Juggernaut: Rise of the Zerg

Chapter 187 The prototype of the hive mothership

The acid resistance research on planet [-] did not trouble Sass for long. With the help of samples provided by native organisms, this already thoughtful research progressed rapidly.

The strong acidic environment is fatal to living things, but these living things living on planet [-] resist this extreme environment to a certain extent by themselves. Even before, the insect swarm had already possessed the ability to initially move on the surface of the planet through them.

Sass' work this time is to further strengthen the Zerg units, especially the Zerg energy units, on this basis.

At the same time, although they have a strong tolerance, in order to prevent them from being soaked in strong acid liquid for a long time, the external form of the energy unit has also been adjusted.

Prior to this, the energy units of the Zerg including planet No. [-] and the "moon" were almost all dark black overlapping sheet structures, similar to layers of dark leaves, rooted and underground, attached to the surface, absorbing energy from the stars.

However, this structure is not suitable for Planet [-]. If it is still concentrated and scattered on the ground as before, then when the acid rain falls, some of the energy units will inevitably be directly soaked in strong acid liquid. In this case, no matter how strong the tolerance is, it will be difficult to survive for a long time.

Therefore, they no longer grow close to the ground, nor do they overlap in sheets.It is an important part of their design to guide the contacted acidic liquid into the ground at the fastest speed. The original flat leaf structure has become a concave ring with drainage and self-healing functions.

As long as it doesn't cause lethal damage in a short time after contact, Sass has a way to make them into a suitable shape.

After experiencing a round of sulfuric acid rain, the ground part as a small-scale experiment did not show obvious damage. Although it cannot be said to be unscathed, it is enough to prove the success of the experiment.

They are not dead, and even if they suffer some damage, they will return to their original state in the subsequent growth.

This means that it has become possible for Zerg energy units to reproduce on a large scale on the surface of planet No. [-]!
Now that Sass has produced the results, a large number of insect swarms that were dormant above the orbit of the yellow planet have started to land. They will use themselves as the starting resource to lay the foundation for the large-scale expansion of the insect swarm.

It is foreseeable that in the next few decades, even this planet with an extremely harsh environment will eventually be conquered by it and become another resource base for the Zerg.

However, Sass himself had already hidden his fame, and turned around and began to sort out the ideas of heat energy utilization.

Now with the addition of Ori, a total of three planets have been landed by the Zerg, and will be colonized one after another in the future, becoming the "planetary biological base" of the Zerg in the star system, but this is far from the end, Zero wants much more than this.

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As a brain worm, Dagus is undoubtedly qualified.

After entrusting it with the task of continuing to promote the survival of the Zerg on the lava-like planet, Dagos continued to experiment and improve the tolerance of the Zerg by using the lava environment inside the second planet on the basis of Sass' previous research.

It is different from Sass. If Sass has gradually become stable in the course of hundreds of years of life, then the young Daggs still maintains a unique way of thinking.

It's not that Sass has become mediocre due to knowledge pollution, but there are two styles between the two. The former is now more accustomed to advancing the Zerg's biotechnology based on its own rich knowledge system, while the latter prefers to diverge thinking.

Under normal circumstances, the accumulation of a large amount of knowledge can guarantee steady progress, and thinking outside the box can often produce amazing results, and there is no better or worse. Sass also experienced this stage back then, but it grew too fast, and the Zerg was too weak at that time, and the knowledge system was pitifully weak, so a large part of its wild ideas were not really put into practice.

After handing over the underground research base on Planet No. [-] to Dagus, Zero didn't pay much attention to it. After all, what it did was just step-by-step work. With its knowledge reserve, as long as it was down-to-earth to experiment, it would almost certainly be able to get results.

However, Zero did not expect that in this seemingly ordinary research project, Dagus actually gave him a surprise.

It has continued to improve the Zerg's tolerance to high temperature for two years, and has achieved some results.

The surprise is that in the process, it captured the inspiration pumped in the mind, and even proposed a theoretically feasible idea that can use the matter and energy inside the lava!
Of course, this must first be based on the Zerg's ability to withstand extremely high temperatures, which is far from meeting the requirements.

In its vision, in an ideal state, the range of activities of the insect swarm can be pushed all the way deeper underground, directly to the interior of the earth's crust, based on the energy generated by the decay of magma in a molten state and radioactive substances, and directly erode the entire planet here!

Of course, this is a vision that can only be achieved in the end, and whether it can be realized has yet to be verified. With the current technical level of the Zerg, it cannot be said that a Zerg unit that can achieve this level is completely a luxury, but it can only stay in the imagination.

But things always have to be done step by step. The most practical part of the theory proposed by Daggs is not in the complete collection of the resources of the entire planet, but in the expansion of the current thinking on the utilization of geothermal resources!
With this direction in hand, Sass could start experimenting.To put it bluntly, this mechanism is not much different from the Zerg absorbing star energy, but the bio-utilization of solar energy has precedents from producers and algae, and it has been gradually transformed and evolved by the Zerg for hundreds of years before it has developed to this level.

