Juggernaut: Rise of the Zerg

Dormancy 131
Although Zero's most important research, that is, the self-detonation of firebugs failed to achieve immediate success, but another characteristic of them, Sass has already had some ideas.

At present, the Zerg race is indeed very powerful. At least in this continent and the nearby sea area, there are no decent enemies anymore, but they still have many problems.

With the current ability of the bug swarm, as long as they don't stop expanding, the problem of food or energy will always trouble and restrict them.This point has never changed since the era of ants.Zero also thought about getting rid of this restriction in the past, but the result can only be said that the road ahead is long.

At the same time, another issue is equally crucial, and that is longevity.

The strength of the Zerg's appearance often makes their own problems ignored, as if they will always be at the peak, and will always maintain the combat power of the newborn.

But Zero is very sure that, except for Sass, all other bugs, including the hatchery, actually have a limited lifespan.

Today, it has only been two years since the first Zerg hatched.Although the first batch of hatched bugs had been basically lost in the constant battles, Zero still keenly noticed that as time went by, they seemed to be weakening at a very inconspicuous speed.

Unlike other races, the Zerg are almost born at their peak, but they obviously can't maintain this state forever.Even if they are never afraid of death, and are always extremely fierce, it can't change the fact that they have been going downhill since their birth.

Regarding this point, the most obvious evidence is that even if they are all Zerg that have not been strengthened, in Zero's specially conducted combat tests, the first hatched bugs are almost completely suppressed by the latest hatched bugs.

This is not accidental, because Zero has made a total of a hundred sets of controls, all of which are like this.

From this point of view, they seem to be no different from other living things.They just skipped the infancy period, or in other words, the infancy period is extremely short, and directly reached the peak period, and then every day, they are declining, and in just one year, they have shown obvious signs of infancy. The gap in combat power.

Although Zero is still unable to determine the specific lifespan of Zerg units because of the short time, but judging from the rapid decline in their combat power, their lifespan should not be very long. Zero roughly estimated that it should be between five and ten. years or so.

In the most optimistic case, there is a high probability that he will not survive ten years.

Such a short life, but most of the time is dormant, which is of course a waste.

Zero always feels that letting them go into hibernation when there is no war is actually a kind of slow suicide.

Moreover, the so-called dormancy of the Zerg itself is nothing more than a simple rest. Apart from reducing energy consumption, it does not reduce the consumption of the Zerg's life.

This is completely different from what Zero imagined.

He believes that the Zerg in this state should not need any supplies at all, nor consume any energy, let alone consume lifespan, as if they are already dead, until they are awakened when needed, they can directly join fighting.

This is the dormancy in his imagination, or in other words, dormancy.

Of course, this can only be regarded as one of his beautiful visions, and even he himself knows that this is impossible, at least under the current conditions.

So far, all the animals discovered by the Zerg, including the lizardmen, all have such restrictions, as if the existence of life will eventually die out.Zerg, while very special, still hasn't escaped that.

Ten years seemed like a long time to the Zerg who could now wipe out the Lizardman Empire in a few months.

But Zero can't just focus on the present. When the time scale is extended to the entire planet or even the deep space universe, this length of time is not even a moment.

It was too short.

However, this time the research on fireflies has led to an answer to solve this problem in disguise.

In the past, the so-called dormancy of the Zerg was just to stop activities and reduce consumption, and the passage of their lives would not be stagnant because of this. It can be said that although the speed is very slow, they are indeed getting weaker every minute and every second .

But this time, when Sass was studying the firefly, he found that when the firefly was in this state of suspended animation, the life of the firefly passed very slowly, almost to nothing.

According to its estimation, in the state of suspended animation, the vitality consumption of the firefly is only about [-]% of the normal state!
This is an amazing find!They seem to have gotten rid of nature's restrictions on life to a certain extent. Using this method, they have greatly extended the time they survive in this world.

It wasn't just Sass who came to a conclusion, this was also confirmed by Zero's experiments.

