Star Ocean: Starting from the Abandoned Mining Space Station.

Chapter 343 New Prosthesis
Zerg Guards was an idea Chen Ming had long had.

Only after today did this become a real idea that he had to deal with.

Because in this surprise attack on the mechanical galaxy, Chen Ming saw many problems.

Especially during ground combat.

The bugs that invaded the mechanical planet and established a hive relied on space battleships when they broke into the planet.

After entering the ground, they can only rely on ordinary Zerg units carried by some warships and the corpses of Zerg cruisers as cover, and lack the ability to protect themselves.

Basically, they can only rely on themselves and may be wiped out at any time before they can go deep underground.

If it weren't for the fact that the Mechanical Race seemed to have no experience in dealing with such a situation, leaving a gap for the Zerg to hide deep underground, this attack would certainly not have been so smooth.

And next time, the Mechanical Race will never give the Zerg such an opportunity. Once the Zerg reach the ground, the Mechanical Race will definitely find ways to destroy them at all costs.

Not to mention that even if the Zerg units have formed a hive, they may be eliminated by the powerful ground combat units of the Mechanical Clan, such as the Demon King.

therefore.

Chen Ming felt that when deploying Zerg onto the mechanical race’s planet, powerful combat units would be needed to provide security for the Zerg that were building their nests.

This does not mean that we can just provide some Zerg units to participate in the invasion, but we must make thorough and absolute defense.

It just so happened that an idea he had previously had of creating powerful Zerg guards appeared in his mind.

This unit was originally intended to be used to protect the Queen Zerg, and it can be used to protect Zergs performing important tasks.

It doesn't mean that the guards must come to protect the Queen. The Zerg, which are rare in number and have extremely strong combat power, are capable of doing more.

What's more, the Queen of Insects has Chen Ming's spiritual power as a backup, so it is impossible for her to encounter any danger.

The guards are a unit that has no value to the Queen.

But to the entire Zerg, the Guards are valuable.

Chen Ming imagined that the number of Zerg guards would not be too many.

They will not arrive on the ground with the Zerg invading fleet, but will be deployed using his psychic energy at the same time as the units that create the hive arrive on enemy territory.

Entering the atmosphere is the mission of the Zerg spacecraft, while protecting the Zerg deep underground from being destroyed by the mechanical race after landing is the mission of the Zerg Guards.

Therefore, Chen Ming has very high requirements for the Royal Guard Zerg, at least they must be worthy of his exclusive use of psychic energy to target them.

Chen Ming probably also had the same idea as the Royal Guard Zerg unit.

Of course, not a Zerg like An Wuping.

Although the Zerg combat unit imitated from An Wuping can be said to be the one with the highest individual combat power in the entire Zerg, it also has its shortcomings.

The comprehensive capabilities brought by the Chaos Core in An Wuping's body cannot be replicated on ordinary Zerg units.

Moreover, the strength of Zerg individuals like An Wuping lies only in their own combat power, and their protection capabilities are basically zero.

He is obviously unqualified to be a royal guard.

The guards in Chen Ming's idea must have strong combat and protection capabilities to be able to persist in the enemy's base camp until other Zergs hide underground.

Therefore, the Guard Zerg can abandon comprehensive combat effectiveness and mobility and develop purely in the direction of protection.

However, the Zerg do not have a unit that meets these requirements.

This is true even for the Titan worm, which currently seems to have the strongest protective capabilities and needs to be at the forefront of the ground battlefield.

It also relies on its powerful charge to crush and destroy the enemy, and then relies on its size to passively absorb all damage to protect other Zerg in disguise.

It's OK in some battlefields where there are confrontations, but when invading and needing to temporarily stay in a certain location to perform protection tasks, the Titan worm's own capabilities are not enough.

It can only be said that it is really difficult for a species like the Zerg, which is fearless and brave, and can fight to the death like all other insects when necessary even the weakest worker insects do not care about any losses, to protect something.

It is not enough to not be afraid of dying on the battlefield.

