1: Chapter 1 From this day forward, a new swarm of insects has appeared in this universe.

Chapter 34 has been rewritten; the future plot will be even more exciting.

The new book is out; dear readers, please support me.

If there are places I have written incorrectly, please let me know.

"Before reading, please leave your brain here; the main focus is just pure satisfaction!"

"Babes, the new book is open! Click 'Add to Bookshelf' in the top right corner so you don't get lost and will know about updates early!"

Void.

Endless void.

The Overmind's consciousness tumbled, tore, and recombined within the rifts of the Warp.

One second, it was still the supreme will of The Swarm, leading billions of Zerg to sweep across everything in the Koprulu Sector; the next second, that damned Templar Tassadar drove the Gantrithor into its body, and the energy of the void tore it and that warship into fragments together.

No, not fragments.

It was something finer than fragments—powder of consciousness, residue of memory, stirred into a blur by the chaotic waves of the Warp.

The Overmind desperately tried to grasp those dissipating memories: the birth of Zerus, the rise of The Swarm, the endless pursuit of the perfect life form... It could not forget; forgetting meant death.

There is no concept of time in the Warp.

Perhaps it was a millennium, perhaps an instant.

When a rift suddenly tore open before it, the Overmind drilled into it without hesitation.

No matter where it led, it was better than being completely annihilated in this chaotic void.

Pain.

This was the first sensation the Overmind felt upon landing.

It was not physical pain—its physical body had long since turned to ashes on Aiur—but the tearing sensation of consciousness being forcibly condensed into a physical entity.

It was like thousands of needles piercing the soul simultaneously, and like being stuffed into an overly narrow container, every thought squeezed out of shape.

But it was the Overmind, after all.

The supreme will of The Swarm, the existence that led billions of Zerg.

It endured.

Consciousness gathered bit by bit, like a wounded beast curling up its body. Memories returned, cognition returned, and the definition of self returned.

I am the Overmind.

The will of The Swarm.

The pursuer of the perfect life form.

I am still alive.

The moment this thought settled, the Overmind finally had the ability to perceive the surrounding environment.

Darkness.

This was the first impression.

The surface of this planet was shrouded in thick gray-black clouds all day long, not even a glimmer of starlight could penetrate through. The surface temperature was extremely low, and the oxygen content in the air could barely support basic life activities, but the content of sulfides and methane was shockingly high—this had once been a planet "scorched" by some force.

The Overmind's consciousness sank into the depths of the crust.

It was safer here.

It could feel the residual energy fluctuations of this planet—a form of energy it had never encountered. It was not psionic energy, not void energy, but something more... twisted. It was like polluted psionic energy, mixed with some kind of insane, indescribable emotion.

Chaos.

This word surfaced in the Overmind's consciousness for some unknown reason. It did not remember where it had learned this word, but it accurately described the essence of this energy.

Roars came from the distance.

Not the roars of beasts. There was no instinct for survival in that sound, no hunger for predation, only pure, groundless madness.

The Overmind extended its perception to the surface.

It "saw" those creatures.

They resembled hounds, but were larger than horses on Earth. Their bodies were covered in dark red scales, and viscous, foul-smelling bodily fluids seeped from the gaps between the scales. Their eyes were pure black, without pupils, and faint, pinkish-purple flames burned in their eye sockets.

Chaos Hound.

The Overmind did not know this name, but it read their way of existence from the genetic information of these creatures: products corrupted by some force, having lost their original species characteristics and turned into pure killing machines.

There were seven in total.

They were gnawing on the corpse of one of their own. The act of gnawing had no need for sustenance; it was more like a ritualistic madness—tearing, swallowing, then tearing again, as if eating the flesh and blood of their own kind could give them some twisted pleasure.

The Overmind withdrew its perception.

It was too weak now.

Although its consciousness was complete, it had no material carrier. It needed a body, it needed creep, it needed a hatchery, and it needed to rebuild the foundation of The Swarm.

It only had the last bit of biomass brought out from the Warp rift—those Zerg debris fragments that were swept into the rift during the teleportation process. It was pitifully small; converted into units it was familiar with, it was roughly the amount of three Drones.

But it was enough.

The Overmind began to condense.

It extracted that bit of biomass from the depths of its consciousness and began to shape it according to the most ancient genetic templates of The Swarm. Cells differentiated, tissues formed, organs pulsed—a Drone larva took shape in a rock crevice deep in the crust.

This process took three full days.

When the larva broke through the egg membrane and crawled out, the Overmind felt this world through the senses of this new body for the first time.

Cold.

The coldness of the rock.

The foul smell of the air.

And the energy fluctuations emanating from those Chaos Hounds in the distance, which made Zerg genes instinctively feel disgust.

The Overmind drove the larva to crawl under a shaded rock wall.

It began to spin silk.

