Ch 14

EVOLUTION COMPLETE

Overmind Lv 2

Health – 200/200

Mana – 500/500

Abilities:

Spawn Lair (100 Mana) – Grows a Zerg Lair at your current location (12 hours)

Burrow – (0 Mana) – Go underground; unable to move; can only be detected by sensors

Transfusion – (50 Mana) – Instantly transfer 125 health to biological unit or structure

Shapeshift – (0 Mana) – Take on the appearance of any target similar in size

Adamantium Armor – (Passive) – All physical type damage is blocked 100%

PSI Assault (1 Mana) – Casts a focused PSI attack at one enemy

PSI Storm (50 Mana) – Casts a localized storm of PSI energy

PSI Guantlet Lvl 1 (Passive) – Mana Above 0; Strength increased by factor of 10

PSI Armor Lvl 1 (Passive) – Mana Above 0; All attacks do 25% less damage

PSI Sensor (Passive) – Mana Above 0; Able to detect cloaked, burrowed, and hallucinated units

Zerg Mana – 8,943,280

Well, it looks like I was right. With a full day to absorb light, the creep had provided me with an income of nearly 8 million mana. More importantly however, is that I'm currently completely naked, and surrounded by six females who are stirring awake just as I am, and who are also naked from the waist up. Turning away quickly, I activate Shapeshift to clothe myself. I figure I might as well go for clothing I've always wanted to wear, and the next thing I know, I'm in long black satin cargo pants with lots of pockets, a white silk shirt, and a black satin long sleeve over shirt that I left unbuttoned, along with black combat boots, golden arm bands glinting from the interior sleeves of the overshirt, and a silver necklace with a small gold medallion with the Triforce on one side and the symbol for light on the other. I may not be Tassadar, but I figure the Light Medallion, even if it's fake, has a lot of meaning for me anyway.

Also, this time when we went through the evolution, I changed my appearance. I may as well be a carbon copy of Tassadar now, only I didn't change my height, just my hair color, eye color, and my overall physique, as well as removing any blemishes and facial hair. I won't have to ever cut my hair again either. Between my change in appearance and my clothing, the only tell between me and Tassadar would be my height and eye color. While I had changed it, Tass has glowing eyes that are a bright blue, the original eye color of Protoss Tassadar in fact. For one, my new eyes don't glow, and now consist of two colors. Originally, my eyes had three rings, one dark green thin outer ring, a grey blue large inner ring, and a gold rust colored inner ring. Also, my right eye had a bulge connecting the outer ring to the inner ring. Now, my eyes are a solid saphire blue with a bright gold inner ring. All told I like my new eyes. Aside from appearance changes, now if I ever have to pass the time, I can go to sleep even if I don't need to sleep anymore. I did forget to remove my capacity for boredom, but I figure it'll allow me to stay productive at the least.

Once finished adjusting my clothing, I waited a few moments before turning back around. As expected, my Queens had shapeshifted their spider like bodies to form clothing of their own, but more in the style of form fitting caraspace armor like they'd already been wearing. They were born Zerg, so naturally they would be more comfortable keeping a Zerg like appearance, even if it is a form fitting armor that leaves nothing to the imagination, and now that they have human like legs to walk on, their sex appeal had increased enormously. I'm very glad that the illusion of clothing on my person is able to hide the awakening of junior.

My Queens smiled at me, feeling my approval for their new looks through our connection. It's unusual for me now since all my Queens are now my height. I had actually grown a bit used to them being bigger. Oh well. I'm glad I had decided not to change my height after all like I'd been contemplating doing, though I suppose it doesn't really matter that much. They'd probably just match my height no matter how tall I am.

For once, I get the chance to initiate a group hug, bringing Rose and Snow into my arms, causing the other girls to surround me as well. It's far easier to hug each other now that we're all the same size and don't have large protruding bodies getting in the way. After a while, I let go and the girls did the same.

Grinning, I said, "I think it's high time we took over the Nether." My Queens grinned as well and I got a chorus of affirmatives. Walking outside and in the direction of the Nether Gate we'd set up a number of days ago, I concentrated on going a little overkill and put 100 Hydralisks on order along with 100 drones. With Hydralisks costing 150 each, that comes to a grand total of 2000 mana spent for both. That still leaves me with a total of 8,941,280, so I'm in no danger of losing mana any time soon if ever.