As for the use of geothermal resources, it is almost from scratch, and it is inevitable that there will be some confusion for a while.

But this time Dagus proposed to use the worm species that can tolerate strong heat to convert the energy of the star through the previous energy unit above Ori, which can also convert the huge energy from the star core into the biological energy that belongs to the zerg!

This is almost a pioneering change, and it is just a young brain worm born only a few decades ago. After decades of study and summary, at this moment, it finally showed its potential.

Once this idea comes true, the avenue leading to the interior of the planet will be regarded as opening a door for the swarm.Maybe one day, they'll be able to do the feat of physically destroying entire planets!
It can also be seen from this that today's insect swarms are gradually no longer life in the general sense. If Zero is willing, their body surface can become harder than rock or even steel. Whether it is strong acid or extreme temperature, they are gradually unable to pose a threat to them.

——They gradually became fundamentally different from creatures in the general sense.

After going into space, they are getting rid of their fragile flesh and blood at an extremely fast speed, and becoming real interstellar species that can adapt to various complex environments!
The mother star Ori is like a hotbed for them to hatch. Now, the young swarms have grown up, and they have stepped out of the warm embrace of the mother star to accept the severe test from the universe.

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Five Ori years later, the swarm landed on Planet [-] for the first time. This planet, whose surface was almost melted by the heat from the sun during the day, ushered in the first biological landing in its history.

And Daggs has thus proved his ability, and can already be responsible for some scientific research work independently, instead of just being an assistant.

It ushered in the second bright moment of its own worm life, that is, leading the swarm to complete the colonization activities on Planet No. [-], and bringing this planet, which is the closest to the star and the smallest, into the zerg sphere of influence, which can be said to be unique.

Due to the particularity of the environment of planet No. [-], it will be a huge energy base, and its advantages in terms of stellar energy are unmatched by all other planets.

Therefore, the colonization activities here are very important, but at the same time, the test that the bug swarm will face in its activities here will be quite severe.

During the day, part of the rock on the surface here will become molten, and it will cool rapidly at night. The extreme temperature changes bring huge benefits and equally unknown risks.

And on Planet No. [-], a pilot project for the utilization of geothermal resources has already started, a blanket-like tiny life silently extended its root system into the hot rock crevices, and began to spread here.

This is the Zerg's first-generation underground energy extraction unit designed by Sass. Like lichen, they grow in this opened space, and pass the obtained energy upward through the root system of the surface energy unit above that goes deep into the ground.

Their range of activities will not only stay within this excavated space, and the surrounding rock walls will not be their hindrance, but rather the food for their growth.

The inspiration generated by Dagos finally became a reality in the hands of Sass. Although it is impossible to penetrate deep into the magma, even the energy absorbed at the extreme edge above the asthenosphere is an extremely impressive figure. Under the simultaneous collection of surface and underground, the development speed of Planet [-] will increase to an unprecedented level.

On the "Moon" space base, in addition to the base itself, another huge biological structure began to "grow" above its orbit.

In order to advance to the orbit of the fifth giant planet, during these few years, ZERO began to plan long-distance voyages in the galaxy.

With such a long distance, with the current resource reserve and maximum speed of the Zerg space unit, the consumption on the journey alone is quite a huge figure. If you still start from the "Moon" base at that time, you also need to consider the long distance between the orbit of the fourth planet.

Therefore, Project Zero will directly build an even larger "space dock" in orbit around the fourth planet, and Sass will be in charge of designing the new generation of Zerg long-distance navigation units.

Since the colonization activities on planet No. [-] have just started, and the energy and resources on the "moon" have been concentrated in the "Moon" base, this huge "space dock" will be completed in the orbit of the moon, and then "drive" to the orbit of planet No. [-].

And this is also an attempt carefully prepared by Zero.

In His plan, the so-called "space dock" is not just a building that concentrates resources to produce the Zerg biological fleet. Due to the insufficient energy output efficiency and the strength of biological materials, the space movement of huge insect species has never been formed.

And this time the "Space Dock" orbital migration plan is an attempt to integrate the Zerg's current highest biotechnology and move in space with giant space units.

Its volume will be 1.5 times that of the "Moon" base, and its full-load mass will be about 2.3 times that. The overall shape will be fusiform, just like a huge biological spindle hanging in space.

When it reached its complete form, the original "Moon" transportation channel and the space base above it became a veritable little man.

It will set sail from the "Moon" space base, first orbit Ori, and then park out of the orbit of the planet, heading for the fourth planet.

Four months later, under the unlimited supply of the entire "moon" resources, it completed its growth and absorbed a large amount of energy, reaching saturation.

And the order to set off came in the next moment. For the Zerg, their life structure makes them have no safety checks. As long as they have a breath, they can still maintain their activities and will not stop because of this.

The moment this huge life received the command, it began to have an acceleration tangential to its orbit. At the same time, its orbit gradually became different from the original space base that was dependent on itself. Although it was not clear at the beginning, its orbit had already broken away from the gravitational force of the "moon" at the far point and entered the Ori orbit.

