Ch 7

I did not sleep well last night. You wouldn't know it from how refreshed my body feels, but I kept waking up every half hour or so, thinking some new threat would show up and was attacking my Zerg, only to find nothing. Despite feeling ridiculously stressed out, my body feels fresher than ever. Sighing, I made my way outside into the bright morning sunshine and stretched.

Today I'm going to take it easy. I recognized what's happening now. Whoever I'm fighting is trying to psych me out. It's a classic move in psychological warfare. Unfortunately just because I recognize what's happening doesn't mean it's not affecting me. It just means I know roughly what to do about it now. I'm going to take it easy and de-stress while I've got the chance.

Deciding to skinny dip in the Spawning Pool once more, I let my Overlords get back to resource gathering, idly ordering up more Overlords as soon as I had enough Bio-Energy for them. I need to get my economy back to where it was, growing exponentially. I toyed with the idea of having my Overlords Ferry Drones across the lake, then decided against it. There are just too many variables in that move, too many ways for things to go wrong. Best I just stick to a fleet of Overlords for now. I also increased my Mutalisks up to 12 just in case.

Unfortunately, one can only skinny dip and float in a pool for so long before I get bored. I'm the kind of guy who likes hanging with friends, playing video games, or reading to relax. Unfortunately, short of trying to watch a movie in my head using the windows in my glowing bubble thing, I don't exactly have any of those options.

While I waited to dry off, I cast about for ideas of things to do. Looking skyward while pondering, my eyes fell upon one of my Mutalisks and I grinned. A minute later has me sitting in the crook of the C shape of the Mutalisk with my legs clenched around my seat and holding onto ridges in the Mutalisks armor for dear life while trying to ignore how far down the ground is. Despite being scared stiff, I whooped and hollered as the Mutalisk swooped, swerved, and did loops that would make any rollercoaster pale in comparison. I may not seem it, but I'm a bit of an adrenaline junkie, so long as there's a measure of safety involved, and I was very careful to keep the Mutalisk flying very high up over the Overlords so on the off chance I fell, one of them would catch me. Not that I'd have to worry much about that. At the speed the Mutalisk is going, I'm being pressed hard back into the Mutalisk, with its flying deliberately keeping me pinned there under the G's its pulling. Never let it be said that a Mutalisk doesn't have a mastery over controlled flight.

It's a bit chilly up here, but I'm only peripherally aware of it, seeing as Zerg can tolerate the cold of Deep Space. The cold of the upper atmosphere is nothing compared to that. The thought of space and knowing Zerg don't need to breathe combined with the high of adrenaline can be attributed to my next move. In the rush of excitement, I decided I wanted to see space. So what did I do? I ordered the Mutalisk up!

It took a few minutes, and the Mutalisk kept swerving to keep me entertained. I grew aware that it was getting harder to breathe, but I wasn't getting light headed at all. Eventually blue gave way to the blackness of space, and the stars! It took my breath away, literally. The only time I can compare to the sight I see before me now is that one time I went on a camping trip to a rural area away from the city, and during the night I laid on a sleeping bag in the open fields to watch the expanse of the Universe open up before me. I never knew the sky could be so colorful until then, but now… now with no sky in the way, it's like seeing a video you've only watched in low quality before suddenly get switched to HD. Glorious hardly begins to describe it.

I must've stayed up there for hours. It was only the sun touching the horizon that I finally realized I'd nearly forgotten entirely about my Zerg and the planet below. Turning my ride back around, I couldn't help but stop and stare once more. This planet is HUGE! I'd left the atmosphere and I still have to crane my neck up and down to see from horizon to horizon. That settles it then. This planet is much MUCH bigger than Earth. Seeing it like this… I should really name it shouldn't I? But there's really only one name suitable isn't there… Minecraftia… I mouthed the word since I couldn't actually speak it up here.

Casting my eyes about over the landscape, I'm suddenly really glad for my connection to Swarm. If not for that, I'd have no idea where my Hive Cluster is on this planet! Zeroing in on the spot, I nearly sweatdropped at just how large the forest my Hive is in really is. I can't even see the Hive with my own eyes from here! Taking in the details of the world below me, I noted the large mountain range to the west of my Hive. It's impossibly long and ends at the border of the Ocean to the north of the forest. On the other side of the mountain range is a desert so large it dwarfs my forest by a factor of five at least! As for the Ocean, it borders my forest on both the North and Northeast. To the direct east is a lighter green that I'm assuming are plains of a sort that stretch off to the south east. Directly south of my forest is an oddity I would probably find only on Minecraftia, snow. An entire Taiga biome borders the south end of my forest, and is separated from the Desert by a mountain range. I can't even begin to imagine how that would work, climate wise.

