Flesh Abyss

Carnivorous Bee Nest.

Similar to the Spider Nest.

This, too, was a vertical shaft descending straight down.

The only difference was that the vast underground hollow connected to the Carnivorous Bee Nest had no bottom.

The Carnivorous Bees had merely used the bones and shells of various animals, mixed with mineral debris, to construct a ring of funnel-shaped hive structures, narrowing the opening into the underground world to a diameter of two meters.

Head-sized flying insects glittering with yellow fluorescence slowly drifted out of the opening.

They resembled floating wisps, their bodies covered in fuzz. They barely retained any insect-like characteristics. They radiated a warm red glow and looked quite harmless.

Yet in Elar's memories, these insects bore the terrifying name of Floating Mayfly Demons. Their bodies were practically saturated with grease. They would spontaneously ignite at the slightest provocation, and they acted in groups, often swarming their targets and burning them into living torches.

They also lived symbiotically with jellyfish-like monsters called Lantern Monsters, which loved to self-destruct. Together, they were the most flammable and explosive combination among labyrinth monsters.

However, the Floating Mayfly Demons in cave labyrinths were usually only fist-sized. Neither their levels nor their heat output came close to those drifting out of the underground world.

These monsters possessed extremely high caloric value. The endless stream of Floating Mayfly Demons drifting from the opening alone could feed every larval bee in the swarm.

If the Carnivorous Bees could use these Floating Mayfly Demons as a food source, then so could the Swarm.

Creep spores naturally countered monsters covered in nutrients.

Once a Floating Mayfly Demon entered the yellow spore mist sprayed by a Spore Crawler, mycelium would begin spreading wildly over its furry body. The Swarm instead had to make sure to retrieve them in time, lest they fall back into the underground world.

As the Creep spread over the opening, clung to the rock dome of the underground world, and differentiated sensory organs—

The Overmind was finally able to see the underground world.

Countless specks of Floating Mayfly Demons and Lantern Monsters formed a warm-colored galaxy, dazzling and brilliantly radiant.

The Overmind froze for a moment, having never expected to see such a sight underground.

At the same time, the ever-spreading Creep and the hive opening being continuously widened seemed to draw the attention of a Lantern Monster.

It no longer drifted with the wind, instead floating deliberately toward this spot.

Its enormous body, seven or eight meters in diameter, might not have been able to blast apart the ore-mixed Carnivorous Bee hive, but it could easily burn away the Creep.

Just as the Lantern Monster drew nearer—

A yellow acidic spore glob struck it.

The acid instantly ate through its outer membrane. After entering its internal cavity, it splashed outward, nearly dissolving the entire Lantern Monster. At the hive entrance, a Spore Crawler was anchored to the hive structure with its cannon pointed downward.

At the same time, more Spore Crawlers crawled out of the opening, surrounding it as they hung upside down and rooted themselves into the ceiling of the underground world.

Using the Spore Crawlers' senses, the Overmind was able to see the ground of the underground world across a height of several kilometers...

The Overmind on the throne showed an astonished expression.

Several minutes later, an ordinary Zergling leaped down from the opening.

Its vestigial wings vibrated rapidly as its falling body continuously made minute adjustments, dodging one Floating Mayfly Demon and Lantern Monster after another.

The "ground" of the underground world grew closer and closer.

A mass of slowly writhing arms of varying sizes came into the Zergling's view. They intertwined, rising and falling like ocean waves. As far as it could see, there was no end to them.

If its guess was correct, this was a Many-Legged Monster.

An unbelievably enormous Many-Legged Monster. The Overmind felt it could even be described as a "Flesh Abyss." It had no idea whether all the Many-Legged Monsters in the underground world were this size...

Smack— The Zergling, already at terminal velocity, tensed its legs and landed firmly, snapping five arms beneath its feet in the process.

Only then did the Overmind realize that these arms of all sizes were not spider legs, beast paws, bat wings, or any of the other animal limbs commonly found in labyrinths.

They were the hands of humanoid creatures. Dark in color with a faint bluish cast, they had slender wrists and long fingers, and were quite beautiful.

Could these be cave elf hands?

But the Overmind soon dismissed that possibility. They had only four fingers, and were much shorter than Elar's arms. Even fully extended, they were not as tall as the Zergling. The dense sea of arms could not even block the Zergling's line of sight.

Driven by a monster's instinctive hatred for living beings, the Flesh Abyss's arms began clawing their way onto the Zergling.

The Zergling easily shook them off.

Zerglings were inherently highly aggressive. Without the Overmind deliberately stopping it, the Zergling quickly bit through more than a dozen arms.

Regeneration and rapid proliferation were the Many-Legged Monster's bread and butter. More arms, softer and more tender, quickly grew from the severed stumps.

The Overmind keenly noticed that the discarded arms bitten off by the Zergling were beginning to adhere to the Many-Legged Monster's body, sprouting countless fine threads like blood vessels.

Moreover, those threads were growing ever more numerous, and the severed arms were regenerating faster and faster...