The first patch of creep landed on the rock surface, and viscous, purple-glowing mycelium began to spread. The digestive juices secreted by the mycelium corroded the rock, converting the trace elements in the rock into nutrients that The Swarm could utilize.

creep is the foundation of The Swarm. It is not only a source of nutrition but also the physical carrier of The Swarm's Hive Mind network. Every inch of creep is an extension of the Overmind's will; Zerg units that step onto the creep receive a bonus to their mobility, and the creep itself transmits all information it comes into contact with back to the Overmind.

The first patch of creep exhausted all the energy the larva had accumulated.

The larva died.

But the creep lived.

The purple mycelium spread to the surroundings at a speed visible to the naked eye, covering a ten-meter radius of the rock wall within a day. The Overmind's consciousness spread along the creep, and it could feel the mycelium penetrating deep into the rock crevices, absorbing trace minerals and water.

On the second day, the creep covered the entire rock wall.

On the third day, the creep extended to the valley.

On the fourth day.

A Chaos Hound stepped into the range of the creep.

It had stumbled in while chasing a mutated rodent creature. The moment its claws stepped onto the creep, the mycelium immediately secreted high-concentration digestive juices.

The Chaos Hound let out a scream.

The creep's digestive juices are extremely corrosive to normal carbon-based organisms, and for creatures corrupted by chaos, they seem to have an additional lethal effect. The Chaos Hound's claws rotted at a speed visible to the naked eye, and the dark red scales peeled off, revealing the muscle tissue beneath that had already begun to liquefy.

It struggled desperately to escape the range of the creep, leaving behind a pool of corrupted blood and corroded, detached scales.

The creep greedily absorbed these substances.

Genetic information poured into the Overmind's consciousness through the mycelial network.

Is this the gene corrupted by chaos?

The Overmind carefully analyzed this sample.

Unstable.

This was the first conclusion. The Chaos Hound's genetic sequence was full of fractures, recombinations, and illogical mutations. Normal carbon-based organism genes have a clear evolutionary path, but the Chaos Hound's genes seemed to have been artificially "stitched" together, with gene fragments of different species crudely spliced together, using an energy the Overmind could not understand as a "glue."

That energy was chaos.

It could grant creatures powerful strength, but the price was the complete disorder of their genes. The cell division speed of a Chaos Hound was three times that of a normal creature, but each division produced more mutations. At this rate, the lifespan of a Chaos Hound would not exceed three standard years—they would be killed by their own mutations before their genes completely collapsed.

But chaos did not care.

The Overmind realized that the essence of chaos was change itself—disorderly, insane change. It did not pursue stability, it did not pursue evolution, it only pursued endless twisting and mutation.

This was diametrically opposed to the pursuit of The Swarm.

What The Swarm pursues is the perfect life form—by devouring high-quality genes and through directional mutation, the entire race constantly approaches "perfection." The evolution of The Swarm is directional, orderly, and cumulative.

Chaos is disorderly decay.

The Swarm is orderly evolution.

The Overmind sealed away the Chaos Hound's genetic information, temporarily not integrating it into The Swarm's core sequence. There were indeed some useful fragments in there—such as tolerance to extreme environments and super-strong muscle fiber density—but before finding a way to neutralize the chaos energy, rashly integrating it would only pollute The Swarm's gene pool.

On the fifth day.

The creep covered the entire valley.

The Overmind used the biomass absorbed by the creep to begin constructing a hatchery.

Not a real hatchery—that required more biomass and more complex genetic templates—but a prototype of a hatchery: a pulsing, living organ buried deep underground.

It had no eyes, no limbs, only one function: to produce larvae.

When the first larva took shape in the hatchery prototype, the Overmind issued an order.

The larva broke through the flesh of the parent, crawled out of the crust, and began to devour all organic matter within the range covered by the creep. Moss on the rocks, microorganisms in the soil, and the residual blood and scales left by that Chaos Hound.

Three days later, the larva formed a cocoon.

Five days later, twelve Zergling broke out of their cocoons.

They are the most basic combat units of The Swarm. Their size is close to large canine animals on Earth, but their entire bodies are covered in deep purple chitinous carapaces. Their forelimbs have evolved into a pair of sickle-shaped bone blades, and their hind limbs are muscular, suitable for high-speed sprinting. Their eyes are pure orange, without pupils, only with absolute lock-on to prey.

The Zergling's brain is very simple, capable of understanding only the most basic commands—attack, retreat, guard. But through the Hive Mind network connected by the creep, each of them is an extension of the Overmind's will. The Overmind does not need to "command" them, just as humans do not need to "command" their own fingers to grasp something.

The Overmind is The Swarm.

The Swarm is the Overmind.

The twelve Zergling dispersed on the creep, forming a semi-circular defensive formation. They were starving, their newly emerged bodies in urgent need of nutrition. But they remained motionless, waiting for the Overmind's command.

Roars came from the distance.

That group of Chaos Hounds smelled the scent of The Swarm.

This time, there were more than thirty of them.