The sun sinking as it set further over the horizon broke me out of my study, and reminded me that time is wasting. Quickly, I had my Mutalisk dive back towards the Hive Cluster as fast as it could go without suffering reentry burns. To my chagrin, I'd completely forgotten about making new Overlords, distracted as I was once I'd gotten up to space. I'd brought my count up to 30 before I was distracted, but that's not near enough. I can't even believe how fast time has flown by considering it was still midmorning when I took off on that Mutalisk. I guess it's true what they say. Time really does fly while you're having fun.

Having gone that long without increasing my Swarm size, I now have a sizable chunk of 5,455 Bio-Energy sitting in my collection. To be honest, I'm not really sure what I should do with it. With that much Bio-Energy available, and 25.5 support free, I could field another team of 12 Mutalisks if I wanted and still have 3,055 Bio-energy left over! After brainstorming a few ideas, I decided to hold off doing anything for now, just in case anything happens during the night, that I can use the Bio-Energy for. If nothing happens again, I'll just spend it on upgrading my Hive on the morrow.

Making it back to the Hive, I went back into my Lair. It didn't take long before my count of Mutalisks to reach 24 after that. I positioned them all around the Hive, and waited. And waited. Once again, not a single mob showed up. I was starting to get worried again, but I forcefully shoved it back down. I wouldn't let all the fun I had today go to waste by stressing out again. Turning my mind back to the flight I had and the expanse of stars, I drifted off to sleep.

It was roughly midnight when I was urgently woken up by my Overlords. Something is approaching from the East. Something they'd never seen before. Turning my gaze on my mental map in that direction, my face drained of color, and I had to rub my eyes both literally and figuratively to make sure I wasn't seeing things.

A wall. A literal wall of orange fire is flying this way. The spinning golden rods and the demonic eyes in the flames give it away. Somehow, an army of Blazes has been fielded against me. They're still a ways off, but there are so many of them clustered together, it'd be impossible not to see them from miles away. With at least a little time available, I took a moment to calm down. That done, I then brainstormed how to go about dealing with this with a minimum of casualties on my side.

It seems my Mutalisks are going to get to do what they do best. Hit and run tactics! I spread my Mutalisks out to make it harder for the Blazes to focus fire on any of them and sent them off. It only took a minute for the Mutalisks to reach the Blazes, and immediately began strafing them, peppering them with Glaive worms with loud distinctive hacking noises. The effect was immediate with the Blazes clustered so close together. The Glaive worms bounced from Blaze to Blaze like an erratic pin ball machine, tearing chaos and disorder among the ranks of my foes as the Blazes tried to figure out if they should target the Mutalisks or the Glaive worms. It was glorious.

With holes popping up all over the wall of Blazes, as well as with the Mutalisks aggroing the lot of them, I could finally see behind the wall, and that's when I spotted the six ghasts hanging back behind the curtain. The Blazes had only been a diversion!

Quickly, I ordered as many Mutalisks as I could spare from the chaos of the Blazes to attack the Ghasts, but it was too late. They're already in range, even from all the way back there. Great white flaming meteors were soon raining through the holes made in the curtain and onward to my Hive. The blasts scattered flaming debris everywhere, though thankfully the Creep took the brunt of it. Unfortunately the fire is catching, setting fire to anything it touches! My Zerg were crying out in pain, and I quickly ordered the bulk of my ground forces into the Lairs for safety.

Luckily, the shots only continued for a few more seconds before the Mutalisks were successful in distracting the Ghasts and they were quickly put down after I quickly relayed the Mutalisks to attack their undersides, since shots would go straight through anywhere else without causing any damage. A few seconds bombardment was all that was needed to set the entire east half of my Hive on fire. My thoughts were nearly drowned out by the screams of pain coming from nearly a third of my Zerg. Water! I need water!

Quickly, I ordered my Overlords to gorge themselves from the lake, and then dump their loads over the Hive. Soon, water was literally pouring down over my island, snuffing out the fires, some just in time. I'd nearly lost a few of my Sunken and Creep Colonies as well as my Spawning Pool from that! I don't even want to imagine the damage sustained if I'd allowed that many Blazes to enter range as well, hoping for my Hydralisks and Spore Colonies to help pick them off!

My Mutalisks had nearly destroyed the rest of the Blazes before reinforcements showed up. A much smaller wall of maybe two dozen Blazes came out of the forest to engage my Mutalisks, flanking them and trying to catch the lot in a cross fire. It didn't help that I'd already sustained 4 casualties and would probably lose a fifth soon. Sending the injured one back to the Hive, I had all my Mutalisks spray out Glaive Worms indiscriminately to agro all the Blazes, then take off to the North, staying within range of the Hive, but not letting the Blazes get any closer or cut them off.

