Ch 20

Overmind Lv 3

Health – 300/300

Mana – 2500/2500

Abilities:

Spawn Hive (200 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

Burrow Move – Ability to move underground when burrowed

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 2 (Passive) – Mana Above 0; Strength increased by factor of 20

PSI Armor Lvl 2 (Passive) – Mana Above 0; All attacks do 50% less damage

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

Teleport Lvl 1 – (0 Mana) – Able to teleport within range of vision; full horizontal/slight vertical

Photosynthesis (Passive) – Ability to obtain partial sustance from light sources

Flight: Flame Propulsion (1 Mana per second) – Fly using the thrust of conjured flame

Fire Immunity (Passive) – Mana above 0; 100% immune to heat, fire, lava, etc.

Self Combustion (1 Mana per second) – Wrap yourself in flames spontaneously

Exploding Fireball (5 Mana) – Explodes on contact, not affected by gravity, spreads flame, deflected by opposing opposite force

Fire Charge (2 Mana) – Shoots rapid balls of fire in three round bursts after each charge

Animation (10 Mana) - Give inananimate objects a limited form of life; enslaved

Reanimation (15 Mana) – Give limited life to the biological deceased; enslaved

Zerg Mana – 653,277,660/1,000,000,000,000

I don't think I'll ever get tired of seeing such a large amount of mana being dumped into my mana stores. I watch with a sense of pride as my Zerg hatches out of the latest evolution. Just for the heck of it, I order a Hydralisk to fly around the Nether a little. It looks weird, but it's still a successful test. Rocket propelled Mutalisks should be even faster, and it'll be nice for my Overlords to be even faster than before. If I had to guess, they'd been going at 40 MPH before that speed upgrade putting them up to 60 to 80 MPH. Now they're going at probably around 200 MPH. That's a much nicer speed.

Looking over at my brand new Nydus Network, a strange chill runs up my spine which prompts me to quickly glance around and do a quick scan through the eyes of my Swarm, but I don't notice anything unusual. I'm about to dismiss it, before a shockwave rocks the ground, causing me to stumble a little.

The heck was that!? There aren't supposed to be Earthquakes in Minecraft! Then again, this world is more realistic than usual so maybe that isn't the case. Or that's what I thought until the nearest Lair spotted a plume of dust and dirt rising out of the pit we'd dug out earlier. Focusing on it, My Lair spotted something floating above that nearly made me crap myself.

My Queens had quickly formed a defensive ring around me as soon as the shockwave hit, not expecting anything of the sort. If not for the spike of fear, they might have relaxed, but that made them tense even more.

"What is it?" Asked Asura. I mentally pointed out to them the disturbance on the mental map and answered, "It's him…"

My Queens gulped, and I teleported near to the pit with them quickly following behind. I looked up at my nightmare on this world turned reality, and spoke one word.

"Herobrine."

He looked down at us from his position up high in the air, his eyes glowing a bright almost sinister white. Then his head tilted and words boomed into our head.

DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU'VE DONE?

I shook my head, not trusting myself to speak. His words literally send chills of fear crawling down my spine just listening to him.

Suddenly he disappeared.

Then he's inches from my face, still with his head cocked to the side.

OBSERVE.

As soon as he said that last word, an image of the world inverted flashed into my mind, the colors all wrong, as if even the colors themselves had been inverted, but all in black and white anyway, with flecks of those particles from the void floating down into the strange ground, or was it up? I can barely tell, it hardly makes sense. Everything just seems… wrong. There's a seeming large round ball floating in the sky giving off flecks of red and black, and the sky on the other side of it looks like more ground. It takes me a moment before I understand what I'm seeing. It's the Void.

As soon as I realize this, I feel as almost an afterimage, the completion of the evolution we just went through. Not even a second later, the ground burst open and large Nydus Worms tunneled into the false sky of the Void. The twisting body went everywhere, spreading throughout the entire planet, piercing the center ball that I realize now is the Nether, and entering the ground again in just about every spot available.

Just like that the vision faded, and I realized what had happened. I'd been trying so hard to avoid Herobrine, only to create a creature that spans the interior of whatever planet it's built on. That certainly explains how the Nydus Network works, but if there was one way I'd have given anything to not introduce myself to Herobrine, it would've been full scale invasion, and that's pretty much exactly what happened.

As soon as the vision faded, I noticed that Herobrine was back up in the sky exactly where he'd been before. I had to wonder if he'd actually been there or not. The very fact that he could do such a thing with his teleport scared the crap out of me. At least the Ender Pearl teleport had become somewhat traceable by those who used it. It almost looked like the person blurred an instant before they disappeared. Herobrine's teleport though, it was like he wasn't even there at all!

Looking up at the blank face, gulping, I asked, "I could remove the Nydus Worms from your land, would that help?"

