Ch 24

In the End, the entire event was rather anticlimactic. As I suspected, we popped up on the surface of the Moon. The spires of Obsidian with the strange devices sitting atop them which fueled the EnderDragon's health as it flew by were all there. Since we're invisible, the EnderDragon didn't notice us. The Endermen were everywhere, but looking at them did nothing since none of them could even notice our presence.

Together, my Queens and I blasted the whole lot with Lightning. The fight didn't even last a fraction of a second. I left one of those jewel things untouched for Analysis though. The EnderDragon floated up into the sky and once it disappeared, a portal below it opened up with an egg sitting on top of it. Grabbing it and the jewel device, it was a matter of moments to port them over to the Evolution Chamber and toss them in the analysis pool.

With that finished, I called up a Speedling and had it jump through the Portal the EnderDragon had created. I wasn't sure what would happen, but I didn't want to risk anything crazy by jumping through myself, and I sure as heck wasn't going to risk my Queens in this either. Making sure to keep my presence back but still keep an eye through the Speedling on what happened. I saw nothing but darkness until suddenly my connection to the Speedling got severed. The next thing I know, the Speedling I sent through is racing away from the spot it was originally created at, and started to attack the nearest Hive. I tried wrestling control of it, but it didn't answer. I had the Hive skewer the thing. While anything less than Adamantium won't affect Adamantium, Adamantium can still affect Adamantium, otherwise I'd have had to have an Overlord pick up the thing and shake it to pieces or something.

It wasn't dead yet though, so I ported over to the thing with my Queens hoping my proximity would help overwhelm whatever had taken control of my Zergling. Unfortunately it didn't work, but I was able to get an idea of what I'm up against. The Darkness had enslaved my Zergling, and through it, I could see that the Darkness itself is thankfully not a sentient entity, or else with its power we'd be screwed. The only reason my Speedling had been taken from me is that it seems whatever touches the Darkness is enslaved to it, and the portal created by the Enderdragon is choked with it. I'm guessing that the Darkness itself is sort of equivalent to the Darkside of the Force. It's not an actual being, but using it poisons whoever touches it to its will, so I'm probably going to end up facing quite a few champions of this Darkness sooner or later. If they're anything like Herobrine, then I shudder to think what I might face in the future.

Taking pity on my Zergling, I fried it to put it out of its misery. If only I had the ability to reverse the enslavement to the Darkness. As soon as I get access to Cerebrates, the first thing I'm going to have them do is reverse engineer that enslave to the Darkness ability. Hopefully they'll be able to come up with a way to reverse the enslavement that way.

Porting back to the Moon, I and my Queens tore the portal back to the Overworld apart. Once we'd done that and destroyed the thing into little bits, I paid my respects to Steve, glad that nothing on this planet would be enslaved like that ever again.

Once we'd finished, the analysis pool had completed its analysis too. Evidently those jewel devices are called Ender Crystals and the Ender Dragon can call them into being to heal it specifically. Other than exploding on destruction and healing the creature it created, I deemed the construct useless. The EnderDragon itself also proved to be useless to me since the one ability I was interested in, it's ability to fly through the landscape, didn't appear in it's ability list. This made me wonder if this EnderDragon wouldn't have been able to fly through solid objects? That would seem more logical since this supposed Minecraft world is far more realistic than the game was.

With that finished, I teleported back to the Hive. I feel slightly disappointed at having nothing really to show for it, other than a kind of satisfaction at having avenged Notch's brother to a degree. With this planet all but mine, I turn my sight to the stars. It's high time I see about expansion and send a good lot of my Overlords out exploring the Solar System, using their Teleport to get around more quickly.

With that underway, I turned my attention to the Nydus Worms and commanded one to eat out the ground beneath a few Hives. They all sagged dangerously, but it seems I underestimated the strength of the Creep, though it's barely holding on at this point. Quickly, I toss the end portal ring into the analysis Pool, while having the Nydus Worms hold up the bottom of the Hives. An hour later, the ZGA had finished analyzing the element it had dubbed Gravity Stone, and I had the Creep grow a layer of it on its underside. Immediately the Hives stopped sagging and I had to grin at the success of this experiment. I thus ordered out the excavation of a good layer of dirt and stone underneath each continent, enough for Hives to grow under.

