85: Chapter 85 Metabolic Overload: Eight Years and the Dragon Beetle Swarm
The aftershocks of the Legendary Rank dragon's might still echoed throughout the Divine Domain.
The 300-meter-tall Biochemical Bone Dragon Emperor, Theodore, gazed silently at his creator with eye sockets burning with ghostly blue soul fire. Every piece of newly formed bone armor and every dark rune inscribed upon it proclaimed absolute loyalty and terrifying power to Su Chen.
High-end combat power was in position.
Su Chen's gaze shifted away from Theodore's massive and majestic body, sweeping across the sky of the Divine Domain. There, several other Saints who had also entered the Legendary Rank remained; they were the sharp blades and pillars of this war.
But this was not enough.
For a war sweeping across the star sector, having top-tier generals was far from sufficient. They needed an endless army capable of drowning all enemies.
Su Chen's consciousness sank into the mental network, instantly connecting to the resource repository located in the deepest part of the Iron Hive.
That was the massive amount of spoils he had plundered from the Divine Kingdom of Hercules.
Piled like mountains, the Dragon Blood Resources exuded rich life essence, each drop containing violent energy capable of causing the genes of low-tier creatures to collapse. Beside them were even purer, more majestic Divine Power Crystals, stored in special containers; their mere existence caused the surrounding space to slightly warp.
A crazy idea formed, calculated, and was finally established in his mind.
If he was going to fight, he would do it thoroughly.
Su Chen's will, like silent thunder, instantly pierced through the core of the entire Iron Hive.
"Mother Nest!"
His voice boomed on the mental plane.
"Initiate 'Metabolic Overload' mode!"
"Target area: A forty-two-kilometer radius centered on the Iron Hive!"
"Time flow rate: Full power acceleration!"
Hum!
The core area of the entire Divine Domain shuddered violently.
A visible, semi-transparent force field expanded rapidly, centered on the Iron Hive, eventually forming a massive dome that completely enveloped the forty-two-kilometer radius.
The light at the edge of the force field refracted strangely, and the world outside the dome fell into absolute stillness in that instant.
A falling leaf froze in mid-air.
A rolling dewdrop hung suspended at the tip of a blade of grass.
To the outside world, only an instant had passed here.
But inside the force field, time was ignited.
Su Chen stood at the pinnacle of the hive; as the sole anchor point for this accelerated time domain, he witnessed with his own eyes this miracle catalyzed by divine power and life.
One year.
The iron ground beneath his feet began to vibrate at a high frequency. Endless Zerg eggs were produced by the Mother Nest at an unprecedented speed, covering every inch of land. The air was filled with a fishy, sweet scent mixed with amniotic fluid and metal. The cracking sounds of hatching merged into one, forming an incessant symphony of life.
Two years.
The lives of the first generation of Zerglings came to an end. Their corpses were devoured and decomposed by their newborn kin, turning into the purest nutrients to feed back into the Mother Nest. It was a cruel and efficient cycle, with not a shred of waste. Dragon Blood Resources were injected into the incubation sequence, and the first batch of mutants began to appear.
Five years.
On the plains, within the black sea of Zerg, streaks of piercing scarlet began to appear. That was the new generation that had successfully fused with Dragon Blood genes. Their bodies were larger, their claws sharper, and their vitality far exceeded that of their predecessors. To compete for limited living space and superior genes, the most primitive and bloody internal elimination began.
Eight years!
This was eight years bought by burning massive amounts of divine power and part of the Mother Nest's primal lifespan.
For the Zerg Swarm, this represented the succession and evolution of dozens of generations of life.
It represented slaughter and selection on the scale of hundreds of millions.
When the Divine Power Crystal reserves at the core of the Iron Hive hit bottom, and when that crazily accelerated time flow rate slowly subsided, the semi-transparent force field shrouding the core area silently dissipated.
Everything that had been still in the outside world resumed its flow.
That leaf drifted leisurely to the ground.
The aura of the Divine Domain had completely changed.
The core area, which had been solemn but still featured large, empty plains, was now completely filled by an endless black ocean.
Those were Zerg.
Endless Zerg.
Their numbers had increased tenfold from the original baseline!
Furthermore, these were no longer the fragile, ordinary Zerglings of the past.
After the forced infusion of massive amounts of Dragon Blood genes and eight years of brutal natural selection, they had completed a transformative evolution.
[Dragon-Armored Zergling]
They stood silently; their originally fragile black chitinous carapaces were covered with a layer of fine, dark red dragon scales with a metallic sheen. The scales were not simply a covering but had grown from beneath the carapace, fusing with it. Under the sunlight, they refracted a cold, murderous luster.
Their defensive capabilities were now sufficient to withstand direct shelling from human main battle tanks.
Tens of millions, hundreds of millions of Dragon-Armored Zerglings formed a silent military formation. There was no roaring, no chaos, only absolute silence and order. The pressure built up from sheer quantity and quality was enough to suffocate any elite interstellar fleet.
These eight years brought changes that went far beyond this.
Under the tempering of the high-intensity time flow and the pervasive aura of war, those core Saints had also completed their own cultivation.
In the sea of Zerg, an area was eerily cleared out.
Baghdad stood in the center of this clearing, his door-sized giant axe slung casually over his shoulder. He kept his eyes closed, his aura restrained to the extreme; he was like a silent active volcano—seemingly calm, yet beneath the surface, lava capable of incinerating everything surged.
On the other side, Zaz hovered in mid-air.
Its disproportionately massive head had expanded another circle compared to eight years ago. Beneath the semi-transparent cranium, billions of complex neural synapses flashed with ghostly blue psionic lightning. Its computing power had reached an inconceivable level; every single unit of the entire Zerg Swarm was under its real-time monitoring and dispatch.
The entire Divine Domain had completely transformed from a mere lair into a precise, cold, and insatiable war machine.
Every part was in place.
Every blade had been sharpened.
"Everything is ready."
Su Chen stood at the highest pinnacle of the Iron Hive, the cold wind whipping his clothes.
His gaze pierced through the boundary membrane of the Divine Domain, looking toward the distant, deep, and dead dark void.
There, a will so vast it was indescribable was approaching.
The pressure brought by that will caused the void itself to ripple, and an intangible vibration was traveling across the vast distance.
The army was pressing in.
A cold arc curled at the corners of Su Chen's mouth.
"Come, Corrupt Matriarch Spider."
"I hope your teeth are strong enough; don't break them."