I do know that I still need to keep up the expansion of the Hive, so I order another 1000 drones to finish off covering the peninsula in Creep and Lairs, as well as pushing further south. I'm a little worried that the curve of the coast I've seen so far means I'm on an oblong island, but hopefully by grabbing some glowstone, I won't have to worry about it.

Zerg Mana – 8,893,280

Huh, so if I don't bother with the math the ZGA will tell me anyway? That's kind of nice I suppose. Using the flint and steel sitting next to the portal, I light it up, and stand aside to let the Hydralisks through. Immediately we can hear the sound of explosions through the portal, but the armor does it's job, and the explosions are rather quickly silenced. I make a note to try and take a Ghast alive. Having the ability to shoot explosive fireballs is bound to be useful. On that note, I should probably try and catch a Blaze as well. Maybe catch a zombie as well to figure out how the flesh is animated without being alive. Might be useful to figure out, just in case any of my creatures gets injured despite their armor, not to mention if I can figure out how to reverse it, I might just be able to permanently remove Zombies as a threat here.

Stepping through the Portal after my Queens, I'm immediately glad that my clothing isn't actually real or I'd feel even more stifled than I already do. It is unbelievably hot in here! The Zerg may be able to handle Char easily, but it's still not very pleasant! Even more unpleasant is that we've only just got through and we've already hit our first snag. The Portal is unfortunately sitting on a ledge that's only just able to hold us all, and certainly isn't big enough to hold a Lair on top of that. Making my way to the edge, I look around only for more bad news. It seems this ledge is jutting over a large lake of lava and there's no easy way to get to any of the other ledges in this giant hellish cave. It seems the only direction to go is through the wall of rock behind the portal. While the Hydralisks may not have the speed of a Zergling, their large claws more than make up for it. At this point I really wish I had a Zerg strain built for digging though. The Hydralisks are making progress but it's slow going. I consider ordering up some Zerglings, but there really isn't enough room for anything more.

Going through the portal, I come back with my pickaxe and get to work alongside my Hydralisks. It's tedious work, and it takes a few hours, not helped by the Ghasts popping up on occasion to investigate the noise, but the lot of us finally make it through the cavern wall to thankfully find a number of ledges sitting over a large chunk of netherack easily big enough for a Lair or two to sit on. Finding a way down, I direct two of my drones forward, they set up to build two Lairs, and I direct the others to push the debris of Netherack into the lava. Thanks to that we ended up extending the stretch of land by a little but not by much. Either the lava is melting the netherack down to practically nothing, or it's quite deep!

As a test, I tried bringing water in a crude container into the Nether, but it literally evaporated as soon as it touched the air. Unbelievably troublesome. I'm starting to reconsider taking over the Nether and just getting the glowstone, Ghast strain, and Blaze strain, and getting the heck out! It doesn't help either that the only real light source in this place is the lava, which certainly isn't much, and if I even want to put down enough creep for it to matter, I'd have to find some way to get rid of the lava! Of course, if I do succeed in infusing the creep with glowstone then that might still be a viable option. Still though, lava is the lifeblood of the planet, and this is it's core. If I cover the entire top layer of all the lava here in obsidian I may just cool the planet enough to somehow send it on its way to destruction or something. Better to find some way to adapt to the extreme heat of the lava itself rather than change the lava, just like I don't want to cover the Ocean with a top layer of creep either.

Besides, I wouldn't be able to float Lairs on top of the water anyway, at least not in any way I know of. Unless I infused the Lair with that thing in the Overlords that allows it to fly… suddenly I have visions of hives floating in the sky. That would be seriously useful out in space, and it'd be practically stealing the idea of moving buildings from the Terrans.

I can just see the look on a Terran or Protoss player's face now. They're facing a Zerg hive they'd found with a scouting party and send an army after it, only to find slowly receding creep instead. Knowing the Zerg, they would wonder why a Zerg Hive would suicide like that, or bring in a sensor wondering if the buildings had somehow burrowed like the other Zerg… speaking of which that's an awesome idea in and of itself! Burrowing Zerg buildings would be amazing, especially if they could move underground! The buildings are alive just like the units, and if the units can move underground, why can't the buildings? And since the Lairs now have openings in the roof, units would still be able to be spawned and climb out onto the battlefield or just burrow their way out of the other entrances to the top! That'd also take away the need to worry about bad terrain too, since a mountain could easily just be used as shielding for a Lair or Hive! It's brilliant! It'd make it far easier to spread the creep in this place since the buildings could then just embed themselves in the walls. Unfortunately a change that big would probably require a Cerebrate to figure out how to pull it off. After all, if the Zerg building is underground, where is the creep going to come from?