In other words, after this round of acceleration, it is no longer a satellite of "Moon", but has become the same Ori satellite as the natural satellite of "Moon"!

Due to the huge and uneven distribution of mass, this huge living creature suffered unimaginable compression and tearing at the moment of acceleration, and in the process of continuous acceleration, the confrontation and tearing caused by the propulsion force and the gravity of the "moon" will always exist.

Fortunately, it is not a mechanical structure, and it has enough resistance to this kind of "tearing", and Zero has already expected it before. As long as it is not directly torn off in the process, the plan will not stop.

And this is difficult to happen under the premise that Zero can adjust its acceleration more accurately.

This voyage plan was carefully prepared. In order to reduce the difficulty, He deliberately designed it into a relatively regular shuttle structure. Naturally, he would not ignore the issue of the window period for landing on the fourth planet.

After Ori's orbit accelerated again, it plunged headlong into the deep space, with the azure hemisphere half-submerged in the darkness as the background, heading towards the orbit of the yellow planet.

In order to propel a giant creature of this mass level to sail in space, the energy stored in its body is consumed in large quantities. In the calculation of zero, the energy redundancy of this flight is much smaller, which means a lower error tolerance rate.

Due to their huge mass, in order to save energy, their optimal sailing speed is only two-thirds of that of ordinary space units.

In a vacuum state, if other useless losses are not considered, and on the premise of ignoring mass changes, the kinetic energy possessed by an object is proportional to the square of the velocity. That is to say, as the target velocity increases, the energy consumed can be abstractly regarded as increasing in a quadratic function curve.

In this state, every minute of speed increase represents a huge energy consumption. Therefore, this time the voyage took an extraordinarily long time, which lasted ten months!
When it set off from Ori, the No. [-] planet had just circled the other side of the star, and when the trip was completed, Ori had gone far away, and No. [-] planet was already close at hand on an astronomical scale.

Even though the speed was already so slow, in the end, Zero's prepared resources for sailing were almost exhausted during the final deceleration, leaving very little left.

This is the limitation of accelerating to extremely high speed for the Zerg. Before the energy output efficiency is not improved qualitatively, interstellar navigation is still out of reach.

Fortunately, this time the voyage plan ended successfully. Although it was still pitch black right in front of the "space dock", its speed had dropped to a reasonable range. When it actually reached the orbit of planet No. [-], it would be captured by the planet for a short time. At that time, it only needed to make a small speed adjustment, and it could be parked in the orbit of the planet smoothly.

As for the subsequent resource filling, it is naturally the responsibility of the fourth planet, which has successfully launched the colonization activities within these ten months.

In Zero's plan, it will be the prototype of the future hive mothership. At least after this voyage, Zero has gained enough experience in promoting the voyage of such a mass object.

Whether it's the overall layout or the observation of energy consumption, with the help of the will of the hive, the entire dynamic process is presented before his eyes.

The accumulation of knowledge has never been achieved overnight, and there is no other civilization's technological system to absorb.

In terms of Zerg's own space travel, even the octopus people don't have much experience to refer to. After all, the Zerg can't get extremely accurate data like them, and they can only rely on practice to slowly explore under the guidance of data for space travel.

It is worth mentioning that while the acquisition of geothermal resources on Planet [-] has been successfully verified, all planets that have already begun colonization activities except Planet [-] have begun to exploit this resource. These collected energy sources are the food for the future activities of the insect swarm in the star system and even look forward to the universe.

After solving the problems of planetary four colonization, Sass began to work on improving the energy output efficiency of Zerg space travel.

Thanks to the octopus's research on spaceflight, Sass was able to send Zerg units from the surface into space by leaps and bounds, but now, in terms of the use of conventional energy, there is nothing worth learning from the octopus.

After all, it has only been 300 years since they released satellites to start space exploration and created interstellar spaceships.

Even under the pressure of 300 years of life and death, their various technologies have advanced by leaps and bounds, but in the use of conventional energy, they are not much better than today's Zerg, and even worse in many aspects.

The most important factor in being able to reach the level of interstellar navigation in such a short period of time is undoubtedly the acquisition of those two energy crystals!
They solve the most difficult problem facing the Octopus - energy.

The Zerg were not as lucky as they were. Even if Zero wanted to get the discarded crystal for research, he failed in the end. The explosion took it to nowhere. In the vast star system, searching for a transparent crystal is more difficult than finding a needle in a haystack.

Therefore, what Sass has to do now is no longer to summarize the existing knowledge theories, or to make changes based on the existing knowledge achievements, but to truly lead the Zerg to take the step that the octopus failed to take in terms of basic energy technology, and push the Zerg to a new level in the use of conventional energy!

This is the cornerstone of the Zerg's entire universe exploration plan in the future, and it is also the only way to step out of the star system.

It may take a long time, but it has to be done.The sea of ​​stars is far away, there is absolutely no reason to give up because you can't run fast enough.

　Huh, sorry, it's a bit late, don't worry, there will be no interruption.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)