21: Chapter 21 The Wisdom of Elderly Worker Bees and the Birth of the Brain Worm's Strategist
It was a feeling of almost perfect control.
Like a meticulous chess player placing the final, winning piece on the board, the entire world moved according to his will.
Su Chen's will hovered above the divine domain, overlooking the desert stained dark gold by the scarlet sky.
A death line of two thousand Lurkers silently lay dormant beneath the yellow sand, merging with the earth.
This defensive line was enough to make any ill-intentioned probe pay a bloody price.
Now, in this barren divine domain, he finally had a true foundation to establish himself.
However, just as this sense of all-encompassing control reached its peak, an extremely subtle dissonance quietly emerged in his sea of will.
Disharmony.
Su Chen's divine sense instantly focused.
This disharmony did not come from an external threat, but from within the Zerg Swarm.
With the completion of the Lurkers' incubation, the total number of Zerg Swarm under his command had officially surpassed the one hundred thousand mark.
This was a number to be proud of.
But the massive base also brought new problems.
There was a one-ten-thousandth of a second delay in command transmission.
A Drone responsible for transporting minerals, due to a momentary stutter in the mental command, collided with another Drone, scattering high-energy ore everywhere.
A group of Zerglings undergoing formation drills showed a barely perceptible disruption in their synchronized movements.
These flaws were extremely minor, almost negligible for the vast Zerg Swarm.
But for Su Chen, who pursued ultimate efficiency and absolute control, these were intolerable defects.
The problem lay in the command system.
His will was the source of the highest commands, but the specific execution and dispatch were distributed through the Queen of Blades Sarah's psychic network.
Sarah's will was an unstoppable blade, the most terrifying killing weapon on the battlefield. Her psychic network could unleash devastating efficiency in localized combat.
However, when she needed to weave a vast network covering the entire divine domain and coordinating one hundred thousand units, this blade proved inadequate.
Her talent lay in "destruction," not "coordination."
"We need a true brain."
Su Chen's will instantly withdrew from the Lurker defense line at the border and descended to the logistics center of the divine domain—the massive open-air mining area.
Tens of thousands of Drones shuttled back and forth here, emitting a huge roar. The air was filled with the acidic scent of minerals being decomposed and the unique sweet smell of high-energy biomass.
Countless Drones, like the most precise components, worked tirelessly day and night along fixed routes, continuously transporting vast amounts of resources back to the Hive Cluster.
The entire scene was grand, orderly, and full of industrial violence aesthetics.
But Su Chen knew this was only superficial.
Beneath this seemingly efficient operation lay hidden resource waste and efficiency loss caused by command delays.
His divine sense transformed into an invisible wind, sweeping across the entire mining area, examining every detail.
Just then, a Drone entered his field of vision.
It was an unusually aged Drone.
Its carapace had lost the Zerg's characteristic faint glow, appearing a dull grayish-white, even covered with tiny weathered cracks. One of its six segmented limbs was noticeably lame, causing it to hobble when carrying ore.
According to the iron law of the Zerg Swarm, such a defective product with declining physical function and lost efficiency should have long ago been actively sent into the decomposition pool, its organic matter recycled to provide nutrients for the birth of new life.
But it was still alive.
Not only was it alive, but the scene around it caused a violent ripple in Su Chen's will.
Centered on this elder Drone, within a circular mining area with a radius of five hundred meters, the collection efficiency of all Drones was actually thirty percent higher than in other areas!
No collisions.
No congestion.
Every Drone's movement exhibited an extremely fluid arc; they always managed to turn and yield at the most opportune moment, as if an invisible hand were planning the optimal route for them.
Su Chen's divine sense instantly magnified, focusing on the elder Drone.
He was surprised to find that this elder Drone was not engaged in strenuous collection work.
It merely stood quietly in a relatively open spot, its abdominal gland releasing pheromones at an extremely peculiar frequency, so faint they were almost undetectable.
These pheromones were not mandatory commands, but rather suggestions, a form of guidance.
They transformed into invisible threads, mapping out unseen "shipping lanes" within the chaotic Drone swarm, optimizing the transport sequence of all units.
"This is..."