That's when I had an epiphany. The Lair generates creep and the other buildings feed off of it, but the Lair must feed off of it too, so it generates creep and feeds off of it? Why can't the other Zerg buildings do the same? And for that matter, why is the Lair the only building capable of being built off the Creep? That's going to have to be changed. I'll have to look into that… right now! I was contemplating doing it later, but I'm not really doing anything at the moment.

Querying the ZGA proves that I can indeed have the buildings generate their own creep and be built off creep, but I'll have to wait to get a cerebrate in order to modify the burrow ability to be useable by the buildings, or have them fly like Overlords. I guess it's one thing to apply an ability in one thing unchanged to another, but in order to make any of the buildings burrow or fly, some heavy modifications would be needed.

At this point I've worked out the pattern quite nicely. If what I want the Zerg to do is something they already do, and is just a reapplication of it, then all I need to pull it off is the evolution chamber. If I have to modify the ability in any way to fit what I'm trying to do with it, then it requires a Cerebrate. If what I'm wanting is an ability that the Zerg just plain don't have yet, then it requires a Cerebrate Geneticist. Understanding this, I realize that I got really lucky that what I'd wanted by infusing Zerg hide with the adamantium was something the Zerg had already set precedent with. How else did they strengthen their armor in game? By making it progressively harder with new materials. If that hadn't been the case, I'd have to wait for a geneticist to be created before I could get my near invulnerable armor and weapons. That's another thing that made it easy for the Hydralisks to dig. Their blades practically carved through the Netherack like butter with their more densely packed Adamantium blades, though in a way this actually made it harder to dig as well since the blade was too sharp to catch on anything and rip away chunks of netherack.

Well, there's not much else to do here. I contemplate looking around for more areas to create Lairs on, but honestly, I just want to get out of this heat. It'll be a little less than 12 hours before the Lairs spawn anyway, and since I can't create an evolution chamber off of creep yet, I'll have to wait till they're done before I can start collecting anything. I would've collected some glowstone, but all the clusters of it are on the roof and I can't fly, nor do I desire to try tunneling down into it, accidently destabilizing the floor and falling into a pit of lava. It's already too hot as it is. I don't want to contemplate how hot it would feel in lava, even if it wouldn't burn me.

Leaving the Hydralisks there to guard the burrowed Drones, I head back to the Portal with my Queens, and calling down an Overlord, I have it transport us to the protected village. On the way I realize it might be a good idea to leave a defense force around the portal itself, so I order some of the Hydralisks to guard both ends of the portal as well. Ten at each side ought to do it. Too bad an Overlord couldn't fit through the Nether Portal, or getting that glowstone would've been easy.

Once at the village, I'm met again by Thomas Farmer, who didn't recognize me at first thanks to my changes, but once he did, he voiced his being understandably a little concerned about the creep and the presence of the Lairs outside the village.

"WHAT THE NETHER ARE THOSE THINGS!? They're frightening the villagers out of their minds! We've been too afraid to try and leave to hunt for more food than our grain stores since we saw those giant things shred those monsters apart! And yet you walk right by them without a care in the world? And then there's that black stuff covering the ground, making it impossible to till any more ground other than the farms we already have set up! We're only lucky we were able to make the most use of the space we have available within the walls since the stuff hasn't made it past the gate, which is just another reason we don't dare open the thing!"

Ok, maybe he's a bit more than just a little concerned. I hold up my arms to try and placate him. "I'm sorry. I've been really busy otherwise I would have tried to come by sooner. Those buildings out there that look like giant creatures are part of the Zerg. They look alive because they are alive, and they are buildings, and they're mine. You won't come to harm from them. As for the black stuff growing on the ground, it's called creep and it's also mine. I'm sorry about the loss of potential farm land, but in a way, you've lucked out. The creep is edible at least to us Zerg, so it stands to reason it would be edible for you too. Just a small piece is enough to stave off hunger for twice as long as a normal meal would."

