Star Ocean: Starting from the Abandoned Mining Space Station.

Chapter 337 Evolved Zerg
The president also felt very strange when he heard Chen Ming's question.

When he was infected by the dimension for the first time, he did not feel any situation related to spatial ability and spatial effects.

Not to mention the rifts that are closely related to the Scarlet Dimension.

But after hearing Chen Ming's speculation, the president suddenly had an idea.

"When I experienced my first dimensional infection, the target of the dimensional infection was my eyes."

"The eyes are also appearing in the cracks now. Could there be a connection here?"

"Is it possible that the galaxy I had thrown into another dimension had returned to the Scarlet Dimension and had learned some abilities to move between spaces through the process of my exile?"

But Chen Ming immediately recounted what happened when he experienced the nominal second, but actually the third, dimensional infection.

No rift opened that time...

wrong.

As Chen Ming was speaking, he suddenly realized something.

The cracks exist.

Right on that distorted heart.

However, the strength of the rift was not enough at that time, and the dimensional infected entity did not have enough "nutrition" to supply, so it lost the ability to connect to the scarlet dimension, and finally could only forcibly drag Chen Ming's consciousness into the consciousness space.

then……

In the space of consciousness, Chen Ming remembered that when he had his final battle with the distorted heart, he sensed that something was coming in the starry sky in his space of consciousness.

He didn't know what it was at that time, but now it seems that it is definitely something closely related to the Scarlet Dimension.

As early as the first dimensional infection, Chen Ming had already begun to come into contact with the Scarlet Dimension.

The cracks are real.

However, this crack also did not appear directly in the normal universe. Even the distorted heart could not directly call out that kind of existence in the normal universe. Instead, it attracted something that Chen Ming had never seen before through the consciousness space.

The normal universe has indeed never opened a rift to the scarlet dimension.

There must be some hidden reason behind this.

As for what the president said, that the rift had not opened before because the Scarlet Dimension was imitating, Chen Ming could only say that he had doubts about this situation.

Since the rift has never opened in the normal universe, the president's conjecture can only be regarded as a conjecture for now.

The president easily accepted and understood what Chen Ming said. He also agreed with Chen Ming's idea: "Then I'll go through the previous files to see if there is anything I missed. I'll talk to you when I have news."

The president ended the communication with a few words.

Chen Ming closed his eyes and held his forehead.

His head hurts a little.

Let's put aside the issues of dimensional infection and phase space for now and let others deal with them.

He still has to wait until his mental strength recovers before dealing with the next things.

His mental strength is still recovering.

Although the total amount of mental power has reached a terrifying level, the recovery speed is still quite fast with the help of the hive mind network, spirit stones, condensed spiritual energy source, ship spirits and even various medicines.

It looks like it will be back to normal in a few hours, and it won't affect Chen Ming too much in continuing to work on the three fronts.

However, there is always a priority in doing things on the third line.

Two laboratory projects.

Ontology research tasks.

As well as the pioneering fleet's response and counterattack measures against the mechanical race.

If we arrange them according to the degree of urgency and the consequences of failure, then the most urgent issue must be that the pioneering fleet is about to encounter an attack from the mechanical race.

So Chen Ming will definitely focus on dealing with this matter next.

He had already made arrangements.

But he had prepared in advance to seize control of the colony from Yu Hui, and it took him several days to prepare the goods for migration. In the end, he had to rely on Chen Ming's spiritual power to operate continuously for a whole day before he could send it away.

Although the scale has not expanded much now, it does not mean there is no expansion.

It is not easy to move the base quickly.

So if he was attacked by the mechanical people now, the situation would seem to be a bit bad.

Just like... now.

Chen Ming had just finished a call with the president a few minutes ago.

He sensed that unexpected situations had occurred in some small outposts left behind by the pioneering fleet for developing resources.

Almost all strongholds near the border between the Mechanical Clan, Afterglow and the Empire, or even within two further jumps, have encountered a small fleet of the Mechanical Clan.

The mechanical fleet, consisting of a destroyer and four frigates, launched an attack on Chen Ming's strongholds at almost the same time.

Such a fleet is very small and is destined to be cannon fodder on the battlefield.

But in those small strongholds left behind by Chen Ming, a fleet of this size is enough to completely destroy the strongholds.

"It came really fast."

Chen Ming frowned.

Although he had learned the news before, he was still surprised that his territory had been discovered so quickly and that preparations for the attack were ready.

Chen Ming's original plan was to...

Forget it, there's no need to think about the original plan anymore.

