Juggernaut: Rise of the Zerg

Chapter 144 Changes
The morning sunlight passed through the gaps in the clouds, and a thin layer of water vapor formed in the jungle. Under the effect of the Tyndall effect, it reflected colorful lights in the air.

Winter goes to spring, and it is another year of cold and heat.Counting it down, this is already the fourth year since the swarm landed on the mainland.

In the first year, they broke through the lizardman territory in the jungle and gained a firm foothold here.When the winter passed and the next spring came, the Zerg broke through the lizardman fortress, the giant city Heli, and went deep into the empire, destroying the ancient empire that had ruled the continent for thousands of years.

And last autumn, they basically completed the expulsion and cleanup of the lizard people on the continent, and gained complete dominion over the entire continent.

Maybe there are still some lucky ones who escaped the cleanup of the swarm, but it doesn't matter anymore.Under the sea of ​​insects, they couldn't afford any waves.

Today, the Zerg's footsteps have spread all over the entire continent, and they are also continuing to explore and expand around in the ocean. Since the appearance of the Zerg, they have developed to such a degree for the first time.

Zero probably made a statistic on the size of the bug swarm today, and concluded that it was 700 million!
It includes all arms of sea, land, logistics, and even underground and sky. The total number has exceeded this number.

In terms of quantity, they may still be far behind the ant tribe at its peak, but in reality, the two are no longer the same.

What's strange is that with the rapid increase of Zerg individuals, Zero in the empty space gradually feels that something has changed in himself.

He was a little uncertain, this change must be related to the Zerg, but it was just a vague perception, and he didn't even know what it was.

This made him a little concerned, the change in the number of Zerg could affect him?This is something that has never happened before.

When he was on the initial island, the number of ants had reached tens of millions many times, but he had never felt this way.

"Perhaps there is a fundamental difference between the Zerg and the Ant," he guessed.

Although he sensed it, he didn't find out where this change came from. It just became more intense as the number of Zergs increased.

He realized that this kind of change should be closely related to the overall number of Zerg, and he was not in a hurry. Zero's mentality is very peaceful now, and everything is developing in a good direction. Although there are some troubles, it is not in general. Not a big problem.

He believes that as the Zerg race progresses day by day, there will be a result whether it is the problems they faced before or the changes that are happening to him now.

Based on the current base of the Zerg Swarm, even if the Zerg on the mainland has basically stopped hatching, they are relatively cautious in expanding in the ocean, and their number is also increasing at an extremely fast rate.

It is also for this reason that Zero's vague feeling before is becoming clearer little by little.

He could feel it, as if something was about to appear as the swarm grew, and it was about to come out, but it stayed on the illusory dividing line that was about to come out.

Zero is very indifferent, even if he does have some curiosity about it, he will not destroy the swarm's step-by-step plan to expand wildly.

Who knows how many more Zerg units it will take to figure out what that feeling really is?Since it will definitely appear, why should He worry, just let it happen naturally.

The swarm bypassed the dangerous sea area at sea and continued on their way.

This experience made Zero and Sass clearly realize that although the Zerg seems to have occupied the entire continent and a large area of ​​the ocean, it is still far from being a threat.

Today's strength is only external, and there are still things in this world that can cause harm to the swarm.

...............

Time passed by every minute and every second, and three months passed in a blink of an eye.

During these three months, Sass continued to think about research that might be useful on the Zerg, and at the same time, he did not forget to advance his own basic knowledge.

It is worth mentioning that, in order to meet its own research needs, it tried to use Sommer's eyes on the Zerg for the first time, and pioneered a Zerg unit that focused on assisting scientific research, and used this function Added Zerg gene pool.

This means that Zero can use this ability on any suitable Zerg unit at any time in the future as long as he needs to.

The reason why it is "suitable" comes from the different structures of different Zerg units. If the body size is small, there is naturally no way to apply it.

Of course, due to the immature research, this kind of bug basically replicated the eye function of Sass, without much extension.

However, this can be regarded as creating the most basic conditions for the basic biological research of SARS.

Zero had already tested this bug when it was just hatched, and he found that under close observation, he could clearly observe the fluff on the legs of small crawling insects above the ground through the vision of this bug fine structure!

Although it is still far from being truly nuanced, it is still a gratifying result.At least after that, Sass would not be ignorant of those tiny creatures.

During testing, Zero also used the swarm in isolation to attack large fish that contained deadly substances to the Zerg, and risked the newly hatched species to observe the substances escaping from the corpses.

Undoubtedly, all the bugs responsible for the observation eventually died, but this time Zero finally learned what was attacking the Zerg through them!
It was a creature similar to a maggot that had shrunk hundreds of times. What finally flowed out from the corpse was not "pus", but the external manifestation of this dense state of creatures. With such a tiny size, when they When scattered in the sea water, it will naturally disappear without a trace.

Although Zero still doesn't know how such aggressive creatures survived in that big fish without killing the host, there is no doubt that they should be parasites that live in this creature.

The specifics are still unknown, but at least the swarm has initially revealed their true colors and seen their "looks" clearly.

This is of course an improvement. If you look at it carefully, this should be the first time the Zerg have truly observed the microscopic world. It can be regarded as a milestone event. Even strictly speaking, these tiny bugs are still not real. microscopic organisms.

In addition, after losing a large number of Zerg units again, Zero also figured out another characteristic of these parasites, which is the main reason why Zero lowered his guard against them again.

He discovered that if these parasites are exposed to seawater, they still have the ability to parasitize nearby organisms even in a short period of time. They will use the substances in the host's body, and even if it is just a single worm, they can multiply rapidly and exponentially Incrementally, all the hosts except for the big fish will be killed in the end, and then exposed to the sea water again, and this process will continue, and the number of reproduction will continue to increase.

