128: Chapter 128 The Star Sea Insect Swarm Far Exceeds Expectations
However, Elia was still the most efficient, so they eventually returned to their original mode: Elia took the lead in attacking, while Li Yuan and Laya stood by, serving tea, cheering her on, and incidentally clearing out the sporadic Zerg Swarm attracted by the commotion of the battle.
During the hunting process, they did indeed encounter the "abnormal biological units" mentioned in the headquarters' advisory.
It was during a break when the three were sitting on top of the battle fortress eating lunch—"high-energy nutrient bars" specially made by Yimoku. The flavors were random, and today they drew the spicy crayfish flavor, which made Laya teary-eyed and constantly chugging water.
Then, several figures appeared on the distant creep hills.
Li Yuan took one look and nearly spat out the nutrient bar in his mouth.
What on earth was that?!
Humanoid, mostly. But the left arm was long while the right was short, one leg was reversed-jointed, and on its back, it simultaneously possessed angel-like white feathered wings, demon-like black bat wings, and a pair of transparent insectoid membrane wings.
Its head was densely covered with seven or eight eyes, distributed without any pattern; some were on the forehead, some on the cheeks, and some even grew on the back of its head.
Its walking posture was also extremely bizarre—its upper body stood rigidly upright, while its lower body crawled rapidly using multiple articulated limbs like a spider. Wherever it passed, the creep seemed to come alive, writhing and wrapping around, crushing several passing Drones into fragments.
"My sanity is plummeting..." Li Yuan muttered to himself.
Laya was also stunned, forgetting even to drink water: "Doesn't it... doesn't it feel uncomfortable? With so many eyes, wouldn't it get dizzy looking at things?"
Elia frowned slightly: "The energy fluctuations are very chaotic. Light-type, dark-type, nature-type, spiritual-type... all mixed together, like a pot of burnt porridge."
That Primarch also noticed them. It stopped, its seven or eight eyes rotating simultaneously, focusing on the battle fortress.
Then, it raised its long arm—the end of the arm was not a hand, but a bone blade shimmering with holy light.
"Swish!"
A holy light slash struck, accurately hitting the fortress's shield. The shield rippled but did not move an inch.
The Progenitor tilted its head, seemingly a bit confused. It switched to its short arm—the end of this arm was a mass of writhing shadow.
The shadow impact slammed into the shield, also ineffective.
The Progenitor was silent for a few seconds, then... turned and left.
It crawled in another direction, where a small group of newly emerged Zerglings were. The holy light bone blade swung, the shadow impact finished them off, and in less than ten seconds, the Zerglings were completely wiped out.
Then, it didn't even glance at the battle fortress again and continued to advance toward areas with more Zerg.
The three of them looked at each other.
"...It seems," Laya said cautiously, "that it really prefers fighting Zerg?"
"Attack priority: Zerg is the highest." Li Yuan recalled the content of the advisory, deep in thought, "So as long as we don't actively provoke them, they will basically ignore us?"
The subsequent encounters confirmed this judgment. Although the Gene Primordial Bodies looked bizarre enough to make any psychiatrist break down, their behavior patterns were quite "simple": sense Zerg energy fluctuations, rush over, kill, absorb some energy, and continue searching for the next target.
Occasionally, a Progenitor would take an interest in the base's shields or Drone armaments, but after attacking a few times and finding they couldn't break through, they would lose interest and turn to cause trouble for the Zerg instead.
"In a sense," Li Yuan said at that day's summary meeting, "these 'abnormal units' are actually quite easy to get along with. At least they are more predictable than the Zerg."
Li Yuan even gave them nicknames:
The one that could cast holy light was called "Brother Holy Light."
The one that could cast shadow curses was called "Little Brother Shadow."
The one that could transform into a Giants of Light was called "Giant Bro."
The one that could manipulate plants to make the creep turn against them was called "Green Fingers."
"Speaking of which," during one break, Li Yuan watched "Brother Holy Light" in the distance beating up a nest of Hydralisks, thoughtful, "These Gene Primordial Bodies... aren't they designed a bit too casually? Did the designers at Holy Brilliance Purity draw the blueprints while drunk?"
Laya lay on his lap, saying lazily: "Maybe they think... diversity is beauty?"
Elia was checking the newly collected moon essence data and looked up upon hearing this: "From a biological perspective, overly heterozygous gene expression leads to loss of morphological control. These Progenitors might... be in an unstable state themselves."
"Instability is better," Li Yuan said. "If they were both strong and stable, then we would be the ones with a headache."
When he said this, he had no idea that a slap to the face would come so quickly.
...
The alarm sounded, a Red Alert warning.
It was not a ground alarm, but the highest-level combat readiness alarm from orbit.
On the command center's holographic star map, a large, dense patch of red dots suddenly appeared in the trial star sector.
There were over ten thousand large red dots alone, and countless small red dots.
"Ultra-large-scale spatial disturbance detected!" The voice of the warning personnel from the fleet command sounded in the communication channel, with obvious urgency, "Orbital radar has captured energy signatures—it's Leviathans! A massive amount of Leviathans!"
Major General Zhao Yu rushed into the command room, staring at the star map, his face darkening bit by bit.
On the star map, what first appeared were standard leviathan motherships—those biological warships tens of thousands to over a hundred thousand kilometers long. Humans had been dealing with them for hundreds of years and were all too familiar with them.
But this time, the Leviathans were not the main characters.
Behind the Leviathan cluster, even larger shadows were emerging from hyperspace.
The first one to appear was a... maggot.
To be precise, it was a maggot-shaped biological warship over three hundred thousand kilometers long. Its surface was covered in heavy biological armor, and mountain-like bone spurs grew on the armor plates; between the bone spurs, countless gun ports and incubation chambers were writhing.
The energy readings displayed by the radar scan made everyone who saw them gasp.
"That is... 'Star Swallower'." Major General Zhao Yu's voice was dry, "The Zerg's super warship. It can directly devour celestial bodies and has only appeared once in the records of the 'Battle of the Boötes Fall' four hundred years ago. That time... humanity lost seventeen star systems."
Before he could finish speaking, a second giant warship appeared.
It was a monster with a ferocious shape like a multi-headed dragon, with energy tentacles extending hundreds of thousands of kilometers from its tail. As it "crawled" out of the void, the surrounding space produced visible ripples.
"Tiamat-class." Luo Lan brought up the few blurry images in the database, "The Zerg's super-heavy assault mothership."
Then came the third, the fourth...
When a total of seven Zerg super motherships, never fully recorded in the human database, completed their assembly jump outside the trial star sector.
On the star map, the red area representing the Zerg fleet had already surrounded nearly half of the star system.
It formed a evenly matched standoff with the three million warships representing the Alliance of Ten Thousand Races' escort fleet.
"Fine," Zhao Yu said. "The Papal Hall's Great Prophecy Art, looking at it now, really only has this parity after factoring in our three million escort warships. Screw the 'minor invasion,' Ulysses is unreliable; this is the largest anti-Zerg war in 500 years!"