Juggernaut: Rise of the Zerg

Chapter 336 Dimensions
  After sweeping across one star field after another, the scale of the Zerg race has reached an unimaginable level. In a planetary system with three rocky planets, there will be at least millions of large insect species during the expansion, and Such a planetary system, even if we exclude the ones that have been developed, the ones currently occupied by the Zerg will be counted in the trillions!

These are just large units. Some special units, including energy units, broods, space base stations, etc., plus small units that hatch at any time. Even if micro units are not added, this number will be doubled several times!

In such a huge number, they were produced but there was nothing extra to do. Apart from adding bricks and mortar to the enhancement of the Hive Mind, all that was left was transportation and continued expansion.

If there is any race that can make a more obvious contribution to the increase in entropy of the entire universe, it is undoubtedly the Zerg.

Of course, the exploration of the universe will continue and will never stop. The Zerg also need to become stronger to ensure that they will not pose a threat to the entire universe, but pure numerical growth is actually not that critical in this era.

Facing an enemy that cannot threaten the Zerg, there is not much difference if the number is tens of billions or even ten or a hundred times. And if the enemy has the ability to actually threaten the Zerg, there is still not much difference.

The insect tide tactic is of course a high-quality means of "defeating the strong with the weak". Zero will not give up this advantage, but he needs to think about more possibilities so that the Zerg no longer only have these "three axes".

…………

Ever since the most primitive silicon-based life was discovered on a seemingly dead planet, the Zerg have actually been studying this unique creature.

Their existence has undoubtedly expanded the scope of the word "biology", but from the study of insect swarms, this kind of life does not seem to have high potential under natural conditions, and a long period of time has not allowed them to be born. Develop enough intelligence to have the potential to create a civilization.

This should be due to its own structural composition. Even if it is the same family of elements, silicon-based life is still different from carbon-based life. Strictly speaking, maybe Mira can also be called silicon-based life in a sense, at least It should be considered a certain period of time.

However, an existence like Mira is too special. It is an "artificial" life. In a sense, it is another miracle of life in this universe!
  The silicon-based organisms discovered by the Zerg back then were completely different. They had entities in a macro sense and were able to carry out biological activities, but it was difficult for them to possess intelligence.

Sass believes that this should be caused by the properties of the silicon element. In addition to the relatively mature individuals on the surface of the planet, the insect swarm also discovered primitive silicon-based life in the molten state inside the planet. They could only obtain it from some Energy is obtained from the oxidation of elements. Compared with carbon-based life, their life level is basically still in its infancy.

However, one thing is worthy of praise. Whether it is the most primitive silicon-based life or a larger individual that can move freely, their natural life cycle is extremely long. The Zerg has observed it for nearly two thousand years. During this period, the stars have changed and the world has changed. Some of them have also They are still not dead. If they have wisdom, they will definitely be the most capable of witnessing history among the intelligent races.

Not only that, their vitality is much stronger than that of ordinary carbon-based life forms of similar levels. In a natural state, death is a very difficult thing for them.

Their appearance once opened another door for the Zerg. It once allowed the Zerg to greatly increase the utilization rate of silicon, a very widely distributed and cheap non-metallic element in the universe. Now the Zerg's body has this aspect. Results are included and occupy a very important position.

However, after all these years, the swarm has still not been able to completely deconstruct this so far unique creature.

Their reproduction method is completely different from what the Zerg are familiar with. Just searching and demonstrating the so-called genetic information and expression has taken a lot of time for this research project that is not the focus.

But these studies are not meaningless after all. As the understanding becomes deeper and deeper, the so-called silicon-based life cannot remain completely mysterious in the eyes of the Zerg. Their life foundation has been deconstructed bit by bit, and now it has largely become Part of the Zerg, but this is only a phased achievement.

Over the years, the reason why the body strength of the Zerg elite units has been able to be completely immune to high-intensity kinetic energy weapons, and can even directly defend against low-power energy weapons, is because they have applied it to themselves. However, recently, they have come to a new conclusion.

