A large black serpent slithers its way around the large trees. Despite its behemoth size, the serpent made no noise as it makes its way to a small blue lake. As an Apex Predator, this giant black python has nothing to fear. It could even devour elephants whole, no creature has ever survived its ambush.
Even if its prey escapes, the serpent would strike at a later date and be rewarded with more food as its target has led it to its nest. The serpent's head quietly emerge from the bushes, leans down into the water and starts drinking it. Suddenly, the black snake felt tense as a searing pain tore away large amounts of its scales not too far away from its's head. Before it could react and devour its attacker, life faded from its predatory yellow eyes.
A pair of zerglings emerged from the bushes. Using their claws and scythe like appendages, they tore apart the phyton's body. Not long afterwards, drones started coming out of the shrubbery and carried back the chunks of meat cut out by the zerglings. In a matter of several minutes, the whole snake disappeared as a small squad consisting of eight zerglings, five drones, two roaches and an overlord hunted it and brought its body for digestion. In a week and a half after the swarm entered this world, it had reached the Tier 2 standard a few hours ago.
Due to trees and massive lifeforms providing much Bio Energy, the Swarm is expanding quite rapidly. Currently, there are 3 Lairs being morphed into Hives, 15 lairs and 27 Hatcheries. If not for the lack of Creep Colony in the first tier, the Swarm would have grown at least thrice as fast. All of these bases take half the time to produce thanks to the advancement.
In order to minimize overlapping territories, each base is located 5 miles away from each other. Each hatchery has an Overlord while each Lair has 2 to 5 Overlords while the Lairs being morphed into Hives have 6, 7 and 9 Overlords respectively. Evolution Chambers, Hydralisk Dens and Roach Warrens are only found in Lairs. Currently, the Creep carpet has covered 120 km² and produces Bio Energy at a rate of 7 units per hour.
Swarm Tier: 2
Bio Energy: 275,611/100,000,000 units
Bio Energy Production rate: 20/day
Genetic Information Acquired:
- Baneling
- Baneling Nest
- Creep Colony
- Evolution Chambers
- Queen
- Hive
Tier Advancement Requirement:
- 100,000,000 Bio Energy units
- 100,000 Zerg Lifeforms
Right now, the creator's swarm consists of a budding queen, created from Alpha who morphed into one using Absolute Creation. The modified queen in cocoon will take 5.4 hours to emerge as it had just recently morphed. The Creator had modified the queen to possess a more humanoid form, made this special queen 5% larger, 35% faster, stronger, more intelligent and more durable. This special queen also possesses a degree of psionic powers that allow it to throw three cars at a time.
The special queen has a special skill called Psi-Barrier, which creates a psionic barrier around it and any allies within a ten meter radius. The Queen is now named by the creator as Praelis, a protoss name in order to designate it as something sentient instead of being just a stronger queen. Else than the first queen, there are 131 Overlords present with 6 more being morphed. 52 Drones are hunting and cutting down some trees while 216 are harvesting minerals and vespene gas around the various Zerg bases.
As for the combat breeds, 466 Zerglings are present, with 24 being morphed. 84 Roaches are present, with half of them hunting with zergling packs, drones and an Overlord. 18 Roaches are being morphed in the various Hive Clusters. As for the Hydralisks, there are only 68 Hydralisks with 7 being morphed.
Only two dozen Hydralisks join the hunting and harvesting parties to provide Bio Energy for the Swarm, while the rest safeguard the various Hive Clusters. The Tier 2 Advancement made the zerglings 10% more agile and 15% stronger, making them approximately 26.5% more powerful than the Overmind's average Zergling. Overlords could now control a hundred zerg units at a time. The creator made many of them to scout distant lands and guide hunting parties.
With the current Overlords he has, he could control a Swarm of ten thousand but his forces only number around a thousand. Tier 2 Advancement caused Drones to move 25% faster and have 25% more capacity when transporting things. The five mile standard allowed the Zerg Hatcheries, Lairs and Future Hives to be placed near high mineral and vespene gas areas. This fueled the Zerg expansion even more.
From afar, the creator issued a command for many larva to morph into Creep colonies to aid in the expansion of the creep carpet. The creep carpet has been stuck at 144 km² of space despite the large number of zerg structures present. Tier 2 advancement made Roaches have a skill that allows them to fire three charges of acid at a time for three times. This allowed the Roaches to quickly kill any native life they find within one or two barrages due to their ultra corrosive acid.
As for the Hydralisks, this allowed them to possess a small amount of psionics. It allows them to communicate psionically with other Hydralisks in a five meter radius. The short range communication would make their purpose as shock troops even more pronounced. This would let them plan ambushes and attack at specific angles which would massively reduce friendly fire and also increase accuracy and lethality as a group.
Each Tier advancement would basically empower the Zerg's abilities. A Tier 1 Zergling would definitely be outclassed by a Tier 7 Zergling, who would possess short range warping abilities, close to Mach 1 speed and extremely high stamina, psionic cloaking, psi enhanced claws and short range detection abilities. That's why an advancement would bring an immense power multiplier to the Zerg Swarm. This tiering system was built to make the Zerg evolve beyond their current limits.
