——Overmind POV———

Well shit happened, I severely underestimated Kerrigan and overestimated my defense.

Now let clean this mess before something kill the Maw.

First step deal with the thing that can be done immediately.

For Zagara, while using my own egg against me may be clever for most other opponents, I can take control over them since they are filled with my cell.

And done, now she is all alone inside of a very hostile hives cluster. I ordered her captured and then injected with my cell, it will take a while but by the end of the day, she will swear loyalty to me.

As for Izsha, she wanted to hide in my sea of larva, well I’ll just rip one from Moses book and make a miracle.

I arrive quickly at the sea and find where she is hiding.

Oh in the middle? let rise one up Moses then.

The millions of larva that consisted the sea received an order to make way.

They began to crawl their way out of the nutritional liquid they sent their time in, not wanting to waste time following my order they climbed on top of each other, emptying the sea in moments.

Leaving a very exposed and a freaking out advisor in the middle of the empty sea. The look on her face had an effect on my sadist side.

When she tried to flee, I launched myself on her. closing the distance in mere moments and the Grabbed her by the back of her head and slamming it to the ground.

Seeing even Zerg can have a concussion, I knocked her out with blunt trauma for good measure".

After that, I injected her some of my own cell in her since I had plans for her and her breed. Like Zagara, she will eventually become one of mine.

Now for the more complicated one

I hope that Abathur did not get into one of my « special » labs. They are full of especially insane creatures, things that are so dangerous that I am honestly afraid to use them.

And yes Most of them is a nuclear option if I ever need to retreat from a universe.

But for now I must handle the proto kaiju, they are quite easy to find, just follow the bloody trail left behind by the carnage they created.

When I finally find them my swarm were already fighting them. It was beautiful, a dozen of kaiju in a circle formation were surrounded from every direction, tens of thousand zerg life form would recklessly charge at the titan. Most of them would die from a single hit made by the titan, but they managed to make a pound of flesh as the limb of the Titans got close.

Ultralisk would sink their kaiser blade into the flesh of the titan. Hydralisk would launch their spine aiming at any wound on the body of the Kaiju. Roach's were sacrificed by the hundred, by literary jumping into the jaw of the monster, those who managed to survive would claw they way out of the body of the titan. Zergling swarmed the leg and climbing on the back of the Kaiju.

Flying breed had an easier time since they kept out of reach and just keep launching everything they had. Whoever were controlling them made sure to instruct them to aim at the eyes of the bio-titans, blinding them.

The Titans head covered in wounds, blood was flowing out of them like rivers, but they still fought and they were still starving.

This is the way zerg fought superior opponents, we would drown our enemies with our blood.

The Titans would have died from exhaustion if I didn’t come here. My involvement meant those titans were demoted to target practice.

Twelve blasts later only left the Titans in pieces, they could always be remade some later anyway.

So where is the next crisis... There are some failed experiments running around but they are not worlds ending. They can be left to my troop to deal with, for now, the potential action by Abathur is more dangerous than anything else.

Dehaka and his pack could be dealt with my troop, with the essence he is absorbing he will be dangerous but in the end, he was still just a primal, there a limit on how fast he could evolve. And if that doesn't work, I don’t mind spacing them, we are on a spaceship after all.

I check my lab one by one to check their status. Some of them are empty, other are intact and properly sealed.

Abathur had roaches to do the heavy lifting and himself was sneaky enough to enter most places without alerting my guard.

My lab containing Alarak and his Tal'darim were empty. I managed to follow their escape, they grabbed everything that had value and stole a technique from me, the wormhole. They even rescued the hybrid made by narud, but I don’t think they did that out of the kindness of their heart, well let hope that my little anti-stress ball like that little vacation because I will make sure he caught up to everything he may have missed.

Although other labs show the presence of Abathur passing he left the cocoons and experiments alone.

He did, however, look into the zerg equivalents of note, Brain dedicated to keeping my various lab running. And by that I mean he has eaten them, the bastard.

When I finally locate him, he is in front of one of the most devastating bioweapons I created. Something that I should have destroyed every last trace of.

Created during one of my moments of insanity, I made that thing.

In the Warhammer Universe, the Imperium often use a weapon to do Exterminatus, the life-eater virus. I wanted to improve on that, and I succeeded.

One drop of the world eater virus would destroy all life, even zerg. But that was not the end of it. You see once it lacks food it would mutate to feed on other things, rock, metal.

The planet I tested that on at first it was a rocky lifeless world. Now it is a gas giant that devour anything close enough.

I had one sample vacuum sealed and Abathur was right in front of it.

