Juggernaut: Rise of the Zerg

Chapter 176 Octopus Man Capture Plan

If it is said that when the Octopus first landed, Zero immediately launched an attack after making a preliminary judgment because he did not know the details of it. While obtaining specific information, he also exposed himself.

Then this time, it was the octopus himself who gave Zero the opportunity to hide in the dark again.

Of course, it is even more difficult to achieve the same effect as before. If they land again this time, they will inevitably conduct a more detailed search against the Zerg.

On this point, Zero has already prepared.

In addition to hiding his existence in a more hidden place, he also planned to re-arrange the abandoned Zerg base, pretending that a large number of Zerg units had died due to drastic changes in the environment, and he did not hesitate to spend a lot of resources for this.

As for the octopus people, they had no choice but to accept the current situation.The individuals at the outpost have all returned to space and collectively entered hibernation, leaving only a few responsible for taking care of the larvae and maintaining the normal operation of the spacecraft.

Arriate and Nichols, who were the instigators, were one of them.As punishment, they will be on duty here for 20 years, during which time they will not have the right to enter the dormant chamber.

It is their job to monitor changes in the ground environment, respond to possible changes, and guide things in the direction expected by the plan.

Compared with other companions, they have to spend 20 years of life in the outside world, and after 20 years, they should also be very old.

As the parties involved, they don't care about this.In all fairness, they didn't do anything unforgivable, they just practiced their own ideas. In fact, they were much more proactive than trying to communicate with the Zerg. After all, Zero had no intention of responding to those messages. .

It's all about civilization, not self-interest, which is why they are still trusted to take care of these matters to this day.

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

Time passes quietly with the sun rising and the moon setting, and 20 years have passed in a flash. Although there are no vicissitudes on the earth, it can be said that things are different and people are different.

The lush mountains in the past have become wastelands without a trace of greenery.

The life in the ocean is withered, and most of the marine animals have died. Although they are not extinct until now, they are still decreasing. It is impossible to know how many will survive in the end.

As a result, some microorganisms ushered in their own paradise. The death of a large number of animals indirectly promoted the reproduction of microorganisms.

Changes at the biological level will inevitably lead to drastic changes in the entire ecological environment.

Bearing the brunt of this was a dramatic drop in atmospheric oxygen, which further contributed to the death and extinction of surface life that depended on oxygen for survival.

The massive reproduction and decomposition activities of microorganisms emit a large amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which gradually begins to cause the gas content to lose its original balance, thus posing a threat to the survival of more organisms.

In addition, on the land, a large amount of vegetation has been lost, and the climate here has become no longer pleasant. When the water vapor above the ocean is brought to the ground by air currents, they can easily take away a large area of ​​water and soil.

Without the protective use of vegetation, landslides, floods, mudslides and other natural disasters are rampant on the surface, the plains are no longer flat and suitable for farming, and the mountains are no longer rampant with wild animals.

In the short 20 years, the scene of thousands of ravines has begun to take shape, and gradually has a scene of doomsday disaster.

Arriate and Nichols completed their last day of duty and were ready to go into rotational sleep.Their punishment is over, but they are no longer as strong and strong as they were back then.

The process of life has entered the twilight years irresistibly, and has moved towards the countdown of a short period.

Fortunately, everything above the surface is developing according to the predetermined trajectory. If there is no accident, they will reach the predetermined goal in 30 years at most.

Two years ago, they took an aircraft to inspect the near-earth surface, and the hell-like scene on earth did not cause them any physical discomfort.

As the Zerg that was the focus of attention, they personally arranged underground detection devices to observe, and found that they were still alive, but their numbers had exploded, and they were still dying.

The discovery of this point greatly encouraged the initiators of the two plans. The death of the swarm is the ultimate goal of their plan. As long as there is no threat from the zerg, the environment here will become much worse. For the octopus, It's still a paradise.

In the last two years, they are still sober and have even started to formulate a plan for remodeling the environment after landing.

Now, the "sentence" has expired, and the two of them will enter the dormant cabin with their aging bodies, waiting for the day when they will be awakened again, leaving only a lot of research results and thinking about the future.

Zero discovered the opponent's detection plan two years ago, and because of this, he directed and acted out a good show that the Zerg was going extinct.

Obviously, the other party is not so easy to fool. They have carried out monitoring one by one on almost all the Zerg bases that they have discovered before. Fortunately, Zero is indeed well prepared for this, and has made different targeted measures according to different environments. The layout makes everything seem more reasonable.

For example, in the Zerg bases in the ocean, the number of surviving Zergs will be much higher, showing a look of struggling to survive.

On land, Zero also highlights a misery.Most of the depths of the base are already dead silent, with insect corpses all over the place, and some places are simply empty of insects, only a mess, and what's more, they have completely fallen into dead silence.

Although according to the information obtained before, Zero knew that they had no way to detect such a detailed level, but to be on the safe side, he still made every effort to facilitate this.