The mechanical tribe arrived so quickly that the plan was of course completely disrupted, so there was no need to think about it anymore.

He must change his original plan and take countermeasures as soon as possible.

Fortunately, Chen Ming maintains a high degree of connection with all the afterglow cores. Even the weakest gamma-level core has a direct connection with Chen Ming.

Therefore, when these small strongholds were attacked, Chen Ming basically had enough time to take away the Yuhui core.

Only some unlucky afterglow cores that were unlucky at the beginning and found that the attack was slow and were hit by the core itself at the beginning were destroyed in this attack.

There are about twenty of them, which is not a lot.

Although Chen Ming’s repair power can repair the afterglow core itself, it is unable to repair the consciousness within it.

Therefore, if these afterglow cores are lost, they are truly lost.

Chen Ming now only has tens of thousands of afterglow cores, and losing a few of them would make him heartbroken.

Not to mention that the base itself, its equipment and a considerable amount of supplies could only be abandoned there, destroyed or looted by the mechanical race.

You must know that since Chen Ming's pioneering fleet has already made four jumps, there are quite a lot of these small outposts located relatively close to the empire, and the incoming supplies account for about 40% of Chen Ming's material circulation.

This will allow Chen Ming to be less dependent on the empire for resources for development.

Once he lost these small outposts, he would have to spend extra money to fill the gap in order to maintain the pioneering fleet, and he would also have to bear the impact of closer ties with the empire.

For Chen Ming, who has always been thinking about escaping the empire, these losses are real losses.

Chen Ming also thought that the mechanical clan would directly cause trouble for the main force.

Therefore, the afterglow from these places was not removed.

Because the investment cost has already been recovered, every extra day of mining will bring in extra income.

He really didn't expect that the mechanical clan's attack would be so "deep into the grassroots."

Through the vision of those afterglow cores spread throughout the entire pioneering route.

Chen Ming could see that at least one-third of the mechanical clan's spaceships in the lower-level fleets of their star field had been pulled out and used to clear out Chen Ming's small strongholds.

As for the remaining two thirds, a portion will be kept for use in the mechanical star field.

The others were probably also tasked with finding the coordinates of Chen Ming's strongholds before, and are now continuing to be responsible for finding the location of his real stronghold.

Chen Ming's small temporary strongholds can be said to be extremely scattered, and are distributed in a fairly large area.

If it weren't for the carpet search by an extremely large fleet, it would be impossible to lock down almost all of Chen Ming's small strongholds.

This scale can be said to be unprecedentedly huge.

Of course, what Chen Ming said was from his perspective and the history of this mechanical star field.

In addition, he could also see that there must be mechanical cruisers with a large number of fleets filling the surrounding star fields to further search the galaxy where Chen Ming's pioneering fleet was located.

Instead, the middle and lower level ships of the Mechanical Clan are searching through hyperspace.

So if Chen Ming does nothing.

In a few hours at the fastest and three days at the slowest, the two temporary strongholds he currently has, located one in front and one behind the third and fourth jumps respectively, will inevitably be discovered.

As long as the mechanical clan finds him, a fleet of troops from the mechanical clan will immediately arrive.

Chen Ming would not flatter himself, but judging from what the Mechanical Clan had just done, he could only believe that the Mechanical Clan had invested almost all of their mid- and low-level spacecraft to search for his existence in the nearby star fields.

Since all the lower-level fleets of the Mechanical Clan in the entire star field have been mobilized, there will definitely be at least thousands of cruisers being mobilized, and there is even the possibility that they will directly mobilize the main battleships.

The last time the Mechanical Race besieged Chen Ming was when Chen Ming attacked the Mechanical Race stronghold in order to expand the Mechanical Race hive network and seize the Mechanical Race colony ship.

At that time, the mechanical clan sent two fleets, the first batch had 20 to 30 ships, and the second batch had more than 80 ships.

Although the second batch was followed by a phase behemoth.

But it is also enough to show that when the mechanical race deals with threats, they are definitely prepared with strength that far exceeds the threats.

Before that, Chen Ming had just revealed his destructive ability against the mechanical race.

So this time, the armed forces they prepared might really exceed Chen Ming's imagination.

There may even be alien mechanical fleets.

According to the news from Baiquan, Galo's front line has not encountered any significant resistance during this period. The empire has not really invested a lot of war power, but has been able to advance smoothly.

Not only did this process encounter no significant resistance, but there was also no sign of the arrival of an alien mechanical fleet.

Even some reconnaissance fleets that were deeper into the front lines failed to detect any ambushes.

It is impossible for the machine controlled by Chen Ming to provide false information.