Su Chen's will paused for a moment.
"Self-awakened coordination talent?"
Surprise, like an electric current, exploded in his core consciousness.
In a race like the Zerg, founded on absolute obedience and collective will, the emergence of an individual with independent thought, even capable of "optimized management," was a probability more remote than finding a diamond in ten thousand grains of sand.
This was a miracle of genes, an accidental spark on the path of evolution.
"Very good."
"Your mission should not just be to command a group of Drones here."
Su Chen's will conveyed an unquestionable resolve.
The next second, an invisible force appeared out of thin air, directly locking onto the elder Drone.
The elder Drone's body trembled slightly, but it did not resist; it was obediently lifted from the ground by that force, transforming into a streak of light, and was instantly drawn into the colossal, mountain-like Hive Cluster core in the distance.
Inside the Hive Cluster, within a massive, warm, and moist cavity.
The elder Drone floated in mid-air, surrounded by countless slowly pulsating biological conduits.
"System, initiate genetic recombination!"
Su Chen's command was cold and grand.
"Target: Drone (Mutant)."
"Direction: Commander-type unit."
"Consume divine treasures: one Fruit of Wisdom, one hundred units of Psychic Prime Fluid..."
As soon as his command was given, the two precious divine treasures stored in the resource library instantly vanished.
The translucent Fruit of Wisdom, seemingly containing cosmic stars, exploded directly above the elder Drone's head, transforming into billions of pure spiritual light points that surged madly into its body.
One hundred units of Psychic Prime Fluid, in turn, transformed into a dazzling silver river, completely enveloping it.
"Buzz—"
The elder Drone's dilapidated body, under the impact of this immense energy, couldn't even last a second before instantly disintegrating and vaporizing.
In its place, at the core of its original body, a walnut-sized mass of primitive neural tissue began to frantically absorb energy, expanding and proliferating at a visible rate!
Countless flesh tendrils and neural tentacles grew from the tissue, connecting to the Hive Cluster's biological conduits, greedily devouring the newly transformed high-purity nutrient fluid like hungry infants.
One meter.
Three meters.
Five meters.
...
Half an hour later.
The surge of energy slowly subsided.
In the center of the Hive Cluster's core, a massive, ten-meter-diameter fleshy orb, entirely dark blue and covered with complex cerebral gyri, quietly floated in mid-air.
It had no limbs, no facial features, only countless translucent neural tentacles hanging from its surface like willow branches, their tips flickering with faint blue electric light, directly connecting to the entire Zerg Swarm's divine network.
A stream of data clearly appeared in Su Chen's consciousness.
[Race]: Dominator Cerebrate (Commander Type)
[True Name]: Zaz
[Tier]: Tier 3 (Psychic Power Tier 5)
[Talents]: Superbrain Computation, Full Map Link, Tactical Simulation
As Su Chen examined this data, a psychic fluctuation directly entered his mind.
The voice had no gender, no emotional fluctuations, but was steady, rational, and even carried an absolute neutrality that was neither human nor divine.
"Praise be to you... Great Overlord."
With the appearance of this psychic fluctuation, the divine network, which had seemed slightly noisy in Su Chen's perception, instantly fell into absolute silence.
The next moment, an unprecedented, grand and precise order was abruptly established!
In the mining area, a Drone on the verge of collapse from overwork received a new command just a second before it fell. It changed direction, used its last remaining strength, and precisely crawled into the nearest biomass recycling channel.
On the training ground, thousands of Zerglings' movements achieved perfect unity in an instant. Every claw swipe, every charge, was as if carved from the same mold, with no further delay or error.
On the border, the biological radar power of the two thousand Lurkers dormant beneath the sand was uniformly adjusted to its optimal value, ensuring both the alert range and minimizing unnecessary energy consumption.
The one hundred thousand Zerg Swarm, at this moment, seemed to transform from a group of individually fighting soldiers into a precisely structured, flawlessly operating war machine.
Each unit became a precisely coordinated gear in this machine.
In Su Chen's will, the sense of controlling everything returned, and it was stronger than ever before.
He contentedly "nodded."
"Zaz, from today, you are my strategist."
"The Zerg Swarm's brain is in place."