004. Legion’s Hive Mind (3)
The Legion’s ruler was the most powerful entity orchestrating all events on this planet.
The ruler is the commander-in-chief who can create and command hundreds of millions to billions of corps. In addition, it is also a being that has the ability to observe and remember all the events that occur on the surface of this planet.
It was an unwritten rule for rulers to kill each other.
The rulers who share the planet have never fought a war in which they do their best to kill each other.
First of all, it is very difficult to completely subdue an opponent with similar abilities, and if you accidentally kill all the rulers of other corps, the race itself may die due to lack of prey.
The organic matter on the planet’s surface has already been devastated by the Legion over 1.5 billion years. By the time the will of the Legion met its death, the native creatures themselves had withered.
So, the rulers had no choice but to keep each other’s proper power, and according to a tacit agreement, they had maintained their corps by eating the objects of other rulers as food.
Other than this, there was no way to keep the huge legion alive.
But today, this unwritten rule has been broken.
-Khan, it’s a big deal. Lydis is dead.
―Jarus, why are you making such a joke all of a sudden?
-I’m not kidding. Jiwoo just killed Lydis.
—… … what? Send your memories. I’ll check it out right away.
Khan looked at the memories Jarus had given him and was shocked.
【Crazy, what Jarus said was true.】
【The ruler has been murdered. This is something that should never happen.]
Of course, the ruler was also a living being with a body, so he could die at any time because he was not immortal.
Legion’s will was unlucky enough to be hit by an asteroid and fell into regeneration, and one of the young heirs he hastily created was swept away by lava and melted without waking up.
However, it was the first time in the 1.5 billion year history of the species that a ruler died not from a natural disaster, but from the force of an opponent.
Accident and murder are fundamentally different.
[New Hive Mind Jiwoo, this youngster is a very dangerous individual for the continuation of our corps.]
If, by any chance, that kid kills all the rulers and unifies the Legion, this will put the very existence of the Legion at risk.
I don’t know what the reason is, but the will of the Legion died without passing on the essence that can create the ‘Hive Mind’ to the next generation. Therefore, after Han Ji-woo, the new ruler of the legion is no longer born.
【Zarus, are you listening? Without competitors, the Legion starves to death. We must absolutely avoid the road to extinction. Apparently, you and I will have to survive by getting rid of that dangerous new ruler. As long as he swallowed all of Lydis’s remaining corps, it would be difficult to leave him to grow further.]
– I am of the same opinion. I will gather as many troops as possible. prepare yourself too
– Watch your back. Don’t fall prey to provocation, and prepare enough troops in advance to prepare for an ambush in your hive. If you make a mistake, you may die in vain like Lydis.
Khan and Jarus formed an alliance, squeezing out all the food available in the Hatchery to create an army of over five billion. Of course, these cowards set up nearly half of the swarms around their colonies for defense without even sending them out to hunt.
If you create a legion above the capacity limit in this way, you will inevitably run out of food, but you still think it’s better to starve than die in a beehive by the spider commandos.
―Jiwoo, I am the ruler Khan. Why did you kill Lydis?
– I will give you one last chance. Disband the Legion yourself and submit to us.
―If you don’t seize this opportunity, we will break the Legion’s unwritten rule and get rid of you for killing Lydis.
A declaration of war thrown with full preparation.
The answer that came back was very simple.
―Fuck it.
The alliance of rulers could not help but be confused when they heard the name of a very old body organ that popped out of nowhere.
The bodily organs called ‘fucks’ in these Legion races were degenerated and lost 1.5 billion years ago, when the Legion’s will evolved egg-laying spiders into hatcheries.
—… … Jarus, we don’t have a dick, but somehow I’m starting to feel very dirty.
-Khan, me too. I don’t know why, but I wanted to kill that kid like crazy.
War between the rulers was now inevitable.
Of course, when small wasps and jellyfish with spiders on their bodies sneakily appeared, those who declared war first stayed locked in the colony for over a week and did not come out.
Although the aspect of the war is a bit strange, it was the first war between the Legion rulers on the planet anyway.
* * *
I am also a ruler with a need to notice, so I know a little about the unwritten rules and tacit agreements of the Corps. I found out right away after watching this area with a super-large jellyfish corps floating in the sky.