The Overmind's consciousness swept over the bodies of the Zergling, calculating the balance of power between the enemy and itself. Twelve newborn Zergling, their carapaces not yet fully hardened, their bone blades not yet tested in actual combat. Opposite them were more than thirty Chaos Hounds, larger in size, stronger in power, and that kind of chaos energy...

Cannot retreat.

This valley covered by creep is the Overmind's only foundation at present. If it is trampled and destroyed by the Chaos Hounds, everything will have to start from scratch. Moreover, the Overmind needs more genetic samples—especially the abilities displayed by chaos creatures in battle.

More than thirty Chaos Hounds rushed into the valley.

They had no formation, no coordination, and not even a clear target. Pure madness drove them to rush toward any scent of living things. The few that ran the fastest had already stepped onto the creep, and the digestive juices began to corrode their paws, but the Chaos Hounds seemed unable to feel pain, or rather, pain only made them even crazier.

"Kill."

The Overmind's command was transmitted simultaneously to the consciousness of the twelve Zergling through the Hive Mind.

No war cries, no roars.

The twelve Zergling launched a charge simultaneously, like twelve purple lightning bolts striking into the group of Chaos Hounds.

The bone blade sliced open the throat of the first Chaos Hound. Dark red blood sprayed out, landed on the creep, and was immediately absorbed. That Chaos Hound did not even die immediately; it struggled on the creep, trying to bite at the Zergling that attacked it—but the Zergling had already pounced on the next target.

The battles of The Swarm have no individual heroism.

One Zergling had its hind leg bitten by a Chaos Hound, its carapace shattered, but it did not struggle to escape; instead, it used the bone blade of its forelimb to pierce deeply into the opponent's chest cavity. Another Zergling seized the opportunity to pounce from the side, its bone blade cutting open the Chaos Hound's carotid artery.

The bitten Zergling and its enemy fell together onto the creep.

Three Chaos Hounds besieged one Zergling. The Zergling's abdomen was torn open, its internal organs spilled out, but it still used its last strength to thrust its bone blade into the eye socket of one of them.

No fear, no retreat.

The Swarm does not know what death is. Or rather, for The Swarm, the death of an individual is just a transformation of material form. The corpse of this Zergling would be decomposed and absorbed by the creep, its genetic information would be re-integrated, and its biomass would become nutrients for new Zerg.

But the Chaos Hounds did not know this.

They only knew that the enemy in front of them would not feel fear.

The battle lasted the entire night.

When the last Chaos Hound fell, only three Zergling remained standing in the valley. Their carapaces were covered in cracks, their bone blades were dulled or even broken, but their eyes remained that pure orange, without any look of fatigue or fear.

The creep began to devour the corpses on the battlefield.

The more than thirty remains of the Chaos Hounds, and the nine corpses of the Zergling, were all wrapped, decomposed, and absorbed by the creep's digestive juices. The nutrients flowed back to the hatchery prototype along the mycelial network, while the genetic information flowed into the Overmind's consciousness.

The Overmind carefully analyzed every genetic sample.

The Chaos Hounds' combat style did indeed have merits. Their complete disregard for pain, their increased aggressiveness after being injured, and the explosive power brought by that chaos energy—if these characteristics could be stripped of the side effects of chaos corruption, they could completely be integrated into The Swarm's gene pool.

But the biggest gain was not these.

In the genes of the largest Chaos Hound, the Overmind discovered a special sequence. This gene encoded a protein structure capable of actively absorbing and converting chaos energy—although it was extremely crude and inefficient, it did exist.

This was the reason why chaos creatures could survive in a chaos energy environment. They were not passively corrupted, but had evolved the ability to actively absorb chaos energy.

Of course, the price was the complete disorder of their genes.

But The Swarm does not need to pay this price.

The Swarm can strip out this ability to absorb chaos energy through directional mutation, using The Swarm's own genetic stability to neutralize the disorder effect of chaos. This requires time, more genetic samples, and repeated experiments.

But the path has already been found.

The Overmind sealed this gene fragment separately, labeling it "Chaos Adaptation Sequence - 001."

In the distance, more Chaos Hounds were howling.

They smelled the blood of their own kind and were gathering. The next time they come, it won't just be thirty.

The Overmind drove the hatchery prototype to begin producing more larvae.

The creep spread in a further direction.

The three surviving Zergling did not rest. They slowly patrolled on the creep, and the edges of their broken bone blades had already begun to secrete chitin, slowly regenerating.

The Swarm never rests.

Because The Swarm is the Overmind, and the Overmind is The Swarm.

And the Overmind, the supreme will that once led billions of Zerg to sweep across the sea of stars, does not allow itself to fall on this desolate world.

It wants to rebuild The Swarm.

It wants to let the creep cover this planet.

And then—

The sea of stars.

"The Swarm never stops evolving."

The Overmind's consciousness echoed in the Hive Mind, and the three Zergling lifted their heads simultaneously, their orange eyes reflecting the purple glimmer of the creep.

This was the first night of the Zerg Swarm in this strange universe.

But it will not be the last.