10: Chapter 10 The Sleeping Primordial King Insect and the Birth of the Queen of Blades
The afterglow of power still surged within his divine soul; the authority to define 'Firmness' and 'Fragility' made Su Chen's every thought feel as if it carried physical weight.
But he knew better than anyone that even the sturdiest shield required sufficient strength to support it, and even the sharpest spear required a sea of resources to forge.
Ambition needed to be fed with strength.
He withdrew his gaze from the slowly closing spatial rift and cast it toward the depths of the Lizardmen temple's ruins.
Having finished his own enhancement, it was time to take stock of the greatest harvest of this war—Guldan's treasure vault.
As an ancient lizard with a severe hoarding habit, Guldan's family assets were far more substantial than Su Chen had imagined.
His divine sense swept through, and the scene of the entire treasury was reflected in his mind.
It was a massive underground karst cave; rather than a treasury, it was more like a giant junkyard.
Tens of thousands of Faith Crystals were piled haphazardly into a small mountain, emitting a milky-white soft glow. Beside them, magic ores of various attributes, bones of unknown creatures, and some damaged magical artifacts were mixed together, piled randomly and covered in a thick layer of dust.
Su Chen's divine sense quickly filtered through them, directly whisking away tens of thousands of units of Faith Value and some useful high-tier ores into his divine kingdom.
Just as he was about to finish this 'waste sorting,' the tentacles of his divine sense paused in a corner at the deepest part of the vault.
There, covered by a pile of decaying animal hides and discarded metal ingots...
...a stone box lay quietly at the very bottom.
Unlike the surrounding clutter, this stone box appeared exceptionally... clean.
It was inscribed with layers upon layers of sealing arrays. The structure of those runes was extremely complex; even after the long passage of years, faint energy still flowed within them, isolating it from the erosion of time and all external perception.
Had Su Chen's divine sense not reached a whole new level of insight into 'structure' under the blessing of the [Firmness] divine portfolio, he might have overlooked it.
With a thought from Su Chen, the stone box penetrated the junk above and flew through the air to land before him.
He extended a finger, a wisp of peerlessly sharp Killing Divine Power swirling around his fingertip as he tapped lightly on the complex seal.
There was no violent energy clash, only a dissolution at the level of rules.
Under the erosion of the Killing Divine Power, the energy structure forming the seal began to collapse and disintegrate from its most basic level.
Click.
With a soft sound, the stone box popped open.
An indescribable aura rushed out from the box.
It wasn't a simple energy fluctuation, nor was it some kind of scent.
It was a feeling.
Ancient, desolate, deathly still.
It was as if a prehistoric behemoth that had been slumbering since the previous epoch had let out a sigh across eternity right in his ear.
Su Chen cast his gaze inside the box.
There were no glittering treasures inside, nor were there any divine artifacts with startling power.
There was only a fist-sized egg lying quietly on a soft lining.
The form of this egg was extremely bizarre.
Its entire body presented a deep purple-black color, as if it could swallow all light.
What was even more heart-palpitating was that its surface was covered in countless veins like those of a living creature. Those veins bulged slightly, throbbing at an extremely slow yet incredibly steady frequency.
It didn't look like an egg.
It was a beating heart.
Just as Su Chen's fingertip was about to touch it, the system's notification sound suddenly rang out in his divine soul.
"Ding! High-energy lifeform detected!"
"Item Name: Primordial Overlord Egg (Sealed)"
"Description: A Zerg remnant from the previous epoch, containing terrifying psionic potential. Due to a lack of sufficient life energy, it has been in a deep slumber for over ten thousand years."
Primordial Overlord?!
Su Chen's breathing came to a momentary halt at this instant.
The Zerg!
And it was a Zerg remnant from the previous epoch!
In his Zerg technology tree, Overlords weren't just simple transport units. They were the aerial fortresses of the Zerg Swarm, and more importantly, high-level commanders that transmitted the Overmind's will and coordinated the combat of billions of Zerg!
"A true tactical commander..."
Su Chen's eyes instantly became incredibly scorching.
His current Zerg Swarm had already begun to take shape. But these creations, catalyzed through genes, were more like killing machines driven by fixed programs, possessing only the most primitive combat instincts.
