True Dragoon

The Cerebrate ' fury exploded through the entire Char Swarm's Psionics link like a nuclear blast. Billions of Zerg huddled together in the Char hive, wildly brandishing their claws as they burst out of caves, through the passageways of the hive's organic structures, and into the towering spires, rapidly filling the Char ground and sky, which were stained red by scorching lava.

The Swarm sensed the enemy's invasion, smelling the threat in the scorching wind.

"Where are the Protoss, the Revolutionary Army?"

Tosh emerged from the main hive's exit, a structure made of soft, organic matter. Screaming Zergling and Hydralisk swarmed through the tunnels and spiny chambers, pouring out from either side of him. Even the clumsy Cerebrate, still lingering in the deepest parts of the main hive, were able to be heard by Tosh through the special telepathic links between Cerebrate.

As far as the eye could see, the deep red plains, rift valleys, and volcanic mountains of Char were covered with swarms of Zerg, and countless shrieking Overlord, Mutalisk, Brood Guardian, and Swarm Devourer hovered in the sky.

The undulating sea of insects stretched across Char's crimson horizon, their chitinous carapaces gleaming in the sunlight, the moving Swarm resembling rolling waves. The heatwaves that once scalded a person no longer brought ashes and sharp pebbles, but rather an overwhelming Swarm that blotted out the sun.

"They disappeared as soon as they showed up." Sath's voice entered Tosh's mind; the voice of this Cerebrate was like a sharp axe chipping away at wood.

"But the invaders must still be here, they must be. I can smell their scent, the sweet smell of flesh and blood. My people will rejoice at the sight of their enemies' blood."

"Only a small fraction of the enemy has reached the surface of Char; the vast majority remains in Char's orbit," said the Leviathan Swarm's Cerebrate. "My swarm will annihilate the enemy Fleets."

"For the sake of Overmind."

"Find those enemies on Char!" Sath said. "The nascent Cerebrate will assist you; its swarm is ready to pounce."

"Don't try to order me around, you have no right to do so." Tosh responded to Sath's request bluntly, which angered and displeased the latter.

"If you ignore the warning of a Cerebrate, you will pay the price," Sath warned Tosh. "You must be careful, or the Swarm will be destroyed because of you."

"I will go find those intruders, not because of your orders," Tosh said, finding the youngest of Char's many Cerebrate in their mental links.

Apart from the insignificant newborn Cerebrate, the rest were all older and highly prestigious individuals. Each of these powerful Cerebrate possessed a strong clan, but Tosh couldn't command them yet; only this still-inexperienced Cerebrate obeyed him completely.

From a human perspective, Tosh could be considered a general commanding an army, but he wouldn't qualify as a marshal. Tosh cannot command other Cerebrate unless Cerebrate Overmind orders them to obey his commands.

The Overmind is currently in Aiur, extremely far away from Char. Even the Overmind's Psionics power is insufficient to monitor Char at such a distance and control every single Cerebrate under its command.

In his interactions with the other Cerebrate, Tosh received advice from some, while others remained indifferent. Abathur, the Swarm evolution master he had met before, and Carlos, the infection expert, had both vanished without a trace.

The Cerebrate, the Overmind of the Cerebrates and all Zerg, and its oldest and most powerful Cerebrate, Daggoth, are not in Char. Even Sath cannot command all the Cerebrate. The Cerebrate are loyal to the Overmind, not to any other Zerg.

"Cerebrate." Tosh sensed respect in the young Cerebrate; a newborn Cerebrate without a name dared not disobey a powerful Cerebrate with a name.

All the Cerebrate knew that Tosh was favored by the Overmind —even when he was still a human.

"I need you to send an army of Zerglings to follow me," Tosh said to the young Cerebrate.

"Glad to serve." The Cerebrate readily accepted Tosh's order and patiently awaited his next command.

A group of Zerg with bright purple carapaces broke away from the moving Swarm. They were similar in color to the Jormungand Brood, but the purple on their carapaces was much lighter.

"."

While Tosh remained silent, the Cerebrate conveyed a questioning thought, as if the newly formed Swarm Lord had not yet made up his mind about what to do. He simply gazed at the spreading Swarm and the undulating terrain of Char, still pondering how to find the enemy that had infiltrated Char.