Invasion can only send a limited number of Zerg to the enemy's territory. Trying to achieve your goal mindlessly and desperately is just a waste of opportunity and gives the enemy time to prepare.

There must be enough combat power to protect those weak but extremely important insects, so that the insect nest can be built underground and the enemy's planet can be destroyed from the inside.

The Zerg themselves have no protective capabilities, and Chen Ming couldn't even imagine what kind of Zerg could meet his needs.

But if combined with mechanical spiritual nerve activation, the guards would have suitable manufacturing conditions.

Chen Ming has already begun to plan to further increase the intensity of attacks on the mechanical clan's star field, which also provides the guards with sufficient environment for use.

When the Zerg attacked the Mechanical Clan's planet and released Zerg, there were actually only three dangers that needed to be faced in protecting these Zerg from building their nests.

The encirclement and suppression of the Mechanical Clan's ordinary units, the targeting of the Mechanical Clan's psychic units, and the attack of the orbital defense facilities.

Ground units can rely on the Zerg's own abilities to block.
It means protection is the main thing, with killing the enemy as a supplement.

The prerequisite is that the size of the Royal Guard Zerg must be large enough.

Just use the Titan worm as a template, change the shape of the original Titan worm's forelimbs, and form shield-shaped forelimbs by gathering a large amount of keratin.

The front carapace is further thickened, sacrificing mobility in exchange for absolute frontal defensive power.

In combat, it relies purely on its own mass and brute force to strike with its shield to inflict damage to the enemy.

If they want to defend against the ordinary ground units of the Mechanoids, the defensive capabilities of these Guardian Zergs must be at least strong enough to withstand the direct frontal fire of the Centipede's Charge Cannon.

This is relatively easy to solve.

If defense is not enough, psychic power will make up for it.

The Queen's psychic power is now effective enough to allow many Zerg to withstand the attacks of many Mechanicals by specifically strengthening their own shell defenses.
So on this basis, we only need to slightly improve the Titan worm.

Slightly adjust the size and proportion of the body, turning the Zerg that was originally charging into a Zerg that is stationed for defense.

As long as the most basic activity ability and mobility are guaranteed, it will not be easily broken through by the flexible mechanical units.

Then, with a little improvement in the air defense capability, it will basically be enough to protect the Zerg units from the ordinary ground units of the Mechanical Clan and send them underground.

If Chen Ming had to explain these requirements, he could actually have come up with them after a little research.

As long as he puts forward an idea, the Queen of Insects will definitely help him realize it.

The real source of trouble that has caused Chen Ming to start dealing with the Guards now is obviously the mechanical race's psychic units and orbital defense facilities.

After the Zerg fleet broke through a planet's space defenses, the biggest troubles after entering the planet were these two.

In the absence of sufficient support from the outside world.

Both the psionic mechanical units and the orbital defense facilities are problems that most Zerg units cannot solve.

Unless the enemy is completely crushed in numbers.

Just like the battle that just broke out.

The Mechanical Race failed to dispatch the Demon King in time to clean up the Zerg when they were still struggling to gain a firm foothold on the planet, which led to the Zerg's development. They relied on their terrifying numbers to crush the Demon King.

If the Demon King had arrived just as the Zerg had landed, things would not have gone so smoothly.

And next time, Chen Ming can be 100% sure that the Mechanical Clan will deploy at least three Demon Kings at the Zerg landing point.

Therefore, psychic mechanical individuals like the Demon King will be problems that must be solved when the Zerg invades in the future.

If it were a space war, the Infernal Lord would be just like that, but on the ground, it would be difficult for the physical strength of the ground Zerg units alone to break through the psychic strength of the Infernal Core.

And this requires mechanical spiritual nerve activation.

The Black Mist psychic power that Chen Ming had just obtained from the Black Mist Mechanical Spiritual Awakening Nerve is extremely comprehensive, integrating the abilities of displacement, protection, attack, etc.

Whether dealing with other psychic machines or orbital defense facilities, you can rely on it to solve most problems.