In terms of reproduction speed alone, even today's Zergs can't match it even if they hatch with all their strength. As long as the nutrients are sufficient, they can reproduce the next generation within a few minutes, which is ten times or even dozens of times faster than the Zerg swarm. A parasite itself has the same ability as a Zerg hatchery, which can be called a metamorphosis.

However, this rapid reproduction does not seem to have brought them much genetic mutation and the possibility of adapting to environmental changes.

Even with such a rapid reproductive ability, once it stays in seawater for more than an hour, it will die completely, and no one will be spared.

This is also the main reason why they failed to harm the entire ocean.

The insect swarm responsible for close observation suffered huge losses. In order to ensure continuous observation, they could be said to be sent to die one after another.

However, this kind of observation has finally achieved some results, and the losses of the Zerg are not in vain.

Zero noticed that once they are exposed to seawater, they will quickly lose their mobility within a few minutes after they disperse. Although they are still not dead, they are no longer able to move autonomously until the next host approaches, and the next cycle will begin. Or they can't wait for a new host and die by themselves.

The discovery of this point made Zero really feel relieved. There is no doubt that they will die if they are exposed to the ocean for a long time. This is one of their weaknesses.

Although it is still impossible for him to allow Sass to take the risk of studying more properties of these parasites, in fact Sass can only observe them at present, the size is too small for the Zerg to have the ability to accurately harm it, let alone Researched.

But knowing this, for the Zerg, it is undoubtedly basically eliminated their threat.As for more details, it will naturally be revealed step by step after the technology of the Zerg's exploration of the microscopic field has made progress.

In addition to this, during these three months, the Zerg's exploration missions at sea never stopped for a moment.

It has been more than a year since the global project was launched from scratch and a large number of advance teams were sent. Even if the Zerg stopped and stopped along the way, a lot of time was wasted because of the positioning problem. The farthest exploration team is now far away from the mainland. The straight-line distance from the coast is tens of thousands of kilometers away.

Zero sent exploration teams from the east and west sides of the mainland at the same time. That is to say, if there is no big deviation in direction, the straight-line distance between the farthest Zerg units on the east and west sides should exceed [-] kilometers in the known area. !

During this period, they also encountered some land, or islands.

The largest of them is almost one-fifth the size of the continent occupied by the Zerg, and it can already be regarded as a small continent.

There are also various creatures on it, but currently there is no intelligent race like the lizard people. Because of its vast area, the Zerg have only established camps and are exploring.

With such a long distance, Zero simply made an estimate.

If this place is indeed a planet, judging from the fact that the lizard man's size and body structure are still able to move freely, its mass should not be too large.

With a distance of [-] kilometers and a voyage in the northern hemisphere, it is obviously not on the equator. Zero thought about it for a while. If this is the circumference, the Zerg has already advanced a full week on a circle with a diameter of [-] kilometers!
If it was as he guessed, the Zerg on the east and west sides, especially the exploration team near the north, met on the ocean, it should have happened in the past few months.

No other continents were discovered during this process, and Zero is quite surprised, but this is not a surprise. Maybe the northern hemisphere of this planet has more oceans and less land, or simply this is a "Mercury planet" that is mostly oceans. "Maybe.

At the same time, the main force of the marine Zerg behind the exploration team is also steadily advancing their sphere of influence.

They are advancing steadily all the way, and on the premise of not causing devastating damage to the marine ecological environment, they continue to expand in all directions centered on the mainland.

Although the speed is far behind the global exploration team, the sea area within [-] kilometers around the mainland has already been included in the Zerg's rule, and the progress is gratifying.

According to the zero estimate, in the direction of the southernmost tip of the continent, they are likely to be close to the position of the equator now.

However, the exploration progress of the Zerg and the progress in scientific research are certainly gratifying, but in terms of surprises, the latest changes in the Zerg make Zero care more.

As the swarm continued to expand forward, even though it had been controlled, their number became larger and larger, until one day, the vague feeling that shrouded Zero's heart was like a thick fog, and finally revealed It's true.

The reason why the increasingly indifferent Zero was surprised was because in the experiment, he discovered that this change could allow him to directly interact with the outside world!
He seems to have acquired a new ability!

When the fog dissipated, a "star map" like the Milky Way starry sky appeared in his consciousness.

Through experiments, he easily verified that every very dim "star" in the "star map" represented a Zerg unit, or in other words, a complete Zerg unit hatched from larvae!
Because it is too obvious, in this "star map", those bug swarms that have gradually ceased large-scale activities on the continent and collectively fell into dormancy are densely distributed on it, and the outermost global exploration team also Extremely abrupt!

It can be said that this is an information map representing the distribution of Zerg!

And the reason why Zero felt that he had acquired a new ability was because he was pleasantly surprised to find that within the range covered by those swarms, he seemed to be able to have a certain influence on nearby creatures!

He seems... to be able to control the behavior of some insects to a certain extent!

Accomplishing this is not relying on any Zerg unit, but really, by virtue of Zero himself, exerting influence on the creatures outside!

This is really the first time in the world!
Since he woke up from zero, he has always been able to rely on Zerg individuals to indirectly interact with the external environment. Sometimes he thinks that maybe this world is not real, and he is just an outsider who can control the swarm.

But now, this concept has been completely shattered.This is real, this feeling is like he has been watching a movie through the screen, but suddenly finds that he can really feel the wind blowing on his face in the movie, and feel the raindrops falling on his body. Delighted and amazed.

And for Zero, who has been in the void space for a long time, as if separated from the real world by latitude difference, this is the first time that he really feels his own existence!

(End of this chapter)