Juggernaut: Rise of the Zerg

Chapter 317 Screening and Source
The second brain worm experienced the entire incident under Zero's close attention. Of course, he did not give up on saving it, but it was really hard to do anything.

As an intelligent unit, it is normal to be afraid of death, especially a fate that is close to real death. However, out of absolute loyalty to Zero, death will never deter Zerg units.

From noticing the subtle changes in the body, and gradually feeling some kind of "erosion" on the consciousness level, until the real death came, it lasted a total of 522 Oridays. Zero didn't know whether the previous brainworms also experienced such a long period. incident, but judging from this process, the Zerg, who had been prepared, finally had a complete understanding of this. Of course, the price was the death of another brain worm.

There is no doubt that this silent erosion gradually intensifies as time goes by. When it reaches a certain limit, it will explode rapidly. Zero understands this as a "general attack", that is, the completion of this long-term erosion of consciousness. the final step.

But why did this, as yet uncertain, enemy fail to succeed?
Although there are speculations, instead of letting Zero believe that this is a natural disaster and a "spiritual poison" naturally existing in the universe, he is more willing to believe that this is a means designed by some kind of existence to achieve a certain purpose.

This method of hiding one's existence for a long time until launching the final blow at the last moment does not seem like a mysterious natural phenomenon.

But why did it ultimately achieve a fatal result?Could it be that this is the ultimate goal?What's the point?

Zero thought, if the enemy's goal is to cause the death of the Zerg, then since it can achieve this point, it is not impossible to massacre on a larger scale. It cannot be as painless as it is now.

And if not, then it will actually kill the affected Zerg units. The only possibility that Zero can think of is "failure".

The opponent wanted to achieve a certain purpose on the Zerg, but failed due to some unknown reasons. Instead, the Zerg unit as the "recipient" died directly.

From a technical point of view, the opponent infiltrates from an imperceptible level of consciousness. In this way, it is quite normal for ordinary Zerg units to die without resistance. Their fragile "nerves" even often Without the initial "penetration", it naturally doesn't matter whether they "erupt" or not, they will die at the very beginning, which is why Zero can't detect any abnormalities from them.

This is a very possible guess, but in any case, research is still continuing.This kind of attack has caused the death of two Zerg intelligent units that have experienced hundreds of thousands of years of continuous learning and mastering vast amounts of knowledge. It can be said that since then, they have been threatening the fundamental interests of the Zerg at all times. If Zero is not completely solved, there will be no peace of mind. .

The research on the brainworm itself has allowed the Zerg to explore many scientific research directions that were not originally imagined, including the nature of "immortality", the characteristics of "continuous growth", and even the innate "design" of general insect species. "Talent, etc., are on the agenda again after many years.

Of course, the most important point is also one that Zero has been very concerned about since the birth of the Zerg race, that is, why the brainworms themselves cannot be biologically "reproduced", and why it takes about 200 years for them to be born, and What happened to the group of ants that had undergone mutation, which ultimately led to the birth of the Zerg race and so on.

These issues are the focus of Zero's attention. They are directly related to the foundation of the birth of the Zerg race, and may even be closely related to Zero himself.With the two brainworms dying one after another under Ling's nose, all of this seemed to have the possibility of being answered.

At this moment, the insect swarm is still moving forward. In addition to the advancement of technology itself, the threat we are facing now is also one of the driving forces. Even if something has been discovered, the three major civilizations can be found to solve the original mystery of this matter. The cause is always the goal that Zero will never give up.

For the Zerg, time seems to have always been on the side of the Zerg, but this time it is unexpectedly urgent!As time goes by, the remaining brainworms may face the same ending at any time, and Zero cannot even be sure whether this is a simple matter of probability.

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

Mira is still monitoring the movements of the Zerg, and at the same time, she does not forget to continue her own experiments.Its mechanical fleet is always moving forward like the Zerg, but during this period of time, it is more interested in what the Zerg is suffering.

It is indeed difficult to truly simulate the impact that intelligent individuals suffer at the level of consciousness. This has always been a weak point of omnic life. However, through a large number of meticulous physical sign observations and combined with external comparisons in corresponding states, Mira was able to obtain has made some substantial progress, at least now it can be certain that this special method does indeed have an invasion of consciousness at the time of death, and it is very likely to originate from the fundamental attack on life. "Tampering" of sources.

This is not a whimsical conclusion drawn by Mira. On the contrary, it is a conclusion drawn by countless Hokki people who have spent their own lives for Mira’s research!

In other words, after a long period of comparison and research, Mira believes that there is more than 70.00% possibility that it is the cluster-type "component" that releases some kind of "something" by a method that is not yet understood, and this kind of Something is trying to give "it" itself a sense of "existence" in a macro sense!
As for the remaining 30.00% or so, it is Mira's summary of more and less likely conjectures, but in any case, Mira is also certain that this thing should not work for her.

The reason for reaching this conclusion is simple. It also conducted a small-scale experiment near its "body", but until now it is still "living" well and has not felt any abnormality.

This is not because Mira is purely dedicated to technology. In fact, after doing enough experiments on the Hukki, she believes that maybe only if this phenomenon actually happens to herself can she truly master all its mechanisms. , of course it also takes adequate insurance measures.

But there is no doubt that its "adventure" attempt failed. If "it" really exists, the other party does not seem to be interested in this life form.

Of course, this situation is also an important piece of information.

Although there is no evidence, based on the mechanism of what happened before and after, Mira believes that this is likely to be a "screening".

A screening based on affordability!
It's just that so far, no existence among the Hokki people has passed this filter.