Isn't there only one possibility left?
The mechanical race truly regarded Chen Ming as a greater threat than the empire.

Come to think of it. For the mechanical race in this area, the threat posed by the Empire and Chen Ming are similar, and the worst that can happen is the destruction of the star field.

But to the mechanical race in the entire universe, Chen Ming is more dangerous than the Empire.

The expansion of an empire takes time and is limited.

Chen Ming can run around anywhere.

In particular, Chen Ming also has a fleet of expeditions outside and has established various strongholds. This behavior has made the mechanical race raise the threat of Chen Ming to a level that exceeds that of the empire.

Even for the mechanical race, if sacrificing a star field could kill Chen Ming here, they would definitely have the possibility of doing so.

Therefore, the number of the attacking fleet this time will only be more than Chen Ming guessed, not less.

His guess is even quite conservative.

With such a scale, Chen Ming felt that his pioneering fleet would have little room for struggle.

There are less than twenty cruisers in total. Even if they can exert several times their effectiveness under the blessing of Chen Ming's psychic power, they can't put up any resistance in front of the main battleship.

Even when facing a fleet that exceeds a certain limit in number, Chen Ming's psychic power will not be able to play a sufficient role.

Although he was also preparing, he was not prepared for a head-on battle with such a fleet, not to mention that he had not had time to prepare yet.

And there is an even more troublesome issue.

That is, the mechanical race attacked Chen Ming just when he had finished participating in the experiment, experienced the destruction of two dimensions, and his mental strength was exhausted.

Chen Ming couldn't even use his spiritual power to block the attack or speed up the relocation.

He could only verbally urge a few Afterglow Cores and then see if there were other ways to stop the Mechanical Fleet from searching for his location.

There is no reinforcement from outside the empire, so everything depends on Chen Ming himself.

The situation has really taken a turn for the worse.

Before, Chen Ming could prepare calmly, and even was at ease for quite a while, with nothing happening.

But today, there were two sudden incidents in succession.

He couldn't continue with his previous calm state of mind.
He had to figure out a way to deal with it quickly.

The first thing he had to do now was to avoid the worst situation from happening and absolutely not let the mechanical fleet approach.

There are two ways to stop the Mechanic fleet.

Prevent the mechanical fleet from discovering his settlement, or move away directly.

Chen Ming had already started preparing for the next migration, but if he did nothing, it would probably take another four or five days to prepare.

This is an impossible time to accept.

If you want to solve it, you must find a way to restore your mental strength as quickly as possible.

Chen Ming's mental strength recovery speed is very fast, so the most convenient method is to delay time.

And delaying time just happens to coincide with another method of organizing the mechanical fleet, which is to block the mechanical fleet.

As long as we can delay the speed of the mechanical clan's search, the rest will be easy.

As for the delay method...

It is not enough to just send a fleet of cruisers across.

The mechanical race is not fools. They will find that Chen Ming’s fleet will attract the most attention and only a part of it will go over. More people will definitely continue to search for his existence.

If you want to stop the mechanical race, you must do the same as the mechanical race and release a large number of mid- and low-level ships to influence the mechanical race's search in a carpet-like manner.

But this can only deal with the mechanical fleet that has been released.

If it is the fleet that follows the mechanical cruiser to jump to the outside world, it will not be so easy to solve.

There is even a certain probability that they will jump directly to Chen Ming's face.

Dealing with them is definitely a hassle.

Just when Chen Ming was thinking about how to solve the problem.

In his perception, the queen insect had already awakened in the cocoon and had completed its evolution.

It seems that luck is on his side.

Chen Ming immediately turned his attention to the Queen Insect's nest planet and just happened to see the moment when the Queen Insect broke out of her cocoon.

I saw several tentacles tearing open the cocoon wrapped around the Queen Insect's biological cruiser from the inside out, revealing the biological cruiser's current appearance.

The outer black carapace was covered with fluorescent lines, and some of the blood discharged during the evolution changed from its original gray-green color to clear, emitting a fluorescence like fairy leaves.

Even some muscle tissue in the gaps between the shells and the energy crystals sandwiched between the muscle tissue on the queen insect's body have become similar.

But soon, under the control of the Queen Insect, the shell turned black again, and the flesh turned gray-green again, and was no longer so conspicuous.

Only the clear and transparent energy crystals in the queen insect's body with a slight fluorescent glow were preserved.

This energy crystal contains even more powerful energy.

Besides these easily noticeable changes in appearance.

All the deeper changes that occurred during evolution were transmitted to Chen Ming through the consciousness link between the Queen Insect and Chen Ming.

it is more than words.

