Star Ocean: Starting from the Abandoned Mining Space Station.

Chapter 340 Ambush
The Zerg cruiser crashed to the ground from space.

The reaction force brought about by the violent collision without any deceleration was too much for it to bear, and it died completely at the moment of the collision.

However, while the violent impact shattered the earth and the cruiser itself, the Zerg inside the cruiser survived.

They took advantage of the opportunity when the nearby mechanical race had not yet surrounded them, and with the cover of the wreckage of the Zerg cruiser, they invaded the underground of the planet belonging to the mechanical race.

The Queen's consciousness then replaced the Zerg units that had gone deep underground.

Next, it will control these insects personally.

The queen insect immediately let the insects carrying the energy crystals devour the crystals and differentiate the basic tissues of the insect nest on their bodies.

Another part of the Zerg quickly transformed into all the types of insects needed to cultivate new hives by consuming energy.

The Zerg units responsible for digging immediately began digging underground.

The Zerg responsible for digestion then began to devour the excavated rocks, soil and minerals, converting them into nutrients to provide to all other Zerg that provide all the conditions needed to build the hive.

In just a few tens of seconds, the framework of the insect nest appeared deep underground.

A larval hatching pool was also built in the center of the frame.

Under normal circumstances, the production efficiency of the larvae hatching pool can only be said to be acceptable, but it cannot meet the needs of rapid military expansion in a short period of time.

But this time things are different.

The Queen Insect's spiritual energy is bestowed on the hatching pool.

In the process of consuming a large amount of energy, the hatching rate in the larval hatching pool is nearly twenty times faster than normal.

Only Zerg with sufficient numbers can become the cornerstone of the battlefield.

In addition to the Queen's use of psychic energy to enhance the breeding efficiency of the larvae hatching pool.

There is also a faintly glowing vesicle-like structure on the outside of the larval hatching pool, a biological building.

It was filled with a bright green liquid that was slowly being poured into the interior of the incubation tank.

This liquid was invented by Chen Ming some time ago because the Zerg units hatched too slowly without preparation. When applied to actual combat, Zerg eggs had to be arranged in advance and the eggs were given too long to hatch and grow. So the Queen Zerg used its ability to produce special substances to create a new thing.

The injection of this liquid can greatly promote the differentiation of cultured larval insect cells and accelerate the growth and cultivation of individuals.

Allow the larvae to grow as quickly as possible to an age where they can work or fight.

Of course, the side effect is that the lifespan of Zerg units is greatly shortened.

However, the lifespan of the Zerg units themselves is not long. Only the queen can survive for a long time. The life cycle of others, such as the worker insects, is longer, but will not exceed one month.

Moreover, in battle, life span is not an issue that needs to be considered at all.

The most important thing is how to produce Zerg as quickly and efficiently as possible.

As the hatching pool operated, a large number of larvae crawled out of the hatching pool under the stimulation of special substances.

Some of the larvae go to nearby areas that have just been mined by insects and differentiate into new larval hatching pools.

Another part of the larvae are further cultivated by the queen insect into worker insects with different functions, joining the work of the previous insects.

Further acquire underground resources to expand the hive.

As the hive expands, the number of larvae hatching pools is increasing, and the number of larvae can be said to be growing exponentially.

Even these larvae, worker insects and even hatching tanks may not survive more than a day.

But after they grow up, they are enough to create enough opportunities in the next period of time.

The mechanical race cannot sit idly by and watch the rapid expansion of the hive.

It’s just that underground insect nests are quite troublesome to deal with.

Although many of the mechanical clan’s buildings are equipped with devices to emit shock waves into the ground and kill underground creatures.

However, these devices, which seemed to be specially designed to restrain the Zerg, could not reach the deep underground where the Zerg nest was located at this time.

The Mechs are also trying to use some of their working Mech units to dig out the soil beneath the bodies of the fallen Zerg cruisers.

But it took some time just to clean up the corpses, and after cleaning up the corpses, the mechanical clan discovered that the passage originally dug by the insects had collapsed.

