Ch 6

Zerg Mana – 5,235/1,000,000

Zerg Supply – 33/65

Mana Required for Evolution: 500,000

'And so dawns the fifth day…' I thought as I woke up and stretched. Or at least I would have stretched if I weren't completely immobilized between Cuddles and Asura, not to mention I'm still piled beneath Joy, Rose, Snow, and Faye.

The lot of them are giggling, though I've no real idea why. Urk, ok, maybe I can guess why, as I realized a certain part of my anatomy is firmly pressed up against Cuddles lower area. I can only thank heaven I'm still clothed! For the first time I feel a little worried at having created so many Queens, and yet knowing I'm only going to end up making more.

"Erm… Cuddles? Could you let me up please?"

This seemed to trigger a fresh bout of giggles, and what's with that look on Cuddles' face? Somehow I'd expect that look wouldn't be too out of place if she were eyeing her next meal, and it's making me nervous.

Thankfully, Cuddles did let me go, and I got up and took off out of the Hatchery like a bat out of hell, heading for the tree line, the laughter of my Queens echoing behind me. I'm am SO screwed…

A few minutes later, I left the tree line sighing in relief that the old 'taking a leak' trick had worked on my morning wood for once. And to think I'd spent the last five days not even having to worry about my old problem… now it's suddenly springing up, pun not intended, and what's worse, I have six Queens and more on the way, who, if the last few minutes are anything to go by, are hell bent on torturing me to death! There are some days I really wish I could just take my libido out for a walk and shoot it in the head… repeatedly. Then douse it in fire until there's nothing but ashes left.

That's when a dastardly thought entered my head. Suppose my libido is one of the things I can get rid of once the new level up happens? Then I won't have to worry about my addiction ever again! I like sex as much as the next guy, but when it gets to the point that I have to take time out of my life just to, take care of the problem, as it were, it becomes terribly annoying. It's only made worse by the fact that this addiction has literally ruined my life up until this point. All of my major life goals require celibacy outside of marriage, so everything I'd been aiming for up till this point has been put on permanent hiatus until the situation can be taken care of. Unfortunately, it wasn't something I could take care of in any way… until now that is. This next level up has suddenly increased in priority than anything before. My addiction's days are numbered, and I can finally see freedom on the horizon!

A cough behind me, had me turning around. All six of my Queens were arrayed in front of me looking contrite. Cuddles stepped forward and said, "I'm sorry Matthew. I didn't know our teasing you like that would upset you so much. Please forgive us… forgive me?"

Smiling, I wordlessly opened my arms and Cuddles rushed into them. I gave her a squeeze and said, "I wasn't upset at you…. At any of you. If anything I was upset at myself. There's nothing to forgive." Cuddles nodded and set me back down. I think I'm starting to get used to their hugs lifting me off the ground. Considering I'm so much bigger than most people, standing at 6'6", it's very unusual for me to actually be dealing with a situation where everyone is bigger than I am.

Nodding to each of my Queens, I clapped my hands together and said, "Right. Time to get to work. The creep still needs expanding, but before we do that, we need to start increasing our defenses. We haven't faced much opposition yet, but this world is dangerous. It's only a matter of time before we start to catch the attention of things better left alone. But unfortunately for them, this is our world now, so we're going to have a fight on our hands. I'd rather we not have to fight at all, but these monsters are mindless. They will attack us, and we will have to defend ourselves."

Rose raised her hand. I smirked at that and said, "You don't have to raise your hand Rose. Just speak up if you have something to say ok?" Rose nodded and asked, "What else is there on this world that could pose a challenge to us?"

I nodded and answered, "Quite a few things actually, one of which I'm praying with all my might doesn't actually exist, because if he does, I don't think there's anything we can do before level five to actually stop him."

I took a deep breath and said, "What you first need to know about this world is that it's actually three worlds combined. First is the Overworld, which we're in right now. Next is the Nether, which can only be accessed through an Obsidian gateway of purple flame, and the End, which can only be accessed by tracking down the gateway to it with an Eye of Ender, and even then we'd need a number of those eyes in order to open the portal to it. There's also possibly a fourth world called the Aether, but I honestly have no idea how we'd get there or what might be there."

Tired of standing, I sat down, and my Queens followed my example doing so. Continuing with my explanation, "First, the Overworld. We've already seen Zombies, Skeletons, spiders, and Creepers. Also the first night I was here, I also had to deal with an Enderman. I never saw it, which is lucky, but it collapsed my first shelter, exposing me to the rest of the monsters at night. Enderman are extremely dangerous. If you look directly at them, they will attack you on sight. They're tall, midnight black, and extremely scary. Their most dangerous feature is they have the ability to warp to any spot they wish with almost no warning. That small warning is that a purple dust seems to emenate from them, and if you learn to track it, the direction the dust trails to when they disappear is the direction they warped to. Their teleportation reacts automatically to any ranged attack, so melee is the only thing that works. They also have a nasty habit of randomly taking a chunk out of anything you build. It's more annoying than anything, unless you're under a shabby shelter made of sticks that can collapse at the slightest disturbance. If possible, I'd like to bring the Enderman's ability to teleport into the swarm. If we can make that ability open to the entire Swarm, I can think of very little that would ever be able to stop us."