The Zergling, still crunching away at bones, suddenly stopped.

Its back arched, and the extra limbs on its back tensed and lifted. It looked exceptionally alert.

The Overmind could also sense distinct psionic fluctuations, steadily rising.

This enormous Many-Legged Monster had begun directing its attention here—its immense size prevented its soul from fully synchronizing with its flesh.

This method of wielding power through focused attention gave the Overmind an odd sense of familiarity.

The arms that the Zergling had once been able to tear apart with ease gradually became tougher.

Seven or eight hands tightly gripped the Zergling's limbs, appendages, horns... Even with the strength of its alien muscles, it struggled to break free.

But that was as far as it went.

The Zergling could not shake free of the arms' grasp, but it could still use its powerful jaws to bite them off, its appendages to carve bloody holes into them, and even its spiked tail to easily sweep through their bones.

Compared to the Flesh Abyss's enormous size, an arm was less significant than a single hair. Even if it focused all its "attention" on one arm, it could not make that arm exert much force.

When the Zergling used its teeth to tear at an arm gripping its horn, it suddenly felt intense pain.

And the source of that pain... was the very arm the Zergling was biting.

This bizarre scene made the Overmind pause for a moment.

But the Zergling, its veins flooded with adrenaline, did not pause. With a crack, it bit the arm clean off.

Yet after the arm was severed, the remaining hand on the Overmind Zergling showed no sign of falling away.

Only then did the Overmind realize that the severed limb had already fused with the Zergling's flesh.

After carefully examining the Zergling's body with psionic power, it found that the Flesh Abyss's tissue had neither invaded the Zergling's body nor altered its DNA. It had merely used some method to completely shut down the Zergling's rejection response.

Then, with the natural healing speed of a Many-Legged Monster, it fused with the Zergling.

The Twisted Nodes in the spider cave provided the Swarm with large amounts of high-quality protein every night, but the Many-Legged Monsters within the cave labyrinth had no such ability.

Such a miraculous and utterly effortless method piqued the Overmind's interest—if the Creep possessed this ability as well...

At that moment, the Flesh Abyss reacted again.

Powerful neural signals began entering the Zergling's body from every point where the arms connected to it.

The Flesh Abyss was forcibly controlling the Zergling's limbs through neural links.

Even though the Zergling's neural structure was far more advanced than the Flesh Abyss's, the difference in their sheer mass could not be ignored.

Though the Zergling did its best to resist, its body still gradually began swaying with the surrounding arms amid violent tremors...

The Overmind, which had been monitoring the Zergling's body all along, confirmed once more that the Flesh Abyss had not invaded or altered the Zergling's internal neural structure. The two were merely connected through their nerves.

Which meant...

The red glow in the Zergling's eyes intensified.

The Overmind's psionic power began reinforcing the Zergling's brain.

As the temperature inside its skull rose sharply, the Zergling's neural activity intensified by more than tenfold.

Intense neural signals surged through the arms linked to the Zergling and into the Flesh Abyss. Just as the Flesh Abyss had forcibly controlled the Zergling, the Overmind began controlling the Flesh Abyss's body tissue in return.

All around the Zergling, the arms within a radius of ten meters suddenly stiffened, shooting straight into the sky as they formed the gesture for "six."

And as the Overmind continuously increased its psionic power, more and more trembling arms joined them, forming the "six" gesture and raising high into the air.

Fifteen meters, twenty meters, twenty-five meters, thir... There was no thirty meters. The Zergling's entire nervous system had burned out.

However, the Overmind's actions seemed to have thoroughly enraged the Flesh Abyss.

The previously calm flesh around the Zergling's mangled remains suddenly began to churn.

Amid the rolling waves of flesh, countless arms twisted and clenched around one another, merging with the underlying tissue to form a colossal hundred-meter hand. As it swung, it unleashed a thunderous sonic boom.

Not even a Roach could withstand such a terrifying blow. The Zergling's remains were almost instantly smashed into pulp.

The Overmind also recorded the peak psionic level at that moment—Level 11.

Without question, whether in mass, soul strength, or physical power, the Flesh Abyss was the strongest enemy the Swarm had ever directly faced.

Yet the Overmind felt little fear. "Send a Carnivorous Bee down to collect some samples."

Since powerful neural signals could suppress and even seize control of the other party's bodily movements, it meant that with sufficiently powerful neural nodes and an Extractor, this endless expanse of Many-Legged Monsters could be turned into an unprecedented "Twisted Node."

If it could gain such a source of organic matter, the Swarm would not need to worry about resources for a very long time...

Nearly a month had passed since the Swarm established its first Hatchery.

Although it had shifted production several times during that period, producing Drones, Overlords, Roaches... the Overmind had still accumulated over a hundred thousand Zerglings. It now had enough forces to launch a reckless assault.

And... the Overmind's gaze passed through the thick strata and projected toward the surface.

Dragon Lion Territory, beside the Spawning Pool.

The cocoon belonging to the Dragon Lion had entered the final stage of "fetal movement"...