thingy. Which I was, even if purely from a selfish perspective, it had to be worth a lot of experience and if I was lucky then I would discover another one of Aster's skeletons while travelling.

That or she was really worried about me, which straight up did not match with anything I knew about her or her family. I didn't think someone who was raised in a weird slave cult dedicated to a phoenix or whatever the Shakirns were (I didn't doubt for a second that the merchant clan thing was a front) was really the type to get attached that easily. She might be into me but that was a different seal of dragons altogether that I was not equipped to deal with, even if I were to ignore the dysmorphia which still made me feel gross every time I became aware of the motions, contractions, undulations and rhythms of my body. But really, that was an even more absurd idea.

Medea skittered over to a pile of sheets of parchment and once again I took over it. What I had been thinking was paper in this world had been magically smooth and thin parchment all along. Of course everything ran on biomancy in the city where the number 3 problem plaguing it was rogue biomancers, after inequality and insane dragons. Medea— I grabbed a pencil and began to draw a detailed diagram of a cross-section of the thing I was planning on turning Selene into based on the creatures the vampires had agreed to provide to me. I didn't have the physical dexterity to draw but that was not really a problem when I could just possess Medea. Tens of similar diagrams of bodies, now all outdated but salvageable, were sitting nicely in a folder.

Of course, it was not all for Selene. I was also looking into things I could do to myself. I was really partial to an arm design that looked normal but with a flex of a nearly invisible extra muscle could release bone blades from across its length. That was of course assuming that it would work. Anyways, both my recovery and Selene's upgrade took priority over that.

"That won't work." Mitria said and I jumped, startled. They could move silently when they wanted to. I looked at the thing I was drawing. An upgrade plan for Selene meant to maximize feathered areas. It was based on an octopus or Amphisbaena with subsections of the brain dedicated to controlling feathered tentacle-wings. I frowned. It looked possible to me but I wasn't going to disregard the opinions of a significantly more skilled and experienced biomancer.

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"Why?"

"Usually I would let you figure it out yourself but you will waste a lot of good ingredients that you struggled to find so I'll tell you. You see that nerve-cluster there?" They pointed to the connective center of the creature.

"That will snap easily when those limbs move and you won't know it until half the thing dies from disrupted circulation and rot begins to set in." Shit. That was bad. There was a limit to how much use I could get out of dead meat.

"Crap. Yeah, you are right. How do I fix it?"

"Move the entire brain inwards so that it is in the middle of the body. Make internal eyestalks for the eyes and weave them into that chamber. There are more mistakes but I'll see to them later." Here, Mitria's expression lost some of the perpetual hint of warmth I was used to and turned serious. For a lanky bald horned androgynous biomancer, Mitria just seemed like the type of person who was the mom of all their friend groups. "You have visitors. Really important visitors."

Mitria wasn't lying. The visitors in question were a man representing the archpresbyter of the Temple of the Goddess Arshanara himself and Lady Ayn. I hadn't had the foggiest idea of what people that important would want with me but these were not people I could ignore. Mitria quickly helped me into a gown that I deemed vaguely acceptable and before I knew it, I was seated on a living chair with legs that walked with the gait of a dog.

The High Councilor looked as inhumanly beautiful as always and I assumed the man clad in layers of robes of pristine white was the priest sent by the archpresbyter.

I supposed I should be bowing or something but my body was not capable of that without pain so I just dipped my head a bit.

"Lady Ayn, High Priest, it is an honor." I said finally, dearly wishing Selene could speak so that I could ask Fahria for the proper honorifics and all that. The priest for his part gave me a warm fatherly smile that oozed benevolence while Ayn just laughed.

"Now, none of that formality here. We are all friends here. Anya, meet Reth, Reth meet Anya."

Reth held out three fingers in a claw that I shakily tried to match. He flushed and rose from his seat to give me a quick bow.

"Oh goddess, forgive me, miss. I didn't realize your regression was this bad." He spoke without a breath.

"Uh, it's fine?"