For a while, they were unable to keep up with the Zerg's digging speed.

They could only temporarily give up hunting down the Zerg underground and concentrate their efforts on defending against attacks from space.

In addition to clearing out the underground insect nests, they also need to fill the gaps in the orbital defense system.

The loopholes in the orbital defense system can only be addressed by calling in facilities in other directions in areas with less pressure.

Relying on the facilities dispatched urgently, the mechanical clan managed to fill some of the gaps that had been opened.

This will prevent the Zerg from breaking through again and creating more Zerg nests.

However, the number of Zerg fleets is ultimately too exaggerated.

Wherever the Mechanoids have moved their orbital defense facilities, the Zerg fleet will concentrate its firepower to attack that area, and they may even have enough strength to continue to divide their forces and launch attacks on the entire planet from different locations.

A planet this large is bound to have weak defenses.

Chen Ming did not intend to give up the location where the Queen of Insects had just entered the planet in the first wave. He was determined to engage in a head-on battle with the most intense firepower of the Mechanical Clan and launch a frontal attack.

Because this is the core colony of the mechanical race on this planet.

While the Zerg fleet in space continued its attack.

The queen worm deep underground is still continuing to expand and reproduce.

The insects brought by the three cruisers that just crashed have already started a large-scale reproduction, and several fully functional insect nests have begun to take shape.

At this time, Chen Ming also gave new instructions.

Let the underground Zerg go to the nearby mechanical mineral mining area to seize the mineral veins.

The colony where the three hives controlled by the Queen are located is the core colony of the entire planet and also a comprehensive colony.

Near the edge of this colony, there is a large mineral vein and mineral mining areas distributed along the vein.

Expanding over there and devouring minerals is more efficient than devouring soil and rocks to obtain energy.

The Queen of Insects immediately followed Chen Ming's orders.

The three insect nests changed their development direction and dug towards the mineral mining area.

Dozens of Zerg digging workers, each with two pairs of huge digging forelimbs and a pair of well-developed broom-like hind limbs, dug frantically and in just a few minutes they reached the Mechanical Clan's mine and drilled through the entire passage.

However, as soon as the tunnel was dug, a high heat flowed into the tunnel dug by the Zerg along the excavated channel.

The Infernal Lord is resting in the mine.

This is a trap set by the Mechanicals after anticipating the Zerg's movements.

The moment the Demon King discovered that the Zerg had dug a tunnel, he immediately activated the Infernal Core. The horrific heat as if hell had descended poured back through the passage dug by the Zerg, destroying the Zerg nest that had just been connected to the mine.

Only piles of charred fungi and insect corpses were left.

An insect nest was destroyed, but the queen insect continued to carry out Chen Ming's orders without any hesitation.

The two nearby insect nests were still digging towards the mine, opening up several passages in different locations.

A large amount of fungal concentrate sprayed out from the passage.

While cooling down the entire environment, some high-energy liquid energy crystals extended into the mine along the biomass ducts in the rock layer below the fungal mat.

It avoids being directly destroyed by the high heat of Purgatory Demon, and at the same time the enclosed space can maximize the power of the explosion.

Amid the roar of high-energy crystal explosions, the mine collapsed.

The demon king trapped deep underground lost his ability to move and was immediately torn to pieces by the Zerg that moved freely underground.

The charred Zerg corpses in the hive destroyed by the Demon King were quickly devoured by the other two hives, and a new hive was rebuilt on the corpses of the original hive using the larvae.

The new insect nest was restored to its original state with the help of the previous corpses, and parasitized an entire vein along the mine.

Devouring the ores, transforming the nutrients, and shaping into new Zerg.

The insects, which were already growing exponentially, now had even more energy to reproduce after occupying this huge mineral vein.

After that, only a dozen minutes passed.

A pitch-black Titan worm broke out from the mine that was re-excavated by the Zerg.

Following closely behind them was the Zerg, which was now strong enough to contend with the mechanical ground forces.