Although the mechanical spiritual awakening nerves are weaker than the spiritual awakening nerves before transformation, the Royal Guard Zerg do not need to defeat them, they just need to delay time.

Once the insects burrow into the ground, their mission is accomplished.

Moreover, Chen Ming had just obtained the Black Mist Mechanical Spiritual Awakening Nerve, and he would definitely need to make adjustments to it later.

If Chen Ming really lacks strength, the worst that can happen is that he can just pull some more spiritual energy from the black fog core.

It's impossible to say that it can't be stopped.

Although it may not be possible to fight against the mechanical race for a long time.

Mechanical spiritual nerves essentially have an upper limit, and they are just a means for the Shining Civilization to deal with by-products such as spiritual energy.

It can't compare to the Purgatory Core in the hands of the Mechanical Clan.

But it is not too difficult to make the power brought by the mechanical spiritual nerves strong enough to withstand the attacks of orbital defense facilities for a period of time.

Then all Chen Ming needs to do next is to cultivate the prototype of the Royal Guard Zerg, and then implant the spiritual awakening nerve into the newly-formed Royal Guard Zerg unit to complete the cultivation of the Royal Guard Zerg... probably...

In fact, it probably won’t work because there is still a very critical issue.

How to teach Zerg units to use Black Mist Mechanical Nerves?
The mechanical psychic creatures of the mechanical race have mechanical psychic nerves installed before they become mechanical psychic creatures. By undergoing the biological to mechanical transformation process together, the biological and mechanical psychic nerves are completely assimilated.

In this way, after the transformation is completed, the mechanical psychic creatures will master the use of those mechanical psychic nerves through the coordination of nanorobots.

But for the Zerg, being completely transformed into machines is no different from being useless.

If an ordinary Zerg with only a mechanical appearance loses the power of the Queen Zerg while mastering the psychic power of the weak mechanical psychic nerves and cannot use the mechanical psychic nerves and the power of the Queen Zerg together, it would be better for them to go directly to the Zerg.

So this is also something that needs to be considered.

This problem has been solved with the emergence of half-mechanical, half-biological individuals like Sample Zero that combine the advantages of both.

As long as the conversion process is only carried out halfway, allowing the Zerg individuals to partially mechanize and master the mechanical spiritual awakening neural abilities, while retaining most of the Zerg's abilities, the problem of not being able to use the Zerg and mechanical spiritual awakening neural abilities at the same time can be solved.

However, when this complete device was designed, Chen Ming's current need to convert only half of the data was not taken into consideration.

It does not have such functionality.

However, if the Zerg being transformed were taken out halfway through the transformation process, or if the system was forced to shut down, problems would definitely arise, rather than creating a half-mechanical, half-biological being that could truly achieve the desired effect.

As for the damaged conversion facility that was eliminated, it could not be used directly to convert the guards.

Looks like he'll have to fix it himself.

Chen Ming has always had a psychic power that he has not used on the damaged equipment.

It is the advanced psychic effect of maintenance, deep maintenance, which can also be called deep repair.

Its previous role can optimize the target device, making it almost perfect under its current role.

And now, after Chen Ming experienced another event related to the Scarlet Dimension, it has undergone new changes.

In-depth maintenance will optimize the effect in a comprehensive direction.

It will be optimized in the direction of the original target's function.

Now, as long as Chen Ming has the need and the idea, he can actively use his psychic power to intervene in the deep maintenance process, so that the optimization process is no longer comprehensive, but shifts in a direction he wants.

For example, with the one-third transformation facility in his hand, Chen Ming can optimize it to transform only half-mechanical, half-biological individuals.

Chen Ming didn't use this psychic power before because he hadn't experienced the recent Scarlet Dimension incident, and he only had one copy in his hand.

What if something went wrong during the previous repairs, such as completely repairing the facility and making it impossible for him to continue transforming the half-machine, half-organic creature? That would be troublesome.

And now that he has the additional knowledge from the Scarlet Dimension, his mastery of psychic powers has reached a new level, and he also has a second complete device.