"Outside of the Enderman, there's not much in the Overworld that can stop us. We'll be able to find local villagers if we can ever get to a plains area. They'll trade with us and aren't to be harmed if we can help it. They can build iron golems, which are dangerous at close quarters, but most of our warriors could take one down. Still, villagers are most likely sentient, and I don't want to bother sentients if I don't have to."

"There are also plenty of animals that won't harm us and will most likely run away if we bother them. These would be sheep, pigs, cows, and cats. It should be noted that creepers are scared of cats and run away from them. If we can replicate this, that would be ideal. If not, well, cats can be tamed with raw fish and can be found in jungles. They'll come to you if you hold out a fish and hold still."

"Wolves shouldn't be a problem either. They won't attack unless attacked first. They can be tamed with bones from those skeletons if any of you are interested in keeping pets here."

"If we ever go down into the caves, we may find small spiders, silverfish, and, if we go deep enough, slimes. Those three are more annoying than anything, although silverfish are this world's version of the Zergling. Small, fast, and does little damage, but they tend to pop out of nowhere and swarm. So long as you can stand them nibbling on you and jumping at you, you'll be fine. Slimes are just blobs of slimey stuff. All they do is jump around and at you, trying to bump into you. They're not very dangerous at all."

"Now," I stated becoming extremely serious, "Other than those things, there is one other thing in the Overworld. HE is more myth than anything, but in case HE does exist, I won't say his name, since I've heard saying HIS name three times will summon him. Trust me when I say, you do NOT want to screw with this guy. He looks human, with brown hair, a blue shirt, and blue jeans. His most notable feature is his white blank eyes with no pupils. If you do see him, TELL THE REST OF US IMMEDIATELY. Most notable among the powers he has, which can only be speculated on, is that he is invincible. If you fight him and he 'dies', he will most likely come back to fight us again. He can fly, turn invisible, has super strength, and can call lightning bolts down from the sky. Worse still, he has a teleportation ability that leaves no trace and has NO limits. An Enderman can travel extremely far horizontally, but vertically it can only teleport upwards a short distance. This thing can appear everywhere and yet nowhere. Pray you never see him or hear of him, because if you do, the entire Swarm might not survive his wrath. In case you do hear his name, I don't want you repeating it out of ignorance, so you should know that his name starts with an H and ends with an E."

My Queens nodded, fearfully. Good. Hopefully they'll be wary and not ever come across HIM. Hopefully if we're lucky, the truth will be that he really doesn't exist and is just a myth. All the same, I can't wait till I can get the Swarm spaceborn and leave this planet behind. I don't want to leave any ties at all for HIM to find us. Not unless I can find some way to make the swarm invincible, or at least myself invincible. I can at least restart the Swarm, but not if we're all dead or worse.

Sighing, I said, "Thankfully, the rest of the creatures we may face are nothing compared to that, so for the most part we should be fine. Still though, I would like it if we can incorporate the diamonds we find on this world into our armor. It'll go a long way to making sure we stay safe on this world."

"Now, as to the Nether. We can get there by creating a rectangular gate made out of Obsidian, and then lighting a fire on the interior of it. It needs to be tall enough for an Enderman to pass through. On the other side of this gate will be a world of lava. It's a hell like world, that is speculated to be located underneath the deepest recesses of this planet. While we don't have to go to the Nether, it does contain this world's greatest weapon. Glowstone. It emits light as bright as the sun, and I'm sure you noticed, all creatures of this world either go docile under the sun, or just don't spawn. It only takes a single shadow for the monsters of this world to appear in, and the less shadows there are, the more concentrated the monsters will appear in that one shadow. Unlike the sun however, zombies and skeletons will not burst into flame from the light of glowstone. If we can situation glowstone everywhere though, that'll cut down our enemies ability to appear everywhere within our territory, and it should double our income of mana, maybe even quadruple it if we can layer glowstone underneath the creep as well. After all, the faster we level up, the faster we can get away from this planet and avoid the risk of meeting HIM."