The swarm on the ground has a clear goal.

That is the nearest ground orbital defense facility.

As long as the orbital defense facilities are destroyed, the entire planet will be ravaged by the Zerg fleet.

Although the Mechanic were unable to completely eliminate the Zerg when they invaded underground, they also prepared a huge number of ground Mechanic units on the surface to try to stop the Zerg's advance.

There are even a considerable number of mechanical psychic creatures mixed in among the mechanical units.

But the average combat effectiveness of the Zerg is now higher than that of the Mechanical Race.

The shells reinforced by the skin of fairy trees and the new energy crystals with extremely abundant energy meant that the Zerg suffered almost no losses under the firepower coverage of the Mechanical Clan.

Those mechanical psychic creatures are far from being as strong as fourth-level psychics and cannot pose enough threat to the Zerg.

Even if the mechanical clan dispatched several more demon kings, even if the entire environment has become like real purgatory.

The Zerg still broke through the Mechanical's defenses with great force.

We are about to arrive at the area where the ground orbital defense facilities are concentrated.

The situation is critical.

Some orbital defense facilities in orbit were forced to turn their guns and aim at the ground to curb the speed of the Zerg's attack on the ground orbital defense facilities.

However, if the Mechanic race does so, it means a weakening of the orbital defense force against the Zerg fleet.

But if they don't, the ground orbital defense facilities will also be destroyed.

This is a dead end.

Soon, the orbital defense system that had been breached once before was breached again.

The gap was opened again, and dozens of Zerg cruisers successfully broke through the defense line and crashed on the land of the Mechanical Planet.

Countless Zerg once again burrowed into the ground, hiding deep inside where the Mechanical Clan's underground defense weapons could not reach.

When they appear again, they will be strong enough to compete with the mechanical race.

Such a scene not only occurred on the battlefield of the core colony of the Mechanical Clan that Chen Ming was concerned about, but also occurred in several colonies on the entire Mechanical Clan planet.

After seeing that the situation had become one-sided, Chen Ming handed over all the remaining command tasks to the Queen of Insects.

At this time, he was paying attention to the familiar-looking building of the mechanical psychic biological transformation facility near the center of the core colony of the mechanical race.

Chen Ming planned that if the mechanical race had already taken action to destroy the equipment, he would directly use his psychic power to rob it.

However, the mechanical race did not seem to have any signs of directly destroying the equipment.

But this does not mean that Chen Ming can easily obtain the equipment.

On the contrary, he needs to pay more attention.

The mechanical race had already learned from the colony that was previously attacked by the phase monster that he intended to seize the equipment.

Before, the mechanical clan also decisively destroyed the equipment, leaving Chen Ming no chance to seize it.

As a result, Chen Ming only got one third of the equipment.

There is only one reason why they didn't do that this time. There's an ambush.

But what if there is an ambush?
Chen Ming was confident that he could withstand the ambush of the mechanical tribe and steal the things.

As gaps appeared everywhere in the planet's orbital defense facilities, more and more Zerg cruisers entered the defense line.

Several Zerg troops on the ground finally arrived near several clusters of orbital defense industrial facilities of the Mechanical Clan and completely destroyed all the ground orbital defense facilities.

The Mechanic's front line collapsed completely, and the orbital defense facilities that had turned their guns in space orbit to try to destroy the Zerg units on the ground were also destroyed.

The entire planet completely lost air superiority.

On the ground, the source of minerals in the mines was occupied by Zerg.

The industrial chain for manufacturing mechanical core units was broken, and the mechanical race could only rely on the originally stored materials to desperately produce new mechanical units in their last struggle.

But soon, more and more Zergs that occupied the mines crawled out from underground.

They cleared out the remaining forces of the Mechanical Clan, destroyed the Mechanical Clan's industrial areas, and occupied their warehouses.

New biomass is gradually growing in these warehouses.

This is because the Zerg convert more energy into the metals smelted in the warehouse by devouring them.

