Overlord: Rise of the Zerg

The early morning sunlight passed through the gaps in the clouds, and a thin layer of water vapor arose in the jungle. Under the action of the Tyndall effect, it reflected colorful lights in the air.

Winter turns to spring, and another year of cold and heat comes. To put it into perspective, this is already the fourth year since the insect swarm landed on the mainland.

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

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

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

Today, the Zerg has spread across the entire continent, and continues to explore and expand in the ocean. This is the first time since the Zerg appeared that they have developed to such an extent.

Zero probably made a statistics on the current size of the insect swarm and concluded that it was seven million!

This includes all branches of the sea, land, logistics, and even underground and aerial forces. The total number has exceeded this number.

In terms of numbers, they may still be quite far behind the ants at their peak, but in reality, the two are no longer the same.

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

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

This made him a little concerned. The change in the number of Zerg could actually affect him? This 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 before.

"Perhaps there is a fundamental difference between the Zerg tribe and the ant tribe." He speculated.

Although he sensed it, he did not discover where this change came from. However, as the number of Zerg increased day by day, this feeling became stronger.

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

He believed that with the increasing progress of the Zerg, whether it was the problems they faced before or the changes that were happening to him now, there would be a result.

With the current base of the swarm, even the zerg on the mainland have basically stopped incubating, and their expansion in the ocean is relatively cautious, and their number is also increasing at an extremely fast rate.

It is for this reason that Zero's previous vague feelings became clearer little by little.

He could feel it, as if something was about to appear as the insect swarm grew, ready to emerge, but it stayed on that illusory dividing line that would emerge but would not emerge.

Zero was very indifferent. Even if he did have some curiosity about this, he would not destroy the step-by-step plan of the insect swarm and expand crazily.

Who knows how many more Zerg units it would take to figure out what this feeling is? Since it would definitely appear, why should he be anxious and just let nature take its course?

The swarm of insects bypassed the dangerous sea area and continued to move forward.

This experience made Zero and Sass clearly realize that although the Zerg now seems to have occupied the entire continent and large tracts of the ocean, it is still far from being without threats.

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

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

Time passed forward minute by minute, and three months passed in the blink of an eye.

During these three months, Sass continued to think about research that might be useful on the Zerg, while also not forgetting 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. It pioneered the transformation of a Zerg unit focused on assisting scientific research and used this function Added to the Zerg gene pool.

This means that Zero can use this ability on any suitable unit of the Zerg at any time whenever needed.

The reason why it is said to be "suitable" comes from the different structures of different Zerg units. If they are small in size, there is naturally no way to apply them.

Of course, due to immature research, this bug basically replicates the function of Sars' eyes without much extension.

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

Zero had already tested this bug when it first hatched. He found that under close observation, he could clearly observe the fluff on the legs of small crawling insects on the ground through the bug's field of vision. The subtle structure!

Although it is far from being truly meticulous, it is still a gratifying result. At least after this, Sass wouldn't know anything about those tiny creatures.

During the test, Zero also used the insect swarm in isolation to attack the large fish that contained substances that were fatal to the insect race, and let this newly hatched unit take the risk to observe the substances escaping from the corpses.

There is no doubt that all the bugs responsible for the observation eventually died, but this time Zero finally learned through them what was attacking the bugs!

It was a creature that resembled a maggot that had shrunk hundreds of times. What finally flowed out from the corpse was not "pus", but the external manifestation of the dense state of this creature. With such a small body size, when they When scattered in the sea water, they naturally disappear without a trace.

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

The specific details are still unknown, but at least the swarm has initially revealed their true face and clearly seen their "appearance".

This is certainly an improvement. If you look into it carefully, this should be regarded as the first time that 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 really real. Microscopic organisms.

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

He discovered that if these parasites are exposed to seawater, even within a short period of time, they still have the ability to parasitize nearby organisms. They will use the substances in the host's body to multiply rapidly, even if it is just a bug, exponentially. Increasingly, all hosts except the big fish will eventually be killed, and then exposed to sea water again. This process will continue, and they will continue to reproduce and increase.

In terms of reproduction speed alone, even if today's Zerg hatches at full strength, it is still beyond the reach. As long as there are sufficient nutrients, they can breed the next generation within a few minutes, which is ten or even dozens of times faster than the Zerg swarm, and every time A parasite itself has the ability to be equivalent to a Zerg hatchery, which can be called a metamorphosis.