Enhanced Zerglings

Master Stars's actions shocked everyone, including Chloe herself.

Astromancers were proud, even arrogant. They believed they could see fate clearly and were beings beyond ordinary mortals.

The Astrologers' Association was also an organization beyond the influence of any nation. There were far too many matters for which kings and nobles needed their help.

As a result, although some Astromancers pledged allegiance to a king, they rarely knelt. No one thought there was anything wrong with that.

Master Stars had not been among the three people in Chloe's original plan. She had intended to proceed gradually, starting with the two mages and leaving Master Stars until last.

"Your esteemed Highness, as the party's guide and the one who put the prophecy into practice, I, Stars, dare to ask you for a reward."

Before Chloe could react, Stars continued, "An Astromancer's wish is to see the prophecy fulfilled. And also..."

Stars raised her head to look at Chloe. Purple light shimmered in her eyes like the Milky Way, like the stars.

"To live up to my name."

Taken aback by Stars's motives and resolve, Chloe hesitated over giving her a Neural Thorn implant. After a little thought, she decided to proceed with the implantation anyway.

Stars's reasoning was simply too sound. She had indeed made enormous contributions. Failing to reward someone so powerful and accomplished would have a very bad effect on the party's stability.

The implantation process was extremely unsettling. When the Neural Thorn's sharp mouthparts first bit into Stars's scalp, her expression shifted slightly.

Then her face returned to solemnity until the implantation was complete, with no more than an occasional twitch of her eyebrows. If not for the copious beads of sweat visible on her forehead, people would surely have mistakenly believed that implanting a Neural Thorn caused little pain.

"Thank you, honored Executor. With your help, I have finally touched a fragment of the stars." Once the pain ended, Stars bowed to Chloe and returned to the crowd.

Executor was the name the Hatchery used for Chloe, and Chloe was very surprised that Stars knew it. When she had time, she intended to get to the bottom of it.

Ymir was the last to receive a Neural Thorn implant. As Grand Knight Commander, his contributions were beyond question, and rewarding him was only natural. It would improve his enthusiasm and loyalty. Besides, implanting a Neural Thorn in him had been the purpose of this round of rewards in the first place.

Ymir also wanted to follow Stars's example and overcome the pain through willpower, but he endured it only briefly before beginning to howl just like Raul. Stars truly was an exception.

At last, all three Neural Thorns had been implanted. Raul, Stars, and Ymir all displayed strength far beyond what they had possessed before.

With someone taking the lead and tangible changes in strength before them, every knight present felt as though a fire had been lit in his heart. They had all originally been ordinary knights of the lowest rank, only a little better than squires, and their futures had not been bright.

The fact that they had been sent off with the Princess's doomed party said enough. But things were different now. The Princess had bounced back from rock bottom and become their greatest hope for a bright future.

The way all the knights looked at Chloe had changed. Once, they had coveted the Princess's beauty. Later, they had come to fear her power. Now, they looked at her eagerly, hoping she could grant them strength.

In the past, Chloe would have basked in those gazes for a long time. Now her sights were set higher, and she no longer cared much about such things. Stars's performance had given her a slight sense of crisis, and she chose to have a second Neural Thorn implanted.

Previously, when her Neural Thorn stood upright, it looked like a stray tuft of hair. Now they looked like a cricket's two antennae.

It was not that she was unwilling to have more implanted, but that her brain could not bear it. To use a simple analogy, no matter how much memory a computer had, it still would not run fast if its CPU was inadequate.

Chloe was still very afraid of modifying her brain. This sort of surgery was no minor undertaking, and she also worried about whether it might have an irreversible effect on her consciousness.

A Level Two Hive could supply enough energy for five thousand Zerglings. Although that did not mean it could only produce five thousand Zerglings, keeping their numbers reasonable would prevent the Swarm from starving.

Besides, Chloe simply could not control that many Zerglings. Zerg units beyond her control that had not been incorporated into the Swarm Network would descend into instinctive madness.

They would keep slaughtering the living things around them, including their own kind, stopping only when they died.

To control the Swarm, Chloe made a choice: upgrade the Zerglings, doubling their energy consumption and halving their numbers.

This approach was relatively poor value, because the upgraded Enhanced Zerglings were only thirty percent stronger in combat.

But to control the Swarm effectively, Chloe had no choice but to do this.

Later, she found another pretext to reward the two mages. Together with the previous three recipients, the five were linked to a total of five hundred Enhanced Zerglings, while she herself controlled two thousand.

To expand the Swarm more quickly, newly hatched Zerglings hurried straight to the battlefield. Death Forest became the Swarm's hunting grounds, a slaughtering hell for magical beasts.

The larger Swarm raised the intensity and density of the hunts to a new level. It seemed that every leaf and every handful of soil in the forest was soaked in blood.

Beside the Level Two Hive was the Digestive Cavity. Having already been upgraded twice, it resembled a bottomless cavern. An endless stream of Zergling hunting parties dragged prey to the edge of the cavern and tossed it down.

The magical beasts' blood, in all its different colors, painted the cavern walls in a multitude of hues, like a portrait of hell.

This was the Swarm's systematic hunting, slaughter, and digestion.

In a small corner of the forest, a squirrel-like magical beast held its breath as it hid deep within the bushes. Its body trembled slightly with terror and fear.

Outside the bushes came rustling sounds. Those were the sounds of Zerglings running, the source of the squirrel magical beast's terror.

At last, after it had hidden for quite some time, the sounds faded. The squirrel had escaped this hunt.

The squirrel was a High-Level Magical Beast. It possessed intelligence and could manipulate the wind into blades that shredded its enemies. In a surprise attack, it could kill one or two of the Zerglings hunting it.

Its intelligence told it not to do that. A momentary victory meant nothing. These Zerglings were monsters that had suddenly crawled out of hell.

They were not just one or two, one pack or two packs. They had no fear of death, they were addicted to slaughter, and they were endless.

If the squirrel magical beast rashly attacked, more Zerglings would soon come to hunt it. Even if its hunt was flawless and it left no survivors, the Zerglings would still appear.

No one could figure out why the Zerglings were so united or how they passed messages between themselves. It seemed that staying far away from them was the best choice for survival.

The squirrel's furry front paws stepped on dead branches and fallen leaves, not daring to make a sound. It was precisely because of its caution that it had survived until now.