After the Mechanoids lost their air superiority, the Zerg Hives could now breed in warehouses on the surface.

The entire industrial zone is falling, and it won’t be long before the Zerg will completely wipe out all the mechanical units here.

Then there is no need for Chen Ming to give orders from now on.

Or maybe he didn't give any orders at all.

I briefly explained the basic tactics to the Queen of Insects and the rest was just to rely on the difference in combat power to overcome them.

As for what he said before starting the battle, about testing his own command skills.

was all he could say.

Command? What command? Why would you command something that can be run over?

His Zerg fleet possesses terrifying strength and logistics, and can be transformed into a huge fighting force as long as it can devour a planet.

Just run over it and it's done, what's the point of giving orders?
Of course, Chen Ming also knew the gap between his Zerg fleet and the top forces in the mechanical star field.

In addition, he is now in the Mechanical Star Region. Even if it is just the border, the Mechanical Race can still send reinforcements from other colonies.

So at this moment he is still paying close attention to the situation of the entire galaxy.

However, at this time, there were no unexpected situations in the entire galaxy.

No ships, no support, no help.

It's as if the mechanical race had abandoned this planet, leaving it to fend for itself.

This situation made Chen Ming extremely vigilant.

He didn't believe that the mechanical race had given up on this place, because if they really had given up, they would have killed each other and destroyed each other, leaving him nothing of value.

Just like they did last time.

The current situation is definitely just the calm before the storm.

Real danger could come at any time.

at this time.

The several colonies of the mechanical race on the ground have almost turned into a scorched earth mixed with black and gray-green.

Only a small core area located in the core colony of the entire planet is still putting up the final resistance.

This is because the mechanical psychic-biological transformation facilities that Chen Ming needs are located here, so Chen Ming deliberately did not let the fleet in space attack this area.

Even at the last moment, the mechanical race still did not destroy the transformation facility.

It can be said that the words "There is a trap here" are clearly written on this thing.

But Chen Ming really had to step in.

In order to obtain the equipment, he must take the necessary risks.

Then it's time.

Chen Ming's real body closed his eyes.

His consciousness appeared in the body of a robot on a Zerg cruiser that had just passed through a gap in the orbital defense system.

It’s still the same robot based on power armor as before.

However, this time Chen Ming used the complete version of the power armor, which was a biological power armor that integrated the crystallization of technology and biotechnology. It was equipped with an afterglow core and a miniaturized biomass jump engine.

This half-biological, half-mechanical power armor exudes a rich psychic energy fluctuation belonging to Chen Ming all over.

Enough to pretend that he had come in person.

The Zerg cruiser crash-lands near the facility.

At the moment the cruiser crashed, Chen Ming used the jump engine to instantly jump to the side of the building.

He reached out and pressed on the outer shell of the facility, while at the same time extending a data cable from a hidden place, bringing the building under his control.

This process took only three seconds.

And at the moment when these three seconds ended, the mechanical clan's counterattack came.

A violent and turbulent transition wave appeared simultaneously at three locations outside the planet's orbit.

This is different from ordinary transition fluctuations.

Ordinary jump fluctuations will appear on both the starting point and the end point of the jump engine when it is started, and will last for a period of time, allowing people or other things near the target location to anticipate it in advance and have about ten seconds to react.

And the three violent and turbulent transition fluctuations that appeared now stopped the moment they appeared.

The three motherships of the Mechanical Clan appeared in the orbit of the planet within one second, scattered in three locations.

The three motherships activated the jump blockade device at the same time, blocking the entire planet.

We must keep Chen Ming here forever.

Immediately afterwards, another wave of jump fluctuations appeared near the orbit. This wave of jump fluctuations was normal. It should be the follow-up reinforcements of the rest of the mechanical fleet.

Just to prevent Chen Ming from escaping at the first moment, the mechanical clan chose to use special means to jump first and sent the mothership over to prevent Chen Ming from escaping.

At this time, Chen Ming looked up at the space.

Sure enough, there was a trap waiting for him.

