Heart of the Swarm

Three days later.

On the surface.

Dragon Lion Territory.

A Queen carrying the Overmind's consciousness flew from the Spawning Pool toward the Heart Forest.

This Queen was truly unlike any other.

Zerg units often had irregular protrusions and asymmetrical bone spines on their bodies. Such structures usually served no special purpose, merely vestiges left behind by the Zerg's ancient genes.

Yet this Queen had none of those things. Its carapace was smooth, its bone spines symmetrical. Most importantly, there was its head.

A normal Queen's head was round and bulbous. Together with the mandibles by its mouth and its little antennae, it looked like a fly no matter how one looked at it.

But this one was different. Below its eyes, where its mandibles grew, its head narrowed slightly, forming a structure resembling cheekbones. The overall contours of its head were relatively sharp, and together with the lines of its carapace above the eyes, they formed something like "brow ridges" and "eye sockets." Its insect face somehow looked downright "valiant."

The reason for this change was simple: while it had been soaking in the Spawning Pool to heal its wounds, Elven genes had been inserted into it.

Yes, this was the Queen Elar had shot and wounded. It had been healed.

While analyzing Elven genes, the Evolution Chamber had discovered that Elves possessed an unbelievable sense of direction and spatial awareness. So it had conveniently inserted those genes into the Queen that had been soaking in the Spawning Pool to recover. It had never expected Elven genes to also have cosmetic effects.

The Overmind had named this Queen Handsome Ball.

Because the Overmind was possessing it, anticipation showed on Handsome Ball's handsome face with almost human-like clarity.

The Venom Devourer's Heart Tree transformation experiment had failed. Reality was not a game; bugs could not be exploited so easily. The Overmind had already turned eighty percent of the Venom Devourer's carapace woody, and because it contained too many tree genes, all of the Venom Devourer's functions had been reduced by forty percent. Yet there was still no sign of a Heart Tree transformation.

Just as the Overmind was preparing to give up, the Heart Forest's life-force-focused Evolution Chamber sent word—its tests on life force had made a breakthrough.

The Heart Forest was not far from the Spawning Pool.

Not long after Handsome Ball took off, it began descending again.

By now, the Heart Forest had undergone a complete transformation.

Flesh tumors mingled with plant fibers grew from the trunks. Enormous chunks of meat were supported by the trunks like skeletons, swelling and contracting as though with fetal movements. Flesh tentacles continuously branched out, thinning into capillary roots that grew together with tiny twigs.

The entire forest had become a literal "flesh forest."

The Evolution Chamber's brain possessed astonishing information-processing capabilities, but like most Zerg units, it had no concept of self.

It was not that it could not evolve one. Rather, the birth of self-will was firmly locked down by Zerg genes. Only a powerful Overmind could bypass that genetic lock through the will of the hive.

Producing Zerg units with self-will was usually also a sign that an Overmind had matured.

Therefore, no matter how much the Overmind wanted one, no commentator crawled out of the Evolution Chamber to meticulously explain every detail of each evolution. Unless the Overmind was willing to let infected units that retained their sense of self touch the Evolution Chamber, one of the swarm's most vital structures.

It linked to and searched the Evolution Chamber brain's information, while also controlling the Queen and having it point its view toward a chunk of flesh deep within the forest that continuously expanded, contracted, and pulsed.

A faint but clearly visible green glow kept lighting up from the flesh.

So that was it.

The Evolution Chamber had verified an organ closely tied to the power of life.

For living organisms, "organ differentiation" was a fairly basic evolutionary technique.

Put simply, it meant specialized functions. The lungs were dedicated to breathing, the heart to pumping blood, the liver to breaking down toxins... It was the same principle as an industrial assembly line: the simpler the task assigned to a single organ, the greater its efficiency.

The same was true in the supernatural realm. The optimal solution for an organism seeking to wield supernatural power was to concentrate that power into a single organ and grow a specialized "supernatural organ."

For instance, most psionic units concentrated their ability to manipulate psionic energy in their brains. Moreover, whether Protoss or high-level psionic units among the Zerg, they had all independently evolved specialized psionic organs known as "neural cords."

Life force followed the same principle. Although even Elves had no organ specifically meant to manipulate life force, this supernatural power was inseparably connected to the heart.

Come to think of it, was not the Heart Tree's most crucial organ also a heart made of roots and vines?

Elar's memories also contained a forbidden ritual called the "Heart of Thorns," which replaced a flesh-and-blood creature's heart with a special tuber in order to gain more powerful life force.

The Evolution Chamber had completed its basic testing. The "High-Activity Auxiliary Heart" had become an Evolution Chamber technology and could now be installed on Zerg units.

Yes, an auxiliary heart. Because it activated too many Elven genes, its blood-pumping ability had declined, making it unable to meet the circulatory needs of Zerg units.

