Qi Heng did not give the larvae any overly complicated instructions.
He was the Overlord, not a Commander. He could not personally direct these little white worms every moment of the day, so he could only issue simple commands such as:
[Eat.]
[Grow.]
[Collect ore.]
Fortunately, he had the system.
Because the larvae had been created from the system’s energy, some of their behavior could be controlled through it.
After Qi Heng used his mental power to etch the instructions into their simple minds, the plump little white worms opened their tiny black, beadlike eyes and rolled around twice in front of him as though trying to please him.
Then they began slowly inching across the ground.
As mining worker units, excavation was their natural talent. The instinct had been engraved into their very being.
Qi Heng ordered them to pass through the rubble ahead and mine the tunnel on the other side.
The fallen rocks were an impassable obstacle to him, but the mining workers’ bodies were only half the length of his smallest finger. They could easily crawl through the gaps between the stones.
Under Qi Heng’s gaze, the little white worms received their instructions and climbed onto the rubble in an orderly procession.
Guided by the system, they began passing through the cracks.
Whenever they encountered a gap too narrow to enter, the leading worm slowly opened its mouth as though yawning, revealing a gleaming set of teeth.
It took a great bite out of the stone blocking its way.
Even the fragments it bit loose were enormous compared with its body, yet the little worm at the front swallowed them anyway.
It ate as it crawled.
Before long, the mining workers had chewed a tunnel the width of a fist through the rubble.
Qi Heng watched all of this through the system.
As creations of the system, the little worms could transmit whatever they saw back to it without consuming energy, provided they remained within a limited distance.
There were no tools more useful than these mindless Primordial Zerg.
They did not fear hardship or exhaustion. As long as they were properly fed, they could continue working indefinitely.
Going without sleep or rest meant nothing to them.
Once they passed through the rubble and saw the buried tunnel beyond it, the little white worms immediately dispersed.
Following the Overlord’s orders, they opened their mouths and began taking great bites out of the surrounding walls.
Qi Heng watched them work diligently through the system interface and smiled faintly.
As expected, gathering energy was much faster when he had helpers.
If he relied entirely on himself, he would have to spend every day digging by hand while also surrendering more than a hundred kilograms of ore.
At that rate, who knew how long it would take to accumulate the energy the system required?
Mining worker Zerg cost one energy point for every three produced.
They could feed on the rock within a mineral vein. With an abundant food supply, they required only three days to grow from larvae into adults.
Aside from the periods when they had to form cocoons as part of their development, they would spend every moment mining.
For Qi Heng, who now had to count every energy point carefully, they were extremely cost-effective worker Zerg.
Otherwise, he would never have chosen to create them as a means of gathering energy.
Qi Heng left the tunnel.
He would return three days later.
By then, he would not only have a large quantity of processed raw ore waiting for him, but he would also create another batch of mining workers.
After all, one hundred and fifty workers were nowhere near enough to hollow out an entire mineral vein.
As for what would happen to Tianyun Star after the deposit was consumed?
What did that have to do with him now?
In the past, he had protected Tianyun Star’s environment because it belonged to him.
Now that the planet had changed hands, there was naturally no reason for him to continue protecting it.
He might as well consume the resources himself.
Under no circumstances would he allow the sinister organization currently enslaving the Zerg behind the scenes to benefit from them.
…
After leaving the abandoned tunnel he had marked as [No. 1], Qi Heng found another passage and completed his KPI for the day.
With the system assisting him, he mined while allowing his thoughts to wander.
Nearly a week had passed since he transmigrated into the Zerg world.
When the system first brought him to Tianyun Star, only five hundred energy points remained.
Some had been consumed immediately, while maintaining the system’s daily operation required a fixed expenditure of ten points.
That day, permanently activating [Energy Conversion] had cost two hundred energy points.
Creating one hundred and fifty mining workers had cost another fifty.
Rounding the numbers, only about one hundred and eighty points remained.
Assuming there were no additional expenses, the system could continue operating for eighteen more days.
Qi Heng’s thoughts returned to the mining workers he had just created.
Mining worker Zerg were related to the Tianjia Zerg, but they belonged to a different evolutionary branch.
The Tianjia Zerg had evolved from the Primordial Zerg.
Unlike the Primordial Zerg, where individual bodies existed as parts of an immense swarm under the control of a Commander, the Tianjia Zerg were higher Zerg with human appearances and intelligence.
Each was an independent individual.
Perhaps the only trait they retained in common with the Primordial Zerg was that their worship and reverence for the Overlord had been engraved into their bones.
The Primordial Zerg obeyed their Commanders.
The Commanders, in turn, submitted to the Overlord of the Tianjia Civilization.
In the past…
By which Qi Heng meant the past inside the game.
When the Tianjia Civilization left its homeworld, entered the sea of stars, and swept through one interstellar civilization after another with overwhelming force, the Primordial Zerg had firmly occupied the foremost position in the Zerg military through sheer numerical superiority.
Their swarm tactics had driven the great interstellar civilizations to wail in despair and tremble at the mere mention of the Zerg.
The term “calamity” broadly referred to the Tianjia Civilization.
But when used more specifically, there was no question that it referred to the Primordial Zerg.
Under the command of a Commander, the Primordial Zerg could continuously produce new military units as long as sufficient energy remained available.
Maintaining such an invincible military force had required enormous resources.
Wherever the Primordial Zerg traveled, they consumed everything in their path.
The star regions they crossed were stripped bare like fields ravaged by locusts. With their extraordinary teeth, the Primordial Zerg would not even leave behind a single asteroid.