In order to achieve his own goals, billions of creatures around the world have given their lives for it. Although this has no effect on him, Zero will not allow himself to fall short because of his mistakes at this time and be noticed by the other party.

Under His deliberate disguise, the two of Ariate didn't notice any abnormalities, but before leaving, they still left some arrangements, apparently to monitor the changes of the Zerg in real time.

Zero can only act and do a full set of this. He personally started to control the Zerg bases all over the world, continued to perform dynamic camouflage, and successfully deceived the octopus people.

However, in the deeper depths, in the new Zerg base, Sass' scientific research plan has never stopped.

When Ariat and Nichols, who were entering old age, were finally able to enter the dormant chamber, after 20 years, Sass finally completely digested the knowledge gained from the previous raid on the mine.

Those two at the beginning were obviously octopus people with talents in engineering construction. In their memory, they even participated in the construction of the spacecraft that is now suspended in outer space!
It was indeed overkill when it was used to maintain the operation of the mine.These high-level talents who should have sweated the blueprints and data in the office should not have waved wrenches and screws next to the roaring machinery in the mine. Unfortunately, they were so lucky that they finally became part of Sass’s mind, which is not humiliating. Their status as senior engineers.

Digested and absorbed the engineering knowledge from the other party, which was a great expansion of Sass' knowledge system.

It should be noted that the so-called engineering covers an extremely wide range, including basic disciplines such as chemical and material physics, as well as various applications of energy and biology.

As the most outstanding engineers in the entire civilization, their knowledge accumulation is quite complete, at least in terms of basic disciplines, there will not be too many missing.

Of course, when technology develops to a certain level, it is impossible for individuals to achieve encyclopedia-style omniscience and omnipotence. They each excel in their own fields and lead the way.

And all these efforts and opportunities finally made a wedding dress for the Zerg.

Using the cutting-edge knowledge acquired from them, Sass not only transformed the body structure of the "inner circulation" of the Zerg before, but now he has achieved preliminary results in the research on the outer armor of the Zerg.

Zero is a bit worried about the fact that the kinetic energy weapons used by the octopus can easily cause terrifying damage to Zerg units. Although those dead Zerg units are actually nothing, and it is impossible for every individual Zerg to become invulnerable, but such a fragile Flesh and blood, it is still difficult to satisfy Zero.

In addition, the destructive ability of the mechanical products of the octopus is limited, and the inability to directly attack the interior of the outpost also makes Zero have to care.

If it is said that his requirements for defense are not very high, it is impossible for him not to care about the attack ability as the basis of the lethality of the Zerg.

If the fangs and sharp teeth of the Zerg can't break through the enemy's defenses, then no amount of numbers is meaningless.

Regarding this point, He also had a plan in advance.As early as when the fire bug was discovered, Zero hoped that the Zerg could use various resources from the outside world to enhance their physical strength.

It's a pity that until the Zerg blaster improved from the fire bug appeared, this matter still had no clue.

Sass even eventually advanced the level of biotechnology of the Zerg to the level of gene editing, but there was no breakthrough until the arrival of the octopus.

However, from the advanced engineering talents of the Octopus, Sass finally got inspiration.

When the first step is taken swayingly, the subsequent development will become much easier.

From a biological point of view, Sass can now be said to be a well-deserved master.Although the gene editing ability of the Zerg is not yet perfect, it is enough to disdain the Octopus.

What it lacks is sometimes just a little bit of inspiration.

But it is just this sliver of inspiration, sometimes it is like a natural chasm, which cannot be crossed no matter what.

Zero can vaguely feel that although Sass is making rapid progress, the scientific research of the Zerg seems to have reached a bottleneck period again, which is difficult to promote with the power of only one insect.

Every time it acquires knowledge from other intelligent races such as lizard people and octopus people, it is an extremely rare collision of wisdom for it, and often in this process, it can produce huge gains!
The reason for this is not just the absorption and growth of knowledge level. It is true that a more advanced civilization can bring more gains to Sass, but for itself, what the intelligent life has learned in its life and its own The collision obtained by the research is something that it cannot obtain on all other Zerg units, including non-intelligent races!

That's like... a communication from the mind or even the soul!

Under this kind of collision, the transformation process that has plagued Saas for many years and has been zero-anticipated for many years has made breakthrough progress for the first time.

Even Zero couldn't help applauding when the first Zerg unit that was carefully transformed had an attack ability that was almost a generation behind that of ordinary Zerg individuals!
It was the only Zerg individual that was hatched by a special hatchery that absorbed the mechanical fragments from the Octopus and was personally intervened by Sass!
On it, Sass has almost done his best, and has made great optimizations in terms of the underlying genetic modification and the smoothness of the appearance.

It can even be said that if the previous Zerg unit was a broken bullock cart, then the current one can at least be regarded as an electric tricycle.

Of course, the mechanical fragment Zerg from the Octopus is not yet mass-produced, which is a scarce resource.Although in the knowledge system of the octopus people, the production system of this material is quite complete, it is still unrealistic for the Zerg to produce it themselves.