"Ahem. Please excuse Reth, he is new. He has a favor to ask you, well, the archpresbyter has a favor and he is just the messenger." Ayn spoke, the mirth barely concealed in her voice and Reth sat down with a sheepish grin before his face turned serious.

"Are you aware of the history between Kalist and Lady Arshanara?"

"Only from this book called Regdren's Kindling." Reth twitched, as if annoyed. Probably a point of aggravation that cheap dime thriller novels about that whole mythology (history?) were so popular.

"I'm familiar with that publication and as much as it pains me to admit it, it does not misrepresent the relationship between our Lady of Devouring Fire and that damnable reptile." He looked ashamed to have to concede that and I was stuck with the fact that he didn't seem that experienced or old. Probably a few years older than me at best. "So, from that you must understand that the continued existence of Kalist among the living is an affront to our lady. The Illustris Council, the Security Guild and the Church are collaborating to put an end to the creature. And here we need your help."

"I'm sorry? My help. I'm just a crippled biomancer with a single weak divination skill."

"Yes. But you have encountered the creature multiple times and you have survived every time. You have a closer connection to it than most and those that do can't afford to replace a skill at this point in their development." It was Ayn who butted in.

Then Reth fished a crystal out of his robes. It looked like the skill gem but instead of rainbow light, it shone with a golden light as brilliant as the sun. After a moment, he put it back while I tried to blink away the spots seared into my retina.

"The church can temporarily boost your skills so that you can pierce through the might of the dragon and let us find him."

I would have agreed, just because that crazy dragon living was a problem for me but one of Fahria's lessons had sunk in and I asked.

"I'll do it but I want payment for it."

"That is acceptable. We shall negotiate then."

I was sure that I was getting fleeced but by the end of it, I had secured the promise of a pair of chaos-warped hawk wasps. The vampires were still looking for one but if I could get one for free instead of the small fortune they would ask for one then I wasn't going to complain.

The idea was simple. Ayn had a skull retrieved from what I understood was a failed kobold. I was supposed to use Ossific Communion on that to get a lead. Then Lady Ayn would carry me around the city so that I could pinpoint Kalist's location.

I touched the misshapen partially melted skull and let my mana touch the golden crystal. It burned with a new kind of fire but didn't hurt. I could feel the mana around me glowing white-hot as something else flowed into it from outside. Arshanara's fire.

Pain. That's all I had known recently. Had it been hours? Or months? I didn't know. My mind wasn't mine anymore and yet the pain was mine to bear. I had begged for mercy but no one heard me. I tried to escape but my restraints would not budge. All I saw was the grey room with its blinding light and him.

He came again. A man with rust colored hair and throbbing veins of fire on his face. The man didn't speak, he never did. And still I lived in terror of his arrival. The man walked up to me. His eyes burned and yet were cold. So cold.

The man forced my mouth open and poured something in it. It burned and my torment increased several folds. Pain, pain unlike any I had ever known. My nerves screamed, my muscles dissolved as the man stared dispassionately. WIngs! I had wings.

I knew I was dying. I welcomed my release. The last words I heard, the very first I heard from my tormentor:

"Another failure."

Information about the poor kid flooded my mind. Species, time of death, information about the species and more. He was a corrupted kobold at the time of death, not human.

Not long afterwards, I was high in the air inside a platform of golden light. A small pile of Aetherite crystals sat beside me.

"Where is the grey-room?" A direction. Ayn snapped her fingers and a map of New Delport made of golden light snapped into being above me. Two lines appeared on it to create a cone that emerged from our location.

"Where is Kalist?" I asked, visualizing that rust-haired vessel that he now held, and for the first time, it wasn't an evenly spaced star. More lines on the map and the box moved with blinding speed until we were at a different place. I repeated the questions there and at five more places until the fire wore off. The map had a small area where all of the lines intersected.

Afterwards, I was dropped back at the clinic. I was drained and exhausted now that the flames of Arshanara had left my body and after a quick meal, I fell asleep without even doing my daily biomancy and therapy. In the morning I was disappointed when a masked enforcer showed up to inform me that the dragon had escaped alive once again.