Immediately I hit upon a problem when the roots of the trees were left exposed along with all the creep tumors. Having no real better ideas since removing the dirt had no effect on the plants at all, I had the Creep grow thick enough using a layer of pale ivory colored gravity stone to hide the roots and creep tumors. Thankfully Burrow still seems to be viable to use in this thickened creep, even if the Swarm no long needs such an ability.

I had to wonder what the Nydus Worms were doing with all of the dirt and stuff it ate. As far as I could tell it isn't going anywhere. Maybe they're eating it for real? That seems the most likely explanation. The excavation of the first underground level took nearly the whole night, and only went deep enough to allow the excavation to only uncover the spaces underneath exposed land not covered in oceans.

Once midnight rolled around, my mana increased to 5,155,541,600. Immediately my Queens created 7,930,064 Drones. Grabbing a few of them, I created an Evolution Chamber in the Underworld, the Aether, and the Moon, giving each one a Drone assistant, then I built a Nydus Network on the Moon and the Aether. My Queens then created 7,930,056 Hives with the rest of the Drones. I can only count myself lucky though. With that many Drones added, every single plot of land available to me got covered in one fell swoop. By midday, every single bit of available land I have at the moment will be covered in Creep. Expanding out to the rest of the planets in this solar system just took on a whole new priority. Thankfully my Overlords have already discovered the closest two, though it looks like there may be a small one circling closer to the planet, making this the fourth planet from the sun. Unfortunately, each of those planets are significantly smaller than Minecraftia.

I wouldn't have had enough room for all the new Hives if it weren't for the Nydus Worms already starting on the second level. While they can't dig anymore under the exposed landmasses until the new Hives have finished, they can and have been digging under the Oceans. My Swarm also encountered pockets of monsters holed up in the caves underground, but my Nydus Worms ate them along with the rest of the dirt. Any of the Endermen who tried to escape would inevitably get mowed down by the rest of the Swarm.

By midday next, my new Hives were finished, allowing the Nydus Worms to finish digging out the second level by nightfall. I'd have been astonished at the speed of digging out a surface area just as large as the Overworld, only the Nydus worms had gotten unbelievably efficient at this digging business.

Come nightfall, my Mana jumped up to 9,120,572,875. Unfortunately, I only have enough space for 4.9 million Hives, and going the usual route of building as many Hives as possible has given me 14,030,112 Drones. Luckily, my Overlords did uncover those other planets, so I had all the rest pop over there to cover those planets. To my shock though, roughly 10 million Hives is enough to cover those first three planets entirely! I can hardly believe it! The first planet in the row still has a sliver left of land to cover in creep, but it would only take a few more to cover that up.

With 1,000,075 Mana left, I created an Evolution Chamber and Nydus Network on each planet so they could be hollowed out as well for multiple levels. That lot cost me only 1,575, leaving me with 998,500 Mana. I decided at that point that I need to increase the amount of Overlords I have for faster scouting. Ten minutes later, and I now have 10,000 Overlords, costing me only 892,100. While this leaves me only 106,400 Mana, I'm ok with that for now since I'll be back up to the billions by the next night.

Already, the increase in Overlords pays off with the discovery of the next two planets after Minecraftia. By midday, The Overlords had discovered all seven planets within the system, the last three of which are gas giants, all the size of Jupiter, each with a surface area of roughly 38.5 Trillion Meters. I've no idea how I know they're that big though. The number seemed to just pop up or something. I asked Asura about it but she didn't know either, though she did guess maybe the ZGA gave me the number. Considering that's very possible, I asked, and the ZGA confirmed it. And I thought I'd just been getting really good with math.

Slightly disappointed in my evidently not so uber math skills, I turned my attention back to the gas giants. Since they're gas giants, I can't exactly hollow out the planets, but I might not even have to with flying Hives settling into the upper atmosphere of those giants. Each one could give me the space for 77 Billion Hives! I'd have wondered why I hadn't seen any of those giant planets up in the night sky before now, if it weren't for the fact that they're currently in orbit on the other side of the sun from us and not only that but are also extremely far away. I wonder if I shouldn't also try and place Hives in the Lagrange points of the planets as well. I won't get very many Hives out of them, but altogether with five Lagrange points around seven planets each that should give me quite a large amount of Hives anyway.

