It wasn't a fleet of ordinary scale.
From Xia Jin's perspective, the scale of the newcomers was a bit large.
And their strength was ridiculously powerful.
Before she could even react, standard laser cannons fired from several of the opposing ships, instantly blowing up her Small Leviathan.
Its shield hadn't even been activated.
Xia Jin: "..."
She fell into deep thought.
Relying on overseers scattered in the distance, Xia Jin observed the scene again and found that the enemy was continuing forward, flying straight toward the Dulu planets she had occupied.
Their target wasn't the Dulu home planet, but one of the others.
"They aren't heading toward the mining area I control, but it's still not good that this Dulu planet was discovered."
The creep had already begun to be laid out; it would be troublesome if it were taken down.
Considering this, Xia Jin gave up on spreading it in this system.
Starting from these past two months, Xia Jin believed she had enough bugs under her command.
At least enough for the time being. Continuing to increase the numbers wouldn't have much impact on the growth of the Zerg's overall strength.
She began producing queens.
The Small Leviathans and transport ships in the rear were dedicated to transporting queens to every star system visible to the naked eye.
Most importantly, she made an even more drastic move.
She wove the creep into giant nets and aimed them directly at the stars.
Indeed, if she couldn't build a Dyson ring, couldn't she at least make solar panels?
Each patch of creep covered exactly one square kilometer. In space, this was so small it was almost negligible.
Transport ships flew through space, and the queens perched on them dropped a creep tumor at regular intervals.
There was absolutely no need to provide energy. Since they were relatively close to the stars, they could survive simply by relying on light energy and a small amount of matter released beforehand.
After a busy month, her resource production directly skyrocketed.
"Originally, this was something that only appeared in the next level of the Zerg Hive... Solar Panel Bugs," Brain Bug No. 1 commented dryly.
"So, I've... advanced the Zerg's development?" Xia Jin asked with a grin.
"Yes, but for now, you should consider how to face the enemies that took out the Small Leviathan."
"Why face them? I'll just give it up. We can't stop them anyway. I've calculated that although the enemy is faster than us, it will take them a year to fly here. By the time they finish and turn toward another system, it'll be over a year. That's enough time... if we go all out on production."
The quality of the Zerg still had to wait for the Hive to upgrade, but the quantity was truly beginning to explode.
In particular, Xia Jin now only maintained the production of one Small Leviathan per month. All other resources were used to hatch queens and transport ships, along with drones for mining.
Soon, the daily production of high-energy crystals reached 20 billion units.
And this growth rate was getting faster and faster.
As for the two trillion tons of interstellar minerals, with the number of drones surging to one billion, the collection was completed in just a few days.
For this explosive increase in production, Xia Jin even designed a type of giant transport ship that was incredibly cheap, with shells so brittle that even a meteorite could easily smash them, specifically for transporting ore to the Hive Carrier.
The cost was appallingly low.
For a price of 500,000 units of high-energy crystals per ship, she directly produced giant transport ships several kilometers in diameter, complete with hyperspace navigation equipment and fusion engines.
It could be said to be a type of ship that prioritized efficiency over the future.
Even Brain Bug No. 1 was stunned.
"According to calculations, because the cost is too low, the fusion engines inside have a risk of exploding. The probability is... about one percent per transport run."
"It's fine. At this rate, our Hive can upgrade in twenty days. At the original speed, it would have taken two years."
Brain Bug No. 1: "..."
"Additionally, our drones can be designed as consumables. It doesn't matter if they look a bit deformed; the load capacity needs to be large. Anyway, keep the cost as low as possible. Design some specifically to resist high temperatures to work in hot places, and cold resistant ones for cold places. Normal drones will travel between the two locations as permanent units. Regardless, the cost of the consumables should ideally be less than one fiftieth of a normal drone. At worst, we can just recycle them after they die."
"Then, produce a batch of queens that do nothing but specialize in breeding larvae. Directly remove their creep spreading and combat capabilities; just let them give birth. Ideally, the production speed should be dozens or hundreds of times faster than before. Even if it overtaxes them, it doesn't matter; we'll just recycle them when they die."
Brain Bug No. 1: "..."
Although the idea of using these low cost consumables until they broke was a bit cold blooded, Brain Bug No. 1 did a careful calculation and found that the efficiency was indeed much higher. The value created by each unit before its death was far higher than in its normal state. This would allow the number of Zerg to surge rapidly, and the resource volume would also increase at a terrifying speed.
One wondered what the former Overlord would think if he knew.
Not to mention, because of the frantic spreading of creep and the production surge focused solely on queens, the high-energy crystals produced were nearly overflowing.
With so much energy used directly to interfere with the mining areas, the resulting Zero Point Nucleus production was also ridiculously high.
As for the Stellar Azure Crystal, sending countless drones down for brute force mining was no problem at all.
Consequently... just fifteen days later, five days faster than expected, the Hive reached the level required for an upgrade.
And with this upgrade, Xia Jin discovered that the Zerg gained an even greater boost than in the past.
Rate on N.U.