Anyway, Legion on the verge of extinction?
Sitting laughing.
The rulers did not have the concept of flexibility in their heads, so they were using very ignorant methods while leaving the most efficient methods alone.
【Those bastards without dicks are really stupid.】
―My ruler, why?
【No, why are you worried about extinction? If you can’t recreate the hive mind, the legion will starve to death? Why don’t we just give the Legion Queen the authority to build and command independent Hives? The queen can be reprinted as many times as needed?]
—… … ah?!
-You are wonderful. you are the ruler
【… … Hey Arachne. The fact that I can’t think of this is because those bastards are so stupid that I’m not great.]
Yes.
From what I’ve experimented with with that corps queen, named ‘Arachne’, which looks like a spider, the queen is an individual who has the ability to raise a colony under her command and create and rule an corps.
These guys don’t just have the ability to command the consciousness of the colony, they can fertilize and lay eggs themselves like a hatchery, and they can digest organic matter to make slime.
In a word, each of these guys is a walking hatchery, and at the same time, it is a sound that is a low-end hive mind.
So, in the unlikely event that all of the legion’s rulers die, the clever queens survive to rebuild the colony, maintain competition for food, and keep the legion alive.
Extinction is a structure that cannot happen.
This was an all-purpose object that the legion’s will had originally created to be used like this, and he himself was very good at it.
【Arachne. Isn’t it worth it since you tried it too?]
—… … It’s a bit cumbersome, but we can now maintain about 100 million colonies.
【… … .]
When I tried it once, I was dumbfounded because it was so good.
When I ordered that guy to build a colony, form an army, and go hunting, he formed his own army much faster than I did and was very full of independent activities.
【Look. You are doing well too.]
But those naive rulers didn’t even think of giving their authority to their subordinates. Because of the stereotype that he is a powerful ruler, he cannot tolerate handing over his role to subordinates.
Anyway, bullshit about extinction is just an excuse.
The implicit agreement on hunting between the rulers is also a simple political quality that guarantees each other’s regime.
Thanks to this, in the colony of other rulers, this powerful legion queen is just used as a radio for calling jellyfish or as a chore object that gives instructions to worker insects, which is an absurd situation.
【Oh right, Arachne.】
-Speak, lord.
Originally, in this world, there is no need for unwritten rules and tacit agreements.
【listen carefully. I will use as many legion queens as possible from now on. We need a large number of queens to effectively control the legions left behind by the rulers.]
—… … Are you sure you’re abandoning me? Ruler, think again… … .
【… … Be noisy and accept the group consciousness.]
【Do you understand? This is the concept of ‘survival of the fittest’. So that you teach it to the newly born Legion Queens later.]
—… … Are you the ruler? Doesn’t this create a risk of power struggle or rebellion among the queens?
【That’s not my business.】
—… … .
【It’s fine if you don’t attack me.】
The strongest survives to the end.
Those who do not know how to use their power properly will die.
I was reviving the completely lost law of survival of the fittest on a planet where there were only unwritten rules and tacit agreements.
The only good rulers on this planet are dead rulers.
Except for me, of course.
Oh right.
I need to prepare for war, why are you teaching Lieutenant Spider this stuff?
【Hey, is the test subject all grown up?】
-Tonight I will be sacramental. Because they are so large, they take a long time to grow. Sacrificing an entire hive will take at least a week.
【Take it right away when you’re done. I’m going to go shoot bamboo spears, you bastards.]
Of course, I prepared a very powerful secret weapon this time too.
Lydice, who died after her head was hived by a spider excavator, had really good genetic information.
Lydis, the first hive mind that lived the longest, was as big as a dome-shaped retractable arena, so the spider’s burrow-digging touch, which was passed on to her through the hive consciousness, was quite good.
… … Hmmm.
It’s a big deal. This is getting more and more colored by the legion.
Anyway, I wonder why Lydis didn’t resurrect this good object and use it as a corps power.
If this is not even applicable, I even wondered if it was not the brain but the flour dough that was in that large size.
* * *
Because of the shadow of the huge object in my colony, the moonlight that was faintly illuminating all directions was completely gone.