Plucking up a two pieces of creep off the ground outside the gate, then in deference to the village for now closing it quickly in case the Creep really isn't edible for them, I come back in and pop a piece in my mouth and eat it. After swallowing I said, "See? It's pretty good stuff. Try it."

Sceptical, Thomas took the creep and looked at it. Slowly he put it in his mouth and chewed. His eyes lit up at the taste, so at least that's going for it. Then he swallowed. "You're right, this is far better than I expected! Even better then bread! Is it bad if you eat too much of it at once?" Shrugging I replied, "I have no idea. I've only ever eaten enough of it to get by. You can probably get away with eating a very small piece to show it's edible if you're worried."

Thomas nodded, then pulled open the gate and plucked up a very large patch of creep before closing it and convening the Elders. On the way I mentioned that the wall may not be needed anymore since my Lairs are so efficient at taking care of the monsters. Thomas was skeptical of taking down the walls since he was worried that if any miss it might destroy their houses. I promised him this wouldn't be the case. My Lairs never miss, and they can control how hard they're fired so they wouldn't go straight through the mobs if a house is right behind them. I also told him about how I'm working on a way to get the creep to glow so monsters won't be able to spawn in the first place. This, more than the fact that the creep is edible, seemed to excite Thomas and convince him to accept the Creep, though it did occur to me that if the creep were infused with glowstone, would it be edible anymore? If it still was, would the consumed glow dust cause us to glow? These questions led me to believe that either I'd need to somehow make it so there could be patches of nonglowing creep, or make the creep shed the glowdust if plucked.

One of the other farmers seemed to pick up on this possibility and I explained that I'd work out a way to get around it, but it might be necessary to choose between having safety or an easily accessible food source. The meeting continued on and I tuned out quite a bit of it. Honestly, some of what they talked about had hardly anything to do with me anyways.

Instead, I kept up tabs on my Swarm's growth. The Hydralisks had continued to keep the Ghasts at bay, and surprisingly, a tribe of zombie pigmen had decided to go on the offensive too. Considering those were always neutral in game until attacked, the fact that they'd go on offensive like that is strange. I hope that doesn't mean other rules from the game won't be ignored either.

I also kept track of the Overlords and their scouting. To my disappointment, they'd discovered that we are indeed located on an oblong island shaped similarly to Australia tipped on it's side. The only relief came from knowing one of my Overlords had scouted over the edge of the water to the south west and found another land mass that way. I've already directed an Overlord to bring drones over that way.

I've also kept track of keeping up the general spreading of the Lairs and Creep, though I'm seriously considering handing that job over to one of my Queens. It's not that it's hard, but keeping track of that much at once is starting to become a strain. I'd much rather focus on the Zerg as a whole instead of micromanaging the movements of each and every drone out there, of which there are about a thousand at any given time, though in a couple hours that number will decrease if the new landmass spotted doesn't pan out.

This micromanaging on top of trying to keep track of these council meetings isn't helping either. Evidently one of the council had been trying to catch my attention for the past few minutes and I hadn't even noticed. That for me, is the final straw. I asked the council to hold a moment and mentally asked my Queens to handle drone, lair, and creep production for me from now on. I just can't keep up on both since controlling that many drones is just too much for me to handle on top of everything else. Naturally my Queens agreed and they took to it like fish out of water, making me realize I hadn't been using them efficiently either, what with having them sit around doing practically nothing. They're Queens. They're meant to nurture and spread the Swarm, so of course handling the drones would be easy for them!

Sighing, I mentally came back to the meeting and apologized explaining I'd been taking care of matters on my end and became almost visibly annoyed when I found out they had still been discussing ways for their fencing to block the spreading of the creep.

"Why do you even want to know about that?" I asked.

The other farmer spoke up, "So we can still have patches of land to grow our crops on. Even with this new food source, we aren't going to want to eat creep all of the time."

Ah, well that makes sense. I guess that'd been explained at some point, but I'd missed it. Good thing I don't have to worry about the drones anymore. Almost as if to mock me, Asura made contact mentally asking for usage of the Overlords as well in order to better spread the Drones out. I agreed, telling them to use the Overlords as they saw fit, but to still keep one for each of them at all times for transportation purposes, and that I'll still need one for that purpose as well. That finished, I realized with a start that from now on, that would basically be the extent of what I'd have to deal with the drones for! I almost laughed in relief, but was able to refrain else the other council people might think me crazy or something.