My mouth is getting dry. Continuing, "As for the monsters of the Nether, it's surprisingly not as dangerous as you'd expect. There are magma slimes, which are basically slimes on fire. Nasty, but rare. Zombie pigmen are surprisingly docile. Like the wolves though, they will amass on you if you attack them. The most dangerous enemy you'll face in the Nether are the Ghasts and the Blazes. Both fly, and both shoot fireballs. Unlike the blaze, the ghast's fireballs are explosive and can only be damaged by hitting their underbelly. Thankfully Ghast's fireballs don't catch fire easily, but Blazes do. Blazes are more rare however, but we'll have to find some if we plan on getting to the End. The main reason the Blazes are so dangerous though is because most of the nether is made of a material that can burn indefinitely. The only reason it ISN'T suicide to take on a Blaze in the Nether is because fire spreads to slowly to be a true problem, else the entirety of the Nether would be on fire, rather than just hot enough to evaporate water on contact."

All of the Queens were looking at me like I'd grown a second head, and Asura asked slowly, "And you WANT to go to this place?" I shrugged and said, "We're the Zerg. We can adapt. Besides, if we can assimilate the ability to survive in a place like that, who knows what we can do? Imagine Zerglings who can catch fire at will and survive the experience. That would be extremely useful, don't you think?"

Asura nodded along with Rose and Snow, looking thoughtful. Cuddles and Joy still looked unsure, but I doubt they have any real reason not to go for it. Continuing on, "Now for the End. I honestly have no idea where that place is. For all I know, it could be this world's moon. The reason the place is dangerous Is for two reasons. One is that it's the home of the Enderman. You couldn't throw a stick without hitting one. There are that many of them. Second is the Ender Dragon. As far as Dragons go, it's not that large and not even that dangerous. It's main attack is to ram into you. I don't think it can even breath fire. The bad part about the Ender Dragon, is that no structure can survive it's passing. Everything it runs into is destroyed. All except Obsidian and Bedrock, or Adamantium. Now, if we can get Adamantium infused into our armor, then at that point we can probably kiss our troubles in defense goodbye. The reason is that Adamantium is indestructible. Nothing, and I mean nothing can put a scratch on it… well, nothing short of diamond anyway. If we can assimilate adamantium into the Swarm, then perhaps not even HE could bother us anymore."

"Back to the point though, it honestly should be all that hard for us to take down the Enderdragon. If one guy can do it with a bow and arrows, a couple Hydralisks ought to take the thing out of the sky in seconds. The only trouble to this is that it's realm is filled with towers that regenerate its health if it flies near them. Funnily enough they're explosive, so if you shoot one while it's near enough to regenerate from it, it'll end up getting more hurt than it would've been otherwise. After that, we'll gain access to the egg of an Enderdragon and well… being able to assimilate the ability of having nothing survive contact would be a nice thing to have for our weapons."

The Queens were silent at this, and after a moment, I stood up and brushed off my pants and said, "Well that's all I know about this planet. Any questions?" After waiting a moment, the Queens all shook their heads. I think they might still be shell shocked from everything I'd just told them. I can hardly blame them. It's going to be one heck of a fight claiming this planet, if that is truly what we end up doing. I'm still toying with the idea of pushing to level four as fast as possible and just hightailing it away from this planet, but there really are some useful things we could gain here if we stick it out.

My Queens headed off to continue the work started yesterday. Now, what to do with 5,235 mana? My first thought would be to pump out more Queens, but that's not really necessary at the moment. With my six Queens, they're already pushing out the boundaries of the Creep to the point that any more Queens would just get in the way. Interestingly, the more creep tumors they spawned, the more efficient they seem to be getting at it. It wouldn't surprise me if in the end, it didn't cost them anything to make the things. Of course, six Queens aren't going to be able to cover an entire planet with creep very quickly, but at the moment, they should do just fine.

So for now, I decided to not spend any mana. Hopefully I'll soon have enough for the next level up. Because of this, the rest of the day went fairly quickly, at least until late afternoon, when a wild, crazy idea popped into my head. Right now, I'm only relying on the creep tumors to spread the creep out, but those aren't the only things that can spread creep. Hatcheries spread the creep even better than creep tumors do, and unlike the tumors, they don't require being built on creep itself! I can spread the creep exponentially if I have the drones scout out and establish new hive clusters!

Resolving to do just that, I ordered all drones to cease collecting resources and scout out new spots for Hatcheries. By evening, five of them had started spawning. By bedtime, all of them had found suitable locations for more Hatcheries to spread the creep. Unfortunately, two of them would have to wait till morning to create their Hatcheries.

With that taken care of, I spent most of the day floating in the Spawning pool, following the Queens around, and occasionally directing a Drone. At the end of the day, Asura and Cuddles went to bed with me. The others had decided to try their hand at surviving out in the open and placing down more creep tumors. I allowed this so long as they paired off to watch each other's backs.

-END CHAPTER-

Overmind mana – 100/100

Zerg Swarm Mana – 35/1,000,000

Zerg Supply – 20/65

Units:

1 Overmind

11 Overlords

2 Drones

12 Zerglings

6 Queens (Broodmother)

Structures:

4 Hatcheries (13 Spawning in progress)

1 Spawning Pool