As for what will happen after "passing", Mira has no way of knowing. After all, this kind of screening itself is just a guess. If the guess is true, it is not difficult to think of some, but Mira will not do this without any solid basis. A plan to waste computing power based on conjecture.

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

The Zerg's basic space unit has received another update, its seventh enhancement since the incident.

After changing the focus of research and combining some of the research results obtained from Zhuna, the Zerg's space technology has been able to make further progress, and the results have continued in the past hundred years.The frontline Zerg units will undergo a large-scale "self-renewal" almost every ten years, which also allows them to significantly increase their forward speed every once in a while.

The Zerg's constant pursuit of space jumping capabilities finally paid off.Today, even the Cerebrates are under threat of life. Even if they are taking into account the research on the origin of the Zerg itself, they are still several eras behind the main battleships of the three major civilizations, and are shortening every moment. The distance between the two.

Zero doesn't know how long it will take to reach the real territory of the three major civilizations at the current speed of the Zerg's frontline units, but he knows very well that this time is shortening by leaps and bounds!

Of course, over the years, Zero has never given up the hope that the worm species will open a wormhole passage. Zero has not given up further research on this natural passage, which is still the main means of passage for the worms in other directions.

Since the enemy can permanently close it, perhaps the Zerg can do the same. Even if not, following this line of thinking, we may be able to explore some federal research results in related directions.

However, Zero never imagined that in this direction, the Zerg once again discovered something they had never imagined!

Speaking of permanent wormhole closure, the Federation is not the first to do this in front of the Zerg. Before them, there was a strange creature that completed the permanent wormhole in front of the Zerg. "heal".

That is energy life, Zhuna!

As for the means of the three major civilizations, it can be said that Zero is basically unable to observe them at this stage. Therefore, after initially deciding on the strategy of conducting research on closing wormholes, the Cerebrates actually started their main research from Zhuna.

Due to the special nature of Zhuna, it takes a lot of luck to observe it, let alone study it carefully.

Fortunately, the territory ruled by the Zerg is now large enough, and there are actually many galaxies occupied by Zhuna.

In the past 1000 years, with the huge supply of space-generated samples, Zero has finally discovered some amazing results today, but they have little to do with wormhole healing itself.

There is no wisdom in Zhuna's body. This is the final conclusion reached by the Zerg after many years of long-term exploration and observation.Even when they gather together in large numbers to forcibly "close" the wormhole, they still seem to be just acting instinctively like ordinary insect species.

But after long-term observation, Zero has discovered differences, and this difference is actually quite related to what the Zerg are encountering now!

The death of the brainworm Gore in the Lyman Galaxy left a deep impression on Zero. After all, it was the first time a brainworm "died" in the Zerg race. The changes that occurred at that time were caused by the wormhole.

For a long period of time, since it was roughly traceable, Zero believed that the incident was a "side effect" of the wormhole being open for a long time, so he also made a judgment on the time when the Zerg continued to use the wormhole. Strict restrictions, just because I don’t want to make the same mistakes again.

But now, He doesn't think so.

Because "Zhu Na" is obviously committed to preventing this kind of thing from happening, because of the unpredictability of that kind of change in the long term, because of the special scene and powerful damage ability when "it" appears, all of this adds up to Being together, from Zero's current perspective, was unusual.

And when Zero really tried to complete the permanent closure of the wormhole through research on Zhuna, he suddenly discovered that Gore's death might not be that simple.

Gore died in an instant. Of course, it still exists today and has not lost its memory like the brainworm that died before. But what it told Zero was that it was not clear why he was at that time. "die"!
This in itself is very strange, but it did not attract much attention from Zero at the time. After all, in that state, even the stars had disappeared into the universe out of thin air, no matter how it "died", In fact, it's all normal.

In this targeted research, after Zero deliberately opened the wormhole channel and "released" the "accident" from the inside of the wormhole, he also gained a lot of insights in the subsequent research.

He knew how Zhuna traveled between galaxies, and finally understood why Zhuna was committed to destroying the "seeds of life" that are the origin of all civilizations. Of course, he also knew that the Zerg failed to " "Watch the whole process" and see what kind of changes it will bring to the universe if left unchecked.

The original stars will reappear after disappearing, and all the planets that disappeared will also "return", but some things have changed.

Through the Zerg explorers arranged from far to near, Zero "saw" for the first time what would happen in the end of this matter.

A planet that did not originally exist in this star field has appeared here. It has superior astronomical conditions, and the distribution of resources on it is extremely reasonable - it has a large number of suitable conditions for the birth of life, and has already Being "implanted" with the "seed" of life...

This may be the reason why Zhuna's clone is obsessed with destroying all planetary environments on the journey that may contain life seeds.

Some time later, Zero observed Zhuna in this star field, which could truly be called "coming from afar". From the perspective of a scientific research unit, it was obvious that it had combined a large number of separate bodies. But the unprecedented "weakness" should be due to the huge consumption caused by crossing the barren space zone.

Of course, it "missed" and failed to catch up with the outbreak of the incident. For some reason, it even failed to accurately reach the star field where the incident occurred.But Zhuna herself took root in this galaxy for the first time.

It exists in many galaxies, and it turns out that it was "attracted" here.

Of course, Zero didn't let go of his research on the "extra" planet.He was surprised to find that inside this planet there was exactly the same special structure that the Zerg discovered on a living planet!
Everything after that was a matter of course. Because of the wormhole mutation, Zero carried out research on this structure with the utmost caution. After spending a lot of time, even he couldn't stay calm!
The source of everything actually comes from here!
(End of this chapter)