Finally, FINALLY, the meeting ended. The council had decided a few things, one of which would be to experiment on ways to block creep growth. Since the gate and walls had stopped worked in that fashion, they would see about fashioning stone walls to do the same thing. Considering the fact that there are stone fences in Minecraft, that shouldn't be difficult for them to pull off.

Now with the meeting over, I decided to go and visit the other villages as well. Upon hearing my destination, Thomas asked to come with, though he seemed to be less than enthused when he discovered my means of transportation.

It took a bit to finally coax Thomas on the Overlord. I'd finally threatened to leave him there before he finally got on. The ride took a bit to get to the nearest one. I chose to doze off, considering I could just watch the land pass by through the eyes of the Overlord. Thomas can't do that though. I wonder if I could get a Cerebrate to put artficial viewports in the Overlords for things like this? I put it on my long term evolution goals for later.

Once we got to the next village, it seems I'd come not a moment too soon. All the villagers had stayed inside to hide from the Lairs and they were nearly sick with hunger. Needless to say they all but fell upon the Creep as soon as we'd demonstrated that it could be eaten. This seemed to be the general state of all the other villages as well. We came, we proved the Lairs safe, we showed the Creep as edible, the starving villagers fell upon it praising us, or me in particular since Thomas would point out the creep is my doing. Afterwards the village council would be called to discuss various things, mainly who I am, "Matthew the Overmind, leader of the Zerg," my purpose here, "Just the new neighbor saying hello," and other things such as the purpose of the creep and the Lairs themselves. Interestingly, one of the villages actually asked to explore one of the Lairs. I agreed, and nearly the whole village came to see. There wasn't much to the tour though considering there's only really one accessible room in the entire lair, and I warned against them touching the pool, demonstrating how stuff disappears when touching it. I did tell them if they were ever in any danger and they couldn't reach the village, they could escape to hide in a Lair if they wished.

All in all, the rest of the day was full of the meet and greet. I didn't say as such, but I'd basically claimed ownership of the villages in my head as the new Lord of the land so to speak. I don't need anything from them of course, other than good will and no hostilities. Other than that, they can really go on with their lives as usual. They'll just have to get used to the general vista is now black instead of green, though I am considering making the creep look like grass as a possibility. All my Zerg and even the creep can use the shapeshift ability now, but as of this moment I haven't really seen any need to do so.

Over the course of the day, I stayed aware of the goings on of my Swarm. The Overlords had continued to scout, drop off and pick up drones, and gather various things. A few cave systems had been discovered over on the new land, as well as a new village. It's too late to go visit today though, and come to think of it it's not like I have to do that either. After contemplating, I pass on the word to my Queens to handle any more meet and greet outside of this island's villages unless it's something I need to attend to. Joy promised she'd go visit the new village tomorrow. Eight villages are more than enough for me to handle, anymore and all of it will just start blending together in my head.

As for the expansion of the swarm, my Queens had kept up a steady rate of drones pushing further and further into the new land, and any time the Overlords discovered a new place, more drones were purchased and shuttled there to continue the spread. I'm almost appalled at the efficiency my Queens are going about with it. They've spent far more than I would have in a day's worth of expansion, but in the end they've already nearly doubled what I would have covered today if I'd continued to handle the Creep expansion on my own. I'm really glad I passed the job onto my Queens now.

Now that night has fallen, the monsters had started out, but thanks to the new armor, my Queens continued as if they weren't even there. Not even creepers exploding bothered my drones, though after a while the Queens started directing the drones to avoid them after witnessing so many pockmarks left in the ground from the aftermath, enough to slow the spread of the Creep.

All in all, by the time night had come, my Queens had gone up to nearly 5000 drones when expanding the creep, and just as many Lairs, leaving me with 6,143,280 mana, and with the rate they're going, I wouldn't be surprised if that number goes up exponentially as the creep spreads further and further out, especially once glowstone gets thrown into the mix and we can finally expand into the Oceans.

On that note, my two lairs in the Nether have finished now. With that started, my Queens immediately have set to building Overlords and Drones to explore and spread in that place as well. With the first Overlord finished, I took over that one and had it pluck down some glowstone from the ceiling, then push it through the portal to this side. That done, I ordered the drone assigned to the evolution chamber to drop it in the analysis pool and started that up. With the fragility of it, I wasn't at all surprised that it only took a few minutes to finish.