Again, midday came and went, increasing my Hive count to 32,269,250. During my free time I did a lot of exploring and flying around, even porting over to the other planets to see them. Running around in low gravity is super fun. I even, with my Queen's permission, checked out how close I could get to the sun without getting destroyed. I didn't think I'd actually be able to touch the sun, even if that was my aim, but I did get surprisingly close before I had to back off or risk frying my insides.

Midnight came, increasing my Mana to 16,134,625,000. That amount gave me 24,822,500 Drones. I'd have gotten less, but I decided to suspend the million mana base line for now. With the third level dug out by the Nydus Worms, I filled that first before sending the Drones off to settle on the 'surface' of the first Gas Giant. 18 Million drones barely even made a visible dot on the surface of it.

This pattern went on the next day, with my total Hives increasing to 57,091,750, and the next night giving me a total of 28,545,875,000 Mana. 12 hours later and my total Hive had increased to 101,008,480. 12 Hours again, and my mana had jumped to 50,504,240,000. 12 more hours, 178,707,310 Hives. 12 hours again gives me 89,353,655,000 Mana. At this point, I'm a bit frustrated at the slow going of the Overlords. Despite there being 10,000 of them, Space is rather vast, and exploring outside of the solar system is proving extremely slow going, even with using Teleportation. As such, I decided to halt my Queens in spreading the Creep for a day, and instead spent the lot of my Mana on Overlords, jumping my total count for them from 10,000 to 893,546,550. Needless to say, the jump in the Overlord count has already seen results. They've already discovered the next closest Solar system.

When I say closest though, I mean that it's retardedly far off. The sheer amount of empty space between my current location and the next system is almost completely ridiculous. As such, I make a mental note to make use of such space. After all, if I can make free floating Hives and Creep, then I can make my own free floating planets of the thing, if not just create stringed webs or other such constructs of Creep trailing freely between the Solar systems. One thing's for sure. As soon as I get access to Cerebrates, I'm going to give one the sole responsibility of spreading the Creep, and I'll make sure to give him a budget of 50 percent of the total mana for it.

But those are thoughts for a later time. For now, I'm getting desperately bored following all the accounting involved in the spreading of the Swarm. I set my Queens to do that, so that's what I'm going to do. As more and more time passed, I spent more and more of the majority of my time simply enjoying myself. Despite the two solar systems I've discovered so far, the only planet with any form of life on it has been this one. I've even taken to starting to explore the vastness of space alongside my Overlords. I don't spend too much time on it though. Being a single person free floating in such vastness makes me feel rather small and insignificant. It's not the greatest feeling in the world to be sure.

Finally, after what felt like a month, but was probably only two weeks or something, my Swarm had gathered enough for the next level.

Evolution Lvl 4

New Buildings:

Ultralisk Den

Spire-Greater Spire

Defiler Mound

Nydus Canal

New Units:

Ultralisk

Defiler

Leviathan

New Evolutions:

Pathogen Glands – Increased starting energy for the Infestor

Overmind Lvl 4

Health – 400/400

Mana – 12500/12500

Abilities:

Physical:

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 (0 Mana) – 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%

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

Psionic:

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

PSI Blast (10 Mana) – Fires a focused ball of PSI energy at a single enemy

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

Flight: Mind Over Matter (0 Mana) – Can propel yourself using only your mind, limited only by the mind

PSI Guantlet Lvl 3 (Passive) – Mana Above 0; Strength increased by factor of 30

PSI Armor Lvl 3 (Passive) – Mana Above 0; All attacks do 75% less damage

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

Magic:

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

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

Lightning Lvl 3 (0 Mana) – Can cast a lightning bolt into any location, even without sky

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

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

Teleport Lvl 3 (0 Mana) – Can teleport any distance, into any solid, liquid, gas, or plasma, so long as you've been to the location before

Invisibility Lvl 3 (0 Mana) – Can become undetectable to any source, can choose to reveal yourself to individual 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.