He placed the two fire worms in two caves opened by the Zerg. After the diggers appeared, it became quite easy for them to open the caves.

Afterwards, he let one of the firelighters fall into a dormant state, while for the other, he used the swarm of bugs to keep approaching to lure it, so that it remained active for half of the day.

Of course, they are all provided with enough substances to survive.

In this comparison, the difference in their longevity becomes quite apparent.

The firefly, which was often disturbed by the swarm, could no longer light up on the seventh day, and eventually died quickly.

And the other one, until a month later, was still alive and kicking when it was awakened.

This is enough to explain their superiority in this state of suspended animation. In a sense, it can actually cut off the power of time to a certain extent!
Even if Zero currently has no way to solve the Zerg's lifespan problem, if the Zerg always has this ability, by entering this state, he can prolong the peak period of the Zerg in a disguised form, and they can enter this state when they don't need to fight. In this state, while reducing consumption, it can also seal up its own combat power for a long time.

The only thing that Zero is worried about is the characteristic of these fire worms that "see light and die". He is more worried that after applying this characteristic to the Zerg himself, it will directly turn the Zerg into nocturnal creatures, which seems too much to be worth the candle.

However, the answer given by Sass relieved Zero's worries.

It believes that this characteristic of the firefly is not caused by the state of suspended animation itself.In other words, firebugs fall into a state of suspended animation when they see sunlight, which has nothing to do with this characteristic of suspended animation, but just a stress response to sunlight produced in their long-term evolution.

Seeing strong sunlight will cause fireflies to react, whether it is fear, nervousness, or something else, it is unknown.But this reaction will cause it to enter a state of suspended animation instinctively.

In short, these two things have nothing to do with each other in essence, it is just the fire starter's instinct, like an unconditioned reflex born with it.

The Zerg have no such instinct at all.

So, if the swarm uses it on themselves, it doesn't make them completely nocturnal creatures.

After confirming this point, Sass has already begun to try to use it. It needs to consider the impact of this ability on all aspects of the Zerg after it is produced, which will take a while.

But it is certain that after it completes its research, the swarms that will be hatched in the future will inevitably have this ability that Zero calls dormancy.

Of course, although this can alleviate the longevity problem faced by the Zerg to a certain extent, it also does not solve the fundamental problem.

No matter how strong the dormancy ability is, it cannot completely block the influence of time. Even if it can greatly prolong the survival time of Zerg individuals, it still cannot meet the requirements of zero.

He hopes that in the future, the Zerg can have a long lifespan, long enough to be able to travel across distant astronomical scales.

However, this is also just a long-term vision, and it is the goal that He will strive to achieve in the future.At least for now, the dormancy ability is enough.

It can once again reduce the energy consumption of the Zerg, thereby reducing the restriction of food on the Zerg to a certain extent.It can also temporarily free the Zerg from the limitation of life length. For Zero, it can also prevent the Zerg from wasting their lives in vain because they have no use for a long time.

...............

Sass seems to be always so busy, and there are always endless researches waiting for it.Before the second brain worm is born, it shouldn't have much free time.

Although more than two years have passed, it seems that the birth of a second brain worm among the Zerg is still far away.

Zero has also thought about why it is so difficult for the Zerg to produce intelligent units, and each individual lizardman, from birth, only needs to grow normally to have this ability that the Zerg can't possess even with all their efforts.

After thinking hard to no avail, in the end, he could only think that this was a certain destiny in the dark, so that the Zerg, a race that reproduces rapidly and has the ability to create life to some extent, is limited in terms of wisdom. It's not unfair to let a race like the lizardmen that grows slowly and reproduces difficultly be born.

For a brain worm with wisdom like Sass, Zero retains considerable respect. His unique name and unreserved reliance are unmatched by any worm.

Of course, the reason why the Zerg is a Zerg lies in its obedience to a large extent, and Sass is no exception, even if it does have considerable intelligence, can think independently and make judgments, but for Zero, it Always be absolutely obedient.

