Deep within the Hatchery, Chloe felt utterly exhausted in the center of its brain.
She had poured every ounce of her energy into commanding the Swarm through a full day of fierce fighting. The strain on her brain was immense, and now she was hungry, exhausted, and sleepy.
She was only an ordinary human, not a member of the Swarm with its fully developed genetic technology. Lasting this long had been no easy feat.
But she could not rest. Even though reports from the patrolling Swarm told her the beasts were all resting, she still could not rest.
The pressure posed by the Legendary Beasts was too great. She had to eliminate their threat as soon as possible.
A white liquid flowed through the needle at the back of Chloe's head and into her brain. In an instant, her hunger and fatigue vanished, and she felt as refreshed as if she had enjoyed a full meal and a good night's sleep.
These were nutrients she had ordered the Hive Mind to formulate for her. Although they could temporarily ease the burden on her body, there was a price: afterward, she would need a longer rest to recover.
But this one injection would allow her to command the war for three days without sleep or rest.
With her energy restored, Chloe turned her attention to the Hatchery's interior. Inside a purple spore sac, Stars lay asleep, completely naked and submerged in green nutrient fluid.
The Hive Mind was using the Swarm's genetic technology to study what made Stars special, seeking a new breakthrough in Psionics so it could soon achieve its goal of enabling the Swarm's Warrior Bugs to use Psionics as well.
Combined with the samples from the many magical beasts they had hunted all this time, the Swarm was no longer completely in the dark about Psionics. It had developed some basic theories and understanding.
The Hive Mind told Chloe that Stars was indeed special. Compared with other Tabi Star Humans, Stars had some strange sections in her genes, possibly some kind of mutation.
This also explained why her talent for Psionics was so strong, and even her neural sensitivity was thirty percent higher than that of an ordinary person.
This reminded Chloe of some rumors about the Astrologers' Association. The Astrologers' Association was extraordinarily mysterious, caring about nothing except the Shroud and Psionics. Worldly power, land, fine food, jewels-they scorned them all.
Yet they still actively participated in political struggles between nations, accepted commissions from kings, and even sent powerful Astromancers to help kings fight their battles.
What they needed was something special... people. And not ordinary people, but those they deemed to have a talent for Psionics.
That was their payment.
They actively cultivated good relations with every royal family, then obtained the right to freely take children away from any country.
Of course, they gave the children's parents generous compensation, but this was not a trade. It was a compulsory transaction, and even a royal princess had once been taken away.
Rumor had it that the Astrologers' Association did this to marry these gifted children to one another and have them produce even more gifted descendants.
That was why everyone who came out of the Astrologers' Association possessed extraordinary strength, far surpassing the geniuses of the mage academies.
Chloe had once been skeptical of this rumor. Now she was eighty percent convinced.
After another glance at the sleeping Stars, Chloe shifted her consciousness elsewhere. Given some time, the Hive Mind would uncover her secrets sooner or later.
Following the Hatchery's thick nerves, Chloe's consciousness began to descend, sinking somewhere very deep.
There was an enormous space here, filled with nutrient fluid, much like a large Hatchery Pool. But instead of eggs brimming with life, it was strewn with all manner of severed limbs. Some belonged to magical beasts, others to the Swarm.
This was the Hatchery laboratory, where the Hatchery tested new units.
Normally, a Hatchery had its own gene bank, containing vast quantities of genes. When needed, it only had to combine those genes into new units suited to the battlefield, such as the current Zerglings and Needle Crawlers.
But by sheer bad luck, the devastating blue beam fired by the Antil Military Empire's flagship had damaged a section storing the key to unlocking the gene bank.
All of the Swarm's technology was hidden in its genes. Now, without the password, even the Hatchery itself had to expend considerable effort decoding them to unlock the Swarm's technology.
Fortunately, the Swarm had considered this possibility and left an algorithm behind. They could only take their time cracking it through brute force. For another civilization, unraveling the secrets within the Swarm's genes would be as difficult as reaching the heavens.
None of the genes decoded so far were suitable for dealing with Legendary Beasts. Time would not wait, so the best approach was still to conduct their own research and assemble units suited to countering Legendary Beasts.
The body parts soaking in the nutrient fluid began to combine: Swarm limbs with magical beast heads, magical beast bodies with Swarm organs. All manner of novel, unique combinations began to appear in the Hatchery laboratory, one after another.
Chloe tried as hard as she could to view these experiments from the Swarm's perspective. The things they assembled were too insane, too visually shocking for an ordinary person.
All manner of twisted, bizarre creatures appeared. The only limit was what a person could imagine, not what the Hive Mind could make. Had she not spent so long in the Hatchery and greatly increased her sanity, she truly would not have been able to watch.
Whenever it assembled a relatively suitable unit, the Hive Mind hatched it, then found a squad of Warrior Bugs containing Zerglings and Needle Crawlers to fight it and collect data on every aspect.
Once it finished collecting data, the Hive Mind put the newly hatched unit back into the Hatchery laboratory's nutrient fluid to recycle it.
It was already deep into the night. Chloe did not merely watch the Hive Mind conduct experiments; she also offered relevant suggestions and discussed them with it.
The Hatchery laboratory conducted experiments very quickly and could work on several projects at once. In the five hours since nightfall, it had already tested over a thousand combinations.
Honestly, without the Hive Mind's brain helping Chloe handle the data, she could never have endured research work of this intensity.
When Chloe complained in her mind that her brain's capabilities were too limited, the Hive Mind, utterly lacking in emotional intelligence, agreed with her.
The Hive Mind also advised Chloe that once the Hatchery reached level 3, she absolutely had to invest enormous resources into hatching Cerebrates.
Cerebrates took far higher priority than Warrior Bugs. Only with the support of their tremendous brainpower could the Swarm's development enter the fast lane, rather than continue at its current leisurely pace.
Those words nearly snapped a nerve in Chloe's brain. The Swarm's current development counted as leisurely? It seemed that, besides pain, the Hive Mind's perception of speed also differed considerably from hers.
With two hours left until dawn, the Hatchery laboratory finally produced results.
A simple, effective new unit had been created. Not only did this unit uphold the Swarm's longstanding tradition of cost-effectiveness, but the energy required to hatch it was only 1.5 times that of a Zergling.
Its combat capabilities were not limited to countering Legendary Beasts, either. It could join the regular roster of Warrior Bugs and adapt to a variety of specialized battlefields.
Because it closely resembled an insect called a spider, the new unit was named the Venomspider.
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