The guards I had in the rooms were dead so was the roaches of Abathur. I had toyed with the idea of creating dedicated guard breeds but I other projects had to take priority and the prototype I had made were lacking potential. The ones in this room were just Hydralisk hidden on the walls. They were imitating an old favorite of mine the xenomorph from Alien, just hiding by not giving a sigh of life and a bit of camouflage. it would have effective until Abathur decided to evolve one of its roaches into a Brutalisk.

Seeing that I had no guard left, I had to intervene a hasty and quiet wormhole later and now I stand just behind him. His Brutalisk was guarding the door and was too far to cause me problems.

Honestly, I was on my way to beat the shit out of Abathur, but he suddenly sends a psi-link to talk to me.

(Abathur) Organism designated Overmind wish to communicate.

Did he figure I was behind him, let’s humor him and see what he want? If he tries anything funny with the bioweapon I will nuke him.

I let my psionic presence known while keeping my avatar hidden.

(Overmind) What do you want?

Abathur entire body tensed he was nervous, afraid and agitated, not the type of emotions you want with an individual is next to a doomsday weapon.

(Abathur) Overmind swarm superior's, superior essence. Organism Abathur wish to integrate Overmind swarm and be remade superior.

… What the hell did he eat? Oh yeah the brain, he must absorb my cell too.

Having Abathur would help since he is good with essence, and I can teach some trick to him too. Why not, either my cell is working really well on him, he really wants to join my force or is faking in order to stay alive.

Let make sure I order him to open his minds and to hide nothing.

I process his entire life with the help of extra brain power from the archives.

Good news, he really wants to join for an increase in his ability.

Bad news, he never had competition, no urge to improve himself for a long time. Well that easy to fix, he will soon have to be creative if he wishes to keep his position.

But first, he needs to get the fuck out of this rooms.

Next time I pass next to a star I will drop that into it. And work for an antivirus just in case.

I ordered Abathur to go in the evolution cathedral, my version of an evolved evolution chamber. He will be subjected to evolution by my hand when I have time.

Next stop Dehaka.

Primal Zerg, I was conflicted about them, they have a quality that I admired but their independence and constantly evolving bodies made them significant hard to infest, while still keeping their original quality.

I wonder if I could make a deal with them, turn Zerus in a worldship and bring them with me to collect essence from other worlds.

I was not a Primal but if the benefit outweighs my status, there should have some volunteers willing to follow me.

Dehaka had a taste from the stock I collected, he could be interested in my offer, if not, well there are others primal.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

For now, let try negotiate, I send moderators over the bank he currently hiding in.

A hundred moderators gather over the structure. They all began from all their mouths to speak in a single voice, a choir.

(Moderator choirs) Dehaka, the Overmind is giving you one chance to surrender, Summit and the essences of the universe will you to hunts, refuse and be exterminated.

(Moderator choirs) Ether way Zerus will be transformed either for the best or for the worst.

After the choirs spoke the essence bank began to tremble and one of the exterior walls of the living structure slit open.

Dehaka came out from the wounded wall, I was guessing that was Dehaka since he still had a vague resemblance with the image I remembered.

If there a victor today it would be without a doubt him. His body was massive and multiple mutations were apparent just by looking at him.

he looked like his master skin from Hero of the Storm, but with some differences. The most obvious was him severed arms had regrown.

He stood in the opening in the wall, his pack also had evolved. While he and his pack could, in all honestly fight and break through the encirclement with acceptable lost, the nature of the primal making then impossible to truly judge their strength.

Dehaka stood there for a while, I guess he was thinking on the offer. When he finally made his decisions he did not shout or sent a messenger, he used the ability of the moderator to send and receive Radio wave, to the moderator choir.

They acquired a rather useful ability there if I would take a guess the totality of his pack must also have this ability too, giving them the ability to coordinate his pack on large scale. He only needed them to learn how to talk with this ability, and while the moderators were abusing this ability they needed the hive mind to learn to use it.

The fact that Dehaka could form a sentence with it was scary and a clear sign of the potential primal possessed.

(Dehaka) I Will Follow Essence.

A rather simple sentence but it would transmit the meaning easily.

He couldn't care less for everything else, as long he could collect essence he would be happy. This is closest a zerg could be to a mercenary. Whit his previous employer Kerrigan being dead, he had no allegiance but to himself.

I could work with that, but I am not foolish enough to believe him on his word alone. I will send a brood to Zerus and turn it into a worldship, but not like the maw.

During my preparation for the future, I realized that some world were just too precious to be infested, and the natural evolution those world produced were work of art

A world like the one of Monster Hunter or Catachan from Warhammer 40k or any death world from that universe. Useful for a being that use those essences to improve his troops.