Every civilization in the Milky Way knew that only the Overlord of the Tianjia Civilization could order the Primordial Zerg to stop.
Therefore, if a civilization woke one morning and discovered the main Zerg force waiting outside its homeworld, surrendering immediately was strongly recommended.
Raising a white flag was far preferable to having the entire planet beaten into ruins.
That was how Qi Heng had earned the titles [Creator of Calamities] and [Chain of Calamity] while playing the game.
He had created the calamity.
At the same time, he had become the only chain capable of restraining it and confining it within a safe area.
No civilization could endure the Zerg calamity without eventually surrendering.
Unless, of course, its true objective was its own destruction.
A piece of ore came loose from the rock wall beneath Qi Heng’s pry bar.
He bent down, picked it up, and tossed it into the vine basket, which was already more than half full.
He did not know whether it should be called the Zerg’s misfortune or every other civilization’s good fortune.
Had the Commander of the Primordial Zerg still been present ten thousand years ago, the other civilizations probably would never have had an opportunity to win.
However, if the Primordial Zerg had been released without Qi Heng there to restrain them, consuming the entire galaxy would merely have been a matter of time.
The Primordial Zerg had no concept of moderation.
Once the only being capable of controlling them disappeared, the restraints imposed upon them would have broken as well.
Under those circumstances, the interstellar civilizations would have faced a true calamity.
No matter how glorious the Tianjia Civilization had once been, all of that belonged to the past.
The Zerg Overlord had once stood at the highest point in the sea of stars.
The present Qi Heng was every bit as wretched as the Zerg civilization that had fallen from the heavens into the lowest dust.
Three days later.
Abandoned Tunnel No. 1, before the rubble blocking the passage.
As Qi Heng approached, he carefully examined the surroundings.
Apart from the traces he had left three days earlier, there were no signs that any other Zerg had visited.
During those three days, his mental power had undergone a qualitative change.
According to the classification system for mental-power control, after his total Mental Power surpassed one hundred, he successfully advanced to Level 1.
The area covered by his released mental power was now far greater than when he first began.
The mining workers remembered the unique frequency emitted by the Overlord’s mental power.
The instant Qi Heng released it, some of the workers behind the rubble detected his presence.
He ordered them to clear a passage through the obstruction large enough for him to enter.
Before long, the sound of stone being gnawed came from the other side.
Soon, an opening wide enough for one person appeared.
The first creature to emerge was a large white mining worker that stood partially upright and reached approximately to Qi Heng’s knee.
Its soft, cloudlike body revealed that it had already reached maturity.
Qi Heng examined it.
“What an… unexpectedly harmless appearance.”
It did not look vicious or frightening.
In fact, it was somewhat adorable.
Then again, the smaller Zerg units in the game had never looked especially terrifying.
Even certain combat units could easily appear harmless and cause others to lower their guard, provided they kept their fangs hidden.
This was the only mining worker among the original one hundred and fifty that had come forward to welcome him.
That meant it held a certain status within the group, roughly equivalent to the foreman of the mining workers.
“Lead the way.”
As Qi Heng spoke, he issued the order through his mental power.
The Primordial Zerg possessed no individual self-awareness.
However, in the absence of a higher-ranking superior, members of the same unit type would automatically select the strongest among them to lead and organize their work.
The Zerg before him, designated [Mining Worker 28] within the system, had developed faster and more successfully than the others.
As a result, it had become the foreman of the group.
While the others worked, Mining Worker 28 adjusted their assignments and continually improved the group’s mining efficiency.
The large white worm understood Qi Heng’s order and led him through the opening in the rubble.
The passage beyond could no longer properly be called a mining tunnel.
The chamber was far larger than the tunnels outside, with the rock walls continuously widened on both sides.
Large quantities of clean crystalline ore had been piled nearby.
Apart from Mining Worker 28, which was guiding Qi Heng, the remaining one hundred and forty-nine were all still working diligently.
How capable.
Qi Heng silently praised them.
He then ordered two workers to move several rocks into place and block the entrance he had used.
That would prevent any female Zerg who happened to enter the abandoned tunnel from discovering what was happening inside.
No one could refuse a group of efficient employees who asked for nothing in return and worked a nonstop “007” schedule.
He was not a heartless capitalist, but he could not bring himself to turn them down either.
He glanced at the mining workers.
With their mouths closed, they appeared soft and adorable. Once they opened them, however, they revealed rows of enormous steel-like teeth.
After briefly considering it, Qi Heng understood what had happened.
While consuming the rock, they had probably absorbed metallic ions from the stone.
Their bodies had then synthesized those materials into teeth capable of increasing their working efficiency.
Qi Heng walked over to the pile of ore and extended a hand, allowing the system to absorb everything.
This ore differed from what he mined personally.
The rock casing that had originally surrounded the mineral had already been eaten away as food, leaving only pure Obsidian Crystal behind.
Not only did this greatly increase the system’s energy-conversion efficiency, but once the Obsidian Crystal was absorbed, nothing remained except a scattering of powder.
That meant Qi Heng would not have to worry about anyone discovering what he had done.
He swept his gaze across the chamber and made a rough estimate.
There was unquestionably more than one metric ton of Obsidian Crystal present.
When he calculated how much energy that might provide, anticipation rose within him.
- KPI means Key Performance Indicator or his required mining quota for the day.
- The reference to “007 employees” is a Chinese workplace joke meaning employees who work from midnight to midnight, seven days a week.
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