Celestial:

Creation Lvl 1 (500 Mana) - Able to build anything with your mind you already know how to build manually; size limited to ten times your own size

Adaptive Strength (Passive) – Base strength is set automatically to allow the ability to lift and throw any weight

Incorporeal (Passive) – Take on a non physical state automatically in reaction to any danger

True Sight (Passive) – Able to see through any limitation to vision (ie. Lack of light, solid matter)

Hm. Well that didn't change much. Having Leviathans is nice, but technically my Swarm has been space ready for a while now, though I'm sure having access to warp space will make getting places much faster. Checking a drone and a larvae to see the command list for my new units and buildings, I had to blink at the price of a Leviathan. The Ultralisk would cost me 500 mana and the Defiler would cost me 200 mana, but the Leviathan costs a whopping 2000 mana to build, far outstripping even the cost of a Hive. Also shocking is the time involved. So far everything I've made has been in the range of half an hour to an hour to two hours, with my Hive taking the most time at 12 hours. The Leviathan takes 48 hours to finish. Pretty impressive for something so large, but still shocking considering what I've been used to. I also note that rather than costing support, a Leviathan would add support to the Swarm, the same amount as an Overlord actually.

Immediately, I order a larvae to morph into a Leviathan, only to be surprised as all three larvae clump together to make the single most massive Zerg egg sac I've ever seen. While I'm waiting for it to finish birthing, I establish the Defiler Mound and Ultralisk Den on Minecraftia. Then just to be thorough, I set up a full range of all the Zerg support buildings on each of the planets in the system. That way if by some strange chance one set of them gets destroyed, it won't be a problem for the Swarm. I'm tempted to build a Nydus Canal Network, but considering the teleport capabilities the entire Swarm has, I decide against it. I also went ahead and morphed all the Spires to Greater Spires as well.

I didn't like having to wait the two days just to see the Leviathan, but I got through it all the same. Finally, the egg sac ripped away and the Leviathan flew up into the air, hovering like some giant massive super blimp… with tentacles. I had not expected the tentacles. To be honest, when I thought of the Leviathans, I'd always thought of them as giant manta ray looking things. This thing looks more like a giant tick with tentacles for legs, and it flies. I'm simultaneously disappointed and creeped out by it. At least my Swarm's colors make it look a bit cooler than I suspect it would have been otherwise.

Shaking my head, I set aside it's looks for now and call up the creature's command list. I am a bit astonished at its abilities. For one, it's practically a giant overgrown Overlord. It's a passive sensor along with providing transport and support. Other than that, it can use its tentacles to attack, as well as vomit out a swarm of bug like creatures that are like mini scourge, giving it both melee and ranged attack abilities. In addition to this, it can also shoot out a bio plasmid discharge, doing tons of damage, as well as firing out a biostasis, which is really just a glorified term for giving an enemy what amounts to fungal overgrowth on steroids, pretty much locking anything up that it touches, but is a bit short lived. More surprising though is that the Leviathan can give birth directly to Mutalisks and Overlords. This is all in addition to the Swarm wide changes I'd already made of course, so the thing can also teleport, cast lightning, go invisible, become incorporeal, and see through anything that would normally block sight.

Also, just like my Queens had said it could, it seems the Leviathan is capable of entering warp space. I query the ZGA to see if that can be shared out at all, but evidently it's a physical type evolution, and requires a huge chunk of space, which is half the reason the Leviathan is so large in the first place. Looking at the thing, it's a bit difficult to really judge or grasp the size of it. If I had to guess, I'd say it's roughly the size of my original island and you could probably fit at least ten Hives comfortably inside of the thing.

Entering the Leviathan itself, I amended my previous statement. If the entire thing had been hollow, you could fit ten Hives in here comfortably. Looking on the inside like this, I'd say you could probably fit five of them in here if you squished them together. I considered building a Hive in the interior of the Leviathan, then after some thought, I figured why not, and did just that. With the Hive finished, the interior of the Leviathan, including the walls and ceiling, got coated in a layer of glowing Creep. I'm a bit surprised the Creep had traveled up the walls like that, but I shrugged, figuring it needed somewhere to grow so it did just that.

Over the course of the next week I grew six other Leviathans, one for each of my Queens, just because I could, each complete with Hives in their interior. I knew they didn't actually need them or anything, but it doesn't really matter.

-END CHAPTER-

Overmind mana – 2500/2500

Zerg Mana – 1,000,075/1,000,000,000,000

Units:

1 Overmind

893,546,550 Overlords

5 Drones

11 Speedlings

6 Queens

100 Hydralisks

Structures:

57,091,750 Hives

7 Spawning Pool

11 Evolution Chambers

7 Hydralisk Den

7 Roach Warren

7 Baneling Nest

10 Nydus Network

7 Greater Spire

7 Infestation Pit

7 Defiler Mound

7 Ultralisk Cavern