No matter from which point of view, Sass is a major contributor to the Zerg's development to this day, and it is fundamentally different from those ignorant bugs. From this perspective, apart from its appearance, it can no longer even be recognized. It is regarded as a bug, but should be a self-aware individual, but still retains absolute loyalty and obedience to Zero.

If it wasn't like this, Yiling would have led the swarm to rise up and shouted that the Zerg Master Ning Youzhong would have been like this if he treated it like an animal day and night.

The model worker-like Sass improved the dormancy very smoothly. It only took half a month to complete this without affecting the combat power of the swarm.

After that, it once again devoted itself to the research of the creatures brought back from the ocean by the Zerg.

As the swarm's exploration got farther and farther away from the coast, Sass's research gradually became a little inconvenient, because it was becoming more and more difficult to preserve those creatures back from a long distance.

Recently, Zero intends to send SARS to the ocean. Now the entire continent has basically become a back garden for the Zerg to gallop. In the future, the focus of Zerg development will gradually shift to the ocean. Letting SARS go there first can be regarded as a timely response thing.

Zero doesn't need it to be the commander of the swarm for the time being, in order to facilitate its research, it is justified to act like this, although Sass has grown a lot during this period, and he is no longer able to command the swarm. The same is true, but now scientific research is its main business.

During the time when they conquered the Lizardman Empire, the Zerg's actions at sea never stopped for a moment.Now, they have completed their exploration around this continent and wiped out all the enemies near the shore.

Within dozens of kilometers away from the coastline, the insect swarm was already the absolute master.

At the same time, through this kind of exploration around the continent, Zero really understood the approximate location of the continent and its true size for the first time.

In fact, in the records of the lizard people, there are relatively clear records of the size of the empire's territory, but limited by the level of technology, there are inevitably a large number of deviations in their drawing of mountains, rivers and other terrains, which eventually lead to As a result, they made considerable errors in the overall outline of the entire continent.

The Zerg is different.

After the bug swarm completed a circle around the continent along the coastline and cleared up the nearby threats, Zero could already directly bring this area into view.

Although on the mainland, the Zerg Swarm has not yet completed the occupation of the entire continent, and most of the places are invisible to Zero.But through this ring-shaped area, combined with the proven area as a ruler, he has been able to draw a relatively reliable overall map of the continent.

Through the exploration of the swarm, as expected, this place should be located in the northern hemisphere. The swarm found extremely cold frozen soil at the northernmost tip of the continent, and the ocean was also covered by ice.

At the southernmost tip of the mainland, it is relatively warm and humid with lush vegetation.

The entire piece of land presents an extremely irregular shape, roughly resembling a flat boot oriented east to west, long and narrow from east to west and relatively narrow from north to south.In the far east, where the Zerg first landed, is the foot of this huge "boot".

Zero made a rough calculation, and estimated that the entire continent is tens of millions of square kilometers in size!
The specific terrain and insect swarms have not been fully explored, but now the lizardmen have long been unable to recover, and it is only a matter of time before this is completed.

This time, under the escort of the swarm, Sass will return to the cliff camp where he first landed, and stay there for a while.On the one hand, it is relatively convenient to receive species on the ocean for research, and on the other hand, it is also to take into account the discoveries on land.

Today, the Zerg race can be said to be in a period of great discovery. Whether it is land or sea, as the strength of the Zerg race grows day by day, their original mysterious veil is also being torn off a little bit, and newly discovered species are everywhere. Most are in the ocean, but the land can't be ignored either.

Given that there is only one Sass, Zero can only do this at the moment. After all, if the creatures on the land are captured alive, they may last for a period of time during the transportation process, but most of the creatures in the sea will die if they leave the water. It will die soon, especially after being transported to land, and it will be very difficult to ensure its integrity as time goes by.

However, in the future, the center of gravity of the swarm's exploration should gradually move to the ocean. As Sas returned to the coast from the inland, this situation would improve a lot.

As for the land, it is the most stable base camp of the Zerg.

(End of this chapter)