Further strengthening its functions was no longer the Evolution Chamber's job. That required first spreading the organ widely, increasing the mutation pool, and then selectively breeding it.

Thus, the Overmind immediately gave the order: Try it on a Dragon Dog first. Its genetic chain was resilient enough.

Spawning Pool.

The Dragon Dog that had been grievously wounded some time ago had just run out of the pool. The mucus on its body had not even dried when it shook itself, ready to frolic—only to suddenly freeze.

It turned around and hopped back into the Spawning Pool...

Oh, right. It also needed to prepare a "High-Activity Auxiliary Heart" specifically for building units. Perhaps after installing a "heart," the "Venom Devourer Heart Tree" would finally be completed?

On the surface.

Spider Forest.

The Overmind on the throne opened its eyes.

Before him stood a strange Venom Devourer.

Unlike other Zerg structures, which were uniformly dark reddish-brown, it was a tender, lush emerald green from top to bottom. Its internal circulatory system had even grown into the shape of leaf veins. A closer look at its carapace revealed woody grain patterns, while numerous thick roots had sprouted from the base of the structure, plunging into the creep to draw nutrients.

With a point of the Overmind's finger, fan-shaped leaves resembling those of a Venus flytrap rapidly grew around the Venom Devourer, wrapping it within before swiftly filling with thick slurry.

Part of the Venom Devourer's tissues would rapidly dissolve and reconstruct within. The Overmind had relied on this rapid modification mechanism to deeply lignify the Venom Devourer within three days.

After the sac wriggled only a few times, a handsome Overlord could be seen flying in from afar through the sky, carrying a cocoon.

The cocoon Handsome Ball brought was naturally not a living heart. It contained only a mass of thick slurry—its essence a package of "essence" prepared by the Evolution Chamber. It contained nucleic acids related to the High-Activity Auxiliary Heart, along with a chain of proteins.

With the support of the "essence," and given the Zerg's efficiency, growing a single heart would not take long. At most, two hours would be enough to basically complete the modifications to the circulatory system.

Yet after only half an hour, a wave of green energy suddenly burst from the cocoon.

The Overmind could sense with perfect clarity that the Venom Devourer within the sac was being rapidly reshaped.

Just a few breaths later, the cocoon split apart.

A Venom Devourer wreathed in green mist emerged. Through the sac beneath it, a green, glistening heart could clearly be seen beating powerfully at the structure's central axis.

Its transformation was not over yet.

Under the effect of its life force, that heart continued to expand, growing larger and larger.

At the same time, countless conducting tissues on the creep that had originally supplied the Venom Devourer grew thicker and more developed. After connecting to the Venom Devourer's heart, they began to pulse faintly along with its beat...

Once all the changes had ended, that heart had become the main body of the structure. The Venom Devourer itself had instead become "accessory tissue" attached to that giant heart.

A "Heart Tree" unique to the swarm had been born, with the Venom Devourer as its heart and the creep stretching a thousand meters in every direction as its tree...

The Overmind witnessed the entire process firsthand. He even possessed it through the hive mind, recording the full process of the heart's rapid development and the changes across the entire patch of creep from both psionic and genetic perspectives.

If the same process were repeated twice more, this "Heart of the Swarm" could be inscribed into the swarm's DNA chain and become a constructible building.

The Overmind reached out and pressed a hand against the "heart." In an instant, he felt a warm power fill his body. Due to his body's dormant functions, he himself did not feel much, but he could clearly sense that the biological activity of the throne beneath him had risen by a level.

The essence of a "Tree Heart" was to gather life force dissipating throughout the environment. Once it could no longer contain it, it would actively release the excess life force, increasing the biological activity of nearby units in the form of an aura.

Because the "Swarm Heart" was a Zerg unit through and through, it could directly inject life force into other Zerg units through physical contact...

Put simply, Zerg units had no rejection response toward one another. Through contact, Zerg units could become part of the "Swarm Heart," naturally allowing them to share its life force.

By the same principle, every structure on this patch of creep could become part of the Swarm Heart, enjoying the efficiency of Zerg structures nearly on par with elite units.

But after pondering for a moment, the Overmind did not establish Hatcheries or Evolution Chambers around the Swarm Heart.

Instead, he summoned a group of Drones and began mass-producing Venom Devourers.

Using the Swarm Heart as the core, the Overmind intended to establish an array of Venom Devourers that would produce highly active diseased spores and remain ready to spread them into the atmosphere at any moment.

With such an array, the Overmind would possess a trump card capable of infecting the entire world in a short time.

But... maintaining such a field of Venom Devourers would not come cheap. Even pouring in all the output from the newly constructed Twisted Node might not be enough.

The Overmind took a deep breath, suppressing his pained feelings, and slapped the armrest.

The throne slowly drifted toward the Spider Cavern...

I'll have to toss the throne into the Splitting Pool for some modifications later. This speed is way too pathetic!