- >The changeling had never experienced this level of power before.
- >All the previous food sources had been much weaker.
- >This ape — no, human. He called himself human in his thoughts — was really enamored by his dreams coming true.
- >Also, most of the energy extracted previously went to sustain the not-so-successful drones of the hive.
- >None of these sources had lasted for too long.
- >The survival of the hive was much more important than the survival of the food.
- >And more important than the survival of each individual hive part.
- >That's why this drone was now alone.
- >There was no possible way of being reattached.
- >Even though all the energy provided by the, uh, human would probably be very useful for the hive.
- >Any drone that somehow lost connection to the hive even for a couple of minutes had to be killed personally by the Queen.
- >This changeling was alive only because she didn't want to waste the valuable energy ending the one that was going to die anyway.
- >But now that it had managed to survive... What was the purpose of its life now?
- >The Queen had always been the mastermind and beacon of the hive.
- >No drone could ever do anything she hadn't appointed it to do, except when acting on pure instincts.
- >But wait. This 'human'. He didn't have a queen or a hive to live for — and still wasn't depressed.
- >Maybe given enough time it would be possible to understand how he was able to live this way?
- ***
- >Having calmed down a little after the initial hype, you leaned against a tree.
- >What could you do at the moment?
- >You weren't hungry yet, but soon you will be.
- >Better find some food now.
- >Stealing from that zebra would probably be a bad idea.
- >You could get a bowl of oatmeal (or what do these creatures eat?) at best.
- >And stealing from a warlock was a bad idea anyway.
- >All the trees and plants were strange.
- >You had never seen anything like that before.
- >Trying to blindly eat whatever berries you might find...
- >Probably even worse an idea than stealing from a warlock.
- >Maybe you could try hunting?
- >Yeah, like you would be able to catch a hare if it jumped right into your face.
- >You looked around for any possible hints.
- >A-ha! There was a nest up in the branches of a nearby tree.
- >Eggs. Definitely better then nothing.
- >You vaguely remembered how to start a fire from your childhood games, but raw eggs were fine too.
- >Now you just had to get to your future meal.
- >Of course, it would be better if it could come down instead...
- >All of a sudden the whole nest got enveloped with a green aura, emanating from you.
- >Then it took off and flew down to your feet, the green aura disappearing shortly after.
- >What.
- ***
- >The changeling instantly realized its mistake.
- >Trying to do anything that this human wanted, it ended up using an ability the 'armor' it was imitating should not have.
- >It needed to think up a solution.
- >And better be quick at this, because if he freaked out — this fantastic flow of power would stop.
- >Unacceptable.
- >Luckily, in its frantic delving through the human mind it quickly managed to grasp a concept that could work.
- >Actually, it could help with the things that the drone was unable to mimic, too.
- >And it would not have to carefully divert this bothersome prey's attention from these anymore.
- >Not bad.
- ***
- >Before you had a chance to properly think about what had just happened, the answer jumped right into your face.
- >Literally, on a pop-up.
- >These were becoming slightly annoying...
- >You scrolled through the text.
- >Your armor turned out to be an experimental model, made for testing only.
- >It didn't have a number of standard functions — booster glands, projectile spikes, even most built-in reflexes were missing.
- >But instead it had better brains, better morphing, an ability to sync with user's mind and, yeah, telekinesis.
- >It was... A great tradeoff, if you were the one to ask!
- >Still, you felt slightly uncomfortable.
- >It was almost like you were a character of some generic anime — this sudden summoning, finding prototype armor and all.
- >Meh, you weren't exactly able to do anything about the situation.
- >Better just go with it and hope to be the *main* character.
- >You looked at the fuckhuge manual on the nonstandard functions of the suit.
- >Why read it now?
- >The overview was quite simple, learning by doing is always better.
- >After all, it will always be easy to look up anything you need.
- >So you just pressed the 'sync' symbol.
- ***
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