Chapter 42

He began sorting through the books that were too awful to look at. Even though he knew that, given the nature of most Zerg, the library was unlikely to receive any visitors other than him in the years to come, he still made a great effort to put the Zerg romance novels that gave him a headache at a glance at the very back of the shelves.

He painstakingly placed the few books written in Zerg script at the front.

Books from the Zerg were easy to recognize. Compared with the thin, brightly covered novels from the human world, Zerg books were usually thick and heavy, with pitch-black covers that looked as though they had been made from shed insect skins or carapaces. Sometimes, they even felt wet and sticky to the touch.

One such book gave Su Lin a fright. When he touched its cover, damp as though it were alive, he instinctively let go.

The massive Zerg tome fell to the floor.

As Su Lin bent down to pick it up, his gaze fell on its open pages.

Zerg works differed from human books in another way: they used a great many illustrations to record events and tell stories.

That was a good thing for Su Lin now. Although merging with the Zerg Queen had given him the ability to use the Zerg language directly, he still knew nothing about Zerg writing.

But he could easily understand what the book was about: the story of the Primordial Mother and her males.

The Zerg were a naturally violent, brutal, and highly exclusionary race.

Before the Primordial Mother appeared, whenever the Zerg encountered another colony, they would begin slaughtering one another.

That terrible behavior, however, was connected to their method of reproduction. When the breeding season of a natural cycle began, all Zerg colonies would gather to fight, and only the strongest, most vicious colonies were qualified to send their breeding males into the Zerg Queen's royal nest.

There, they would spend the entire breeding season in intimacy with the Zerg Queen, then leave with as many eggs as possible. These eggs, soaked in the Zerg Queen's honeyed fluid, would be stronger, craftier, and more perfect than others of their kind. Once hatched, they would become the rulers and vanguard of the colony's next generation. Then they would lead the entire colony into a new round of fighting against numerous other colonies in the next breeding season.

In other words, the more thoroughly you wiped out other colonies in ordinary times, the more likely you were to enter the Zerg Queen's royal nest during breeding season, which meant your colony could produce stronger offspring...

But this self-consumption also meant that, for an unimaginably long time, the Zerg remained nothing more than low-level, savage cosmic lifeforms rather than a "civilized race."

Until the Primordial Mother appeared.

This exceptionally unusual Zerg Queen allowed seven males from different colonies into her nest during the same breeding cycle. And as the breeding season drew to an end, the males escorted the utterly exhausted, drenched Zerg Queen out of the royal nest.

That was also the first time in Zerg history that different colonies gathered without beginning to slaughter one another.

Without realizing it, Su Lin had become absorbed in the book he was holding.

Although the book was about the Primordial Mother throughout, the illustrations never showed her true appearance. The seven males, however, were depicted in considerable detail. Su Lin stared at the bizarre Zerg in their primitive forms in the illustrations and could not help clicking his tongue.

Wow, this... the Primordial Mother could actually handle seven Zerg of this type in one go?

A complicated feeling rose in the shallow human straight man's heart, and he could not tell whether it was admiration or horror. Just as he was eagerly trying to turn the page and continue reading the story of the Zerg Queen and her seven little lovers, he caught a glimpse of a white figure out of the corner of his eye.

He turned his head and was startled.

"Whoa-"

Su Lin let out a short cry of surprise, but once he saw what the white figure looked like, his fright quickly turned to amazement.

It was a young woman.

The young woman was not exactly a peerless beauty. In fact, compared with the handsome Zerg Su Lin had seen during his time among them, her looks could only be called delicate.

And yet...

The young woman was perfectly Su Lin's type.

She looked so pure, gentle, and innocent. Her light brown curls and misty yellow eyes, as though she had only just woken up, complemented her snow-white skin. From every angle, she looked harmless and pitiful, just like a helpless little white rabbit or a delicate white flower bearing dew in the wind.

Of course, Su Lin did not actually know that what had appeared before him was not a real individual but a remote projection, or that the form it showed was not the other party's true form at all.

But forgive him; he was only a foolish straight man, after all. At that moment, he could only stare blankly at her. He knew full well that anyone who could appear silently and without warning on a Security Committee spaceship had to be a Zerg, however he looked at it, yet in that instant, his heart beat as if a drunk fawn were dancing in his chest.

"Y-you, um, hello?"

Su Lin stammered out a greeting to the young woman.

The young woman looked at the red-faced youth before her. She pursed her lips and took a step back, as though she were very embarrassed.

"Sorry, I didn't frighten you, did I, Su Lin?"

She spoke very gently.

"You know my name?"

Su Lin was taken aback.

"Carlos mentioned you to me," the young woman replied. She blinked, her cheeks slightly flushed. "...I heard you used to live in the human world? So I came to find you."

"Huh?"

"There are some things about humans I'd like to ask you."