They could execute simple commands like 'charge' or 'tear apart,' but they couldn't understand complex orders requiring tactical thinking like 'flank,' 'outmaneuver,' or 'feint.'
This was an army without a brain.
And the egg before him was the perfect answer to this problem!
A thought began to grow wildly in Su Chen's heart.
He looked at this weakly throbbing egg, sensing the flame of life within it that was almost extinguished.
Time to gamble!
"System!"
Su Chen's divine sense issued a thunderous command.
"Activate Infinite Gene Evolution talent!"
His eyes were frighteningly sharp, showing a recklessness that disregarded the consequences.
"Target locked: Primordial Overlord Egg!"
"Inject all divine power! Inject all high-tier biological essence!"
A desperate gamble!
He mobilized all the divine power converted from the tens of thousands of faith points he had just plundered from Guldan's treasury, along with all the assets he had accumulated before, without reservation in this single instant!
In the divine kingdom, the pool storing high-tier biological essence was instantly drained.
Streams of massive, pure-to-the-extreme life energy, mixed with Su Chen's divine power carrying the dual divinity of killing and Firmness, turned into a surging torrent and poured frantically into that purple-black insect egg!
Buzz—! Buzz buzz buzz—!
The originally weakly throbbing insect egg, like a dying person injected with a shot of adrenaline, instantly began to vibrate violently!
The purple-black veins on its surface erupted with unprecedentedly dazzling light. That light was no longer a deathly dark purple, but a brilliant psionic purple full of vital energy!
A sea of energy washed over its every corner, awakening its life origin that had slumbered for ten thousand years.
Crack!
A crisp sound of cracking rang out.
A crack appeared on the eggshell.
Then came a second, a third...
Crack! Crack crack—!
The dense cracking sounds merged together, and in an instant, countless cracks covered the entire eggshell.
No ugly, hideous giant bug crawled out from it.
At the moment the eggshell completely shattered, an endless rain of purple psionic light erupted from the broken core, sweeping through the entire underground karst cave!
Within the rain of light, a slender, graceful silhouette slowly... stood up.
The light dissipated.
What appeared before Su Chen was a humanoid female creature.
She possessed the perfect body curves of a human female; every inch of her skin seemed to be the most outstanding creation of a god. However, her body's surface was not flesh, but covered in a layer of bone-like carapace with a flowing purple crystal texture.
That carapace fit her figure perfectly, outlining heart-stopping curves, full of a sense of power and a strange beauty.
Behind her, two pairs of huge, sharp bone wings were quietly folded. The edges of the wing blades glinted with a metallic cold light, as if they could easily slice through space.
A waterfall of long purple hair moved without wind behind her head. The tips of each hair strand had condensed into sharp bone spikes, possessing a bizarre, living rhythm.
She slowly opened her eyes.
They were a pair of purple, non-human vertical pupils.
Within those pupils, there wasn't a trace of emotional fluctuation belonging to an intelligent lifeform—no curiosity, no confusion, not even the ignorance of a newborn.
There was only an eternal, absolute loyalty toward the only figure standing before her, a loyalty originating from the deepest part of her soul and imprinted in her genetic sequence.
And, toward everything other than that loyalty, an innate, pure desire for slaughter.
A terrifying aura that made one suffocate exploded from her body, instantly sweeping across the entire area!
That wasn't divine power, nor was it simple energy pressure.
It was an absolute suppression on the level of life!
[Race]: Queen of Blades (Unique Hero Unit)
[True Name]: Sarah
[Rank]: Tier 6 (Epic-Tier)
[Talents]: Psionic Storm, Queen of the Swarm (All Zerg units under her command gain +50% to all attributes)
Tier 6!
An Epic-Tier Hero!
As Su Chen looked at this perfect masterpiece he had personally catalyzed, which emitted a terrifying pressure, a fanatical joy almost exploded in his chest!
The moment Sarah's gaze met Su Chen's, his figure was reflected in those cold vertical pupils.
She moved.
Without a moment's hesitation.
She took a step forward and knelt on one knee, her bone wings folded tightly against her back and her perfect head bowed deeply, assuming a posture of incomparable respect and humility.
A cold, murderous, yet supremely pious voice rang directly within Su Chen's divine soul.
"I am the Swarm."
"I am willing to die for you, my... Father Emperor!"