Herobrine's face didn't change at all. His blank face and creepy glowing white eyes really unnerving me. His lack of reaction in and of itself seemed to be the answer. No, no it would not.

BEWARE LITTLE FLEA, YOUR OBLIVION IS AT HAND.

The next instant I found myself flying through the air having been simultaneously struck my lightning and punched so hard in the gut, that I'm almost clear to the next island. Activating my flame propulsion for the first time, I stabilized myself, floating in midair. I turned to face Herobrine, only to find that he'd disappeared.

I looked around, trying to spot him, as well as eyeing my mental map, but it's like he'd simply disappeared out of existence. The next instant though, I knew it wasn't over. Far from it. With a clap of thunder, lightning struck the ground all over my creep, and the next I knew, it is filled with holes two meters wide leading to what I knew would be traps. That wasn't the only effect though. Every single tree on and around my creep had been stripped of all their leaves, and strange pyramid shapes had grown underneath parts of my Creep. And to top it all off, giant letters composed of glowstone were littered everywhere on my Creep, all of them letters from Herobrine's name.

The first thing I did as retaliation is have my hives target the letters and shatter them into dust. As soon as this started happening, each time a letter was destroyed, lightning filled the sky, replacing the letters as soon as they were destroyed, resulting in a near constant boom of thunder as each new letter was subsequently destroyed and replaced. While this was happening, I spotted Herobrine below me staring up at me. As soon as I looked down at him, he disappeared in a puff of black smoke.

For my part, I could only be glad that thanks to my hives, Herobrine had been stalemated for the moment, since his powers are concentrated on renewing the letters. I can only hope he isn't as free to move about as I am while this is happening. The true problem though is how can I go about trying to operate inspite of Herobrine? My Queens had quickly joined me in a huddle around my person while I thought.

I realized in the end, the only real thing that would come of this is Herobrine making a nuisance of himself. He can't hurt me with either his lightning or super strength, he can't trap me thanks to my own teleport abilities, and he can't harm anything else of mine since they're just as immune to his strength and lightning. Reciprocally though, I can't really do anything to him either. His own teleport is better than mine, so it's not like I can even try to take advantage of it in trapping him. His own immunity renders most of my offensive capabilities moot, and he has nothing to protect, so I can't get to him that way.

While I'm thinking, a lightning bolt lances down and strikes me again, though no punch accompanies it this time. It tingles. I can only be glad that I'm immune to physical damage, since the lightning is following the path of least resistance and is tracing it's way throughout my adamantium flesh, but leaving everything else alone. I am a bit surprised at that since I know this Adamantium isn't a metal, so the fact that it conducts electricity almost perfectly is a bit of a surprise.

Most importantly though, this is when the realization that Herobrine truly can't do anything to me hit. I almost felt giddy with relief, and with it came the realization that I'M FLYING! My laughter started out low, but soon it became a whoop of joy as I shot off as fast as this flame propulsion could let me go. I'm certainly not going at the speeds of the Human Torch, but it's still pretty darn fast!

Of course, Herobrine had to ruin my fun by appearing right in front of my flight path and sending me flying with another punch. I soon had control of my momentum though as I rocketed off in the other direction. My Queens by this point, had come out of their stupor at my seeming apparent lack of concern to the worst happening, and followed me at a semi sedate pace.

All bets were called off though as soon as Joy was sent flying by a punch though. It seems Herobrine isn't just targetting me then. I have to figure out how I'm going to put a stop to this, or just abandon the planet. Of course, there's no guarantee that just leaving would stop Herobrine. Once you catch his attention, he doesn't stop until you're dead and stay dead. I figured at this point it's time to try out the big guns.

Waiting for just the right moment when Herobrine would appear, I hovered in middair, keeping a close eye to my surroundings with all my eyes. It didn't take long for Herobrine to show up once more to attack. As soon as he appeared, I cast PSI Assault at him. He burst into black smoke from the attack, but for a second there the attack had stunned him. Not a surprise kind of stun, but a mental lock up kind of stun.

Still though, I kept my eyes peeled. I could destroy his body like that, but it wouldn't actually kill him. Actually it might not even be his real body. The way he burst into smoke like that might suggest an ability to clone himself. If that's true, I had to wonder where his real body might be. Then I realized. Of course, if he's not actually here, where else would you find him? Probably the place where he came from in the first place. If I'm to somehow beat him, I'm going to have to take the fight to him, into The Void.

And what better way to take the fight to him, then to expand the Creep into his domain? Relaying quick mental orders to my Queens, I set them to work right away on building up the usual swarm of drones, only they would use the Nydus Worms to get there. I'd have had them use the hole Herobrine made in the pit when he first appeared, but oddly enough, there was no hole. The Adamantium is still rock solid. Of course, I could have the drones chew through it, but I don't want to give Herobrine time to stop me.