To the point where a single zergling could defeat a brood all on its own. But that's for later on, far into the future when the Swarm could make any civilization bend its knees and surrender simply by appearing. As of now, the Creator is collecting wood for the Swarm like a diligent Overmind. He selectively cuts down trees that are either too common or are invasive species that require culling.
He could identify these through the help of Praelis, whose consciousness is guiding him through the Hive link. With a swing of his sharp neo steel axe, the massive tree fell before him. He approached its massive trunk and lifted it with ease, attributed to his super strength. Being the Overmind added a massive Psionic capacity to him.
Every Zerg consciousness contributes some psionic energy to him, allowing him to wield the combined Psionic power of the Swarm. If the Swarm consisted of two queens, he would possess enough Psionic power to lift a car at will. Intelligent and Psionic strains would provide much more energy and capacity. Cool thing is, that the Swarm loses no energy with this and only the Overmind's stamina would be affected depending on how much energy is used.
A single percent of Psionic energy in the Swarm would cost a single percent of stamina. Using an all out attack would deplete all his stamina and force him to sleep in order to recover. Death through over use is impossible due to the Swarm's very presence sustaining the Overmind with their will and the Bio Energy reserves. Unlike the Overmind on Char, the creator cannot be destroyed or killed, which would make the Zerg race truly immortal as the power of Absolute Creation protects them.
The creator walks towards a hatchery he established by creating another larva. Creep colonies form a line at the borders of the creep carpet as they spread the gray, goo like creep into the forest floor. The seven cocoons surrounding the six meter tall hatchery pulsed in excitement as they feel their Overmind approach. The creator had commanded this newly born hatchery to spawn larva which in turn he morphed into a Spawning Pool, Hydralisk Den, Baneling Nest, Roach Warren, Evolution Chamber, an Overlord and a drone.
He had ordered a batch of larva to be generated by the hatchery as he wants to quickly expand the Zerg Swarm. As he approaches the mound of flesh and bones that is the hatchery, the surrounding larva approached him, newly hatched and ready to be morphed. The larva climb onto his body, their small millipede like legs are surprisingly ticklish as the creator giggles from being climbed on. Anyone would be afraid or grossed out to have the nightmarish maggot like larva crawl over their body while purring.
However, the creator felt calm, like being surrounded by his own children. Children who would help each other, who would accept each other and listen to his every command with a fanatic zeal that even the most fundamentalist human could never exhibit. He could feel resonance with them, like an unhearable melody that echoes around the various minds of the Zerg. A song of their own, that connects each and every Zerg to the swarm no matter what they are.
The melody brings warmth, peace but also ambition. This melody fills each Zerg with the immovable, unchangeable and absolute will of completing the Overmind's commands. Pride fills every Zerg who accomplishes the will of their Overmind as their very existence is attributed to him. As the creator stops before the large creature of flesh and bones before him, the hatchery vibrates in resonance to his presence, delighted to be noticed.
The creator enters the biological tunnel into the hatchery and drops the wood into a pit of green ooze. As the logs of wood touch the green digestive fluids, they sizzle as they started vanishing into the fluid, digested into Bio Energy for the Swarm. After doing so, he returns to finding more wood to fuel the Swarm's growth. As the creator cuts down more wood, the Swarm started expanding much more faster.
More batches of larva are produced, to their maximum capacity. With every batch hatched, half would become a combat breed, a third would become drones while the rest would become buildings and control units. All extra drones are sent off with overlords and a small squad of seven combat breeds to establish more hatcheries. By the time that the first queen Praelis was born, nine new hatcheries are being established.
The five mile rule and rarity of areas with both minerals and vespene reduced the speed of expansion due to overlords requiring several minutes to wait for gathering its expansion squad and due to it also taking time to survey the perfect area for hatcheries. Despite its lack of combat knowledge, each Overlord possesses instincts that tells it how to pick the best area for establishing a nest. Tier 2 advancement brought down the establishment of hatcheries from a day into only eight hours, tripling the Swarm's current growth rate. While the Overlords manage the Swarm's growth and Bio Energy production, a cocoon on the first hive vibrates and swells.
Like a beating heart, it expands and contracts. Its orange glow intensifying with every expansion. After a series of expansions and contractions, the cocoon bursts like a zit. A geyser of bio liquids spraying into the air, raining down as large drops of cloudy liquids. From the central mass, a large being emerged.
It stood 10 feet tall with an imposing figure. Its upper half is that of a well proportioned humanoid female covered in hard, dark brown carapace. It had glowing yellow eyes, with a pair of sharp, spider like mandibles on the sides of its face. A large crown of carapace and bones, easily the height of its head and thrice its length is situated on its head.
From the back of its head, many thick and long hair like strands grew out. They provide psionic abilities to the newborn queen and easily number in the mid tens. Upon its birth, its eyes glowed yellow as the nearby zerg stop and face towards the first Zerg queen. In a test of power, the queen focused her psionic energy to lift three large trees and then throw them at a nearby hill.
The newly born Praelis looked at her new form, in awe of her Overmind's creation. After examining her new body, the modified queen began controlling the Swarm's expansion, collecting as much Bio Energy as possible without causing mass extinctions.