Upon returning to Infactorium, Gammaton's first instinct was to report to Faetalis, but then she remembered that she had another task to accomplish; the tunnel. She also didn't want to bring this filthy captive, who had soiled himself by now, into the presence of a Supreme Being. So once she arrived at Hivehill, she descended to the Pits, the lowest point of Infactorium and a logical place to start digging. Gammaton searched for two empty holding cells and tossed Szilard into the smallest empty cell she could find. The largest empty cell would make a good location for the tunnel's entrance. Though her instructions were to make the outer-facing exit camouflaged, Gammaton still planned for the possibility that someone could infiltrate Infactorium through the tunnel. By making the entrance to the tunnel from within Infactorium end at a locked cell door meant that even if someone did manage to sneak through the tunnel, they would still be locked out from the rest of the guild castle.
Releasing pheromones to summon a small band of idle ant workers, Gammaton wafted out an elaborate assortment of delicate chemical scents that provided the workers with instructions on the shape of the tunnel, complete with a spiraling ramp that reached all the way to the bottom. Once Gammaton was certain that the instructions had been absorbed, she left the ants to their task and returned to Szilard, who was blubbering and begging for his life now. Gammaton found this odd, since previous enemies had always fought to the death. Of course, previous enemies had always been players who could respawn or summoned minions who lacked sentience, but Gammaton wasn't privy to such concepts. What Gammaton did know was that she was a neural parasite, and though she had never extracted memory with her Consume Knowledge skill in the past, she instinctively knew that it was possible; and she was hungry.
Approaching Szilard's cell caused the man to recoil and move away from the door, making it all the more easier for Gammaton to enter unimpeded. Locking the door behind her, Gammaton reached for her mask and pulled it off, revealing the dead, sunken eyes, moist pallid skin, and thinning strands of pale hair of her host. Honestly, she had been using this body for just a little too long, and could hatch into her Infantilis form whenever she wanted, but considered that it might be more prudent to maintain a humanoid form for the time being.
"You're a...human...?" Szilard asked, though the thing in front of him looked closer to undeath.
"Not anymore," Gammaton replied. Her toxic blood coursed through her host's veins and altered its physiology in subtle ways, one of which would be revealed soon. Gammaton dashed forward with surprising agility and grabbed Szilard by the neck to silence the scream she knew was coming. Unhinging her jaw, Gammaton's throat prolapsed into a fleshy proboscis with a black, hollow spine at the tip. Szilard gurgled feebly as the tip approached his face. Despite being strangled, Szilard's scream was still quite audible as the proboscis pushed its way through his left eye. Szilard suddenly fell silent as his body convulsed while a tongue covered in microscopic hooked scoops darted in and out of Gammaton's probscis, gouging, liquefying, and drinking Szilard's brain matter, scraping the inside of his skull clean.
Gammaton had only ever used Consume Knowledge to temporarily obtain a skill relevant to her current mission. For example, when she accompanied GrillBears to a volcano biome, Gammaton consumed the brain of one the local fauna to obtain temporary heat resistance. So even she wasn't prepared for what came next. Memories flooded through her mind, and for a moment that lasted an eternity, she was Szilard, a sad broken old man who never respected those around him and who was incapable of preserving the bonds that meant the most to him. Gammaton saw his failure, his ineptitude, his irresponsibility, his bitterness, and his loneliness. Gammaton saw her own rotting face approach and the black spine drill into her eye, tasting the sudden, final crescendo of terror and then...nothing. Gammaton woke up in the cell next to Szilard's dead body. She was curled up in the fetal position as tears ran down her cheek. It took Gammaton a moment to realize that these were not her tears; these were the tears of Szilard's fading consciousness, but coming from her own eyes. Gammaton stood up, still trembling, realizing that she had underestimated how harrowing it would be to consume an entire lifetime's worth of memories. But such weakness was unbecoming of the Lord of Hivehill, Grand General of Infactorium. Still trembling, Gammaton stood up, and placed her mask back on her face, providing a sense of security. She had gotten what she wanted; she now knew everything about this world that Szilard did, and a thorough written report was in order.
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