In just a few moments, I had 988,299 Drones ready for the invasion, with 1,000,320 mana available to use towards the war effort. Quickly, I ordered the Nydus Network to sprout two heads, one I put into the pit itself which seemed oddly appropriate. The other I had to work blind, so I ordered the Nydus Worm to open up the other end beneathe the Adamantium. It's a weird order since logic would dictate that opening a head underneathe the ground would be worse than useless, but thanks to Herobrine, I know now that's not the case.

I wish I could just have the whole lot of Drones teleport there, but I have to get a set of eyes in the Void first before I can do that, since none of my creatures can blindly teleport like I'm sure Herobrine can. 400 Mana and 15 minutes later and I found myself diving into the mouth of the Nydus with my Queens in hot pursuit. I tried to order them to stay top side, but they weren't having it. Wherever I go, they go. For the first time I almost felt a twinge of regret in giving them free will, but in no way was I about to try and change that. The fact that they're sticking to me like this is actually makes me feel warm inside, despite my not wanting them to come to harm.

Nearly an instant later after we'd entered the mouth of the Nydus, we found ourselves spit out once more into the inverted world. Actually being here is throwing me off even more than I expected. It seems gravity is trying to pull me towards the center of the large red and black molten ball in the sky, but at the same time it's rooting me to the faux ground of this world as well. The black and white color scheme on top of the colors of everything being inverted is also jarring. Nevertheless though, I fly up to get a good view of the place, only to find myself getting pinballed by a furious Herobrine.

In a way, I'm glad he's so focused on me alone, and while I'm flying about, I order my Queens to start the invasion. In the next few instants, the world exploded in natural colors as my writhing mass carpet of Drones warps into this world before spreading out to build the Hives. I can't help but grin at this. 24 more hours and then the invasion would be truly underway. The fact that my impervious buildings had set up shop seemed to enrage Herobrine even more. I'd had enough being pinballed though, so I turned right around and started doing the same to him. I think the picture of shock on his face as I smashed him just as hard as he'd been smashing me is a moment that's going to stick with me for the rest of my life. Before I could start pinballing him though, he teleported and tried to strike me again, only this time more wary.

Needless to say, I teleported out of the way myself, and thus ensued a violent mockery of the game of tag I'd played with my Queens earlier. We were both pretty much stalemating the other, what with our strength and invulnerability. He struck me more times than I did him though since his teleport isn't as limited as mine is. I wish I could absorb that into the Swarm.

Then again, maybe I could! If I could somehow maneuver him into the Evolution Chamber and make him fall into the Analysis Pool, it might disolve him, bringing him, or more importantly his abilities, into the Swarm while getting rid of him for good! Of course, his invulnerability might make that impossible, but you never know until you try. It's as good a plan as any for now, but how to get him there?

With the way our fighting is going now, what with our practically being everywhere at once, it'd be next to impossible to maneuver him into it. Even if I used PSI Assault to stun him again, it wouldn't last long enough. As I was considering this, the answer came to me. The Infestor! They can use that mind control thing! If I stun Herobrine long enough for an Infestor to stick him with it's mind control ability, then the Infestor could make him enter the pool himself!

Of course, there's still the problem of whether or not the Infestor's probe would even be able to enter into Herobrine's head, let alone control him, but it's the only plan I've got at the moment. I've got two Evolution Chambers set up at the moment, and I'm not about to try waiting a full 24 hours until I can set one up here, so I'll see if I can get him to follow me to one. I'll choose the Nether in the hopes he'll actually follow me there instead of sending me clones like in the Over World. The only reason I know this is actually him is because he's still creating clones to help him fight, and they're all coming from this body. Plus, the clones are still disappating after being damaged enough, but this one isn't really being affected by my hits.

Waiting for my chance, as soon as I got an opening, I took it and punched him as hard as I could into the Nether, combined with a PSI Assault. I'd have to get this done soon. I'm running low on mana surprisingly enough, but having sustained flight this entire time, my mana is starting to get low. The only reason I've lasted this long is that I've been using it in bursts since using my teleport so much has arrested my momentum to the point where gravity hasn't been all that much of an issue. Still though, I've used Flame Propulsion enough to need some more if I'm going to keep going. I'm down to 212 personal mana.

Keeping my time limit in mind, I teleported to where he landed, sending praises for my luck that he'd landed within sight range of my two Hives and Evolution Chamber. Just my luck though, as soon as I'd appeared near to him, he grabbed hold of me and chucked me into the lake of lava. The fight would be seemingly over at this moment as I disappeared before the surface of the blazing hot goop, and I'd stiffened for my seemingly inevitable death… yeah right!