Therefore, Zero also placed the hope that he had planned for the Zerg to find another path, and placed it with them.

The reason is that in the process of studying them in recent hundreds of years, we have gradually discovered that there seems to be an extremely subtle "rhythm" in the "species" on this planet and the environment in which they adapt and survive. !
  Why is it that there are so many planets in the universe, and that the Zerg have explored so many star fields, but such a life was born on just that one planet? To be similar, planets like it are not uncommon, and are even extremely similar. The cosmic environment has double digits, but the Zerg have not found anything at all in these places.

It was not until the research gradually deepened, and after hitting the wall again and again, that the insect swarm finally noticed something abnormal when they started to attack this rare planet.

Following this abnormality, tracing back to its source, and using limited research resources, the research base station race under the Zerg found the key to the problem sixty-two years ago, and came to a more credible conclusion four years ago!

There is some mysterious connection between the life born here and the planet itself. What exactly does this connection represent? To be conservative, since no large-scale destructive research has been carried out, not much progress has been made yet, but this The medium of this connection, or at least part of the medium, has been discovered by the Zerg!

It is an extremely unstable special element, but its appearance is very strange, and this is one of the reasons why Zerg research has not been able to determine it for a long time.

The reason why it is strange is that it can only show specificity after leaving the planet. That is, only when it comes to the orbit of the planet or even farther away, it will gradually change from the most common elements. Separate”, or manifest.

They are indeed of mass, but while they are widely distributed, they are also extremely rare. When they were first observed at a glance, researchers thought it was a certain characteristic of the Zerg body, which was a normal phenomenon.

Of course, there are also some researchers who want to figure out its essence, but due to problems with their thinking, they have done many things in the opposite direction.

It was only after receiving a negative answer from the brainworm and attracting the attention of Sass that it took forty-four years to eliminate all possibilities bit by bit and lock them into a certain within the range.

Of course, due to its particularity, many detours were taken during this process, and it was even led in a completely wrong direction.

Until now, all its parameters have been basically confirmed in long-term experiments, and it is for this reason that Zero has listed it as one of the possibilities for the Zerg to take another path. This extremely rare element, which only exists on this planet, is no different from ordinary chemical elements under the influence of a gravity field above 0.896 Ori. It can be any known existing element in the universe. , depending on the environmental factors near it, where they have the same properties as ordinary matter, and no abnormalities are detectable at all.

But when it escapes from this gravitational environment, it will quickly leave its original state and reveal its original appearance - a fundamental particle that does not belong to this universe, or in other words, a fundamental particle that has not been discovered yet.

In view of its particularity, it was named "Universal Element" by researchers at the very beginning. However, although this ability to "disguise" as other elements is strange, apart from research, it is not very useful to the Zerg. Much value, not to mention its cumulative mass, would not be of much use even if it were usable.

Later research also proved that the existence of silicon-based life on this planet is inseparable from this "universal element", and as the research gradually deepened, there seemed to be something unusual about the planet itself, but Regarding this point, there is no reliable conclusion so far. Only clues can be captured from the distribution of this element itself and the activity patterns of silicon-based organisms over a long period of time.

But in Zero's view, its value at this stage does not lie in these two aspects, but in the characteristics shown in its own "disappearance" and "appearance" process!
  In the gravity field of about 0.896 Ori, they have various properties, relative masses of different sizes, and various forms of existence. But out of this environment, they will be separated from various compounds or simply simple substances.

No matter what kind of mass they had before, no matter how many elements they could react with before, they will eventually become a substance with a relative mass infinitely close to 0.7, which cannot combine with each other and can only exist in the form of particles.

In a sense, this is simply a miracle!

It's not that Zero isn't interested in the secrets that may exist on this planet, it's just that compared to things that are temporarily difficult to know, he prefers to focus on places that can bring tangible changes to the Zerg.