Before being transformed into those people, Tosh was just a teenager in the Haj slums, whose understanding of everything was limited to the poverty and chaos of the slums, his small family, his grandmother's teachings, and his Voodoo beliefs.

Even though his innate Psionics powers made Tosh's mind mature like a young man at a young age, giving him a quality that his grandmother called leadership, his combat experience was limited to slum brawls and gang rivalries.

Tosh knelt on one knee on the sun-baked ground and grabbed a handful of scalding ashes.

"Why have they come?" Tosh asked, stroking the doll on his chest.

"If it's not because the enemy is too stupid, then they have other motives."

"Grandma used to say that what is predetermined is called fate," Tosh said. "Sometimes, a hunter chasing a Haj will cut his own arm to make the prey think it has a chance."

"Where are those cunning little mice?" A golden glint appeared in his yellowish eyes; the cruelty and ruthlessness brought about by the Zerg modification were affecting him. A sense of humanity had become far removed from the Tosh of today; he was no longer the person he once was.

"I will pin these rats' tails to the ground with my claws, then skin them and offer their skins to the Overmind and Manan."

"As long as the intruders remain here, I will find them," Tosh muttered to himself, when a Zergling suddenly crawled to his feet and nudged his calf with its horns.

Tosh patted the little monster's head and found it rather cute, like those stray dogs in the slums that would whimper and bark for a little "rat meat" as food.

But the Zergling likely walked away; it wasn't trying to please Tosh, it had simply bumped into him by chance. This Zergling was no different from its almost identical counterparts in the Swarm; its hormone-induced frenzy didn't conjure much independent thought.

The Swarm is composed of a large number of low-level members who only obey the Cerebrate and the Overmind. They have no independent thought because these Zerg were created to unconditionally obey the commands of the higher Zerg.

Aside from the Overmind and the Cerebrate, a Zerg with independent capabilities is extremely rare. Thousands upon thousands of members would fight for a single command from Tosh without the slightest hesitation.

When Tosh attempted to establish a mental link with these Zerg, he almost immediately gained control over them, able to move these terrifying Zerg forward or backward with a single thought, and also gain access to their visual and auditory perception.

"My Swarm, move out! Find and destroy those invaders!" Tosh eagerly took control of the Zerg from the newborn Cerebrate and ordered them to search for any potential invaders.

The entire Zerg of Char was searching for the intruders, and Tosh didn't have any unique methods to force the enemy to reveal themselves. They might be hiding in some desolate crater, or they might have already left Char and been playing the Cerebrate for fools.

But once a colony of Cerebrate discovers an intruder, Tosh will immediately rush there and personally tear the enemy to shreds.

Tosh looked up at the sky and summoned a roaring Mutalisk from above. The dragon-like creature landed beside Tosh with a hiss, revealing its back covered with sharp thorns to Tosh in a humble and submissive manner.

This Mutalisk was a massive creature with deep yellow skin, many times the size of an ordinary Mutalisk, with a wingspan that could almost blot out the sky. It was an elite individual from the Mutalisk race, the Kukulkan Mutalisk, the most powerful and deadliest individual in an Mutalisk Spire.

Then, after a brief, thought-provoking moment of contemplation, Tosh took two steps forward, climbed onto the Mutalisk's sharp back, and sat down on its bulging neck.

For an ordinary person, these sharp, dagger-like spikes would be enough to pierce his buttocks, but Tosh was extraordinary. His buttocks were covered with a chitinous carapace that was much harder than human steel armor plates, making him completely immune to the spikes on the Mutalisk's back.

Although no Zerg had ever attempted to do so before, Tosh, through his ingenious idea, actually rode on the back of a Mutalisk and took to the air as the Mutalisk flapped its wings.

This was a colossal Mutalisk with forked membranous wings, taking flight on a rising stream of heat, casting a massive shadow on the churning ash.

"What are you doing? A Cerebrate should stay in the hive, protected by the strongest members of the swarm, otherwise the Protoss assassins will kill you. This is a lesson learned from the battles against the Protoss." The Cerebrate Sars heard Tosh's telepathic message echoing throughout Char's mind and roared in shock and anger in Tosh's mind.