He even mastered a lot of knowledge about half-mechanical and half-biological things through Sample Zero.

That's enough to do it.

With the activation of Chen Ming's psychic power, the directional deep maintenance effect was applied to the one-third of the transformation facilities of the mechanical clan.

As he actively stimulated psychic energy to exert further influence, the facility gradually lost most of its functions, and ultimately only had the ability to mechanize some tissues and organs of living things.

Although this device lost a lot of additional value, its optimized results perfectly met Chen Ming's needs.

A guard Zerg that had just been bred by the Queen and implanted with the Black Mist mechanical spiritual awakening nerve was also stuffed into this newly optimized facility.

After Chen Ming set the target of transformation to the flesh and blood implanted near the mechanical spiritual nerves under the back shell of the guard Zerg.

The transformation has begun.

Nanobots crawled out of the facility and attacked the back of the Guardian Zerg.

The way nanorobots work is slightly different from before.

It no longer completely transforms flesh and blood tissue into machinery.

Instead, it is transforming some flesh and blood tissue into a structure that can communicate with the machine.

And some of the machinery was transformed into structures that could maintain close contact with flesh and blood without repelling each other.

What Chen Ming wants is integration, not transformation or replacement.

That's what he thinks.

He relied on his psychic powers to exert his ideas on the facilities without understanding how they worked.

And he wanted to go further.

While he was converting the facility into operation, he still used his psychic energy directed at deep repairs on the facility.

He wants to optimize the facilities to what he most wants to see.

Although he had no idea how the conversion facility worked, his psychic abilities allowed him to understand it.

His hands can help him do things that he can figure out and calculate.

And his psychic powers can help him do what he wants.

time flies.

The transformation process is over.

The Guard Zerg crawled out of the facility.

Its appearance has not changed much, except that there are mechanical spines on its back that run through the entire body.

Inside the body of the Guardian Zerg, which cannot be seen from the outside, there are countless nerves deriving from the mechanical spine and spreading throughout the entire body of the Guardian Zerg.

These nerves are extensions of the mechanical spine, allowing the power of the black mist to permeate the entire Zerg body.

A faint black mist was slowly emanating from the body of the Royal Guard Zerg.

As an exoskeleton creature, the Zerg's extra spine looks weird, but it does not affect its effect.

Chen Ming directly used his psychic power to bring the guard Zerg to his side.

A huge body suddenly appeared in front of him.

Feeling the psychic power brought to it by the Black Mist Mechanical Spiritual Awakening Nerves, it released its mental power to test this transformed Royal Guard Zerg.

No actual combat is required, only mental stimulation and simple simulation using mental power.

Chen Ming could be sure that three or so Guard Zergs would be enough to protect the Zerg invading the planet for a period of time under the attack of the Infernal Lord and orbital defense facilities.

I believe that it will not be long before this Royal Guard Zerg will have its first battle.

At that time, it will be verified whether such guards have any value in existence.

After Chen Ming recorded the data of this guard in detail, he sent it back to Chigou, asking the Queen Insect to continue to create new guards. He would then start the equipment again to carry out the transformation.

So there is not much left for the guards to do at this point.

And the next project to do.

It is the transformation of the Black Mist Psychic's prosthesis.

The parasite had already been implanted in the body of the Black Mist Psychic, and the transformation of the human body into an insect body was almost complete.

However, Chen Ming has not yet attacked the Black Mist Psychic's brain, because he has one last thing to do.

He asked for the Black Mist Psychic from the Supernatural who had been raising Black Mist, and prepared a Black Mist mechanical psychic nerve that was about the same size as the human spine.

The Queen of Insects performed a spinal replacement surgery on the Black Mist Psychic and implanted the Black Mist mechanical spiritual nerve.

Black Mist Psychic Power is originally the psychic power of the Black Mist Psychic, so there is no need to master the use of mechanical psychic nerves. The Black Mist Psychic's body will instinctively mobilize the Black Mist Psychic Power.