After understanding the changes of the Queen Insect.

Chen Ming breathed a sigh of relief. It seemed that the trouble would be solved soon, unless the mechanical clan really used the capital ship.

Chen Ming didn't dare to waste any more time, and immediately said to the Queen Insect: "Quickly gather the insect nest and prepare for migration and battle."

The Queen of Insects also started to act without a moment's hesitation.

The entire planet's insect nests seemed to come alive in an instant and became extremely active.

A considerable number of Zerg individuals inside the hive were immediately decomposed by the hive and transformed into new types of highly concentrated energy crystals.

Provide nutrients to the nest structure, allowing the originally fixed nest to gradually transform into the same structure as the queen.

A core control node, or Zerg neural control tumor, wrapped in the hull of a biocruiser.

Almost all Zerg hive structures began to undergo such changes, constructing one heavy, dark Zerg cruiser after another.

Due to the restrictions on Chen Ming's own psychic power that directly controls the number of spaceships, he has been considering solutions to his lack of large-scale combat power in space.

One of the solutions is the Queen of Insects.

Until today, he finally has a large-scale space combat force that can be deployed at any time.

But to be honest, Chen Ming's total mental power has already exceeded that of the Queen of Insects by a great deal. The Queen of Insects can even control so many biological cruisers.

But Chen Ming only had a few cruisers to control, which made him very nervous.

Fortunately, after Chen Ming's psychic power reached the upper limit of the number of cruisers, the number of lower-level spaceships he could control was almost unlimited.

As long as we get more armor-piercing ships, the effect will be almost the same as that of cruisers.

There is no other way, psychic power is too mysterious.

Perhaps when Chen Ming is able to control battleships, there will be fewer restrictions on cruisers.

After Chen Ming gave more detailed orders.

The Queen also gradually adjusted the process of hive transformation.

The main thing is to give priority to recycling and transforming Zerg in the Hives located in the shallow layers of the Hive Planet.

The deep-level hives continued to breed large numbers of worker insects at a crazy rate, continued to mine the planet's resources at a crazy efficiency, and devoured everything on the planet.

The Queen's psychic power showed a new concentrated effect after evolution.

The physical enhancement ability can focus on strengthening certain parts of an individual's body.

The worker insects responsible for digging have strengthened their digging limbs, and the worker insects responsible for digestion have strengthened their digestive organs. Even the hive tissues responsible for converting energy into energy crystals have had their corresponding organizational structures strengthened.

The Zerg hives are madly devouring the planets they host, converting the planets into energy crystals and into resources for the Zerg.

Just a few dozen minutes passed.

All the Zerg nests on the shallow side of the planet have been transformed into Zerg cruisers.

There are some places where the rock layer has been exposed due to the transformation of the hive, but it was immediately covered by the fungal carpet that has evolved again and has a higher expansion speed and strength.

It can be seen that the deep Zerg nest is still breeding Zerg and still devouring everything.

The number of Zerg cruisers transformed from the shallow hives alone has exceeded 100,000.

When Chen Ming got this number, he found that he was wrong, and he was wrong very much.

He had always underestimated the Queen's power, and underestimated it quite a lot.

He originally thought that it would take time for the Queen of Insects to develop a large-scale combat force after evolving.

The most we can do is to create some temporary combat forces in a short period of time to help him solve the problems in front of him.

But now it seems.

The Queen of Worms even has the ability to fight head-on with an entire mechanical star field.

Chen Ming has always liked to observe many things from a pessimistic perspective and has always made predictions based on the worst-case scenario.

Therefore, he felt that after the Queen of Insects evolved, at most he would be able to fight against the incoming mechanical fleet to a certain extent.

But in fact, the situation was much better than he thought.

After all, the Zerg are not humans, afterglows or machines, so they don’t need to consider the planning and construction of industrial colonies and then the production of ships.

What the Zerg have to do is to devour everything, convert everything into nutrients, and then convert the nutrients into warships.

This is the terrifying efficiency of the Zerg.

Under normal circumstances, the average length of a cruiser is one thousand meters. After the Zerg cruiser has evolved and Chen Ming has just used his limited mental power to optimize it, its average length is about one thousand two hundred meters.

The circumference of the Earth is 40,000 kilometers.

Today, the Zerg's warships can be connected together to circle the earth more than three times, not to mention the height and width of the warships.

These numbers may seem exaggerated at first glance, but if you think about them carefully you will find that they are not exaggerated at all.

Because there are even more exaggerated ones.

(End of this chapter)