【Zerg Hive LV14】
【Recruitables (Land/Air): No change.】
【Recruitables (Water): No change.】
【Recruitment Cost (High-Energy Crystals): No change.】
【Ships: Small Leviathan (3 billion units of high-energy crystals), Hive Carrier (evolved from Hive using 50 million units of high-energy crystals), Floating Escort (5 million units of high-energy crystals), Floating Transport Ship (2.2 million units of high-energy crystals)】
【Tools: No change】
【Overlord Evolution: The Overlord's size has increased, reaching a height of 50 meters. It now features an internal psionic subspace expansion, capable of holding 50 insects (regardless of their individual volume).】
【Hive Carrier and Small Leviathan Strengthening: Limiters removed. Unlocked the Abyss magic shield and gained curvature flight capability, allowing for a navigation rate 100 times normal speed.】
【Zerg Hive Fusion Engine Enhancement: Maximum acceleration up to 150 kilometers per second.】
【Small Leviathan Fusion Engine Enhancement: Maximum acceleration up to 200 kilometers per second.】
【Added subspace navigation device: Ships in curvature flight can now enter a subspace cruising state, increasing the speed in that state to 100 times the original.】
【Small Leviathan Size Increase: Length approximately 200 meters.】
【Hive Carrier Main Weapon Added: Tractor Plasma Beam.】
【Small Leviathan Main Weapon Change: Upgraded from green slime plasma balls to Advanced Beam Plasma Balls.】
【Small Leviathan Sub-weapon Added: Fusion Missiles (curvature propulsion).】
【Swarm Adaptability Evolution: The entire Swarm can now survive in more dangerous space environments.】
【Floating Transport Ships and Floating Escorts: Maximum speed increased to 50 kilometers per second, with the addition of curvature flight devices.】
【Mineral Compression: The Zerg have gained the mineral compression ability, allowing them to extract 1 unit of high-energy crystals from 10,000 tons of minerals.】
【Mineral Absorption: During Zerg production, they can absorb the elements required for Zerg units directly from minerals, reducing production costs to a certain extent.】
【Upgrade Cost: 20 billion units of high-energy crystals, 1 trillion tons of interstellar minerals, 1,000 units of Stellar Azure Crystal, 20 units of Zero Point Nucleus.】
【Description: The Zerg's initial Hive, very primitive. After transforming into a Hive Carrier, it can perform basic interstellar space navigation. Due to efficiency and structural strength limitations, the Hive Carrier can accelerate up to 200 km/s. This organism replaces the Queen as the Swarm's breeding center.】
...
"Hmm, it seems this evolution is centered around the ships."
The standard Swarm units basically didn't evolve at all.
However, this was for the best. Xia Jin calculated that the 100x acceleration plus subspace navigation would allow the Hive Carrier to reach a speed of 1.5 million kilometers per second, while the Small Leviathan could reach 2 million kilometers per second.
On paper, those figures seemed to exceed the speed of light, but that wasn't actually the case.
In essence, the actual flight speeds were still 150 km/s and 200 km/s. The reason the ships could travel so quickly was that space itself was being warped. By shortening the spatial distance, the ships could traverse much farther distances at the same speed.
As for subspace navigation, it was even more unique, utilizing a trace of so-called subspace energy to achieve its acceleration.
Of course, even so, such flight speeds were still insignificant on a cosmic scale.
By a simple calculation, the Small Leviathan could now reach 6.66 times the speed of light.
Traveling to the nearest stellar system would take 0.58 years.
Naturally, that wasn't the main point.
To Xia Jin, the most critical additions were the two new functions: mineral absorption and mineral compression.
This meant the insects could finally start mining.
What troubled her was the collection of those 20 units of Zero Point Nucleus.
A Zero Point Nucleus was an energy core formed by compressing the peculiar energy found in a vacuum into a microscopic scale.
This substance existed everywhere in the universe, but for an average civilization, there was basically no possibility of extracting it directly.
However...
That didn't mean a civilization that had just entered space couldn't utilize them.
There were regions in interstellar space rich in zero-point energy, where the energy concentration was so high that the Zero Point Nucleus would almost manifest from the microscopic realm, forming physical energy cores of staggering density.
These energy cores could even be picked up by hand like solid matter. Of course, if they were subjected to a high-intensity impact, the material would explode, creating an intense gamma-ray burst.
Xia Jin didn't expect the Zerg to find such a rich mineral zone.
They were far too rare, and even if one existed, it would easily fall into the hands of a more advanced cosmic civilization.
Therefore, there was a compromise: finding "tidal peaks" where this peculiar energy was relatively abundant, then using massive amounts of standard energy to excite and extract it.
Places with such high energy levels would form a mineral known as Stellar Azure Crystal. Thus, finding one location meant finding both resources.
"Regardless, I'll send one Small Leviathan to the neighboring planetary system first. It's going to be a six-month flight."
She currently had two Small Leviathans, so she could afford to send one out immediately.
The construction cost of the new Leviathan was absurdly high, but given how much its size, weaponry, and defenses had improved, it was well worth the price.
While the ship was out navigating, Xia Jin dispatched transport ships to begin mineral collection in different areas of their home system.
She would secure the common mining areas first; every little bit adds up.
Rate on N.U.