Immediately afterwards, the consciousness in his brain was stimulated. After his body was supported by mechanical spiritual nerves, it was enough to support the weakened consciousness of a psychic.

The Black Mist Psychic woke up.

He could feel something inside him moving, trying to speak, but his mouth wouldn't listen.

He wanted to mobilize his psychic power, but his psychic power seemed to have abandoned him and treated him as nothing.

His consciousness was struggling frantically, but his body lay calmly on the operating table.

There is nothing he can do.

This feeling of powerlessness and the unfamiliar environment around him gradually gave rise to fear in the heart of the Black Mist Psychic.

And when the sound of footsteps slowly approached from a blind spot that was beyond his sight, the fear continued to grow.

"Okay, see you in the next life."

This familiar voice appeared in the ears of the Black Mist Psychic, and his pupils shrank to the extreme in an instant, because he was extremely frightened.

But in the next moment, his pupils slowly dilated.

Chen Ming let him wake up just for testing purposes, to see what would happen if a psychic implanted mechanical psychic nerves with his own psychic effects.

So the test has been conducted, the data has been recorded, and the Black Mist Psychic has been allowed to take one last look at the world. At least he will not die in vain.

As a leftist, he should at least die in fear, right?
Otherwise, it would be a disservice to his status.

The Black Mist Psychic's brain was directly devoured by the Queen Worm, and the memories in it were extracted by the Queen Worm and handed over to Chen Ming.

There was nothing valuable in these memories, so Chen Ming didn't pay too much attention to them.

He still needs to complete the transformation process of the Black Mist Psychic first.

He wanted to transform the Black Mist Psychic into a prosthesis that was a fusion of biological, mechanical, and psychic abilities.

Chen Ming has also thought of its background story.

It is an experimental subject of a fusion experiment between humans and Zerg in Zuojing, and is also mixed with some psychic effects of Black Mist Psychics.

The purpose of his existence is to become a psychic who induces the Zerg to attack the Mechanical Race.

A psychic who is suspected to be a remnant of Zuo Jing, uses the black fog psychic power to guide the Zerg to do things.

Of course this will happen later.

He would not appear until the script on An Wuping's side was completed as he imagined it.

If Chen Ming guessed correctly, the black mist prosthesis should be able to find a suitable opportunity to appear soon.

With the previous and recent experiences, Chen Ming quickly completed the transformation of the Black Mist Psychic.

And sent the Black Mist prosthesis to a suitable place.

After sending away the black mist prosthesis, Chen Ming now has almost finished what he needs to do.

The next step is to target the mechanical race.

But before taking the next step.

He also did one other thing.

It was he who brought Yan Xiong back from Chaofan, extracted his Spirit Iron Spiritual Awakening Nerve that could transform ordinary metals into psychic metals, and transformed it into a Spirit Iron Core and a Spirit Iron Mechanical Spiritual Awakening Nerve through facilities.

It was also implanted into Zerg individuals at the Royal Guard level, and continued to be used to provide research samples for Chaofan and psychic metal materials for Chen Ming.

Make it a thorough tool.

It also helped Yan Xiong to be freed from torture and be reborn as soon as possible.

Of course, Yan Xiong himself is a level 6 psychic. It was only because Chen Ming had used a trick to defeat him.

Chen Ming did not give Su Xing the chance to take one last look at the world and find out how he would die.

He directly extracted the Qi Ling nerve and killed the man decisively.

The same thing happened to the other psychic.

His spiritual awakening nerve was also extracted by Chen Ming, and he was also transformed into a prosthesis by Chen Ming. However, Chen Ming did not transform the spiritual awakening nerve into a core, but retained it.

This pure mental force is concentrated to the extreme to achieve pure spiritual energy with various effects.

Quite special.

Keep it for a while, maybe it will have other value.

After extracting the spiritual nerves of these two people and making corresponding processing.

Chen Ming finally completed something he had been thinking about for a long time.

Next, after a brief rest.

He wants to extend his claws to the mechanical race again.

(End of this chapter)