What an Insect Sea Really Is

The two sides quickly clashed at close quarters, the Zerg organisms against the Amoeba rhizome swarm.

Then... there was no then. The surging rhizome swarm swept aside the Zerg organisms the moment they made contact, like a tsunami crashing head-on, utterly unstoppable.

One-on-one, there was no question that rhizomes could not defeat any Zerg organism. Aside from non-aggressive larvae, no rhizome could beat a single Zerg organism in ground combat.

But group battles were different. Beyond the combat power of individuals, many other factors had to be considered. The combined strength produced by those factors was the information that truly mattered in a group battle.

For example, battlefield width.

The Zerg had a large organism weighing several tons, with heavy, durable armor, specially adapted resilient bones, and an additional cerebrum besides its brain. Even if one brain was damaged, it would not die. Most lethal of all, it possessed four large, sickle-shaped Monomolecular Blades. Combined with the bite force of its powerful muscles, virtually nothing made of molecular materials could withstand its cutting.

In a one-on-one fight against a rhizome, the outcome of a ground battle was practically beyond doubt.

Yet because this organism was so huge, it occupied a great deal of space. Within the same battlefield width, there could be thousands, even tens of thousands, of rhizomes. They swarmed forward in a flood; the four Monomolecular Blades had barely closed to cut down one batch before the next batch submerged it.

And could that organism's heavy biological armor really be harder than the strata deep underground near the planet's core? Besides, places like its joints could not be covered by shell armor.

Take another small Zerg organism, for instance. It had a pair of sickle claws on its back, sickle claws for hands, and a barbed tail. It