The most fundamental reason is that from the changes in these particles, the former Velvet people and now the Zerg Velvet Research Department have observed dimensional changes within a very small range!
  It is neither a mistake nor an error. After tens of thousands of experiments and observations, this result has been completely confirmed.

In other words, its specificity involves the transformation of matter in dimensions!
  Of course, there may be more complex and incredible changes involved, but the Zerg have obviously not reached the level of observing them.

Changes in physical properties are relatively easy to explain. The change in mass out of thin air has indeed exceeded the rules of the real universe - it really disappears and increases. At least with the Zerg's means, it is impossible to observe where the disappeared mass goes. Where does the excess mass come from?

These problems are left to be solved in the future. At this stage, what Zero values ​​​​in this regard is only the short-term dimensional changes of matter!
  He believes that this is very likely to allow the Zerg to "find another way" and get rid of the current "three-axe" status quo. It should at least significantly change the current war model of the Zerg.

That could be dimensionality enhancement or dimensionality reduction!

Even just relying on imagination, you can know what role it will play once it is actually used by the Zerg!
  That will undoubtedly be another explosive development in the history of the Zerg!
  .......................................

All research on silicon-based life is ultimately classified into one major category. Since it currently mainly involves research on dimensions, it is mainly handled by the Velvet Department. Zero knows that this may be a long or even very possible process. There will be no resultant process, but this does not prevent Him from looking forward to it. After all, if he does not take this first step, he will never be able to find the answer.

The Zerg are now considered to be a big business. There are at least tens of thousands of valuable research projects, large and small, being conducted at the same time. However, apart from research at the dimensional level, the only thing that really receives zero attention is the "Stone of Life". Further research and detailed investigation and essence exploration of the "soul body" were carried out.

The former is progressing very quickly. Although it also involves unprecedented material participation in this universe, the Zerg "operators" will not be soft-hearted because of this.

The "Stone of Life" is very hard, which can be said to be higher than most of the high-strength materials currently possessed by the Zerg, but it can still be destroyed after all.

The first thing to be tested was naturally the solubility and other performance tests of the substances in the queen ant's body. It was cut to a very small extent by the "operator" because there were still many tests that needed to be done later, so it could only be used Experiments were conducted with such limited samples.

But the results were clear, and actually not beyond Zero's expectations.

It does not react at all with the substances in the queen ant's body!
  Whether the two "gems" are of the same type or not, according to their functional tests, there is a high probability that they are consistent. That means that even the stone from back then will most likely not be directly dissolved in the queen ant. in vivo.

This can actually be concluded from the analysis of the materials alone. After all, its ingredients do not look like substances that can react with that kind of low-grade digestive juice.

If the previous judgment was not wrong, it means that something not so simple may have happened in the unexpected changes that led to the birth of the Zerg.

Research is still continuing, and of course it is not just pure testing, but also observation and verification of its internal structure, and even replicative testing, are all on the agenda one by one.

This point involves the origin of the Zerg, and Zero has always been very concerned about it. He knows that the secret must exist here. Even if these fragmented results cannot directly draw conclusions, the information obtained now will definitely lay the foundation for future research.

As for the latter, Ruhr is responsible for it. Since the space jump technology has gradually matured and there is basically no energy problem anymore, the Zerg have abandoned the original "wormhole" passage, and this natural abandonment has continued for hundreds of years. as long as.

But now, after many years, the brainworm Luer once again led some Zerg scientific research units into it to carry out a cause that it had not paid attention to for a long time. The main purpose of this stage is to find the reason why the interior of the "wormhole" channel is isolated from all signal transmission, and to observe and record the specific internal environment.

Both of these tasks are not difficult. What the Zerg are currently doing is to avoid the attack of the "soul body" and conduct research on the environment in which it may exist. As for more, it needs to be based on the conclusions of this exploration.

(End of this chapter)