"I'm not one of you useless fat worms," Tosh sarcastically remarked to Sath. "I could strangle you all with a flick of my wrist."

"This is why the Overmind created me. I am smarter and stronger than you. I am not a weak child, or a defenseless insect."

As Tosh was about to continue speaking, a bone-chilling cold pierced his chest. A bright green Psionic Blade, its surface shrouded in some kind of smoke, came from the void, aiming straight for Tosh's heart.

Thanks to the agility and speed gained from his physical modifications, Tosh dodged the fatal blow, but the cold, Psionics blade immediately pierced the Mutalisk he was riding, causing the abominable aerial behemoth to let out a sharp screech.

The Mutalisk suddenly increased its height, but dared not throw Tosh and the enemy off its back.

A figure wearing a long, dark purple veil now stood before Tosh, firmly planted on the back of the Mutalisk, assuming an aggressive stance.

"Dark Templar Master." The knowledge he gained during the transformation told Tosh that he was facing a Protoss warrior who posed a significant threat to the Cerebrate.

"Zeratul."

The name left a deep impression on the Swarm, for this Dark Prelate had once killed two Cerebrate, and his reputation terrified Cerebrate.

"I am Zeratul, High Priest of the Dark Templar."

"Gabriel Tosh, you were once a selfless and noble being, but the darkness of the Swarm has deeply twisted your heart." Zeratul's torch-like eyes stared directly at Tosh, the turbulence and howling winds of the Mutalisk's flight unable to shake him.

"I couldn't stop the misfortune from happening, but perhaps it was part of the prophecy."

"You are part of the climax, the rise and fall of the movement; everything you experience is predestined. Ancient beliefs have ended, and new spirits and bodies will surely be reconstituted," he said.

"You will surely reveal your path; your destiny is bound to reincarnation."

"Fate?" Tosh might get along well with Zeratul; his grandmother used to talk a lot about destiny, faith, and reincarnation.

Tosh was born a powerful Psionics who could see into everyone's thoughts, but he still had doubts about the predetermined fate his grandmother spoke of.

"Fate," Zeratul uttered hoarsely. At the end of those words, he delivered a lightning-fast, fatal blow to the neck of the Mutalisk beneath his feet, the cold Psionic Blade nearly ripping the monster's veins out.

This attack completely killed the aerial behemoth, causing it to plummet to the ground. Zeratul retreated immediately after the attack, disappearing without a trace as a cloud of darkness drifted away with the wind.

The Mutalisk plummeted straight down into a layer of grayish-white ash, kicking up clouds of smoke. Even falling from the sky, this monster covered in hard armor wouldn't have been shattered into pieces, but it was quickly dissolved by its own blood, which had turned into strong acid after death.

Tosh appeared completely unharmed from the fall of hundreds of feet. He rose furiously from the self-dissolving Mutalisk's corpse, roaring, "Cowardly wretch! Zeratul, is this the only despicable and vile thing you can do?"

The Mutalisk crashed right in the middle of a swarm of insects, and thousands upon thousands of Zerg immediately surrounded it, their countless yellowish eyes fixed on Zeratul in the center.

"You're right." Zeratul reappeared from the shadows, unfurling his green Psionic Blade and assuming an elegant stance towards Tosh.

"We should have a war between us."

"Very well, according to Haj's rules, only the victor deserves to live." Tosh accepted the challenge, full of confidence in his newly modified body.

He shooed away the Zerg that wanted to attack. "This is a one-on-one fight."

Zeratul did not respond; he merely glanced to the left and right, as if gently shaking his head.

A high-ranking Templar Knights clad in blue-gold armor emerged from the shadows, silently igniting his blue-green Psionic Blade, pointing them directly at Tosh. In his hands, one was a blazing High Templar blade, and the other was a chilling Dark Templar 'Blade of the Master.

Next to appear was Sarah Kerrigan, a red-haired Ghost operative dressed in a blue and white Ghost combat uniform. As she emerged from stealth, she tossed her fiery red ponytail, pouted her sexy red lips, and held her A-10 rifle level, aiming it at Tosh.

"I don't know why, Augustus told me I should thank you properly." She blinked.

"Thank you."

"For that, I'll send you a nuclear explosion."