Now with the glowstone available to the Zerg, I hit on a brilliant idea. I'd been worried that introducing glow dust into the creep would make it inedible, but then I realized the solution. Shapeshift can take on physical traits so long as the object it's shifted into is available to the Swarm. I could have made the Creep look like a field of glowstone before now if I'd wanted and it wouldn't have done any good. It'd look like Glowstone certainly, but it wouldn't glow. Now with Glowstone available to the swarm, now I can have the creep shapeshift into creep that already has glowdust infused in it. Then it'll glow, but it doesn't actually have glowdust in it, so once it's digested it'll revert to its original state! I knew I could have my cake and eat it too!

Sending out the order, I watched in glee as a golden glow rippled out from the lairs like drops of water in a pool, lighting up the entire area. The spiders became docile, but the Lairs killed them anyway just in case. It wasn't even seconds later that the sound of flying spines and dying monsters faded to nothing. After all, without darkness, the monsters couldn't spawn and get reinforcements. Just like that, my land is now as safe as if I'd turned the difficulty to peaceful. This is seriously a victory worth celebrating! The cheers of my Queens over our mental link is extremely heartening, and I know that once I get back to the Lair, there's going to be much hugging and cuddling to celebrate. I just wish I had a drink to commemorate the occasion.

Then I realized that I could have a drink. Taking a detour, I directed the Overlord I'm riding back to my Lair in to pick up a bunch of apples. Doing this, as soon as I reached the lair, I had the Overlord pulp the apples, then strain the juice into a separate part of its body then chill it. That done, I grabbed another Overlord to fashion a large cast iron keg and iron cups out of some of the iron left over from that long ago dig. Then I had the other overlord fill the keg up with the apple juice, then deposit the left over apple rinds into the nearest mana pool.

At this point, the Queens had come out to see what I was doing outside the Lair rather than coming inside and celebrating. Grinning, I passed out glasses of fresh apple juice, then held it aloft and said, "To victory! Let this be the first of many to come!" My Queens held there glasses aloft to this then as one we drank the juice. It had to be the best apple juice I've ever had, between it being freshly squeezed and being from the apple trees on the creep.

I'd already noticed that despite falling off the trees a while ago, the apples hadn't decomposed at all, staying completely fresh, and even resisting bugs. That alone would have seen my apples taking over the market back on Earth. If I can do that for all fruits and vegetables, then I'd quickly have a monopoly in the produce trade easy. Of course, monopolies are illegal, so there'd have to be others who sell fruit and veggies as well, but I'd hold a virtual monopoly since everyone would rather have edible plants that never go bad. Too bad I don't really need money though, so I'd probably just end up giving out my produce for free. Too bad that sets a precedence that could lead to all products being free. That could either destroy the economy or evolve it into a higher system not based around bartering, but around good will.

People will never stop being greedy though, and a system based on honor and good will would require the abolishment of greed. Since there will always be greedy people who will fight to keep their power base, namely the economy, from being destroyed, an evolution into a higher system would not be completely smooth going anyway. Doesn't mean it's not a worthy goal to pursue though! We'll just have to see how that goes if I ever find Earth again.

I am seriously glad that I have apple juice available though. I'd missed having juice to drink. My favorite drink is milk though. I wish I could get some milk to drink. Then again, there are cows in minecraft, and you can get milk from them. Maybe I can get some milk after all! Scanning quickly through the area with the eyes of my Lairs and Overlords, I find some cows on the west side of the island. To my surprise, there are hardly any animals on this island, even though I'd seen more than this before. These animals are relatively young too.

It didn't take long for me to realize why. All the older animals used to eating grass would have avoided the creep, not knowing it to be edible, leading the deaths of most of the animals on the island. These young animals are probably the few who figured out they could eat the creep, since that's exactly what they're doing. Thankfully they still are despite the fact that the creep now glows.

With those few cows, I won't have much milk available. Sensing my disappointment admist this time of celebration, my Queens asked me what's wrong. After explaining it to them, to my surprise they laughed and Asura asked, "Is that all? How did you create this container of apple juice in the first place?"

Confused, I replied, "I had an Overlord shape it and another one crush a lot of apples to get the juice."