But this is a problem that needs to be solved in the future, and the results achieved now at least prove that this method is desirable.

So even if this kind of material is not used and some grades are lowered, for example, the iron ore of the lizard people may not be able to achieve a similar effect, it is nothing more than a little worse, but it is unique in terms of the difficulty of obtaining resources and reserves. The advantages!
Speaking of the application of natural elements, given the current development status of the Zerg, it is no less difficult to achieve higher achievements in materials like the octopus, and Zero does not think it is The path the Zerg should take.

That is the bright road of ordinary intelligent civilizations such as octopus people and lizard people, but it is not applicable to Zerg people.

Because Zero can't expect Sass or him to go out and precisely direct each Zerg individual to do some work that is destined to require fine manipulation, and they themselves don't have any subjective initiative. possible things.

The Zerg have their own way to go. Of course, this is not to say that the technology from other civilizations has no reference value. In fact, the principles contained in this knowledge are precious wealth no matter what civilization they are in.

That is the cognition of the rules of the universe, and it is the underlying logic recognized in the general sense, and it is by no means useless.

And the result of Sass this time is a clear lesson.Without the inspiration from the Octopus, there would be no Zerg enhancement this time.

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

Limited by the scope of activities and Zero's camouflage to cover up the Zerg's activities, although Sass has some research results, he has not blatantly started resource collection, which will undoubtedly abort Zero's plan.

However, in the dark, it is still slowly collecting the mineral resources hidden in the ground. The development of minerals by the Lizardmen at the beginning seems a bit rough to Sass, who now has the knowledge of the two civilization processes.

With the vastness of the entire planet, in the depths of the underground ocean, there are countless rich resources and minerals. Although the swarms are inconvenient to cause large movements, it is not difficult to carry out such activities quietly.

In order to collect resources, Sass once again transformed the Zerg diggers to make them more adaptable to the deeper underground environment and obtain enhanced resources for the subsequent incubation of the Zerg swarm.

As for the conversion between matter and energy, it is a technology that even the interstellar civilization, the octopus, has not been able to understand. Even if Zero actually has some concepts about it, it is impossible to realize it on the Zerg.

Therefore, relying on the swarm itself, it is basically impossible to achieve the current level of strengthening, at least not currently.

The hard chitin formed by the polysaccharide structure is the defense structure of the Zerg that has been inherited from the ant era. Until now, except for being thicker and denser, it has not changed much in essence.

Using it to resist the bite of creatures may be able to play some role, but it is difficult to have the desired effect on the mechanical creation of the octopus.

Those metal elements that exist in mineral resources have properties that are far superior to biological chitin. This property zero has been coveted for a long time. I have long hoped to combine it with the Zerg and integrate it into the body of the Zerg individual among.

To put it bluntly, these elements are actually just a basic substance in the universe, and they are still composed of more microscopic structures.

It may sound like nothing special, but if the Zerg were to create even a single atom, it would be more difficult than reaching the sky.

Zero knows that matter and energy are actually one in a sense, but this does not mean that he can perform heart-to-heart transformation in it as he pleases.

It is certain that for a long period of time in the future, the swarm will not have such capabilities.

However, it is much easier to obtain and use them directly from the outside world. This is the greatest significance of the existence of these substances in nature to the Zerg race.

It will become a part of the flesh and blood of the Zerg unit like the biomass the Zerg get from food, making it more fierce and powerful.

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

The capture plan for the octopus is still pending, waiting for them to return to the surface, waiting for them to relax their vigilance.

This time there is no need to obtain information about the opponent's civilization, so as long as they are not detected, the Zerg will not attack rashly.

When the opponent's civilization revival activities are in full swing and large-scale activities are carried out on the planet, it is the Zerg's opportunity!
The octopus spaceship Zero is beyond reach, so it is Zero's biggest goal to lure the best talents in it to the surface as much as possible, and only in this way can He catch them all in one go.

The so-called workers must first sharpen their tools if they want to do their jobs well.Before that, in addition to hiding themselves, arming and strengthening the Zerg itself was also a necessary procedure.

In a place where the octopus can't see, after 20 years, the Zerg unit is quietly undergoing another update.

They excavate underground resources and minerals to strengthen themselves, and their offensive and defensive capabilities have stepped up to a new level.

Now, although the "bronze and iron walls" that once provided shelter for the octopus people are not as fragile as paper in front of the swarm, they are by no means indestructible.

Facing the opponent's weapons, the insect swarm is no longer as fragile as touching it and dying. It is true that these weapons can still cause fatal damage to the insect swarm, but it will not be so easy to kill like before. thing.

The creatures on the surface are still dying in pieces, as if they are going through an extremely difficult catastrophe. The new ecological system slowly begins to rebuild during this process, but it is nothing like the original dominant creatures. related.

Under the ground, the swarms are quietly waiting for the opportunity to step on the ground again and dominate the entire planet again!
(End of this chapter)