The Beast Tide Approaches

The Three Legendary Beasts naturally were not affected so strongly, but they, too, grew solemn. They knew what had caused the tidal surge.

It was the effect that the gradual awakening of Behemoth, the King of the Beasts, had on the entire planet's psionics. This influence was like Behemoth's breathing.

Now the legendary beasts had no choice. To avoid further disturbing the psionic tides and waking Behemoth, they could only unleash a Beast Tide and wage open war against the Swarm.

Behemoth was terrifying. Once he awoke, the first thing he would do was eat-consume enormous quantities of food to satisfy his ravenous appetite.

Was there anywhere on this planet richer in resources than the Death Forest? No. Those scrawny humans would barely fill a gap between the King of the Beasts' teeth.

When that happened, the legendary beasts would suffer first, followed by the high-level beasts, then the ordinary beasts. Only their high-quality flesh could satisfy Behemoth.

And so the multicolored psionic energies representing their mental communication began to change. Red, the color of anger, slowly became dominant, enveloping the gathered beasts like a crimson illusion.

To reach a consensus on unleashing the Beast Tide as quickly as possible, the Three Legendary Beasts used anger to guide the other beasts' emotions. Under the influence of those emotions, all the beasts reached a unified resolve.

The most terrifying Beast Tide in Tabi Star's history was about to begin.

Meanwhile, the Swarm, the instigator of the entire incident, remained in the dark.

Chloe was carrying out her work for the day.

An enormous Zerg structure had just finished hatching. It was still considerably smaller than the Hatchery, standing only five or six stories tall. It took the shape of a triangular tower, with a Hatchery Pool full of nutrient fluid in its center.

This was a Creep Tumor. Its purpose was very simple: to produce nutrient fluid to expand the creep. The creep's importance to the Swarm was common knowledge. As long as enough creep was laid down over a large enough area, the Swarm would grow stronger.

This, too, was knowledge Chloe had obtained from the memories the Overmind had given her. Experience showed that once creep covered a third of a planet's surface, the Swarm's enemies would have no possible way to defeat it except to destroy the planet.

To cover the Death Forest in creep as soon as possible, Chloe had already led the Drones in hatching more than thirty Creep Tumors. The Death Forest's vastness exceeded her imagination. Even though she was doing everything she could to spread the creep, great stretches of forest still extended beyond sight.

Spreading creep had many benefits. First, within its coverage, not only did hunting become easier, but converting plants into energy also became much more convenient.

Second, the vast expanse of creep performed photosynthesis day and night, absorbing solar energy to provide the Swarm with enormous amounts of energy.

A single Creep Tumor could sustain a thousand Zerglings, so if the Hatchery also hatched units without stopping for a moment, bringing their numbers up to thirty-five thousand would pose no problem at all.

The Swarm was expanding too quickly, and the pressure once again fell on Chloe. She could not even command five thousand Zerglings, let alone thirty-five thousand.

The development of the Swarm's military strength had hit a bottleneck, but it was collecting more and more energy. With this enormous supply of energy accelerating the process, the cocoon enclosing the Overmind was also hatching considerably faster.

Chloe missed the Overmind more and more and hoped he would return soon. Only he could resolve their current development difficulties.

Besides her worries, there was also something that pleased Chloe. The Level Two Hive told her that their successful hunts had allowed the Hatchery to collect enough rare elements. It could now imitate the Hydralisk to hatch a new unit: the Needle Crawler.

The Needle Crawler looked extremely similar to the Zergling. No-to achieve the greatest cost-effectiveness, the Needle Crawler had actually been modified from the Zergling template.

The difference between the two was that the Needle Crawler had an inferior version of a Hydralisk's needle sac on its back, capable of firing steel needles with tremendous penetrating power.

Although these steel needles were no match for the ones fired by Hydralisks, which could pierce the armor of interstellar tanks, they could still punch straight through two suits of plate armor. Their firepower was sufficient.

In an emergency, if the enemy closed in, Needle Crawlers were not entirely defenseless despite having lost their bone blades. Their needle sacs could fire explosive bursts, rapidly discharging large numbers of steel needles to produce a shotgun effect.

Needle Crawlers were also very cheap, requiring only a tenth more energy to hatch than Zerglings. With the addition of this unit, the Swarm's combined melee and ranged combat system had taken its most basic shape.

For their numbers, Chloe chose a ratio of three Zerglings to two Needle Crawlers. In the complex forest terrain, Zerglings were more mobile and agile, handling unexpected situations while Needle Crawlers provided ranged fire support.

With this combination, flying beasts and extremely fast-running beasts that had once been difficult to hunt all suffered. The speed and mobility they took such pride in fell before the Needle Crawlers' rain of needles. The concentrated fire of huge numbers of Needle Crawlers fully embodied the shooting philosophy of "fire enough bullets, and there's no such thing as missing."

The Swarm's hunting efficiency improved again, and quite a few new varieties of beast corpses appeared in the Digestive Cavity.

That night, Chloe went alone to the most heavily guarded place inside the Hatchery. The most powerful Primal Zerg were all there. Ever since Zerglings had begun hatching in batches, the Roaches, Hydralisks, and Zerglings had remained here as the Overmind's guards.

The cocoon enclosing the Overmind had grown larger again and was now only slightly smaller than the Level Two Hive. Chloe raised her head and gazed at the enormous egg in awe. She did not know what would hatch from it, but surely it would be an exceptionally powerful being.

Many days had passed since her last mental exchange with the Overmind. To repay the trust he had placed in her, she had not let up for even a moment during that time.

Hunting beasts, collecting abilities, upgrading the Hatchery, expanding the creep-she deserved no small share of the credit for the Hatchery's rapid development.

Chloe herself felt a great sense of accomplishment during this time and found her life fulfilling. But sometimes, especially in the still of the night, she also felt lonely and isolated.

Her prolonged connection to the Swarm Network had a greater effect on her mind. Sometimes she wondered whether she would have been happier and more content if she had been born a Zerg, without the deception and scheming of the human world.

When people were lonely, they thought, and when they thought too much, they wanted someone to confide in. The Zerg in the Swarm Network all had very simple minds. They would comfort you when you were sad and keep you company when you were lonely, but they struggled to respond to overly complex communication.

Those human knights were merely her subordinates, tools for seizing power, not people she could confide in. Chloe missed the Overmind terribly now. Even a single "mm" in response during their exchanges would make her happy.

At that moment, Zhang Han was dreaming. The cocoon continued to incubate, shaping his body while imparting knowledge to him.

This knowledge consisted of the memories of generations of Overminds. In those memories, Zhang Han saw that the Overminds of the Swarm were all cold, merciless monsters. They slaughtered and devoured without pity.

Wherever the Swarm went, heaps of bleached bones remained (a figure of speech-in reality, even a planet's water and soil would be eaten clean, and under extreme conditions, even stone could be converted). High-tech cities filled with civilization and art burned beneath the Swarm's attacks, and the entire galaxy would be devoured clean.

As the dream progressed, these memories frightened Zhang Han a little. Before crossing over, he had never been a brave man, and the prospect of becoming a monster left him somewhat uneasy.