33: Chapter 33 Power Surge and the Purchase of the Zerg Reproduction God Card
The world had been reconstructed in Su Chen's eyes.
He lowered his head, examining his own palm. It was no longer a form purely constructed from divine light.
A torrent of power surged within his body, ultimately settling on the surface of his divine form, imprinting it with a mark unique to 'Calamity'.
Intricate, dark green divine patterns emerged from beneath his skin, winding and crisscrossing, covering every inch of his body. They were not static totems, but flowed with an extremely slow rhythm, flickering in and out of existence.
The brightness and dimness of each divine pattern represented the complete evolution of a lethal viral sequence.
Each cycle of flow symbolized the entire process of a Plague, from its birth to sweeping across the world.
This transformation stripped away the last vestiges of sacredness from him, replaced by a heart-palpitating eeriness and a bottomless sense of danger. Standing there, he was himself a walking natural disaster, a moving source of pollution.
"Is this the price of power?"
A cold arc curled at the corner of Su Chen's mouth.
"No, this *is* power itself."
He liked this feeling.
The feeling of utterly controlling destruction and decay at his fingertips.
He raised his right hand, his index finger casually pointing lightly towards the void ahead.
There was no earth-shattering surge of divine power, only a point of intensely dark, dark green light coalescing at his fingertip before touching the boundary of reality.
*Sss—!*
A faint, almost imperceptible, strange sound.
The space touched by his fingertip did not shatter or distort. Instead, it 'diseased' in a previously unseen manner.
It lost its original stable structure; rules were disintegrating, order collapsing. A tiny, pure 'nothingness' was eroding 'being'.
A black hole the size of a needle tip appeared out of thin air.
It exhibited no gravitational pull, merely hovering silently there. At its edges, wisps of dark green Calamity divine power clung like maggots to bone, constantly hindering the self-repair of spatial rules.
This 'corroded' wound could not heal for a long time on the level of laws.
"Such potent corrosive power."
Su Chen withdrew his finger. The tiny black hole persisted for over a dozen breaths before finally being forcibly smoothed over by the spatial laws of the divine realm.
His voice held no trace of emotional fluctuation, only absolute calm and assessment.
"If I were to encounter a trash like the God of Corrupt Corpses now..."
The image of that bloated deity, dripping with pus and reeking of foul odor, flashed through his mind.
"I wouldn't need Sarah to act. A single finger from me could crush him."
This wasn't arrogance, but a precise judgment based on his mastery of laws. The divine portfolio of the God of Corrupt Corpses was nothing but a joke before the present 'Calamity'.
At that moment, the cold, mechanical system prompt tone rang out once more from the depths of his soul.
[Ding!]
[As your mastery of laws has increased, your number of Saint slots has increased by: 2.]
A clear thought formed in Su Chen's divine consciousness.
Saints.
These were existences even more core than hero units; they were the proxies of a deity, extensions of its will. Each slot was immensely precious and must be granted to the most potential and core heroes within the Zerg Swarm.
Sarah already occupied one.
The remaining slots required utmost caution.
"My strength has increased, but the shortcomings in management have also been exposed."
Su Chen's gaze pierced through the temple walls, overlooking his now vastly expanded divine realm.
Legions of Corpse-Exploding Zergmen stood in orderly phalanxes, exuding an aura of death and explosion.
Across the vast mining zones, tens of thousands of Drones worked tirelessly like the most precise machinery, harvesting resources.
Squads of Zerglings patrolled at high speed through the fungus-covered canyons, their Calamity auras emitting ominous gray glows.
With the large-scale incubation of Corpse-Exploding Zergmen and the natural proliferation of the Zerg Swarm under abundant resources, the total number of units under his command had quietly approached the threshold of two hundred thousand.
This was a terrifying figure.
His divine sense was linked to the sole Overmind, Zaz, allowing him to clearly 'see' the massive flow of information, vast enough to drive any creature insane.
Zaz was already overwhelmed.
Its computational power was being occupied by a sea of basic commands: patrol route planning, resource allocation, unit breeding sequences... Each consumed a tremendous amount of its energy.
This caused its efficiency in more critical high-level tasks like tactical simulations and battle analysis to begin declining.
"The command structure is too flat." Su Chen pinpointed the problem with sharp insight.
The entire Zerg Swarm had only one supreme commander, Zaz, beneath which were countless basic units.
This offered unparalleled micro-management advantages in small-scale combat.
But when legion sizes expanded to two hundred thousand, or even two million, twenty million in the future, this structure would be fatal.
"A lack of mid-level commanders."
"A lack of specialized engineers capable of independently executing complex tasks."
Su Chen's gaze grew sharp.
He needed to establish a hierarchical command system.
A pyramid structure.
He would be at the apex. Below him would be strategic-level Overminds like Zaz. Further down, a batch of 'Lesser Overminds' capable of commanding units by the thousands or tens of thousands would be needed to share Zaz's burden and execute regional combat tasks.
Having identified the problem, the solution also emerged.
Su Chen's figure vanished from the temple.
In the next instant, he had traversed endless spatial distance, reappearing in that City of Deities suspended in the void, pieced together from fragments of countless divine kingdoms.
The Multiverse Trading Hall.
It was still bustling with activity, shimmering with divine lights.
Deities of various forms and their Saints or divine servants moved through it. The air was thick with the complex intermingling scents of Power Of Faith, divine power, and various wondrous artifacts.
But this time, Su Chen had no interest in wandering.
His objective was unnervingly clear.
He ignored the faintly glowing low-tier divine materials on the street stalls and the hawking calls from the shops. He walked straight through the crowded flow of beings towards the deepest part of the trading hall.
The high-tier resource zone.
The number of deities here sharply decreased. Each one had a deep, restrained aura and divine majesty. Some were meditating with closed eyes, others conversing in low tones with peers of similar rank. The atmosphere of the entire zone was solemn and oppressive.
Su Chen's arrival did not attract much attention.
He walked directly to an ancient counter modified from the carapace of a giant star turtle.
Behind the counter, a figure shrouded in shadow, its features indistinct, slowly raised its head.
"Proprietor."
Su Chen's voice was not loud, yet it clearly reached the other's perception.
"Give me one [Tier 5 · Breeding Acceleration God Card]!"
That single sentence caused several nearby deities browsing goods to pause slightly, casting surprised glances his way.
A Tier 5 God Card was already a strategic-level resource, typically only used by established, powerful deities when preparing for large-scale divine wars.
However, this was just the beginning.
Su Chen's second sentence caused the air in the area to momentarily freeze.
"Additionally."
He paused, his tone brooking no argument.
"I want a batch of soul crystals from high-intelligence beings. Whether they're from goblin engineers or mind flayer elders, as long as they're smart, I'll take however many you have!"
These words were like a massive rock thrown into a calm lake.
The surrounding deities with deep auras all turned their eyes towards him.
Their gazes held suspicion, scrutiny, and even a trace of barely perceptible greed.
A demigod, yet his tone was astonishingly grand.
Such an undisguised procurement demand was practically announcing his wealth and trump cards to everyone.
But Su Chen paid it no mind.
He could even feel several subtle divine senses sweeping over him, only to be easily twisted, corroded, and then silently devoured by the flowing Calamity divine patterns on the surface of his divine form.
He intended to use these resources, these soul essences condensed from the deaths of high-tier intelligent beings, to artificially catalyze and create a batch of 'Lesser Overminds' capable of independent thought.
He wanted to elevate the Zerg Swarm's micro-management capabilities to a whole new dimension.
He wanted to arm every Zergling's claws and teeth with that terrifying computational power and tactical execution!