While the other gods panicked, trying to escape the collapsing space, Cillians focus was entirely on the gray swarm spreading before him. He wasn't thinking about survival. He wanted to understand the life form that could thrive inside a newborn multiverse.

From the depths of the Abyss, legions of demons rose like a tide. Their black forms streaked across the void, countless and furious, and still a mere ripple compared to the gray ocean of insects advancing toward them.

At Cillian's command, Demon Prince Fabudi and his armies pushed the assault forward, their armies spreading like wildfire across the void. But when the black mist finally collided with the gray waves, when demons and Zerg met in a clash that tore the space apart, Cillian realized something crucial.

He had underestimated them.

He had somehow underestimated a race capable of devouring the foundation of an entire embryonic multiverse.

——————x——————

"Hah! Bugs?"

Pescher, the demon with crimson eyes, looked out across the endless swarm and smiled. The sight of it didn't frighten him, it thrilled him. All around, demons roared with laughter, their bloodlust rising as the battlefield shook beneath their feet.

Crack.

Crack.

With a single step, Pescher crushed dozens of Zerg vanguard soldiers beneath his heel. Their bodies splattered like soft shells, their gray ichor spilling across the fractured ground. The demons howled, trampling through the swarm as though slaughter were a game.

Unlike mortals, demons didn't fear blood or death. They fed on it. War was their joy. Destruction was their comfort.

"I expected more from something that stinks this bad," Pescher said, sneering as he tore another creature apart.

Cillian stood apart from the chaos, his eyes fixed on several Zerg corpses floating before him in the dark. His divine fire wrapped around them, dissecting their bodies with surgical precision.

"The will of the hive…" he murmured.

Cracking open one of the insect's skulls, he studied its refined, almost crystalline brain. It wasn't small from weakness, it was streamlined. Every unnecessary organ removed. Every cell aligned for the sole purpose of obeying the hive.

Their simplicity wasn't primitive.

Every muscle, every nerve, every movement was deliberate,. Where demons were chaotic and unstable, the Zerg, as disgusting as the were, were mechanical I'm their design.

"The design of this race…" Cillian whispered, his eyes narrowing. "It's beyond anything I've seen."

He ran divine fire through one of the corpses, tracing the patterns of energy within.

Even the most advanced life designers at Grimstone couldn't have engineered something this exact. This was deliberate evolution, executed to the highest level.

Each Zerg was weak alone, yet their cost of birth was nearly nothing.

Demons required many resources to exist. Even Cillian's expendable abyssal soldiers consumed hundreds of times more energy than a single Zerg drone.

And yet these insects had achieved balance, efficiency beyond comprehension.

Every grain of matter was used, where everything served a function. There was a type of Zerg for every need, hunter, builder, soldier, feeder.

They had surpassed individuality.

"So what makes them special?" he said quietly. "Is it their genetic sequence?"

He raised his hand, and lines of glowing data spiraled around him, the Zerg's genetic code, drifting like divine script. Cillian studied it with growing fascination.

"Let's see how deep your perfection runs."

He began his experiment, merging fragments of Zerg genes with the blood of abyssal creatures to observe the results.

And while his attention was fixed on the sequence, far ahead, the battlefield began to shift.

The demons, which had been laughing, certain of their victory, were starting to realize something was wrong.

The Zerg weren't dying anymore.

——————x——————

"Strange…"

As the demon army in the Endless Abyss slowly noticed something unusual about the Zerg, Cillian himself observed the differences.

"After mixing the two genetic sequences…" His black-and-red swirled eyes narrowed, reflecting his growing doubt.

"Why are the Zerg gaining a genetic advantage? No… that's not quite right. To be precise…"

Cillian had previously injected the Zerg genetic sequence into the bodies of abyssal creatures. This hybrid, temporarily called the "Abyss Zerg," should have enhanced the abyss creatures. That had been the plan.

But reality proved otherwise.

Every abyss creature touched by the Zerg sequence became infected. Flesh and blood mutated rapidly, rewriting their forms completely. Their original consciousness was replaced by the will of the hive, transforming them into true Zerg.

Every creature, human, beast, demon, or even twisted abyssal plant, was susceptible. And the transformation took a lot to reverse.

Even parts of Laktovia's body, twisted and tumor-covered, were not immune. When subjected to the experiment, the flesh erupted into writhing, flesh-colored insects, screaming as they rolled across the Abyss, attacking everything in sight. These new Zerg immediately coordinated with perfect synergy, without any communication Cillian could detect. They operated as a single mind.

Even so, in front of Cillian, master of the Endless Abyss, their attacks were still futile.

"Squeak."

A wave of black mist swept through the horde, trapping them. Yet even restrained, the insects continued to gnaw at the mist with their mandibles.

"What a strange phenomenon…" Cillian murmured. He had now identified a second critical trait of the Zerg besides their sheer numbers: assimilation. Their genetic code carried a built-in ability to consume and rewrite other lifeforms.

Raising his head, Cillian watched the distant battlefield where demons clashed with the swarm.

————————————

On that side, Pescher and the other demons fought on. "Fought" was generous, it was more accurate to say they massacred the Zerg. Individually, the insects were weak, despite their overwhelming numbers. For now, their strength was nothing compared to the demons.