While Mutalisks are well known for doing hit and run, it's more of a delaying tactic, while I used my stock piled Bio-Energy to pump out a Mutalisk for each one lost, as well as bringing out five more Overlords so I could field another 24 Mutalisks. Or that's what I would have done. Unfortunately I ran out of Bio-energy by that point, so I was only able to pump out 12 more Mutalisks, which included the replacements for the ones that are being lost as more Blazes show up.

Now down to 17 Mutalisks from the original attack group, and a now literal stream of Blazes showing up to replace the lost numbers as quickly as they were taken down, I sent three of my thirteen Mutalisks to reinforce them, while I had the other ten trace the stream of Blazes back to their source. Turns out they're all coming from a large crater in the ground that had gone deep enough to expose lava. From that, a large obsidian Nethergate jutted out of the lava proudly spewing forth a literal army of Blazes. It'd be a suicide run, but either I send my Mutalisks in, or lose the current war of attrition being fought, with the stream of Blazes slowly but surely killing the last of my Mutalisks until they fall upon my Hive.

Sighing with regret, I had my Mutalisks streak in as fast as they could, spewing out Glaive worms to sow chaos. 7 of my Mutalisks fell to the sheer amount of fireballs being flung at them, but the last three were able to break through and hit the gate, splitting the upper arch so the two halves fell and sank back into the lava. Those three were then mowed down by the Blazes, but not before taking a chunk of them with them.

Better still, with the stream of Blazes finally stopped, my Mutalisks were finally able to start gaining an edge against the last of them. Unfortunately, there are still so many of them! My Mutalisks were eventually able to clear the majority of them out of the sky, but a large number were still located in the pit, and clearing those out would be another suicide run for the 8 Mutalisks I have left. With nothing else for it, I had my Mutalisks tease the edge of the number in the pit, drawing more of them out. Picking at them might have worked, but instead the last of them came out enmass after my Mutalisks. It was a bloody battle, but by the end, my Mutalisks had imploded from their own injuries and burns, and around 20 Blazes are left, and they're advancing on my Hive!

Quickly, I ordered my Overlords to the opposite side of the lake from the oncoming Blazes and prepared for the worst. By now, my Hydralisks had finished healing, but I held them in reserve until the Blazes came close enough.

Before the Blazes reached the edge of the lake, my Spore Colonies tilted the odd ball shaped nozzle on their tops. It's the first reaction I'd ever seen from them, and the closest ones started spewing fast flying globs of corrosive acid and creatures that homed in on the Blazes. I couldn't help but feel elated and grinned, knowing that the range of my Spore Colonies is longer than that of the Blazes. A few were able to get close enough to fire back, but the Hydralisks were able to pick those out of the sky fairly easily.

Finally, the last of the spitting noises and the whistling of flying spines stopped, and silence descended once more. I shook my head, relieved at the victory, but concerned for the future. There were too many things that could have gone wrong in that battle. If I'd allowed them to get close enough, those Ghasts would have bombarded my Hive to dust and caused far more damage than they did. Worse still, that army had only been the result of one large Nethergate! If the enemy fielded more than one, which they're sure to do in the future… I'm going to need to be able to stop that before that happens. I wouldn't be able to survive the result otherwise. Despite my worries, I finally drifted off, eventually.

- END CHAPTER –

Overmind Matthew

PSI Energy – 50/50

Status – Normal

Abilities

- Spawn Hatchery – 50psi – 12 hour build

- Regeneration – Passive – Heals anything not instantly fatal; time needed depends on extent of injury

- Anaerobic – Passive – No longer requires breathable atmosphere to survive

- Temperature Resistance – Passive – Currently able to survive temperatures between -450 and 118 F

- PSI Regeneration – Passive – Regenerate energy at .5 points per second.

Zerg Swarm

Bio-Energy – 155

Support – 162.5/164

Entities

4x Lairs

1x Evolution Chamber

1x Spawning Pool

15x Sunken Colonies

15x Spore Colonies

30x Overlords

38x Drones

9x Zerglings

36x Hydralisks

24x Mutalisks

Swarm Abilities

- Burrow (Drone, Zergling, Hydralisk, Defiler)

- Ventral Sacs (Overlord Transport)

- Pneumatized Carapace (Overlord Speed Doubled)

- Antennae (Overlord Sight Doubled)

- Grooved Spines (Hydralisk Extended Range)