Nodding Asura replied, "Now, if you wanted more apple juice, you'd do this same thing, correct?"

I nodded not knowing where they were going with this. My Queens burst into giggles at this. Annoyed I asked, "What?"

It was Joy who answered this time, "But Matthew, if you took this container of apple juice and dumped it into the analysis pool, it'd stand to reason that you could then have the Zerg produce the apple juice in containers directly! You've already proved that with shapeshift, you can have a Zerg turn into just about any shape you want. Have one be born in the shape of that container and have it filled with apple juice!"

I stared at my still giggling Queens, completely floored. After a time, my brain caught up with me considering the possibilities of this and said, "That… that's absolutely BRILLIANT! Why didn't I think of that? That way I could just take a pail of milk, dump it into the analysis pool, then presto! Milk is available to the Swarm! Actually we could do that with just about any food! The buildings already produce Creep as substance so the process is already there!"

My excitement gave way though as I considered how to do it. "Wait, Shapeshift is an ability that would have to be activated after birth, and it's not like you can grow non biological… objects…" My eyes grew wide, "But… biological objects are simply elements that are also found in non biological objects, just formed in more complex ways… in that case, why couldn't the Zerg grow non biological things?" The idea was radical. It would forever change the shape of the Zerg if it worked.

Quickly pulling up the ZGA, I queried if it would be able to create non living objects. It answered no, but then I asked if it was possible to create a Zerg strain that could die before birth. The ZGA answered yes. In that case, I posed the question that if the Zerg can create a dead creature, then doesn't that count as a non living object? At this point the ZGA shut down stating that any further inquiries into this line would require an update from a Geneticist. Disappointed, but ultimately excited that while I couldn't do such a thing yet, I just might be able to down the road, I put growing non living objects into my long term evolution goals. After all, just imagine it, with the ability to do such a thing, I could literally grow my own tank or any kind of technology! Heck, growing technology just might be the next step in production required to give science a huge technological boom!

Quickly expanding on my idea to the Queens, we further celebrated with more apple juice, and I had the Evolution chamber drone come down to collect some apple juice to pour into the analysis pool, along with an apple, then set the ZGA to analyzing both, which only took a minute or two.

Thoughts of the evolution chamber actually reminded me of something, and I quickly set about ordering some of the Overlords to collect the few bodies of endermen up to drop off at the Evolution chamber. Since I'd been doing this each night since I'd started collecting them, the Endermen genome had finally reached 98 percent completion in the ZGA. Hopefully tonight with these last five bodies would finally see me getting the Enderman's teleport ability into the swarm! Furthering those projects along being on my mind, I quickly set about building a drone and starting up an evolution chamber in the Nether. I also ordered an Overlord to pick up a zombie, skeleton, and spider out of the caves and deposit them outside of the evolution chamber so that the drone could push them into the Evolution chamber, which wasn't all that hard to do when it came down to it.

That finished, and those analyzed, I noticed with some annoyance that the zombie and skeleton only registered as two stages of dead bodies, only giving me a partial genome, not that that would give me the clue to how they're dead but also alive. After thinking about it, I realized that whatever it is probably has nothing to do with their genetic makeup and probably has something to do with magic, which is something that this world does have. Maybe that'll become a new ability type. I already have physical and psionic. Maybe next I'll get magical. That'd be cool.

Even during my doing all that, I continued to celebrate with my Queens just as they also continued ordered the drones out to spread the creep while we celebrated. In fact, now that my creep can glow now, a huge spike in drone and Lair production had started as now my Queens are pushing into the oceans. I'm glad they're taking the initiative on this since they already knew that's what I wanted to do once glowstone became available to the swarm. All told, by midnight my mana had dropped down to 504,630, and the surface area of this world that I now covered is probably close to about 10,000 square blocks, when only this morning the creep only covered roughly 5,000. My girls sure are efficient.

Speaking of efficiency…

-END CHAPTER-

Overmind mana – 500/500

Zerg Mana – 504,630/1,000,000,000

Zerg Supply –~8,319/53,220

Units:

1 Overmind

1079 Overlords

~8000 Drones

11 Speedlings

6 Queens

100 Hydralisks

Structures:

12,851 Lairs

1 Spawning Pool

2 Evolution Chambers

1 Baneling Nest

1 Roach Warren

1 Hydralisk Den