"Uhhhhhh!"

Pescher froze mid-swing, noticing a fellow demon, one he knew well, suddenly collapse. The demon Tal, usually sturdy and ruthless, bent unnaturally.

"Hey, poor Tal! What's wrong? You dying?" Pescher's thousands of eyes glared as he barked, partly in jest, partly genuine curiosity.

The surrounding demons tried to intervene, lifting massive arms, but Tal's limbs went limp. Something abnormal had begun.

Tal twitched violently, screaming, drawing the attention of every demon nearby. Then, snap! Snap!

Over a dozen blade-like Zerg limbs erupted from Tal's body, supporting and reshaping him. His form shifted grotesquely, demonic features fading, Zerg traits multiplying.

Tal lifted his head. Pescher's countless eyes met what were now compound eyes, fully Zerg.

"(Demon language) Long live the swarm…"

"What? Tal, you idiot!" Pescher shouted, gripping his black giant sword, ready to strike.

"(Demon language) Great… Long live the Zerg!"

Tal moved again, and this time, truly moved. The transformation completed. The sturdy demon was no longer just Tal. He was evolution in motion, a living hybrid, wielding abyssal strength under Zerg design.

Pescher's arm, black sword raised, fell on the moment of impact,

"Roar!"

When the many-eyed creature's arm was chopped off, it did not retreat like an ordinary creature to avoid subsequent attacks. On the contrary, the enraged Pescher, this powerful demon, turned around and pounced on the one who had once been called Tal, now fully transformed into a Zerg!

"Brush!"

A new arm sprouted rapidly above the severed one. Yet with this regeneration came a price: the number of eyes on Pescher's body began to rapidly decrease. Each disappearing eye represented a potential soul, annihilated and converted into nutrients for self-repair. Though these losses could eventually be replenished, the scale of consumption still made Pescher's heart ache.

"You damn idiot, Tal!"

Stepping on a tiny insect to death, Pescher picked up the black giant sword lying on the ground, drew it, and charged at Tal—the former Tal—who was now slaughtering the rest of the demons in the distance. His long, barbed tongue greedily licked the black giant sword as he prepared for the attack.

"Wham!"

Something unexpected happened. Tal, who had once been only slightly weaker than Pescher, was able to block the demon's full-strength strike using only the blade-like limbs that had sprouted from his abdomen.

But that was only the beginning.

Pescher's eyes widened as he realized the full scale of Tal's transformation. The appearance of Tal was evolving further and further away from the demon he had known. A huge insect-like body, covered in countless blade-like limbs, constantly shed shells from Tal's old form.

Every piece of his previous body was absorbed as nourishment, fueling the growth of this new Zerg.

Even though this Zerg had only originated from a mid-level demon, its strength now was enough to make Pescher hesitate. The battlefield was full of similar scenes. Countless demons had been parasitized by the Zerg in the same way, transformed into tools for the swarm's evolution.

Cillian had not yet fully understood the mechanism of this parasitic system, but he could see the result:

"It's too late to figure it out,"

He swept his divine fire across the battlefield, scanning every valuable native demon with precision. The most correct decision, he concluded, was clear: grab what you can and run.

Though it might seem embarrassing to admit, Cillian, obsessed with science and knowledge, was decisive when it counted. He had calculated the situation: he could not eliminate the entire swarm by his own strength. Most of the lower gods' divine worlds had already been destroyed by the Zerg.

Even now, the Zerg continued to evolve rapidly. After engaging the gods, many had developed the ability to consume divine fire. While each Zerg would become a crystalline form after absorbing a little divine fire, the decrease of divine fire around the gods was visible even to the naked eye. Middle-level gods tried to defend their worlds, releasing armies to prevent the Zerg from devouring the core, but it was a losing battle. As their troops fell, the Zerg would eventually break through. When that happened, the gods would die, and their worlds would vanish.

Cillian saw no hope for outright victory. Even high-level gods, those at the stage of Grimstone tutors, would struggle against such a swarm. His own strength was insufficient to confront the Zerg directly. The most cost-effective strategy was clear: make a quick gain and run.

But first, he had to wait for Demon Prince Fabudi and the others to fully occupy the 8-shaped world. Its sacrificial rules to the Endless Abyss was too great to abandon. And the potential gain was worth it.

"The Zerg's Will Node."

To study the swarm more accurately in the future, Cillian planned to capture a node of the Zerg's will with the help of his demons. Capturing the main nest was impossible, they simply did not have that ability.

Through long observation, Cillian had discovered something interesting. Though the Zerg appeared to operate under a single will, subtle differences betrayed the swarm's structure. Some Zerg fought more aggressively than others. Some suffered fewer losses. The massive swarm was, in reality, composed of a main nest will and thousands of will nodes.

"Haha, there's nothing we can do about it," Cillian said with a small smile. "Even the most precise organism cannot match mechanical perfection. That's simply the textbook truth."

Cillian closed his eyes, scanning the battlefield once more. Finally, a bright spot appeared amid the gray tide.

"found you"

He stretched out his hand. A wave of black mist, carrying endless demons, surged toward the hive will node. There, a single Zerg paused. Its compound eyes glimmered with a flicker of wisdom.

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