Simply I would form a cocoon around the planet and then tow it with me, and while I said simply, keeping the world ecology intact while moving it across star is beyond complicated.

Now back to Dehaka, he and his pack will receive a parasite, to track and monitor them. They are not from the hive mind and to manipulate them with my geas requires that our mind touch each other.

The parasite was psi-sensitive but not fully connected to the hive mind, this would allow them to enter a place that would be dangerous to possess one.

He agreed to my condition but he wanted to be allowed to hunt on the world I visited(invaded) and that he could use the various essence bank in my possession.

Now that it was over, I oversee the clean up of the failed experiments and make the adjustments to Kerrigan inner circle.

It was a good thing since I was getting tired.

Zagara now has her upper torso look like the torso of her desert queen look from Hero of the storm, and she was evolved from broodmothers to hive empress, her role was after all command and management.

Abathur was remade and he is no longer a brood of one, he has plenty of little brother one in each brood.

The various strains like the Raptors and Swarmling were chosen by brood basis and only the base creature, in this case, the zergling were kept as a template. This would allow a greater variety within the swarm, one brood could posses Swarmling and used a vast number to win it a battle and another would could use Raptor for devastating hit and run tactic. New brood would start with the base unit and chose their variant themselves. This policy would also allow me to create news variants for a specific purpose.

Isara also had a cosmetic change, giving her a human appearance and the usage of her hand. I let her set shop inside of the archives, she would manage the various memory and her children would act as advisors in various position.

Once it is done I was planning to take a nap since I haven’t slept in years and today even made me use a lot of energy.

But a pop-up screen shows up in front of me. It was covered in the corrupted text but there were two words that were readable.

(System) PLOT ARMOR

In my moment of confusion, I simply repeated what written aloud.

(Overmind) Plot armor?

…

...

…

In the psionic connection that was passing as my brain, two cell connected to each other.

(Overmind) Fuck!

I opened a wormhole to Kerrigan last known location, the battlefield in front of the palace.

Once I arrived where her body was supposed to be, she was of course gone.

Now I opened my mind to try and locate her, she somehow managed to dodge all patrols and units I possessed and made her way somewhere out of sight.

I wondered why do I acted that way, hell I started acting like a typical bad guy. And the system strangely silent, normally it would be either trolling me or informing of important stuff.

I must focus on Kerrigan, she is hiding inside the maw, that I am sure of it. Following normal trope, I would use my force that gathered mainly on the other edge and would close the encirclement until I find her.

It was a good plan except I did not trust it, that was what normally someone would do in a story, it would either lead the hero to a way to escape or a way to fight back.

By going against my intuition who seemed to keen to lead me away from Kerrigan fate, I began to review how could Kerrigan reverse the situation with my stuff.

The world eater virus would certainly do damage, but kill me? No, the arsenal of nuke neither a big firework, sure but against the swarm? Nah, the planet cracker from the Dominion, certainly not. Draining the pool of psi energy? Unlikely, defense too strong.

…

Why did I just dismiss that?

A wave of fatigue hit me, and my thought process became erratic, how could that happen? My mind is a network of cell psionically connected that was spread across all zerg organisms. It was simply impossible for me to be tired, bored yes but not tired.

I raise my avatar hand to open a wormhole to the pool, I had an idea of what happening. The energy began to form and swirl but failed to pierce space.

I tried again and this time it even failed to form.

I was panicking, but I knew where I had to go, so I ran my way there, and considering the maw is a planet going from one end to the other without being able to teleport was a pain.

I ran and leaped my way there, it would take time to get there, too much time.

Why am I running? I have troops near the pool, they could buy me time even if they are not able to deal with her.

Again, a strange feeling washed over me followed by an ideal. To forget my other troops and deal with this myself, I was strong enough to defeat her the first time so why should I need help?

After this though, I stopped right where I was. Something was not right, I was manipulated somehow. The geas that was implanted in my soul should protect me from being manipulated.

And yet I was making decisions that I knew would bite me in the ass.

I needed to talk with the system as fast as I could.

But for now, I ordered everything that was idle to rush Kerrigan position. Soon rumbling could be heard across the Maw, millions of zerg lifeform began to move across thousands of tunnels and path leading to my pool.

I knew that the layout of the Maw was made in order to repel an invading force so a lot of choke points and tunnel that becomes smaller the farther you go in. But there was a proper path that could be opened in case of a crisis. And I opened it.

The first zerg to reach the pool were zergling, they barely registered going inside before a bolt of energy turned them to ashes.