I burst out of the lava, ramming into a shocked from surprise Herobrine, sending him even closer to the Hives, and more importantly, the Evolution Chamber. I'd already built an Infestor at each location near both my Evolution Chambers as soon as I'd hit upon my plan, so the Infestor sat nearby, waiting for the moment to take control of Herobrine as soon as I gave it an opening. Herobrine, in the mean time, is regarding me with wide eyes. I can see and understand his shock completely. Being thrown into a lake of lava is usually an instant death move for just about anyone still mortal. I can see Herobrine had been banking on my 'mistake' of sending him into the Nether in order to finish me off with the Lava. Unfortunately for him, I'm fire proof now, so the most the Nether feels to me is a warm breeze now, and the lava is warm mud. I don't need to breath so he wouldn't be able to drown me in it either. Herobrine doesn't know this though. He must think I'm an immortal like him now, if his slight fear and warriness is anything to go by.

"What's wrong Herobrine? Is this flea a little too much for you?" I taunted. Taunting normally goes against my style, but I'm hoping that little comment would send him into a rage, making this next part easier. It did, and he did. He flew at me, silent as ever, but his face is contorted in a rage that would have scared me shitless if I hadn't been 'in the zone' as it were. As soon as he came near, I used PSI Assault on him one more time, and like a snake, the Infestor struck, sending it's probe into the back of Herobrine's head.

The probe bounced off. My eyes widened in shock of my own. I'd been banking on that move to work! I've got to get him into that pool! Gritting my teeth in determination and using the last split instant of shock he's in, I flew into him, propelling him with remarkable aim, through the open entrance to the Evolution chamber. I teleported after him and grabbed him, dragging his body over my head to slam it into the pool literally lying at my feet.

In almost slow motion, I watched as his body disappeared from my hands in horror as he appeared behind me and hit me hard. Unlike before though when I'd been sent careening through objects or just through the air, the Evolution Chamber's Adamantium inner wall stopped my movement, knocking all the air out of my lungs. While no physical damage had been received by, or made it past my skin, my insides were still affected by the laws of motion, and they'd been battered quite a few times against the insides of my impervious body. My health has been dropped dangerously low thanks to this, and my mana has run down even more. My goals lie before me now, I need to get Herobrine into that pool somehow and/or I need to get to the nearest Hive and get my mana restored. Luckily, PSI assault is an instant cast instant hit attack. I hit him, stunning him again, and I went to toss him into the pool, only to find in horror that my body had locked up. Looking inwards, I discovered my brain isn't transmitting my motor control properly anymore thanks to internal damage. I can't even fix it since I'm below 50 mana now and don't have enough to cast transfusion. I can only keep casting PSI Assault to keep him locked up, and in a last ditch effort, I call out for someone, anyone, to help push Herobrine into the pool and end him.

My Queens answered the call, rushing as fast as they could with teleport to my location. My Queens weren't the only one to answer my call though. I'll forever be stunned as I watched Herobrine tumble into the pool, instantly dissolving for all his toughness in the pool, though that might have been helped along by the one who pushed him. With Herobrine gone, I could only stare in mute shock, as Notch turned around and regarded me with his black eyes. His face was neither kind, nor hard. I suppose that's to be expected, since if the stories are true, Notch had finally put an end to his own brother.

It seemed an eternity that he studied me, and I couldn't help but feel as though I'm being X rayed, examined down to my most minute particles. Then the moment broke, and Notch disappeared, his words echoing much the same way his brother had, only fear didn't travel with these words, only a thrill of wonder.

Herobrine has been removed. Above the clouds and through two rainbows, you'll find my doorstep. I will be watching.

A few moments passed in a stunned reverie, even my Queens having not expected such a figure to appear. The feeling soon passed though, giving rise to a fierce determination. Seeing Notch appear like that, taking control of the sitatuation like we were both mere children to be scolded, drove the point home. I need to get stronger. The Swarm needs to get stronger. If we're to survive, we have to. I have no plans for fighting Notch at all, but he isn't the only being well above my ability to stop at the moment. Herobrine himself was too. If it weren't for the fact that his entire modus operandi is going solo, I wouldn't have held out anywhere near as well as I had. I had the Swarm to back me up. Herobrine had only himself and those clones of his. Notch however… Notch is a whole different ball game, and so are any enemies like him out there. I've got to become more powerful, until no one can threaten me or my family again.

-END CHAPTER-

Overmind mana – 36/2500

Zerg Mana – 999,940/1,000,000,000,000

Zerg Supply – 1298/12,958,595 (4,941,495 pending)

Units:

1 Overmind

1079 Overlords

101 Drones

11 Speedlings

6 Queens

100 Hydralisks

Structures:

2,591,719 Hives (988,299 pending)

1 Spawning Pool

2 Evolution Chambers

1 Hydralisk Den

1 Roach Warren

1 Baneling Nest

1 Nydus Network

1 Spire

1 Infestation Pit