―Wooong~!!!
It is a magnificent whale cry that vibrates the entire colony. The hatchery’s mucous membrane rippled like weak waves in a large lake at the sound of its resounding cry.
But why did the hive go dark?
It’s because that insanely huge whale is floating in the sky right now.
【Oh, big, beautiful!】
After killing Lydis, I looked to see if any of his genetic information was useful, and luckily, the genes of a creature resembling a whale that I thought were extinct remained undigested and ‘alive’.
I don’t know what kind of incongruent combination this is, but that whale flies through the sky like an airship?
Well, in a world where jellyfish fly like hot air balloons, it’s not strange that whales fly in the sky.
I chose one of Lydis’ colonies, wondering what it would be like to try to save this whale. Then, after tearing out all the hatcheries in the colony and putting them together, I beat and implanted the genes of the whales that I had arranged myself to ‘obey my colony consciousness’.
Afterwards, all the mucous membranes of the discarded colonies were sprinkled on, providing nutrients for stem cells to differentiate.
I couldn’t even draw troops because I wanted to raise that, so I paid an exorbitant price for one whale.
As a result, I resurrected a whale that had disappeared from this planet.
Although the body has been slightly modified to form a very strong chitinous shell like the Legion instances, the external appearance of the sperm whale-like disc is well preserved.
Hey, if I go back to Earth like this, I can make a lot of money by resurrecting dinosaurs or mammoths?
In any case, this super-sized flying whale will serve as our corps’ decisive battle weapon and super transporter from today.
The whale’s weight class is about 100 times that of Earth’s Blue Whale, so its length is close to 3 km.
… … It’s an unbelievable weight class.
If that whale approaches and slams it coolly with its tail, it is said that it is just a one-shot confirmation of the hive mind of the corps.
From the moment the decisive weapon was revived, it was as if I had already won the war against the rulers’ alliance.
【… … Ruler or something, it’s just one shot.]
―Excellent, lord. You will be the greatest leader the Legion has ever produced.
―By the way, ruler, I have a question. By what principle can that whale float in the sky? Is it the same principle as jellyfish?
【… … I don’t know either. don’t ask I just looked at Legion’s old memories and saw that it was flying.]
—… … Is that so?
I don’t know the exact principle of how a guy like that can fly. No matter how much I looked at the genetic information, it was just a gigantic creature resembling a sperm whale, and I couldn’t find any unique genetic factors that made it fly through the air.
The information I can grasp is that the whale smells strongly of [Godhead], which is very similar to the [System Authority] that I can no longer use, and that they originally ‘did not evolve from this planet, but came from another planet’. It was about the fact that it was a living thing.
yes, that’s right
That is a creature with the power to cross the vacuum of space.
There’s a reason I paid the high price.
―Master, have you decided on a name for that object?
Ah, since I have a body without a mouth, I want to laugh tearfully, but it’s a pity that I can’t.
【Leviathan.】
As expected, the name of the whale monster is like Leviathan.
【Go, Leviathan! determined by you Go and break the earthenware pots of the rulers and come!]
Upon receiving my order, the Leviathan soared straight up into the sky and flew out of the atmosphere as if it were an intercontinental ballistic missile.
If I had a mouth, I’d probably open it wide enough for my jaw to fall out.
【… … Crazy.】
Moments later, the movement of the Leviathan, which had soared into low planetary orbit, was felt through the Hive’s consciousness as it descended swiftly directly over the hostile hive.
―Wooong~!!!
… … Wow, fuck.
If I had a human body right now, I think I would have changed my panties unconditionally.
* * *
Legion ruler Jarus belatedly discovered a gigantic whale appearing above his head and summoned all the Legion’s forces to himself.
[Stop! Quickly stop that whale monster!!!]
Gunnery spiders shooting acidic liquids aimed at the sky, preparing for an attack, and innumerable sentinel jellyfish and wasps flew up and almost covered the sky.
Jarus, who personally witnessed Han Ji-woo’s provocative wasp containment and the subsequent death of Lidis by the spider’s surprise, was preparing for an assassination by deploying such a huge number of legion troops near his colony.
【Hurry-!!!】
―Wooong~
Leviathan’s heavy tail cut through the night sky.