Ch 15

Zerg Mana – 23,780,955

Holy hell are my Queens efficient or are they efficient! I'd not even had my creep glowing the entire night, so with my Queens doubling my surface area of creep, my income has jumped from 8 million to 23 million! That's insane!

I congratulated my queens on this amazing feat. At this rate, half a billion mana might not be so insurmountable an obstacle afterall! I mean think on it, right now my creep covers about 10,000 square blocks of space, and a minecraft world is 60 million square blocks of space. Granted it's like a hundred times the size of earth, but still! Do the math! 23 million income for only 10,000 square blocks, and that's without a full 24 hours of absorption time? By the time I cover this planet, the Overworld alone will give me an income of something like 138,000,000,000 at minimum! If I somehow flattened the Nether, and since the Nether is 8 times smaller than the Overworld, then that would give me 17,250,000,000 at minimum, raising my total income to 155,250,000,000 mana! As for the End, I doubt I should count that really. The place is pretty small compared to the Nether. I mean, you can see the entire space of the End just by standing in the middle of it! If it is the moon, then it must be pretty freaking small, which makes sense I guess since the moon up in the sky here isn't all that big either. It looks smaller than our moon actually. At least it doesn't look square like in the game. I'm actually glad that the land doesn't look like some kind of lego land. That'd probably drive me nuts trying to figure out how anything actually works here. I mean, grass growing out the side of what is basically a sheer cliff of dirt? Is that truly even possible?

Anyways, having approx 155 billion mana a day would be extremely useful. I'd be able to reach Level 4 pretty quickly, and then I could go out and get another planet to try and reach level five quickly too! If I only stuck with this planet after all, it'd probably take me… let's see, doing the mental math… cutting off a billion from both numbers, that's 500,000 divided by 155… that's approximately 3,225 days, which is something like ten years. While I could wait that long, I don't really want to, and besides, by ten years, I probably would have spread my creep on enough planets to reach 500 trillion in seconds. Granted, at that point, is there even a reason to keep spreading the Swarm by that point? Ah who am I kidding, I'm the Overmind, and the bigger my family is the better!

That decided, I turned my attention back to my Queens and the spreading of the creep, and I just about choked. The sheer numbers they're putting out in drones has already topped my supply quota, and I'm already down to 20,000,000 mana! How in the world did they spend 3 million mana already!? Shaking my head, I decide to just go with it. Unlike some people, they're not wasting it, but actually making a very good investment that'll make me even more mana in the long run. I know there's the cliché of if you give a woman your wallet, she'll spend every dime you have, but you can't argue with the results if it ends up returning you far more money than was spent!

I suppose I shouldn't be all that surprised though. With each Lair the equivalent of an Overlord, so adding even more supply each time one is built, that just gives my Queens more and more supply available to spread the swarm. Heck, with 53,220 available supply at the moment, I wouldn't be surprised if they quickly get to the point of having 50,000 drones out at some point.

Almost as if they'd read my mind, the next thing I know, my Queens had topped out my supply limit in drones, though that wasn't too much of a bite into my mana, since 52,023 drones only costs 2,601,150 mana. No what scares me is that that many drones making lairs costs 26,011,500 mana, and I don't have that much mana. I'm surprised they bought so many so fast. Or I was anyway until my mana had dropped down to 305, filling the Ocean with 42,359 new growing Lairs. The leftover 9,664 drones burrowed into new spots all around the ocean floor, and I literally sweatdropped as I realized that come this afternoon, with 42,359 new lairs, my lands will have increased in size nearly five times! Jumping from approx 10,000 to 50,000 square blocks of space is almost insane, and that number is going to grow exponentially at this rate! Actually if I do the math… by this afternoon, my income should jump to something along the lines of 175 million mana!

That's if I did the math wrong though, since it's entirely possible that by infusing the glowstone into the creep, my income will actually have quadrupled, not doubled, but since the last jump wasn't nearly enough to indicate something like that, I'll just have to wait till tomorrow night. If the amount is around 175 million, then it'll have only doubled. If it's more along the lines of 350 million mana, then it will have quadrupled.

That's when an idea got into my head that had me literally freezing in my tracks. The caves… if I spread the creep underground, that would increase my surface area far beyond 60 million square blocks! Actually, whenever I played minecraft, I'd usually end up digging a mineshaft down into the ground, all the way down, then expanding that mineshaft in layers, giving me a multistory complex, and as a by your leave to physics, I always left pillars to support the ground even if they weren't actually needed. If I did the same thing, creating multi level floors big enough to house even the large Zerg Hives, then I wouldn't just have a surface area of 60 million square blocks… I'd have 60 million square blocks times however many floors I can fit under the ground!

That's… that's… if I went by how deep the pit went, then I'd say I could probably have about ten floors underneath the top soil… and to think I'd been boggling at the prospect of having a 155.25 billion mana income! If this works, then I could have a 1.38 trillion mana income from the Overworld alone! If I did the same to the Nether… but then I'm not sure how deep the Nether goes. And all that lava could cause problems trying to figure that out let alone creating multiple levels to it. Still, it won't hurt to try!