The nine ridge-top cannons of the three motherships were all aimed at his current location.

The next moment, the entire colony or even the entire planet could collapse under such an attack.

But Chen Ming was not panicked at all.

He even stretched out his hand and gave the mechanical race a thumbs-down, then started the biomass jump engine.

Although the waves of the jump were blocked within the entire planet by the three motherships, Chen Ming suddenly disappeared from the planet and in front of the mechanical race.

The facilities and an entire building nearby also disappeared the moment he disappeared.

Only the firepower of the spine cannon completely vaporized the Zerg, Mechs and buildings in this area.

This certainly doesn’t mean that Chen Ming’s transition was successful.

The jump system is blocked, and it is impossible to leave by any normal jump means.

He was able to leave purely because he used his psychic powers to teleport the robot disguised as him. Of course, using the teleportation effect of the Scarlet Dimension, he could break through the blockade of the jump system.

But from the perspective of the scene, it seemed that Chen Ming used the jump to leave the planet.

The mechanical clan missed this opportunity, but they will definitely not miss it again when Chen Ming appears again next time.

For Chen Ming, his goal has been achieved, so the rest doesn't matter.

After giving the Queen of Insects the order to destroy the mechanical clan and seize their resources.

The Queen immediately ordered all the remaining Zerg units to start wreaking havoc.

It is destroying the entire planet like a wild horse that has run away from its reins.

Seizing everything on the planet, converting everything into energy crystals, and then sending them back to the Zerg's previous base camp through Chen Ming's psychic power.

The fleet in space, like a mad dog, pursued the three attacking mechanical motherships.

The one that escaped previously is not among these three motherships.

It seems that the number of motherships Chen Ming has come into contact with has become four.

Just as the Zerg fleet pounced on the motherships, the Ridge Peak Cannons on the three motherships, which had originally dimmed, suddenly lit up again.

Instead of aiming at the Zerg fleet rushing towards them, they continued to aim at the planet.

Although the original target Chen Ming has disappeared, they now have a new target, which is the planet itself.

The Zerg have penetrated deep into the planet's underground, and ordinary means are no longer possible to clear the Zerg from the planet.

This planet is useless to the mechanical race.

There is no need to look after a ruined planet.

The fire from the nine ridge cannons swept across the land, accurately hitting the weak spots in the planet's geological plates that the Mechanoids had discovered during their exploration of the planet.

When attacked by severe external forces, these fragile plates will collapse, causing terrible earthquakes that sweep across the entire planet.

Such an earthquake is enough to completely kill all underground life.

But the mechanical race did not stop.

After the violent movement of the plates caused volcanic activity to become more frequent, several ridge cannons continued to fire.

Inducing violent activity in the plates at the center of the planet is to directly destroy the entire planet from the root, leaving absolutely no chance for the Zerg to survive.

The subsequent reinforcements of the Mechanical Clan also arrived as the jump fluctuations subsided, although they were still outnumbered by Chen Ming's fleet.

But the three battleships are also a qualitative leap compared to a single ship.

At least Chen Ming’s current fleet is definitely not enough to destroy the three battleships, and he may not even be able to escape.

However, Chen Ming did not expect that the Zerg that came this time could come back alive.

At this final moment, how many Zerg warships can these Mechanical warships destroy and how much combat damage can they exchange for.

Anyway, Chen Ming's resources all grow from the ground, but the mechanical clan has to dig for their own resources and build their own production lines.

It's worth it if you can exchange it.

Not to mention the invisible value that those spaceships contaminated by the Zerg organization brought to Chen Ming during the battle.

The war on the planet on the edge of the Mechanical Clan's star field has come to a temporary halt.

At the cost of the loss of more than 100,000 Zerg cruisers, a mechanical colony and planet were destroyed, more than 200,000 warships of different levels were destroyed, and several battleships were marked.

And let Chen Ming achieve his goal.

It seems a bit of a loss.

But in fact, all Chen Ming lost from beginning to end were some rocks, soil and time.

(End of this chapter)