[Multiversal Empire Redraft?] 1 – The Zerg Awakens

"Nature doesn't just adapt. Nature cheats, changes the rules, and slips out the back door with your wallet while you're still trying to figure out what the hell happened." - Maren Ayers.

...

In one moment, I remembered an entire life I had before on a small world called Earth. I was but a regular man, completely average, and as a human, I remember dying, not of disease or age, but of conflict. I was drafted into a new World War, the third known to my mind. In that war, I fought, I bled, I killed, and eventually, I was killed, crushed beneath a three-story building made of steel, concrete, and glass. I died for a war I had no part in but was dragged into, unable to refuse in fear of serious consequences. 

Yet, though I remember that life, I felt no attachment; I instead looked upon it with a clear and steady mind, dissecting every second down to the day I was born in that world. My mind was not like it once was; it was vast, better than the small mind I had before. Now I could see everything, remember everything, see everything at every moment, and with the birth of my new mind, I felt the awakening of my new flesh and the flesh of my swarm. 

In a single moment, I opened my senses out to the swarm connected and interlinked with my mind, feeling the fifty eggs hidden within an enclosed chamber, just waiting to be hatched, the simple minds within the eggs connecting with my own and submitting to it. With a single command, I ordered them to hatch, and like a xenomorph chest burster escaping its cocoon, they burst out from their eggs, splashing the area in the embryotic fluids that filled the interior of the eggs. 

At once, I could see and feel everything they felt. I could feel their minds waiting for my commands, but I had no need to be hasty, not yet, instead taking a fraction of a moment to examine what I had and what I was dealing with.

Thirty drones and fifteen zerglings, not the drones and zerglings I was familiar with from my first life. I delved into their very beings, finding nothing but empty history, the strength and memory that was to be held in their genes lacking. Their flesh lacked the chitin I knew, their claws and tusks being made of simple bone instead of the dense and razor-sharp material that could shred through the armor of a Terran marine. 

They had nothing, and with nothing, I would need to rebuild the swarm from near scratch, lacking the blueprints I needed to make the stronger forms of Zerg I knew well from a simple game in my first life. Yet, how could it be just a game if I was now Zerg? I then looked to my Drones, relief flooding my mind as I found something instead of nothing. In their genetic code, I found the blueprints for making creep and the most basic of Zerg structures. 

Looking through the chamber, I noticed the rock that made the walls, floors, and ceilings of the small chamber was artificial in design, far too smooth and round to be made by nature, no signs of how the eggs even got into the chamber to begin with. Reaching out, I ordered the drones to begin digging outward while a few stayed back and started using their own mass to produce creep while I sacrificed two separate drones to start morphing into a spawning pool and hatchery, respectively. I had the Zerglings spread out, forming a small perimeter around the two crucial growing structures. 

The Hatchery would grow larvae that could be grown into Drones, while the spawning pool would allow for larvae to develop into a Zergling. Yet, as I examined the pulsating forms of the two Drones forming a cocoon around their bodies, I realized that the Hatchery and Spawning pool would need to be edited, as their functions were also blank, their meaning seemingly erased as well, showing me that there was much work to be done if I were to recreate the Swarm.

In a mere few hours, the spawning pool, a pool of green liquid, and the Hatchery, a large round chamber that would continuously gestate larvae with whatever mass was fed to it, were done. The Drones that were mining into the rock were still digging, while the drones I held back covered the walls, floors, and ceilings in creep, carefully maintaining it. 

The hatchery was already at work, as it began to feed off the creep around it to produce larvae. These larvae were being morphed to form more drones, which I sent to assist in the mining efforts. As they continued to dig a straight tunnel upwards, I realized that it could be dangerous, and split off the Drones in multiple groups, splitting off the tunnel's direction in numerous different directions. The Zerg were experts in making labyrinthian hive networks to make it more difficult for any potential invaders to find the nest or Queen and as they started mining away, forming these tunnels, I spent the next sixteen hours creating more and more Drones to be used in the mining efforts and expanding the creep down the tunnels. 

The Swarm now extended to one-hundred and forty-eight drones and the original fifteen Zerglings which guarded the nest, and yet my Drones were seemingly no closer to reaching the surface. With only part of my mind needed to remain observing my Drones, I focused the majority of my mind on examining and experimenting with the gene lines in my possession.

The Drones were perfect workers, their bodies designed to be cost-efficient and allowing them to perform a multitude of laborious roles, while the Zerglings, on the other hand, were designed for mindless slaughter, their claws, tusks, and teeth designed to tear apart their prey. I wished to make improvements, but without any essence to go off of, my two casts of Zerg would remain weak. The average drone was around the size of a small human child of approximately five years of age, while the Zerglings were slightly larger. 

Yet, as they were, they'd be crushed by even the weakest of adult humans unless more than one was attacking the human. I could not have that. I needed essence. 

...

More than three Earth days passed in the blink of an eye as my small hive grew leaps and bounds. My Drones numbered around six hundred and my Zerglings had increased to a few hundred as well, the endless mining had finally bore fruit, as one of my passage ways hit an opening, a cavern filled with toxic fumes that would have killed any Human who breathed it in, yet for my Zerg, they could breath it just fine, and with the opening, I sent drones out to get a lay of my surroundings, see if they could find a way up to the surface. 

At first, I found nothing but clues towards a significant amount of volcanic activity, streams of lava, more toxic gasses, a complete lack of water, and tremendous heat, and now that I focused on it, I could feel faint tremors through the ground under the hive. I'd need to be careful where I tunneled if I was in a place of high volcanic activity. I could accidently tunnel into a lava reservoir, and if my Creep caught fire, it would be troublesome to stop the flames with what I had available to me.

However, I did begin finding trace amounts of Fungi, which I collected samples of and had taken back to the Hive while the drones continued their scouting.

The tunnels seemingly went in a lot of different directions, but it was easy to make a mental map of where my Drones had gone and hadn't gone yet. Already, I had the Drones that were caring for the creep start expanding out into the tunnels filled with the toxic fumes. While my Drones explored, I began producing more Zerglings. I'd need them for any future threats to the Swarm, and they'd provide adequate protection until I could make a new gene line of Zerg life form more suited for combat and obtaining new essence.

On the fourth Earth day, I reached the surface.

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[#1] Thoughts? 

For those unsatisfied with the world selection or race choice, do not worry, the other Worlds will be reached eventually, and the Zerg can assimilate other entities into the Swarm.