That brings me another idea actually. Not only do I build down, but I also build up to. Using the same formula as the multiple floors down the mineshaft, I usually end up with a tower of multiple levels stretching into the sky. If I build floors stretching up to the limit of the atmosphere… but wait, that might not be a good thing… Changing the size of the planet like that might be bad in the end. Plus, it's entirely possible that if I dug out an entire planets worth of space beneath the top soil, that could cause the supports to buckle and then I'd have pretty much destroyed the planet basically. I'll need to test out if a layer of rock and dirt alone with nothing but space below can support the weight of a Lair, even with support posts. After all, it's not like I can build support posts sticking through the middle of the Lair. I'd have to make sure that a Lair could be supported by just that without falling… unless… unless I offset everything. Like a brick layer will put a brick over the crack of the bottom row of bricks, I could put a pillar directly underneath the Lair and offset the lower layers lairs. Though if I did it exactly like bricks… maybe only offsetting it by a little each time you go down a layer might do it? But no, that would mean any layer below that wouldn't have a pillar directly beneath the lair above. There doesn't seem any good way to do this!

Unless… unless the support wasn't just stone and dirt? What if the entire frame of support was built using Adamantium? Could that work? It is completely impervious to physical damage… but then again, how would I go about getting that much Adamantium, and it'd probably also be best if it was all one solid piece or at least interlocking pieces too. How would I pull that off?

That's when I remembered what I'd tried to pull off earlier with growing inanimate objects. I could just grow the adamantium! But I still need a geneticist before I can do that. Ah well, just another thing to put in the Long term evolution goals list.

While I pondered the possibilities of a multilayered hive, I had to wonder how I would go about digging such a large amount of land? Zerglings can only go so fast, though they would probably do for small scale projects. Digging out an entire planet a hundred times larger than earth though… Again, I have to wish that I had a creature made for digging, especially in terms of large scale like this. Wait a second though, I do have such a creature! Nydus worms are on an unbelievable scale of size, with their main body jutting out of the Nydus Network building, and having heads that can grow to just about anywhere you wish on the planet. You couldn't ask for a better large scale digger than that!

Actually… with Nydus worms available next level, I could get started doing that within the next week or two… and since I'd infused adamantium throughout the Zerg, they could probably dig down into the void… and when it comes down to it, this entire world is being cushioned on a large block of space that goes down hundreds of miles… after all, if the Nether is 8 times smaller than the Overworld, cross section wise, that's a large chunk of space sitting in between the Nether and the bottom layer of the Overworld. The only problem would be that HE might be down there, and there's still the problem that even with adamantium armor, the Void could probably still kill us. If we can get past those two issues though, that's even more space to fill out with more multi levels of Creep.

Actually there's still another possibility too. This is reality, and the idea of a huge chunk of land sitting on top of a huge empty space is kind of ludicrous, so there actually might only be adamantium and lava straight down to the nether. I want to find out, but I don't quite dare just yet, even if our claws probably would allow us to dig through adamantium now. If it is only adamantium though, then there's the answer to our needing a large source of the stuff to create a frame out of to support the lairs.

With future plans satisfied for the moment, I turned to my Queens and asked, "Why didn't you space out the building of the drones and the Lairs over the course of the day?"

Asura answered, "We were going to, but then we realized that not all of the Lairs would have had the greatest amount of time to absorb light before midnight came to give us more mana. Knowing this, we made as many Lairs as quickly as possible rather than wait."

I nodded, "That makes sense actually. Good work." It also explains why they jumped to having so many Drones so suddenly, and yet still have some left over. It's too bad that we only get mana once a day. If it was a constant income like in the game, then working up to building more over time would be the better move, but since that's not how collecting mana works, my Queen's plan works best.

That out of the way, I wonder what I should do now? My answer came almost immediately by the ZGA informing me that the Enderman genome had been fully integrated into the Zerg. Finally. Teleportation for all Zerg will cut out the need for shuttles, rendering Overlords shuttle purposes useless. Without the need to be shuttles, that opens them up to be evolved into Overseers. Considering the importance of this, and with the new Lairs already on the way, I figure it's time for an evolution, only for me to freeze, with my eyes bugging out. I'd almost forgotten that the Queens had dropped my mana level to nearly zero creating those new Lairs. My Queens were all arrayed around me looking at me curiously as I turned around slowly to regard them.

"New rule," I stated quietly, "In spreading the creep, from now on, you will leave 1,000,000 of the mana alone. Any more than that you can use to continue increasing the size of the swarm, but for now, you will leave 1,000,000 of that untouched. Understood?" My Queens nodded fearfully. I took a deep breath, releasing the anger I felt at having such a huge set back hit. I shook my head and said, "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have gotten angry at you. We need to learn from this though. Spreading the Creep isn't the only thing we need to do to increase the swarm. The only thing left I can think of to do right now is an evolution, and we can't do that without 500,000 mana available. Even beyond evolutions, we'll still need more than that free for emergencies such as if we need to create an army quickly, hence why the rule is 1,000,000 rather than just 500,000."

Sighing, I sank to the ground asking myself aloud, "What to do now?..." Tentatively, Joy stepped forward and cautiously wrapped me in a hug. I leaned into her, grateful, which prompted the other Queens to come forward and wrap around us. Asura whispered, "We're sorry Matthew." I shook my head and said, "It's alright. The issue is dealt with. We can move on from here now, better and wiser than before. Be happy for that ok?" The others nodded while Asura whispered, "Ok."

We sat like that for a while, me cradled in Joy's lap with the rest of my Queens wrapped around us. I chuckled, "I guess I've found what I'm going to do until morning." And with that, I fell asleep.

-END CHAPTER-

Overmind mana – 500/500

Zerg Mana – 305/1,000,000,000

Zerg Supply –10,862/53,220(211,795 pending)

Units:

1 Overmind

1079 Overlords

9,765 Drones

11 Speedlings

6 Queens

100 Hydralisks

Structures:

12,851 Lairs (42,359 pending)

1 Spawning Pool

2 Evolution Chambers

1 Hydralisk Den

1 Roach Warren

1 Baneling Nest